B2B marketers and their CFOs have always paid great attention to ROI metrics. They know precisely the amount of money they have invested in a solution or service and they evaluate the success or failure by the level of profit and/or savings. But what about the time it takes for a company to see value from a new software solution? Often, time-to-value is the overlooked metrical complement to ROI. Time-to-value addresses the need for real results soon after an implementation, especially with tight budgets and highly scrutinized investments.

Recently, Silverpop Engage B2B client WorkForce Software shared with us how they were able to get up and running in just 60 days, from initial training through to delivering measurable results for their organization. In just two months, WorkForce Software was able to completely re-engineer its lead-qualification process to ensure that incoming leads were providing valuable opportunities to sales. Adding lead generation best practices to its marketing efforts also helped increase the number of inbound requests through its Web site by more than 400 percent, proving Engage B2B's time-to-value in delivering dramitic ROI. To learn more about WorkForce Software, click here.

Posted by Will Schnabel at 9:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The tip this week comes from our Client Care Specialist in the London office, Greg Staunton. Greg has a Master's degree in Marketing and more than six years of implementing lead management solutions for high-tech clients.

Many B2B marketers know their companies could benefit from a lead scoring model, because they've read the case studies and seen how the program, when done right, can align sales and marketing teams and increase marketing ROI. However, many of them don't know how to start.

Typical scenario: When marketers market to the leads they've garnered, they send the marketing reports to sales. Soon, a back log arises because sales teams do not have the time to go through every single contact, and review the raw data. This is meaningless. And as the quarter roles by, sales is increasingly under pressure to win deals. Feeling the pressure first hand, sales can begin to view marketing as an ineffective operation that sends them poor quality leads.

To alleviate this issue, many B2B marketers will attempt to develop a lead scoring model to determine at what stage in the buying cycle each lead is at and moving those deemed ready-to-buy to sales. The problem is many B2B marketers will read lead management best practice whitepapers and attempt to develop the final stage of a lead scoring model tied in with a nurture program first versus starting from the beginning. This usually ends up in failure.

The solution: Start off simple. Sales and Marketing must sit down together and implement a lead scoring model. The lead scoring model is based initially on BANT and demographic information provided by the prospect through lead generation. Rank leads according to how well they fit with your sweet spot. For instance: A = perfect fit, E = no fit.

The outcome: Marketing will send sales the kind of leads they'd like to receive to ensure their time isn't wasted trying to qualify leads that should be held in a lead nurturing campaign. Once you've achieved a high MQL to SAL rate, you can start looking at the next phase of lead scoring, which includes scoring leads based on their behavior.

Posted by Will Schnabel at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The best ideas are oftentimes the simplest. They seem to make so much sense once you review the issue before you. Then, they make you wonder how you missed it before.

The recent ah-ha moment for me was in planning how to best share ongoing advice to B2B marketers as it relates to lead management (thus fulfilling the mission of this blog). Well, the answer was right under my nose so to speak in the form of Silverpop's own marketing team, product consultants, and client account teams who are defining and implementing lead management best practices each and every day. Through the implementation of hundreds of marketing automation implementations, they have been fortunate to work with leading B2B marketing organizations engaged in global lead generation tactics and processes. Therefore, I decided to see if I could get some "volunteers" to provide their insights by means of a Tip of the Week.

So over the coming months, look to hear Tips from product marketing, field marketing, lead generation, Engage B2B (fna Vtrenz) product consultants, account managers, and maybe even a client or two. These are the people who don't just discuss the theory, but actually put this into practice every day.

Like I said, simple, isn't it!

Posted by Will Schnabel at 2:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As the economy takes its toll on marketing resources, it is well worth taking a look at how marketing organizations can further leverage their technology investments to improve day-to-day efficiencies. There is always great discussion and analysis around the ROI of lead management from a revenue enhancement and sales team productivity standpoint. But this overshadows a very real benefit of the underlying marketing automation technology, which is its ability to help marketing teams do more with less. With that in mind, here are my top five ideas for leveraging the efficiency of your lead management technology solution.

