Tag Archive for: Marketing Automation

Lead Liaison

Lead Liaison Provides a Marketing Spark in its Marketing Automation Platform

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Allen, TX (PRWEB) September 1, 2013 – Lead Liaison announced the release of another upgrade to its Lead Management Automation™ (LMA) platform. A new feature, called Sparks, is the latest in a series of upgrades released throughout 2013 in their marketing automation platform.

Sparks function as an automated response mechanism that triggers a series of actions following certain types of engagements. Examples of activities that can be assigned as triggers include an email click-through by a prospect, a website visit following an organic search, and a response to a Send and Track email.

Once a lead has initiated an engagement, Sparks can deliver an email or other marketing asset and immediately assign the lead to an owner based upon the style of lead distribution deployed by the Lead Liaison customer. The platform enhancement allows sales teams to quickly absorb the lead and respond immediately to the inquiry.

“Our research has shown that real-time user-based triggering events ‘spark’ B2B relationships more effectively and relieve marketers and sales teams from having to manually respond and update their CRM systems,” said Alex Brown, Lead Liaison’s VP of communications. “Users are also able to sharply focus the messaging to specific inquiries such as completing a web form or requesting a data sheet.”

B2B marketers using the LMA can easily define what actions will trigger a spark, which activities will be automatically deployed, and schedule delivery of marketing messages in a few easy steps. The system allows multiple actions based upon only one trigger, and users can deploy assets from existing marketing campaigns or assign specific assets to be delivered based a lead’s digital activity.

For a preview Lead Liaison’s new Sparks feature or any of the 50+ integrated marketing automation and lead management functions, request a 10-minute demonstration of the Lead Management Automation platform.

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

For More Information:

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

Lead Liaison

Customer Relationship Management: Not Just an App

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Customer Relationship Management: Not Just an AppCustomer Relationship Management (CRM) refers to a type of software or application you can use to manage your interactions with customers, keep a customer’s contact information secure and manage deals and sales. Right?

Well, sort of. A good CRM will do those things for you, but apps can’t do it all. Customer relationship management should actually be about proficiently managing your relationships with your customers – meaning, putting the right tools in place to make sure you offer consistently great customer service. With all the lingo and the acronyms and the must-haves in the app world, we can forget that a solid CRM won’t help if there is no plan for actually managing customers.

Solidifying Your Strategy

Marketing automation can be helpful because the right platform gives you much more information than standard analytics tools ever will. If you are able to use marketing automation data to determine specific consecutive days that a certain visitor has spent on your site, it makes sense to contact that visitor personally, strategically discuss some of the areas of your site they spent the most time on, and determine how your offering suits their needs. Without marketing automation tools, you simply can’t give this level of service to your clients. In fact, you won’t even know what specific users are visiting your website. All Google Analytics and other services will give you is a lump of customer data that doesn’t single out specific IPs.

Take a look at your web visitor data over the past 90 days. If you don’t know who’s visiting, it might be time to consider a marketing automation tool that can help you log specific visitors and tie their needs to your services. If you do know who your visitors are, develop a lead flow strategy for using your customer relationship management tools to pinpoint them, then contact and pitch to them.

Customer Relationship Management Strategy

For instance, does a potential client continue to hover around price points for a certain service you provide? If so, it makes sense to call that person or email them with a special promotional deal. Does a specific client keep coming back to your website to look over terms of service or specific offering points on a package? If that’s the case you might experience future problems from that customer or need to answer a question.  A simple call to check in might remedy a complaint that’s about to surface.

With marketing automation tools, you can better manage the relationships you have with current customers and put systems in place to give them better service. For more information and to take advantage of what marketing automation has to offer for your customers, visit leadliaison.com.

Lead Liaison

How to Humanize Your Marketing Automation Practices

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How to Humanize Your Marketing Automation PracticesCompanies that are deploying marketing automation practices are finding out that a marketing automation platform (MAP) can positively impact marketing budgets and improve close rates. However, for a MAP to be truly effective, there should be some human engagement woven between digital engagements. How do you dovetail automated functions with live engagement effectively? We’ve got a few ideas on how to humanize your marketing automation practices.

Set Alerts

Sales reps should be alerted when a lead is visiting your site. You want sales to respond quickly to inbound activity. Set an alert based on certain parameters, such as a lead visiting a specific landing page. Prior to responding to an inquiry, sales should be able to view a lead’s profile including company data and lead scoring. With a platform like Lead Liaison’s Lead Management Automation™, sales reps a provided critical information that they can use when they respond to active leads.

Be Social on Social Channels

Don’t simply distribute canned messages to your followers – mix it up with your leads! Using automated social posting will make your team more efficient but make sure they take the time to respond to inquiries, comments, etc. Best practices suggest setting email or SMS alerts when a social channel has been engaged or “checking in” at least 2x daily as an appropriate schedule during the early stages of deploying social marketing.

