how to qualify, score and nurture leads for optimal roi

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How to qualify, score and nurture leads for optimal ROI

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• Jen Doyle, Senior Research Manager, MarketingSherpa

@JenLDoyle

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jenldoyle

[email protected]

• Kaci Bower, Research Analyst, MarketingSherpa

@KaciBower

http://www.linkedin.com/in/kacibower

[email protected]

• Chris Petko, Senior Director of Expert Services, Eloqua

@ChrisPetko

http://www.linkedin.com/in/chrispetko

Chris.P [email protected]

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• MarketingSherpa, founded in 2,000, is part of the MECLABS Sciences Group

• Content read by hundreds of thousands in the marketing community weekly

About

Research firm and publisher of marketing know-how


• Introduction & FUEL methodology for B2B marketing effectiveness

• Finding the gold with lead qualification and scoring

• Harvesting high quality leads with lead nurturing strategies

• MarketingSherpa Case Study: Lead-gen revamp with scoring, nurturing and automation

How to qualify, score and nurture leads for optimal ROI - Agenda


• Over 900 B2B marketers surveyed on:

• Top challenges

• Best marketing tactics

• Lead scoring, nurturing and management

• Marketing automation

• Marketing analysis

• Marketing operations

• Key finding: The B2B marketing environment is becoming increasingly challenging

• Result of this study – MarketingSherpa’s FUEL methodology to power marketing effectiveness from lead generation to sales conversion

Research Background


• B2B marketing challenges have become more pertinent to organizations over time

• Balancing quality and quantity of leads generated

• Sales cycles becoming more complex

The Growing Challenges facing B2B Marketers

34%

36%

36%

37%

41%

44%

78%

33%

27%

33%

37%

39%

35%

69%

Marketing to a growing number of people involved in the buying process

Competing in lead generation across multiple media

Generating public relations “buzz”

Generating perceived value in “cutting-edge” product benefits

Marketing to a lengthening sales cycle

Generating a high volume of leads

Generating high-quality leads

2009 2010

Source: MarketingSherpa B2B Marketing Benchmark SurveyMethodology: Fielded Aug 2010, N=935


FUEL Up…….. and Drive Effectiveness

Find and attract leads

Building a foundation for your

lead generation programs

Mastering essential lead generation

How to select your lead generation mix

Uncover qualified leads

Bridging the gap between Marketing

and Sales

Identifying the Marketing-Sales

funnel

Identifying and qualifying leads

Harvesting high quality leads

Establish automated marketing processes

How to select marketing

automation software

Marketing automation

implementation and upkeep

Lift results

Lead generation analysis

Automation analysis

Metrics that matter

Delivering marketing value to the C-Suite

& marketing leadership


Finding the gold with lead qualification and scoring


Finding the Gold: Identifying and Qualifying Leads

What is a lead?


Defining a lead

“By definition, a universal Sales lead is one that has been determined to fit the profile of the ideal customer, has been qualified

as Sales-ready, and spells out the responsibilities and accountabilities of the participants in the program, Sales and

Marketing.”

-Brian CarrollExecutive Director of Applied Research, MECLABS & CEO, InTouch


Lead Qualification will enable you to:

• Generate a greater volume of qualified, sales-ready leads

• Dramatically reduce any frustrations that exist among Sales

• Improve Sales and Marketing alignment

• Increase sales effectiveness

• Accelerate sales pipeline performance

• Ultimately increase overall revenues

Benefits of Lead Qualification


• 80% of organizations require contact information

• Only 42% of organizations are verifying a valid business need

• All other qualifications show 26% participation or lower

• B2B sales teams need sales opportunities, not just inquiries

Information Required Before Passing a Lead to Sales

16%

23%

23%

25%

26%

42%

80%

Lead has potential for large deal size

Lead has indicated an acceptable purchasing budget

Lead has indicated an acceptable time frame to

purchase

Lead has reached a certain lead score through expressing

interest in a number of …

Lead has identified themselves as a decision

maker

Lead has indicated a valid business need

Lead has entered basic contact information in a lead form on our website, a mail …



Step #1 – Analyze past sales-ready leads

• Identify common characteristics among best leads and best customers.

