By now, we are all well acquainted with open and click-through rates as a way to measure the initial impact of a marketing campaign. But we need to look further in order to really understand how well leads are progressing through the lead and sales lifecycle. Only by evaluating conversions (and by extension, their movement through the cycle following their conversion) will you have a better answer for your manager on things like lead quality and ROI of marketing programs.
To gain the most accurate picture, we’ll need to start at the beginning. Instead of simple opens and clicks, let’s actually look at the number of “lead” conversions—those people gave up some personal information in order to get something from your company.
Beyond clicks, which really could denote quite little—especially if you aren’t monitoring where they go on your Website and how long they are on each page—we want to get a better understanding of conversions. We need to be able to understand who is converting and how else they might be interacting with your company. For example, are they going to other pages on the Website, viewing Webinars or demos, or are they downloading information? Knowing this information helps us to better understand their beginning of interest, or research and inquiry.
To effectively measure conversions as well as interactions over the life of a lead, you’ll need one system that will track all conversions, not only for the first campaign but also for all subsequent campaigns during which the lead has interacted with your company. Today’s automated lead management systems will do just that—enabling you to track all the campaigns in which a lead has interacted with you over its life. Such capabilities will help you see over time which campaigns not only initiated action but also continuously brought leads back to your site, helping you to drive them through the lead lifecycle.
By downloading the “7 Steps To Improve Your Conversion Rates Now”, you will learn the best practices that leading companies are employing to identify their most likely buyers as well as the automated tools and tactics they are using to help progress and accelerate prospects through the buying cycle.
It’s no surprise that these days, we have lots of conversations with people about ROI. Marketers, CFOs, and CEOs alike are struggling to figure out the best approach to tracking and computing a return on their marketing and sales investments. But what is interesting is that while there are so many variations of ROI discussions, so many of them have nothing to do with one of the most expensive components in the sales and marketing process-the cost of sales resources.
We often discuss how implementing marketing automation solutions help marketers get more value out of lead generation dollars, by gaining visibility into both working and failing campaigns, increasing the quality of leads provided to sales, tracking ROI related to marketing programs, and much more. But rarely do companies understand the second largest value proposition that marketing automation provides-actually reducing the cost of sales resources.
The idea behind marketing automation systems and processes is that leads today are not what leads were years ago. Today’s leads are mostly just researchers-companies that are still very early in their buying cycle. These leads are not yet ready to be engaged in conversations with salespeople; or if they are, it’s more about educating the lead than the sale of a product or service. Marketing automation systems try to deliver value even before the expensive sales resource gets involved, by identifying “sales ready” leads. And for those leads that are not yet sales ready, these systems nurture those leads-by communicating and educating them on the value of a company’s product or service. These leads are moved along the lifecycle until they are deemed sales ready and can then be passed over to sales.
Obviously, such systems have great impact on marketing departments, since marketing activities have traditionally been the source of large budget items. So, they are always on the line to show ROI for their large expenditures. Marketers must have systems and processes in place to track every lead to every campaign, nurture the leads until they are worth sending to an expensive sales resource, and then follow the lead through the sales cycle (usually they lose all visibility here). To gain a true picture of their effectiveness, they must evaluate ROI on many levels-not just cost per lead or revenue per campaign, but also the impact of their campaigns on the value of the leads-how many quality leads were passed to sales.
Tags: Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Lead Tracking, Marketing ROI
We sometimes get asked what the definition of lead management is… is it the company you are calling on, the opportunity that’s been identified, the individual, etc.? And often the question really revolves around how is tracking happening between lead generation and sales, especially when crossing multiple systems.
Well the answer of what is lead management is yes – It’s really all of those things. It’s what you can track and define within your company as a lead (versus an opportunity, which is often defined in your sales process, and closed sale). So for instance within LeadLife, since we can track a company and a specific person, our lead management process is both. We track their interactions with us and define when a lead moves into our CRM system as a “sales ready” lead. A “sales ready” lead means it’s ready for a sales person to make a call and move the lead to the next step. If the lead meets a certain criteria within our company, the “sales ready” lead moves on to an opportunity (meaning they are pipeline worthy).
Tracking all of these points is part of both a lead management system and a CRM system. The lead management system will be tracking and moving the lead from inception (company and/or individual), through until “sales ready”. Additionally, the CRM will track it through from opportunity through closed sale. The lead management system can also provide insight for marketers to track that “sales ready” lead handed off to sales and see how far it has gone through the pipeline and into a closed sale or not. So a lead management system can give a view of the entire process. As well, revenue from the closed sale should automatically update the lead management system giving marketers ROI reporting on their campaigns.
1. Email messages should be short, brief and to the point. Keeping your email short gives a personal feeling which creates a connection, builds trust, and invites response.
2. An email should include the following structure:
- Subject line: very brief and personal (include first name)
- Lead paragraph: open with a call to action & and how you can help the prospect.