Introduce a Sales Rep Early in the Nurturing Process

Why wait to connect a sales rep with a B2B buyer until later in the buying process? If your lead distribution style is round robin introduce the next sales rep early in the lead engagement process. This doesn’t mean the sales rep has to personally engage with the lead, simply sending contact details in case there are questions can be a way to connect. (You may know by now that customized lead distribution is a great feature when you want to assign ownership of a lead to a specific rep.)

Collect Business Intelligence from Third-Party Sources

Best-in-breed MAPs integrate with research company databases covering 1000s of industries. Sales reps should have company details, contact information, and online behavior when they view a lead’s record. Lead Liaison’s LMA platform integrates with industry-specific resources so the platform automatically embeds lead data into your records.

The key to humanizing your marketing automation practices is to know when leads should be contacted. It’s not always easy to determine but there are a few tactics you can use consistently. In our next post, we’ll discuss those tactics.

Lead Liaison

Integrating a Marketing Automation Platform with Your CRM

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Integrating a Marketing Automation Platform With Your CRMAn interesting interview published in eMarketer came across our desks recently about integrating a marketing automation platform with your CRM. The subject was Kevin Quiring, managing director of sales and customer service at Accenture. It caused us to reflect on a few points Mr. Quiring made during the interview.

“Businesses are placing renewed emphasis on generating new business… either through acquiring new customers or growing existing customers.” Lead management is a critical part of that effort because companies are competing for fewer real dollars as the U.S. continues to stumble out of the recession. Brands need to know their customers well and target suspects effectively. They also need to nurture leads towards a sales engagement. Thirdly, they need to be able to analyze individual pathways to conversion and global trends in organic search. Integrating marketing automation and CRM platforms can do all that.

“There is a chasm between marketing and sales. The two aren’t working together.” The integration of a marketing platform with a CRM platform brings the two teams together. It starts with lead scoring, which provides qualitative and quantitative metrics that indicate how ready a lead is for sales engagement and how close a lead is to conversion. One benefit: system synchronization transfers marketing scores to sales pipeline rankings so sales reps know how hot leads are when they enter the CRM.

Sales and marketing need to work together to establish lead scoring parameters. This way, scoring parameters and benchmarks are defined with a common understanding and accountability structure connected to lead management. Also, the lead distribution capabilities of a full-service MA platform assign ownership from first touch to last touch. Sales reps are connected with a lead at a deeper level as they progress through the qualification and nurturing processes.

“Trying to close a deal when prospects have the potential to be interested in so many diverse products requires multiple sets of activity.” A primary benefit of MA and CRM integration is to have the ability to seamlessly cross-sell through multiple channels. Companies with myriad product lines can serve multiple buyer chains within a single interface. Sharper analytics from integrated platforms allow product managers to understand their markets better. Sales managers can forecast more clearly with data collected through the integrated systems.

“They’re finding the salesperson’s intuition and the marketer’s opinion on what lead will be good or bad is interesting—but not predictive.” Companies are able to analyze both the attributes and online behavior patterns of their markets through analytics provided by both platforms. A customer persona can then be built that accurately reflects statistically significant characteristics. Instead of relying on intuition an opinion, executives have hard data to shape decisions around.

We appreciate that Mr. Quiring sees the value in marketing automation and CRM integration. If you’d like to find out how our Lead Management Automation™ platform integrates with CRMs like SFDC, request a 10-minute free personal demonstration.

Lead Liaison

Marketing Automation Needs a Human Touch

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Marketing Automation Needs a Human TouchWhile I was researching information on how I can improve the marketing automation strategies I employ for my clients, I came across a very interesting article that I had to share. In retrospect, I think it was the title of the article that really got my attention Marketing Automation – Set it and forget it!

The set it and forget it slogan is a popular catch phrase for a cooking appliance infomercial, but it was the thought behind it that really intrigued me. Although the automation aspect of marketing automation is what makes it more simplified and scalable, it is not what makes marketing automation work.

Marketing automation needs a human touch.

There has to be a knowledgeable marketing professional creating the scoring criteria, developing the lead nurturing content, and conducting the final sale. The vital components of marketing automation cannot be successfully managed without a human touch.

Human Profile Created by Humans

It takes a trained marketer to determine how a typical buyer should be evaluated. The software is not able to understand the relevance of each lead’s characteristics on its own. Most marketing automation experts, including myself, will recommend gathering your company’s marketing and sales professionals together to create a comprehensive list of relevant lead behavior and demographic characteristics.

Relevant Content Created By Humans   

There is software you can purchase that will spin articles, but the quality of the content is usually subpar. Articles that are not written by humans won’t be compelling enough to convert leads into customers. The content that is sent to potential leads should answer any questions a typical buyer may have while directing the lead towards making a purchase. Automated software is not capable of creating the level of content that your potential leads expect to receive.

