Lead Liaison

You Can’t Execute Lead Management Without…

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Wrestling with Lead ManagmentSales agents (and now marketing teams) often wrestle with lead management policies. You can’t execute lead management without the right approach. Here are a few key lead management strategies that every enterprise should adopt.

Lead nurturing

There are plenty of numbers being thrown around regarding how many leads are ready to buy on first contact. 50%…65-85%…90%. Whatever the number, the point is that most times marketing leads need to be nurtured (cultivated) so they grow into sales prospects. What’s the best way to be effective at lead nurturing? Create a strategy that advances leads through constantly escalating engagements. (But keep in mind that you can’t herd all leads to the sales engagement gate at the same pace; message delivery should be aligned with where leads are in the buying cycle.)

Lead scoring

As leads are qualified and nurtured, they should be scored and/or graded for quality. To properly execute lead management, companies should grade both physical and business attributes (explicit score) to ensure leads that are generated fit a customer persona. Next, online behaviors (implicit score) should be scored for relevancy. Combining explicit and implicit metrics provides a holistic image of leads that can be used to determine how deep into the buying cycle they are and whether they fit the profile.

Determining “sales-ready” value

Too many times sales gets a lead that, when contacted, shows little interest or capacity to buy. Should sales have received that lead at that time? For companies that simply send marketing leads en masse when they are generated, it’s no wonder that 80% are ignored, discarded, or lost. Sales and marketing should work together to define what a sales ready lead looks like. Sales agents know best about what leads convert to customers while marketers know how to generate leads. Put those two in a room and get them to define how sales-ready leads are while they advance through the pipeline.

Providing a seamless transition

As leads are nearing transition from marketing-qualified lead (MQL) status to sales-qualified lead (SQL) status the handoff from marketing to sales should be non-evident to your leads. Marketing must furnish sales with information about messaging used during nurturing, lead score, length of time in the marketing pipeline, and so on. When a lead moves to your CRM, sales agents shouldn’t have to recreate the lead experience. A marketing automation platform that integrates with popular CRMs can help with creating a seamless lead transition.

Evaluation

I know: it seems like common sense. But a surprising number of enterprises do not evaluate program performance effectively. Marketers need to know if the leads they are sending sales are good potential closes. To determine marketing effectiveness, sales should inform marketers about close rates, lead-to-prospect rates, and other metrics. From that information, marketing should evaluate messaging, delivery, channel, day-part, offers, and engagement tools.

Lead Liaison

Using Marketing Automation for Transparent Campaigns

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Using Marketing Automation for Transparent CampaignsMarketing automation can positively affect a company’s bottom line by creating much-needed links between investment and ROI. For CEOs, it’s more important than ever to get confirmation that marketing efforts are paying off for the company. Without the proper web tracking methodology and assets in place that calculate return on investment, marketers and their CEOs are left without a clue as to whether or not marketing budgets are really worth it. Make sure to use marketing automation for transparent campaigns.

MarketingWeek magazine recently took on the issue of how much CEOs truly trust their marketers – a dubious question that undoubtedly causes stress for both CEOs and marketing teams. You can read the article (and the very relevant and insightful comments) at  http://www.marketingweek.co.uk.

To summarize, the article suggests that 70% of CEOs surveyed earlier this summer in a project by Fournaise Marketing Group expressed a complete lack of trust in their marketing team’s ability to generate a positive ROI through their efforts. This begs the question – do these surveyed CEOs have a point, and is their dissatisfaction indicative of industry-wide views of marketers?

How Marketing Automation Makes the Difference

Accountability is the determining factor in whether a relationship between company executives and marketers is transparent enough to survive. Without some sort of measure of accountability, CEOs have no idea what their marketing teams are doing and whether the money spent results in any kind of return over the long term.

Tracking metrics is what defines that level of accountability. With solid numbers in place, even CEOs who micro-manage advertising campaigns won’t be able to deny the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of their ideas. With marketing automation, a solid set of tools that track advertising campaigns across platforms provides metrics that can’t be ignored. When CEOs and marketing teams have access to these metrics and use them to make marketing decisions, transparency is a sure thing.

