Forrester Research recently came out with their Wave report reviewing 15 top Email Service Providers (ESPs). Summary here, full report can be downloaded from ExactTarget here.
The report has both ExactTarget and Responsys as being ranked at the top, with both being cited for providing robust and comprehensive offerings, excellent functionality and very good service to support their platforms. I've worked with both solutions and can attest to their power and flexibility.
Other notable ESPs mentioned include Yesmail, e-Dialog, Acxiom, Experian and Epsilon. Not ranking quite as high is Lyris, which I've also worked with. I feel Lyris is an up-and-comer in the space due to their solid analytics package, simple content creation, PPC management and burgeoning social media capabilities.
Some other interesting notes include that 92% of those surveyed for the report say they are actively using email marketing as part of their marketing mix and agree that spending on email marketing will be increasing in the next 3 years. So much for the death of email as a marketing tool.
Enhancing the business case for ESPs includes marketers offsetting staffing losses with the increased productivity and efficiency that ESPs provide, and an increased relevance in marketing programs.
I believe a great deal of that increased relevance is (and will continue to be) due to more and more companies embracing lead nurturing and a mutual value exchange in their interactions with new prospects. Email has become the de facto communications channel for timely, compelling and relevant interactions between company and prospects. As the ROI for email marketing for cold lists (list rental) continues to decline, the ROI on house lists/marketing databases should rise as marketers seek to build relationships through their communication by providing thoughtful, educational and targeted content that prospects seek out and come to expect.
Showing posts with label lead nurturing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lead nurturing. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Friday, December 11, 2009
Lead Lifecycle Campaigns
I met recently with the VP of Marketing of a what many experts consider a real up-and-comer in the marketing automation space. He's an innovative demand gen marketeer and has some terrific ideas and opinions about demand generation best practices. He made me aware of some solid thinking about those leads that haven't yet achieved sales-ready status.
One area we talked about was advanced lead nurturing and what he calls lead lifecycle campaigns. He defines these campaigns as designed to ensure that leads don't go stagnant (or get lost), to keep them moving with the goal of maintaining an ongoing interaction with the prospect until they are ready to buy or engage with sales.
Driving home after our meeting I was thinking about the number of leads I've seen generated that for whatever reasons did not achieve sales-ready status that just lingered in the marketing funnel, or worse, were jettisoned out of the system with no further action put upon them. It's a big number. His reference to these types of leads as simply in a 'not ready to buy yet' state was an interesting recognition of these leads having an intrinsic value (you've invested a certain amount of time, money, resource to get them to a certain stage).
My interest was piqued and that night I downloaded his company's guide to lead nurturing to learn more. In it they discuss lead lifecycle campaigns being broken down into three categories - lead handoff, lead recycling and new customers.
Lead handoff is when a marketing qualified lead (MQL) becomes a sales-ready lead (SRL) and is passed into the sales team. Details about the lead including date passed, nurture time and how quickly sales engages with the lead are noted. If the lead is not acted upon in a timely fashion (time frame established by sales and marketing together), not moved forward or is moved backwards in the sales process, there is a set period whereby the lead is reassigned or recycled back to marketing. This ensures the lead doesn't get lost or stuck or otherwise slow down the sales engagement process.
Lead recycling refers to leads which are not yet ready to be acted upon by sales. It's an acknowledgment that these leads have value and should continue to be engaged until they are ready, or until it's absolutely clear that there is no further sales potential. Recycling is important due to the fact that so many leads that enter the sales funnel are ignored or lost. The critical point here is that there are a percentage of these leads that are simply not yet ready to buy, but do down the road fully intend to purchase a product or solution. Potentially yours if you maintain a relationship with them.
The guide refers to two recycling scenarios, where leads are either automatically recycled according to set rules or they are manually recycled by sales. In either case, these leads can be ported to other campaigns in place which are cognizant of their status, the level of data that has previously been exchanged between the prospect and the company and provide tactics which reflect and leverage that information.
The final component of lead lifecycle campaigns is when new customers are won - and the opportunities you'll have to build upon the relationship you've developed with the (new) customer and add to their lifetime value with cross-sell, up-sell and service offerings that continually meet their needs. Drip campaigns for these customers can include welcome notes, helpful hints, newsletters, et al, that would be an ideal means to further deepen your customer engagement and strengthen your relationship.
One area we talked about was advanced lead nurturing and what he calls lead lifecycle campaigns. He defines these campaigns as designed to ensure that leads don't go stagnant (or get lost), to keep them moving with the goal of maintaining an ongoing interaction with the prospect until they are ready to buy or engage with sales.
Driving home after our meeting I was thinking about the number of leads I've seen generated that for whatever reasons did not achieve sales-ready status that just lingered in the marketing funnel, or worse, were jettisoned out of the system with no further action put upon them. It's a big number. His reference to these types of leads as simply in a 'not ready to buy yet' state was an interesting recognition of these leads having an intrinsic value (you've invested a certain amount of time, money, resource to get them to a certain stage).
