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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When Lead Scoring Will Fail

Having worked with B2B marketers for many years, it's typically a no-brainer when someone asks me "should we implement lead scoring?". Lead scoring, which is the process of automating the qualification of leads that you generate, is a key stepping stone to get marketers to the next level. Having said that, your company may not be fully ready for it and there are some steps to start moving in the right direction. Lead scoring can't be used as a band-aid for companies that have incomplete processes. I'll outline some items that will prevent your organization from a successful launch of lead scoring. I'm not saying that you need to nail all of these before you start down the lead scoring path. Lead scoring evolves over time. However, you should consider these items.

Top Five Reasons Lead Scoring Will Fail

1. Not enough leads. I read a recent Marketing Sherpa article about a company that was able to produce some awesome lead gen results without a CRM or lead scoring. You can get away with this if your a small company starting out and your still ramping up your demand generation efforts. You really need a large supply of leads to justify lead scoring. Lead scoring is disruptive for organizations as your automating the prioritization of how leads should be followed up on. If there are not enough leads then sales or the tele-prospecting team will jump on every lead regardless of the best lead scoring system put in place. People need to make their quotas.
2. There is no end goal. Lead scoring can't be something that you setup just to cross it off your marketing automation checklist. It must be setup with a goal in mind. Typically it has a dual purpose: it helps sales prioritize the follow up of qualified leads and it helps marketing determine the type of offers that should be sent as lead scoring is tied to the different stages of a buyer's journey. Possible goals can include increasing the velocity of leads through the sales funnel, increasing the overall revenue generated by sales, launching a specific lead nurturing campaign that is geared to leads with a low lead score etc...  You also should consider the emotional side (have you read Switch?)- making sales people happy and giving more power and respect to marketing. These aren't as flashy to the CEO but they make things more enticing for both sales and marketing. Besides winning a Markie (special award for marketers), the biggest award I've seen given to a marketer was receiving recognition from the sales team of a job well done.
3. Unrealistic expectations. Lead scoring at the moment is still not a science. It will not slice bread. It will not make your product more attractive. It will not generate more leads (it may reduce the number of leads). Many marketers and sales teams see it as the bright shiny toy on the shelf that they have to have. They think it will solve all of their problems. It won't. It will promote some great conversations and it can help you improve your lead generation engine but this will take time. Because lead scoring is not a science it will require some tweaking and fine tuning. Don't expect it to move mountains after a few days.
   
   I also see sales teams that want to take over the lead scoring discussions and build out very elaborate and complicated lead scoring models that use some of the traditional BANT criteria that sales teams have used for years to qualify leads. I don't recommend that lead scoring be used for that purpose and I'm not alone (See: Why BANT No Longer Applies for B2B Lead Qualification).  Automated lead scoring is best used or doing an initial qualification of leads that meet a minimal level of an agreed upon definition between sales and marketing of a "qualified lead: and then having a tele-prospecting team do further qualification to see if a real sales opportunity exists. At that stage, there are different tools that sales can use to determine if a prospect is really engaged or not.
4. Too many lead scoring criteria at the beginning. I recommend using five criteria to track the profile of an individual (job role, industry, company size etc...) and five criteria to track engagement (recency and frequency of web visits, social media activity, email responses, form completions etc..) to start off with. Test out the criteria and see if it's working after three months. You may find that you can add some additional criteria based on discussions with your sales team. Build in a schedule for a regular review of your lead scoring criteria.
5. Not enough data. I still help review about one lead scoring model each week on average and one of the biggest issues I see is lead scoring programs that are scoring on data points that don't exist. Your lead scoring criteria can't be created in a vacuum. For example, if your going to score leads based on industry, review your web forms to determine if you are collecting that data. Review your live events to see if you ask that question at booths and/or roadshows. The score is only as good as the data you are collecting. You may even require some additional data tools to clean your data and append additional information.
   
   In addition, you need to review your lead scoring model every 3-6 months to ensure that it's still producing enough quality leads. If you don't do this, sales will ignore the lead score and you will be back to square one.

Another  top reason that lead scoring typically fails and a common thread through these five items is the lack of alignment between marketing and sales. These two teams need to work together and have common goals to get the most out of lead scoring. I have seen lead scoring work when the end goal was to help marketing segment their database and serve up different pieces of content but you can only get so far without having a good relationship with sales. The success of your business depends on a close tie between these two groups.

