Transcript Lead Management Automation - Info

Practical IT Research that Drives Measurable Results
Increase Revenue & Improve IT’s Reputation with
Lead Management Automation
Introduction
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Supporting the Marketing department seems like a never ending list of constantly
changing requirements.
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Keeping up to date with every new technology and understanding the potential
benefits while avoiding biased marketing hype is tough.
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Utilize this solution set to get up to speed on the emerging space of Lead
Management Automation (LMA).
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This solution set helps you understand how LMA can reduce low value IT work,
provide Marketing with new capabilities and increase company wide revenue.
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LMA provides one of the few technology projects which provides a significant
opportunity to increase company wide revenue.
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Utilize this comprehensive toolset to asses the benefits of LMA then build a business
case & strategy for LMA implementation.
Executive Summary
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Lead Management Automation (LMA) provides an opportunity to increase company-wide
revenue by over 15%
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Improve your reputation as a business enabler and guarantee yourself a seat at the executive
table by championing this high potential technology at your organization
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Provide your marketing department with a toolset that will enable new capabilities, and
enable the marketing department to become more self sufficient by:
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Reduce IT time spent on low value repetitive tasks like:
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Constantly updating marketing web pages
Building changing marketing reporting requirements
Providing data queries and supporting mass e-mail capabilities
Utilize this comprehensive solution set to:
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Providing lead acquisition, scoring and nurturing capabilities that enables continual optimization of
the vast amount of money spent on the marketing function
Providing a toolset that enables the marketing department to follow lead management best practices
and mature
Understand trends in the emerging field of LMA
De-mystify the confusion in the market place
Assess your company’s readiness
Assess how the costs, benefits & risks of LMA apply to your organization
Utilize the toolset provided to build a stronger relationship with your Marketing & Sales departments
Provide a comprehensive toolset to your VP Marketing to assist them in building a business case &
strategy for LMA implementation
Lead Management Automation is an emerging technology that, for qualified firms, is highly
likely to provide an extremely positive ROI.
Lead Management Automation: Solution Set Road Map
What is Lead Management Automation
LMA Market Definition &
Analysis
LMA Market
Penetration &
Opportunity
LMA
Appropriateness
Criteria
Understand Benefits
Costs & Risk
LMA
Costs, Benefits & ROI
Improve
Marketing/IT
Operations &
Relationship
Mitigate LMA Risks
Move Forward with
the Proposal
Build Alignment with
Vice President of
Marketing
Build the Business
Case for LMA
Formulate an LMA
Strategy
Market Analysis:
LMA is an opportunity to increase company revenue &
improve IT’s reputation
What is LMA and why should IT managers’ care?
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Lead Management Automation (LMA) provides a tool set which allows Marketing to more effectively manage the vast
amount of money spent on advertising and lead generation
This emerging category of technology provides an opportunity for an IT project to significantly increase company
revenue
Compared to alternative IT automation projects the ROI potential of LMA is significant
The following section will outline the exact capabilities, benefits & IT impact of LMA in more detail.
LMA is not possible to replicate without IT support!
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If marketing is following known best practices for managing leads they will require IT to provide many low value repetitive
tasks that can be effectively automated using LMA
Changes to web pages, lead reporting, list segmentation, queries, mass mail mergers are all tasks which enable marketing
to more effectively generate leads and are all task which become self sufficient with LMA
Without LMA these low value tasks can be a source of frustration for both IT & Marketing.
Replicating the entire feature set of LMA with a homegrown solution is unlikely to be efficient
Be concerned if LMA is brought into the organization without IT involvement
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LMA provides the tools for Marketing to become more self sufficient and autonomous from daily IT
support and requests.
Marketing may attribute LMA success to being autonomous from IT, reinforcing a perception that IT is a
bottleneck and not an enabler.
LMA is an opportunity to proactively champion a business technology, reducing the perception that IT
does not “get the business side” and simultaneously improve the relationship between Marketing & IT
Lead Management Software Automates Key Marketing Processes
Lead Management solutions integrate business strategies, marketing processes, and automation technologies across all
stages of the sales lead lifecycle, allowing marketers to track leads from initial inquiry to sale, providing a closed loop
reporting mechanism for marketing activities, and enabling campaign ROI measurement.
Lead Acquisition
Marketing's goal is to
Target and reach the right
prospects to generate
qualified leads for the
sales organization.
Leads are acquired when
prospects inquire or
respond to marketing
campaigns. E.g., email
marketing, direct email,
cold-calling, SEM
Prioritization
& Scoring
Leads are scored for
quality based on explicit
profile criteria (job title,
company size, etc.) and
implicit behavior (web
visits, downloads, event
attendance , etc.)
Leads can be scored
according to their “sales
readiness” before being
passed onto sales or
nurtured (to increase
their sales readiness
score)
Lead Nurturing
& Assignment
Leads are incubated
until they are ready for
follow-up by sales.
Nurturing involves
steady communications
designed to educate the
buyer.
