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Top 10 Lead Nurturing Best Practices:

1. Online and Offline. Use lead nurturing for all campaigns both online and offline. Make sure the nurturing content is specific to that user's interaction with your company. For instance, relate the message back to what they did on your site or what they downloaded. As well the next communication should be related to what interest they have shown.

2. Continual Nurturing. Nurture leads before passing them to sales so you can help get them into the buy cycle and after they are in the sales process when sales reps can no longer move the lead at this time to a closed deal.

3. Specific Interest. Track all interactions and get better conversions by creating specific landing pages based on specific interest. Avoid using home pages or all-inclusive, multipurpose landing pages. For instance, changing images for each target-marketing group can have an impact on your results.

4. Lead Scoring Gives Visibility. Use lead scoring to prioritize prospects as they move through your nurturing program. Score important interactions - downloads, pages, time spent, etc. You will be able to identify those that might be entering the buy cycle from those that have no interest.

5. Continuously Engage Prospects. It's ok to complement your drip marketing with integrated monthly e-newsletters. E-newsletters should serve different purposes but continue to keep your company top of mind. Segment leads differently than your drip campaigns. Use an e-newsletter to announce new product and service offerings.

6. Evaluate All Responses. Track all responses, not just opens and links clicked, but what pages your leads go to after they click, how long they spend on different pages, what they download or what they view. Not all clicks are created equal - consider full behavior on a site versus just a click.

7. Deliver Real Value. Be sure to keep the communication to your prospects useful, and unique, not only promotional oriented. Include industry news and helpful tips in your communication to keep your messages interesting and insightful to your audience. The key to successful nurturing is keeping your company's name, expertise, and products and services "front and center" with your leads. 

8. Define "Sales Ready". Sales and marketing need to come together to discuss and define the definition of a "sales-ready" lead. The definition of a lead could include some of the following: company size, industry, geographic location, yearly revenue, job function, title, authority level, stage in the buy cycle, timeframe, budget, what they downloaded, etc.

9. Personalization. Take a personalized approach with all outbound communication to your prospects by including name, company information, and more. It's always smart to mention what they downloaded from your company and based on their particular interest; send them another piece of material that will help to educate them more on your product or service offering. Statistics show that personalization increases reception of information and action.

10. Develop a plan. Outline an effective lead nurturing schema.
Note: Your specific plan will might be different based on your sales cycle.

A basic nurturing schema might look like:

Touch 1 - Day 1: Thank you email for downloading a whitepaper
Touch 2 - Day 3: Introductory phone call and follow-up email
Touch 3 - Day 10: Email another whitepaper of interest
Touch 4 - Day 20: Email an industry article of interest
Touch 5 - Day 30: Email links to a recent Webinar download
Touch 6 - Day 40: Email recent industry analyst report
Touch 7 - Day 50: Personal invitation to attend an upcoming seminar
Touch 8 - Day 60: Send your monthly e-newsletter
Touch 9 - Day 70: Mail customer case study
Touch 10 - Day 80: Send an email to "touch base"
Touch 11 - Day 90: Email a recent customer win article
Touch 12 - Day 110: Prospect calls or responses back to your email

Now you have a qualified lead!

Top 10 Lead Scoring Best Practices:

1. Put a plan together. Before implementing any lead scoring system, it is important that you put together a plan. Decide what interactions you want to score and which you don't. For instance, if someone opens an email that you sent, is that really an action that shows interest in your company - should that action really be scored?  Take time before implementing a lead scoring system to properly think through what interactions and demographics should be scored and which shouldn't be.

2. Don't assume all clicks are created equal. If someone clicked on an email you sent, should they be scored?  Do you know what pages that person visited and for how long they stayed? Really decide what pages of your website (if any) should be scored and which shouldn't. Also include the time spent on a page as a possible indicator of interest.

3. Don't ignore demographic information. Scoring behavior is just one part of the equation. If you have leads fill in forms, make sure it's worthwhile and that you are collecting good, relevant data. Score a lead's title, industry, size of company - whatever best fits your lead criteria.

4. Make sure your definition of a lead fits with sales. The idea of scoring is to find leads that are "sales ready" and to keep leads that aren't quite ready for sales. If marketing's definition of a lead is different than sales, then no level of scoring will help overcome that issue. Start with a common definition and score from there.

5. Don't get too granular. When developing your lead scoring system, hold back the instinct to score every touch point leads have with your company. Each behavior can be tracked, but they shouldn't be scored. If you get too granular, you will have difficulty really getting those leads that are "sales ready" to bubble to the top.

6. Don't score only certain types of leads. When implementing a lead scoring system, you should include all leads generated by the company (assuming they are for the same type of sales force). Don't treat online and offline leads any differently. Factor both types and their possible interactions and demographics into your overall mix. Someone that attends a tradeshow could also be the same person that downloads a whitepaper from an email offer you send out. You want to track all interactions of that lead overtime - online and offline.

7. Stay flexible. Don't think that you'll be right the first time and know that you will probably have to change your lead scoring rules as you measure the effectiveness. Lead scoring is an iterative process and requires companies to measure its effectiveness and adjust.

8. Don't forget to measure. You must measure the effectiveness of your lead scoring.  Track the number of "sales-ready" leads that marketing sends to sales. Continue to track that through to sales. Track how many leads that you are nurturing and how many of the nurtured leads become "sales ready." Also measure your campaign ROI - has it increased since you implemented your lead scoring system?

9. Don't use lead scoring in isolation. For leads scoring to be effective, it should be used within a system that you can track, segment, nurture and move leads. If a lead score is not high enough, what good is it to indentify if you don't have a plan to nurture that lead to move its score higher? What good is lead scoring if you are unable to immediately take "sales ready" leads and move them to sales?

10. Don't ignore the need for lead scoring. Marketing can no longer take clicks, suspects and inquiries and throw them over the wall to sales and hope. Less marketing resources, a slowing economy, expensive sales resources and struggling revenue growth all point to marketing taking more action to increase the ROI it gets for its lead generation dollars while maximizing sales resources.

Keep checking back to learn more best practices and helpful tips from the marketing automation experts at LeadLife!

For more information about LeadLife marketing automation software, contact us at 1-800-680-6292 or request details online today.