WebPage Views
You can see a history of what pages the prospect has visited. You can also see Page Title, what page they came from, information about the machine they were using to visit your site, IP address, and even screen size.  Although these individual details are not compiled in a report (yet), you can get an idea of the path that people take once they hit your site, common browsers, and even how much of your site they most likely see at first glance, based on screen size.

Form Registrations (List Imports)
See which forms the prospect has filled out over time, and get details on which values were provided on that form. This also includes and information uploaded via CSV import or automatic import from Salesforce.com LoopFuse keeps only the most recent data for any given field in the “Summary Profile” for a prospect so this can be useful if you’re investigating when a new value might have been provided.

Email Activity
Although this information can be found on the Email Campaign details, it’s also provided here to help give you a clearer picture of the time-line involved with user/email interaction. You can see when an email was sent from the system, how many times they opened the email, links clicked, and even forwards.

CRM Activity
Find out when the prospect was exported to Salesforce.com. You can see the data values that were passed for our system, see what CRM assignment rules have been set on export, whether an activity was created, score updates, or even if there was an error on export that prevented the record from making it to Salesforce.com

LeadFlow activity
Understanding how your prospects flow through your different processes is essential. Filtering in LeadFlow nodes will let you see when each node is triggering and what the result is, helping you diagnose potential problems. Nodes are color coded so you can see when a prospect enters, triggers a node, or exits a flow. This example shows the prospect entering the flow called “FreeView Signup”, triggering the Export to CRM node, the email send, and then a pause node. This is very useful in helping visualize the path your prospects take in your OneView flows.

Scoring Activity
You can see the overall score on the Prospect Summary page, but the Events page lets you see when those individual events happened.

Custom Events
Recently added to the Prospect Events screen, Custom Events allows you to see what actions users are taking within your product. See our press release and API documentation for more information on Custom Events.

List Activity
This can be used in conjunction with form registrations / list imports to give you an idea of when data values may have changed. This will help you in finding out how a prospect may have ended up in a given segmented list.

Richard Murdock (@shinyranger) is the Senior Manager of Customer Support at LoopFuse. Our goal is to make sure you have the best experience possible with our products.

We would love you to try out LoopFuse here.

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Where did the Prospect come from?
Identifying the source of your prospects helps you focus on those areas that are most productive. LoopFuse helps you in this area by capturing keyword searches, referring URLs, and even company information to pinpoint the different sources of site traffic.

Who is this Prospect or, what is the worth of this Prospect?
Visiting Company dashboards give you a quick view of who is interested in your site offerings. LoopFuse also captures form submissions and relates that offered information to the prospect’s viewing activity. Combining this information with email campaign activity builds a Prospect profile that can be used to get a better idea of what type of person is interested in your product and how they get to that point.

What is the Prospect doing in my funnel?
LoopFuse gives you dashboards that help you see what a prospect is doing within the marketing/sales funnel. The Email Marketing dashboard provides insight as to open and click rates on your email campaigns.  The Web Activity dashboard shows traffic on your site and returning known visitors. Lead Capture shows you which forms are the most active and who has filled them out. The CRM Activity dashboard shows you who has been exported to Salesforce.com recently.

SaaS companies can make use of our recently added Custom Events to track even more prospect behavior within the product itself. This information can be used to gain insight on what product features are used most which can help refine the product offering. Be sure to catch our Webinar on Dec. 15^th for more information on this exciting feature.

Where is the Prospect going?
Prospect activity can be scored according to web page behavior and captured information information. Scoring can be used in nurturing programs that guide a prospect through the desired sales path to becoming a customer. After all, that is the ultimate goal to attracting new prospects: to get them to convert to a satisfied consumer of your product offering. LoopFuse gives you the tools to map out the desired conversion track and guide your Prospects along the journey.

LoopFuse helps you answer those existential Marketing Automation questions that have vexed marketers for quite some time. Sign up and start finding your answers today!

We recently had a discussion with Mac McConnell of Bluebird Strategies about how to do lead nurturing the right way.  Mac knows a thing or two about his given his previous senior sales experience at Sun Microsystems.

You can watch the replay of the webinar by clicking here.

Mac walked us through some great tips and examples during our discussion.  Here are seven things that will keep you from sucking at lead nurturing:

1. Focus on creating value for the buyer by putting yourself in their shoes and asking “how is this solution going to improve my worth at work.”
2. Ensure the content offered meets the expectations of the audience.  Content for the sake of content is a frequently repeated early mistake in lead nurturing programs.
3. Don’t rely too heavily on past accomplishments (case studies, etc.) because they may not apply to the current customer’s situation.
4. Lead nurturing is not a “set it and forget it” process.  Keep it simple but constantly assess both the content and timing of your nurturing program.
5. The best nurturing program is one that focuses on the prospects area(s) of interest and creativity can “shake up a sleeping” database of leads.
6. Don’t forget about retention and the role nurturing plays in that process especially if you are a subscription-based business.  Nurturing doesn’t end once someone becomes a customer.
7. Seek first to educate and demonstrate your knowledge of the customer’s problem and it flows more naturally that you have the solution to that problem.

