The thing about the end of a year and is that there’s never any shortage of predictions on trends and the “what’s hot for 20XX” list.  Many of the lists tend to be general or mundane and make dramatically bold statements such as “content marketing will become important”. Well yes, content marketing has, will and shall continue to become increasingly important.  More importantly, marketers will actually “run out” of content to feed the ever-growing beast of inbound/outbound marketing systems.

Looking back at what industry pundits spoke of leading into 2012, It makes sense to review some of these items in the context of the tools and processes we will need in 2013…assuming the 2012 predictions, barring the Mayan apocalypse, come true.

Marketing Technology – many spoke of how there would be explosive adoption of new b2b marketing automation tools and platforms. Platforms like, SalesFUSION, would be like moveing from the “nice-to-have” phase to the “must-have” phase.  Certainly, the adoption rate of b2b marketing automation software has been very high and companies are beginning to see real financial value not only in the added campaign capabilities that come with the systems but in the revenue derived from the improved processes of marketing to sales integration that solutions like SalesFUSIONdeliver.

Content – was and still remains a big topic, issue, problem and weapon to marketers.  With the growing use of combined inbound/outbound marketing systems and the explosion of social, blog and web competition, content is the new currency of b2b marketing and if you don’t have enough content, you won’t be able to pay for leadsfor sales.

Social confusion – just when you think you you’ve mastered twitter, along comes Pinterest or Google plus…..or something else.  Social networks in b2b marketing are being born and dying just as quickly. Understanding how to navigate these networks beyond the buttons on your home page will be critical for marketers.

Boiling it down to its simplest terms, 2012 was about technology adoption, content droughts and social media confusion.  If you agree with that these three items were the big topics of 2012, then 2013 should, at some level, be a time when we begin to master, control and optimize each of the three items above.

The 2013 to-do list for every b2b marketer should include the following:

1.        Optimize your marketing technology – simple bulk email blasts and a static contact-us page on your website are not going to move the needle on your lead generation goals.  There is simply too much competition for attention of potential buyers today and using outdated or over-simplified tools is going to put you at a strategic disadvantage against your competition.  The technologies within this category include website visitor tracking, drip and trigger-based email campaigns, landingpages, social publishing, lead scoring and CRM integration.

1. 2.      Focus on quality of content – while we would all love to have a staff of industry experts, the most important facet of a good lead generation campaign that leverages the latest technologies for nurture-based email campaigns is quality content.  Companies must develop educational, value-added content in addition to PR, blog posts, tweets and newsletters.  White papers, webinars, articles represent the gold-standard for content marketing and when used correctly and of great quality, can provide a serious boost to your lead generation.

1. 3.      Pick your social battles – focus not on the number of social icons you can point to but the quality of how you manage a few social networks.  Pick your top 2-3 social networks and focus all of your social energy, education and efforts on them.  The big 3 in b2b are Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.  The latter have PPC programs to supplement profiles and publishing.  Forget having 12 social icons with little or no valuable information on them and instead, have 2-3 great social network presences.

1. 4.        Integrate marketing with CRM – having valuable marketing intelligence presented to sales in a manner that adds value to them in the sales cycle will pay huge dividends.  Tying sales into the lead gen process will empower both sides of the funnel to perform better.  Start simple with email based lead alerts when known visitors hit your website or send CRM task alerts when leads score to a high level.  It has been well-documented by a number of analyst firms that companies who integrate marketing and sales perform better from a revenue standpoint.

1. 5.         Implement lead scoring & routing – probably one of the most important aspects of a good b2b marketing automation software application is the lead scoring module.  Lead scoring and the subsequent lead routing capabilities will enable you to more effectively classify, rank, route and track leads to the appropriate place, whether that is a nurture email campaign or lead in CRM.

If companies focus only on these five areas in 2013, they will perform much better in terms of number leads, lead quality, and leads converted to sales. The simple fact of the matter is that 99% of b2b buyers begin their search on the web.  The web has broken down barriers to traditional selling and buying processes.  Your prospective buyers have much more power over the top of the funnel today than ever before.  To keep pace, you need to master the technology, content and processes if you want to thrive in 2013 and beyond.

Good Luck in the New Year!

As more and more companies move towards fully integratedmarketing automation systems, marketing end-users can sometimes struggle with getting their heads around the more feature-rich email marketing applications, such as SalesFUSION.  Many industry pundits believe that single, bulk email blast campaigns are all but useless in the grand scheme of lead management and lead nurturing.  I tend to agree and have long since believed that all email marketing campaigns should be based on drip-based marketing philosophy.  Fortunately, the average marketer need not be an experienced email marketing guru to run simple and effective drip-based email campaigns.In-fact, some of the most effective drip-based email marketing campaigns are nothing more than bulk-email campaigns with a non-responder component tied to it.

