Best practices for lead generation, marketing automation and revenue generation topics.

Lead Liaison

New Marketing Technology

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New Marketing TechnologyEarlier this week we published a blog post entitled “marketing automation challenges – avoiding status quo”. Our second post in the marketing automation challenges series covers new marketing technology. The primary challenge marketer’s face in adopting new marketing technology is lack of awareness. Marketers need to know that new marketing technology exists that represents today’s minimum marketing requirements.

Let’s begin by comparing old marketing technology with new marketing technology. The marketer using old marketing technology feels their “batch and blast” email program works just fine. They use the email program to send the same email bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly or bi-annually to their entire database. They track opens and clicks to measure campaign effectiveness. Sadly, they feel this is adequate.

Conversely, the modern marketer uses new marketing technology to communicate with prospects and customers. The modern marketer uses marketing segmentation and sends tailored email communications to related groups within their database on behalf of sales (appearing to come from the sales person). They schedule a series of relevant email communications and track how recipients respond and interact over time. They setup optimized landing pages and use lead tracking technology for lead capture. Finally, their new marketing technology automatically qualifies leads for sales and alerts sales when a hot lead is ready to buy.

Additionally, the modern marketer integrates newsletters, testimonials, content libraries, events and more into their company’s website and uses landing pages and other opt-in strategies to grow a segmented database.

Are you a marketer using old or new marketing technology? Below is a table that further compares old marketing technology to new marketing technology. Lead Liaison provides new marketing technology that transforms Flinstone marketers into Jetson marketers. Please ping us if you’re still in the Flinstone era!

Comparing Old to New Marketing Technology:

Old Marketing TechnologyNew Marketing Technology
“Batch and blast” email marketing toolIntelligent, closed-loop email marketing
Communication to a single database of contactsAbility to quickly and easily segment database by various parameters such as demographics, company information and interests
Leave contacts that have hard bounces in their databaseMarks the contact as “graveyard” status and/or adds “email opt-out” automatically to the record
Automatically opt-in contacts to their batch and blast emailUses landing pages, web forms, email campaigns and email client plug-ins to opt-in contacts
Manually pull reports to count opens and link click throughReal-time updates of whose interested and when. Tracks current and future page views to build a prospect profile and prepare sales
Subjectively qualifies leadsUses automated lead scoring technology to find only the hottest leads ready to speak with sales
Uses google analytics to measure website trafficUses real-time lead tracking technology to identify businesses and people visiting your site
Relies on web forms to capture informationUses real-time lead tracking technology to capture web form submissions as well as general website visits
Has no way of auto-responding to leadsUses intelligent automated campaigns to send relevant, personalized and automatic email communications based on a prospects interaction with your website and marketing content
Consults a web master or IT group to build a landing page or web formMarketers do it themselves using PowerPoint-like tools to visually build web forms and landing pages in minutes

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Lead Liaison

Marketing Automation Challenges – Avoiding Status Quo

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Marketing Automation Challenges Avoiding Status QuoMatt Smith, Executive VP and Co-Founder of 3forward, recently published an article on the MASG blog highlighting four roadblocks of marketing automation. Over the next few weeks we’ll issue four blog posts related to each obstacle. Each post will summarize the individual marketing automation challenges, include color commentary and provide additional recommendations.

Our first post pertains to Matt’s marketing automation challenge, “afraid of the water”. Here’s the premise; if companies maintain sales and marketing status quo and fail to keep up with new technology and process enhancements then they prohibit change. Most of the time change is good. I’ve always said the biggest risk is not knowing what your risk is. If your company seems to be off in their own world thinking their marketing processes and technology are just fine – to be blunt – it’s a bit ignorant.

