Revenue Generation Blog Archives – Page 50 of 82

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25 Lead Management Statistics That Prove Marketing Automation Works

August 7, 2013/0 Comments/in Industry, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

Are you a numbers person? Do you want figures that show how lead management through marketing automation actually provides better results? Take a look at these marketing automation and lead management statistics. What marketing automation statistics do you have to share?

Sales teams process over 58% of marketing-qualified leads (MQL) with a close rate of more than 23% – AcquireB2B
Lead scoring provides an ROI of 138% versus companies that don’t score leads (78%) – MarketingSherpa
Lead nurturing programs result in 2x open rates and 3x click-through rates compared to one-off email blasts – Silverpop
47% higher order value on nurtured sales versus non-nurtured sales – Silverpop
75% of companies using MA see ROI within 12 months, 44% within 6 months – Focus Research
Companies using MA source 45% more pipeline than those who don’t use MA – Marketo
Sales agents spend 22% more time selling when MA is deployed – Marketo
MA drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead – Nucleus Research
28% of marketers saw an increase in revenue per sale attributable to marketing automation – Chief Marketer
350% return on investment and 100% annual revenue growth while saving $400K and generating $2MM in incremental gross revenue – Acteva
70% companies declare that MA met or exceeded ROI expectations – Focus
Mature marketers achieve 32% greater revenue through the use of MA than non-mature marketers – Marketo
Full deployment of MA reduces close rates from 1:221 to 1:20 – Marketo
Companies using MA for nurturing experience a 451% increase in qualified leads – The Annuitas Group
MA provides 225% increase in prospect volume that convert to sales opportunities – ShipServ
3x more leads passed to sales after one month – Marketo
MA reduces ignored leads from 80% to 25% – Bulldog Solutions
Companies that automate lead management see over 10% increase in revenue in 6-9 months – Gartner Research
47% of MA-nurtured leads make larger purchases than non-nurtured leads – The Annuitas Group
Companies achieve a 15% savings on creative productions with MA – Gartner Research
Companies that deploy lead nurturing through MA generate 50% more SQLs at 33% lower cost – Forrester Research
MA-generated personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14% and conversion rates over 10% – The Aberdeen Group
Event-triggered messaging saves approximately 80% of direct mail budget – Gartner Research
MA-generated emails with high relevancy drive 18x more revenue than traditional email blasts – Jupiter Research
Companies using MA achieve 5% less marketing waste than non-MA companies – Gartner Research

As more companies adopt lead management through marketing automation, there will be more statistics to share!

Marketing Automation Makes Small Business Internet Marketing Easier

August 6, 2013/0 Comments/in Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

Small business internet marketing is a full-time job in itself – and for many small business owners, its concepts and execution are unfamiliar territory. Fortunately, small businesses are able to access tools that will prove useful in self-managing their online marketing experiences. It’s simply no longer necessary to hire full-time or even part-time marketing employees. With marketing automation technologies, small business internet marketing can be a snap for business owners.

Owning the Learning Curve

Many small business owners are looking for the kinds of tools marketing automation has to offer, but end up balking at automated tools when it comes to the learning curve. Major businesses that offer marketing automation – Marketo, for example – are growing with a ferocity. More and more small business owners are considering automation tools for their internet marketing, but may feel inclined to turn their backs when they find out there are tools to learn.

Truthfully, small business internet marketing with automation tools is much easier than using multiple software and tools to keep track of small business internet marketing. At the end of the marketing auditing process, a small business owner may determine he or she needs services like Mailchimp, Google Analytics, Google Adwords and Crazy Egg heatmaps, only to discover these different services spit out metrics that are unmanageable in terms of quantity.

Small Business Internet Marketing and Lead Tracking

Additionally, these tools – even when used together – don’t tend to present a full marketing picture of offer tracking of specific leads. Only the right marketing automation tools can integrate a dashboard that reports on all areas of small business internet marketing. Marketing automation also gives small business owners the specific tools to see who’s visiting, what actions are being taken on the site and how deeply into their sales funnels the leads end up going.

Marketing automation and lead tracking is business intelligence data. Consumers tend to find that marketing automation tools have far less of a learning curve as compared to the various other internet metrics dashboards they end up using. For company owners who are seeking small business internet marketing tools, the costs associated with marketing automation may end up being far less than hiring a full or part time marketing person or approaching the learning curve associated with multiple tracking channels.

