Lead Lizard

Demand Generation Specialist

boush — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 18:10:16 +0000

Position Title: Demand Generation Specialist
Type: Full-Time, Salaried
Hours: 40 hours/week
Location: Portland

Lead Lizard is looking for a Demand Generation Specialist, a junior web production position. The ideal candidate has demonstrated skills in HTML and is eager to learn and improve in a team environment. The candidate will need to prove that he/she can learn marketing automation software quickly, learn from mistakes and execute tasks efficiently.

Responsibilities

Produce and deliver marketing collateral as assigned by the Account Manager. Collateral may include: HTML, reports, emails, landing pages, or forms built within marketing automation software.
Become fluent in Eloqua, Marketo, Salesforce.com and additional CRM and marketing automation software
Become fluent in Lead Lizard’s processes and tools, including task-tracking software and QA software
Develop a library of HTML/CSS that resolves email rendering problems across multiple email clients or landing page rendering across multiple browsers

Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree
Must possess superior written and verbal skills
Must be a good team player who can always work well independently
Demonstrated fluency with web standards and technologies including HTML/CSS
Solid understanding of marketing principles
Must be able to effectively prioritize competing needs, meet assigned deadlines, accurately and completely fulfill tasks, and deliver requested items only when quality assurance has been met
Experience with CRM (such as salesforce.com) or marketing automation software a plus, but not required

Company
Lead Lizard is a fast-growing marketing automation and demand generation agency, located in close-in Portland, OR (a short walk from the South Waterfront near Downtown). We have a relaxed work environment, with an emphasis on getting work done during work hours and enjoying life during non-work hours. Visit us at www.leadlizard.com to learn more.

Tell us about yourself. Please submit a resume with salary requirements to hr@leadlizard.com.

Project Manager

boush — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 18:43:39 +0000

Lead Lizard is looking for a Project Manager!
Location: Portland, OR Type: Full Time, Salary
Job Description: Lead Lizard is looking for an exceptional Project Manager to oversee execution of a variety of projects for small, talented team of marketing experts. The Project Manager will support an Account Manager in a client-facing role, and will be responsible for project scheduling, resourcing, oversight and delivery.

Core Responsibilities:

Manage projects from inception to completion
Use project management software to communicate with internal and external teams and facilitate transfer of deliverables
Maintain and update project schedules

Additional Duties:

Support account manager when needed for major client calls, strategy, etc.
Identify and proactively communicate delay risks
Create and maintain process documents; ensure all process steps are followed for each project. Ensure all deliverables have been routed through the agency’s quality control process.

Skills & Experience:

Strong written and verbal communication skills
1-3 years dedicated project management experience
BA/BS or additional experience in lieu of degree
Marketing automation or CRM experience a plus
Agency experience a plus
Ability to multitask and perform in a fast-paced environment

About Lead Lizard Lead Lizard is a fast-growing marketing automation agency in Portland, OR. Our talented team helps enterprise clients build strategic demand generation programs, align sales & marketing, and deploy their marketing automation and CRM systems. Lead Lizard provides an exciting, fun workplace; healthcare: medical, dental, vision; Simple IRA retirement plan; reasonable work hours and competitive salary.
For consideration, please send resume to hr@leadlizard.com

Lead Management Funnel

boush — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 18:15:10 +0000

Most of the time, a marketing and sales funnel is shown like the kind of funnel you would find in a kitchen or science lab. At Lead Lizard, we like the imagery of a funnel cloud: It’s messy, constantly changing in size and speed, and always a wild ride.

Our job is to help clean up your funnel and tame it. Our job is also to help build a process that reflects the realities and desires of your organization—that everyone can get on board with. A well-built lead management funnel can help your company develop happy clients, and even turn them into advocates.

The keys to a successful lead management program are these:

Align Sales and Marketing. Marketing and Sales need to know what the other department is doing to help generate demand and push leads through the funnel. Both sides can arm and aim the other if they’re aware of the strategy, challenges and objectives the other team faces.
Nurture Leads Throughout. A lot of companies will stop nurturing after a ‘welcome’ nurture program. Build nurturing programs that span the length of the funnel, from Known to Advocate.
Mind the Gaps. The transition from marketing to sales can be jarring for a lead. For every handoff between department, it’s crucial that care is taken on how the lead is passed so that no important information is dropped.
ABC – Always Be Converting. Your job as a marketing, sales or customer service person is to get as many leads to the next stage of the funnel as possible. That doesn’t stop when a lead becomes a closed deal. You’ll want to turn that client into an advocate, who will go to bat for you on future deals, become a case study and recommend your company to his or her peers.