Leads are nurtured until
they reach a specified
quality score, and are
assigned to sales.
Client Nurturing
Client Nurturing
utilizes the same
capabilities as Lead
nurturing to automate
the ongoing
communication with
clients to ensure repeat
business and client
satisfaction
Lead scoring
functionality can be
utilized as client
retention scoring.
Lead Acquisition
Step 1: What is Landing Page Optimization and how does it impact IT?
Landing Page
Optimization
Process
Continuously
Improve the
Landing Page
Marketing Best Practices
IT Implication /Bottleneck
How Marketing
Automation Helps
 Small variations in presentation and content
can significantly enhance the prospect
experience and lead conversion
 Marketing requires IT support to edit
the landing pages
 Lead page editing capabilities
allow Marketing to modify,
update and optimize their own
landing pages daily without IT
involvement.
 An iterative approach is required, as the
enhancements do not are not always
produce predictable results
 The unavoidable lag between request &
task completion reduces agility and
means wasted time on already out of
date changes, increasing frustration for
both marketing and IT.
 Daily changes should be made to landing
pages to increase conversion rates
A/B Test the
Improvements
Calculate Lead
Conversion
Rates
 Best practices for marketing dictate that
landing pages be vigorously A/B tested for
continuous improvement in an effort to
optimize the number of leads generated.
 Lead conversion rates must be calculated
for each of the test landing pages and for
each Keyword
 Landing page conversion rates are critical as
organizations pay for each click regardless
of whether it converts into a lead
 Many B2B firms often spend in
excess of $20,000 monthly on
Adwords thus it’s critical to
continually optimize this spend
 Provides the facility to set up
A/B tests automatically
 No testing tools in place to generate
these comparisons
 Testing allows for increased
conversion rates which
decrease the cost of each
leads
 Poor reporting capabilities for lead
conversion
 Calculates lead conversion
statistics for all test pages
 Providing reporting on how hundreds of
keywords and landing page result in
which sales requires a sophisticated
reporting engine.
 Keywords and landing pages
effectiveness can be evaluated
and ineffective spend can be
optimized
Lead Acquisition
Step 2: What is Campaign Optimization and how does it impact IT?
Campaign
Optimization
Process
Marketing Best
Practices
IT Implication /Bottleneck
How Marketing Automation
Helps
Evaluate
Multiple
Campaigns &
Lead Sources
 Different Sources of leads
must be evaluated to
determine where to
increase and decrease
spending
 Reporting tools are required to monitor hundreds of
different lead sources and keyword combination
from lead acquisition right through to close over a
period of months making analysis and reporting
practically impossible without IT support
 Provides turnkey reporting
capabilities allowing Marketing to
measure campaign effectiveness
across multiple stages
 Marketing must calculate
not only which advertising
sources convert into leads,
but more importantly which
leads convert into sales
 Without lead acquisition data integrated directly
into a CRM system Marketing simply cannot
calculate or determine which leads result in sales
 LMA provides CRM integration tools
and closed loop reporting which
allows Marketing the capability to
manage the quality of each lead (as
measured by revenue) not just the
quantity of leads produced by a
campaign
 Marketing must be
continually re-allocating
spend to more effective
sources of leads
 On average Demand Generation spending is double
the amount spent on the entire IT budget
Prove
Campaign ROI
from lead
source to close
Re-Allocate
Marketing
Spend
 8%-15% of company revenue
is spent on Marketing
Activity compared to 2% to
5% which is spent on
information technology.
 Integration of a home grown lead reporting system
will require more resources than utilizing the
tightly integrated LMA solutions into common CRM
packages
 Without LMA Marketing does not have the tools to
evaluate which portion of marketing spend is
effective.
 Avoid continual Marketing requests for reporting
which is unlikely to be as comprehensive as can be
provided for 1.5-6K/month by LMA
 With effective reporting Marketing
can eliminate spending on the 25%
worst performing campaigns and
allocate that spending to more
effective sources of leads
 1.5K-6K/month for LMA is a small
amount to spend compared to what
most organizations spend on
demand generation
Prioritization & Scoring
Step 3: What is Lead Scoring & Prioritization and how does it impact IT?
Lead Scoring
Process
Score Incoming
Leads
Marketing Best Practices
IT Implication /Bottleneck
 Any company which does not prioritize
and score leads with a system more
sophisticated then hot, warm, cold is
missing a significant opportunity to
increase company revenue
 A manual Scoring system is impossible
cumbersome for Marketing to create and
maintain without LMA or IT support
How Marketing
Automation Helps
 Improve lead conversion by
scoring leads before flooding
the sales organization with
every lead
 Sales can allocate their time
to the right sales leads
Measure
Explicit Lead
Criteria
Measure
Implicit
Behavior
Criteria
 Measure explicit criteria like job title,
company size, to determine lead
priority
 Effective lead scoring requires ongoing
measurement & optimization.