- Final call to action statement with link to forms, website.
- Your company’s postal address must be included in all email messages. Include it in your signature block to make it simple.
- Be sure to include an opt-out link. When adding your opt-out link do not include words like “click here” or “unsubscribe”. Instead link one or two words for recipients to click in order to discontinue receiving your emails.
- Example: To end future email communication from ABC Co.
3. Do not include a lot of html, images or borders.
4. Avoid using any words or names that closely resemble profanity (Dick = Richard).
5. Keep your email file size small – 40K or under is recommended, but definitely no more than 300K.
6. Avoid spam-trigger words like: free, offer, % off, click, promotion, test and credit.
7. Limit use of images, which can raise your spam score.
8. Don’t attach large files to your e-mail. This will trigger spam filters and your email will not get through to your recipients. As an alternative, link to a resources page or use LeadLife to host the asset webpage for you.
9. A few tips about subject lines:
- Don’t use capital letters.
- Refrain from using stopper words like: a, the, an, at.
- Use 3-6 words total.
- Split test subject lines using both Question? Lines and Statement lines.
- Read or write your email before creating the subject line.
- Subject lines work best when attacking customers’ pain points.
10. Avoid using the color RED in your text. This color can tend to give a negative condemnation to words.
11. Provide a Forward-to-a-Friend link. Giving your audience a link to send your emails on to their friends is a proactive stance and can help provide more visibility for your company.
12. Link to Web Version: Some peoples email clients block images or don’t render HTML messages properly, especially if they read email in a preview pane. This allows readers to view your message in their Web browser instead.
13. Why are people likely to unsubscribe from your mailings?
- The emails weren’t relevant to the receiver and;
- A high volume of emails were received from the sender. These actions added together are a recipe to lose subscribers.
- TIP: More email and less relevant email cause subscribers to abandon your programs, it can also get you labeled as a spammer, hurting your email reputation and depressing your overall deliverability statistics.
14. Link text in your email to direct the recipient to your landing page, datasheet, website page, etc.
- Example: To learn more about our best practices visit us on line.
15. Although there’s not a single benchmark to breakdown click-through rates, an average percentage of unique click-through rates you should look for on a typical house opt-in list is a range from 3-4%.
16. If you want to use logos or images in your email messages use .GIF or .JPG files.
17. Be sure to test your emails or e-newsletters by sending “test emails” to different email clients (ex: Outlook, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo). Sometimes your email will render differently based on the email client that you are sending to. It is helpful to know which email client is most popular amongst your recipients so you can decide what type of rendering works and how you want your HTML email to look when it is received.
Lisa Cramer, president, of LeadLife Solutions has been recognized as one of the top 5 thought leaders in lead management.
See what Lisa has to say about the steps to consider when managing lead inquiries, what to do first when managing sales leads, the process she recommends for nurturing sales inquiries, and how to effectively measure ROI for sales inquiries.
Read her interview now!
Question – Do you attribute an opportunity to the original source campaign that hooked the inquiry, or to the nurturing campaign that finally got it ’sales ready’. Can / do you apply weighting, or ‘influenced by’ metrics, or is there a clear-cut, best practice approach.”
As we start implementing the processes and technology to really track ROI and in-process metrics on nurturing and lead management overall, we continue to discuss the best approach to calculate these numbers. The most difficult of these metrics seems to really be ROI based for a specific campaign or maybe that’s the question – is ROI really attributed back to a specific campaign –should it be? Those with lead management systems in place will understand the controversy. Even though a lead was initially tracked back to a specific campaign, the question remains is it that campaign that “turned” the prospect into a buyer. Or was it the 5 other campaigns (nurturing, adwords, etc.) that prompted them to buy? Or was it a combination of both?
The answer to these questions really depends on how sophisticated you want to get with your ROI calculation. Certainly many will continue to attribute the revenue generated from this lead based on the initial campaign that the lead was sourced from. However, others are using a weighting of all campaigns based on the interaction of each campaign. So for instance, if the prospect interacted with a company over 3 campaigns – one adword, one nurturing and one newsletter, some companies will evaluate the “strength” of interaction of the lead and attribute an ROI weighting to that campaign. So for instance let’s say that with the adword campaign the prospect filled in a form to receive the whitepaper offer. With the nurturing campaign they downloaded 3 of the 4 whitepapers/articles offered and with the newsletter they clicked on one link about new services offered. Some might suggest that all campaigns are attributed some percentage or weighting of ROI with the nurturing campaign getting the greatest share.
For most of our customers right now the answer about how to apply ROI really revolves around the need for accuracy and simplicity. It also revolves around categorization of campaigns…. Is it fair for a nurturing campaign to outweigh the adword campaign? Aren’t they used for 2 different purposes? Doesn’t the nurturing campaign support the adword campaign (adword brings new leads in and nurturing moves the leads into the buy cycle)? There’s continued debate on this subject matter with no sure fire best practice applicable across the board. We continue to work with our customers to track ROI and metrics based on their business and evolve that over time as they become more sophisticated in their marketing strategy.