Lead Management Consulting

Lead Lizard is a leading marketing automation agency for enterprise-level B2B companies. Its demand generation experts use strategic best practices to build world-class marketing automation programs. Contact Lead Lizard today to at info@leadlizard.com.

Lead Lizard. Leading the way in Marketing Automation.

Lead Scoring Best Practices

boush — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 01:17:24 +0000

What is Lead Scoring?

Lead scoring is a methodology for assigning a value to an individual. We use it to decide when a lead is ready to pass to sales and how a rep should prioritize that lead.

The Buyer’s Journey

It used to be there was a clear divide between marketing and sales. A lead received some marketing. Eventually, if she was interested, she contacted sales.

With greater information at a buyer’s fingertips, 70% of the decision is already made before sales ever gets involved. But a sales rep doesn’t have time to reach out to everyone who visited the website and filled out a form. Instead, for marketing to tell sales that a person is worth contacting, that person should be in a “Ready to Buy” stage.

Researching options
Evaluating between options
Ready to buy

Only in that last stage, is a lead qualified to go to sales. This is often called the MQL stage.

They’re Doing it Wrong

A novice to lead scoring will say, “I assigned +5 points for clicking an email and -100 points for unsubscribing. Let’s build this out to more activities.” If you ask, “Why? What is it all for?” they will tell you that it helps them know how engaged a lead is.

There’s the first problem. Engagement is not all it’s cracked up to be. It could be that you’ve just got a student writing a term paper on your company.

“Then let’s throw in some demographic information, on top of the behavioral” you might hear. It’s a good start. You certainly want to combine the profile score with the engagement score, which can tell you if you’ve got a good fit. The problem, though, is that we’re starting in the wrong place. Giving x points for this and y points for that isn’t the place to start. Let’s take a step back.

Back to BANT

Profile scoring is far older than marketing automation, and BANT scoring is older still. BANT stands for Budget (How much do they have to spend?), Authority (Can this person even make the purchase?), Need (What are they looking for?), and Timeframe to buy (Are they looking now or in the future?).

BANT has stuck around for a long time. You’ll see it used a lot, and sometimes companies using it don’t even know they’re using it. But BANT is fundamentally flawed based on the modern buyer’s journey. It just doesn’t work well with today’s modern marketing world.

How is BANT flawed?

BUDGET. For many products, the deal is not won or lost based on cost anymore. Often, pricing is available on websites and is often known before marketing even begins. In so many cases, then, the deal is won or lost based on other criteria, such as features or compatibility. And, as an added problem with budget as an explicit question on a form, the data inputted will be completely untrue.
AUTHORITY. BANT assumes that decisions are made in a vacuum. In reality, the real power may rest with an exploratory committee, not a CEO. Decisions are often made by people who support and inform decisions, but don’t make the final sign-off.
TIMEFRAME. Asking someone to fill out a form that includes timeframe is unproductive for a few reasons. First, we are now, through nurturing, better able to engage a buyer through all stages of their journey. Second, the value that they might select won’t reflect when they will make a decision, it only reflects when their boss has instructed them to finalize a decision. And third, data in this field is completely unreliable.

How to salvage BANT:

BUDGET is not relevant. It can be removed from explicit scoring and isn’t reliable through implicit scoring.
AUTHORITY is now being split into two groups: level and role. This acknowledges that, for example, an IT specialist (role is ‘IT’, level is ‘specialist’) may have more voice in vetting the purchase of a new software for a company than a marketing specialist.
TIMEFRAME can now be measured through implicit behavior. Where is the buyer in their journey? Are they discovering or considering? Scores here can reflect an incremental augmentation. Are they deciding? Time to boost the score.

What about NEED? Need is now, by far, the most important. Without knowing what someone is looking for, marketing and sales can’t reply effectively. If their need matches what you can deliver, it will get scored up. That way leads that are more likely to close and win are rising up, while leads that are likely to be dead ends or frustrating fall down. They don’t disappear completely – you’re still marketing to them – but they are not actively pursued.

