Material specific to marketing automation such as needs, best practices, lessons learned, and benefits of marketing automation.

Lead Liaison

How to Generate More Revenue using Marketing Automation

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Generate More Revenue using Marketing AutomationMarketing automation is an extremely streamlined and systematic process for generating the greatest number of potential leads using automated software. Its principle function is to generate more sales and revenue by improving the quality of every lead given to the sales department. It also naturally uses fewer resources, since traditional marketing tasks are now automated. There is no debate whether marketing automation generates more revenue than older methods of marketing and that is not the focus of this article.

Instead, this article will explain how a company can exploit the power of marketing automation to generate even more revenue. There are proven techniques to ensure a company is generating the greatest number of leads possible, as well as strategic ways to nurture these leads to increase their chances of making a purchase.

There are also simple methods for monitoring and prioritizing each lead using effective lead scoring to make sure leads with a higher chance of conversion are given the most attention. More revenue will be generated using marketing automation when all of these efforts are combined.

Generate More Leads

A lead is anyone who comes in contact with a business’ online entities. A business can increase the number of leads they generate by focusing more on their SEO efforts and expanding their online presence. They need a dynamic and intriguing website that ranks on the first page of search engine results using keywords that are relevant to their consumers.

Modern businesses also need to use social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to engage more potential leads. The marketing department must create posts and promotions that generate interest and encourage social sharing. Leads that are obtained through relevant content and posts have a higher potential for conversion.

Convert More Leads with Better Nurturing

All nurturing should start by segmenting the leads into similar groups based on their demographic characteristics and online behavior. Lead nurturing needs to be personalized to generate more interest and more revenue. Although marketing automation is an automated process, the content it produces should not sound like it is coming from a machine.

It needs to speak directly to the reader and create a real connection. Marketers should focus on a common need or concern of a group of potential leads and then provide them with informative content that answers their questions.

Prioritize Lead with Lead Scoring

Every visitor on a site has a different level of interest. Some are anxious to buy while others are still in the initial research phase. It is important to know which ones may buy today and which leads have no intention on every making a purchase. This can be determined by monitoring and scoring their online behavior.

Marketing automation software is designed to pick up on these triggers and identify which characteristics indicate a greater chance of conversion. A solid marketing automation strategy should also incorporate online registration forms that are geared at extracting demographic information from a lead to improve the scoring model. All of this information is ranked and compared against a typical customer to determine each lead’s potential.

A business can generate more revenue using marketing automation by using SEO to increase their website traffic, creating more customized lead nurturing content, and by prioritizing leads using accurate profiling and scoring. There is an endless supply of new customers roaming the web and marketing automation is the most efficient way to secure them and turn them into revenue.

Lead Liaison

B2B Marketing Automation Tips for 2013

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B2B Marketing Automation Tips for 2013B2B marketing automation tips for 2013. Marketing Automation has streamlined the business-to-business marketing process, allowing lead generation, lead scoring, and lead nurturing to be systematically manageable using efficient software solutions. The following are several strategic tips to help gain the most qualified leads using the marketing automation machine.

Develop a Complete Profile for a Typical Buyer

The first and most important tip for using B2B marketing automation software is to establish a detailed and accurate profile of a typical buyer. Every buyer will be different, but there will be similar demographic qualities and behaviors that they will all exhibit. Lead scoring is a vital component of marketing automation and it works best when leads are ranked based on proven characteristics.

Start by assessing current B2B buyers to determine their job title, experience, budget, and the type of business they represent. Give each attribute a score based on relevancy. The next step is determining the normal online activity that signifies a buyer is interested in a product or service. Look at what links they click on and what material they download prior to purchasing. Gather all of the qualities to create a complete profile that can be compared against potential leads to determine their likelihood of conversion.

Ask the Sales Team for Input on Lead Scoring Criteria

Once a profile has been established, bring it to the sales team for their input. The sales team works directly with potential and existing clientele. They know what information and guidance buyers need to become customers. The sales team has a greater insight into leads, which they can share with marketing to create a comprehensive profile that will produce high-quality leads. Remember the philosophy that two heads are better than one. It might be worthwhile to include sales at the beginning of the process rather than the end.

