Customer Nurturing: It's Not Lead Nurturing so Stop Calling it That

You know, I really want to do X with your product. Can you get on a call to chat?

This is a typical message that customer success managers or any customer facing person hears from their customers almost on a daily basis. In many of these situations there is in fact a solution. The problem is that the customer wasn’t aware of it. This can happen for many reasons. The trick is to try and get in front of the items that come up over and over again so you improve the customer experience and lower your support costs. You will of course always have these types conversations and you want them but if you can decrease the frequency, this is a win-win situation for your company and your customers. Unfortunately, marketers have focused too much on launching lead nurturing programs and discount how automation can be used for customers. A recent study that Matt Senatore from SiriusDecisions proved this.

Only 8% of companies that were part of a SiriusDecisions survey were using marketing automation for customer marketing.

What is Customer Lead Nurturing?

Customer nurturing is specific to customers that are in some sort of a contractual agreement with you. It
involves communicating regularly to help deepen the relationship that you have with your customers. It’s mostly about education but it can also serve to provide important notifications. For example, it can be used to educate customers on tips and tricks as well as notify them of an upcoming contract renewal.

Lead nurturing on the other hand concentrates on your prospects and is more focused on the top of the funnel. Elizabeth Usovicz summarizes this well. She sees lead nurturing as away of communicating to a profile that marketing is targeting. Customer nurturing on the other hand involves communicating to a real person. In addition, a customer is much more valuable. If you have provided an amazing customer experience, that one customer can refer you 10 new customers which will lead to additional revenue. You need to treat them much differently.

5 Examples of Customer Nurturing

Let’s go through some examples of customer nurturing that you can use today. The typical channel for these items would be email but you can also include print mail, social media and of course phone calls. These examples are focused on automated customer nurturing.

•  New customer program. It’s recommended to create a simple automated campaign that helps onboard new customers in the first 30-90 days of your relationship with them. This program can include a welcome email, an email that outlines the different ways that they will be supported as well an email that asks them to provide feedback on their early experience working with your company.  You can also use this opportunity to invite new customers to an advocacy program that you may have in place. It’s never too early to have your customers start advocating for you.


• New user program. Once has a customer has completed the onboarding process, you may see different people within the client organization start to use your product. This can disrupt the flow that had been established and can even lead to a customer churning if a new user isn’t brought on board properly. Typically, most of the training and configuration decisions are made during the implementation, which leaves new users out in the cold. By highlighting key training and support resources, a customer nurturing program can help new users get up to speed quickly without having to exhaust the customer success resources.


• Post-onboarding programs. Once a customer has onboarded, there can be a period where a customer begins to stagnate. The customer may not know what to do next as they may have been used to the handholding approach during the implementation. This is a great opportunity to use a customer nurturing program to send timely tips and best practices to maintain the momentum established during onboarding.


• New advocate program. You’ve done it! You’ve spent a great deal of time identifying an advocate and recruiting them to your advocate program. This advocate will refer new business to you, act as a reference and/or provide you with testimonials. The best way to bring on a new advocate is to send them 2-3 emails that explain what it means to be part of your advocate marketing program. You can include the following in your communication: How often should they expect to hear from you? What are some initial tasks that they should do? Who will be reaching out to them and for what? Set the right expectations up front and maximize your advocates' potential.


• Renewal program. This can be as simple as reminding customers that their renewal is coming up. You can take this further. As part of your customer nurturing programs, it’s best to keep obtaining feedback. There is no better time to gauge company’s satisfaction then when they are close to their renewal. Consider sending a feedback survey or NPS survey ninety days prior to renewal. Reminding customers of the value that they are getting is another good approach – especially if it’s personalized based on the activities the customer is performing. You should also consider an upsell/cross sell campaign.

Whichever program you decide to start with, remember to start small and prioritize an approach that fills a gap in the customer lifecycle. As you start to see positive results and appreciation from your customers, build from that momentum and expand to other areas.

What type of customer nurturing program have you found to be successful?

Chad H.

@chadtev

PS - For more ideas, check out Brian Hansford's post: How Marketing Automation Supports Onboarding Customers

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The Modern Marketer's Field Guide: Have You Read it? You Should

When it comes to B2B marketing, there are not a lot of great books out there. For the most part, the books that do exist focus on the novice marketer or focus on high level approaches. Matt Heinz has brought us probably the most practical book out there for the more advanced B2B marketer - the modern marketer. The Modern Marketer's Field Guide is a must read for any marketer that is looking to get to that next level. Matt has assembled a number of experienced marketers such as Brian Hansford,  Maria Geokezas, Jackie Jordahl and Bailie Losleben to provide the advice and guidance that many B2B marketers desperately need.

The book is broken down into the following sections:

• Content Strategy
• Demand Generation
• Lead Management and Nurturing
• Social Media
• Events & Tradeshows
• Sales Operations
• Customer Loyalty & Retention

In just 137 pages, this book is jammed packed with tips and practical advice that you can start using today. For example, I used a tip from the chapter on blogging on how to improve the way I promote blog posts. I now post tweets that include the Twitter handle of anyone that I've quoted or mentioned in my blog posts. I'll try and incorporate more prominent people and then ask them to promote my post via Twitter. I've also challenged people via Twitter that I mentioned in my posts which has proven to be effective in getting a response. Not only does this help you promote your blog, it can also help you expand your social network, it helps you grow your social currency. I've also been inspired to think of other ways to improve my social presence such as starting a Twitter chat on an area that I have expertise.

The Modern Marketing Field Guide is Groundbreaking

In this book Matt covers new ground where most marketing books fall short. As an example, he focuses on B2B marketing past the end of the sale. For many marketers, the sales-marketing funnel ends with the purchase of a product. Matt takes this further. In his chapter on content marketing advice, he suggests that marketers need to develop content to help transform customers into advocates and to help keep them at this level. Matt is also a proponent of an advocate centric organization that listens to its customers, communicates regularly, provides practical advice and thought leadership, and owns up to its mistakes. This is sound advice that all B2B marketers and executives should heed to and I applaud Matt for focusing on this. Listen, the book isn't revolutionary as all of this content can be found on different blogs but I've found few sources that pull of these areas together into one book - that makes it unique.

Because the book is a compilation of mostly blog posts, it's a bit of a mishmash of content that can be jarring at times. Matt may have been in a rush to get this content out to the public and before long, the content may be obsolete. It's easy to see past this as the content provided by true industry experts who have been there and done that is just too good. If you are a B2B marketer, you will walk away with at least five ideas you can incorporate into your current marketing plans today.

I could keep going here but I want to encourage you to experience this for yourself. There are too many nuggets in this book from getting the most of webinars and marketing automation to advanced marketing metrics that you should be tracking. I highly recommend that you get a copy of this book today or download the free version.