Great points Mac!  Be sure to watch the whole thing here.

If you sell a sophisticated product or service, expect that much of the focus of your marketing automation campaigns will revolve around education.  If you provide this value to potential buyers, then your expertise becomes established in their mind.

Here are some approaches we have used to in our marketing automation consulting to help our clients funnel their prospects through the buying process which will help you design your own processes:

1. Focus on the problem. Use a sequence of autoresponse emails to articulate the specific problem your customers seek to solve.  The scenarios can vary.  You can segment each lead flow by problem definition to allow your landing page visitor to opt into a personalized experience with the problem they face.  Speaking about features and benefits is marketing talk.  Start with the problem and how your offering makes a difference and helps people every day.
2. Ensure the copy is conversational. If you merely provide an encyclopedia of answers, people can turn to Wikipedia or other sterile sources of information.  Use plain language in your copy and connect as a human being.  Assume your buyers know very little about how your industry or market works.  Provide the rudiments and help them gain expertise in a sequential diet of information that makes sense to any person new to the industry.
3. Provide branched lead flows. When your email campaigns reach a logical point, provide other calls to action for further lead flow opportunities that get further than preliminary education.  This could be an e-course or videos that go further into the education process.
4. Score your leads for their opt-ins. As your leads opt into further lead flows, ascribe scoring that helps to qualify their lead status for your sales team.  If there is deep interest in the education process, then create a triggered task for your salesperson to make contact.  The sequence of Lead activities should reveal a high level of engagement and interest which makes sense for sales engagement.
5. Break up the content. Our attention is sparse.  Instead of a thirty minute video, make 5 smaller videos.  Condense white paper content to multiple pieces or email template communications.  Create anticipation for the next Lead Flow sequence and integrate them together into a cohesive experience.  This creates fresh engagement for your buyers and keeps their attention and engagement.  Furthermore, your marketing automation rules can be further engineered to funnel the buyer for each interaction.

If your buyer feels educated, they feel empowered.  Furthermore, if you are the one providing the education, then you will have permission to engage in dialogue.

Help them know the right questions to ask and frame the sales discussion from the education process.

Using your Loopfuse system to design multiple educational Lead Flows will create the growing pipeline for lead qualification for your sales team.  You will notice a difference in the sales conversation with higher levels of trust and readiness to buy.

What are some areas that you could provide marketing automation for education?

Here’s a quick look at some of the results:

• Better quality leads is the most important benefit of marketing automation among respondents, followed closely by a better understanding of prospect behavior and a higher volume of leads overall.
• Email Marketing tops the list of the most widely used marketing automation features, followed closely by Web Lead Capture.
• High cost of marketing automation software cited as the top barrier to adoption.
• Social Media Monitoring and Campaign ROI Reporting are top priorities for 2011.
• The benefits and strong ROI from Lead Scoring are not yet being widely realized by marketing organizations.

We are also pleased to announce the recipient of the $500 gift card, awarded for filling out the survey: David Burget, from Omaha, Neb.

His favorite Marketing Automation feature: Inbound Marketing. His company uses marketing automation to determine “which companies have visited the site.” According to David, the sales team “loves the ability to pinpoint return visits” and they use that information as talking points during sales calls.

Want to see more of the results? Download the 2011 Marketing Automation survey report.

An example of automation almost everyone uses is an auto-responder when someone submits a Lead Capture Form.  This is important to do, so that the person filling out the form gets immediate confirmation that the information has been received and to set expectations on when they can expect to hear a reply.  An auto-response email also provides a good opportunity to include extra information about your product or service that can help them along until they get a direct response based on their inquiry.  For example, if someone submits a registration form to contact marketing about a press event, the auto-responder email could contain a link to your press kit.

Another good example of when automation can be useful is when communication to a prospect or customer is based on a calendar event, especially when this event can potentially occurs at a different time for each person.  One illustration for this would be if you have a time based trial or subscription.  It is easy to forget to do the proper follow up at the right time for these if done manually.  It can also become overwhelming if there are a lot of these time-based follow ups that have to be done manually.  However, with Marketing Automation systems, a lead nurturing program can be designed so that the system automatically does the follow up reminder when the trial or subscription is about to expire.

Another benefit of using automated communications within a Marketing Automation product is that it allows marketing to manage the message and to ensure consistent branding when communicating to prospects and customers.

Even though Marketing Automation products typically offer a lot more than automating communication to prospects and customers, it is still one of the primary functions.