Archive for the ‘Lead Scoring’ Category

Decreasing a Lead Score: They’re just not that into you

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

Many of you have seen the 2009 film He’s just not that into you. For those of you that haven’t, bravo – it was terrible. However, the premise of the movie resonates with most of us because we may have been on one side or the other. The film goes through a list of dating scenarios, in which one person should get the hint the other person is blowing them off but doesn’t. Similarly, in the sales process, there are often telltale digital signs that a seemingly viable lead is just not that into you.

Lead Scoring models help your sales team prioritize leads that are ready for action. The total lead score is comprised of both a fit and interest score, and leads are automatically passed to sales once they reach a certain score. To keep lead scores accurate over time, they should be decreased based on certain activities and have a depreciation component, which automatically lowers the score if no activity occurs over a certain period of time. Here are a few activities that should signal that a once “hot” lead is just not that into you:

1. No activity. A lead that downloaded a whitepaper and took a demo six weeks ago but has since shown no activity should not have the same score as one that took those calls to action more recently. Adding depreciation to your scoring model will automatically decrease the lead’s score based on the amount of time that’s passed with no activity. After it drops past a certain point, the lead should be removed from the sales pipeline and passed back over to marketing for lead nurturing.

2. Change in Purchase Timeline. Budget and priorities change for organizations all the time. If the project status changes, the lead score should reflect it. As the lead’s timeline changes, so should your lead management process. Decrementing lead scores that indicate a project is on hold or pushed back will enable you to assign them to the correct process rather than keeping them in the sales pipeline.

3. Website activity reflects non-product related interests. Web visitors viewing career pages, press rooms, leadership pages or investor information are most likely not interested in purchasing your product or service. Visits to these pages should negatively impact the lead’s score so Sales does not waste time following up with them unless product-related page views outweigh their visits to other pages.

4. No progression in the buying cycle. This is not the same as a lead not responding or showing a lack of activity. A lead could attend webinars, download whitepapers, and visit your blog every few days; however, if their interest never escalates into viewing product information or responding to a sales rep’s inquiries, chances are they are not yet sales-ready or are doing research for another purpose. Decreasing their score by placing a negative value on repeats of the same activities will separate the researchers from the truly qualified leads.

Adding depreciation and negatively valued activities to your lead scoring model ensures your sales pipeline stays up-to-date with qualified leads.  When a lead’s interest begins to wane, or it’s unlikely they intend to purchase your product, it should be reflected in the lead score allowing your sales team to focus on the leads that are truly interested – if only we had a tool like this for dating!

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Jeff Erramouspe

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Posted in Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Lead Scoring | Comments Off

Marketing Automation Puts an End to Wasting Leads

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

In many companies, generating any kind of an inquiry is considered a lead and sent over to the sales side, heaped onto the pile that sales reps must dig through in search of someone with a pulse that may have the potential to become a customer in the short term. This is but one example of why marketing and sales don’t get along.

According to Marketing Sherpa, 79% of leads never become sales opportunities. This percentage can either indicate that marketers are not generating the right types of leads, or that the leads sales doesn’t select for short-term pursuit fall into a black hole, never to be seen again—or a combination of both.

The problem with this approach to lead management is that marketing is wasting the majority of the budget they spent to acquire leads, as well as giving viable leads over to competitors without a fight. How long can your company afford to continue this practice?

Instead, consider the advantages of changing the way you manage leads. Marketing automation can eliminate waste and improve the use of sales rep’s time by:

  • Doing the cherry picking for them.
    Lead scoring measures fit and tracks activity so that only the leads that express high velocity, founded on concentrated interest will be routed to salespeople for follow-up. Instead of losing leads into a black-hole database, marketers can better ensure that funnel leakage is reduced while better-qualified opportunities are generated.
  • Disqualifying leads that lack ideal customer traits.
    Armed with an agreed-upon definition of a qualified lead, marketers can remove, or disqualify, leads that do not fit the customer profile your company serves. Not only will this keep your database clean, but it will reduce (hopefully eliminate) fruitless activity for salespeople. All contacts are not leads. Continuing to treat them like they are is a waste of your time—and theirs.
  • Using trigger events to transition leads at the right time.
    Tracking activity across the buying process enables marketers to identify patterns of behavior that result in forward sales momentum at the handoff. Marketing automation provides the ability to set rules and responses to those key behaviors so that salespeople don’t miss the chance to engage at the appropriate time.