  ØFormal – [Webinar Invitation] Join our company on this date for a webinar

1. Stick to the 70/30 rule for educational content – 70% of your webinar should provide industry insight and educational content.
2. Secure compelling speakers.
3. Cross-promote your webinar using all available channels; social, email, PPC, website
4. Follow up with with webinar attendees quickly.
5. Make the webinars as interactive as possible using Q&A and polls

Learn more about SalesFUSION’s new FUSIONcast webinar program.

 Over the last several years, marketing has risen above its traditional standing in the CRM world, which had been low man on the totem pole.  Marketing historically was the “other” technology that existed outside of CRM.  Poorly understood and generally operating outside of the framework of the core CRM, marketing automation as a technology solution was even further from the core.  Today, marketing automation solutions, those that combine  email marketing, web analytics and other channels such as social media, are adding tremendous value to traditional CRM deployments and, more so than ever, have the attention of the C-suite.

 Why all the sudden attention? In a word:  Economy.  The economic environment over the last 3 years has forced companies to re-think their sales and marketing alignment.  Gone are the days of large telesales and inside sales teams supporting field reps working small geographies.  Today, companies are laser focused on building efficient and cost effective lead to sales models and technology like marketing automation fully supports this.

 Solutions like SalesFUSION have focused virtually all of their development efforts on embedding demand generation technology and processes into CRM because this provides a significant financial benefit to most companies.  Furthermore, for those CRM deployments that may be languishing or suffering from poor adoption, adding marketing automation to the mix can jumpstart and invigorate the sales and executive teams to fully leverage the CRM investment.  Here are five ways adding marketing automation to your CRM can save a troubled deployment.

 1.        Getting sales excited about CRM – You would be hard pressed to find a sales person who doesn’t get excited about having leads delivered to them on a silver platter.  SalesFUSION’s lead analyzer scores and then routes leads to reps based on rules created through marketing/sales collaboration.  Email alerts are generated and sent to sales reps when leads meet certain criteria.  Reps get leads sent to their inbox with information about how the lead came to the website and what they did when they got there. A quick link allows the reps to open the lead in CRM from the email.  This simple functionality gets sales excited about lead generation and dramatically reduces  follow up time by the reps.  Catching leads when they are “hot” ensures better conversion to qualified status in CRM.

 2.       Bringing Marketing and Sales together – when implementing marketing automation , there’s a lot more than simple bulk email marketing involved.  Marketing and sales will collaborate on processes for scoring inbound leads.  This collaboration forces marketing and sales to work closely together and define better processes that will keep the CRM system clean.  Process improvements stemming from this collaboration will lead to a better CRM deployment overall.

 3.       Keeping your CRM database clean and efficient – Marketing automation solutions like SalesFUSION act like a traffic cop for lead flow into Dynamics.  The marketing database is often used as a lead staging area where leads are marketed to and nurtured to a point at which they become “Sales-ready”.  Only then does the system move the lead into CRM.  This methodology keeps the CRM uncluttered with suspects and ensures the sales team is only working the highest value leads.  Your CRM database size is also reduced which, in a cloud-based CRM model, can reduce your costs.

 4.       Improving lead conversion – SalesFUSION will gather vital marketing information in the form of campaign response, website visit activity, and more and append this information to the lead and/or contact records in Dynamics.  This information is at the fingertips of sales when they are alerted/tasked to follow up with a high-value lead.  Sales then has the ability to quickly view the contextual history to get a clear picture of what the lead may be interested in based on the pages viewed/website download/email responses contained in the record history.  This makes that  first critical phone call more effective and increases lead conversion.

 5.       ROI on marketing and lead generation. SalesFUSION connects the leads generated from campaigns and the cost of acquiring those leads, to the opportunity entity in CRM.  This allows the C-suite of a company to stop throwing darts at a board with respect to marketing spend and pinpoint exactly how, where, and why they should spend valuable (and shrinking) marketing dollars.

 So marketing  technologies have evolved far beyond email blasting solutions (that’s so 2005) and provide value that can directly impact the performance, adoption, and ROI of your CRM system.

Over the last several years, marketing has risen above its traditional standing in the CRM world, which had been low man on the totem pole.  Marketing historically was the “other” technology that existed outside of CRM.  Poorly understood and generally operating outside of the framework of the core CRM, marketing automation as a technology solution was even further from the core.  Today, marketing automation solutions, those that combine  email marketing, web analytics and other channels such as social media, are adding tremendous value to traditional CRM deployments and, more so than ever, have the attention of the C-suite.