Developing the Right Relationships

One of the more interesting comments on the MarketingWeek article states that if CEOs want to see the true impact marketing has on their bottom line, they should turn their marketing efforts off for a while and see what happens. We can all likely imagine that scenario and predict the outcome.

Varying factors contribute to the trust CEOs have for their marketing departments, but transparency will always be one of those key factors. Using marketing automation tools like Lead Liaison to provide transparency in cross-platform marketing efforts can make more difference than you think. Not only does the right marketing automation company save money – it can repair a spotty relationship between departments.

Visit Lead Liaison today to find out how transparent your marketing efforts can be!

Lead Liaison

Digital Tools That Marketers Need To Dominate the Digital Era

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Digital Tools That Marketers Need To Dominate the Digital EraThis guest blog has been provided by Jasmine Sandler.

Why You Need Digital Tools

The Internet provides myriad opportunities for marketers to sell their products and services. But successful digital marketing requires sophisticated tools that work in tandem, creating ongoing efficiencies and insights.

Digital tools are pieces of software that do two things: They automate and manage a marketing process, and they measure the effectiveness of the initiative. For example, they can manage your CRM by taking information submitted by a prospect via a web form, segmenting the lead and relaying it so that a salesperson can easily use the information to nurture the sales process.

Types of Digital Tools

There are three levels of digital marketing tools:

1. Simple Tools

Examples include Google Alerts, Social Mention and Alexa. Each provides simple information. The first two track the mentions your product gets online; the latter shows the traffic ranking of your website and that of your competition.

2. Advanced Tools That Let You Take Action

Google Adwords drives leads. Lead Liaison automates the sales process. Hootsuite and Viral Heat help to manage social media programs.

3. Developer Tools

These tools help your web developer to create applications that enable you to deliver your brand across multiple platforms. Mobile apps, for example, can drive productivity for both salespeople and customers and help speed order processing. Google Webmaster is a tool that can help your SEO

How to Manage & Measure a Digital Marketing Program

All of these tools, or others like them, are needed to manage a digital marketing program. If you need an audit on your digital marketing strategy, an audit of your social media program or social media training for your team, I’m here to help. Contact me at Jasmine Sandler.com.

Lead Liaison

Marketing Automation Metrics to Focus On

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While marketing automation can improve marketing and sales performance, companies are sometimes unsure of which metrics to focus on. Marketing automation platforms typically provide analytics that can be used as key performance indicators. In most cases, the marketing automation metrics that are often used as KPIs are similar to traditional metrics. Marketing Automation Metrics

Marketing Source Pipeline

Marketing source pipeline refers to how effectively each channel is at lead generation. Marketing automation analytics reveal where leads are being generated. Within a multi-channel marketing program there may be several lead generation campaigns: email, SEM, social, etc. deployed at one time. Using MA, marketing execs should evaluate which sources are pulling leads into their sales pipelines. Evaluate each source’s contribution within a program at leads’ point-of-entry into the pipeline.

Marketing Influenced Pipeline

Sometimes called “channel effectiveness”, the marketing influenced pipeline is a measurement of how effectively MA practices are escalating messages and advancing leads through the sales pipeline. It is important to understand how effectively automated marketing campaigns are performing at lead management. Which messages are engaging and advancing leads? Whether the metric being analyzed relates to day-parting effectiveness or channel performance, executives should understand how effectively marketing is at funnel progression. Evaluate the performance of lead nurturing practices by measuring marketing-qualified leads (MQL), sales-accepted leads (SAL), and sales-qualified leads (SQL).

Investment-to-Pipeline

How effectively is digital marketing spend turning prospects into leads? Companies may have different definitions for a new lead, MQL, SAL, or SQL but execs should be focused on how well marketing dollars are filling the pipeline. Lead abandonment rates can be used to evaluate where leads are dropping off. And it can be beneficial to examine the dollars spent to achieve each status within the sales pipeline.

