Lead Generation Gets Smarter Lead Generation bulks up to meet much higher expectations
Business Brief 01 / 08 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Taken for granted these many years, the email marketer s stock in trade, the sales lead, is the latest beneficiary of technology s steady advance. No longer simply the name and contact info of anyone who had expressed interest in your product, today s sales lead is bigger and better, the product of sophisticated lead generation solutions that provide organizational, biographical, and behavioral data to identify, manage, and nurture prospective clients. Sales leads had to evolve. Markets are faster; competition is everywhere, 24x7, and the buyer can research many vendors online without contacting anyone. If you wait for a prospect to express interest before making contact, you may have already been eliminated from consideration; yet making contact is the easy part. We have every type of device to easily communicate to anyone from anywhere and at any time, in text, voice or video; and our company profiles are online to be followed, liked, and tweeted. Surprisingly, despite all of that information sharing, few really know each other anymore and that remoteness provides the opportunity for improvement. Buyers don t need your help to inundate themselves in websites and PDFs; however, research shows that buyers will respond to personal invitations and relevant, trusted content. While, perhaps, not as spontaneous as a great door-to-door salesman, the newest lead generation solutions let your company put its best foot forward with targeted and personalized communications that begin to build the strong, meaningful vendor relationships that buyers truly want. This paper describes the challenges faced by companies that rely on new customers to meet revenue goals and cites evidence supporting the value proposition of the powerful lead generation solutions from a highly-regarded annual survey of marketing executives.
Business Brief 02 / 08 THE LEAD GENERATION CHALLENGE The 2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Report 1, published each year by Marketing Sherpa with data collected from hundreds of U.S. marketing executives, reveals the challenges companies face in securing new prospects. According to that survey, only 17% of respondents claimed that their email list of potential prospects was growing rapidly. Most companies, 82%, reported slow growth of that database or no growth at all. It s not due to a lack of effort by the marketers; in fact, just the opposite is true, and as the volume of emails sent increased, list fatigue set in faster as consumers tuned out the mass marketing strategy. The worst performances were registered by companies that churned their database with the same or similar email multiple times click-through and conversion rates fell for the second mailing and dramatically plummeted when a company sent a repetitive email for the third time. 82%, reported slow growth of that database or no growth at all. Source: www.dbmarketing.com content quality remains the primary factor in the success of a lead generation campaign. But it is not sufficient to merely refresh stale content. The typical decision maker receives dozens of marketing communications on a daily basis the odds that your generic message will be one of the few that get read are not good. The Marketing Sherpa report confirms that marketing managers believe content quality remains the primary factor in the success of a lead generation campaign, with quality in this case being defined by the prospect. Certainly, the content must effectively impart your value proposition; however, if the prospect doesn t view it as quality content, it is unlikely ever to be read. 1. 2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Report - MarketingSherpa
Business Brief 03 / 08 On the back side of the transaction, your sales team requires quality content as well. Verifying a B2B sales lead s contact information and interest level was historically a thorn in the side of lead generation. To initiate and sustain the personalized email marketing campaign described herein, however, you need that information and much more before you even send the first email to any prospect. A successful lead generation strategy must continuously validate the age and accuracy of all data while also updating its prospect database with new research and subjecting the B2B sales leads generated to a second level of scrutiny. A successful lead generation strategy mustcontinuously validate the age and accuracy of all data while also updating its prospect database with new research and subjecting the B2B sales leads generated to a second level of scrutiny. The timeliness of your campaign is also an issue. Buyers today are able to amass a wealth of product information and never talk to a sales representative. Your company may have made it to the final list of prospective vendors or have already been eliminated before you even learn the prospect is considering a purchase. If the sales lead isn t created prior to the commencement of the prospect s search, you could have the best value proposition in the industry and never get the opportunity to present it. Your company may have made it to the final list of prospective vendors or have already been eliminated before you even learn the prospect is considering a purchase.
Business Brief 04 / 08 STRONG RELATIONSHIPS STILL RULE As much as buyers want and appreciate the convenience and efficiency of the Internet for product research, and will include or eliminate a potential vendor solely on that research, one thing hasn t changed: they will more often give the vendor with whom they develop the strongest and most meaningful relationship every chance to win the business. For your company, building those strong relationships begins with the first email. This isn t news. The Marketing Sherpa survey asked participants to select the primary goals for their companies email marketing strategies from among a list of 16 possible goals. The top 3 stood apart, each cited by 67% of the respondents. It seems email marketers understand that if the message does not Deliver highly relevant content, it will not Drive additional website traffic or Increase sales conversions/revenue. Yet, even knowing that content quality is critical to success, almost 1/3 of Inability to manufacture relevant content on a consistent and predictable basis as a major barrier to the attainment of marketing goals. the survey respondents cited their inability to manufacture relevant content on a consistent and predictable basis as a major barrier to the attainment of marketing goals. To nurture a relationship your marketing communication must first capture recipients attention, and then hold their interests and expand the relationships by motivating an interactive response. Too many companies send boilerplate emails that simply rehash generic brochure/website content intended for proactive prospects. Instead, capture attention by appealing to prospects with content that is uniquely pertinent to their individual interests and needs. So, what s the problem? Not surprisingly, it s hard to create personalized email content when you know very little about the person. In the past, in-person sales calls provided that kind of rapport with the prospect. Today, however, most companies have minimized the number of outside sales representatives in favor of online marketing, with the result that they actually know very little about the people signing their purchase orders.