Why all the sudden attention? In a word:  Economy.  The economic environment over the last 3 years has forced companies to re-think their sales and marketing alignment.  Gone are the days of large telesales and inside sales teams supporting field reps working small geographies.  Today, companies are laser focused on building efficient and cost effective lead to sales models and technology like marketing automation fully supports this.

Solutions like SalesFUSION have focused virtually all of their development efforts on embedding demand generation technology and processes into CRM because this provides a significant financial benefit to most companies.  Furthermore, for those CRM deployments that may be languishing or suffering from poor adoption, adding marketing automation to the mix can jumpstart and invigorate the sales and executive teams to fully leverage the CRM investment.  Here are five ways adding marketing automation to your CRM can save a troubled deployment.

1.        Getting sales excited about CRM – You would be hard pressed to find a sales person who doesn’t get excited about having leads delivered to them on a silver platter.  SalesFUSION’s lead analyzer scores and then routes leads to reps based on rules created through marketing/sales collaboration.  Email alerts are generated and sent to sales reps when leads meet certain criteria.  Reps get leads sent to their inbox with information about how the lead came to the website and what they did when they got there. A quick link allows the reps to open the lead in CRM from the email.  This simple functionality gets sales excited about lead generation and dramatically reduces  follow up time by the reps.  Catching leads when they are “hot” ensures better conversion to qualified status in CRM.

2.       Bringing Marketing and Sales together – when implementing marketing automation , there’s a lot more than simple bulk email marketing involved.  Marketing and sales will collaborate on processes for scoring inbound leads.  This collaboration forces marketing and sales to work closely together and define better processes that will keep the CRM system clean.  Process improvements stemming from this collaboration will lead to a better CRM deployment overall.

3.       Keeping your CRM database clean and efficient – Marketing automation solutions like SalesFUSION act like a traffic cop for lead flow into Dynamics.  The marketing database is often used as a lead staging area where leads are marketed to and nurtured to a point at which they become “Sales-ready”.  Only then does the system move the lead into CRM.  This methodology keeps the CRM uncluttered with suspects and ensures the sales team is only working the highest value leads.  Your CRM database size is also reduced which, in a cloud-based CRM model, can reduce your costs.

4.       Improving lead conversion – SalesFUSION will gather vital marketing information in the form of campaign response, website visit activity, and more and append this information to the lead and/or contact records in Dynamics.  This information is at the fingertips of sales when they are alerted/tasked to follow up with a high-value lead.  Sales then has the ability to quickly view the contextual history to get a clear picture of what the lead may be interested in based on the pages viewed/website download/email responses contained in the record history.  This makes that  first critical phone call more effective and increases lead conversion.

5.       ROI on marketing and lead generation. SalesFUSION connects the leads generated from campaigns and the cost of acquiring those leads, to the opportunity entity in CRM.  This allows the C-suite of a company to stop throwing darts at a board with respect to marketing spend and pinpoint exactly how, where, and why they should spend valuable (and shrinking) marketing dollars.

So marketing  technologies have evolved far beyond email blasting solutions (that’s so 2005) and provide value that can directly impact the performance, adoption, and ROI of your CRM system.

As marketing automation continues to evolve, solutions like SalesFUSION will continue to identify logical integration points with leading CRM providers like Microsoft Dynamics.  SalesFUSION has been leading the way in integrating advanced marketing automation into Dynamics CRM to help companies build lead to revenue management models.

Firstly, web visitor tracking can be lumped into the generic category of  Web Analytics.  Not to be confused with solutions like Omniture, WebTrends or even Google’s analytics package, web visitor tracking is very specifically looking at the first and repeat behavior of individuals and companies on your website.  Basically, code is placed on the universal footer of a company website and this code enables marketers to see in summary reports a list of visitors, pages viewed, time in session, depth of visit….etc.  All very useful in determining what people are looking at on your website.  As a stand alone solution, the usefulness of web visitor tracking is somewhat limited in what it can actually DO for your lead gen effort.  It’s nice to see a report of visitor activity….but what do you actually DO with it?  With a standalone solution….not much.  It’s like giving a kid a painting of a toy…..it’s nice to look at…but you can’t play with it.  Marketers need to realize that investing in standalone web visitor tracking solutions is…to put it lightly….a waste of valuable marketing dollars.  Marketers, like kids, want to play with their toys….not stair at them.