In the post-Google and high tech era (year 2000 and beyond) change is inevitable. For example, sales and marketing processes have changed considerably. Buyers no longer opt to contact the vendor as their first step. Instead, they research solutions online and only contact the vendor when they’re ready. Check out our posts on B2B Buying Process and B2B Buyers to see how the sales and marketing landscape has changed. A growing number of businesses are adopting marketing automation or revenue generation software as we like to put it, to foster advancement and change in their sales and marketing processes. Revenue generation software increases leads, improves organizational efficiency, and produces higher quality leads. The benefits aren’t limited to these three things either. For example, revenue generation software provides vendors with valuable insight into a potential buyer’s interests and online behavior prior to vendor contact. For more information on how revenue generation helps marketers and sales click here: revenue generation for marketers, revenue generation for sales.

Before adopting marketing automation platforms companies need to avoid ignorance and embrace education. Matt recommends educating the entire C-Team on the new sales and marketing 2.0 environment (how marketing and sales should work together, what is marketing automation, how buyer’s buy, etc.). Once executives are up to speed it’s time to implement a plan. Matt suggests the head of marketing and sales mutually build a demand generation program. Finally, Matt suggests the CMO and CEO ask the rest of the organization to stay out of the way. Marketing will have their hands full adapting to sales and marketing 2.0.

Its clear avoiding status quo is a major obstacle to overcome when adopting marketing automation. Lead Liaison can help your organization get an education and design a plan. We can provide you with a complementary overview of the changing sales and marketing landscape and give you and/or your team an education on marketing automation. We also have a template to help you build and define your demand generation program. The template is called a Service Level Agreement (SLA), which is a contractual-style document between sales and marketing teams for sales and marketing teams. The SLA provides a framework for a company’s entire lead management process.

Feel free to contact us if you think Lead Liaison can help your company avoid status quo in route to adopting marketing automation and revenue generation solutions.

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Lead Liaison

Email Automation

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Email AutomationMany businesses rely on email as a means to communicate with their prospects and customers. Unfortunately, plain vanilla email has become prehistoric. Intelligent email automation is necessary to hold meaningful, relevant and interesting conversations with prospects and customers.

Not using intelligent email automation has the following drawbacks:

• It takes more time as individual emails need to be crafted and sent

• Communications are usually one to one and not one to many

• It’s ineffective since the same messages are broadcast out to a large group

• There’s no interaction and opportunity to converse with your prospects/customers

Don’t make the mistake of thinking email marketing is email automation, it’s not. Email marketing is great for things like newsletters; however, email marketing doesn’t understand how recipients engage or interact with email messages. Also, email marketing requires marketers to manually dig through reports to analyze email opens. Additionally, email marketing has misled marketers to believe ROI is measured on email opens.

Email automation technology solves these problems. It helps marketers measure the true ROI of email campaigns by presenting who’s genuinely interested in real-time. Email automation is commonly called lead nurturing or closed loop email marketing. When marketers automate email they’re able to nurture leads. Here’s an example of an email automation process:

• Marketer sends a single email message to many recipients

• Message is personalized by using the recipient’s name, company and other credentials

• Recipient opens the email message and clicks a link of interest in the email

• Lead tracking technology shows which link was clicked and tracks the recipient’s entire online behavior (pages viewed, web forms submitted, content downloaded, etc.)

• Email automation kicks in and triggers a series of related, future communications based off the recipients interests thereby nurturing the lead

By using email automation businesses can increase marketing efficiency and build stronger relationships with prospects and customers. Using intelligent automation results in closer engagement between a buyer and a seller as two-way conversations occur vs. one-way “email blasts”.

To learn how Lead Liaison’s email automation can help nurture your leads contact us using the form on this page at the top right.

How has email automation helped you nurture leads?

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Lead Liaison

Mitigate Email Unsubscribe

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Mitigate Email UnsubscribeIn our post last week we talked about why people unsubscribe from emails. Essentially, unsubscribes can be boiled down to three factors. Abusing the recipients information, sending emails too frequently and sending content that’s not relevant or interesting. Fortunately, there’s a solution to mitigate email unsubscribe problems.

Solving Email Unsubscribe Issues

There are two solutions to the aforementioned problems. First, don’t share your customer’s data with anyone. Sharing recipients credentials is disrespectful of their privacy. We realize this is an obvious one and should go without saying; however, it’s important to always be cognizant of this. Make sure to have a privacy policy and abide by it. Second, adopt a revenue generation software platform which includes marketing automation and lead nurturing technology. These technologies automate marketing processes such as email marketing and build relationships with customers and prospects through relevant and timely communications.