Chad H.

@chadtev

Please Note: I did receive a complimentary copy of this book but I have no financial incentive to write a positive or negative review. From someone that has worked with many of the best marketers around the world for over 10 years I do feel I'm qualified to provide a through review.

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Marketing Automation And Advocate Marketing: A Sweet Combination

Marketing automation + advocate marketing = delicious!

This post was originally posted here.

2013 has been a year of transition for me. My wife and I will be adding a new addition to our family, which will require me to paint a room pink and have tea parties (it’s a big transition after having two boys), and I moved from a behemoth of a technology company to a fast moving startup.
I have also moved from one area of B2B marketing to another. While the audience we focus on at Influitive is still primarily B2B marketers, the space that we play in is a bit different.

Marketing automation software is essentially a marketing database that runs marketing campaigns and provides insights on how those campaigns have performed. It’s the driving engine behind marketing’s efforts and can justify where marketing should be spending its budget. There are, of course, many other functions, such as sales enablement features, but let’s focus primarily on the core aspects of marketing automation.

Influitive focuses on advocate marketing, which is all about taking your customers, partners, employees and fans, and mobilizing them to support marketing campaigns, refer new business and help close deals. We call these super duper supporters your advocates and Influitive helps you tap into these amazing brand ambassadors.

Looking at these two areas of B2B marketing, they are not as different as they once appeared to me when I switched marketing disciplines.

Why advocate marketing and marketing automation are like waffles and maple syrup

Is it a coincidence that marketing automation and advocate marketing share the same initials, but in reverse? I think not!

Both areas actually work well together, like like waffles and maple syrup, for example.

Waffles, which represent marketing automation, are awesome by themselves, but they taste so much better with maple syrup, which is the advocate marketing component.

Adding advocates to campaigns which are being executed from your marketing automation system can amplify your existing campaigns and maximize your marketing automation investment.

5 ways marketing automation can tap into advocates to increase campaign effectiveness

Here are the top five recommendations on how you can leverage your advocates and advocate activities to maximize the effectiveness of your marketing automation campaigns:

1. Mix in online reviews to your lead nurturing efforts

The most recent Nielsen Trust In Advertising report found that 84% of buyers cited recommendations from people like them as their most trusted source when purchasing a product.

When mobilized, advocates can provide online ratings and reviews on sites such as G2 Crowd, TrustRadius, Quora, the Salesforce AppExchange and many others.

Instead of directing prospects to marketing materials that you have created, which are seen as less genuine in the eyes of your buyers, why not direct them to third-party sites where your advocates have left you glowing reviews?

You can also ask your prospects if they would like to connect with these advocates and set up a reference call.

Did you know? Like maple syrup, marketing automation and advocate marketing have strong roots here in Canada.

2. Score leads based on acts of advocacy that have been performed

There are certain social indicators of advocacy which explicitly indicate that a prospect is more interested in your company as well as when their interest is peaking.
These can include:

• Following your company on social channels such as Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google+, SlideShare, Spiceworks and Facebook
• Sharing information about your company on social networks such as Twitter and LinkedIn
• Mentioning your company on public forums such as Quora or Spiceworks
• Responding to surveys and requests for more information

Many of your prospects are fans of your company even if they aren’t customers.

They may not have the budget or exact need at the moment for your services, they may have used your product or service at a former company or they may love what your company represents in their industry.

You can tap into this positive sentiment and track these activities.

As these activities increase, they should be scored appropriately, and an inside sales rep should reach out at the right time to see if they are ready to purchase or just to thank them for their support.

3. Add testimonials from advocates to landing pages to increase lead conversion

MarketingExperiments has published a number of case studies which show that including indicators of trustworthiness on your landing pages reduces friction.

There is no better way to do this than to use testimonials that you have collected from your advocates. You can gather testimonials that indicate the strength of your customer onboarding services, various benefits of your products and even justify spending the five minutes needed to read through an eBook.

Sprinkle in some testimonials and measure the increase in conversions.

4. Ask advocates to share your marketing content

These days, relying solely on email and even your owned social and web properties to reach your target audience is a mistake. The Nielsen Trust In Advertising report backs this up: content shared by people who are similar to your intended buyers is much more powerful and your prospects will be much more receptive to this information.

Have your advocates share your infographics, upcoming webinars and other marketing content with their social networks in order to maximize the effectiveness of the campaigns that you are running.

Be sure to accurately measure the leads coming from advocate activities by using unique URLs and/or designated landing pages.

5. Get feedback on your planned marketing campaigns

…before pulling the trigger on a larger audience. Advocates love to provide feedback. Why? Because they want to have their voices heard.

They feel connected to you and asking them for feedback enhances this relationship. Of course, you need to ensure you are recognizing their contributions for this to work. When performed properly, you can use advocates to provide advance feedback on campaigns that you want to run for a larger audience.

Think about it. You’ve spent or about to spend a significant amount of on a nurturing program, video, infographic or webinar series. Wouldn’t you want to get some honest feedback or test your messaging on a smaller, dedicated audience before you do a major campaign launch? This is easy to do with a co-ordinated advocate marketing program. Using advocates this way, you’ll guarantee a much better chance of campaign success.

I hope you will take advantage of these recommendations and add the sweetness of advocates to your marketing automation efforts.

Chad H.
@chadhorenfeldt

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Improving Your Upsell/Cross Sell Conversions

I was recently asked about approaches to take for creating a cross-sell nurturing program - what are the best practices? I could highlight a few examples of some well crafted emails and messaging but getting a good conversion rate goes well beyond a good email design and an engaging call to action.

Amanda Hinkle wrote a great a simple yet powerful article over at MarketingProfs "Three Cross-Sell and Up-Sell Tactics to Improve Email Marketing Results". Her first point "Take Advantage of Available Data" really hit home with me. If you have a marketing automation tool that can track the digital behavior of your web visitors, then you can review which pages your customers have visited on your website. Take a first pass at some of the products your looking to cross sell to existing customers and review which customers of other products have browsed those pages. That simple step can provide you with a seed list for contacts to add to your first cross-sell campaign.

You can also rely on traditional methods such as truly understanding the sweet spot of who buys your products and looking for similar customers in your database. Try this - instead of just firing off campaigns to anyone who matches your criteria, start with those who are actively engaging with you. This includes those that are responding to your emails, visiting your website regularly and/or agreed to be customer advocates (references). Segmenting based on behavior has proven to be a major contributor to marketing success,

A lot of this all comes down to data - start small and focus on who you are targeting. The list and not the email creative is more important in executing a successful campaign. Thoughts?

