It’s the topic of discussion for so many webinars, whitepapers and blog posts (even here), but do you actually do lead scoring?  Until very recently, we hadn’t figured out a way to incorporate all of the various technology tools (Eloqua for Marketing Automation, HubSpot for its unique Internet Marketing tracking/features and Salesforce.com for Sales Automation) we use into one comprehensive score.  So the question is, how do you close the loop with that many systems interacting?

To regress a little bit, we have always had lead scoring on the list of to-do’s.  It’s been on that list for easily the last three or four quarters, but each time it comes down to the wire either there’s not enough time or there is just so much for us to wrap together that it’s a little overwhelming.  Honestly, it wasn’t a high priority this quarter, but our Sales team was looking for a way to prioritize the accounts they were working so we initially (accidentally) built an explicit lead scoring system.   We set point values for things like:

• Having key players in the decision making unit in our CRM and/or knowing that they exist
• Knowing if the prospect markets to more than one vertical (and what space they play in)
• What Marketing Automation system the prospect uses
• What CRM the prospect uses
• ASP (Average Sales Price)

Eventually this all gets tabulated into a score (and the information collected in creating the score), that score determines a few things.  First, what kind of marketing messages the contacts within the account get and secondly, whether or not the rep even wants them followed up with.  That second item is determined by a score in the negative range…we’ve got some accounts that our reps don’t want to work with for specific reasons and those automatically get a -100 added to their score so we can better differentiate them from the rest of the crowd.

Originally this was good for us, we felt that it was a start towards the lead scoring we wanted to have and that it would give our sales team the info they needed to better prioritize their follow up.  Well it left something out…in focusing only on the accounts they were selling in to, we left out the leads they still need to follow up with in order to efficiently prospect for new business. So we went back to the drawing board.

Our next pass ended up being a more implicitly focused lead score.  With the help of one of our more development minded co-workers, we were able to employ an Apex Trigger in salesforce.com that checks for activity on the lead records and gives a score according to the frequency and creator of the activity.  To speak slightly more English (and less tech), if a lead has 3-5 activities from either HubSpot or Eloqua, meaning a form download, website activity or email open, created within a 3 month timeframe then they are ‘cold’ – if they have 3-5 activities within a 1 month timeframe then they are ‘warm’ and if they have 3-5 activities within a week they are ‘hot.’  Our basic idea being that within salesforce.com we set up views of cold-warm-hot leads and our reps can just follow up with those, instead of worrying about who is coming out of what nurture cycle behind the scenes.   So the sales team essentially gets a window on who is actually raising their hand and only those who do so often enough to be considered interest in us and our products.

By no means have we completed this process but we’re definitely off to a start. Closing the loop between our various tools one score at a time…do you score your leads, if so, how?

Do you constantly feel the pull for newer, better, more data?  Is there always that feeling that if you could just get a few new contacts a sale would be right around the corner?  Of course there is value to new leads data, but what about the data you already have?  Your internal database is likely an underutilized gold mine, but if it hasn’t been properly maintained it’s likely in need of a tune-up.

Did you know?

1. Up to 20% of all postal addresses change every year.¹
2. Up to 18% of all telephone numbers change every year.¹
3. Up to 21% of all CEO’s change every year.¹
4. 25-33% of email addresses on a “house” file will become outdated every year.²
5. In the next hour, 58 business addresses will change, 11 companies will change their names, and 41 new businesses will open¹ … not to mention how many companies will go out of business.
6. In addition, up to 66% of people change companies or job functions every year!³

Scared yet?  If you’re not, you should be, these statistics are enough to worry the most seasoned marketer.  What are you doing to keep your database from being impacted by these figures?   Here at ReachForce we run a series of data hygiene reports on our database regularly, they give us information on what data has been marked as bad, where it came from and how old it is.