The Car Dealership Example

If you recall from our post last week I talked about my experiences with the GMC dealership. Let’s focus on that experience and how the dealership could have kept me on their email list. If the dealership added my activities (online quote, test drive, need to sell two cars, etc.) to their database they could use these events as triggers which spawn relevant actions. For example, they knew I wanted an Acadia Denali from my online quote request. Perhaps they could have added me to a lead nurturing campaign that educated me about the features and benefits of the Acadia Denali model. Also, when I told them I needed to sell my two cars before buying they could have added me to a lead nurturing campaign that combined emails and phone calls to address my need. For example, they could have sent me emails • advising where I could sell the cars and • notifying me when their buyer is in the office so he could give me an estimate and • sending me to Kelley Blue Book to lookup the value of my vehicles and • providing tips on how to sell a car. Furthermore, when I test drove the vehicle they could have added me to a lead nurturing campaign that sent me a follow up email thanking me for the test drive. The campaign could have also scheduled a call for their sales person to ask for my feedback after the test drive. In summary, the dealership missed out on several opportunities to engage me with interesting and timely content. The point of lead nurturing in this example is to send relevant communications based on what I (the buyer) care about and to send those communications when I express particular behavior indicative of buying. They’ve lost my interest since I continue to get communications from them even after I stopped interacting. It seems they’ve forgotten my needs. My suggestion to all B2B or B2C sales and marketing people is to get your organization to adopt marketing automation and lead nurturing technology. Start listening to your buyers. Automation technology will engage and nurture leads to build stronger relationships. When you’re up and running you’ll wind up with more qualified leads that are ready to buy. What’s your feedback on how to mitigate email unsubscribes? To be alerted of future posts, please click on the RSS button.

Lead Liaison

Why People Unsubscribe from Emails

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Unsubscribe from EmailsA recent report from MarketingSherpa shed some light on why people unsubscribe from emails. In this article we’ll discuss the top three reasons and incorporate personal experiences as examples. In a follow up article we’ll suggest a solution to eliminate these problems.

Top 3 Reasons Why People Unsubscribe

First, 53% of respondents unsubscribed from emails when content did not interest them. This reminds me of a personal situation I recently experienced. An email landed in my inbox inviting me to learn more about security firewalls. I’ve never expressed interest in these types of solutions nor have I ever researched them. I hit the unsubscribe button.

Second, staying on an email list results in more unsolicited spam. I’ll share another personal example. Although I can’t recall how, I must have signed up for a sales and marketing newsletter at some point. Time passed, I forgot who I signed up with. I’m convinced my information got passed out to a 3rd party who is now licensing it to others. Now, I get about 3-5 emails per week from list vendors trying to sell me contacts. It’s frustrating too; they don’t have a link for me to unsubscribe. I hit the spam button.

Third, people unsubscribe when they receive emails too often. Sure enough, I’ve got an example to use for this reason as well. The example also relates to the first point, sending irrelevant content. My wife and I were considering the purchase of a new car, an Acadia Denali to be exact. About one month back we decided to request a quote through a GMC dealership online. We got an email quote from the online manager moments later. A few days later the online manager called me up. I took about 15 minutes to explain our situation. We let him know we had a few cars we need to trade in first before we’re able to buy. The online manager committed to look into buying our cars. Everything was going great, at least it seemed that way.

5 days later we decided to go into the dealership to test drive the car for the first time. We were upfront with them and told them about our experience online and that we made contact with the online manager. Here’s the kicker. For the next three weeks following our in-person visit I received emails saying things like “what do we have to do to earn your business?” and another email offering me an opportunity to buy a bunch of other cars before they go to auction. My reply to that is “I already told you, I need to sell my cars and no, I’m only interested in the Acadia Denali”. It seems the dealership didn’t listen to my interests and failed to respond in relevant ways based on my interaction. Their communication was irrelevant and too frequent during this follow up period. I’ve since unsubscribed.

