Marketing Automation: Don't lose sight of the wood for the trees.

Keeping it Simple

With more and more companies adopting Marketing Automation solutions to replace repetitive and time consuming manual processes with a specially designed software solution, its often the case that end users get caught up in the complexity of what the systems can deliver and forget the big picture. Ultimately the purpose of this kind of solution is to help streamline the marketing department’s tasks, making it more scaleable and to help marry these activities with the objectives of the sales department – not to make things more difficult.

So here are Profunnel’s top tips to keep your marketing automation simple.

Understand the power of Exclusions:

For those new to marketing automation, an Exclusion List or exclusions are instructions that ensure that a specific segment or group of existing or prospective clients do not receive specific campaigns or responses based on their behaviour. For example, I’m unlikely to want to send the same offers to existing paying clients as my prospective customers. No brainer right?

But beyond this obvious exclusion, its worth considering a couple more noteworthy examples - sending webinar sign-ups more information on your upcoming webinar, or an e-brochure for those who have already downloaded said brochure is an exercise in futility. Once these obvious exclusions have been addressed, the temptation is to start getting super complicated and start excluding according to all sorts of complex metrics – trying to ensure prospects don’t get the same email twice, or excluding whole lists according to behaviour on specific triggers...the list is endless and our recommendation would be to leave this to the pro’s (e.g. your account manager )

Just remember, over-thinking or in this case over-excluding can create both unnecessary work and can impact long-term marketing strategies. Simple strategies are most effective unless you have dedicated resource to run your marketing automation platform full-time.

Don’t overdo your audience segmentation!

Segmenting prospects and customers is a hugely valuable strategy allowing you to deliver specific offerings to a targeted audience who need it the most. Some companies are happy to distinguish between clients and prospects and others create veritable libraries of different segments. For the majority, once again, the simpler the better.

What most marketers overlook when brainstorming a new and innovative way to segment their audience is that for every segment you may need to create landing pages, e-shots, call-to-actions and offers as well as tying all these into separate campaigns. These then all need refining and tweaking and you end up painting the golden gate bridge all over again. Creating compelling content for larger segments will not overburden your resource and will allow you to push on and actually ensure your campaigns are as effective as possible.

Big Picture

It’s crucial to remember that marketing automation platforms are there to help leverage existing sales and marketing capabilities, not as a tool to overburden and burn out all resources. Of course, there is a benefit in having dedicated resource from your platform in order to supply ad-hoc support or even take on a project on your behalf. However, for the majority keeping it simple is a surefire method of reaping the rewards of a marketing automation platform...don’t lose sight of the wood for the trees.

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Marketing Automation: A Sales Perspective

Marketing Automation from a Sales Perspective


With more-marketers shifting to a revenue-orientated model and the recent sea-change in marketers’ desires to show both business results and brand impact, uptake of marketing automation looks to continue its upward trend in 2013. Despite a high rate of adoption- (a Recent Forrester Report suggested 45% usage within the B2B Enterprise Market*) - companies are only now beginning to understand and leverage the full spectrum of the applications of marketing automation platforms, which can often be very complex.

As a marketer, the physical implementation of a marketing automation platform as the promised silver bullet for their marketing woes can often overshadow an important consideration during the set-up process – planning. More specifically, a plan which will allow the Sales department to reap the benefits of this platform and not use it as another tool for lead-generation or lead management. 

Follow these 5 simple steps to ensure you can get the most from your marketing automation platform from a sales perspective.

1. Align Sales and Marketing: The core purpose of marketing automation is to make sales and marketing one cohesive structure, and will not work if your organisation has been designed to keep sales and marketing as separate entities. Ensure you share cross departmental objectives and success metrics to increase transparency to ensure everyone understands the goals of a specific campaign - everyone’s happier once they know what defines a successful campaign!
2. Focus on Content: Creating enough content to satisfy various newsletters, drip campaigns and blogs throughout a long sales cycle can be a tough job, however it is absolutely worth it when you consider that content really is the coal fueling the marketing automation furnace. To make life a little easier why not consider re purposing your content from your existing assets e.g. one whitepaper can become the topic of a series of webinars or a series of blog posts pulled together could become a new whitepaper and gives your sales team another hook with which to entice prospects. It’s all about working Smart!
3. Plan your Attack: The benefit of a Marketing Automation platform is putting science and process behind the sales funnel therefore defining responsibilities for various stages of the sales cycle is extremely important. e.g. Who's responsible for designing the lead-scoring threshold?, Who's responsible for delegating leads to the Sales team?, Who's monitoring conversion success from these leads? There are important questions to answer and having a designated process firmed up prior to the implementation of a platform so that you can hit the ground running and get the most from your platform and sales team is key.
4. Look to Customize: Most marketing automation platforms will have a plethora of out-of-the-box functions, such as sales alerts and lead scoring which can dramatically improve a traditional sales process but are even more effective when you customise these even further. Having a deep understanding of your industry, specifically your clients purchasing needs will allow you to tailor these functions to your own brilliant needs. Creating customised rules to fit your audience will also allow your sales teams to better target your prospects and marketing to create more bespoke content.
5. Pick a front-runner. Buy-in from Sales is key to the success of marketing automation. By picking a high-performing sales rep and educating them about the benefits of the platform from a sales-perspective you can leverage their kudos to ensure the rest of your sales team understand how it can help reps save time, identify qualified leads and allow for a more targeted approach. Hopefully this will encourage a more rapid uptake of the technology but also more effective usage. 