Segment Leads based on Similar Scoring

B2B marketing automation is designed to gather an endless supply of leads based on online activity. The amount of leads marketing automation generates cannot be effectively nurtured and directed on an individual basis. By segmenting leads based on similar scoring attributes, marketers can develop customized approaches that will target large groups.

Develop Lead Nurturing Campaigns directed at each Lead Segment

Now that leads have been divided into segments, the final tip is to create compelling and informative nurturing campaigns geared towards each segment group. Lead nurturing campaigns need to speak directly to the B2B buyer. It should answer all of the lead’s questions and concerns while guiding them towards making a purchase.

The world of B2B marketing has changed drastically with the introduction of automated software. B2B marketing can now be managed using an efficient and systematic program for gathering, scoring, nurturing, and converting leads. In 2013, the focus will be improving this process using a complete buyer profile that includes input from the sales team, segmenting leads into defined groups, and developing personalized campaigns based on what each segment needs to know. B2B marketing automation can be a powerful tool if it is fully utilized.

Lead Liaison

How to Use Marketing Automation to its Fullest

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Using Marketing AutomationLearn how to use marketing automation to its fullest. Marketing automation is designed to turn website visitors into leads and then into life-long customers. It is a strategic process of generating leads and subsequently guiding them through the buying journey until they are ready to make a purchase. Marketing automation streamlines the entire lead management process by eliminating time-consuming and expensive manual labor from the process. Let’s discuss  how to use marketing automation to its fullest.

Generates Leads

Marketing automation systematically tracks every visitor on a website. Automation software starts the process at the moment of initial engagement by capturing the location and visiting patterns of every user on any given website. It deciphers the country the user lives in, the number of pages they visited, and even how long they spent on each specific page.

Creates Profiles on Leads

Marketing automation software then uses online registrations and forms to extract additional information on each lead. Additional demographics can be easily obtained using free offers for valuable information or services in exchange for a visitor filling in contact information like their email address.

Divides Leads into Segments

Once a profile has been started for each lead, they can be divided into lead segments or groups based on similar characteristics and interests. It is too difficult to provide a truly personalized approach to every visitor on a website, since most successful websites have hundreds or even thousands of visitors each day. Breaking them down into segments is a more realistic approach.

Nurture Leads with Relevant Campaigns

Now that leads have been divided into categories based on an initial profile, they can be targeted using strategic and compelling lead nurturing campaigns. Lead nurturing content needs to be informative and relevant, while guiding the lead in the right direction. It must provide value to the reader to keep them interested.

Scoring each Lead

Throughout the nurturing process, marketing automation software will score each lead based on predetermined criteria. Marketers first create a profile for a typical lead based on the behavioral and demographic characteristics of their existing consumers. Each aspect of the profile is ranked based on the strength of the indicator. This lead scoring profile is then used to evaluate where the lead is at in their buying process and how likely they are to make a purchase.

Marketing Automation Builds Stronger Relationships

Every component of the marketing automation process is focused on learning more about each lead, so content can be customized to benefit their needs. The more emphasis that is put on nurturing leads in a useful and relevant manner will result in stronger relationships. As long as the same quality of service continues after a lead has committed to a purchase, this will create a greater loyalty between the consumer and the business.

Marketing automation software is focused on managing the lead’s lifecycle from initial engagement, through to lead nurturing and lead qualification, to the moment the lead is handed off to the sales team for conversion. It is a complete process for tracking and directing leads using an automated, yet personalized approached.

Lead Liaison

Is Your Marketing Automation Software Managing Your Leads?

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Marketing Automation Software Managing LeadsMarketing automation software (MAS) should provide front to back lead management capabilities. From lead generation to lead distribution, a robust, full-feature program, such as our Lead Management Automation™ platform, must enable your marketing department and sales team to effectively manage leads to achieve maximum sales effectiveness.