 LMA provides a tools set to
score and segment leads
 This key marketing task is next to impossible
without LMA or IT support.
 Each client segment can then
be managed separately versus
a one-size fits all approach
 Track and record the activity history of
each visitor (i.e. page visits,
downloads, etc) to arrive at a lead
score
 Implicit behavior tracking & scoring requires
web pages to track activity and feed data to
a scoring system which can be managed by
Marketing
 Provides an Implicit behavior
tracking system which can be
managed and maintained
autonomously by marketing
 Activity history & frequency are key
components of prospect interest that
must be measured to accurately gage
sales readiness
 Implicit measurement of behaviors like
tracking web site visits are impossible
without IT support
 Implicit behavior data is
critical to determining lead
sales readiness and increasing
the opportunity to close rate
 80% of first information inquiries do
not immediately translate into sales
Calculate Lead
Score &
Prioritize
 Leads need to be scored for sales
readiness before passing all leads to
sales
 Improve the quality of leads that are
passed on to sales
 Effective lead scoring requires ongoing
optimization and measurement which is
difficult without IT support
 Calculating scores and triggering automated
responses requires IT support
 Leads that are prematurely
passed on to sales are most
likely lost
 Increase the opportunity to
close rate and keep the sales
force happy
Nurturing & Assignment
Step 4: What is Lead Nurturing & assignment and how does it impact IT?
Lead
Nurturing
Process
Marketing Best Practices
IT Implication
/Bottleneck
How Marketing Automation Helps
 Nurturing involves steady stream of
communication designed to educate
the buyer and maintain a relationship.
 Without Nurturing capabilities
Marketing has no alternative
but to pass every lead to sales
 Leads are nurtured maintaining an
ongoing relationship with prospects
until they reach a specified score and
are sales ready
 Sales people are not the most
effective or efficient way to
stay in contact with prospect
for a long period of time.
 Provide a toolset that allows Marketing to
score, segment & nurture leads until they
have demonstrated behaviors that indicate
they are ready for contact by sales
 Provides the capability to nurture leads to
maturity, reducing the number of leads
disqualified by sales because they are not
ready to buy immediately
Mass E-mail
Capabilities
 Once a lead has been acquired it is a
marketing best practice to incubate
the lead utilizing mass e-mail and data
merging capabilities
 Many IT departments support
mass e-mail capabilities
utilizing dedicated systems
which integrate poorly
 Mass e-mailing and tracking response rates
are more effective when integrated with
scoring, nurturing & reporting capabilities
Campaign
Design &
Management
 One size does not fit-all prospects who
contact the organization. Designing
and managing segmented ,multi-touch,
multi-variable campaigns is critical to
optimizing lead conversion.
 Complex, multi-stage,
segmented campaigns are
extremely hard to manage over
a long period of time without IT
support
 Campaign design, management, execution
and reporting capabilities can be self
sufficiently managed by Marketing
 Increase the number of qualified leads
without additional spending on acquisition
Content
Improvement
& A/B testing
 Communication & content provided to
nurture leads should also be A/B tested
to determine it’s effectiveness to
mature prospects through the
education process
Nurture a
database of
prospects
Assign Sales
Ready Leads &
Closed Loop
Reporting
 At least ½ of all sales should come
from nurtured leads who contacted the
organization more then 30-60 days
previously
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 No testing tools in place to
generate these comparisons
 Replicating integrated
reporting, campaign design, email, and tracking functionality
is un-likely to be efficient
Reduce the number of prospects who start
out researching but eventually become
familiar with and purchase from a
competitor
 Lead nurturing greatly increases the ROI of
your original lead generation investment as
more warm leads are generated for the
same original acquisition spend
 Increase Opportunity to close rate
Client Nurturing & Assignment
Step 5: What is Client Nurturing and how does it impact IT?
Client Nurturing Process
Nurture a Database of Clients
Client Relationship Campaign
Design & Management
Marketing Best Practices
 It’s far easier to keep a client
than find a new one.
 Utilize the same features &
functions to manage and
measure relationships with
your existing client base
 Utilizing Lead Scoring to
calculate Client Loyalty scores
Client Deliverable Improvement
& A/B testing
Calculate Client Loyalty &
Advocacy
IT Implication
/Bottleneck
 Utilize Lead Nurturing to
maintain complex, long-term,
multi-variable automated
client relationships versus a
one-size fits all communication
plan to existing clients
 Utilize Assignment capabilities
to escalate to customer
service representatives
How Marketing
Automation Helps
 Decrease Client Churn
 Utilize the same
features & functions to
manage and measure
relationships with your
existing client base
 The same requirements
& IT bottlenecks exist to
develop complex
nurturing & scoring
campaigns for an
organizations client base
 Increase Repeat
Business
 Increase up-sell and
cross sell
opportunities
 Reduce customer
service costs with
sophisticated Client
Nurturing
 Depending on the
nature of the business
utilizing the same
toolset for Client
Nurturing can possible
have a greater
financial impact that
Lead Management
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