This is not meant to discourage you but it's something to keep in mind when thinking about a lead scoring project. Many companies I work with will concentrate on getting their database in order first as well as creating nurturing paths to help enrich their database before tackling scoring. It comes down to your priorities.

Articles to consider: Lead Scoring Has Drastically Changed – How do You Measure up?

Image courtesy of Beachhead Marketing

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Lead Scoring Has Drastically Changed – How do You Measure up?

With my son Matthew turning one this week, I’m feeling a bit nostalgic. I dug up and started contributing to a personal online journal that I hadn’t touched since 2004, reviewed pictures from past trips with my wife, and reflected on memories that I’ve had in my first year as a dad. Taking a look back and reliving great times in your life provides perspective and helps explain how things have changed. One year ago I had no clue on how to  change a diaper nor did I realize what a luxury it was to get a full night’s rest.

I’ve come a long way this year - working hard at being a good father and developing a close bond with my son and I couldn’t be happier. I would encourage you to take some time to reflect on changes within your own life and the impact they’ve had on you whether it was a new job, a new home or a new perspective you’ve taken in your life.

I’ve also just passed my five year anniversary at Eloqua where I’m a Regional Manager on the Customer Success Team. I’ve seen many changes both at Eloqua and in the marketing automation industry over this time. In this post, I’m going to focus on how the process of developing a lead scoring program has transformed over the years. But first, let's go back in time to a typical (yet abbreviated and simplified) conversation around lead scoring circa 2005:

B2B marketer: “The sales team thinks the leads we send them are garbage. For them to take marketing seriously, I need to deliver higher quality leads rather than just focusing on quantity. What should we do?”
 
Me: “Implementing an automated lead scoring process should help here but it will depend on the lead management definitions you currently have in place. How do you define what a qualified lead is? Is this something that both marketing and sales agree on?”
 
B2B marketer: “A qualified lead is someone that has a specific challenge that our product can solve, has the budget to pay for our product and has the authority to get the deal done”.
 
Me: “OK, assuming you have worked out the specifics and have buy-in from sales, what are the key online behaviours that would indicate that one lead should be rated higher than the other?
 
B2B marketer: “Well, if the lead has attended an event of ours, let’s rate that higher and if they’ve visited 20+ pages and opened 5 or emails, I would consider that someone our sales team should follow up with”.

Based on these discussions, the marketer would further define her/his requirements and then go and build out the lead scoring program. Hopefully the assumptions made were correct and more qualified leads would be passed to sales. These were also the days of the “big ‘ole forms” on your website where you asked for every piece of BANT question that sales wanted and assumed that the data provided by registrants was accurate. If you found you weren’t getting enough qualified leads, you adjusted your lead scoring program accordingly based on feedback from sales and by reviewing the data.

The Hover Board

Fast forward to 2010 and in five short years, there are a number of new factors that that must be taken into consideration when designing your lead scoring program. Here are a few items to consider:

The accuracy of data captured has decreased over time

A recent GoogleTechTarget survey has found that almost 50% of the administrators, directors and executives from technology firms interviewed provided inaccurate data on web forms because these people didn’t want to be contacted when they were doing some simple research on a topic of interest. Therefore, a different strategy on how to best capture “explicit criteria” (BANT, job title, size of company) for lead scoring is needed. I'm not discounting the qualification process that can be done by an inside sales or teleprospecting team but an automated lead scoring process can weed out some of the "garbage" and allow these teams to increase the number of sales accepted leads.

Techniques such as progressive profiling where you build the visitor profile over time assists in developing more accurate data to score on. The progressive profiling technique should only ask the required information that a company needs for the specific buyer stage that the web visitor is in. If someone is signing up for a newsletter, only a few details such as a person’s email address and their preferences should be required. Additional information can be slowly obtained in a future campaign such as a multi-touch lead nurturing program. In addition, progressive profiling allows the marketer to record online behaviour that can feed into the scoring process.