Why do you think people unsubscribe from emails?

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Why People Unsubscribe from Emails

Source: MarketingSherpa

Lead Liaison

Free Marketing Automation

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Free Marketing AutomationAre you considering a free marketing automation system to power your sales and marketing efforts? In this article we’ll present ideas for consideration to help you make an educated decision.

Background on Free Marketing Automation

Free marketing automation systems were created as a way to “shake up” the industry. Some analysts and commentators have speculated a free marketing automation strategy was created as a “Hail Mary Pass” when no other business models were working. If this is true, it probably means the company providing free marketing automation could be struggling. It’s worthwhile to consider whether or not you want to place your bets on a struggling company who may not be around after a while.

When researching the few companies providing free marketing automation look closely at the restrictions. My momma once told me “son, nothing in life is free”. One vendor clearly puts an asterisk next to “fully functional…account” and suggests reading the full terms and conditions. Without a doubt, offering a purely free marketing automation system is not a sustainable business model for the vendor. The marketing automation vendor’s sole purpose is to get you to upgrade and pay. That means limiting things like number of contacts, users, emails per month, page views per month and more. If you’re okay using a restricted version and have no plans to exceed these limitations then free marketing automation might be a good approach.

A Product, Not a Solution

Analysts have pointed out that a free marketing automation solution benefits the industry, not the customer. It creates more exposure and awareness of the capabilities and power of marketing automation; however, it doesn’t benefit the customer as the product is not the entire solution.

For this reason, probably the single most important item to consider with marketing automation is that it’s not an off the shelf solution and a technology anyone can just pick up and start using. It’s a high-value, strategic solution that requires long term commitment. Marketing automation should be a core strategy engrained in a company’s sales and marketing DNA.

Unfortunately, free marketing automation systems are typically a technology play only. The truth is, technology is only part of the equation. To be successful with marketing automation companies must choose the right vendor who can provide support, training and consultation, which isn’t free. Integrating, using, applying and adopting a free marketing automation system certainly will have its price without proper support, training and consultation. Make sure to consider the total cost of ownership (TCO) of a free marketing automation system.

Other Items for Consideration

  • Will “Free” attract the wrong people and inundate a system with spam emails thereby affecting other accounts?
  • What happens when you need to upgrade? Will pricing change or go up?
  • Will community support be good enough for you?
  • Is it worthwhile to save money up front when it could cost you in the long run?
  • Are you a “one-man-shop” or do you have plans for growth and will you need help?

We found a quote from one of the leading analysts in the marketing automation space, Jep Castelein of LeadSloth, which sums this up:

If your company is looking to adopt Marketing Automation, count on paying for your Marketing Automation system. Either you will go over the limits of the free version, or you will require support. Instead of focusing on free or cheap, choose a vendor that you trust, that best meets your requirements, and that provides excellent support. – Jep Castelein, LeadSloth

At Lead Liaison, we consider marketing automation as a feature, not a solution. Our revenue generation software ties together sales prospecting, marketing automation and lead generation capabilities combined with best-in-breed support, training and consultation to help grow your company’s revenue. We look forward to hearing from you and getting the opportunity to work with you.

What’s your feedback on free marketing automation systems? We would love to hear it.

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Purchased Lists

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Purchased ListsA while back we encountered a prospect interested in Lead Liaison’s revenue generation software. They told us they send about 10,000 emails per month and they were always buying “purchased lists” (list for sale from list brokers) – it sounded like one of their core strategies. We thought this was a great opportunity to blog on the subject of purchased lists. Are they a good source for outbound marketing? Should you feed your email marketing machine with purchased lists?

Unfortunately, the ROI on purchased lists is very low. There’s a better outbound marketing strategy which calls for using a “house list”. A “house list” is a company’s most valuable asset. It’s their existing contact database! We came across an article from Kevin Bush, Principal & CEO of Rainier Sky Marketing & Public Relations that further expounds on this subject. Here’s what Kevin had to say:

The ROI of Purchased Lists

The average response rate with a purchased prospect list is just 1.38 percent according to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), and a quality list can cost you $400 to $700 per thousand (CPM) with a minimum purchase of 5,000 addresses.