Business Brief 05 / 08 Most companies would be hard-pressed to pull even a single point of behavioral insight on any prospect from the data within their CRM application, much less enough to support a personalized lead generation campaign. Most customer relationship management (CRM) solutions provide a powerful tool for managing and marketing but are not specifically designed for managing lead nurturing. Their functionality presents your perspective of existing relationships, derived after the fact from the transactional data you enter. Most companies would be hard-pressed to pull even a single point of behavioral insight on any prospect from the data within their CRM, much less enough to support a personalized lead generation campaign. Yes, to an extent one could use these applications to capture prospect profiles as well, and to include them in the customer-focused marketing campaigns managed within the application. However, a successful email marketing campaign needs before the fact data: organizational, biographical, and behavioral information sourced from everywhere, not only from company transactions. A BETTER APPROACH The latest lead generation solutions not only help marketers access high-quality verified leads but also provide behavioral insight on those leads so that the marketer can devise next-step and long-term approaches. Rather than transaction-based data, the new systems build a rich dossier of actionable intelligence on each sales lead from his or her online activities, public data sources, and social media that marketers use to target their companies email communications. Executed well, the marketer is able to expand its relationship with the prospect across multiple points of interest and pinpoint topics that have recently piqued the prospect s interests to initiate dialogue and reduce list fatigue and churn. By delivering relevant, personalized content, prospects engage with your company and look forward to the next installment of your marketing campaign. The strong relationship formed leads to social media success as prospects are more likely to respond to your interactive calls to action and to forward your promotion to friends and co-workers. Your email list grows and leads generated arrive earlier in the prospect s buying cycle providing greater opportunities to sell. New systems build a rich dossier of actionable intelligence on each sales lead from his or her online activities, public data sources, and social media that marketers use to target their companies email communications.
Business Brief 06 / 08 Combined with the other components of the lead generation service provider s value proposition a database that includes millions of verified decision makers across multiple industries and predictable costs through payper-lead or pay-per-view business models the behavioral insight provided by the latest advanced technology enables marketers to execute accurate, targeted and personalized email lead generation campaigns that grab attention, hold interest, and motivate interaction by all prospect profiles types. The marketer is able to expand its relationship with the prospect across multiple points of interest and pinpoint topics that have recently piqued the prospect s interests to initiate dialogue and reduce list fatigue and churn. INTRODUCING INSIGHTBASE DASHBOARD BY TRUE INFLUENCE Advanced lead generation technology that takes advantage of behavioral and social insight to enable prospect personalization and targeted message delivery has been introduced by market leader True Influence. The company s InsightBASE Dashboard provides a wealth of lead and company intelligence in an intuitive, easy-tomanage, single screen format. The real-time data provided includes: Influence score to understand the lead s level of interest Prospect name, company, title and contact information Their history of accessing online information and social media Comparative data revealing their engagement with your company versus your competitors Identification of the prospect s device usage PC, smartphone, or tablet Documents downloaded, tweets and tweets followed, and more All data updated real-time during the purchase cycle
Business Brief 07 / 08 InsightBASE Dashboard provides behavioral insight to enable prospect personalization and targeted message delivery, a wealth of intelligence in an intuitive, easy-to-manage, single screen format. companies find their next sale. By delivering industryspecific content for multiple markets through its websites and emailed newsletters, the company reaches an audience of more than 16 million qualified business contacts. Its dedicated Quality Analysis team executes a stringent verification process that maintains the integrity of that database and fully verifies each sales lead generated to ensure marketers focus valuable company resources on real opportunities. A high-level snapshot of that same online activity data is included for the prospect s employer as well in order to position the prospect s interests within those exhibited by others at the company. True Influence quickly established a reputation in the market for high-quality B2B sales leads that help
Business Brief 08 / 08 The company distinguished itself within the industry several years ago with the introduction of its LeadPAC Relevance Engine, a solution that groups people based on business demographic data, including industry, company size, job function, seniority, subscription information, and business registrations, and automatically identifies the groups most likely to find your marketing communications relevant, based on responses to previous, similar campaigns. Stringent verification process that maintains the integrity of that database and fully verifies each sales lead generated to ensure marketers focus valuable company resources on real opportunities. Now, with the addition of the InsightBASE Dashboard capability, True Influence raises the standard for lead generation. Within one integrated solution, marketers have access to millions of verified decision makers and the ability to execute an intelligent marketing campaign that delivers relevant, personalized content to the appropriate target audience when they are ready to buy. The leads that are generated provide real opportunities for your company to convert sales and build long-term valued relationships with future customers. CONTACT T: 301-365-6600 E: contact@trueinfluence.com W: www.trueinfluence.com For more information click here Corporate Headquarters 8000 Towers, Crescent Drive 13th Floor, Vienna, VA 22182