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Measuring the Impact of Lead Nurturing: 3 Methods You Can Use

One of the things that I love most about my role is when I'm able to visit customers and participate in a customer user group. This past week I was down in Atlanta for the Eloqua All About Revenue Success Tour and I led a breakout session on the different ways that companies measure the success of lead nurturing. Why is this so important? If nurturing is improving the number of overall leads that your marketing team is generating then everything is good, right? Wrong! Companies that are investing in marketing automation should be demonstrating to their managers, the sales team and company executives the role that technology, specifically nurturing, has played in helping the company achieve its business objectives. This of course goes well beyond technology and encompasses all of the time and effort put in to put these campaigns together. Here is a summary of three main ways that marketers are measuring the impact of their nurturing campaigns:

1. Email Response. Most marketers who have been using lead nurturing were able to see improved open and click-through rates and lower hard bounces and unsubscribes as compared to regular batch and blast campaigns. Others broke this down even further by examining email response by region as an example. A few looked at which emails within the nurturing campaign had better response. This is definitely important to better understand which messages are resonating and which aren't and the optimal frequency to send these emails.
   
   
2. Compare Against Benchmarks. Another approach that was discussed was to compare certain marketing metrics after nurturing was initiated to the same metrics before the nurturing campaigns begun. Companies can compare email response, conversions, leads, total revenue generated, pipeline growth, average deal size and the velocity of movement through the funnel from one period to another if they have the benchmarks to compare to.
   
   
3. Measuring the True Influence of Nurturing. The more advanced marketing teams are able to understand specifically how many leads and qualified leads (MQLs), pipeline and closed deals were specifically influenced by lead nurturing. To do this, marketers are adding lead nurturing campaign responders to a Campaign object in the CRM. Reports can be generated that exhibit all of the campaigns that contributed to producing an opportunity and eventually a closed deal.
   
   To make this work, marketing needs to create a process that ensures that this campaign association is occurring and needs to create campaign influence reports. Depending on the complexity of your process and the type of technology that you have access to, these types of reports can be challenging to generate. However, if you're able to tell your boss, the CMO and head of sales that 50% of the qualified leads generated in the last 6 months had been through lead nurturing and that lead nurturing influenced 20% of the pipeline in the last quarter, you're able to better argue your case for investing time and resources in additional marketing automation and content creation initiatives. There is no question that lead nurturing takes some up front planning and time. You need to prove that it's worth it and third party reports have clearly demonstrated the success of lead nurturing. Eloqua just produced a simple chart showing that the best in class companies that are doing the most automation have the highest amount of leads produced.

My advice and a theme from the user group last week is to start slowly. Follow the concept of crawl, walk, run and don't mix up the order! In this case, focus on one aspect of lead nurturing and get moving with that. As an example, choose a certain segment to nurture to. This may be a specific vertical, region or job role your focusing on. That way you don't need all of the content at once and you can build out the campaign and still get your other work done. As you get more comfortable and start to demonstrate some results, focus on how you can optimize the process and improve how you measure the impact of your campaigns. 

Let me know if you have any other metrics you use to measure the impact of lead nurturing.

Chad H.

PS - here are two good resources that can help you today:

• Webinar on lead nurturing: Automating the Buyer's Journey http://lnkd.in/vjFt-V. This is a case study that is really a story about the evolution of marketing automation at NetApp. The story is told by Erin Rampey and there are some great tips that you can take away from this presentation
• The Grande Guide To Lead Nurturing: http://www.eloqua.com/grande/Grande_Guide_To_Lead_Nurturing.html. All you ever wanted to know about lead nurturingGuide To Lead Nurturing

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5 Mistakes B2B Marketers Need to Avoid in 2010

2009 has been a long year but as I reflect back on my many conversations, I've created a top 5 list of items to avoid in 2010:

1. Not having a defined social media strategy

You would be surprised by the number of companies that say “yeah, social media is important but it’s not important to us at the moment”. In 2010 you will not have a choice but to make social media part of your overall marketing strategy. If you’re company is just breaking ground in this area, at the very least make a commitment to listen to what people are saying about you. For example, check out http://addictomatic.com/ and search for your company name. Most likely, you are being mentioned. Now search for your competitors. This may be enough of an impetuous to get moving on a reactive social media strategy such as “monitor what is being said about you and respond where needed to protect our brand”.

Addictomatic is a free tool that will get you started down this path. You may want to look at some of the paid services out there such as Radian6 or Vocus. Once you have this down, you can then start working on a proactive strategy and determine what it will take in your organization to make this possible. If you’re having trouble with this concept, skip down to #4.

2. Not sending relevant and timely messages

If you continue to only send email blasts on a schedule that you dictate to your email subscribers, you risk massive list attrition, damaging your overall email deliverability and a loss of sales and sales opportunities. The key to sending relevant communication is to automate the process. This may mean creating a lead nurturing program for new inquires on your website or using dynamic content in emails that presents a more relevant message. This concept needs to be at the forefront of your planning in 2010. If you have an automated program in place, look at ways that it can be adjusted to get an even higher response.

3. Not having an accurate picture of your database

Did you have an email campaign this year that received a lower than expected response and blamed the creative or the offer on the poor results? It may well have had to do with these items but did you consider looking at the state of your list and/or database? I highly recommend that you query your database to understand how "active" your contacts are. You need to understand the true state of your database so you can make decisions on what you need to do in 2010 to achieve your goals. Knowing how many contacts in your database have bounced and unsubscribed is no longer enough - you need to understand how much "dead wood" you're carrying around.

In addition, your data may need a "face lift" or a complete makeover as it's either inaccurate or out of date. Consider using data tools that are included in your marketing automation system to clean up your data. You can also look at services like Fresh Address (http://biz.freshaddress.com/) that can clean up your email addresses or providers such as ReachForce or MarketOne that can generate leads based on your specific needs.

4. Not taking advantage of your online community

As a marketer, there are thousands of online resources out there that you can take advantage of to improve your marketing skills. You can even get a marketing degree from schools online. However, this is just “half the battle” (why am I having memories of GI Joe cartoons from the 80s?). You need to engage other marketers to really learn and get the most out of the resources that are available and there are online communities that are waiting to be taken advantage of. Here are some things you can do today:

• Search for a LinkedIn Group that interests you and join it. Participate in discussions or start a new one yourself. Not sure which group to join? See which groups your connections have joined or ask them directly.
• Ask and answer questions on LinkedIn. You may see a theme here. There are a lot of experts in your area that are willing to help you so have a look at LinkedIn Answers. To begin, I recommend browsing the Marketing and Sales category and looking for a subcategory that interests you.
  
