This month, I’m excited to have Ryan Mantzel and Matt Martelli, both co-founders and principals for Flywheel360, featured on our Partner of the Month blog. Flywheel360 is a demand generation agency that specializes in aligning sales and marketing efforts to maximize company resources, generate actionable leads and drive revenue. We asked them a few questions regarding lead management and segmentation, and they had some great insights to share:
1) Do you have any advice for re-engaging contacts that have been inactive for a year or more?
[caption id="attachment_2657" align="alignright" width="218" caption="Matt Martelli (left) and Ryan Mantzel, co-founders and principals for Flywheel360"]
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Martelli: I would segment out the list into a few buckets based on what you know about the contact: type of contact (prospect or customer), length of inactive status, level of interest, and reason for disengagement (if you know this information). Try a “We Want You Back” campaign with a simple survey asking them to share why they stopped responding to your emails. Incentives that are related to your products and/or services work extremely well in this type of campaign. It also shows that you genuinely care about keeping their business.
Mantzel: An easy campaign to clean up your database is a “Help Us Update Our Records” campaign, where you offer contacts a chance to update their preferences. This will help you verify email addresses and keep your database updated. In addition to that, any current events related to their initial inquiry can help them re-engage. For a higher ed example, “New Classes Are Forming” and “New Degree Programs Are Now Available” seem to work well in this space.
I’d also recommend adding a re-engagement program that’s triggered any time a lead is lost. This way, you never have to play catch-up.
2) Do you segment your email addresses by individuals that have responded to previous campaigns?
Martelli: You should segment your audience based on previous behavior, role, buying horizon and any factor that you deem valuable. Create buckets or save queries off your main database to segment your most active contacts, your part-timers and your inactives. I’ve always found that a good survey can help you further segment a database and fill in critical information that will allow you to better converse with your audience in future mailings.
Mantzel: I’d also include progressive forms as a way to continually update your database in small, unobtrusive increments.
3) What’s the best way to ensure a lead is not incl