Automate your data cleansing process

Broken Telephone

While you try and prevent inaccurate data from making it through the front door of your database, it finds multiple ways to seep in there. This will affect what you can score on as the data is not consistent enough. Let’s take job title as an example. Many of my clients use job title as an indicator for their lead scoring model. They’ve found that there are certain roles within an organization that have the highest probability to generate a sales opportunity. While marketing would prefer to force web visitors to select a specific job role when completing a form for accuracy purposes, sales people want to know the exact title. In addition, when collecting leads across various channels and sources, maintaining consistency is almost impossible.

A solution to this problem is an automated process called the “The Contact Washing Machine”. The goal of this program is to review the data that is fed into it and normalize it. For example, if we take the job title example, a Contact Washing Machine would bucket titles into specific categories as defined by marketing. Database records are updated with this normalized title which can then be used for scoring and other segmentation purposes. A great example of a Contact Washing Machine is provided by Amit Varshneya who is the VP of marketing at Hexaware Technologies.

Scoring should reflect the buyers’ journey and your defined sales/marketing stages

When developing a lead scoring program in the past, points were allotted for downloading certain pieces of content based on how marketing and sales subjectively perceived certain materials to valued by the prospect. Today, the assumptions that are made when building the lead scoring matrix are more firmly based on the buyer’s journey as defined by real data with input from sales, marketing, and third party sources. The 2009 TechTarget Media Consumption Benchmark guide confirmed that IT buyers favoured different online materials as they progressed through the buying process. Here is an example of the different materials that IT buyers review across the different buying stages:

By going through the process of mapping out the content that your buyers accessed at various stages in their evaluation process, it ensures that the actual score and associated ranking of leads is more accurate and provides a better indicator to sales on how to prioritize their follow ups. In fact, in a DemandGen Report survey called Transforming the BtoB Buying Process found that “more than 8 in 10 respondents said the buying process did not follow a traditional path where a budget was established”. Therefore the BANT criteria is not enough to accurately assess leads and may actually prevent sales ready leads from rising to the top.

As a best practice, I now recommend breaking out the explicit lead scoring criteria (job title, lead source, size of company) from the implicit criteria (activity) to provide a more accurate picture for the sales team that they can action on. Therefore, you may have a lead with a low explicit rank of a C (where A is the highest and D is the lowest) but has a high implicit score of 1 (with 1 the highest and 4 the lowest). This combined lead rank of C1 is a lead that sales should prioritize as the explicit information provided may be inaccurate but the implicit criteria or the Digital Body Language demonstrates that this person is definitely interested in your company.

In addition, best in class organizations have tied their sales/marketing funnel to their lead ranking definitions. Therefore, in order for a lead to be considered a marketing qualified lead (or MQL as defined by SiriusDecisions Demand Waterfall), it must attain a certain lead ranking such as A1 or C2. To the right is a good visualization of how an MQL may be defined when using Lead Scoring.

I’ve also included a great video that shows you how this is used in the lead management process:



Here are few examples that I recommend you review to get a better feel for this concept:

• Terracotta: Lead Scoring A Buyer’s Journey in Open Source. In this example, Terracotta mapped out the different types of behaviours that made up the different stages that a buyer progresses through. They then used this to build their lead scoring matrix and constantly tweak the lead scoring algorithm to get more accurate results.
  
• Taleo: Seeding and Cultivating the Taleo Revenue Engine with Lead Nurturing. The VP of Marketing Doug Sechrist stated “We built a matrix that looks at the buyer’s journey and our sales cycle, and based on that, we determined the right content for each touch point.” Besides lead nurturing, the buyer’s journey influenced its lead scoring rankings and determined the stage of the buyer. The case study goes on to outline how Taleo only sends A and B rated leads to inside sales as these are defined as MQLs (marketing qualified leads). 

How marketing is now measured has made lead scoring more palatable

In my lead scoring example from 2005 above, marketers were mainly focused on the quantity of leads at the top of the funnel. There is no question that this is still the case today for a large percentage of B2B organizations but after having gone through a recession in 2009 and slowly working out from its shadow in 2010, marketing needs to do more to justify its budget to the other C level executives. Today’s B2B marketers are looking further down the marketing/sales funnel at metrics such as the number of marketing influenced opportunities, the velocity of deals that move through the sales/marketing funnel, the conversion rates across different stages in the funnel, the number of closed deals, revenue generated and ROI on campaigns. By focusing on higher qualified leads that can help sales reach their goals more quickly and impact these new joint metrics, lead scoring has been an easier concept to sell to marketing and sales organizations.