  
• Join Twitter and look for a Twitter List that includes tweets about areas of marketing that interest you. To get started, use a tool like http://listorious.com/ that lists some of the top lists on Twitter. An easier idea is to look at the list of a tweeter that you admire and follow their list. Here is my Twitter list that I generated that I follow daily. Again, to really engage the community you need to ask questions and respond.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. At my company, I’m an active participant in our customer only community. If you’re lucky to have such a community available to you, take advantage of it. Find out who the people that contribute the most and try and help them out if they need it. They will hopefully help you in return. You may want to look for them on LinkedIn or Twitter and follow some of my recommendations above. I’m a big advocate of Xobni that is a plugin for Outlook. It helps me easily add people to my Twitter and LinkedIn communities – check it out.

5. Not using best practices or acting on lessons learned from past campaigns

While this may be a given, you need to be continuously updating your skills to get the most out of your marketing campaigns. I highly recommend that you subscribe to resources such as the Marketing Insights blog, MarketingSherpa, MarketingExperiments, SiriusDecisions, ClickZ, and MarketingProfs to name just a few of the great resources that I use on a daily basis. This is on top of the number of great articles that my community of LinkedIn and Twitter provide me.


I also recommend testing your campaigns by using A/B and multivariate testing for emails and landing pages. What you may find is that you're going to be creating your own best practices based on what you found successful.


My last point is to accurately track your campaigns so you can easily see why certain campaigns were more successful that others in order to reproduce this success for future campaigns.

Of course, one of your biggest sources of best practices should be the vendors you work with. Part of my daily job is to work with marketers to help them improve their campaigns and make them successful. You too should have access to a live person that can meet with you regularly and that can provide you with advice on what you’re doing right and where you can improve. Make that a priority for 2010 if you can.

I hope you enjoyed these and please let me know if there are additional mistakes that you recommend avoiding in 2010. Happy Holidays from my family to yours!



Chad H
@chadhorenfeldt
”You’re so 2000 and late” courtesy of zazzle.com
”The Battle” image courtesy of Patrick Hester's Blog
”Good Data, Bad Data” courtesy of CounterForce Blog
”Your community Profile” courtesy of www.socialdesire.com

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B2B Marketing Trends From Eloqua Experience 09 Via Twitter

Earlier this month I left my newborn and poor wife at home for an unforgettable week at Eloqua Experience in San Francisco. This sold out event brought together some of smartest marketers from all over the world. While there were a few keynote speakers, the conference focused on having the Eloqua community share their experiences so we could all learn from each other.


The main difference this year from last year was that we not only shared our knowledge and insights with each other but with the power of Twitter, we could share these with the rest of the globe. This made the event even more exciting as tweeters could listen to speakers, engage other tweeters, tweet their experiences, and see what others were tweeting about all at the same time! To better understand, how Eloqua pulled this off, see: Social Media Buzz at a Live Event. The result was better than Eloqua could ever have expected. The content generated by the event attendees was almost as good as the content from the speakers themselves. Why? Because it’s real. It’s in the moment. What better way to get in the heads of those that attended than by reading their actual thoughts.

While I could write a number of blog posts on my own findings from this event, I decided to let Twitter write the post for me. Of course, I did sift through over 1,000 tweets for trends as well the most memorable tweets. The Eloqua product was much discussed at the event but I’ve excluded those tweets here as this post was focused on learnings for B2B marketers that goes beyond Eloqua. I hope you enjoy it and I encourage you to follow the Tweeters that I mention below. They are some of the best and brightest out there. And if you’re mad that I forgot a important moment or missed a cherished tweet of yours, add a comment at the bottom.

Social Media And B2B Marketing

Social media played such a major factor at this event. This post as an example, was written from the product of social media (Twitter). At Eloqua Experience, there was a focus on helping marketers better understand the different aspects of social media, how to better leverage social media, and why they need to leverage it. One of the memorable moments on Day #1 was at the social media training session when all of students needed to set up a Twitter account (if they didn’t have one) and tweet using the #EE09 hash tag. It actually caused Twitter to block the IP address at the hotel from accessing Twitter for a short period of time due to the amount of new Twitter accounts generated. Those at the event felt proud that they’re collective voice reverberated across the internet – powerful stuff!

David Meerman Scott was a fantastic speaker and adding all the golden nugget tweets from his presentation wouldn’t due it justice. I have added a few though.

Here is a small taste of what was discussed:

tracyekraft: Social Media Revolution http://bit.ly/1Q6I5R at Eloqua Experience learning how to be better w/social media. #ee09

EricHorton: Twitter just blocked the IP for the #ee09 Twitter training session. How will new users learn to reap the benefits from Twitter?

jocebrown: Social's big impact in B2B marketing will be in how you interact with customers and develop advocates and relationships - Laura Ramos #EE09

stevewoods: Thought leadership and credibility, NOT community size are main drivers of why ppl engage in online communities - @lauraramos at #EE09

chadhorenfeldt: Track social media engagement, not ROI @lauraramos #EE09

edthewebguy: #ee09 steve woods - if facebook was a country it would be the 4th most populous

rhonda: #EE09 It's not about controlling the message it's about getting information out there. @dmscott

Bpoz: @dmscott: lose your fear of social media and lose control of your marketing. #EE09

tillatorrens: New Rule by @dmscott - EARN attention by publishing your way in - via YouTube, blogs, etc #EE09

chadhorenfeldt: #EE09 @dmscott borrowed this from @yoda to describe new rules of marketing: u must unlearn what u have learned

The Marketing Organization

While many of my conversations are focused solely on technology, it’s the people and process that are the building blocks of a successful marketing organization. The tweets below focus mostly on the session held by Tony Jaros from SiriusDecisions and some additional tweets from the Omniture session who use much of what SiriusDecisions preaches. The marketing organizations that have the right people and are using the best practice strategies will have the most success. As an example, SiriusDecsions focused on the concept of what they called the Demand Center.

lauraramos: #EE09: Tony Jaros of Sirius Decisions talks about the gap in marketing skills, not the technology or relationship with sales.

lauraramos: #EE09: Now need 2 worry about how 2 facilitate demand through the entire waterfall. Don't sell yourself short by thinking it's anything less

lauraramos: #EE09: Best marketing organizaitons will see the biggest change at the bottom of the waterfall. Waterfall is center of all marketing.

jocebrown: Neither a white paper not a product is a campaign....you need to be solving a problem....cannot continue to be tactically focused #EE09

lauraramos: #EE09: Quality marketing talent must support a wide variety of disciplines. Silos must go. Marketing automation experience will be key.

jocebrown:Frightening number of B2B marketers self taugh with no budget for training according to Sirius....huge performance gap #EE09

lauraramos: #EE09: The Demand Center is a center of excellence for program creation but with advisory, technical, and execution around buyer's journey.