This brings me to the question I get almost daily from marketers interested in using web visitor tracking.  “What about identifying anonymous individuals?”  There is hype in the market today about solutions that plug their web data directly into data services vendors such as hoovers, jigsaw…etc.  The objective of these solutions is to tell the marketer in a report….ABC, Inc. has been on your website ….now push a button go to jigsaw and buy 5 contacts in the department you sell to and start marketing to them.  Sounds good on paper and SalesFUSION, more by demand from customers than a true believe in business value, offers this to our customers as well.  I can assure you that this benefits the data providers far more than it benefits actual users.   Here’s the scenario:
- your company sells to hospitals

- Green Acres General hospital is identified by IP address to have been on your website

- You push a button and go to Jigsaw and purchase the name/email of 3 employees in the HIM Department ( The department you sell to).

Now what?  Are you going to send them an email saying “Hey…someone from Green Acres was on the website….was it you?”  Are you going to enroll them in an email campaign?  (CAN SPAM Law mean anything?)
At best, you can purchase the names, give them to the sales team and let them make cold calls in hoping to hit the right person who was on the website (odds are low on this).

So back to the question I get asked all the time:  How can we identify an anonymous visitor on our website?  It’s easy, you use something call spyware and hope you don’t go to jail.  The point is people will only identify themselves when they actually want to.  Beyond that, it’s an interesting exercise in analytics.  Your job as a marketer is to create good campaigns that drive leads to the web and entice them to identify themselves.  White papers, webinars, case study downloads should all require registration and identification.   The tried and true tactic of using a an return email for a white paper helps ensure you get good email information on a prospect. 

So the hype – companies will claim that API integrations into data providers will magically get you contacts to call who’ve been on your website.  False. 

There are, however, substantial benefits to be gained from web visitor tracking when they are incorporated into the broader demand generation process.  Known visitors, aka, leads in your marketing database, are easily identified and tracked.   The information gathered from known visitors is vital, if not the most important piece of information you can use relative to lead scoring programs.  If you’re running an email campaign and someone opens, then clicks the email….that’s good info…but, if you then know that they come back your website 3 more times in the same week, then that’s worth its weight in gold!  As a best practice in lead scoring, we use web visits as a primary component in the algorithms.  In particular, we look for deep visits and repeat visits (similar to RF models in retail) as a key indicator if high interest.  This information can trigger sales alerts, auto-enroll leads in nurture campaigns, trigger an outbound telesales call….and so on.  In other words, we can actually PLAY with this toy rather than stare at a painting of it.  Good stuff for marketers and frankly, absolutely necessary if you want accurate lead scoring.”"

Web visitor tracking plays a vital role in the b2b eMartketing mix but be cautious and aware of it’s limitations, particularly with stand alone web tracking solutions.  Learn more about how web visitor tracking boosts your lead gen capabilities on SalesFUSION’s resource center where I’ve written a more extensive white paper on the subject.  http://www.salesfusion.com/salesfusion_resource_center.aspx

About www.salesfusion.com

SalesFUSION 360 provides software that accelerates revenue by connecting sales and marketing with prospects at the moment they are ready to buy. This is made possible through the SalesFusion 360™ suite, which complements Sales Force Automation applications by adding an on-demand enterprise lead management service. SalesFUSION 360 increases lead quantity, lead quality and revenue conversion rates by integrating and automating the lead management process.

About the Author

Kevin Miller is VP Sales & Marketing at www.salesfusion.comand has been working in marketing database technology and CRM technology for over 16 years.  For direct questions, please contact kevin.miller@salesfusion.com

My love of marketing began shortly after graduation from College.  Fresh with a BS Marketing/BS Psychology, I was ready to jump into the agency game, get to work and then go for the MBA. As it turns out, my first gig after college was at a technology company providing solutions to Agencies.  I was involved in Direct Response/Database marketing solutions and had the pleasure of supporting campaigns for agencies like Gray, Bozell Worldwide, JWT to name a few.  As fate would have it, my path took me into CRM and then into database marketing software, where I’ve carved out a comfortable niche ever since.  I’ve always remained a student of marketing however and in the last several years, working in B2B marketing, I can’t help but wonder when Colleges and MBA programs will offer a B2B eMarketing major?

In the retail marketing sector, of which I am a prodigal son, there is no shortage of coursework and degrees and areas of concentration for the student marketer.  This makes sense because if you look at the average retailer like an Orvis or Target or Sears….their marketing staff numbers into the hundreds whereas at most b2b companies, marketing staffs number less than ten.  The bodies and the money are in retail.  I think another issue with offering eMarketing for b2b coursework is that it can be tricky to measure response and campaign ROI quickly and accurately.  In B2C – you run a campaign and monitor sales/transactions.  Pretty simple.  In B2B, we generate leads, turn them over to the sales department and hope for the best.  We also have dramatically lower volume of activity and response in B2B relative to B2C campaigns.