There are several key functions that should be available in a marketing automation program. Integration with a CRM platform is one important feature but your marketing automation software must first provide all the steps that move a raw lead to a qualified, sales-ready prospect. Make sure to self-assess and ask, is your marketing automation software managing your leads?

Lead capture

When leads engage with any of your digital assets, they should be captured. This function is similar to having a prospect walk through your door; the marketing automation software must recognize basic identifiable criteria and deliver that lead to a marketing bucket.

Lead Aggregation

Leads flow from various sources. Each inquiry is not the same and you may have inquiries for five different solutions; price points, buying cycles, and lead education requirements may all be different, so your marketing automation software must aggregate the leads that arrive to appropriate buckets for processing.

Lead Qualification

Once leads have been captured and aggregated, the next step is to determine which ones are viable sales opportunities. Through your marketing automation software, sales agents must be able to determine the leads that are ready for a sales call and which ones need more education (nurturing). By integrating lead qualification assets such as online forms with a lead scoring system, it should become apparent which leads are worthy of a sales engagement.

Lead Scoring

Each lead has a varying degree of interest and fit so it is important for your marketing automation software to be able to rank your leads. The lead profile, source, and solution category are some of the criteria that should be used to prioritize prospects in order to measure sales-readiness. The lead scoring function must provide a threshold that elevates a prospect from a marketing-qualified lead to a sales-qualified lead.

Lead Distribution

How do sales agents receive leads in their pipeline? Your marketing automation software must have an appropriate way to allocate leads according to predetermined rules that your organization assigns. Geography, interest level, and product line are just a few attributes that can be used to determine proper lead distribution. As leads achieve a scoring threshold, they should be automatically distributed through an integration with a CRM package such as the Salesforce.com Cloud.

Lead Tracking

It is crucial that your marketing automation software provides lead tracking so your marketing team can assess the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. As leads respond to marketing engagements the system should update the lead score and deliver alerts to marketing and/or sales about the lead’s online activity.

Lead Nurturing

For leads that require nurturing, your marketing automation software should provide scheduling, message selection, and response. This feature should be integrated with a lead scoring function so, as new behavior is recognized, a lead’s score is automatically adjusted and sales agents are alerted.

Lead Reporting

In order to be fully effective, your marketing automation software must provide real-time reporting on lead status. Lead reports should include profile, score, sales agent assignment, and conversion metrics so management can determine how effectively leads are being captured, scored, nurtured, and distributed.

Lead Liaison

B2B Marketers need Marketing Automation and Lead Scoring

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B2B Marketers need Marketing Automation and Lead ScoringAs the global marketplace expands due to the power of the internet, B2B Marketers need to rise to the challenge and start thinking in terms of large-scale strategies. B2B marketers need marketing automation and lead scoring. They need to market to businesses that are searching for resources online. This is important since every company with an online presence who is selling the same product or service is now their competitor, regardless of their physical location.

Expanding the reach of their B2B marketing campaigns will most likely produce a wide variety of new leads. Each of these leads has their own unique potential and likelihood for conversion. They come from different locations, different industries and different purchasing background. They all approach researching new products and services in their own way and it quickly becomes too overwhelming to manually qualify and prioritize each lead based on their individual potential.

Lead scoring is an automated process designed to assist marketers in qualifying leads by assigning a quantitative value to website visitors based on the person’s demographic and behavioral profile. The value assigned to each lead is determined based on how closely the lead resembles a typical or ideal customer. For example, if a marketer is specifically interested in attracting automotive manufacturers that would need to buy industrial-grade steel for their production line, these parameters would be designed to place a greater value on whether the prospect matches with the criteria describing a typical manufacturing facility that uses industrial-grade steel.

Lead scoring with marketing automation allows marketers to quickly sort through leads and identify changes in behavioral patterns. This helps B2B marketers identify which are sales-ready leads and which will require more nurturing. By using database segmentation features of most marketing automation software, B2B marketers can touch base with leads they are interested in, by assessing their interests and creating content specific to their needs.