I don’t have to look any further for an example of this exact transformation than from within my own organization as described by our Senior VP of Worldwide Sales, Alex Shootman, in his post: At The Wheel of the Revenue Machine: But What if I Want to Follow Up on “D” Leads?. It took a shared goal of increasing revenue and a commitment from sales and marketing to work closer together to help make scoring more relevant in the lead management process. And guess what – if you’re reading about this, you can bet that your competitors either have lead scoring in place or are considering it. Don’t wait for them to beat you to the punch.

I’m sure others can add additional points on how lead scoring has progressed over time but this is one of the few chances I get to sleep and I need to take advantage of it while it lasts! Do let me know if you think I’m missing anything. On a final note as I wrap this up I would like to thank my wife, Allie, who has made being a father easy over this past year and has been such a wonderful mother to our son. I would also like to thank all of the Eloquans – past and present, partners, and customers that I’ve had the pleasure of working with over the past five years and plan to continue working with.

Regards,

Chad H.
@chadhorenfeldt

PS – For something fun, check out Juan Eloqua and the Grande Guide to Lead Scoring

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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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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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Email Autoresponders 2.0 in B2B Marketing

Reflecting back on a long week I had the pleasure of meeting a number of new clients and seeing what they have accomplished as part of their online marketing initiatives. I am extremely lucky to see some of the most cutting edge marketing tactics being used and wanted to highlight some of them here.

I was inspired this morning after my 11 cups of coffee by a former customer and now colleague, Heather Foeh and her blog post "Friday Quick Tip: Re-Visit Your Autoresponders". By autoresponder email, I mean the confirmation email that a registrant immediately receives when they fill out a form on a website. Heather has some good tips to ensure that your information and call to action(s) is up to date. At times, marketers set these up and then forget about them. In this post, I want to highlight some of the interesting trends I'm seeing in marketing automation - specifically the autoresponder email and how you can take advantage of this often neglected marketing gem.

The Evolution of the Autoresponder Email

Let's start with the evolution of the autoresponder. Although this post is mostly from a B2B perspective, the items described here can also be applied in the B2C world. In the past, email recipients were used to receiving a text based email that had a simple message that thanked the subscriber for submitting their information. This in itself was a big step forward as many marketers either didn't have the capability to implement this due to their technology provider or the insight to add this tactic. Now, there are many different types of autoresponder emails from product/service confirmations to event detail information. In this post, I want to concentrate on the use case in which a user either signs up for a newsletter or to access resources from your website. Here is a quick timeline to trace how far marketers have come by displaying how past autoresponders appeared:

1. The Traditional Email Autoresponder

Thanks for registering.

2. Email Autoresponder 1.0

[Insert company logo here]

Thanks for registering.

Click here to unsubscribe.
CompanyX address

3. Email Autoresponder 1.5

[Insert company logo here]

Dear FirstName,
Thanks for registering to receive [insert name of resource] from CompanyX. Please be sure to return to www.companyx.com.

Regards,
CompanyX

Manage your profile or click here to unsubscribe.
CompanyX address

Autoresponder Email The Next Generation

Looking at the examples above, there really isn't anything wrong with the autoresponder 1.5. It provides relevant information, it's simple and to the point. I would also include a few other items as part of autoresponder 1.5: relevant static links to key areas of your website as well as asking recipients to whitelist your email address. This is all great but, if you're looking at ways to get more out of your autoresponders then keep reading.

I've found that autorepsonders can have open rates that can achieve greater that 80% open rates and clickthrough rates in the 20-30% range which blow industry averages out of the ball park. Registrants who fill out forms almost expect to get these emails as they have already taken the time to provide you with some type of information. The least you can do is provide them something useful in return. Other goals to keep in mind is to encourage the new subscriber to open and read future emails but encourage as well as interacting with you in other channels that they may not have known about.

1. Personalization: Adding "Dear FirstName" in your email is good but you're wasting an opportunity to build a relationship between the new registrant and a real person at your company. You know the saying "people buy from people" - well it's true. A recent Aberdeen report has demonstrated that email personalization drives higher email open and conversion rates. Knowing that registrants will most likely open the autoresponder reduces the risk of having a real person in the "from line". What this does is begin or continue the relationship between the prospect and sales rep. As an added tip, make sure you add the name of your company in the first few characters of the subject line so the email recipients realizes that the the name of the person in the "from line" is from your company.
   