We are often asked about lead nurturing and how do you know if you are being effective with your nurturing. There are a number of ways to evaluate the success of your nurturing campaigns. It is important to measure your nurturing on a step-by-step basis as well as your overall nurturing program. It is also good to evaluate the positive – how many clicks, etc. and also the not so positive – how many unsubscribes or no action taken.
First, evaluate each step of your nurturing program. If you check your metrics – opens, clicks, downloads, unsubscribes, lead movement, score, etc. at each step you can evaluate that particular message of the drip and the effectiveness of that step in the overall drip. Then evaluate the continued interaction of the leads during the nurturing program. Are the leads interacting with your nurturing (clicking, downloading, replying, etc) over time? Are they moving through the nurturing campaign? Are you able to evaluate when that lead has moved into the buy cycle (if that can be accomplished during this drip)? Some of these questions can be evaluated by utilizing a lead scoring process coupled with your nurturing.
See how you can score every interaction by every lead, online and offline, and prioritize leads automatically for appropriate next steps by downloading our “Forget the ABCs of Lead Scoring” whitepaper today!
Tags: Lead Nurturing, Lead Scoring, Metrics
Because the Internet has changed buying behavior forever, companies must enhance sales and marketing processes to be “first in mind” with prospects and customers.
Being first in mind means engaging prospects before the actual selling process begins, when they are just looking you over. Perhaps they’ll need what you offer later, as they grow their business. If so, you’ll need to remain first in mind until they are ready to buy.
You must also endeavor to be first in mind with your customers. Do not assume that if you don’t hear from customers, its good news. It’s not. Certainly it’s cheaper to sell into an existing customer base than to find new customers. It’s important to continue to engage customers over time.
Being first in mind with leads, prospects and customers means maximizing your sales and marketing resources and your revenue.
To do this, stay visible to prospects:
- Monitor what is happening in their business that might initiate a search for your products and services
- Drop emails with interesting case studies on how similar companies saved time and money with your offerings
Technologies and expertise can help you target interested parties so your sales team will be better prepared to engage prospects and customers.
Being first in mind is an ongoing process. If you continually interact throughout the buy cycle, you will improve results. Minimize lead loss by nurturing leads through the process to ensure more prospects end up buying from you.
There are two aspects to minimizing lead loss and maximizing your ability to remain first in mind with prospects—tracking and identifying leads and opportunities, and outbound interaction with the prospect.
Once leads are generated, it is critical to prioritize them so hot leads go immediately to sales and others are scored for appropriate actions.
If nurtured properly, when the prospect is ready to buy, your company is most likely to be first in mind. With customers, it takes not only great customer service, but helping them learn how other companies are successful using your products and services. You should have visibility into each customer. What they like and don’t about your specific products. When is the customer’s contract up for renewal?
Do you have an extranet that’s easy for your customers to access? Do you track what they do on your website and immediately store it in their customer record?
Being first in mind is not about having the best automation or technology. Although technology can help, it’s not the end goal. Being first in mind is about results. It’s a combination of marketing, sales, technology and processes that in total drive the desired results.
To learn more, read the whitepaper ‘Be First In Mind’ and see how you can become top of mind with your leads, prospects, and customers while maximizing your sales and marketing resources and your revenue.
With the current economic situation, it’s clear that marketing efficiency and effectiveness are increasingly vital for companies of every size. Lead management systems give marketers tremendous insight and action into the life of a lead, helping to nurture leads, drive value and show accountability for the lead generation dollars being spent. As companies come to terms with less resources combined with heightened sales performance expectations, having the right tools and process in place is critical.
By implementing a lead management system and best practices is something that can be done by virtually every marketing department — it’s not just for large companies and can actually be more important for smaller marketing groups that are feeling the economic pinch. The goal is for lead management systems to deliver rapid return on investment in terms of more efficient lead generation spending and higher-quality leads that contribute to the bottom line.
Tags: Best Practices, Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing
Now more than ever, it is essential that money spent on lead generation shows a solid return related to sales revenue or ROI. To this end, the success of marketing activities must be continually evaluated so that dollars are properly applied to the highest-yielding programs. Today’s lead management systems track all interactions of a lead with marketing and where it goes through the sales cycle. Therefore, marketers have keen visibility into which programs worked to bring in the highest number of quality leads, delivering ROI. Additionally, the lead scoring process gives marketers an early insight into the success of campaigns before revenue is generated from them. Lead scoring helps to show how leads are progressing across the marketing pipeline — how many are entering the buy cycle per campaign.
Tags: Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Scoring, Marketing ROI