My interest was piqued and that night I downloaded his company's guide to lead nurturing to learn more. In it they discuss lead lifecycle campaigns being broken down into three categories - lead handoff, lead recycling and new customers.
Lead handoff is when a marketing qualified lead (MQL) becomes a sales-ready lead (SRL) and is passed into the sales team. Details about the lead including date passed, nurture time and how quickly sales engages with the lead are noted. If the lead is not acted upon in a timely fashion (time frame established by sales and marketing together), not moved forward or is moved backwards in the sales process, there is a set period whereby the lead is reassigned or recycled back to marketing. This ensures the lead doesn't get lost or stuck or otherwise slow down the sales engagement process.
Lead recycling refers to leads which are not yet ready to be acted upon by sales. It's an acknowledgment that these leads have value and should continue to be engaged until they are ready, or until it's absolutely clear that there is no further sales potential. Recycling is important due to the fact that so many leads that enter the sales funnel are ignored or lost. The critical point here is that there are a percentage of these leads that are simply not yet ready to buy, but do down the road fully intend to purchase a product or solution. Potentially yours if you maintain a relationship with them.
The guide refers to two recycling scenarios, where leads are either automatically recycled according to set rules or they are manually recycled by sales. In either case, these leads can be ported to other campaigns in place which are cognizant of their status, the level of data that has previously been exchanged between the prospect and the company and provide tactics which reflect and leverage that information.
The final component of lead lifecycle campaigns is when new customers are won - and the opportunities you'll have to build upon the relationship you've developed with the (new) customer and add to their lifetime value with cross-sell, up-sell and service offerings that continually meet their needs. Drip campaigns for these customers can include welcome notes, helpful hints, newsletters, et al, that would be an ideal means to further deepen your customer engagement and strengthen your relationship.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
High-Performance Landing Pages
As part of an overall lead nurturing strategy, there's been increasing talk about the use of what are commonly being referred to as high-performance landing pages (HPLPs). Marketing Profs will be presenting a webinar on HPLPs later this week. Companies like Ion Interactive offer software for HPLP development.
The idea behind HPLPs is simple -- better segmenting practices help you construct more targeted landing pages (LPs) with custom messaging and offers that more accurately speak to the interests and needs of targets in the decision chain. As marketeers continue to search for ways to boost conversions and make their content more relevant, I think the idea of customizing and super-charging your landing page optimization is well founded.
Some software apps (like the aforementioned Ion) can automate the process of building these pages -- helping to improve page layouts, dynamic page editing, adding/testing page elements such as Flash and flexible forms, bringing in logic/business rules to provide unique pathing based upon prior behaviors and advanced reporting capabilities.
Even if your budget won't permit the use of a landing page optimization software app, it's good practice to seek to manually create LPs that are specifically targeted to individual members of the decision chain (C-level, VP-level, Dir-level, Analyst-level) rather than one size fits all. Usually each of those targets has different responsibilities relative to the decision process, and thus would likely better respond to more relevant (and compelling) messaging and offers.
The idea behind HPLPs is simple -- better segmenting practices help you construct more targeted landing pages (LPs) with custom messaging and offers that more accurately speak to the interests and needs of targets in the decision chain. As marketeers continue to search for ways to boost conversions and make their content more relevant, I think the idea of customizing and super-charging your landing page optimization is well founded.
Some software apps (like the aforementioned Ion) can automate the process of building these pages -- helping to improve page layouts, dynamic page editing, adding/testing page elements such as Flash and flexible forms, bringing in logic/business rules to provide unique pathing based upon prior behaviors and advanced reporting capabilities.
Even if your budget won't permit the use of a landing page optimization software app, it's good practice to seek to manually create LPs that are specifically targeted to individual members of the decision chain (C-level, VP-level, Dir-level, Analyst-level) rather than one size fits all. Usually each of those targets has different responsibilities relative to the decision process, and thus would likely better respond to more relevant (and compelling) messaging and offers.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Lead Nurturing
I've been chatting this week with a former colleague setting up a simple lead scoring system for a small tech company where he runs the marketing team. He embraces the importance of automating his lead collection and management, nurturing the leads they gather as well as placing scores on each of the interactions he has with prospects as they progress through the lead funnel. Good stuff.
We've been debating though the amount of data he should seek to collect through this lead nurturing process, that is, how much data and when to ask for it. He's attempting to collect all relevant data with which to determine if the prospect is a viable lead IN THE FIRST CONTACT HE MAKES. Hmmm, I say... not good stuff.
We both agree that lead nurturing should be an ongoing process where we engage in a ongoing dialogue with a prospect with the goal of providing the prospect with high value information that makes him smarter/do his job better in exchange for his providing us proprietary data about what his needs are (or might be in the future). This suggests that this information exchange should be gradual and at a pace the prospect feels comfortable with in his learning process.
The lead nurture process is very much about your company gradually earning trust as a valued thought leader or provider of good ideas. As you become a trusted partner (you're not just about trying to sell product) the prospect will become more willing to gradually reveal more information about himself and his requirements. Very few people will tell you everything about who they are/what they need in that first marketing interaction.