Validating a methodology

After you’ve set up lead scoring, it seems to be working and reps are happier: How do you know it’s working? How can you improve it? The key to validation and optimization is in the data. Here are some standard reports that will help you look for problems and patterns:

Lead Score by Opportunity
- Opportunities Won
- Opportunities Lost

Lead Score by MQL:
- Converted MQL
- Rejected MQL

Lead Score by inactive leads

Look for patterns. Ask questions. Should we have passed leads that we didn’t? Are we missing some opportunities? Is sales closing what we throw over the wall?

These reports tell you what is the final product of your scoring model: how they map to your processes. Digging deep into this helps you validate your scoring model.

Conclusion

Lead scoring is not prescriptive, it is descriptive. It shows you which leads need to be addressed. It helps your sales team allocate its time effectively and it helps marketing show its value to the organization.

Lead scoring needs to address the buyer’s journey. It needs to be a guide that lets sales know who is researching, who is evaluating, and who is ready to buy.

Lead scoring must be thought out. If it becomes a task of assigning points to individuals just so your sales team knows who downloaded the latest whitepaper, it will fail. If you look at lead scoring as a dynamic, comprehensive methodology for bringing up leads that fit with what you’re selling, then you will make a lot of people in your organization very happy.

Lead Scoring Consulting

Lead Lizard is a leading marketing automation agency for enterprise-level B2B companies. Its demand generation experts use strategic best practices to build world-class lead scoring programs. Contact Lead Lizard today to at info@leadlizard.com.

Lead Lizard. Leading the way in Marketing Automation.

Act-On Software Consulting

boush — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 00:21:56 +0000

Lead Lizard has stepped up its partnership with Act-On Software, and is now providing Act-On consulting services.

Advance your use of Act-On Software

Are your campaigns not living up to their promise? Lead Lizard offers an Act-On managed services package that includes:

Campaign strategy
Best practices consulting
Campaign management and administration
Program execution
Training
Content creation
Targeting and list segmentation
Reporting
Templates, emails and landing pages
Testing, QA and optimization

Clean your data with a CRM and Act-On Audit

Is data between Act-On Software and your Salesfocre.com instance unreliable? Are their inconsistencies in your reports or database? Lead Lizard offers an audit that will:

Deliver clean data between Act-On Software and Salesforce.com
Report the right metrics
Integrate your CRM with Act-On
Deliver a best practice audit that covers programs, scoring rules, fields (account, prospect), connectors, forms, and user activity

Deliver qualified leads with a custom-built program

Does your marketing team need help building out a program in Act-On Software? Lead Lizard specializes in specific programs that will deliver quality leads to sales. The programs include:

Lead Scoring
Lead nurturing
Lead capture and custom forms
Closed loop marketing

Act-On Software Consulting

Pardot vs. Eloqua

boush — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 21:37:19 +0000

When it comes to Marketing Automation Software, you’ll want to make sure you choose the right one to match the exact specifications and goals of your company. In this blog post, we’ll be comparing the capabilities between two vendors: Pardot and Eloqua.

Pardot Overview

First, let’s look at Pardot.

It offers powerful segmentation tools with a clean UI, and a wide range of features, comparable to those of the more powerful Eloqua, but in a more affordable option.
Creating a dynamic list in Pardot is a simple and powerful way to filter your prospects based on your needs and goals. Dynamic lists use ‘rules’ to filter prospects, with a wide array of conditions. You can filter by tag, a specific form, landing page completions, custom and default fields values, query string, visitor info and CRM campaign, to name a few.
One of the more useful filtering options is Pardot’s ability to filter by other lists, both static lists and dynamic ones, so you can fine tune your results.

An excellent use case for this is if you want to send a reminder email only to contacts who registered for an upcoming event, you can create a dynamic list that automatically updates when members of the invitation group register for the event by completing a form or landing page.

Now, you can schedule the batch in advance, knowing when the emails go out, it will have dynamically updated to include only the contacts who have registered. You can then use that list to exclude the registrants if you send out a second round of invitations, so people that have already RSVP won’t be receiving emails they don’t need.