jocebrown: It's the people and process not the technology that is stalling sophisticated nurturing and scoring - Laura Ramos #EE09

lauraramos: #EE09: Omniture organization looks like: Audience Program Mgmt, Offer Development, Channel Execution, and Marketing Operations supports all.

lauraramos: #EE09: 1: Sales engagement means taking in sales language: what do we contribute to the pipeline, how many sales accepted oppty do you need?

paynejoe: Avg CMO tenure 22 mnths. BUT if the CMO has a demand generation or sales enablement background he/she is 2 times liklier to make 5yrs #ee09

Measuring Marketing Effectiveness

This was definitely a hot topic and Eloqua was lucky to not only have speakers like Laura Ramos and Tony Jaros but also CMOs from its customer base. A theme across many of these discussions was the need for marketing to demonstrate its impact to the rest of the business. This doesn’t just mean the pipeline influenced from a lead nurturing program but also can mean the effectiveness of lead scoring to the sales team.

lauraramos: #EE09: all this [marketing] activity amounts to 18 to 30% of the pipe. Must look at influence in the waterfall, even if marketing doesn't source it.

lauraramos: #EE09: @siriusdecisions Marketers must measure the performance of demand creation, not of marketing.

SuaadSait: Benchmarking marketing statistics is NOT what matters, Baseline YOUR mktng data & set goals to grow as a commitment per @lauraramos #EE09

jocebrown: Nurturing value measured in pipeline velocity - Drew Clarke IBM #EE09

rhonda: #ee09 Drew Clark on measuring nurturing: what type & how many activities lead participates in, what their role is in opp & in account.

lauraramos: #EE09: Waterfall + database segementation shows Omni needed to acquire 150K more names to feel the model. Content choice: research survey.

lauraramos: #EE09: Omniture measures conversion across channel and pipeline. Lets them know where to invest marketing programs and why.

rhonda: @pteshima #EE09 ?'s CMOs ask: What initiatives drive ROI, how does sales & mktg funnel look, r my strategies working, how do I benchmark?

rhonda: #EE09 Scott Sheppard shares great ideas on rolling out lead scoring to your sales team: videos, distribute custom reports & driving adoption

Marketing Tactics

If you ask many marketers, one of the main reasons they came to Eloqua Experience was to pick up a few tips that they could take home with them and implement right away. This could mean learning how to clean your data so that it could be easy to segment off of or something simple as creating a control group that you send no marketing communication to and measuring how it fairs to the rest of the database. It’s very powerful when marketers themselves can share their results and let you know what is working and what isn’t.

jill_rowley: @lauraramos - content needs to be about me and my needs, not you and your products, your awards. #EE09 #Eloqua

JenPumpItUp: Session tip: How good is your lead scoring program? Only as good as your sales team buy-in. Make sure they're a part from the start. #EE09

rhonda: #EE09 marketers shld work w/ the sales team to help define a qualified lead for scoring... But DON'T ask them to help you prioritize assets!

rhonda: #EE09 Incorporate time frame into ur scoring model to ensure recency is reflected in the "value" of the lead.

rhonda: #EE09 Sales adoption of lead scoring is a paradigm shift-if rep reluctant, push adoption not just from top but via success of their peers.


lauraramos: #EE09: Omniture says realtime alerts increased contact ratios by to 100X and increased opportuntiies generated by 21X vs. no tools/process.

jfernandez: I love the idea of misspellings within automated e-mails from Sales Rep to add a touch of authenticity. Brilliant stuff, @Omniture. #EE09

Eloqua: Omniture: EVERY email must be personalized and relevant. #EE09


gclarkmt: Mikel Chertudi says Omniture only saw a 3% drop in conversions with their really long contact form versus a short form. #EE09

gregforrest: Omniture says do less programs and make them better - get more out of them. #ee09

tmcmullen: favorite idea of the day - create a control group when testing marketing campaigns/effectiveness #ee09

hallim: #EE09 data cleansing - tactics to support the overall strategy of demand generation and qualified leads into the sales pipline

chadhorenfeldt: http://twitpic.com/o5sq5 - Great Eloqua data quality dashboard in Eloqua by @gregforrest #EE09 #b2b #marketing

jill_rowley: Tony Jaros from SiriusDecisions says something like....Lead nurturing turns garbage into gold. #EE09 #Eloqua

Until Eloqua Experience 2010…

I hope you enjoyed some of these tweets as much as I did and if you were at Eloqua Experience, I hope these tweets bring back some good memories. To end this post, I want to highlight some of the true marketing rock stars that were at the event. These people were the finalists for the Markie awards. Here is Tweet from the Markie awards ceremony celebrating the achievements of the finalists:

stevewoods: Was a fantastic evening! Congrats all! RT @chadhorenfeldt: http://twitpic.com/o7l7g - The Eloqua Markies finalists #EE09

For more information on the winners, see: Winners of the 2009 Markie Awards where you can learn more about the categories, the winners and why they won.

Be sure to add comments on your favorite tweets or moments at EE09. Looking forward to Eloqua Experience 2010!

Chad H.

@chadhorenfeldt

PS: For videos from the event and some of the sessions I mentioned above, check out the Eloqua YouTube Channel. For more pictures, Check out the Eloqua Fanpage on Facebook

PPS: I would like to thank every tweeter at the event – you made this post possible. Believe me, it was hard choosing who to include! I would especially like to thank @lauraramos, @jocebrown and @rhonda who I used extensively.

PPPS: I did mention that this post was not on the Eloqua technology but I did want to give a shout out to the Pedowitz Group and its Sweet Platform that captured all of the tweets from the event in Eloqua and made it possible for me to analyze them. Very nice add-on and a big thank you.

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How To Build a Lead Nurturing Culture Part I

Are any of you out there new fathers? How about new parents? I’m still getting the hang of holding my 2 month old son while I check my emails or read a book. I’m getting much better at this juggling act and on some of those nights when he stays up I’ve been able to generate some blog post ideas – I just didn’t have the two hands needed to type until now. :) So here we are.

My biggest inspiration for this post was re-reading Jim Collins’ famous Good to Great. I remember reading it years ago and recalling how it guided some of my career choices as well my management style. It was time to give it another read to see if I could get another boost of inspiration. While I was distracted by reading about how great Fannie Mae and Circuit City were, you need to read past this to get the major points that Jim (if I can call you that Mr Collins) is trying to make.

Technology Does Not Create Momentum – It Accelerates It

Good to Great stresses that technology is not going to instantly transform a good company to a great company. There are many factors that are necessary before technology can really provide companies with the boost that they may have been expecting. In addition, some companies may not be able to fully utilize technology until they’ve put the proper building blocks in place.

