A Quicker, Simpler Path to Lead Management ROI

A Quicker, Simpler Path to Lead Management ROI A Step by Step Guide Lisa Cramer Co-Founder & President LeadLife Solutions lcramer@leadlife.com 770.670.6702

Because marketers are time, budget and resource-constrained, one question is asked consistently: How can we start down the road to improved lead management without overhauling our entire operations in a lengthy, three to six-month implementation? Learn how taking small steps can provide immediate ROI and visibility into what s been missing. It all sounds so good tracking ROI and detailed marketing metrics, in-depth prospect behavior analysis, automatic one-to-one nurturing, dynamic content creation, and promotion of sales-ready leads to the sales team. But with all that you have going on, how can you effectively implement lead management in an already stretched marketing department? How do you get started? To simplify complications is the first essential of success. - George Earle Buckle This whitepaper will describe a simple, easy and quick step-by-step approach to getting up and running with lead management. Today, there are lead management systems with great features and capabilities available but the reality is that due to time and resource constraints you won t or can t stop what you are doing today to put a complicated system in place in order to start gaining ROI. Nor can you spend tens of thousands of dollars with consultants to map out your entire lead management processes before getting started. Also, think of it this way: Realistically, would you really take advantage of all the advanced features and processes available like dynamic content and progressive profiling? Certainly some companies can make that jump but for the rest of us, it s neither realistic nor immediately necessary. The truth is that you don t need to take advantage of all the features of your system right at the beginning. Also, it s just not practical to develop a huge process map in order to realize some benefits from lead management. The good news is that you can start out small, improving on what you are doing today and start gaining immediate results. What you need is a welldesigned and realistic path of incremental steps that let you start reaping the benefits of lead management now, and then grow with your lead management system and processes over time. Now is the time, particularly in marketing, to be pragmatic and figure out what levers you can move to maximize marketing impact on your business. The following pages summarize the basic steps for a successful implementation of lead management processes and tools. The best way to start is by assessing your current lead-to-sales process. In other words, have you defined a new, more updated process or do you still follow one that is part of your company s marketing-to-sales legacy? For instance, in many companies, leads (and these may be real inquiries or suspects, or just simply college students who have wandered in doing research, etc.) now come into your website through a variety of channels or offline through events such as tradeshows and get dumped into your CRM system for the sales reps to call. This is still the norm for most companies today. So although the sales cycle and buy cycle have changed, your marketing and sales approach really has not. The Internet has thrown the old sales cycle/buy cycle out of whack. It used to be that we as vendors held the leverage with buyers they were dependent on us for their research and information gathering. Now with the Internet and the breadth of data available, the buyer can research without us knowing and when they are ready to buy, we hope we are chosen. This also means that it s no longer up to a salesperson when they should contact a lead, but it s up to the prospect when they are ready to be contacted. So, if all leads are passed to sales, as we did previously, our sales team would be turning off many buyers that aren t ready to speak to sales, while the sales team would be wasting significant time trying to contact someone who isn t ready to talk with them. www.leadlife.com 1.800.680.6292 Copyright 2010, LeadLife Solutions 1