However, B2B marketing, eMarketing in particular, is a truly interesting, challenging and fun segment of the markeitng universe.  Campaigns can be extremely deep, contain may disparate elements and extend over long periods of time. If a b2b company is engaging in a lead nurturing campaign, each campaign may leverage may different types of technologies and include very complex processes that involve cross-departmental coordination.  Good Stuff!

When I look at the b2b eMarketing segment as a whole, it’s growth has been limited to point solutions such as email software, web tracking software…..and basic campaigns.  I’ve seen a fair amount of people who understand the discrete components of what we classify as b2b eMarketing.

As a broad definition, let’s call b2b eMarketing the practice of using electronic media for the purpose of lead generation.  This includes email, search, social and on line advertising.  There are a lot of b2b marketers out there who get one or two aspects of this.  Many b2b marketing professionals understand email marketing and some basics around search.  Few truly grasp social media and how to make that work in the context of lead generation (I’ll lump myself into that category…but I’m learning).  Fewer still understand multi-disciplinary approaches to b2b eMarketing such as lead nurturing and drip marketing.

The evolution of the b2b marketing skillset seems to follow a predictable path for many professionals.

1.  Simple Email Marketing

2. Simple Search Marketing

3.  PPC marketing (Adwords)

4. Drip Email Marketing/Simple lead nurturing

5.  Lead Scoring/Lead Management

6.  Social Media (basics such as blogging, twitter, LinkedIn)

7.  Web Analytics and web visitor tracking

8.  Integrated lead nurturing

9.  Fully integrated marketing and sales demand generation processes

10.  eMarketing fully integrated into the sales process

I implore the higher education community to create at least a 101 class in this.  It doesn’t have to me a major or even a minor….just a few classes to give the broad perspective and philosophy behind b2b marketing would be a good start.  In the meantime, it is up to us in the industry to continue to work towards educating b2b marketing professionals and help them gain the skillset they need to be successful in their professional endeavours.

eMarketing as a segment has weathered the downturn very well.  Companies are investing heavily in tools and solutions that are designed to leverage cost-effective web technologies for lead generation.  b2b Marketers would do well to position themselves for professional growth by becoming experts in all aspects of b2b eMarketing.

So when a marketer is ready to make the leap from say Constant Contact, iContact, Emma or Vertical Response (great tools that do what they’re designed to do very well), they usually show up on my doorstep and want to talk about doing more with email, integrating email into more nurture-style campaigns….etc.  I always tell them the same thing…Start simple….get your feet wet in the easiest types of drip/nurture campaigns and then move on to more advanced functionality.

As i’ve written in many other papers, webinars and blogs, Nurture Marketing/Drip Marketing….whatever your choose to call it….is basically presenting the right content to the right people at the right time.  So simple a caveman can do it?  Not quite.  A marketer needs to understand many components of eMarketing that they may not have had direct exposure to before.  Segmentation, both dynamic and static, lead scoring, personalization, web tracking can all play a role in “nurture marketing”.  I’ve seen companies go out and spend $50K on a solution because conceptually, it did exactly what they wanted it do….but they had no idea how to actually execute, what to measure, how to measure, how to integrate sales…..and on and on and on.

So, as the title of this blog states, simplicity pays off for marketers who are just beginning to wade into the Nurture Marketing pool. When I demo SalesFUSION software to people who’ve not been exposed to advanced demand generation tools, I always show them one simple drip email…the Subject Swap Email.  A Subject swap email is so elegantly simple, easy to measure and gets you started down the right path in drip marketing.

What is it?  You have an email blast that goes out to a segment or your entire database.  You wait 3 days, then you send the same exact email with a slightly different style subject line on a different day at a different time of day.  Whew….that’s a tough one…but guess what….when you’re dealing with a database of say 50,000 names..the average subject swap email adds 4-7% lift on opens and 1-5% on click throughs.  Last time I checked…5% of 50K is 2500.  I’ll take 2500 responses for what amounts to about  10 minutes of work.  The only real trick to the email is the segment it goes out to is based on the prior email….everyone who didn’t open the first email.  You want to be sure you’re not sending it to people who didn’t click…only those who did not open. 

In many cases, especially in the summer during peak vacation, you’re catching folks on vacation.  People may be away from their desk, be in and out of meetings and your initial email get’s buried below the email fold…never to be seen again.  That second try  will pay big dividends, is easy to do an again, gets you going down the path of drip email marketing and nurture marketing.