Lead Liaison offers a suite of tools that can help business owners who need small business internet marketing understand their data. Best of all, top-of-the-industry support ensures the learning curve of marketing automation software is minimal. Give Lead Liaison a whirl today and start tracking your data all in one place!

How to Get Marketing Automation to Work for Your Business

August 2, 2013/0 Comments/in Best Practices, Marketing Automation, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

I was reading this helpful post, 3 Lessons from 1000 Blog Posts on Marketing Automation, and I was impressed at how easily they were able to summarize the most important factors of such a powerful software strategy; create engagement, forget traditional channels, and measure effectiveness.

I agree that these three factors are critical for its success; however they are many other ways to get marketing automation software to work for your business. The article also neglects to explain how to create more engaging content, how to use the new marketing channels for cross-promotions, or the marketing automation tools that are being used to measure its effectiveness. Although the article was a good synopsis, I felt it needed further explanation.

Here are a few proven ways to get marketing automation to work for your business:

1. Comprehensive Profiling

A thorough lead profile is an essential factor in the success of marketing automation. Website visitor tracking allows businesses to gather details about a lead’s online history and purchasing behavior. Marketing automation strategists should also use web forms and registries to extract vital demographic information from potential leads.

2. Lead Segmentation

Marketers should focus on customizing their efforts to groups of buyers with similar interests instead of trying to personalize content for every individual lead. Once leads have a comprehensive profile they can be segmented into different groups based on overlapping characteristics.

3. Quality Content

Every web page and article should be optimized for more than just keywords. It has to be compelling, helpful, and relevant, so it can make a real connection with the lead. It should answer all of their questions and concerns, while offering them viable solutions to their problems.

4. Social Media Marketing

Modern business will experience greater marketing automation success when they combine their lead nurturing campaign with a strong social media presence. You will be able to tap into a larger audience if you promote your website content and lead nurturing articles on Facebook & Twitter. This will drive more traffic to your website and increase the number of leads that the marketing automation software is able to capture.

5. ROI Metrics

Marketing automation strategies will also work better if they are monitored and tweaked for optimal performance. Marketing automation software allows users to compare the results of the campaign with how much revenue each step generated. It can also show which landing pages and email blasts had the highest conversion rate. Companies can improve the success of their marketing automation campaigns by measuring and reacting to data supplied by the software.

Marketing automation will work for your business, however it will require comprehensive profiling, lead segmentation, quality content, social media marketing, and ROI metrics. Greater marketing automation success will be the end result.

Do you want Lead Liaison to get marketing automation to work for your business?

How Marketing Automation is Evolving to Better Suit the B2B Environment

August 1, 2013/0 Comments/in Best Practices, Marketing Automation, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

I was researching new trends in marketing automation when I came across this great article on the 7 most popular Marketing Automation Trends. It made me think about all the ways marketing automation has grown and changed just within the past few years. In this post we examine how marketing automation is evolving to better suit the B2B environment.

Its unique ability to tap into the B2B environment and convert more leads has also evolved. The focus of marketing automation has drifted from the power and speed of automation to the necessity of personalization. There is also more emphasis on building lasting relationships and customer engagement.

Creating a Connection

Marketers realized that using a heavily automated process was resulting in a detachment between businesses and B2B buyers. To resolve this issue, marketing automation professionals are now putting more focus on understanding their leads and fulfilling their individual needs through comprehensive lead profiling and segmentation.

Profiling and Understanding Leads

Website visitor tracking software can be used to monitor a lead’s online activity, track their pre-purchasing behavior, and record any demographic information that can be obtained from the lead using online forms and registries. This lead monitoring technology is now an essential component of marketing automation and it is used to develop a complete profile on every lead that crosses paths with a particular website.

Scoring and Segmenting Leads

Another marketing automation trend is extending the benefits of the profiling process by ranking and segmenting each lead. Marketers will compare each lead against a typical B2B buyer and then score them based on how closely their behavioral and demographic characteristics match their existing customers. Leads with a high potential for conversion will be immediately passed onto the sales department and leads that require more nurturing will be segmented into groups based on similar needs.

Personalized Content for Lead Segments

It is too difficult to personalize lead nurturing content for every individual lead, yet personalization is necessary for real engagement. Once leads are gathered into similar groups, marketers can create more relevant and customized content directed at each group of buyers.

Greater Emphasis on Quality Content

The biggest new trend in marketing automation is creating compelling, original, and high-quality content that provides the reader with real value. Content needs to contain more than just keywords to sway savvy B2B buyers. It should also gently guide them in the right direction without sounding like a typical sales pitch.

