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Closed-loop Marketing Improves Lead Scoring
June 18, 2008
Talented marketers can, and typically do, generate a significant number of leads each month for their sales force. And talented sales reps will generally ignore or pay little attention to most of them.
By Loren McDonald
Leads flood into companies from all directions and as a result of a myriad of possible marketing initiatives—tradeshows, online events, white paper downloads, e-mail campaigns, etc. With hundreds—or even thousands—of leads pouring into the sales funnel every month, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify and differentiate between the handful of potential buyers that are actively seeking a product or service and the majority who have no near-term intention to buy.
This causes a challenge for today’s marketers who are under increasing pressure to deliver measurable results and clearly demonstrate the value they provide. And sales is feeling just as much heat to deliver. But marketing and sales organizations are not taking advantage of the sophisticated solutions now available and many are likely missing out on real opportunities and closed deals.
To ease the pain, establishing an automated, closed-loop marketing program can deliver active and timely feedback from sales, as well as give real insight into how various marketing activities are driving revenue. Marketing automation allows companies to manage lead generation and lead-to-sales-processes, deliver full closed-loop ROI reporting and administer customer communication management.
Marketing automation provides marketing and sales forces with detailed prospect and customer information that enables companies to outperform the competition. But marketing and sales need to work together to figure out how to score and nurture the wide array of potentially valuable leads. Hot leads need to be identified and passed on to sales while cooler prospects need to be kept by marketing and "warmed." A closed-loop marketing automation solution provides a method of assigning points to different criteria for each lead that flows into your marketing organization. It allows you to rank and prioritize your leads and determine the likelihood of each becoming a customer.
Qualities of a Good Automated Lead Scoring Model
The most accurate lead scoring models are comprised of both explicit and implicit information. Explicit lead scores are based on information provided by or about the prospect—company size, job title, geographic location, etc. Implicit scores are derived from monitoring prospect behavior—Web site visits, white paper downloads, e-mail opens and clicks, etc. A good lead scoring methodology measures these attributes and behaviors over time to define a person's level of interest—and whether he or she represents a strong potential opportunity for sales.
Additionally, top-notch lead-scoring models also account for the recency and frequency of a behavior—how often and how recently a person took an action. By adding these two elements to the evaluation criteria, the model enables scores to go up or down based on prospect behavior. This is critical. Sales reps know that the quality of a lead changes both over time and as more or less interaction with the prospect occurs. A lead that comes into the system with an initially promising score needs to be re-scored as actions take place that indicate the prospect is ready to buy. Similarly, what looks like hot leads in the beginning can erode down to lukewarm if the initial burst of activity is followed by a lengthy silence.
However you choose to do it, keep the process flexible. Prospect scores should be able to change as you uncover new insights. Being able to fine-tune your scoring model increases accuracy, results in more qualified leads being sent to sales and more deals being won.
Automation Makes It Easy
Fortunately, powerful tools are now available that streamline and automate the lead scoring process—and provide access to all the different components of a lead score together—in a single platform. Today's demand generation marketing automation applications enable business-to-business and other marketers with a complex sales process to develop a complete, dynamic and measurable lead scoring processes as part of an overall lead management system.
Improving the ability to accurately track and measure marketing's impact on sales is critical to improving revenue. Not only does the sales team enjoy a flow of better qualified leads, marketing is able to monitor the results of its programs and track its successes.
Loren McDonald is Vice President of Industry Relations, Silverpop
Sales & Marketing Management Magazine
This article is brought to you by Sales & Marketing Management, the leading authority for executives in the sales and marketing field.
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