Ok, so let’s say you already do something like this, you’ve got your dirty data bagged and tagged, what do you do now? Check out our Top 10 signs your database needs help, some of these top 10 can easily be identified in an error report, for those that you can’t identify, you really need to take a deeper dive into your data.  These things can’t be remedied overnight, but with some elbow grease and time you too can turn around the state of your database, after all, according to  Sirius Decisions, companies marketing to a database that is routed through a healthy data-cleansing routing can realize nearly 70% more revenue than an average organization, based purely on data quality.

For an idea of how dirty your data might be, check out the ReachForce Dirty Data Calculator, with a few simple numbers from you, it will give you some real-life idea as to how much of your data has ‘expired.’

SOURCES:
¹D&B
²Lyris Technologies: “Guru’s Guide to Email Marketing Success”
³Sales & Marketing Institute

As the person here at ReachForce ultimately responsible for having a regularly updated blog, I know how very difficult it can be to continually come up with new blog post ideas.  Lucky for me Kipp Bodnar has created a great list of 20 Ideas For B2B Blog Content To Drive Traffic and Boost SEO on the Social Media B2B blog. Here are some of my favorites:

• Profile your customers
• List the top ten twitter users in your industry
• List the top five blogs in your industry
• Start a contest and ask for submissions
• Use Trendrr to create graphs of industry information
• Compile the top ten blog posts on a specific industry topic

I can’t wait to start using some of these ideas myself.  Some things we do on The B2B Lead:

• Guest posts from partners and customers
• Quote great articles and blog posts and then expand on those ideas (hence this post)
• Write a cliff notes version of hit industry books
• Feature other companies who offer complimentary services or products to your own

Don’t forget to read the full list of 20 ideas!

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, Are Your Leads Lying to You?, I want to dive a little further into David Taber’s article CRM Tips: When Leads Lie.  There are some truly interesting statistics in this article, but the meat of the article is his call to focus on the creation of opportunities as a key indicator/metric rather than the creation of leads.  Sitting at the cross-roads between Marketing and Sales I can echo his commentary that is a key indicator but I feel that it’s also a bit hasty to claim that it is the only meaningful metric.

Taber argues that by focusing on ‘sales-cycle starts’ (i.e. creation of opportunities) you get a true view of the over all process and communication between Sales and Marketing.   His position is that by using opportunity creation as the key metric you will encourage better alignment between Marketing and Sales.  While I think that he is on the right path, I feel like using only creation of opportunity as a metric fails to take into account the activity on all sides of the table that goes into feeding the creation of opportunities.

If one side fails to fulfill their end of the bargain, then you’ll end up with a lopsided equation and little to no opportunity creation.  For example, if Marketing is not held to the standard of feeding ‘X’ amount of leads and then drumming up activity via an email campaign, webinar, etc. then there is nothing for Sales to use to stir up the opportunities.  On the other side of the coin, if Marketing regularly adds leads, keeps the activity going and continues to feed the fires but Sales isn’t following up then opportunities won’t be created either.   Both pieces of the puzzle are necessary to create opportunities and by looking away from the metrics that measure each of these activities, spotting upcoming problems (or finding the root to existing ones) is difficult at best.

Taber argues that an opportunity centric focus will create the collaboration necessary to convert leads to opportunities, while I agree that if all the pieces are in place it can happen I guess I’m just a bit of a cynic (or a big metrics nerd).  I feel like it’s important to see the whole picture to ensure the process works all the way around.  Keeping everyone accountable to key metrics (lead input, campaign activity, meeting setting and execution) that are relevant to their role in the cycle will allow better visibility across the process and will ensure that if something breaks you can easily identify where the problem was and fix it.

Sitting down with my coffee this morning I stumbled across David Taber’s article CRM Tips: When Leads Lie,.  In it, Taber makes the case for really focusing on the right metrics in measuring performance, interesting stuff, but I got stuck on a particular statement he makes: “In many B2B and B2C businesses, the unqualified leads that are in the nurturing cycle may be numbered in the millions. Industry statistics show that up to 40 percent of leads may make their first purchase after having been in the “remarketing database” for 18 months or longer.”   As someone who works with our database and manages the cleansing of our customers database (via our Relevance & Repair Process), I was really struck by this.