Marketing automation also allows B2B marketers to:

  1. Analyze lead scores in an effort to personalize email campaigns.
  2. Assess the effectiveness of past campaigns.
  3. Create automated responses to a lead’s online activity such as registrations, downloads, and/or newsletters.
  4. Create mailing lists catered to leads with specific scores.
  5. Identify buying stage of prospects and their likelihood of conversion.

By implementing lead scoring criteria with marketing automation software, companies can:

  1. Identify the improvement in the number of quality leads that were generated over a period of time. When lead profile criteria is regularly analyzed and evolved, marketers will be able to better define a sales-ready lead and then plan effectively towards closing the business deal.
  2. Reduce labor expenses associated with manual marketing processes and focus more on the campaign execution process.
  3. Offer marketers more insight into their leads, so they will spend less time guiding and nurturing leads through the marketing funnel.
  4. Unite the sales and marketing departments, so they can work together to generate higher quality leads and identify more sales-ready leads.

Lead scoring using marketing automation is a necessity for B2B marketers who want to expand globally while still being able to gain visibility into their lead’s intent. This priceless intelligence can be leveraged to move leads faster through the marketing funnel and improve their chance of becoming a customer. That is why today’s B2B marketers need marketing automation and lead scoring.

Lead Liaison

B2B Marketing Automation: Run In the Right Direction and Win

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B2B Marketing Automation: Run In the Right Direction and WinThe implementation of B2B marketing automation is often seen as daunting in the face of perceived complexity and unpreparedness. Implementing market automation is simple and cost-effective. It assures more qualified leads and revenue growth without making you put in an overwhelming amount of effort. The following are a few must-follow tips to follow to get your marketing automation plan going in the right direction.

Build your Marketing Automation Campaign on a Strong Foundation

Think of what type of skill sets you have and what type of volume you expect your marketing automation tools to handle. Tally your resources and thoroughly audit the expected performance criteria against the system you employ. Consider targeted customers, their motivations and expectations and make sure your marketing automation system can support them. Add contacts based on these selections then refresh and recreate your campaign content regularly. Plan the minimum details you need from customers upfront.

Improved Targeting and Sophisticated Deliverability

Your marketing automation system must be sophisticated enough to create a sense of trust in the mind of targeted customers. Test your email, the most important marketing automation contact tool, to ensure that its display, presentation, and readability suit customers and their mobile or laptop devices. Ensure that your email does not land up in the spam filter of recipients, blunting its appeal and value. Also, confirm email addresses and make sure you have prospects, customers and partners permission to nurture them.

Integrated and Multi-Touch Campaigns

Align marketing automation with your CRM and multi-touch campaigns. Two-way integration of CRM and automation empowers business processes and campaigns and helps achieve better sales potential compared to stand-alone solutions. It helps keep superior relationship with vendors and customers while expanding the sales funnel without committing extra resources. Multi-touch strategy with provision of five to 10 touches over a period of time is a must to cultivate prospects from interest to sure sales conversion. Enable more touches customized as per client preference in every buying-cycle step.

Consider Timing

Make sure you send appropriate automated messages to the right person at the right time. Source the client or partner data and analyze the same to establish their preferred timing. Messages received during out of office hours or nights may be considered intrusive, leading to negative reaction. However, messages sent on birthdays, special holidays, and leisure times are received with a positive feeling and are more likely to elicit response.

Improve Lead Management

An improved lead management process is a vital part of a successful marketing automation. Use both implicit and explicit data to generate and nurture leads. Implicit information includes clicks, page visits, and email subscriptions while explicit information includes data specific to industry, geography, classification based on requirements, jobs, behavior, etc. Create different lead-stage campaigns to prevent any leak in the sales funnel. Both short-term and long-term communication measures focusing on competitive pricing, education, demos will help attract prospects.

Once your marketing automation is up and running, try to fine tune it regularly to continually achieve higher ROI. Analyze results based on market intelligence and feed the automation system accordingly.

Lead Liaison

Targeting Leads Using Marketing Automation

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Targeting Leads Using Marketing AutomationTry targeting leads using marketing automation. Thanks to impressive advancements in modern technology anyone can now manage the targeting, timing, and content of their outbound marketing messages in direct response to prospect’s online behavior.  Marketing automation is designed to first qualify each potential lead and then target the leads based on their established online history.  Lead qualification criteria are setup specifically for each business, so every aspect can be customized to find leads that have the greatest potential.