1) Centralize Your Prospect Lists: Take all those spreadsheets, email lists, and web leads and consolidate them into your lead management database. Then, take a look at all the input areas where leads are captured. Have every input point linked into this database. Sound difficult? Actually, it's easier than it may seem at first. Start by focusing on your Web forms and look to replace them with Web forms from your lead management tool. Or alternatively, have your current forms just call your lead system's API (Application Programming Interface) to insert the new lead directly into the database.

2) Keep Nurturing Simple: Now is not the time to craft the most sophisticated nurture programs in the world, finely slicing and dicing your prospects into highly targeted streams. As you may know, more streams of communications will require more content and thought. Work to define one solid lead nurture program. At a minimum have every prospect touched monthly, and look to use some of your best collateral.

3) Integrate Leads into the Sales Tool: In a perfect world, sales and marketing will sit together, develop the full aligned processes with a robust qualification and scoring model. However, there isn't always time. Take the first step and ask for a small amount of IT assistance (please don't laugh), and spend the effort getting new leads integrated into the sales tools as quickly as possible. Most lead management tools should and will be able to quickly integrate into the leading CRM systems to make this first-step integration fairly painless. Even if the lead flow is just one way (into sales), in very short order you can have leads going from initial capture all the way through to the hands of someone in sales with little or no manual intervention.

4) Alert Sales to New Leads: You'd think that sales would always be eager to follow-up immediately on all the new leads, but they are running as fast and furious as marketers are. You can put in place an ongoing, automated alerting campaign that keeps your leads top of mind to sales by sending them either email alerts or tasks directly into their sales force automation tool. And to save you the time and energy in trying to stay on top of sales, have the alerting continuing to send until the reps take action.

5) Build a Portfolio of Repeatable Campaigns: When you do an event, Webinar, or build a landing page, think about them as templates that will be copied and tweaked. You don't have time to come up with overly custom campaigns each time. Get a good design, make sure to test that it works smoothly, and then use that as the standard for future, similar campaigns.

As you can see, it is important to get assistance from IT and sales, as integrating the flow of data is key. But the initial work done now will pay off greatly in the coming months, and will really let your investment in marketing automation technology free your marketing personnel to spend time on other revenue enhancement projects.

Posted by Will Schnabel at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I love metaphors. I think they are a useful approach to explaining new concepts such as those in B2B lead management. One of my favorite metaphors of late is from my friend (and Silverpop CEO) Bill Nussey. He speaks about the changing marketing paradigm from interruptive marketing to true relationship building through customer engagement. He paints the picture by comparing the old-school interruptive marketing approaches to that of an uninvited party guest who shows up with a megaphone and wearing earplugs. The traditional idea was that if you shout loud enough and often enough, then someone will eventually listen to you.

Unfortunately, these types of guests are finding it harder and harder to get invited to the party. Not that mass advertising will go away as it will still remain part of our mix for a long time to come. However, as we all know, TV and radio advertising are being diminished by the likes of Tivo and satellite radio. Newspaper circulations are on the decline, because people are getting more and more of their news via the Internet. And unwanted communications, via telephone, email, and direct mail, are causing more and more of a backlash. The fight for space in a person's inbox is on, as prospects and customers are taking control of what they want to hear and when they want to hear it.

This was clearly the theme at last week's Technology for Marketing's annual event in London (for highlights of the show, read Technology for Marketing 2009 | razorshine). There was still a buzz in the air, even during the tumultuous environment that we are experiencing. But given the shrinking budgets and high scrutiny of marketing spend, the focus has shifted to engagement tactics that listen and respond, build long-term relationships, and ultimately drive higher return on marketing spend.

So I encourage us all to think about what we are trying to do when we launch new campaigns or plan our lead generation programs. Are we just trying to shout the loudest, or are we opening the door for meaningful dialog with our prospects and customers?

Posted by Will Schnabel at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)