• Which leads closed the fastest and had the largest deal sizes?

• Which customers make the most repeat purchases and recommend your products and services?

• Are there common job titles? Locations? Industries? Company sizes? Etc.

How to Get Started with Lead Qualification


Step #2 – Meet with Sales

• Gain support from key influencers first

• Act as a facilitator of this meeting

• Plan ahead & prepare

• Ask “What is a qualified lead for our company?” then listen

• See Page #27 for more questions to ask

Step # 3 – Confirm with Sales

• Schedule a second meeting to confirm universal lead definition

• Establish accountabilities

• Set expectations



Step #4 – Draft and roll out

• Draft ULD based on insights that were consistent from initial meeting to confirmation meeting

Step #5 – Confirm again

• Once drafted, confirm with Sales to make any necessary edits and receive final buy in

Step #6 – Publish

• Make the ULD as public as possible

Step #7 – Edit and Republish

• Over time, leads change



Sample Universal Lead Definition

A sales-ready lead for our company has a need for CRM software, and 'gets it.' They have some level of education on CRM and a clear understanding of the benefits.

They have an adequate budget set aside for their purchase and they have downloaded one of our whitepapers on CRM software benefits. Approximately 30%

of leads generated from Marketing will be sales-ready and approximately 15% of sales-ready leads will be closed by the sales team.

-CRM Software developer


• Lead scoring – the process of adding or subtracting points as a result of various lead attributes and behaviors that identify sales-ready leads.

• Once a lead enters the system, an initial score is assigned

• Points are added and / or subtracted over time

• Methodologies evolve over time

Identify Qualified Leads with Scoring Processes


• 25% of organizations following best practice for lead scoring

• Behavior-based scoring criteria both popular and effective

• Marketing automation enables automated behavior-based scoring

Lead Scoring Processes and Calculation

16%

23%

23%

25%

26%

42%

80%

Lead has potential for large deal size

Lead has indicated an acceptable purchasing budget

Lead has indicated an acceptable time frame to purchase

Lead has reached a certain lead score through expressing interest in a

number of categories

Lead has identified themselves as a decision maker

Lead has indicated a valid business need

Lead has responded to a marketing campaign by providing basic contact

information



Components of a Successful Lead Scoring Campaign

CRITERIA

Demographics & attributes

Behaviors

EXECUTION

Manual execution for a small number of criteria or leads

Automated execution to

ensure consistency

ASSUMPTIONS

Launch with a best guess for qualified

lead threshold score

Test and adjust threshold over

time

FLEXIBILITY

Continual process of trial and error

Gather qualitative feedback and

quantitative data

FEEDBACK

Check in with Sales regularly

Identify problems early on


Attributes and Behaviors for Lead Scoring

Lead Scoring Attributes Lead Scoring Behaviors

Industry Website visit

Company size (number of employees)

High-value website page visit

Annual revenue Email open

Location Email clickthrough

Budget Whitepaper download

Job title Webinar registration

Key problem / pain point Phone call

Current solution Email sent

Education Visited booth at tradeshow


Sample Lead Score CalculationLead scoring criteria Addition / Subtraction of points

Lead works for a company with more than 100 employees +3

Lead has indicated an acceptable budget of US $5,000 for

purchase

+5

Lead has indicated a timeframe to purchase of three months +5

Lead has a job title that includes the word Manager or Director +3

Lead indicated that they wanted to be contacted by a

consultant or salesperson

+8

Lead visited the website +1

Lead visited the pricing page of our website +2

Lead opened a company email +1

Lead clicked through on a company email +2

Lead unsubscribed from the email list -5

Lead has not shown any activity for 14 days -3


Harvesting high quality leads with lead nurturing strategies


• What is lead nurturing?

• Ongoing nurturing

-Consistent communications intended to

keep brands on prospects minds

• Outreach nurturing

- Captures new leads, permissions,

additional data, etc.