If your company still follows the legacy of passing all leads to sales, don t panic and don t think you can t get started with lead management. You can still start with a basic process that s tracked and changed as you go, based on your feedback and what you learn. Remember, lead management means many different things based on your application of the tools and processes employed. You can get an immediate impact without changing your entire marketing-to-sales process or building hundreds of pieces of content. It s all about a series of one-at-a-time steps. Basic Steps To Get Started 1. Set Realistic Goals The first step is to define your goals short-term, mid-term and long-term and establish measureable targets. Where can you show some initial benefits by applying basic lead management and where can you go from there? Be realistic based on current resources and timing. For instance, start with something such as increasing conversion rates in a particular campaign or tracking which campaign is driving the most leads and the most qualified leads. Or, perhaps you want to provide your sales team with greater intelligence about the leads that are interacting with your company such as what products/services they are interested in, when (what time of day) the lead interacted with your company, and other information that would enable your sales team to make better calls. Some mid-term goals might include: monitoring the success of nurturing campaigns; tracking the percentage of leads that are being moved through a nurturing campaign; evaluating which messages are working and which are not; evaluating the number and quality of leads you are now passing to sales; determining the percentage of leads that move through the sales cycle (to what stage) and the percentage that are actually closing. There s so much more but again, most of us need to take a small step into the process before being able to lay the groundwork for an entire lead management process re-work. Start with a small step but make sure that each step, even the first small step, is measurable. 2. Get Sales Buy-In Working with sales is something that you need to do even before you take the first step in the lead management continuum. When you are thinking of mid- to long-term goals in particular, you need to evaluate the marketing-to-sales process. And in that case, you should really work with sales and decide the best approach. Foremost, define the sales ready lead. It s critical that both sales and marketing agree on the type of leads marketing will pass to sales. What do these leads look like what kind of behavior have they exhibited and what kind of demographics should they have? What leads stay in nurturing and when do they get passed to sales? Do you define a scenario that allow leads to move back into nurturing once they fall out of the sales funnel? And when does that happen is it based on a salesperson s designation or on automated monitoring of lack of activity or failed change of status? There are many more conversations and decisions that should occur with sales when looking into the mid-term goals and objectives of implementing lead management. Either way, the important thing to remember is to test and measure. You must continue to work with sales to evaluate the quality of leads being passed from marketing, as well as the number of leads passed to sales from your lead management system that close. And don t forget continue to tweak both scoring and nurturing processes! www.leadlife.com 1.800.680.6292 Copyright 2010, LeadLife Solutions 2

3. Identify Initial Campaigns/Steps It s important to evaluate where to start where can you get some immediate value without bringing down the entire marketing department or missing current targets/campaigns? We have found this question/evaluation to be very company-specific. It depends very much on what you are currently doing and what you can facilitate moving forward. Maybe your first step is as simple as taking your monthly newsletter and adding better targeting and tracking to the process. This could give you better conversions by targeting newsletters to specific industries, titles, interests, etc. Enhanced tracking of behavior beyond simple opens and clicks gives you visibility into the warmness of the lead for example, what other web pages do they look at, and what else have they downloaded? Below are some of the steps to consider Define newsletter content and target audiences º Segment leads based on demographics and/or behavior (this assumes that you have reasonably accurate data sometimes this is not the case. If not, you need to start with the data before you can get value from segmenting and targeting.) º Create template to be used for all º Create different content and/or images that are relevant to the target audiences and have the lead management tool dynamically alter content based on the rules you apply Setup basic scoring rules to identify leads as they start to interact º Score based on behavior that means something as defined by marketing and sales if you don t know, give a point for each page and/or asset then measure for value º Score based on the lead s title, industry, etc. that you are collecting but understand many people won t tell you the truth when filling in forms º Keep scoring simple not too many rules or points initially Your company s specific scoring scheme will vary depending on your needs and processes. A very basic scoring scheme might look like this: Lead Score 0-40 41-60 61+ Priority Level Suspect Lead Sales Ready Lead Marketing or Sales Action Thought leadership nurturing activities by Marketing Move to Telemarketing for qualification or nurture with more product content Send to Sales www.leadlife.com 1.800.680.6292 Copyright 2010, LeadLife Solutions 3

Of course, there s setup work to determine the overall scoring scheme and what score and process is appropriate for each action. Do not expect to get it right the first time. It s a process, so remain flexible and adjust scoring based on feedback. Setup small drip campaigns to start your nurturing process º Setup some automated emails that go out based on time (every x number of days) regardless of who clicked what. The more sophisticated drips (based on behavior) can come next in your lead management evolution º Evaluate your content is it relevant and interesting to your prospect? Should you start with thought leadership content to build credibility? º Content should be personalized - There s personalization and relevancy. Actually, these could be implemented together or if you want to start out small, start by personalizing emails and possibly also landing pages - Next, you could implement the concept of dynamic content through email and landing pages to provide relevant content and images based on a lead s demographics and/or behavior (e.g., shown interest) An example of a lead nurturing campaign: Scenario: Lead clicks through to landing page, registers for webinar through the form Touch Nurturing Plan 1 2 3 4 5 Nurturing Plan Lead Registers Online 7 Days Post-Conversion 14 Days Post-Conversion 21 Days Post-Conversion If score is above 50 Automated Email Description Send thank you email for filling in website form, offer other materials Email a whitepaper of interest Send a personal invitation to an upcoming seminar Send email with article related to webinar subject Send an email with more product based content signed by the sales rep on the account www.leadlife.com 1.800.680.6292 Copyright 2010, LeadLife Solutions 4