On a day to day basis I look at lots of data (ok that’s an understatement, in the past two months I’ve looked at tons of contacts/prospects), most people who engage in our data appending and cleansing services do so to clean up old data – to find the diamond in the ruff. They are looking for that 40%, but what if they’ve had the right name and the wrong email for the last eighteen months?? And assuming they have been emailing this person for that time and they’ve had the wrong email, wow – that’s someone that they have lost some serious time with.

So how do you avoid falling into the abyss of not knowing if you’re marketing but no one’s listening?  Know who you’ve got good information for and who you need to get the right information for.  One more pitch for data cleanliness here but the idea is very simple, how will you ever reach that 40% if you don’t have their contact information right?

Our customers, prospects and B2B Lead followers often ask us about marketing automation.  Since ReachForce targeted role-based leads are fed into many of these solutions we decided to give each of them an opportunity to explain their key benefits and features in their own words. Thanks to Matthew Quinlan (@mattquinlan) at LoopFuse for this post.

What is LoopFuse?

Sophistication Made Simple

LoopFuse was founded on the principle that marketing automation should be powerful yet simple. In fact, it was the founders’ experience of implementing a marketing automation system at JBoss that led directly to the creation of LoopFuse OneView. Some marketing automation vendors achieve power and flexibility, but at the expense of usability. Others have a fantastic user interface, but a shallow feature-set. LoopFuse OneView strikes the delicate balance between sophistication and simplicity by hiding complexity with integrated contextual help, intuitive defaults, and wizard-driven configuration.

In addition to making LoopFuse OneView easy to implement and easy to use, we also make it easy to buy. Our complete pricing list is publicly available from our website so that our prospects know exactly how much LoopFuse will cost before engaging our sales team. (Refreshing, isn’t it?) Even better, there are absolutely no hidden fees. No setup fees. No support fees. No per-user fees. No API fees. You can even pay by credit card. Try LoopFuse OneView with zero risk by signing up for a fully functional free trial on our website. Your account is immediately provisioned without ever speaking to a LoopFuse salesperson.

Lead Management

Target, track, capture, score, segment, nurture, route, convert, close, and analyze your leads in a single tool that tightly integrates with your CRM. Start with anonymous web activity collection that provides the basis for web analytics such as most popular pages, best referrers, search terms, and most active companies (via IP address). Collect registration data and convert anonymous visitors into identified prospects. Continuously evaluate the quality of each prospect according to his/her profile and behavior and route qualified prospects to the CRM. Nurture unqualified prospects by providing a constant drip of highly relevant and timely information (via email) to engage the prospect until they are ready to buy. Arm the salesperson with all of the relevant information necessary to close the deal. Finally, analyze the effectiveness of each lead source to determine the best use of your marketing dollars.

Sales Enablement

LoopFuse will automatically create new leads/contacts/tasks in the CRM based on the LeadFlow you define. Existing leads/contacts in the CRM are continuously updated with information such as lead score updates, new registration form data, email campaign activity, and latest web activity. Within 1-2 clicks the salesperson has access to every piece of data ever collected about a prospect, including the prospect’s company & location (even if prospect left it blank), and all of the activity (anonymous included) associated with the prospect’s company. The prospect data is further enriched with one-click access to the prospect’s LinkedIn profile as well as data about the company from Hoovers, Jigsaw, ZoomInfo, and Google. By adding a prospect to their watchlist, a salesperson can be immediately notified when the prospect visits the website. Calling a prospect while they are browsing your site ensures that you have their full attention.

Performance & Scalability

While much of our early success was concentrated within open-source companies, LoopFuse continues to add customers from traditional software companies, SAAS providers, media companies, etc. One of the advantages of having so many open-source customers early on was that it required us to build a highly scalable infrastructure to manage the millions of transactions (page views, emails, registrations, etc.) per day that result from our customers offering free software. This continues to be a strategic advantage for LoopFuse as we can easily scale to accommodate customers of any size.

