Posts Tagged ‘Lead Management’

Marketing Automation Buyer’s Guide to Lead Nurturing

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010

Lead Nurturing is the corner-stone of today’s marketing automation and automated email marketing processes. With it, marketers are able to lower their costs of new customer acquisition, build interest and awareness for their product and services, and help retain existing customers; all in an automated fashion requiring little effort from marketing staff.

Before making a purchase decision for a marketing automation platform, buyers should research and accumulate knowledge on successful lead nurturing programs, and more importantly, what types of lead nurturing programs they plan to implement. Of all features found today in marketing automation systems, it is important to note that with lead nurturing you should choose the system that is right for you and not simply buy the prettiest, cheapest, or what-the-consultant-tells-you. Implementing a Lead Nurturing program is a serious undertaking that seldom get right the first time. A system that can grow with you and can produce measurable and refinable results will suit you best in the long-run.

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7 Must-Follow Marketing Automation Blogs

Monday, September 13th, 2010

For the benefit of our readers, we have assembled a list of our most-read blogs that provide marketing automation best practice advice, tips, tricks, and industry news. We normally follow these blogs actively and believe them to be the most important and up-to-date group of expert bloggers covering  the field of marketing automation:

  • LeadSloth : Covers all aspects of marketing automation (including best practice advice, tips, tricks, webinars, and news) with the most up-to-the-minute and non-biased reporting in the space. Follow LeadSloth on Twitter for the most up-to-date events announced in the marketing automation space: @leadsloth
  • Customer Experience Matrix : Managed by David Raab, this blog’s focus is mostly centered around industry news within marketing automation and complementary spaces like web analytics, email marketing, and SEO. David has covered the industry for a long time and is possibly the most knowledgeable (and objective) blogger in the field.
  • Marketing Consiglierie : Allinio’s corporate blog is filled with marketing events/conference news, and general best practice help and advice for those starting out. Allinio is a consultancy dedicated to helping organizations maximize their marketing automation investments.
  • Marketing Interactions : Ardath Albee does a great job of providing nuggets of wisdom in every blog post. Aside from marketing automation topics, this blog covers social marketing, sales process, email marketing and content-writing.
  • Digital Body Language : Steve Woods, CTO of Eloqua, is a visionary in the space of demand generation and marketing automation. Ths blog updates very frequently with great advice for all levels of marketing automation users.
  • The Funnelholic : Covering online marketing, b2b marketing, b2b sales, lead nurturing and general marketing automation trends and events. Insightful and regularly updated.
  • DemandGen Report : You may have to wade through the vendor-sponsored content, which is often hard to distinguish from the regular editorials, but this site provides well-written and informative articles, covering industry news from all the vendors in the space.
Marketing Consigli

Webinar: “Search and Rescue” for your lead database: How to find lost leads and turn them into opportunities

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

Live Webinar: Wednesday August 4th, 2010, 11am PDT/ 2pm EDT

Where did all our webinar leads go? Did any of the 250 whitepaper downloads turn into sales opportunities? Did we get our money’s worth when we paid $40 per lead in a lead gen program? This 45-minute webinar will teach you how to save those leads and turn them into revenue for your company.

You will learn how to:

•    Create workflows so no lead is left behind
•    Improve your data quality by segmentation and nurturing
•    Nurture your leads with relevant information
•    Convert qualified prospects into paying customers

Join us and get useful tips on how to help save your drowning leads and bring them to the surface so you can start generating revenue NOW! Jep Castelein of LeadSloth, a long-time marketer and thought leader in the area of lead management and marketing automation, will demonstrate the simplicity by which you can automatically start to better nurture and qualify your leads today.

RECORDING AVAILABLE: if you can’t make it, you can still register so you’ll receive the recording afterwards

Click here to register for the webinar.

Are you ready to lead?

Monday, July 19th, 2010

The face of marketing is changing.  Techniques and approaches that worked as recently as 18 months ago will fall by the way side within the next 18.  I’ll paraphrase Gretzky here; the goal is to not be where the ball is, but where it’s GOING TO BE.  To take advantage of the emerging opportunity you need to start preparing today.

While there will be other components to the messaging mix, the most important ones, that I call the Big 6, are going to be key.  Review the following list.

Are you ready, or do you need to get to work?

1.  Website
– Optimizing page structure and wording for SEO
– Setting up tailored landing pages for cross channel campaigns
– Hosting webinars and other rich media destination content

2. Email
– Eliminating acquired list mailings
– Growing list of 1st party opt-ins
– Using for retention campaigns

3. Search
– Building a link back network
– Optimizing all forms of content for specific keywords
– Exploring emergent search engines like Facebook

4. Display
– Incorporating as part of a broader cross channel campaign
– Utilizing highly targeted, verticalized networks
– Tracking all of your referral sources

5. Content Syndication
– Developing content specifically for off-site deployment
– Establishing outlets on YouTube, SlideShare, Scribd, etc.
– Using simple syndication through RSS, Feedburner, etc.

6. Social Engagement
– Targeting specific communities to penetrate
– Actively commenting and publicizing others content
– Growing followings and connections

If you can put a check next to all of these you are in pretty good shape.  You have a strong foundation to work from and are ready to start innovating!

The Quota Carrying CMO

Monday, November 30th, 2009

There is an interesting shift happening in corporate America at the moment with regards to performance evaluation of marketing departments.  While I suspect that this shift may be global in nature, I have only personally witnessed it in the states and will therefore limit myself from over-reaching generalizations (seems almost quaint in the blogosphere today).

About 7 months ago I was discussing marketing automation tools in general, and LoopFuse in particular of course, with a marketing SVP and highlighting the different value propositions for the sales department versus the marketing department.  Given his role, I focused my discussion primarily within the marketing side of the equation, but he repeatedly kept redirecting the conversation towards the benefits for sales.  Initially I thought he was simply trying to identify any reservations or concerns that the sales VP might have by asking all of these sales-oriented questions.  But as the conversation progressed I learned that this marketing SVP’s personal bonus was not tied to the traditional measures of marketing success (brand awareness, lead volume, events, etc.) but instead was based almost entirely on revenue.

At the time I considered his company’s personal performance measurement approach to be interesting, but not particularly relevant.  One outlier is an anomaly, two is a coincidence, three is a pattern, and four is a trend.  As of today I have encountered my fourth marketing executive who is primarily rewarded based on the success or failure of the sales department.  At first, this approach seemed unfair to the marketing department.  But as I see this trend growing I realize that almost everyone is rewarded based partially on the success or failure of others, especially at the executive levels.    In this case the CMO is actually carrying the company’s global quota just like the sales executive.  One potentially positive aspect of this approach is that your sales and marketing departments may find that there is significantly less friction between them because their respective leadership’s goals are now perfectly aligned.

Are you a marketing VP?  Is your bonus compensation driven almost exclusively through revenue quotas?  Tell us how it has impacted yourself, your team, and your organization.