Marketing automation has evolved to make it easier to track, monitor, and engage B2B leads throughout their buying process. It allows users to understand their leads, score them based on their potential, segment them into defined groups, and nurturing each group using relevant and information content. Changes to marketing automation`s main focus has now given it the power to convert almost every lead the software captures.

We Have Lift Off: Marketing Automation is Taking Off!

July 31, 2013/0 Comments/in Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

Houston, Houston, we have lift off!!! Marketing automation is taking off. David Cummings wrote a nice article on his blog the other day about the coming wave of marketing automation adoption. The post clearly lays out the opportunity for marketing automation vendors like Lead Liaison. More importantly, businesses have a great opportunity to bring new technology in house to improve efficiency and drive revenue, faster. David identifies the gap in companies using CRM systems but not marketing automation systems. He references the following figures for CRM usage:

Salesforce.com: ~140,000
SugarCRM: ~10,000
Microsoft Dynamics CRM: ~40,000
Netsuite: ~13,000
Total: ~200,000 companies

David points out that 9,000 of these companies also use a marketing automation system. That’s a 4.5% penetration rate, leaving 95.% of companies not using marketing automation. In David Cummings post he only considers the opportunity for companies using a CRM. Believe it or not, but many of Lead Liaison’s customers don’t use a CRM at all. Looking at some numbers provided by a leading analyst in the space, David Raab, we see these figures are consistent with those reported by David Cummings; however, David Raab uses a broader scope to segment all businesses in the US with more than $5M in revenue into three categories, small to mid-size, large and enterprise companies and look at installs/adoption across each segment:

By looking at this data we see only 6% of all businesses more than $5M in revenue use marketing automation. The lowest penetrated space is the $5M to $20M range. Only 9% of all companies $20M to $500M use marketing automation. About one out of every three enterprises use marketing automation. Assuming an average selling price (ASP) of $10K for small to mid-size companies and $30K for large businesses, that leaves $4.4B in total available market (TAM) for marketing automation vendors. We’re excited about the growth opportunity here at Lead Liaison and look forward to having all of our new customers take our marketing automation platform to the next level.

If you’d like to see a demo of Lead Liaison’s marketing automation system for your business contact us!

Segment Your Database for Email Success

July 30, 2013/0 Comments/in Best Practices, Email Marketing, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

Database segmentation can have a significant impact on your email campaign effectiveness. The relevancy of your messaging and offers is critical to generating opens and – more importantly – sales. Lead Liaison’s database segmentation tools provide parameters that allow you to create email distribution lists that target lead attributes, buying status, behavioral identifiers, and trigger events. Make sure to segment your database for email success.

Segmenting your lead database is important for two reasons: 1) you can target specific leads for customized messages and 2) you can avoid spamming uninterested suspects. With our database segmentation feature, you can accomplish both in a matter of minutes. There are over 65 preset attributes and over 10 trigger events that can be used to filter your email list.

How to Segment Your Database

So what are some of the effective criteria that marketers should use to segment a lead database?

Geography – where are your leads located? Whether your sales team is organized by territory or not, geography can play a role in how you approach a lead. The culture in Texas is different than in New York; messaging can be tweaked to appeal to each region’s cultural differences.

Lead Grade – leads that are graded on how well they fit your buyer profile should be segmented according to appropriateness. After all, should a line worker at a company with revenues below $1MM be approached the same way as a CEO of a company with $10MM in revenues?

Lead Score – marketers should segment according to the implicit (behavioral) attributes that are provided through online activities. For example, a lead that has attended a one-hour webinar should not be grouped with leads that have visited a single webpage.

Gender – this one is not always considered when segmenting a database. However, grouping by gender allows marketers to create messages that appeal to each gender’s buying triggers, emotional attachment(or lack thereof), and value systems.

Job Function (Title) – b2b decision-makers typically reside within certain positions: CEO, vice president, purchaser, etc. Though not always the case, segmenting email recipients by job function is effective at putting your salespeople in front of the right person.

Past Purchases – if a lead has previously purchased from you, it should be segmented for specific repeat, up-sell, or cross-sell purchase messaging. Once segmented, you can deliver special offers and build brand loyalty.

Buying Cycle – why should your sales team be contacting prospects who have just begun their buying process? Leads can be segmented according to indicators that reflect where they are in the buying cycle.