Setup small drip campaigns to start your nurturing process º Setup some automated emails that go out based on time (every x number of days) regardless of who clicked what. The more sophisticated drips (based on behavior) can come next in your lead management evolution º Evaluate your content is it relevant and interesting to your prospect? Should you start with thought leadership content to build credibility? º Content should be personalized - There s personalization and relevancy. Actually, these could be implemented together or if you want to start out small, start by personalizing emails and possibly also landing pages - Next, you could implement the concept of dynamic content through email and landing pages to provide relevant content and images based on a lead s demographics and/or behavior (e.g., shown interest) Content - repurpose what you already have: º You have more content than you think, and you don t have to recreate the wheel. See five tips below on where you can pull content from, and how you can repurpose what you already have: - Website: Your website is probably full of rich content, so why not repurpose some of the copy you already have? Just make sure it s not salesy if you are early in your nurturing - Datasheet or Collateral: Use some of the main ideas and bullet points listed in your sales collateral for articles or blog postings note the salesy comment above - Press releases: Pull out customer quotes or success rates to sprinkle throughout articles - Case studies: Use your customer s experience with your product/service for a short article - Industry News: Share passages or statistics from articles and industry analyst reports that your audience would find useful By using some of the content that you already have you can get your nurturing program off to a great start. One key thing to remember is that you must express your thought leadership in a way that speaks your prospects language and provides them educational value. When you author your articles or blog postings, leave your audience wanting more give them just enough to whet their appetite so they want to hear from you sooner rather than later. Evaluate success of targeting (conversions), scoring (quality of warmer leads), and drip (continuous engagement) Another first campaign to consider is integrating tracking and landing pages to AdWords or banner ad campaigns. This will enable you to track which ads are giving you the best conversions and, potentially with drip campaigns as a complement, you should get an increase in overall conversions (of course depending on how good your nurturing is ). Below are some steps to take to make this happen: Create landing pages for campaigns º Your lead management vendor or consultant should have best practices for you on effective landing pages www.leadlife.com 1.800.680.6292 Copyright 2010, LeadLife Solutions 5

º See if your lead management vendor will host the pages so you don t even need to work through your IT department to get started Create drips for campaigns (see details above) Setup basic scoring to identify warmer leads (see details above) Evaluate success of targeting (conversions), scoring (quality of warmer leads), drip (continuous engagement) Start getting a sense of which banner/adwords is driving the more qualified leads 4. Define A Simple Process For Website Leads You need to have a basic process to track leads coming in off your website not just from a specific campaign. Don t forget about these leads. If a lead goes to your website and fills in a form, what would you like to have happen? Setup basic scoring to evaluate the warmness of the lead (demographics and/or behavior) Have a follow-up drip established to stay in touch automatically (see details referenced above) Utilize the defined lead-to-sales process (based on your decision about when a lead should go to sales) Measure success of scoring and drip at each stage 5. Lead-To-Sales Process Considerations At this point determine the process for the leads you generate. Leads might be in categories cold, warm, hot/sales ready. How you define your leads in the top end of the funnel (before sales gets them) depends on your classification. This could be based on scoring levels. The following are some considerations for moving leads to sales initially and how it could change in the future (mid-term and long-term goals). You can continue to promote all leads to sales while still nurturing and then grow that model over time. We ve seen this when companies want to stage their approach to lead management. They want to get better at nurturing and scoring before limiting the number of leads they pass to sales. After some time and evaluation of nurturing effectiveness, they choose to pass those leads to sales that they feel comfortable with (an agreed to definition of sales ready as defined by marketing and sales). Alternatively some companies acquire the sales ready lead definition from the start of implementation and hold certain leads (inquiries and suspects) in marketing to continue nurturing while promoting others. At the beginning of this approach, you need to define your promotion rules liberally and then refine them over time based on measurements and feedback from sales (i.e., how many sales ready leads close, how many get to each stage of the pipeline, etc.). Defining rules liberally means don t clamp down and only promote leads with scores between 95 and 100. Until you are sure that your lead scoring reflects true sales ready leads, it s important to start simply and measure. Then run through the process a few times until it s proven to be effective in the form of closed sales. www.leadlife.com 1.800.680.6292 Copyright 2010, LeadLife Solutions 6

