Posts Tagged ‘lead nurturing’

Getting to Know You… Digitally (Online Research)

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

When you are fairly unfamiliar with your new target segment one mandatory step is to begin an online research program.  In our ubiquitously digital world there is an enormous amount of content that is easily available that can give you a head start.   The objective here is to arm yourself with a thorough understanding of the current terms and trends and a high level outlook on the market.

If you are totally new to the space and don’t even know where to start you should try setting up a social monitoring program.  Plug in the names of potential customers and competitors in the space, which you should have identified in the sizing exercise,  and start to analyze the terminology, sites, and authors that are being used.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

Know Thy Customer

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010

For a while now we’ve all heard plenty about how the emerging trend in marketing is moving towards “content marketing” or the creation of custom pieces aimed at generating a relevant engagement at a specific point of time.

What I’ve found lacking in the discourse, however, is a real pragmatic approach to leveraging this for marketing purposes.  Part of the explanation for this is certainly that it’s not an easy thing to do.  It is, however, possible to apply a methodology for content creation that will consistently outperform traditional approaches.

Over the coming weeks I will begin to breakdown the evolving approach I’ve seen work for a number of clients.  As a starting point, I’ll focus on getting to know the customer.  This is the key starting point for any content strategy.  If you don’t understand what makes them tick you can’t consistently generate interesting perspectives.  There are a lot of very tactical, very actionable steps you can take.  In fact… there are at least 15 of them!  Some of these will certainly be familiar, but on the whole hope you will take away some nuggets and a plan on how to string them all together to greatest effect.

(more…)

Nurturing your prospects with automated leadflows

Friday, August 13th, 2010

Marketing automation tools are very cool. Instead of purchasing 4 or 5 different products to run your marketing programs you only need one – that is pretty powerful. What is even cooler is that LoopFuse is giving someone all this functionality for FREE. I know, where am I going with this – I am supposed to be showing you different use cases, right. I am just setting up the scenario. With the announcement of FreeView we are getting a huge influx of signups. As a software vendor, giving away something for free definitely drives the traffic – we knew this from our previous offering of a free trial. With such a high volume of leads coming in – we needed to build a leadflow that would nurture these leads throughout the “getting started” process.
(more…)

Yammer – keeps them coming back

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

Yammer is a secure Twitter (and more) for your internal organization. We have been trying it out and one feature I really like is the occasional email reminders letting me know the activity going on within our account and the gentle coaxing to participate. The emails are short and to the point and usually start off with “We haven’t heard from you lately.” Then it provides some ideas for posting and a link to login.

Although I’ll admit that the majority of the time I delete the emails, Yammer is persistent, yet doesn’t nag. Eventually, Yammer catches me between tasks and the reminder works as I’ll log in to catch up and the ideas for posting give me a quick starting point. I’m not a Yammer addict yet, but with respect to email reminders, they’ve certainly done a great job.

There are two interesting aspects of Yammer’s lead nurturing program here.  First, this program is a response to a lack of activity on an account.  This is a subtle, yet important, distinction.  The vast majority of nurturing programs are reactive; a user is enrolled into the program as a result of submitting a form, visiting a landing page, etc.  In essence, this program must be running continuously and must check for inactivity on an account.  The second interesting aspect of this nurturing program is that it must take into account activity data that it assumably stored in a separate application database (my next post will show you how to do this in LoopFuse OneView).

Does your organization automatically engage with users/prospects based on inactivity?

Tweet This Article