   Once the person opens the email, have a signature that includes a real person's name and contact information. The autoresponder should encourage the email recipient to contact the sales rep if they have any questions. The best in class marketers have their CRM synced up to their marketing automation platform which means that known contacts from their CRM should already have an associated sales rep. Your marketing automation platform should also allow you to dynamically include the sales reps information as part of the autoresponder. As an added tip, include a picture of the sales rep. If the registrant is new to your system, have a generic signature that perhaps is from your CMO or a known figure within your organization. Your marketing automation platform can also help you build signature rules based on other contact information such as geography which allows for a personalized approach even if a web visitor has yet to be assigned to a sales rep.
   
   This type of personalization leads to a much stronger and smoother hand-0ff process between the marketing and sales teams which I described in my last post "Lead Management and Football". Using this technique demonstrates that marketing is at the top of their game.
   
   
2. Dynamic Content: This is one of the key areas that makes me smile when I'm reviewing how our customers are getting the most out of our product. Dynamic content in an email allows you to:
   
   • Simplify the autoresponder email creation. Instead of having 20 different versions of the same email, have one email that you can easily maintain. Using dynamic content you can change key areas such as what was exactly downloaded as well as customizing a call to action either based on what they downloaded and/or the interests that were specified in the registration process.
     
     In one example, I have a client that promoted different case studies based on the industry that was specified in the sign up process. In another example, a client specified exactly what was downloaded by capturing this in the registration process and then dynamically displaying this on the email. These techniques are simple, effective and led to increased response.
     
   
   
• Pull in content from RSS feeds: I've outlined this concept in an earlier post Latest Trends in Email Marketing: RSS and Calendar Reminders. You can promote corporate blog posts, upcoming events, press releases and the newest white papers/case studies in an RSS feed(s) that you can add to your email either underneath the main "Thanks for registering text" or as a side column. This means that not only are you saying "Read our latest blog posts" but you're actually including the title of your latest posts as well as a link to read the entire article. In this way you have new content that is dynamically added to your autoresponder without the marketer having to make any manual updates. This is a great way to get more out of your content and drive new registrants back to your website.
  
  
• Personalize who the email is coming from. I described this above but want to point out that this is a form of dynamic content
  


3. Promote Other Channels: More and more marketers are using social media to keep prospects engaged while they are in the sales and marketing funnel. In addition, more and more of prospects are using social media to learn about your products and services as well as comparing you to your competitors. As I outlined in 10 Tips for Using Twitter And Email Marketing for B2B you can add your company's Twitter address, Linkedin groups and links to RSS feeds such as your corporate blog to your autoresponder emails.
   
   You should consider other channels as well. For example, Breaking Point Systems offers a free poster which has proven to be a very successful campaign. I also find this approach brilliant as the autoresponder email drives recipients back to the website to fill out additional information to receive the poster. Another idea is to include a link to a video that may be a customer testimonial that is relevant to the recipients challenge or job role.
   
   
4. Sales Should not Follow up the Email With a Call: So you're reading this post and hopefully enjoying it and then you read this and you're like "What? Chad - you should have stopped after the second cup of coffee". Just because a web visitor signed up for a white paper or a newsletter on your website and you have pasted a nice picture of the rep on your autoresponder doesn't give anyone the right to call them up. If you have a properly defined lead management process, leads should only be passed on to sales for follow up if the prospect has attained a high enough lead score. In this way, you're focusing your sales team on the prospects that are more inclined to buy and sparing a potential buyer from being called too early in the purchase process.
   
   
5. Don't Stop After The Autoresponder: You may be saying: "Wait a minute - so, sales shouldn't follow up but I shouldn't stop after the autoresponder?". That's correct. As I mentioned above, you want to ensure that new subscribers are "sales worthy" according to the agreed upon definitions that you should have between sales and marketing. A great way to keep a new subscriber informed about your company is to move them into a nurturing program typically called a "welcome program" for new subscribers. This may involve a few different channels including having someone follow up with them by phone to further qualify the "inquiry" but the first few touches should be via email to demonstrate the value of having provided you with their email in the first place and to build a profile which translates into a lead score for marketers that have implemented a lead scoring system.
   