• Engagement nurturing

- Targets early stage prospects to build

stronger relationships and increase interest

• Conversion nurturing

- Targets later stage prospects to convert

• New customer nurturing…

Harvesting High-Quality Leads with Nurturing Programs


Step #1 – Define segments

• Deliver highly relevant content by segmenting based on multiple factors, and developing unique lead nurturing tracks for segments

• Buyer personas identify traits, interests and needs

• Balance buyer personas with buying cycle stage – ongoing, outreach, engagement, conversion and new customer nurturing

Step #2 – Collect and develop content

• Audit your library of existing content

• Develop content that meets the interests and needs of various buyer personas in specific buying cycle stages

Six Steps for Establishing Lead Nurturing Campaigns


Step #3 – Add a human touch with teleprospecting

• Collect prospect information - Outreach nurturing

• Teleprospecting VS telemarketing

Step #4 – Further expand the types of lead nurturing touch points

• Deliver content in the preferred formats of your segments

• Consider original lead generation campaigns

Step #5 – Perfect your timing

• Deliver content to various segments when they need it the most

• Timing & frequency of delivery

• Scheduled & triggered nurturing messages

• Make an educated guess for launch

Step #6 – Test, test and test again

Six Steps for Establishing Lead Nurturing Campaigns


• Achieving the right timing and frequency of lead nurturing touches is of paramount importance

• Majority have a frequency of a few times a week, once a week, or once every other week

• Start with an educated guess, then test and tweak over time

Frequency of Lead Nurturing Touches

11%

12%

8%

17%

18%

20%

5%

9%

More than once a month

Once a month

Once every three weeks

Once every other week

Once a week

A few times a week

Once per day

Multiple times a day



Drafting Lead Nurturing Content

Ongoing Outreach Engagement Conversion New customer

Buyer persona 1

Buyer persona 2

Buyer persona 3

Buyer persona 4

Stage of the buying cycle

Buyer personas


MarketingSherpa case study


• Software provider Jaspersoft used automated lead scoring and nurturing campaigns to increase Sales conversion rates

• Segmented in-house database of open-source subscribers, paying customers, and subscribers interested in making a purchase

• Steps to success

Case Study: Lead-Gen Revamp with Automation and Scoring


• Communicate effectively to all segments to improve sales conversion rates

• Profile audience and segment their database

• Establish automated processes for lead scoring and nurturing

Campaign Goals

“We’ve got this huge funnel. Plenty of people know us and use our software. My challenge is not to increase the number of leads, but to

get improved conversion rates throughout the funnel.”

-Nick HalseyVP MarketingJaspersoft


• The team had a lack of integration between Marketing and Sales databases

• CRM for commercial sales leads, separate database for open-source community, email tool, web analytics, accounting platform for ecommerce transactions

• Created a centralized database by:

• Implementing a marketing automation platform

• Integrated existing databases

Campaign Tactic: Centralize and segment database


• Segmented database according to demographics and behaviors

• Prospects who registered on the community site were considered non-commercial prospects until further actions or demographic information indicated otherwise

• Allowed visitors to self-segment by specifying interests

Campaign Tactic: Centralize and segment database

“Over time, we get a pretty good matrix of information about each contact.”



• The team applied segmentation to a series of scheduled outbound email communications

• Four editions of their quarterly newsletter

• Customer

• Community member

• Corporate Europe Edition

• Corporate North America Edition

• Announcements for events and new products

Campaign Tactic: Customize Communications


• The team set up triggered communications

• 30-day trial download triggered a series

• Thank you / welcome

• Links to tools

• Links to online documentation and forums

• Request for permission to engage with Sales

• Behaviors triggered automated sub-campaigns

• Indications of readiness to buy triggered hand-off to Sales

• Purchasing documentation

• Signing up for a training course

Campaign Tactic: Triggered Lead Nurturing


• Automation application enabled the team to develop dynamic registration forms

• Asked prospects for information depending on the action they were taking, or information already collected

• Entry level actions only required name and email

• Subsequent actions triggered additional questions

Campaign Tactic: Dynamic Registration Forms


• Lead scores were developed based on demographics and behaviors over time

• Once a community member reached the qualified lead threshold, they were handed off to Sales

• They routed leads to the appropriate sales person based on sales team expertise and specialties

Campaign Tactic: Lead Qualification, Scoring, and Hand-off

“We have hundreds of thousands of names of people just simmering in the background.