Final Conversion Approached By Humans

Marketing automation software profiles and guides leads that are captured on a website, but the final sale should be done by an actual human. Many marketing automation strategist will have a system in place, like ours, where the sales staff is immediately notified by text or email if a lead shows a high likelihood of conversion. This way it is a person reassuring the lead they are making a sound buying decision.

Marketing automation requires human profiling, human content creation, and human conversion. The automated aspects will save time, but it is not meant to be a “set it and forget it” system. Online companies will see superior results by employing an experienced marketing automation expert to oversee the success of their marketing automation strategy.

Lead Liaison

Use SEO and Marketing Automation Together to Optimize Marketing Effectiveness

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Use SEO and Marketing Automation Together to Optimize Marketing EffectivenessSearch engine optimization has been around for over 15 years. And marketing automation has been taking the B2B world by storm over the past few years. Although each provides distinct capabilities for digital marketing, when combined they make a potent combination.

SEO has evolved as Panda then Penguin have changed search marketing strategies. The evolution of SEO provides an opportunity to leverage the strengths of MA; namely, the ability to understand how well organic and paid campaigns have been and the development of other search marketing practices (such as back linking or social campaigns). The key is to use SEO and marketing automation together to optimize marketing effectiveness.

Marketing automation allows marketers to track lead behavior. Search patterns provide potential indications of buyers’ intentions. It seems like a natural fit to combine your SEO strategy with a marketing automation system. With the information available within an MA platform, SEO campaigns can be linked to a deeper view of Web activity and, ultimately, to conversions. SEO performance can be tracked from click to close. Search campaigns can be evaluated through MA analytics then modified based upon the insight platform users have into keywords and referral sources; campaigns can then be optimized to match traffic patterns. MA can help demonstrate ROI for both paid and organic campaigns.

When integrated with a CRM, such as Microsoft Dynamics, a marketing automation platform like our Lead Management Automation™ can point marketing managers to KPIs where the true dollar attribution is visible. Existing SEO analytics products fall short of that capability. By combining SEO and MA, marketers have a wider scope into buyer behavior. Page views and other content consumption data can provide direction for developing lead-centric  content marketing initiatives and site architecture modifications. Not only can MA provide keyword performance metrics for search activities but also within email campaigns and landing pages. Link building is more effective when combining SEO and MA by using the trackable link function, which allows users to follow leads through search, social, and other pathways. The lead intelligence provided through this function can help shape link building strategies more effectively than standalone SEO reporting.

Finally, using MA with SEO allows businesses to budget with more agility, basing decisions on actual revenue generation capabilities of search marketing tactics. Using only SEO analytics requires managers to adjust budget based on traffic, not close rates.

Lead Liaison

Effective Lead Management: More Than Marketing Automation Alone

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Effective Lead Management: More Than Marketing Automation AloneWith marketing automation platform (MAP) adoption expected to generate $750 million by the end of the year, we felt it was important to draw a distinction between MA and lead management. Marketing automation is a function of delivering scheduled messaging to marketing leads. But lead management is a process of advancing those leads appropriately to the point where they can be migrated to a CRM system (like Salesforce.com) and engaged by your sales team.

We believe there is more to MAPs like our Lead Management Automation™ platform than automatically delivering customized messages. To truly leverage the strengths of a MAP, you must use the technology to advance marketing leads through your marketing funnel.

While some companies implement parts of their MAP, those that deploy all the features relevant to lead management within a robust platform see higher ROI. Why is that? Because successful conversions require more than messaging.

Certainly, managing leads involves messaging. But effective lead management also requires appropriate timing, sufficient escalation of the relationship, rapid response, and accurate scoring. For example, our real-time visitor tracker, Streamer, provides visibility about who is on your site. The information provided can reduce response time by allowing the user to quickly engage in a chat or send a personalized email.

Our Briefcase™ dashboard is another example of the robust lead management capabilities that can improve lead classification, scoring, and distribution to sales agents. LMA users can quickly identify the most qualified and sales-ready leads. Features like this expand our MAP beyond simple automated marketing practices.

Lead management takes a fresh suspect and turns it into a marketing-qualified lead that has been adequately engaged through the marketing automation process. Factors such as content development, database segmentation, and lead distribution all play significant roles in managing leads effectively.

Of course, not all leads that enter the pipeline through an MA platform will go on to become a sales opportunity. But leads that are managed effectively through MA functionality such as lead scoring, real-time tracking, or lead qualification are more likely to be converted.

Lead Liaison

Marketing Automation Makes Small Business Internet Marketing Easier

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Marketing Automation Makes Small Business Internet Marketing EasierSmall 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!

Lead Liaison

How to Get Marketing Automation to Work for Your Business

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How to Get Marketing Automation to Work for Your BusinessI 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?

Lead Liaison

How Marketing Automation is Evolving to Better Suit the B2B Environment

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Marketing Automation TrendsI 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.