   What is important is to provide content that is relevant. Relevancy depends on the recipient's interests that they provided, what they have downloaded and/or which pages, offers or emails they responded to. Frequency is also very important. Try to prevent recipients from receiving email content that they have already received. You also want to ensure that recipients are not receiving too many emails in too short a period of time. However, I believe that relevancy trumps frequency and if the content is relevant, recipients will want to receive it and if they don't feel like looking at it right away, they'll still want to get information from you in the future.
   

Measure the Results

Measuring the results is very key in this process. If you've read the above you may either be excited or overwhelmed. I would recommend benchmarking your current key email and conversion metrics and then slowly adding some of the techniques above and seeing the results. For example, by adding in personalization, are your sales reps receiving inbound calls as a result of this email? Of course, you will need a process in place to measure this (perhaps a dedicated line) but I would recommend starting simple and building on your successes. While these recommendations will require an investment of time up front, it will pay off in the long run.

Have you tried any of these techniques? How has it worked for you?

Chad H.
@chadhorenfeldt

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Related Posts:

• Latest Trends in Email Marketing: RSS and Calendar Reminders
• Lead Management and Football
• 10 Tips for Using Twitter And Email Marketing for B2B
• Dynamic Email Content: The Next Generation of Personalization

Technorati tags: autoresponder email, e-mails, email frequency, relevancy, social media and confirmation emails, personalization, Twitter B2B marketing

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Lead Management and Football

In one of my meetings these past few weeks I was thinking of an analogy where I could break down the lead management process into much simpler terms so everyone could understand their roles - this is where football comes in. Why football? Well, if I compared it to hockey no one outside of Canada would care. I'm going to introduce the players and coaches below and then summarize how the different parts fit together to create a Super Bowl caliber lead management process. Are you ready for some football?


The Players and Coaches Take the Field

• Quarterback: The marketing team is the QB. If you're a marketer, you're saying "I don't get paid like a quarterback". No one does - let's assume that salaries don't apply here. If you're in sales you may also disagree as QBs typically get more of the glory but hear me out and you can have your own say if you don't agree. The lead management process should start with the marketing team just as a football play begins with the quarterback getting the snap. It's marketing's job to fill the funnel with leads as it is the QBs job to move the ball down the field and pass the ball off to other players on the team.
  
  
• Running back: The players running with the ball on the ground are the inside sales/demand generation team (different companies give this group different names). Inside sales gets to do a lot of the grunt work to qualify leads and set meetings but they typically don't close the deals. In football terms, these guys can make the difference in the game but typically only pick up short yardage.
  
  
• Receivers: The receivers are the sales team. Who else are the biggest prima donnas on earth and are proud of it? Here are a few football players that come to mind: TO, Chad Johnson and Plaxico Burress. While receivers talk the talk, they also walk the walk. They are expected to make the impossible catches, score the winning touchdowns and throw the odd block to help their team move down the field and score. The good receivers are sought after by every team.
  
  
• Place kicker: The place kicker represents members from the sales and marketing operations team that typically don't get the recognition that the other players get but are key in scoring points. This may include CRM and marketing automation administrators, analyst that pull together the key sales and marketing metrics and key personnel who prepare sales collateral While there are some place kickers that stand out, it's typically the ones that screw up that everyone remembers (Steve Christie "wide right" ring a bell?). These people need to be on their game to ensure all systems are running as they should.
  
  
• Defence: While I could break down every defensive position, I like my rest and honestly, I couldn't tell you every position and you wouldn't care (except you there who plays the right outside linebacker position on the weakside). In the lead management process, the defence represents anything that is preventing the offence from scoring touchdowns. Think of the defense as anyone or anything that is hampering the lead management process. The defense could be a marketing automation system that is not fully synced with a CRM, it could be your competition providing higher quality products or it could be a breakdown in the hand off process between sales and marketing - there are many more possibilities.
  
  
• Coaches: The coaches are the executives in the organization: CMO, CEO, VP of Sales etc... They are the ones that watching the hours and hours of film to review past performances and they are the ones that are guiding their players to prevent interceptions by the defence and to ensure that the other teams in the league (your competition) get their buts handed to them.
  