Pardot Disadvantages

Though robust in its capabilities, there are aspects to it that can be improved, such as:

Its ability to utilize sweeping global conditions, such as if prospect EVER opened or clicked an email, filled out a form or visited a landing page.
The fact that there is no rule allowing the option to filter by emails at all, which can be frustrating. However, there are ways around this: Tagging contacts or creating lists from email reports for future segmentation and or suppression are good ways to get the data out of the system but the solution isn’t exactly “automated.
The UI is user-friendly and intuitive, yet the simplicity can seem limiting at times, and due to the lack of “real” advanced logic, creating more robust filtering can take a bit of foresight. Tedium can set in if you want to segment data by multiple assets, tags, lists, landing pages, etc. because you have to create each one individually. Filtering by email is conspicuously absent from all of these emails, as are email related metrics such as opens, or clicks.

Eloqua Overview

Next, we’ll talk about Eloqua and compare its capabilities to Pardot.

Though recently acquired by Oracle, Eloqua has a similar menu of filtering options to Pardot. It can do most everything Pardot can do, and more, much more. You can (depending on which version you are using) create segments that vary in difficulty.
In E9 the trial error method can run you in circles. Filtering to include specific groups or other filters is not a 2 click operation like it is in the more agile Pardot.
The Segment tools in E10 give the user-friendliness a well needed boost. Advanced logic? You’ve got it, it’s all there. Want to filter your database by anyone who’s been sent an email in the last 6 months, completed a form and hasn’t unsubscribed? How about a special offer to only to people who clicked on your newsletter last month? Filters abound, shared lists, contact uploads and more. No running reports, or creating extra lists or tagging thousands of contacts to achieve the same result, like in Pardot.

Eloqua 10

Eloqua 9

In both cases, you can segment your data using a wide variety of tools, tricks and processes and it could be said that Pardot and Eloqua have similar skill sets, and it is a matter of scalability.

Conclusion

Essentially, there have been great advancements in Pardot recently, but it still lacks some of the more basic functionality you would expect from even the most elementary automation software. Eloqua complexity is justified by the level of performance and the robust features that it offers, however the learning curve is quite steep.

Note: If you need more help, fill out the Marketing Automation Vendor Selection Form at the top of this post.

Marketing Automation Agency

It can be difficult finding the right marketing automation software for your company. We’re a full service Marketing Automation Consultancy, and would love to help. Contact us any time at info@leadlizard.com.

Lead Lizard. Leading the way in Marketing Automation.

Blind Form Submit

boush — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 18:05:12 +0000

What is a Blind Form?

A blind form is a form that is submitted by a site visitor (and contact record) without their knowledge. The process looks like this:
1. Visible – Contact clicks on a link (such as a link in an email)
2. Invisible – Link URL points to a blind form
3. Invisible – Form submits automatically
4. Invisible – Desired form processing steps are triggered (such as campaign association, campaign status change, group member inclusion, sales rep notification, etc.)
5. Visible – Contact is directed to the desired page or content

Use Case for Blind Forms

A blind form is extremely useful because it allows you to perform actions on a contact record through a click rather than a form submit. Here are some uses:

Event Registration – When sending an event invitation through email, a recipient can sign up merely by clicking the “Sign me up” button, rather than clicking a link that drives to a registration form.
Resource Center – When a cookied contact is browsing your resources, there’s no need to have them sign up for every piece of content. They can view it all after one form submission, and for subsequent content downloads they will be treated like they filled out a form, even though the experience will feel like simpy clicking a link to download it.

How to Build a Blind Form

Lead Lizard will generally build the blind form in the marketing automation software, so the process is different depending on the software. Howere, there are commonalities.

The first step is to determine which form fields will be submitted with the blind form. These can include fields where contact information is known (such as first name, email address, etc.) and constant field values (campaign ID, for example).

Next, you need to build the querystring parameter, using tokens or constant values. Here’s an example that could theoretically pass the email address to a form and then send the visitor to a thank you page:

?FormName=blindform&email={email token}url=http://www.domain.com/thankyou.html Finally, you would append the querystring to the marketing automation engine domain and add the link to your email or on your website.