There are many similarities between the concepts that Jim Collins discussed in his book and lead nurturing. Lead nurturing can mean many different things to may different people. In my definition for this post, I’m referring to a process that automatically delivers highly targeted emails to prospects or customers in a specific time frame via a marketing automation platform. There is no question that lead nurturing has been a proven tactic for B2B marketers. Aberdeen has reported that the Best-in-Class organizations are have doubled the bid-win-ratio on nurtured leads compared to their peers who have launched lead nurturing programs. Why are we seeing some companies exceed at lead nurturing over other similar companies? Why do we see other organizations that have the technology in place for automated lead nurturing under perform? Beyond the technology itself, what is needed is an organizational culture that will foster and, well, nurture the concept of lead nurturing. For this to happen, marketers are going to need to roll up their sleeves and get to work. I'm going to provide some pointers on how to get there.

Building a Lead Nurturing Culture

Executing a successful lead nurturing campaign is no different that executing traditional types of marketing campaigns. However, there are some key items that you need to focus on and like any marketing effort, proper planning up front and processes will make all the difference. They key here is creating the right frame of mind for your organization that will allow lead nurturing to succeed.

Here are the key items that you need to consider in building a lead nurturing culture:

• Targeted, Engaging Content is King. Content is at the core of your lead nurturing efforts. It needs to be engaging and be targeted to your intended audience. You will need to push your organization to ensure you have the resources in place to create the necessary content for your lead nurturing efforts. This may mean sequestering experts from all over your company to help create this content or hiring content professionals.
  If you think that a “one size fits all approach” for your lead nurturing content will do, you will not achieve optimal results. If you think that product sales sheets are appropriate for lead nurturing, you will not achieve optimal results. If you’re not sure the type of content that should be included in lead nurturing campaigns, check out SavvyB2BMarketing’s post Need Content? 20 Formats to Consider. Remember that your prospective customer is being bombarded with hundreds of emails each day – how is your email going to appeal to them? Always keep this in mind.
  
  Whether you have content generated for your nurturing campaign or you discover that you already have the content you need from your previous marketing campaigns, you still need to align this content within your lead nurturing campaigns to match your prospects’ buying process. For more information on this topic, see The Buying Process; Auditing your Content Assets.

• Focus on leads that are in the funnel. Rather than trying to continuously fill the top of the funnel, marketers need to create campaigns that will engage the contacts that are in your database but not yet ready to buy.
  
  Aberdeen’s research stated that only 16% of the total leads from the companies they studied are deemed as "sales opportunities" that will actually close. Therefore the remaining leads (84%) present a tremendous opportunity for your company. If you keep your company top of mind to these prospects, there is a greater chance that they will buy from you than your competitors. In addition, there is a significant savings in cost per opportunity by focusing on leads that have already expressed interest in your product or service.
  
  Using lead nurturing to target existing leads can not only keep these people “warm”, it can also be used to further qualify them which leads to our next point around sales and marketing alignment.
  
  

Building a lead nurturing culture will not happen in one day and either will this blog post (my son just started to cry). Stay tuned for the next post(s) where we’ll cover a common framework for sales and marketing, establishing standard marketing effectiveness metrics and benchmarks, creating focused segments and outlining the right skills marketers need for lead nurturing to thrive.

Remember, technology will only succeed if your organization has fostered the right environment for lead nurturing to succeed.

Chad H.

“King” image courtesy of seoibiza.com

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Latest B2B Marketing Trends From SiriusDecisions Summit 09

If you’re looking for an eloquently written post on how B2B marketing has changed and recommendations on what you should do, you’ve come to the wrong page. What I have done is reviewed the tweets from the latest SiriusDecisions Summit 2009 and captured points that I thought were interesting and categorized them.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to go (not without trying!) but as you’ll see from the comments below, some great stats and thoughts have been captured by attendees via Twitter (yet another reason to use Twitter).

At some point I would like to come back to each category and focus on them specifically but for now, here is some organized Twitter talk for y’all – enjoy it:

Sales and Marketing Alignment
jblock: Only 32% of sales and marketing orgs work together to define programs for existing customers. @megheuer #sds09

megheuer: Sales is protective of customers and late-stage deals; marketing needs give options, not mandates, to help at this stage #sds09 @tjaros

jblock: 72% of B2B orgs can segment the customers and prospects in their marketing database. @megheuer #sds09

jblock: Management changes served as a catalyst for greater sales and marketing integration at Aspect @thetravelingcmo #sds09


megheuer: #sds09 If leads that marketing thinks are qualified get ignored by sales, find out why/what's changed to fix it @tjaros

megheuer: Question: Marketers, do you understand the compensation structure of the team you feed leads to? No=FAIL #sds09 @tjaros


megheuer: #sds09 "whole sales team is motivated to make this work" so positive changes in marketing really make a difference --Perry Dembner


megheuer: #sds09 If leads that marketing thinks are qualified get ignored by sales, find out why/what's changed to fix it @tjaros

megheuer: #sds09 Ennis: "Get everyone clear on marketing's contribution to revenue" and use a common language to track, explain it

megheuer: #sds09 @joegalvin says sales 2.0 is really about the dominance of buying cycles and increasing productivity through sales readiness

megheuer: #sds09 Only19% of attendees have sales and marketing collaborate on sales playbooks; 58% don't create them at all

megheuer: #sds09 Goal of sales playbooks is increased productivity: More opportunity, shorter sales cycles, higher win rates

megheuer: #sds09 It's not a new selling paradigm, it's a new buying paradigm, powered by technology @joegalvin says

cahidalgo: #sds09- 59% of attendees do not believe their sales and marketing are aligned. amyblack: #sds09 how do you increase adoption? Process drives productivity - start with process then implement technology.