  
• Fans: The fans of course are your paying customers. Typically, if you have a really good offence and coaches, you're going to have a good team that scores a lot of touch downs. More touchdowns usually means more wins which leads to more fans and the cycle hopefully continues until you need to build a new stadium with more private boxes.

Putting the Pieces Together: Touchdown!

As we know you have star quarterbacks like Joe Montana and Brett Favre who have great vision and deliver quality passes and you have quarterbacks like Rob Johnson and Ryan Leaf who could throw the ball with decent accuracy but never lead their teams to major victories. In the lead management process, you need marketers that not only deliver leads to the inside sales and sales team but deliver leads that are of the highest quality as defined by both marketing and sales. If a QB throws a pass that is a perfect spiral 10 yards down the field, they may define that as a quality pass. However, if the receiver who the pass is thrown to is on the other side of the field then this pass will be incomplete and may lead to an interception by the defence and a loss of downs. The marketing and sales team need to be on the same page and be reading out of the same playbook so that everyone knows if a newly assigned lead is considered of high quality and should be prioritized. This is where strong coaching is needed in football to ensure everyone's head is in the game. When it comes to marketing and sales, the executives from both departments need to be involved to ensure that both sides are in full cooperation (Here is a great video from SFDC Dreamforce 08 on this topic).

Some marketers will use an inside sales or demand generation team to further qualify leads and ensure that when these leads are passed on to the field sales that they are real opportunities. To compare this to football. the quarterback physically hands the ball off to a running back and can be assured that there isn't going to be an interception and will usually get positive yardage.

How can marketers improve their skills to improve the lead management process? Just like in football where you need to constantly practice and upgrade your skills to be a top notch QB, marketers need to take advantage of the best technology out there to make the lead management process as smooth as possible. This will involve the sales and marketing operations teams that may assist in configuring and maintaining the CRM and marketing automation platforms as well as using techniques such as automated lead scoring and routing to make the process run more efficiently. Again, the executives will be key here to decide which "players" should be used and the strategy that should be employed.

Post Game Review

You may hear this conversation on a local radio show following a football game (any Lions fans?): "Hi, I'm a long time listener, first time caller. I called in to say that the our team played like @%&^ today. That's all I have to say. Thank you."

When a game is over and players and coaches have finished doing their post game interviews, coaches watch the game film and do a full review on every play of the last game to learn about what worked, what didn't and can be improved upon to play even better in the next game. The sales and marketing process must have this same type of process where dashboard reports have been set up to monitor key metrics that have been defined by sales and marketing to measure success. Not only should these dashboards be setup, they should be consistently monitored and reviewed to make changes in the process where necessary.

Fumble! A Leaky Funnel

You just made a great catch and you're running towards the end zone. The problem is that you have three defenders ready to take your head off. If you run out of bounds, you give your QB another chance to score a touchdown - what do you do? Do you risk possible brain damage or do you give it back to the quarterback for another shot? In the lead management process, you need to define a process where leads get handed back to marketing in situations where prospects just aren't ready to buy. If we go back to our story, you can compare a possible touchdown to a closed deal. There is no way that the deal will be closed at this time. The sales team needs a way to label a lead to be sent back to the marketing team for further nurturing until the prospect is ready to engage again with the sales team. Don't allow for fumbles where leads fall through the cracks.

Notice how I didn't mention a punter? That's because leads should never be punted anywhere. A punt is unpredictable and can bounce all over the place. The lead management process needs to be much more specific. I didn't even get into the nitty gritty of the lead management process in terms of creating opportunities etc... Perhaps I'll cover that another time. The important item to keep in mind is that you need a process that is clearly defined and agreed upon by everyone. If the team is not in sync, there will be a breakdown which will lead to a possible quarterback sack and in this economy, making the right decisions is even more important. Let's keep everyone on the field, playing the game as it should be played and winning as much as possible.

What do you think? Did I miss any players? Did I misrepresent anyone?

Chad H.

PS: Let's talk about cheerleaders - we can't forget the cheerleaders. Cheerleaders could be part of your marketing team that is building demand for your products or services or your top customers who are your biggest promoters. I'll let you decide.
PPS: Some other posts on this topic:

• Landing Page Strategies and Lead Qualification
• Resources on Aligning Marketing and Sales for B2B Companies

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