Sound targeting and segmentation can significantly improve results, but organizations may have to test several list before finding a source that performs well. Having the communications piece professionally designed and written can also improve results, but it too adds to the cost. So, you can imagine the kind of long-term return on investment that direct marketing requires.

A better approach for smaller organizations is to simply do their own direct marketing. It might not be as efficient, but it can still be effective. With a basic data base or, preferably, contact management software a small organization can build its own list with resources they may just find online or at their local library. Coupled with a valuable call to action and personalized follow-up, the DMA reports the response rate on such “house” lists improves more than double up to an average 3.42 percent. – Kevin Bush, Rainier Sky Marketing & Public Relations

Getting the Most out of your House List

For most B2B companies building a house list from resources at their local library is not practical. Although, most businesses put themselves in a position to aggressively build their house list. Trade shows and website inquiries are two solid sources. Once you’ve got a house list in hand turn to revenue generation software to maximize return on this valuable asset.

Revenue generation software includes features such as closed loop email marketing, lead nurturing, list segmentation and lead scoring to help marketers get the most out of their “house lists”. It also includes lead capture techniques to optimize landing pages and trade show lead generation. If you’re interested in a free consultation to understand how we can help you recycle, renew and replenish your existing marketing database without wasting money on purchased lists contact us.

What’s your feedback on purchased lists? We would love to hear it.

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Top Social Media Sites

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Top Social Media SitesAs part of any social media strategy it’s important to identify which social media outlets to target. We recently ran a study of the top social media sites in the world and we thought we’d share them with you. Rankings are based off of Alexa ratings. We’ve highlighted our top social media sites that every B2B marketer should participate in below.

Top social media sites

Ranked by Alexa rating as of 2011

NumWebsiteAlexaCategory
1youtube.com3Videos
2twitter.com9General
3linkedin.com17General
4flickr.com31Images
5stumbleupon.com113Cool Content
6reddit.com136General
7digg.com140General
8scribd.com199Articles
9del.icio.us244General
10metacafe.com285Videos
11technorati.com901Blogging
12mixx.com2,265General

We’ll be updating this post shortly when we add a new feature to our solution to help track ROI from social media. We welcome your feedback, comments and suggestions. What are your top social media sites?

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Sample Lead Nurturing Email

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Sample Lead Nurturing EmailSuccessful lead nurturing programs have good planning, proper process and great content. Unfortunately, many companies never get to the “great content” step in lieu of perceived difficulty in creating lead nurturing material. We thought we would share a sample lead nurturing email and highlight unique points about the email that are generally applicable to all your lead nurturing content.

Sample Lead Nurturing Email

Jeff,

I thought you would find this short presentation interesting given your interest in protecting software applications. Ben Jones of Alegis Group discussed how to secure software applications from the most common threats. Ben covered three topics:

• Threats facing software applications

• Impact of having software compromised

• What technology is commonly used to protect software

Learn more. View the on-demand webcast.

Take care,

Sue Smith

Sales Development Manager, Security Vault

+1.512.222.1212

What makes this sample lead nurturing email unique?

There are six unique aspects of this lead nurturing email that you can apply to any of your lead nurturing emails. Here they are:

There are no pictures.

It looks like a regular email sent from a human being since it’s in plain text. When messages are personal they’re more effective.

It’s personalized.

The sample lead nurturing email is sent from a person and addressed to a person. Lead nurturing is about building relationships from one person to another. It’s not about sending company to company communications.

It references 3rd party content.

Not all lead nurturing content needs to be proprietary. Expand your marketing content library. What can you leverage from the internet, Analysts or Consultants?

It’s short.

Only 73 words! If your emails are more than a few paragraphs you can forget about it getting read. People are busy and inundated with digital communications. Keep it simple and remember less is more.