Investment-to-Revenue

This is the big one that most marketing execs are graded on in both traditional marketing practices and marketing automation practices. Often called the “win rate”,  this metric reveals how well marketing spend is driving sales. It can be tricky to evaluate profit within an MA platform but execs should definitely be focused on where marketing dollars are producing revenue. While cost-per-lead and close rate are frequently used as KPIs, as MA analytics evolve further, marketing execs will be able to sharpen their focus on evaluating the practices that are directly influenced by marketing automation.

Lead Liaison

Why Should You Care about Real Time Visitor Tracking?

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real time visitor trackingReal time visitor tracking on your website lets you know how people are using your site as it’s happening. This hasn’t always been the case with the web’s most accessible tracking tools. Back in the good old days of internet advertising – i.e., about four or five years ago – Google Analytics didn’t offer a real time tracking option.  If you wanted to see how visitors were using your site, you’d need to check in hours or even a full day after the traffic happened.

Analytics competitors like Woopra changed the way the game works. Google was faced with other companies out there doing robust tracking with real time visitor tracking, which necessitated some differences in the way their platform works. Over the years, Google’s interface has changed so that website hits are now reflected more accurately in real time – but is this really all the info you need?

Real Time Visitor Tracking Isn’t Enough

Because of Google’s TOS, you’re not going to be able to pull out IP addresses from Analytics. Rewiring your Analytics account via any kind of API changes to show you this information will only get you banned for life from Google. If you want to get a more specific idea of who’s visiting your site via real time visitor tracking, you’re going to need to rely on something other than Google Analytics.

Doing real time visitor tracking isn’t just about seeing what recurring IPs are flipping through your website. You can also:

Record user data. Watching how users are interacting with your website while it’s happening gives you a clear picture of what’s eye catching and what’s not. You can use heat maps to assess this data over the long-term, but there’s nothing like seeing how an individual user from a recognizable IP is viewing your data. Today’s marketing automation software typically includes real time visitor tracking resources that allow you to watch visitors using your website live.

Look for Patterns. Google doesn’t allow you to identify particular users, but most marketing automation software does. Once you know a user or group of users is coming from a certain IP/company, it’s worth it to consider marketing to those folks based specifically on how they’re interacting with your website. Real time visitor tracking allows you to do this kind of monitoring for patterns in user behavior.

Get a Holistic Perspective. Because Analytics doesn’t allow you to see individual users, a holistic perspective isn’t as possible. You should be able to figure out how individual users are responding to your website, your email marketing and all other forms of marketing – not just one marketing channel at a time.

Why Marketing Automation Works

When you’re able to drill down to a very specific level of detail with real time visitor tracking, you’re able to get a clearer picture of how your marketing efforts affect the end user. Lead Liaison has a set of marketing tools that will not only allow you to do real time visitor tracking, but will give you a full picture of how one marketing channel affects the other.

Visit Lead Liaison for more information on real time visitor tracking today!

Lead Liaison

6 Myths about Marketing Automation

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6 Myths About Marketing AutomationAs companies learn more about marketing automation, the B2B community is abuzz about whether marketing automation is useful, effective, etc. We’re here to dispel a few myths that are out there with 6 myths about marketing automation.

1)  Marketing Automation  Doesn’t Provide Results

Check out these statistics (sources):

  • Prospects nurtured through MA generate 451% increase in qualified leads (The Annuitas Group)
  • Companies automating lead gen see 10% more revenue within 6-9 months (Gartner Research)
  • Relevant emails delivered through MA drive 18x more revenue than email blasts (Jupiter Research)
  • MA provides 70% shorter sales cycles; 54% improvement in sales quota achievement (Bulldog Solutions)
  • 150% increase in contact-to-lead conversion rate (SHIPSERV)
  • 47% higher average order value (Aberdeen Group)

2) Marketing Automation Is Simply A Drip Marketing Campaign

MA offers ever-increasing ways to deploy and/or leverage digital marketing assets. While email campaigns remain a vital component to marketing automation systems, marketers can also automate social engagement, deliver surveys, create and deploy landing pages, and maximize SEM efforts.

