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The Strategic Alliance between Lead Profiling and Lead Nurturing

The Strategic Alliance between Lead Profiling and Lead Nurturing

I was reading this great article titled; Lead Nurturing; Ripening the Right Bananas, which explained how lead nurturing turns unripe leads into loyal consumers. The article was helpful, but I immediately noticed a crucial step in the process that they had left out; lead profiling. Successful lead nurturing begins with thorough lead profiling.

Lead Nurturing Needs Lead Profiling

Although the article did an excellent job of summarizing the benefits of lead nurturing, it didn’t supply the reader with a real strategy for creating meaningful connections with unripe leads. Leads that are not ready to convert require customized coaxing to convince them to respond favorably to the campaign. Businesses cannot effectively turn leads into consumers without first understanding the leads’ behavior, interests, and needs.

It makes perfect sense when you think about it. How can a company convince someone they need a particular product or service, if they don’t first understand how their product or service will benefit that specific lead?

Lead Profiling for Lead Nurturing

The building blocks for any effective lead nurturing campaign is comprehensive lead profiling. The most efficient way to develop a complete lead profile is marketing automation. Marketing automation software uses website visitor tracking to find out exactly what information a lead is seeking out, which articles or pages they have already viewed, and any demographic characteristics that can be obtained through their IP address or online registries. All of this crucial information is compiled to create a beneficial lead profile.

Marketing Automation and Lead Nurturing

Visitor tracking and profile is necessary for the foundation, but there is still more work that needs to be done before a business develops lead nurturing content. The marketing automation process always involves ranking and segmenting leads based on specific behavior and characteristics. All of this is done to increase engagement and lead nurturing ROI. Lead nurturing content must be relevant and customized based on the predetermined lead segments to create a real connection with the reader.

Relationship Building with Lead Nurturing

Businesses can’t expect to develop an intimate and meaningful relationship with potential prospects if they first don’t take the time to get to know them personally. Leads know they have endless purchasing options online and they won’t settle for a business that doesn’t make an effort to understand their needs and concerns.

Developing a strategic alliance between lead profiling and lead nurturing makes it easier to turn leads into consumers. It makes the prospect feel like the company truly cares about their concerns and is offering valuable advice for free. To generate significant ROI from lead nurturing campaigns, companies must first track, profile, and segment every lead into comparable groups. That is the only proven way to create relevant content that will be truly beneficial to your prospects’ lives.

How to do Database Profiling

How to do Database ProfilingHave you ever wondered how to build a database profile? If you haven’t, it’s time you start thinking about it. Database profiling creates individual, sub-segmented databases to target marketing efforts and personalize messaging. Dust off the cobwebs and consider tapping into your most prized resource, your database, vs. buying lists and using common “spray-and-prey” marketing approaches.

While driving cross country the other day, I saw a big semi truck with the words “Our most valuable asset sits here” plastered across the side of the truck. There was an arrow following the statement. The arrow pointed to the truck driver! The trucking company clearly feels their drivers are a key asset to their company. It got me thinking, what would a business say their most valuable asset is? Rightfully so, some might say their employees; however, companies would be remiss not to mention their database as one of their most valuable assets.

Databases take time to build and contain a host of crucial information on partners, competitors, prospects and customers making them a rich repository for any marketing savvy professional. Unfortunately, many businesses aren’t able to unlock the true potential of their assets without a database profiling solution. Sophisticated technology is necessary to build rich database profiles, which effectively partitions a database into smaller, more targeted sub databases. Database profiling solutions allow businesses to do two things, segment and score their database. Let’s cover lead scoring and database segmentation in more detail.

Database Profiling using Lead Scoring

Lead scoring allows marketers to prioritize their database by assigning points to each record based on custom criteria. For example, marketers can run scoring programs across the database to give 10 points to people in a target industry. Similarly, assign 10 more points to people who work for companies generating more than $100M in revenue. These scores are examples of demographic lead scoring. Behavioral lead scoring takes into account contacts interaction with marketing. For example, if someone filled out a web form or clicked through an email campaign. The end result is a prioritized and qualified database, something very handy for a sales team.

Database Profiling using Segmentation

Database segmenting is the process of creating individual lists or groups based on select criteria. For example, marketing can create a list of contacts in a certain industry that have interacted with your company in the past 6 months. With a segmented database, marketers can send personalized communications to prospects that are more relevant and topical. Segmented databases are easier to nurture using lead nurturing technology and result in higher lead to opportunity conversion.

Make sure your lead scoring and database segmentation solutions are dynamic, not just static. In other words, make sure the tools you use can build a database profile that applies to your existing database as well as future contacts added to your database. Case in point, when a new contact is added to your database that fits specific segmentation criteria, the contact should be automatically added to your list. Likewise, once a lead scoring program is setup and defined future contacts should be scored based on your criteria.

Database profiling is easy when you have the right tools to segment and score your database. Fortunately, Lead Liaison delivers solutions to help you statically and dynamically profile your database. Don’t forget to market and re-market with relevant material. Start getting the most out of your shiny new asset today! Maybe the “most-valuable-asset” arrow might get pointed at you!

To learn more about Lead Liaison’s database profiling solutions please contact us.

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