I've always felt that the campaign forms I build are incremental and reflect where the prospect is in the funnel. I seek to gather just enough prospect data with the first marketing activity that permits me the chance to re-connect and prove my mettle again and again. My first forms usually ask just for a first, last name and an email address (always a 2nd email field to ensure there are no errors). Once I have that, I can enter the prospect into my marketing database and let the conversation grow.
Hopefully with each successive marketing transaction I provide sufficient value for the prospect to feel comfortable in exchanging more info about who he is and what his needs might be. A 2nd form might for instance ask for his title, company name, size, address and industry. 3rd touch forms might then delve into BANT information (budget, authority, need, timeline) where I begin to get a sense if there is funded project either now or on the horizon.
In future posts I'll go through how creating an offer portfolio which supports this lead nurturing process ensures a hand-off from one marketing transaction to the next and keeps the prospect engaged.
We've been debating though the amount of data he should seek to collect through this lead nurturing process, that is, how much data and when to ask for it. He's attempting to collect all relevant data with which to determine if the prospect is a viable lead IN THE FIRST CONTACT HE MAKES. Hmmm, I say... not good stuff.
We both agree that lead nurturing should be an ongoing process where we engage in a ongoing dialogue with a prospect with the goal of providing the prospect with high value information that makes him smarter/do his job better in exchange for his providing us proprietary data about what his needs are (or might be in the future). This suggests that this information exchange should be gradual and at a pace the prospect feels comfortable with in his learning process.
The lead nurture process is very much about your company gradually earning trust as a valued thought leader or provider of good ideas. As you become a trusted partner (you're not just about trying to sell product) the prospect will become more willing to gradually reveal more information about himself and his requirements. Very few people will tell you everything about who they are/what they need in that first marketing interaction.
I've always felt that the campaign forms I build are incremental and reflect where the prospect is in the funnel. I seek to gather just enough prospect data with the first marketing activity that permits me the chance to re-connect and prove my mettle again and again. My first forms usually ask just for a first, last name and an email address (always a 2nd email field to ensure there are no errors). Once I have that, I can enter the prospect into my marketing database and let the conversation grow.
Hopefully with each successive marketing transaction I provide sufficient value for the prospect to feel comfortable in exchanging more info about who he is and what his needs might be. A 2nd form might for instance ask for his title, company name, size, address and industry. 3rd touch forms might then delve into BANT information (budget, authority, need, timeline) where I begin to get a sense if there is funded project either now or on the horizon.
In future posts I'll go through how creating an offer portfolio which supports this lead nurturing process ensures a hand-off from one marketing transaction to the next and keeps the prospect engaged.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Top Tips to Increase Marketing ROI from Industry Thought Leaders
I thought this was good post today on Marketo's site Increasing Marketing ROI: The Top 5 Tips from our B2B Thought Leaders on how to increase campaign ROI. It's consistent with what I've been discussing recently about the importance of inbound marketing (being found, creating compelling content), as well as the significance of lead nurturing, testing and integrating all your various channels to make sure they're working in concert.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Today's Cool Links - Mar 19, 2009
Several great articles/posts the last two days...
On MarketingProfs (premium membership req), in How One Company's Content Marketing Improved Qualified Lead Generation, Boosted Revenue 38% Kimberly Smith talks about the importance of content to help fuel their lead generation programs and increase conversions and lead quality. Specifically she discusses vendor-neutral content as establishing the company as an unbiased thought leader and expert on a particular topic. Prospects gravitate to information that educates and informs them about business challenges/problems, and the trust that ensues supports a value-based relationship between the company and the prospect.
In A Direct Marketing Revolution Gary Stein on ClickZ discusses how the Status Update feature on Facebook can provide a terrific opportunity to send email-like updates on anything into your company's Facebook followers.
Terrific MarketingSherpa case study on lead nurturing at Optimize a Lead Nurturing Campaign: 5 Steps to Boost Conversions and Warm a Cold List ... finding the right combination of relevant content and messaging frequency to make your lead nurturing campaigns resonate.
And finally, also on ClickZ some great tips from Dave Evans on Where to Get a Social Media Education... check it out.
On MarketingProfs (premium membership req), in How One Company's Content Marketing Improved Qualified Lead Generation, Boosted Revenue 38% Kimberly Smith talks about the importance of content to help fuel their lead generation programs and increase conversions and lead quality. Specifically she discusses vendor-neutral content as establishing the company as an unbiased thought leader and expert on a particular topic. Prospects gravitate to information that educates and informs them about business challenges/problems, and the trust that ensues supports a value-based relationship between the company and the prospect.
In A Direct Marketing Revolution Gary Stein on ClickZ discusses how the Status Update feature on Facebook can provide a terrific opportunity to send email-like updates on anything into your company's Facebook followers.
Terrific MarketingSherpa case study on lead nurturing at Optimize a Lead Nurturing Campaign: 5 Steps to Boost Conversions and Warm a Cold List ... finding the right combination of relevant content and messaging frequency to make your lead nurturing campaigns resonate.
And finally, also on ClickZ some great tips from Dave Evans on Where to Get a Social Media Education... check it out.
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