6. Understand The New Analytics That Are Now Available It s now time to upgrade your thinking about analytics and visibility into what s working and what s not. You are now able to track not just opens and clicks but also ongoing behavior and marketing effectiveness. Not only is tracking behavior important, but understanding what that behavior is really telling you is important. There are many layers of metrics to extract to understand how nurturing is going, how campaigns are going, how your website is performing, and how materials (webinars, collateral, case studies, etc.) are performing. Lead management systems enable you to really understand the progression of leads, the effectiveness of materials, and the true results of campaigns. Initially we find it s important to understand what new metrics you are able to find with lead management systems. Then think through sales and marketing metrics that would help you drive ROI. There are interim metrics needed to measure performance from a marketing perspective before leads even pass to sales and before revenue is generated. Define those and ensure you are able to easily extract those from your system and that your process is defined in a way to present those metrics. Some examples might include: Percentage of clicks per email (drip versus batch) Segmentation and targeting emails before and after Personalization and relevance before and after Nurturing before outbound calls hit rate and qualification Number of conversions for example, by landing pages, by form fills, by email campaign, and by online ad campaign Number of downloads each type of material Lead profile what does a sales ready lead that closed look like? º This looks at not just demographics but behavior what did they look at? For how long? What did they download? Any consistency? Which campaigns did they come in on? Number of times a lead went to your website/landing page for information before being passed to sales How many people continued to interact with your company during the drip/nurturing emails after the newsletter and where do they go on your website/landing pages Number and quality of leads passed to sales Sales cycle stage that leads are in for those that were passed to sales Revenue per campaign, revenue per lead profile Conclusion: You Are Ready To Take The Next Step Once you feel comfortable with the technology and process you ve established for your initial step into lead management, it s time to add more features and sophistication to your approach. Additional components might include: Differing your drip campaigns based on where the buyer is in the buy cycle º Different content, different triggers Add sophistication to your drip campaigns, driving them based on behavior not just duration www.leadlife.com 1.800.680.6292 Copyright 2010, LeadLife Solutions 7

Go beyond personalization to add relevancy to the content setup rules to change text and pictures of the email content based on the target s industry, title, interests Put a more sophisticated scoring model into effect. Separate scoring by demographic versus behavior. Define more scoring rules for actions that you know directly impact the quality of the lead (based on feedback from sales see above) Add personalization and relevancy to landing pages, increasing conversion Re-nurture leads in the pipeline based on status, lack of activity, etc. There is certainly a lot more to discuss when it comes to implementing lead management systems and processes. Our intent in this whitepaper is to help you get started. Some feel you need the entire marketing-to-sales process revamped to get some benefit. Some feel that you must lay out the entire process map before anything can be started. We ve seen, and we believe that the reality in today s market is that there is a wide range of possibilities. What s important is that you can take small steps and get benefits and retain your ability to grow into the full lead management process and system at your own pace. About LeadLife Solutions LeadLife Solutions is a provider of on-demand lead management software that enables B2B marketers to automatically track, score, prioritize and nurture leads. With LeadLife s flexible and intuitive software you can increase the value of your lead generation dollars online/offline, qualify sales leads, shorten sales cycles and increase your marketing ROI. At LeadLife it s not only about leveraging automation, but also delivering lead management best practices to increase marketing and sales success. For more information on lead management and our best practices, please visit www.leadlife.com or call 1-800-680-6292. www.leadlife.com 1.800.680.6292 Copyright 2010, LeadLife Solutions 8