Why this is a good first step to nurture marketing?  Because you ARE nurturing in this case!  You’re modifying content and sending to a dynamic segment conditional upon behavior taken against the first campaign email.

So there you go.  Step 1 to getting your head around drip/nurture marketing. 

Kevin Miller is VP Sales & Marketing for www.salesfusion.com - a SaaS based demand generation solution that specializes in helping b2b companies implement nurture/drip marketing.

For questions or comments to Kevin – you can email at kevin.miller@salesfusion.com

Understanding nurture marketing

Nurture marketing is a term that has gained visibility and interest in the B2B marketing space over the last several years. Initially, the concept grew out of the capabilities of CRM systems to track and manage sales interactions with early stage prospects over time. In the last 3 years, technology has flooded the market to help B2B marketers identity, generate and manage leads in the pre-qualification stage. Essentially, the strategic shift in B2B sales has been that marketing owns the top of the funnel while sales owns the middle to bottom of the funnel. In some cases inside sales/telemarketing has direct line reporting into marketing more so than sales. As this shift has taken root, marketing has increasingly expanded its role and capabilities around lead and demand generation. As eMarketing applications have flooded the B2B marketing community, there have been great strides in technology-enabled marketing to help professionals increase their capabilities relative to demand and lead generation.

With the new technology (email, SEO/SEM, social….etc) comes new challenges. In the age of internet-driven lead generation, the sheer volume of leads has increased dramatically, often times overwhelming marketing and inside sales departments. The issue a marketing department may have faced in years past was around generating enough leads to build the funnel on a quarter by quarter basis. Today, the challenge becomes filtering through the “noise” of hundreds of leads per month to ensure the best leads are being “touched” and the least qualified leads are being developed for the longer term.

Having a well balanced sales funnel with early-stage and late-stage leads is critical for a company to perform well against earnings targets over the long haul. What you do today as a B2B marketer may very well make the difference between success and failure 9 months from now. Your successful 4^th quarter begins in the first or second quarter.

For the B2B marketer, the technology is now in place to manage the process of nurture marketing and ensure that no lead gets left behind. However, as with all technology adoption curves, there is an initial dearth of functionality but an overall lack of education and understanding about how best to leverage new technology in day-to-day circumstances. Nurture marketing is a perfect example of this. The term itself can be somewhat misleading so we’ll first spend some time defining what nurture marketing is, what technology makes up “nurture marketing” and then we’ll provide some real world examples of how B2B marketers can leverage this technology to improve their coverage and reach.

What is nurture marketing?

Nurture marketing can be defined as a process that automates a flow of communication with a prospective customer. The seller pre-defines a path of automated communications based on certain criteria. This criteria typically falls into 2 categories; Demographic and Behavioral. For demographic, you may have a certain email campaign for one vertical and another set of content for a different vertical. Behavioral criteria are dependent upon a prospect’s interactions with the seller. These interactions may be based on website behavior (visits to website, pages, downloads of documents on the seller website…etc) or campaign response behavior (email responses, open email responses).

Nurture marketing is basically the process of presenting content to a lead based on their current-state interest level and leading the prospect to continue interacting with you over a period of time until they either qualify in or qualify out.

Types of Nurture Marketing Campaigns

In B2B, nurture marketing campaigns can be a combination of many things over a relatively long period of time. Email campaigns, telesales, direct mail, can all play a role on nurturing a lead from identification to qualification. Today however, nurture marketing is most closely associated with email marketing. And within the context of email marketing, there are 2 distinct types of emails that are used by marketers for the purpose of lead nurturing.

Trigger Email

As the name suggests, trigger emails are emails that are executed when a condition is “triggered” or met. Simple examples of trigger emails are a “confirmation email” that is sent to a lead upon completing a form on the website. The email has no date associated with it, rather it queries the database and when the condition is met, the email is executed. Trigger emails use one or more dynamic segments to execute. A dynamic segment is nothing more than a pre-defined query of the marketing database who’s membership is made up of people who do certain things.

Sample Dynamic Segments

Web Activity – Individuals who have an active session on the website within the last 24-hours.

Form – completion of a form

Campaign – Opened and clicked through a certain email

Trigger emails are a simple yet invaluable way to continually “touch” a lead and ensure interactions are followed up on. Trigger emails can also be the launch point for more lengthy drip campaigns. If a web activity triggers an email and that email is then opened and clicked through, then that activity in and of itself may trigger a new set or string of email communications.