It is quality over quantity when it comes to potential business, so any program that can categorize each lead based on how their interests relate to your company’s main focus is worth its weight in gold.  Marketing automation searches for strong leads that have a higher chance of conversion.

Marketing automation qualifies leads by analyzing prospects online activity, so a potential vendor can better understand needs and buying patterns even before first contact is made.  This way the marketing team can create campaigns designed specifically to appeal to customers they are targeting.  Marketing automation uses website activity profiles to segment your audiences for various campaigns based on their personal interests. For example, if you know someone has registered to run a marathon and you sell high end fitness gear, then you can direct the ad towards how your shoes are superior for long distances.

Every marketer wants to get to know their potential customer’s faster and the best way to tap into their thought process is to analyze the sites they are visiting, the articles they are reading and the products they are purchasing.  Marketing automation does all of that in less time than humanly possible.

Marketing automation also allows you to personalize your lead nurturing efforts to target specific leads by providing them with useful and relevant content.  Imagine sending educational articles geared toward subjects that the potential customer is interested in reading.  Companies can sell their product or service in a more subtle way.

Marketing automation can also create landing pages that adapt to different audience segments.  A company has mere seconds to grab a potential customer’s attention since first impressions are important.   By customizing every interaction to prospect’s unique taste, it will automatically improve your conversion rate.

In today’s high tech world there is no need to randomly spread marketing messages hoping the right people will see it at the right time.  By using marketing automation a company can specifically target each prospect based on their personal interests.

Lead Liaison

Use Marketing Automation to Avoid Human Error

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To ensure that marketers are able to target potential leads with the right messages at the right time, today’s businesses need a marketing automation software platform that can automatically tailor messaging, as well as the timing of their marketing communications to provide the optimal results.  Automation provides a more accurate and thorough process than someone who may have their own agenda.

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” – Bill Gates

By having an unbiased view without personal preferences, lead data produced will end up being a more realistic reflection of each lead.  Every interaction is being judged by the same criteria and will be evaluated solely on merit rather than human opinion.   Leads that may not strike an individual as having potential could rate as a qualified lead when objectively considered by a marketing automation program.

Marketing automation software can also run email campaigns and track responses, which is normally a very tedious and time consuming task.  If a person was managing your campaigns, they may miss out on opportunities simply due to time crunches or failure to see the potential in a specific lead.   Marketing automation can organize and interpret data faster without the potential for human error.

People may have the tendency to rush through work assignments and they often miss important things without realizing it.  It is only human to make mistakes, but fortunately software programs are guaranteed to do exactly what you instruct them to do.  That way you can be sure that everything it is supposed to look for has been reviewed and that every potentially useful fact has been considered.  An automated system can easily adapt to handle an increase in volume without an increase in cost or time.  If it wasn’t automated, there would be an increase in salary and a higher probability of human error any time work load increased.   Human capital is going to go up when business improves, but not marketing automation. If the company already has a smooth running operation and a clear understanding of their target market, then it only makes sense to put it on autopilot.

Use marketing automation to improve efficiency of your business’s lead generation efforts and to remove costly human error.

Lead Liaison

Maximizing Results Using Marketing Automation

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Maximizing Results Using Marketing AutomationIt’s important to understand how to begin maximizing results using marketing automation. Marketing automation is a tool for increasing operational efficiency and for generating revenue. It is about automating the routine and repeatable tasks associated with lead management, lead nurturing, lead qualifying, and creating and maintaining a marketing lead database. If it is done right, then it can help marketing organizations improve their productivity as well as their collaboration with sales organizations. Automation software enables marketing departments to measure what works and determine the impact on revenue. It does this by integrating with your existing sales force automation system, so that it makes marketing a true partner with sales throughout the lead management process.