Reduce Waste

When you wish to avoid sending emails to unlikely prospects or invalid addresses, there are several criteria that can be used such as:

Delivery Bounce – an undeliverable address can be easily segmented into a cold lead list.

Do Not Call – often b2b sales require a phone engagement, leads that have indicated ‘do not call’ during previous engagements can segmented for digital communications only.

Do Not Email – whether a lead indicates ‘do not email’ through an opt-out request or on a form, that lead can be bucketed for phone or direct mail contact only.

In addition, you can use explicit (physical) criteria to segment leads that should be avoided. For example, companies with revenues below your target profile can be grouped as third-tier or lower prospects.

Our Lead Management Automation™ platform provides segmentation that can make marketers more effective at creating and delivering messages and make salespeople more efficient by routing the most appropriate and sales-ready leads to your sales team.

10 Email Drip Campaigns That Work

July 29, 2013/0 Comments/in Best Practices, Email Marketing, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

Looking for lead nurturing help? Here are ten ideas you can use to boost your email drip campaigns.

Create a story

Develop a storyline that is relevant to your solution(s), such as the life and times of your typical customer. Make sure the content is well-written and constructed like an old movie serials about crime fighters, where readers are anticipating a new chapter.

Run a campaign

Start a campaign to reduce waste or to create a movement. This is a variation to cause marketing and can be effective at generating followers.

Host a contest

Design a contest for customers and prospects alike. Leverage social media by having participants follow you. Make it simple to join. Post updates, new information, or other fresh content on social accounts.

Announce an event

Tell your list about an upcoming event that your enterprise is participating in. Use reminder messaging to update readers. Add to previous emails by providing fresh information about the events or its participants. Make sure to include a reference to the new information in your Subject header. It can be an event your enterprise is sponsoring or a third-party event that you’re connected to or attending.

Promote a new product

Introduce a new product with a time-sensitive promotion. Use each message to introduce a new benefit/feature. Update the Subject header to announce the new benefit/feature.

Announce partnerships then drip the benefits

Send an announcement about a new partnership or organization change then follow up with messages about how the move will be beneficial. Be sure to link to websites associated with the change to generate traffic.

Host a charity fund drive

Announce a charity fund drive and follow up with milestone achievements, uses for funds, thank donors, etc. Follow up with goal attainment, notable donors, and other information.

“Did you see this?”

Provide third-party content that can be helpful to your leads. For B2B companies, this can include a wide variety of information such as financial, operational, small biz, legal and regulatory, trends, whatever.

Create a conversation (like with social media)

Use a drip campaign to start a conversation about a topic that is close to your lead’s heart or work responsibility. Send follow up messages that include comments made other participants. Remember to use bcc:!

Send video links

Provide links to helpful and/or informative videos that can benefit your list. After several messages, take a poll on which videos were beneficial or suggestions for future videos.

Get your marketing and sales people together for brainstorming and input on what interests prospects and customers.

Small Business Marketing Automation and Why You Should Get Involved

July 26, 2013/0 Comments/in Marketing Automation, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

Doing small business marketing isn’t easy, and for businesses on a budget it might never seem like the right time to invest in marketing automation tools. The truth is, a user-friendly and fully managed automated marketing platform can make a huge difference in the way small businesses operate from top to bottom.

Small Business Marketing and Marketing Automation

There are so many reasons to integrate your marketing efforts. Many small business owners feel like this type of integration is mostly reserved for medium-sized to large businesses because they don’t truly understand the time management/time saving techniques that are a part of a good marketing automation dashboard.

Time management is absolutely critical for small businesses. Business owners who can’t spend a lot of money on resources may find that using their marketing automation dashboard in the right way will give them the same kind of insight a part-time marketing expert would. Marketing automation tools empower small businesses to use their marketing in the most effective way.

Direct management of leads, cost data across all marketing platforms, and key insight that can result in more accurate marketing plans are all small business marketing goals that can be realized with a good marketing automation dashboard. Rather than calling in a marketing expert to do the work and report, small business CEOs can send tasks to their sales teams and beef up marketing efforts based on the reporting data they’re seeing from marketing automation.

Cost Savings

Small business marketing requires an investment. The right marketing automation tools actually cut down on that investment for small business owners because they have all their data tools in one place. Marketing efforts and ROI data come seamlessly without the need to hire a specialist for analysis and reporting. Many marketing automation dashboards also include email marketing tools that may cost extra if you use a service outside the dashboard.