Why LoopFuse?

• Basic setup in less than 1 hour via configuration wizard
• Unlimited database size at no extra charge!
• Free trial to prove the value before you purchase
• Because it works

Is your database a clunker?  Is it sputtering to a stop just short of the finish line?   Taking a look at the contents of your clunker can have some huge benefits for you, it not only helps you save some green, it also can stimulate the revenue engine for your sales team.   Drag your clunker out of the garage and see how it measures up:

1. Do you know how many of your contacts are duplicated? Saying you have 45,000 contacts is one thing, but if that is three copies of 15,000 people it’s not really a 45,000 contact database.  You aren’t reaching the number of people you want to be with duplicates in your database and you’re probably missing out on other contacts and companies who are ripe to hear your message.
2. Are you marketing to the entire DMU (decision making unit)? Marketing Sherpa says that for purchases of $25k or more:
   • Companies with 100-500 employees, the DMU consists of 6.8 people who make buying decisions
   • Companies with 501-1000 employees, the DMU consists of 13.5 people
   • Companies over 1000 employees, the DMU consists of 21 people

   So the question is which, if any, of the 6.8/13.5/21 people are in your database?  Which ones are you missing, which ones are over a year old?

3. How many email addresses are you missing? I’ll bet that’s an easy number for you to find, now can you tell me how many of the existing addresses are right or wrong?  Of those that are wrong, is it because there is something structurally (i.e. they are missing the ‘@’ sign or a ‘.com’) wrong or are they hard bouncing?  If you’re relying heavily on email marketing these are important things to know.  Having thousands of contacts is great, but thousands of contacts with only a few hundred accurate email addresses, not so great.
4. According to Gartner, more than 30 million people out of the 138 million employed in the US will switch jobs in the next 12 months.  Do you know which of your contacts have been sitting in your database for 12 months or more? Do you know which of those are still employed with the same company, doing the same job?
5. Do you know which companies in your database are in your target market? Is it easy to segment your database by company level information? If you’re missing industry information on your records you’re probably missing opportunities to include the right people (or companies) in your messages.

If you’ve been left with a few too many questions after reading this, that’s ok.  The good news is that a good data cleansing/appending service can fill in the gaps and help you turn your clunker into cash, or some serious elbow grease from an in-house team can really get the wheels turning.  SiriusDecisions reports that companies marketing to a database that is routed through a healthy data-cleansing routing can realize nearly 70% more revenue than an average organization, based purely on data quality.  Next step for you – get that clunker rolled out of the garage and get cleaning!

Need help updating your clunker of a database? ReachForce has a special Cash for Clunkers offer for Q3 to help you get in gear for Q4.

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been highlighting some of the most well known Marketing Automation players out there.  This week we’re profiling MarketBright.  Thanks again to Caitlin and Mike Pilcher for the previous blog post.

So now that you’ve read about and studied up on each, what’s next?  Just getting the right technology in place isn’t going to solve all of your headaches.

MarketBright’s whitepaper, Tips To Improve Your Lead Management Strategy, has some great ideas on creating and building out your lead generation strategy.

Here’s a few things that caught my eye…

When getting started here’s a few things to think about:

• Who has ownership of each stage of the process?
• Is there a defined lead management flow that exists today?
• What essential performance indicators or ROI measures are associated at key points throughout the process?

Just like taking a road trip, best practice says you should have a map before you take off.

Lead Generation/Acquisition – the following elements are absolutely necessary to provide QUALITY leads:

• Have you agreed with your sales team on what a qualified lead looks like?  Any of these sound familiar?
• Clearly define and know your target market.  An effective lead generation process always begins and ends with knowing the audience.
• Use effective lead generation tools.
• Optimize landing pages and forms.  Be clear on the action you want your audience to take and focus the content on just that action.
• Use accurate and reliable campaign metrics for tracking, reporting and testing.  This keeps everyone involved in the process honest .