You may not be able to wave a magic wand and change your sales and marketing processes overnight, but by following the tips above, marketing automation can help transform your marketing programs and re-frame the role of the marketer from a cost centre to a revenue-driving, sales-collaborating winner!

*http://www.forrester.com/The+State+Of+LeadToRevenue+Management/fulltext/-/E-RES71381

Lead scoring does not have to be complicated!

PART 2

Lead scoring does not have to be complicated:

As previously discussed lead scoring should be the Holy Grail for sales people!  Lead scoring is when sales and marketing defining what a ‘sales ready’ lead is and the lead being handed to Sales on a plate with key information about that prospect’s behaviour. 

Scoring can range from 1-20 dependent on the actions of the lead, and should be enough to give your sales rep a good idea of what their leads have been doing. Once the lead builds up their score they pass through thresholds taking them from a cold lead, to a medium lead and eventually a hot lead – effectively the lead is moving from an MQL to an SQL. As an MQL, nurturing campaigns encourage the prospect along the sales cycle by offering tailored information in the hope of resonating with the individual.  A prospect enjoys being sold to when it is relevant to them! 

When the Lead hits the Hot Lead threshold this is when it’s time for your sales team to pick up the phone!  Research shows that 35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first and lead scoring can help you become a front runner.  Alerting your sales team when prospects reach a certain score will mean your organisation really can be in the right place, at the right time talking about the right product!

Here are some top tips to help with your Lead Scoring:

1 – Keep it Simple

People can get very carried away with lead scoring, but the scoring really needs to focus on the main calls to action that will help increase your sales team’s productivity.

2 – Understand your Leads

Who are you targeting?  Which decision makers do you want to chat to? For example if you are an IT company you would want your sales team talking to IT Directors as these people have the best profile for making IT purchases. You can then assign points based on the leads job title and this will give all the IT Directors a head start on the rest of your database.

3 – Automate your Marketing

Once leads are qualified and start to move up through your lead scoring you want your sales reps to know that their leads are active. When leads hit scoring thresholds, alerts can be sent to sales reps and the lead can be added to a specific nurture campaign or added to a specific data list. The email alerts will be sent straight to the sales rep who can then follow up immediately. Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at a 33% lower cost.

4 – Cold today but Hot tomorrow

Not all leads will be active immediately. 79% of marketing leads do not convert into sales. Lack of lead follow up is the common cause of this poor performance. Most leads will need to be nurtured as they will not be ‘ready to buy’ immediately. Their lead score may be low and their activity limited to a few opens and clicks in emails, but instead of ignoring or disqualifying these leads - they need to be monitored. Never jump the gun by dismissing low scoring leads. Follow up marketing will keep the lead interested until you can hit the right note with them, or when they are ready to engage with you - alerts will be sent to your sales reps.

Enjoy setting up your lead scoring but remember you need sales and marketing input and expect to make some changes so that it can become automated.  Invest time now and reap the rewards soon!  And remember why you are doing this - a good lead scoring strategy will increase conversion rates!

 

References –

www.salesforce.com

www.b2bmarketingzone.com

Lead Scoring - Is it Worth it?

Is Lead Scoring worth the effort??

I have worked with a number of companies; from those who have an abundance of leads who wade through lead after lead to find the cream, to other companies that are scrapping away to get their hands on any lead!  Each company differs with their approach in handling leads i.e.  Do your sales team generate their own leads, do you buy them in or do you have dedicated internal sales team?  Given that there are so many options when dealing with lead gen, the golden question is how to make the most from your leads without burning them?

Ultimately leads come in a variety of forms and just a small increase in lead quality can result in a huge increase in sales productivity.  These changes are what I’ve found salespeople spending hours and hours looking for by hoping their leads will tell them something!  The beauty of using lead scoring is this information is provided to your sales team on a plate!  They can then focus their time on converting these high quality leads into revenue.

But what is Lead Scoring?