3) Marketing Automation Is Difficult To Implement

While implementation of some platforms may be complicated, several systems exist that are user-friendly and intuitive. Most MA vendors provide training and some platforms have robust help files. In some cases, companies elect to focus on using one or two features at the start then phase in additional components once staff has become comfortable with the system.

4) Marketing Automation Is Impersonal

Many MA platforms allow users to create personalized messaging through database segmentation. The efficiency that results from automating delivery does not reduce the capacity to create a campaign where leads are engaged personally. Business intelligence can be used to tailor event-triggered responses (like an email click-through) that deliver messages that address specific lead concerns.

5) Marketing Automation Is Expensive

More statistics:

  • Creative production costs are 15% lower using marketing automation (Gartner Research)
  • Event-triggered response through MA can save 80% on direct mail budget (Gartner Research)
  • Decrease in cost-per-lead from $195 to $130 (Marketo)
  • Companies that excel at lead nurturing through MA generate 50% more leads at 33% lower cost-per-lead (Marketo, Forrester Research, CSO Insights

6) Marketing Automation Lacks Creativity

As one expert puts it “actually, the opposite is true”. Because repetitive tasks, such as scheduling message delivery or data entry, can be streamlined, marketers can focus on creative practices like landing page design, social post creation, and other creative tasks. In fact, with database segmentation capabilities within MA, there is as much a need for creative design than ever before!

Lead Liaison

Lead Liaison Adds Social Post Management to its Lead Management Automation™ Platform

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Allen, TX (PRWEB) July 9, 2013 – Lead Liaison broke new ground today when the company announced the release of its social post management automation and tracking component to its flagship Lead Management Automation (LMA) platform. The fully integrated feature allows marketing and/or sales departments to post messages to multiple LinkedIn profiles, Facebook pages (including Fan Pages), and Twitter accounts simultaneously and track prospects’ activity when they engage in these social channels.

Lead Liaison developed the social media component to address the needs of its customers who wished to combine social and email channels within their lead nurturing practices without having to manage multiple interfaces.

“Our customers told us they wanted to have the functionality of a system like HootSuite with the real-time lead tracking of our Lead Management Automation platform,” said VP of corporate communications, Alex Brown. When used in combination with the platform’s activity-tracking features, the social posting component provides a unique way to generate and nurture leads through a multi-channel campaign.

“Using this feature allows marketers or salespeople to create and schedule automated delivery of posts that are intended to stimulate conversation,” said Brown. “They can conduct multiple social campaigns at once and view the results of each message in real time.”

With the LMA’s social post delivery interface, users can schedule postings according to best practices, a preconfigured model, or according to their own unique posting schedules. In addition, when scheduling messages that will be reposted, such as announcements about an upcoming trade show or promotional event, users can create “canned” messages one time and schedule repeated delivery during the period leading up to the event.

The company’s customers are already excited about the new feature. Michael Heinrichs, CEO of IMSware, a facility IT management software provider remarked, “This new feature is amazing; we’ll use it in the near future instead of TweetDeck.”

This release follows the recent upgrade of the LMA lead distribution capabilities. The company has been focused on upgrading and expanding its SaaS platform since early 2012, adding periodic user-experience improvements and cross-functional capabilities.

Want to see the social post management in action? Schedule a 10-minute personal demonstration today. For more information about any of Lead Liaison’s marketing automation products or its support services contact Lead Liaison.

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Lead Liaison is an application development company that designs, develops, and sells cloud-based marketing and sales automation software. The company markets to small and medium-sized businesses worldwide, and focuses on creating the broadest and most user-friendly revenue generation software platform. Applications cover all phases of lead management automation including sales prospecting, lead generation, and marketing automation functions that directly influence revenue generation. It’s innovative and robust lead management platform combines unparalleled sales prospecting, lead capture, real-time lead tracking, lead qualification, lead distribution, database segmentation, lead nurturing and ROI reporting. The Software as a Service (SaaS) model delivers an effective user experience and integrated cloud computing capabilities.

For More Information:

Alex Brown
VP, Corporate Communications
abrown(at)leadliaison(dot)com
888.895.3237 (888 89 LEADS)