Remember – the secret with any lead management system is to maximize the efficiency but not lose the impact of a personal customer experience. I think this is a great point!  As we continue to use automation to be more effective and efficient we have to remember that people buy from people.

Thanks again to MarketBright for contributing this week.  Now go download this whitepaper to ensure you are set up for success.

MarketingSherpa just came out with a very interesting how-to on using LinkedIn for lead generation.  While most of us have a profile, many marketers are unsure on how to use this new channel as a lead source.  MarketingSherpa interviewed Jason Rushin, Director, Marketing at Quantivo on his process and found 6 lessons that all B2B marketers can learn from.

Here are some of highlights from the article:

Lesson #1. Target groups by activity level, not just size

For each group, Rushin spent 15 or 20 minutes reading through recent posts to assess group members’ interest areas, and how much activity each post generated. In the end, he identified 17 groups that matched his needs.

Lesson #2. Join groups under an individual name, not a company identity

Social media is a two-way channel, which makes it especially important to assign a point-person to oversee your social media initiatives, establish themselves as a community member, and respond to feedback.

Lesson #3. Place collateral in the context of a conversation

Every time the team had a new piece of collateral to promote — such as a webinar or a white paper — Rushin looked for opportunities to share that information with the team’s LinkedIn groups.

- For example, when promoting a white paper, he would write a message to the group announcing the new title, sharing a link, and asking group members to provide feedback on the white paper itself.

Lesson #4. Response rate is highly variable

By participating in several groups, Rushin quickly saw that response to his lead-generation offers (in the form of landing page registrations) was highly variable. Each group has its own characteristics and dynamics, which make some white paper or webinar offers highly successful and others relative duds.

Testing content offerings among different groups is essential. Beyond that, Rushin also saw two factors that affected response rate:

- Placement in the weekly or daily update newsletters

- White paper or webinar topic

Lesson #5. Create social media-specific landing pages

Rather than taking LinkedIn members to a standard landing page, Rushin created landing pages that specifically addressed the LinkedIn audience.

The tactic did not require a complete landing page redesign. Instead, the team modified the landing page text to create continuity for visitors arriving from LinkedIn, using phrases such as: “Thank you for your interest in this discussion”

Lesson #6. Quality can be an issue with leads from LinkedIn

To discourage job-seekers, the team changed its registration form to require prospects to use an email address from a company domain — forbidding the use of free email accounts such as Yahoo! or Gmail. The technique backfired, though, when LinkedIn members began complaining to Rushin (and sometimes to their Twitter followers) that the company was preventing unemployed people or independent consultants from viewing their thought-leadership content.

Rather than risk alienating LinkedIn members, you may have to rely on inside sales follow-up or further nurturing to eliminate non-qualified leads from your marketing funnel.

Ultimately lead generation on LinkedIn is the same as any other lead gen channel.  Be targeted, stay relevant to your audience, measure everything you can and always go for quality over quantity of leads.

The entire article is open to non-MarketingSherpa members until August 5th, be sure to check it out.

Thanks to Emily for the Manticore post earlier this week.  Manticore has great resources section on their website full of best practices and tips for anyone trying to learn more about marketing automation.  For those of you who are trying to make the tough decision to decide on the best marketing automation solution for your company, Manticore has 23 Questions Demand Generation Companies May Not Want You to Ask.  The checklist coves five categories of questions you should be asking:

• Key Features and Functionality
• Customer Support
• Usability
• Company Reliability
• CRM Integration

Questions to consider include:

• What is the specific version of the product that you are showing me?
• Do you have your own email engine?
• How long will the implementation take?

The best part is it is not just a list of questions.  Manticore breaks down why you should care about the answers to each and how it will affect your business.

Don’t forget to download your own copy for the full list of questions (it is the first item under the whitepapers tab).