Lead scoring is the process of ascribing a value (points) to the behaviour of your prospects.  This behaviour may be website activity, demographic profiling, email campaign interaction or a form completion and a volunteering of their information.  Different businesses will assign different values to these actions depending on the importance of one or more of the above actions.  The joy of lead scoring is that it is tailored to your business.  This sounds simple enough but many organisations just want to know what others have done and replicate that…you can’t!  For lead scoring to work for your products and your sales team you need to consult with those involved.  Assigning scores to leads moves your leads from being Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) to Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) therefore communication between these departments is vital.  History will show there has been friction between these departments with marketing throwing quantities of unqualified leads at sales and sales wasting potential leads looking for the ‘quality’!  Lead scoring can solve this!  But first you need to find out what the ideal lead looks like from both a sales and marketing perspective and define these boundaries.  The scoring profiles will evolve and next generation marketing requires flexibility, adaptability and quick changes – adopt this philosophy and you’ll see your business grow.   

Lead scoring doesn’t have to be complicated and next time some tips coming your way…

References –

www.salesforce.com

The Evolution of Email Marketing

The evolution of email marketing

In 2012 it felt like we couldn't escape the constant reminders by journalists, bloggers, marketers and even consumers that social media had reached adolescence. Some even touted the idea that social could make email marketing obsolete; a bold and presumptuous concept when you consider that email is still the primary source of lead generation for 9 out of 10 B2B marketers. Whilst email marketing may not have received the accelerated public growth adopted by social, it has begun to evolve – so what can it offer in 2013?

The relevance of email

The aforementioned figures were revealed by Forrester and sat alongside stats declaring that 70% of marketers see email as either ‘critical’ or ‘very important’ with more than half of them using emails as a primary source of, (in descending order), lead generation/nurturing, enhancing or building brand awareness, driving sales and strengthening thought leadership.

The ultimate B2B marketing tool

Industry wide, B2B marketers reported an average deliverable rate of 84% and a further 13% average click-through rate. Not only are these figures extremely positive, but website forensics can provide marketers with hitherto unprecedented access to customer analytics and reporting which can be tied back to ROI, mainly through the process of lead-scoring; a convention still presenting teething problems for the social revolution.

“New and growing businesses are stealthy in how they embrace email. You will hear marketing automation, cloud-based marketing platforms, digital messaging, CRM, and the like, but the companies valued highly and/or raising a ton of money or being acquired, feature email front and centre’ (S.Jenkins, Clikz 2013)

So what’s next for email marketing?

More and more professionals are now using more complex email marketing systems and choosing marketing automation platforms in order to enhance email lead nurturing campaigns. Marketing automation offers more complex analytics, allowing marketers to track customer behaviour which ultimately leads to more efficient output as brands can fine tune their communications, content and daily activities by interpreting this unique data. Furthermore, these platforms can streamline the entire process with CRM integration, automation of campaigns and filtering mechanisms. What’s not to love?

Marketing Automation

So why do we think Marketing Automation is critical to the longevity and survival of email marketing? Firstly, the adoption of marketing automation is expected to increase 50% by 2015 and thanks to the ease in which customers now have access to the plethora of information about your company, the average sales cycle has increased by 22% over the last 5 years - all the more reason to join the party. Moreover, to counteract this paradigm shift in buying behaviour marketers must now adopt a more sophisticated lead nurturing approach to keep up with this revolution in buying behaviour.

Evolve to prepare

So in summary, it’s safe to say that email marketing is not ‘dead’ and social certainly isn't the straw that will break the camel’s back just yet. However, to keep up with the shift in consumer behaviour email marketing has to continue its evolution to become more sophisticated and integrate with your existing end-to-end marketing efforts including web, social, CRM and offline channels.

Finally, Gartner predicts that by 2020 customers will manage 85% of their relationships with an enterprise without talking to a human. If this is the case, can you afford not to have a platform in place to ensure that you make the most of inbound leads so that your sales teams can target the right customers at the right time with the right content?

Should B2B and B2C be Compared?

The editor of B2B Marketing, Joel Harrison, recently attended a round table with the Marketing Society, where the main topic was based on creativity. Delegates questioned if the level of creativeness achieved in B2C campaigns can be transferred to B2B marketing, as this was thought to be an issue. Key examples referred to as B2C successes were the ‘Compare the Meerkat’ campaign for Compare the Market and Cadbury’s Gorilla campaign.

As Harrison describes in his blog “B2B doesn’t need to ‘do a meerkat’ – it would be irrelevant and unnecessary. B2B needs and does focus on driving relevant, appropriate, timely and salient marketing activities to its niche audiences”.

Harrison clearly identifies how B2B marketing is crucially about timing and relevance, in order to generate sales. Businesses can integrate marketing automation solutions to improve the effectiveness of both of these elements. The technology enables marketers to tag and track website visitors, with information about their activity being relayed directly to marketers in real-time. Marketers can use this information to send automated, targeted emails relevant to prospects’ interests at a time when they are ready to buy. Consequently this improves lead generation and allows sales to achieve their targets while businesses can identify a clear ROI.

Visit Profunnel for more information on marketing automation.