Getting the intelligence data that shows how potential customers are using your marketing materials can result in more sales over time. Marketing automation can change the way a business executes marketing efforts, resulting in more sales – particularly for business owners interested in small business marketing who don’t’ have an advertising background. With the right marketing automation tools, small business marketing can be a snap for cost and time-conscious CEOs.

Lead Liaison’s suite of marketing automation tools can help your business rise to new heights with your small business marketing. For more information, contact us today!

How to use Lead Nurturing Content to Convert More B2B Customers

July 25, 2013/0 Comments/in Best Practices, Lead Nurturing, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

While researching the latest lead nurturing techniques, I came across an informative article on B2B Content Marketing for Lead Nurturing and Retention by Caroline Watts. It discusses the impressive ways content can be used to convert more B2B customers, which inspired my own take on the subject matter.

I have always stressed how important quality content is to the marketing automation process. Any content you post must be relevant and informative if you expect it to sway an undecided consumer. It should be catered to their specific needs and provide them with answers that will help them make an informed purchasing decision. Learn nurturing content is critical for converting B2B customers.

Content is King

Content is probably the most critical aspect of a marketing automation program, since it is a company’s chance to communicate directly with potential leads. It can be used to build interest in a particular product or service while guiding them towards final conversion.

Great content is not only essential for marketing automation; it is also incredibly beneficial to your SEO efforts. Well-written content will improve your search engine ranking, which will inevitably drive more traffic to your website.

Lead Nurturing Techniques

The success of the content will depend on how the content is developed and promoted. You will successfully convert more B2B customers by ensuring that the right message is being sent to the right people at the right time. This will require lead profiling, lead segmenting, and a strong social media presence.

Lead Profiling Software

Understanding a lead’s needs and interests will make it easier to create relevant and useful content. Marketing automation software programs will track website visitors, monitor their behavior, and extract demographic details about each specific lead. Using this information to customize content is an essential lead nurturing technique.

Segmenting Leads into Groups

Instead of developing unique content for each lead, B2B buyers should be segmented in groups based on similar needs and profiles. Marketers will be able to convert more B2B customers by creating lead nurturing content that addresses groups of buyers. They will appreciate that the content has still be personalized to their needs.

Strong Social Media Presence

Another lead nurturing technique is to promote the new content using various social media sites. The leads that are captured by marketing automation software may not be same leads that are your followers on Facebook and Twitter. Cross promotion between mediums will increase awareness of the content and inspire more potential leads to click on the articles. This will also help your SEO efforts and increase traffic to your site.

Quality content is essential for marketing your business online. It is the most influential part of your website for both leads and search engine crawlers. It can also convert more B2B customers when it is used with a comprehensive marketing automation strategy.

Forrester Research is Telling B2B to Go Social: We Agree

July 24, 2013/0 Comments/in Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

Forrester Research is telling B2B to go social. They released its results of the company’s most recent Technographics® survey, one which polled 382 North American and European decision-makers at companies with 100 or more employees.

Forrester’s report uncovered some incredibly high social media usage statistics. The study revealed that 100% – yes 100% – of respondents use social media in some capacity for work-related purposes. In addition, 98% of business decision-makers are “spectators”; they read blogs, watch videos, listen to podcasts, etc. for work-related purposes.

To a lesser extent, nearly 80% are “joiners” who maintain a profile on networking sites for business purposes. The study also found that 75% of business decision-makers are “critics”. They comment on blogs or post ratings and reviews for products and services.

This confirms what many CMOs and marketing strategists already know: businesses should be investing in social media. Interestingly, however, the social sites that most may think of may not be the best channels for B2B engagement. LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter have their advantages, such as huge mature communities. For outreach, those sites are effective at building audiences.

For marketing engagement purposes, the Forrester study suggests that niche communities are more often for specific purposes, such as to solve a technical problem or ask a community for recommendations. Forrester blogger Zachary Reiss-Davis writes, “for example, business technology buyers might visit IT Central Station or Spiceworks to learn more about multiple competing technologies at once; alternatively, they might visit a community managed by a single brand, such as the Cisco Communities or SAP Community Network.”

We have believed what Forrester uncovered. Social engagement is a vital new toolbox in the war for buyers. This belief led to the release of our social posting automation interface. Some may argue that automation takes the sociability out of the equation but we disagree: as Forrester has shown, B2B decision-makers expect SM to be a channel for marketing – and they’re all in communities out there.

Get a 10-minute demo on how social post automation can boost your campaign effectiveness.

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