Lead Nurturing

jblock: @tjaros: If you get one deal out of a reconstituted leads program, it's worth the effort. #sds09

jblock: 5%-10% of leads that are sitting in your CRM system as "dead" can become real opportunities if put into a nurturing program. #sds09

cahidalgo: #sds09- Tony Jaros - lead nurturing business rules must be established by BOTH marketing and sales in order to be effective.

megheuer: #sds09 "When leads are actively disqualified, that' a good thing- you can address that lead in an automated way to nurture it" –@tjaros

megheuer: #sds09 When a quantity function (1-and-done marketing) feeds a quality-focused function (sales), leads fall out at top of funnel @tjaros

megheuer: #sds09 21% of attendees have a lead nurturing program in place now; twice that number are "working on it"

Marketing Effectiveness Measurement

megheuer: Biggest change in marketing results: About a 10% drop in closed deals over the last year @tjaros #sds09

megheuer: #sds09 @jneeson reports 55% of marketing inquiries generated via the Web today; email 19%; events 15%, direct mail 11% (averages)

megheuer: Great metrics to track from CyberSource: # of days to close a deal and # of marketing touches to close #sds09

megheuer: "We know that sometimes approximate is good enough to get us where we're going" for marketing reports -Brenda Kring #sds09

megheuer: Need to be able to measure overall ROI and also activities, to align them with your overall strategy #sds09 @lazgonzalez

MarketingFuel: 52% of attendees dont track conversion rates [in their sales pipeline] and 77% dont track sales cycle lengthi n the sales pipeline #sds09 jblock: Only 24% of orgs have a closed loop process between sales and marketing regarding detailed info on opportunities. #sds09

kdewitte27: #sds09 Org's that have embraced a closed loop approach=+21% profit and +24% rev growth vs -6% and 0% for those that haven't (3 yr timeframe)

amyblack: Deborah Nelson at HP says that her "best in class" roi target is $70 earned for every dollar spent. #sds09

Sales/Marketing Funnel

stharris: #sds09 Most case studies are after purchase. Why not have one on Why they switched? Case studies across the demand waterfall. (Tony Jaros)

cahidalgo: #sds09: TJaros- "The demand waterfall is as much about human behavior as it is numbers." Human change management is part of process change

megheuer: Omniture improved # of opportunities by 5X, marketing's pipeline contribution by 7X based on linking brand to demand #sds09

megheuer: "Not about how we measure progression of a sales opportunity, but how we impact the progression of an opportunity" -@joegalvin at #sds09

jeffernst: #sds09 @jneeson This year sales is not just telling marketing we need more leads, we need marketing's help advancing our pipeline opps.

jblock: Focus is not so much at the top of the funnel; it has shifted to pipeline acceleration and sales enablememt. #sds09

Channel Marketing

jblock: Partners need guidance from their suppliers to run effective multi-touch campaigns. @lazgonzalez #sds09

cahidalgo: #sds09-common definition of a lead expands beyond direct sales and marketing and must also extend to the channel.

kdewitte27: #sds09 trend in channel demand gen strategy: let the partner create his leads and have the vendor support them with the right tools.

megheuer: #sds09 Channel programs shifting $ to supplier-to-customer programs, delivering message themselves, not waiting for partner @lazgonzalez

MarketingFuel: 83% of #sds09 attendees have absolutely no visibility into Channel marketing campaigns and effectiveness. Do partners really want you to?

Marketing Automation

megheuer: #sds09 Marketing automation is a requirement for best-practice performance says @jneeson

megheuer: #sds09 Prediction from @jneeson is by 2015, up to 50% of b-to-b marketers will deploy marketing automation


Marketing Structure

cedwardbrice: #sds09 more than half of audience making organizational changes to their marketing functions

kingsol: #sds09 Common theme between Deb (HP) and Buell (IBM) on creating single marketing themes for global deployment. Develop Once, Run Anywhere [DORA]

megheuer: #sds09 "Cajoling and good citizenship did not work" to drive use of run-once-use-everywhere programs; Centralized org structure did

megheuer: #sds09 By 2015, dominant marketing model will be an architecture of plays and tactics in an integrated, multi-dimensional approach

megheuer: #sds09 Attendees report marketing ops (38%), field mktg (36%) are areas of marketing programs that will change the most by 2015

megheuer: #sds09 The marketing demand center has advisory, execution and technical resources--more value-add than execution only @jneeson

megheuer: #sds09 Most attendees report their marketing org structure is a hybrid model (43%); 2nd most common is centralized (32%)

megheuer: #sds09 Leading organizations invest in marketing skills and address gaps in technology, process and programs that hurt progress

Social Media

cedwardbrice: #sds09 B2B organizations with a coordinated reputation strategy gain an average of 40 percent more inquires

brainshark: #sds09 Create content in smaller chunks that can be reused @jblock Convergence of Social and Traditional Media

megheuer: Need to have a baseline--do an annual audit of communications and social media activities to see what works/doesn't @jblock #sds09

megheuer: "We can't stick our heads in the sand anymore and not monitor what's going on in social media" -@jblock #sds09

megheuer: @jblock: Use a combination of social media and traditional awareness tools to improve leverage and reach of assets #sds09

amyblack: #sds09 Social media is cheap (technology) but expensive from a human resources stand point - it takes time and effort to do it well [ Amen!]

megheuer: #sds09 Only a small number of btob organizations have a coherent strategy for social media says @jblock


amyblack: #sds09 Communities are the fastest growing social media segment within b2b orgs - blog adoption is still higher ( 33% vs. 29%)

amyblack: #sds09 prediction that social media will become more a function of product marketing as that group needs to have a dialogue with customers

Here are some quick thoughts that I’ve jotted down (more later - just went through 25+ pages of Twitter search results and need to reflect more on this):

• Inbound marketing is and will be extremely crucial go forward but marketers need to develop strategies to target leads that are deeper in the sales/marketing funnel – especially in this economy
• Importance of lead nurturing (no need to say more right now)
  
• No mention of lead scoring - any comment on this from summit attendees?
  
• Suppliers are looking for ways to help out their partners
• Social media in B2B marketing is still at its early stages but expect this to grow enormously for the next summit
• The key across all of these topics is sales/marketing alignment. It may also be the most difficult part.
  

Thanks to all of the twitters who passionately twitted at the conference and gave people like me some semblance of being there. Of course, muchos gracias to @siriusdecisions for bringing together great presentations and great people.

Chad H.
@chadhorenfeldt

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Technorati Tags: B2B Marketing,sales marketing alignment,lead management,lead nurturing,Twitter,BtoB,social media,demand waterfall,marketing automation,marketing ROI

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Top 10 Triggered B2B Email Marketing Campaigns

One of the themes for marketers in 2009 is “doing more with less”. While some marketing teams are facing cut backs and spending freezes or reductions, they still need to hit their goals which may include generating X number of leads, Y amount of influenced pipeline and/or Z amount of influenced sales. A key part of “doing more with less” is automating your email marketing campaigns. While many may label this as “lead nurturing”, it goes well beyond lead nurturing. It’s at times like this when you need a bounce in your step and powerful tools that will make it easy to keep you engaged with customers and prospects but allow you to leave work at a reasonable hour.