Research conducted by SiriusDecisions finds that prospects are 70% of the way through their buying process at the time of sales engagement. The better able companies are to continue a content marketing dialogue from the first identification of a lead until sales readiness is indicated, the higher the potential to turn leads into customers. Nurturing leads over the longer-term buying process increases the odds that your pipeline will be more consistent, especially with evidence that a majority of leads that express interest will buy a solution from a vendor within a year or two.

Marketing automation software gives B2B marketers the tools they need to reduce lead waste and leakage and help salespeople to focus on pursuing the best opportunities for customer acquisition.

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Christopher Doran

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Posted in B2B Marketing, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Lead Scoring, Marketing Automation Software, Marketing Funnel, Sales | Comments Off

The Business Case for Marketing Automation

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010

Metrics have fostered a lot of discussion with marketers in the last year or two. Those who have adopted marketing automation software have discovered the difference of using data to drive decisions that help them to realize higher returns on marketing investment as well as customer acquisition.

A recent report by Aberdeen Group, Marketing Automation: A Strategic Guide for Optimizing End-to-End Marketing Activities, found that 67% of best in class companies report increases to annual revenues and 65% claim year-over-year increases to return on marketing investment. CSO Insights’ 2010 Lead Generation Optimization study found that only 37% of marketers using a lead generation management system say their efforts need improvement. That’s quite a difference when compared with 65% of marketers not using automation systems who said they needed improvement in this area.

With measurement such a hot topic, as well as one of the benefits of marketing automation technology, I thought it would be useful to review some of the top metrics marketers are using to prove the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns in driving overall company objectives.

  • Increase in the development of sales opportunities. DemandGen Report conducted research that identified a 20% increase in sales opportunities generated from leads that were nurtured in comparison to leads that were not.
  • Revenues and customer acquisition. Aberdeen Group found that best in class companies saw double their bid-to-win ratios on nurtured leads, plus a 47% higher average order value.
  • Sales Pursuit. Forrester Research finds that salespeople follow up on >75% of leads in 46% of firms where marketing has developed formal lead management processes.

In addition, marketing automation provides numerous ways to measure the components of marketing programs that contribute to the achievement of the metrics above. They include the ability to measure:

  • Growth to your marketing database in contacts and leads.
  • Propensity to buy based on lead scoring models.
  • Audience response to nurturing programs by market segment.
  • Leads returned to marketing by sales for re-engagement.
  • Campaign comparisons to validate market interests.
  • Passive vs. interactive response by leads. (e.g. reading content vs. registering for a webinar)

To demonstrate real world achievement of metrics that validate the importance of using marketing automation software in support of your marketing people, process and programs, here are a few documented results Manticore Technology customers have seen (these marketing automation case studies can be downloaded from our website)

  • 190% increase in conversions to closed deals.
  • 9.3% increase to revenue per sales rep.
  • 171% increase in qualified leads.
  • 30% reduction to length of sales cycle.
  • Breakeven ROI on marketing automation investment in two months.

What becomes obvious when assessing the research, the capabilities and real-world results is that marketers without the capability to automate their marketing programs are leaving a lot of money on the table. With the ability to gain true visibility into today’s customers, marketers can streamline the execution of campaigns while increasing relevance to drive higher interest and engagement.

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Christopher Doran

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Posted in Customer Acquistion, Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Scoring, Marketing Automation, Marketing Metrics | Comments Off
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