It’s relevant.

The person’s interest was notated in a CRM. In this instance, we’re sending a relevant email about software security since that’s the prospects interest. Using marketing automation we can trigger tailored communications off of parameters such as this as well as future parameters such as how the person responds to this email or future marketing communications.

It’s casual.

It’s signed in an informal way, “Take care”. Again, when messages are personal they’re more effective as well as believable.

It’s educational.

Notice the purpose of the email is not to sell, but to educate. The timing of this educational-type message is better on the front end of your lead nurturing cycle. Hard sales tactics will turn off your prospect when you’re first building the relationship.

We’ve had other clients purposely misspell words to make automated messages appear as if they came from an actual person. We’ll leave that tactic up to you. ;-)

Hopefully this sample lead nurturing email helps you think of creative ways to increase effectiveness of your lead nurturing campaigns.

We welcome your feedback, comments and suggestions. What sample lead nurturing emails can you share with us? What are some of your tactics?

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Lead Liaison

Increase ROI of Inbound Marketing

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Increase ROI of Inbound MarketingWe recently had a meeting with one of our prospects who told us they do no outbound marketing (or “push marketing”) and focus solely on inbound marketing. At first, they said they didn’t need Lead Liaison because they don’t do outbound marketing. They couldn’t be more wrong. Coincidentally, if you’re only doing inbound marketing you can’t afford to not have Lead Liaison. This meeting as well as the overall public debate on inbound marketing vs outbound marketing sparked a discussion internally on how to increase ROI of inbound marketing using Lead Liaison’s revenue generation software. We documented some of these reasons for you, enjoy!

Using technology to increase ROI of inbound marketing

Lead Liaison provides a revenue generation platform that boosts ROI of inbound marketing. Here’s a list of how our solutions can help you:

Lead tracking

As prospects find you as a result of your SEO, content and social media strategies (three core components of inbound marketing) they’ll eventually find their way back to your website. Lead tracking technology identifies the name of the business visiting your website along with business intelligence information (revenue, location, description, etc.), telling sales when someone is interested – all in real time. Lead tracking also records a website visitor’s online behavior including pages viewed and keywords used in searches to help sales and marketers understand what prospects care about.

Content creation

Revenue generation software helps marketers spin up new landing pages and web forms in minutes. Instead of relying on HTML programming or IT support, marketers create professional looking landing pages and web forms using a visual designer. The visual designer is similar to PowerPoint and uses drag and drop technology to construct content. Generous use of landing pages and web forms is typically a good thing. It’s common to create a landing page with a web form for each new content area or content piece in your marketing library. Doing so will increase the probability of capturing leads and increase ROI of inbound marketing.

Database segmentation

As an alternative to buying purchased lists or list rentals, which typically offer ROIs in the 1% – 2% range, marketers can leverage technology and their own internally developed database to increase ROI of inbound marketing. Outbound marketing typically implies buying large lists and sending out generic, non-personal email blasts. Using database segmentation marketers can “carve out” specific sections of their database to deliver optimized content relevant to prospects interests.

Lead nurturing

As new prospects discover you via your inbound marketing techniques, revenue generation software will help you nurture your leads. Lead nurturing delivers consistent communications to your new-found leads based on the prospects interests, demographics, and lifetime interaction with your marketing content. Recycling and nurturing your database will increase ROI of inbound marketing by lowering investments in inbound marketing as highly qualified leads never fall through the funnel or get left behind.

Lead qualification

A growing investment in inbound marketing probably means a growing number of inbound leads. Lead qualification, sometimes referred to as lead nurturing, uses technology to automatically score leads and identify who’s hot and who’s not. Lead scoring helps sales prioritize time effectively.

Emphasizing inbound marketing over outbound marketing while leveraging revenue generation software will shorten sales, produce higher quality leads, and improve organizational efficiency.

See our post on inbound marketing vs outbound marketing for a more thorough comparison between the two marketing strategies.

We welcome your feedback, comments and suggestions. How do you feel revenue generation software can help your inbound marketing efforts?

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