After reading Ed Henrich’s excellent article on ClickZ Top 10 Triggered E-mail Programs to Build Relevance, I wanted to take a more B2B slant on it but as you’ll see, many of the triggered email programs apply to both B2B and B2C. By triggered email campaigns, I mean an email or a series of emails being sent based on an action of a contact in your database, by their inaction or by their state (for example, a new customer). Here are my top 10 triggered email marketing campaigns:

1. Transactional Messages. Transactional messages or autoresponder emails are some of the easiest and most beneficial campaigns to setup. By transactional email, I’m referring to the automatic email that you receive when you sign up for a newsletter or download an e-book. The open and click-through rates are typically much higher for these types of emails as the web visitor has engaged with your organization and almost expects to receive something in return.
   
   In addition, Michele Linn over at Savvy B2B Marketing recommends that “instead of providing an immediate download of the offer (e.g. white paper, webinar, etc.), send an email with a link to it”. Therefore, the transactional email becomes more than just a record of a transaction but the offer itself. This is recommended for a number of reasons as it provides a greater assurance that the email provided will be legitimate, makes it easy for the recipient to forward the document on and acts as a bookmark to easily find the document at a later date. Here is a perfect example: A web visitor finds your pay per click ad on a Google search results page and clicks on it. On the ensuing landing page, they are able to download a relevant white paper after filling out a short form. Instead of providing the white paper on the confirmation page after the form is filled out, send a link to the white paper in an email. This ensures that you get the most of out your paid search campaigns.
   
   For more information on autoresponder emails, see my post “Email Autoresponders 2.0 in B2B Marketing”.
   
   
2. Welcome email campaign. While an autoresponder may be part of a welcome email campaign, this type of campaign typically includes 2-3 emails sent over a period of 2-3 weeks and should have different messaging.
   
   With some marketing automation platforms, you can automatically check to see if the contact is a new one to your database after they have filled out a form. If it is a new contact, send that person an email that acknowledges that they are a new registrant and provide information on what they will receive and when they will receive it. You should also include a link for them to update their email subscriptions and their profile.
   
   Follow up emails that are part of the welcome email campaign may include sending the latest newsletter, or key videos and/or documents based on the information provided. Some organizations use welcome email campaigns to gain additional information on the registrant for better segmentation – something we call “progressive disclosure”. The key to this campaign is to demonstrate to the new registrant that it was worth it to provide their information and build a long lasting relationship.
   
   
3. Event/webinar campaigns. This is fairly obvious one. When someone signs up for an event, send on the event information to the registrant via email. One item often overlooked is automating the entire event registration and follow up process. A fully automated event contains the following emails:
   -First invite
   -Second invite to those that didn’t respond to the first invite
   -Reminder email for those that registered a day before the event
   -Reminder email for those that registered on the day of the event
   -Follow up email thanking those people that registered and attended
   -Follow up “sorry we missed you email” to those that registered but didn’t attend.
   -OPTION: If an event has size restrictions, have an automated email sent when capacity has been met and send another automated email to those on the waiting list if additional room was made available.
   
   When setup correctly, this type of automated process can save the marketer countless hours as the lists are automatically generated and emails are sent as per the schedule set up ahead of time. For more tips on improving your webinar campaigns see Paul Teshima’s excellent post Four Practices to Increase Webinar Effectiveness.
   
   
4. Inactive or Dormant Lead campaign. By inactive, I mean a contact in your database that has not responded to an email or visited your website within the last six months. I’m not referring to a lead that sales forgot to follow up on but this program may include those contacts as well.
   
   Similarly to your welcome program where you had unique messaging based on their “new contact” status, you’ll want to customize your messaging for those contacts that have not demonstrated any recent activity. The key here is for your marketing automation platform to automatically feed these inactive contacts into a campaign that will fire off these targeted emails. If you have to manually mine your database for these “inactives” or pay someone to do it, you are not “doing more with less”.
   
   These types of emails can include the following:
   -Special offer that re-engages the contact
   -Survey that asks the contact what type of information they would like to receive
   -Notice that if they don’t respond, they will be removed from regular communications.
   
   I’ve seen campaigns that flag contacts as “inactives” and removes them from receiving "regular" emails but if these inactive contacts demonstrate any activity, the inactive flag is removed and they set to receive regular email communications.
   
5. Customer service survey. Automatically send out a follow up email after a customer service case was closed asking for feedback. This is again a simple idea but often overlooked. This type of campaign can prevent issues from boiling up.
   
   
6. Renewal reminders. If your product or service is subscription based, automatically enter key customer contacts into an email campaign that sends auto email notifications that their contract is about to expire at the 90, 60 and 30 day mark prior to the renewal date.
   
   
7. Trial tips. If your product includes a limited free trial, enter contacts into a trial campaign that will send targeted emails throughout the trial with value add materials that encourages the lead to take the next step in the purchase process.
   
   
8. New customer program. For new customers that have purchased your product or service, enter them into an email campaign that introduces them to your product as well as your company. Your product may have been purchased by a select few but will be used throughout the organization. Having a “new user/customer” campaign can help people that aren’t familiar with your product get better acquainted.
   
   
9. Education programs. By education programs, I’m referring to the traditional lead nurturing campaigns. This is typically a series of emails sent over a period of time that helps keep your company top of mind for potential customers. While I’m not going to focus on the substance of these emails, I will indicate how these campaigns are triggered. These types of campaigns can be triggered by:
   -Sales reps entering leads into a nurturing program via a trigger in your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database. Many CRMs are fully integrated with a marketing automation platform which easily allows for these types of campaigns.
   -Lead Rating not being high enough. If a lead is deemed “not yet ready to be sent on to sales”, they can be automatically added to a lead nurturing campaign with the goal that they lead will eventually raise their hand to indicate they are ready to be engaged.
   -Activity/User interests. As an example, if a certain link was clicked on an email (or not clicked on), a contact can be added to an email campaign that will send on more targeted information. Another example is when a web visitor was looking at a page or series of pages on your website, automatically send them a follow up email that provides additional information with a call to action to speak to an expert that can answer any questions that they may have had. Ed Henrich referred to this as a “browse program”.
   
   It’s these types of automated email campaigns that when set up properly can produce tremendous results. The key to this is ensuring that you are measuring the outcomes of these nurturing campaigns. See my post “Lead Nurturing - How to track ROI?” for more details.
   
   
10. Reference Program from Net Promoters. This was an idea I brought up to my own company but it took Ed Henrich to remind me about it. If your organization runs a Net Promoter survey, send an automatic follow up email to those that are “promoters” asking them if they would act as references

These are my top 10 triggered email campaigns but this is by far not a full list. Having the right tools allows you to create highly customized automated campaigns. I hope that you found this useful and please let me know of other automated email campaigns that you may have deployed and how they fared.

Chad H.

Technorati Tags: lead nurturing,e-mail marketing,lead scoring,autoresponders. automated email campaigns,ClickZ,event marketing,webinars

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