Drip Emails

These are similar in nature to a trigger email with one fundamental difference – a Drip email is a scheduled email. It will be set to go out at a certain time/date. It may still include the use of dynamic or conditional segments but again, they will go out at a scheduled time.

A good example of a drip email is a reminder email for a webinar campaign. The email may be set to go out on Tuesday at 10AM – but it will only go out to those individuals who have registered or completed the form for the webinar.

Drip emails are the core of Nurture marketing. You can set up a string of pre-determined emails in multiple branches in advance and let the campaign run in the background. Most typically, drip campaigns will last 30-90 days and no more.

Segmentation

While drip and trigger emails are the primary “executable” for nurture campaigns, they are driven by 2 types of segmentation. Segmentation can be broadly defined as a group of individuals who meet a certain criteria of a query. You cannot have nurture marketing without a good segmentation tool. While segmentation is nothing more than a query of the database, with respect to marketing automation technology, segmentation should be user friendly and allow users to “ask questions” of the database without the need for executing SQL.

Profile Segments – these are driven off of profile data in the lead record in either the marketing database or CRM database or both. The most common profile segments are related to titles, geography and company size/type.

Behavioral segments – these are conditional segments and group individuals based on their activity or behavior relative to interactions they have with you. A simple behavioral example, as mentioned before, may be – “everyone who has visited a certain web page in the last 24 hours.

Behavioral Data as a trigger for Nurture Marketing

What interactions does a prospective buyer engage in with the typical B2B firm today that may indicate potential interest in purchasing your products or services?

• · Web Interactions – How did the prospect find your website? Search, PPC, Campaign Response? In regards to search, it is important to understand how and why the prospect found you. Identifying the keywords used or referring website may help and standard web analytics will identify this. Keywords gives insight into what the prospect was “thinking” or interested in when they came to your website.
• · Email Response Activity – Has the prospect opened, clicked through or forwarded email communications from marketing?
• · Campaign responses – Is the lead receptive to your campaigns? Are they responding to single or multiple campaigns?

Sample Nurture Marketing Campaigns

A good way to understand how nurture marketing works is to explore examples of campaigns. In the example below, a webinar campaign is described. Webinars are online events that allow vendors to promote a solution or industry expertise to a large group of passive attendees.

Campaign Type – Webinar

• · An initial email invitation is sent to a list and/or other promotional vehicles (banner ad, email sponsorship….etc) are implemented. The email invitation contains a link to a registration page. The registration page captures the name, company, email and any other information the webinar sponsor is trying to capture from the attendees.
• · For Registrants, a “Thank-You” or “Confirmation” email is Triggered immediately following completion of the registration. This Trigger email will contain the webinar detail and may cross-promote additional content.
• · 2-3 days after the initial webinar email invitation goes out, a drip email is sent to the original list but segmented based on individuals who did not open the original email – a subject line swap email is implemented. In this case, the original email subject line is changed to a new subject and automatically re-sent to all those in the original list who did not open the first email. This is a drip email because it has a launch date associated with it.

• · 2-3 days later, a first reminder drip email is sent for all registered leads for the webinar.
• · The day of the webinar – a second drip reminder email is sent 1 hour before the start of the event.
• · Post-webinar – 2 primary branched follow up campaigns are then executed following the webinar.

Branch 1 – Attendee email follow up campaign – For attendees, a follow up email is immediately triggered thanking the attendees for attending. The email may include a redirect to a companion white paper, a pdf copy of the presentation or to the website for additional information.

Potential follow up activities for branch 1

• · Attendee responds to email – triggers call from sales (CRM integration)
• · Attendee does not respond to email – put into 7-day drip email
• · Attendee responds to email – triggers invitation to next webinar

Branch 2 – Non-Attendees – those who registered but did not attend webinar – for this branch you may go in several directions. The key is to stay engaged with this group as they were interested enough to register but likely had something come up that prevented them from coming.

Potential follow up activities for branch 2

• · Send “sorry you couldn’t attend” email immediately following the event – redirect to a re-broadcast registration (if applicable)
• · Send email with link to copy (pdf) of the presentation
• · Email inviting to a similar webinar
• · Email inviting non-attendees to download a copy of a white paper

As you can see from this very simple example, companies can get very creative and detailed in trigger/drip follow up emails. A simple 2-branch event may contain up to 15-20 different emails with discrete content. Each of those emails may contain responder/non-responder branching as well. The management of nurture campaigns is not feasible without automation. There are simply too many variables to track and manage. The key to making nurture campaigns work is having the right technology available to helping a marketer schedule, plan and implement a complex multi-contact campaign.