Making the Most Out of Your Reach

Marketing automation helps you locate and engage prospects everywhere possible. Prospects may touch your blog, community site, social pages or a partner page, but they may not be visiting any site pages that are monitored by your revenue generating software (RGS) system. So simply engage the prospects wherever they are, with interactive, branded, marketing strategies that are embedded wherever possible. You can use partner-owned channels, their web sites, email blasts, community sites or any other avenue that is available. Rapidly create and offer engaging co-branded marketing units to partners, so they can easily incorporate into their campaigns. You can also launch using their channels to mutual prospects. This allows you to capture a short-form lead, right at the point of engagement. This will result in less re-directs, less friction, fewer dropped leads and fewer opportunities missed.

Tracking Prospects

Marketing automation can tell you what web pages a specific prospect has visited. You can use that information to score a lead to determine if the lead is sales-ready. You send out newsletters and nurturing emails to tens of thousands of prospects every month. You can learn more about specific prospects and their needs directly from your email. Marketing automation allows you to get answers in a simple, non-intrusive way, no matter where the prospect engaged with your brand.

Gathering Data

Marketing automation systems, along with real-time IP data providers are delivering more accurate information from prospects for landing pages and it is common to pre-fill form fields with the prospect’s crucial customer information (mapped from the prospect’s IP address). It is now possible is to leverage the same real-time IP data, combined with target account or account relationship information in an RGS system to dynamically change and serve highly targeted, relevant, marketing offers everywhere. Marketers will soon be able to define rules in their RGS system to map or update target accounts into different sales pipeline stages. RGS systems will then interact with external partner systems to make all of this possible.

Get More from Marketing Automation

Marketing automation can increase sales through lead nurturing using multi-touch, multi-offers nurturing campaigns. It also uses outbound marketing to follow up, nurture and qualify inbound sales leads. Use automation-driven campaigns to generate more referral or to up-sell  cross-sell, and resell to existing customers. Marketing automation can increase sales productivity by focusing on qualified leads and reactivate old leads. It also offers useful content to build your site’s credibility. There are so many powerful ways that marketing automation can maximize your results and generate increased revenue.

Lead Liaison

How to Optimize your Marketing Efforts Using Marketing Automation

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How to optimize your marketing efforts using marketing automationOptimize your marketing efforts using marketing automation. In today’s competitive business environment marketing needs to be directed to the right person at the right time in the right manner.  It is no surprise at all that older techniques no longer bring in the results that one would normally anticipate.  Consumers are changing, competition has become global and technology is offering businesses more opportunities to directly engage with potential customers.  Your marketing plan has to keep up with current trends if you expect it to grow to reach its full potential.

Marketing automation has the power to generate revenue in faster and more predictable cycles than traditional marketing campaigns.  In order to obtain optimal responses from your marketing efforts, you will need a proven system that can qualify leads that are worth nurturing and targeting.  Using it will increase your profitability due to the use of marketing strategies that are designed specifically to improve your lead conversion rate.  It works because it starts with scoring and qualifying leads before your sales team’s valuable time is invested and it follows up with a proven plan to nurture those leads into new business.

You can use marketing automation to develop new ways to segment your list of leads by combining demographic information with the behavioral data of potential consumers.  You can create marketing offers targeted to specific buyer profiles or personalities.  Marketing automation will help you identify the areas of your revenue cycle that need the most improvement, so you can prioritize your efforts.

Instead of a manual process that can be quite time-consuming and could lead to human error, marketing automation solutions are programmed to be efficient and accurate.  It will enable you to create sophisticated and engaging campaigns that automatically respond to prospect’s behaviors, life-cycle segments and other predetermined criteria.

Marketing automation is necessary technology to support and optimize your potential for growth.  Use it to handle the many complex and time-consuming aspects of lead scoring, lead nurturing and lead management, so your time can be spent securing leads that have the greatest potential for conversion.  At its essence, marketing automation is the optimization of the entire marketing process, from campaign planning to execution to the analysis of the ROI.

One of the beauties of marketing automation software is that companies can use it in numerous ways to meet the specific goals of their particular business. Companies will employ marketing automation to create, execute, manage, and measure the success of their online marketing programs in order to get optimal results.