Form and Landing Page Resources

Marketing Automation Agency

Lead Lizard is the preeminent marketing automation agency. If you’d like to learn more about how Lead Lizard can help you with your Marketing Automation needs, contact us today at info@leadlizard.com.

Lead Lizard. Leading the way in Marketing Automation.

Marketing Automation Vendor Comparison

boush — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 00:22:35 +0000

Step 1: Use the vendor comparison form to the right for a starting point. This will give you an idea of which marketing automation vendors may be right for your company.

Step 2: After you’ve submitted the form, compare specific vendors below based on the recommendation that will be emailed to you.

Marketing Automation Vendor Comparison Tool

Lead Lizard already has a number of posts comparing marketing automation software. Here are some of the existing resources:

Marketing Automation Comparisons

The above chart is based on the Lead Lizard team’s experience across multiple marketing automation vendors. Please use the “vendor Selection Tool” at the top-right of this post to get a better idea of which marketing automation software is right for your organization.

In your decision, you will want also to consider factors such as: database size, expected usage, marketing & sales goals, desired level of complexity, cost, number of seats, etc.

Good luck!

Marketing Automation Agency

Digital Solutions Architect

boush — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 18:59:57 +0000

Position Title: Digital Solutions Architect
Type: Full-Time, Salaried
Hours: 40 hours/week
Location: SE Portland

Lead Lizard is looking for a Digital Solutions Architect, a junior web production position. The ideal candidate has demonstrated skills in JS and HTML, and is eager to learn and improve in a team environment. The candidate will need to prove that he/she can learn marketing automation software quickly, learn from mistakes and execute tasks efficiently.

Responsibilities

Produce and deliver marketing collateral as assigned by the Account Manager. Collateral may include: HTML, JavaScript, reports, emails, landing pages, or forms built within marketing automation software.
Become fluent in Eloqua, Marketo, Pardot, Salesforce.com and additional CRM and marketing automation software
Become fluent in Lead Lizard’s processes and tools, including task-tracking software and QA software
Develop a library of HTML/CSS that resolves email rendering problems across multiple email clients or landing page rendering across multiple browsers
Develop a library of JavaScript that will optimize web form processes

Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree
Must possess superior written and verbal skills
Must be a good team player who can always work well independently
Demonstrated fluency with web standards and technologies including: JavaScript, CSS, HTML
Demonstrated experience with web-based content management systems such as WordPress, Drupal, or other CMS
Must be able to effectively prioritize competing needs, meet assigned deadlines, accurately and completely fulfill tasks, and deliver requested items only when quality assurance has been met
Experience with CRM (such as salesforce.com) or marketing automation software a plus, but not required

Company

Lead Lizard is a fast-growing marketing automation consulting agency, located in close-in SE Portland, OR. We have a relaxed work environment, with an emphasis on getting work done during work hours and enjoying life during non-work hours. Visit us at www.leadlizard.com to learn more.

Tell us about yourself. Please submit a resume with salary requirements, and a small code sample or snippet that gives us an idea of the work you can do.

Web Form Data Collection

boush — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 16:54:37 +0000

Our B2B clients sometimes ask us: What web form data should I collect? It’s an important (if tricky) question, because the information collected at the start of the prospecting process is sometimes the only explicit data a company will collect before a lead is routed to Sales. Often the data collected is an area of discord between the Marketing and Sales departments. Sales often wants to collect data on BANT criteria and other qualification questions. Marketing often wants to ask for data that can help them further the marketing conversation, with questions around demography and the competitive products being considered. This conflict is partially resolvable through progressive profiling which allows marketers to display new form fields for every additional form submission. However, often a very good and qualified lead will only fill out a form once. So what form data should you collect? The answer is clear: collect as little as possible in order to qualify the lead and correctly route her to Sales. When a lead feels that questions are too nosy, they will often fill in bogus data or not fill out the form. The same is true when there are too many questions on a form. Two questions to ask yourself:

What is this information we collect being used for?
Can we obtain some of this data another way, such as through research on the public domain, or through data purchases?

Additional B2B Web Form Resources

Marketing Automation Expert Services

If you’d like to learn more about how Lead Lizard can help you with your B2B and Marketing Automation needs, contact us today at info@leadlizard.com. Lead Lizard. Leading the way in Marketing Automation.