Lead Scoring and Sales Integration

Lead scoring is a technology that ranks and sorts leads based on the aggregate value of their integrations and quality of their demographic profile, relative to your company’s ideal prospect. Lead scoring is a critical component to a nurture marketing and absolutely necessary when integrating marketing into the CRM/Sales process. Lead scoring will typically look at 4 buckets of data. Each is described below.

Profile Data – this is the basic validation of a lead.

• · Company information – size, geography, vertical
• · Title – validation of title – is this the type of person we sell to?
• · Email validation – non-free mail

Web Behavior – may score on a number of elements including

• · Recency and frequency of web visits
• · Website downloads
• · Return visits

Survey Data – looks at how individuals respond to questions in surveys forms

Campaign data – scores leads based on responses to single or multiple campaigns

Scoring will assign a relative point value to each element in the data buckets mentioned above. The aggregate score will help marketing and sales determine the “value” of the lead or “interest level”. Further marketing may take place for low-value/interest leads while immediate action and integration/alerting to sales may occur with high value leads.

When integrating with sales, it is important that there is good integration between the marketing database and the CRM database. Basic information should be passed from marketing such as the demographics and lead score, the campaign activity and any other relevant information that sales can use in their first call. Sales should then be able to provide a feedback loop to marketing. By changing the lead status, the lead should either be validated or disqualified in the CRM system and this information should make its way back to marketing for validation of scoring rules.

Again – a key success factor is having the right database and technology to make all of this work in harmony.

SalesFUSION 360 provides simple yet powerful technology that enables marketers to engage in true nurture marketing activities in a highly automated fashion. The solution is comprised of eMarketing suite. In the suite, tools are available that allow users to set up and manage a variety of campaigns including drip emails, trigger emails, automated rules-based emails, follow up emails and logic-based landing pages.

Nurture marketing campaigns in SalesFUSION can be developed by non-technical users and executed using any number of profile and activity-based triggers. A powerful segmentation engine empowers marketers to define a path of communication that combines static and dynamic segments.

The segmentation engine is driven off of profile data and campaign data. Campaign-based segments allow marketers to take action on the response or non-response to campaigns or steps in campaigns. This functionality, in combination with lead scoring and the drip, trigger and follow up email capabilities is what makes SalesFUSION’s solution powerful yet simple.

Lead Scoring plays a key role in SalesFUSION Nurture marketing as well. Scoring is done on 4 buckets of data including Web Activity, Profile, Campaign Response and Demographics.

Scoring-based triggers are an invaluable asset to the marketer, particularly marketing departments with limited budgets and resources. Leads may be classified into “interest groups”. Once a lead is assigned to an interest group a trigger campaign may be executed against that lead. The trigger campaign will then begin a series of communications based on action/reaction to the outbound emails. The marketer need not worry about whether leads are being “touched” or followed up on. The system is continually monitoring the lead activity/scores and deciding who gets what. This is the essence of ‘set it and forget it’ technology.

Lead Scoring by SalesFUSION is a simple solution to a complex problem. It allows the user to work within a simple user interface to define the interest level of a lead based on the most common elements of marketing activity: Campaign Response, Profile Data, Survey Data and Web Behavior. Because SalesFUSION includes a full suite of web analytics, it is easy to incorporate web behavior into lead scoring, which is one of the key indicators of interest level.

While some solutions focus on reporting on “who’s on my website”, SalesFUSION allows you to take action against this valuable information.

Powerful analytics and alerting keep the marketing and sales teams updated on all activity and sales is directly tied into the lead nurturing process with email alerts. Lead routing and assignment technology ensures that each rep is notified when a high-value lead has been “active”, either in response to a campaign or through an organic visit to the website. These alerts may trigger rules in your CRM system that prompt a direct phone call by sales. It has been proven that timing is a critical component in having a successful first phone call with a lead.

About SalesFUSION

SalesFUSION 360 is a truly integrated eMarketing solution that combines ALL aspects of the eMarketing mix into one easy to use application. SalesFUSION 360 enables companies to set up and manage the exact campaigns (drip, trigger, nurture) described in this paper.

SalesFUSION 360 is an on demand enterprise lead management company committed to changing the way the world creates and manages leads.

SalesFUSION 360 provides software that accelerates revenue by connecting sales and marketing with prospects at the moment they are ready to buy. This is made possible through the SalesFusion 360™ suite, which complements Sales Force Automation applications by adding an on-demand enterprise lead management service. SalesFUSION 360 increases lead quantity, lead quality and revenue conversion rates by integrating and automating the lead management process.