Scoring helps to make you aware when their behavior shows signs of life.”



• Since implementation, the team has achieved a 190% increase in sales conversion rate from qualified leads to closed deals

• Top closing prospects asked to be contacted

• 2nd greatest closing rates from 30 day trial drip

• 3rd greatest closing rates from e-commerce campaigns

Campaign Results

“Marketing automation is a must-have for us, it’s not a nice-to-have.”


Lead Scoring – great practices!

Chris Petko

Senior Director, Expert Services


What stage of Lead Scoring are you currently in?

1. Don’t understand it yet

2. Understand, but haven’t implemented it yet

3. Currently using Lead Scoring, but am looking to optimize it

4. Have been using lead scoring for years and have made many enhancements

5. Not relevant for my business.

Poll Question


Focus on the core scenario

Define a leadCapture their DBL, Qualify, Hand off to sales,Measure, Optimize …


Focus on the core scenario

Define a leadCapture their DBL, Qualify, Hand off to sales,Measure, Optimize … Repeat


Stage Owner Definition Action SLA Pass FailSuspect Marketing An email address in the Eloqua

database.Record fits into ICP Not a good fit

Inquiry Marketing A raw response, or hand-raiser to an outbound marketing program or to our website or to an event.

An email click-through, form submission, landing page visit OR a website visit.

Scoring must be completed within 4 hours.

Email CT, Form Submission, Landing page visit, Website visit, Event Booth visit

Not active, no hand raising

MQL Marketing An Inquiry that has reached a certain threshold for both level of fit and engagement from lead scoring.

Automated - Program assigns score, Custom objects created

2 hours

Inquiry is scored and is at A1, A2, B1, B2, C1.

Lead Score is not high enough

SAL Marketing A lead that has an established need, authority and timing to move forward (pain, role, buying stage).

A qualification call is made.

8 hours

Lead qualifies on ANT Lead does not qualify

SQO Sales An active pipeline opportunity A qualification call is made by Field rep to establish/validate the Buyers Stage, Pain and Authority.

48 hours

Sufficient interest and potential to warrant further investment to develop the opportunity

Discovery call does not uncover real need.

Define a lead


Define a lead - Explicit

Title – Normalized Score

Marketing Title (VP, Director, Manager, Professional) C-Level

50

Non Sales Directors and VPs“Vice President of Sales”

20

Sales titlesExclude: Vice President of Sales

10

Industry Score

Business Services, Banking, Insurance, Technology, Computer Hardware, Software

20

CRM Score

Salesforce.com, Siebel (on Demand), Microsoft CRM 30

Other Exclude: blank or “None”

10


Define a lead - Explicit

Title – Normalized Score

Marketing Title (VP, Director, Manager, Professional) C-Level

50

Non Sales Directors and VPs“Vice President of Sales”

20

Sales titlesExclude: Vice President of Sales

10

Industry Score

Business Services, Banking, Insurance, Technology, Computer Hardware, Software

20

CRM Score

Salesforce.com, Siebel (on Demand), Microsoft CRM 30

Other Exclude: blank or “None”

10

Accelerator:Opportunity that was

disqualified, lost or stalled within the last 12 months.


Define a lead - Implicit

HVWC Score

Services pages 25

Product Pages 25

Platform Pages 10

About Us 5

Customer Success, Case Studies, Videos, Whitepapers 5

Frequency Score

Website visits in last 7 days > 1 20

Inquiry Score

# of Inquiries in last 30 days > 1 10


Define a lead - Implicit

HVWC Score

Services pages 25

Product Pages 25

Platform Pages 10

About Us 5

Customer Success, Case Studies, Videos, Whitepapers 5

Frequency Score

Website visits in last 7 days > 1 20

Inquiry Score

# of Inquiries in last 30 days > 1 10

Accelerator:Contact Us Form SubmissionViewed Demo on eloqua.com


Qualify

Website


Qualify

Website Campaign Inquiry


Qualify

Website Campaign Inquiry

Think in terms of production


Qualify

0 3 7 14

Website Visit = 40Product page (25 pts)About (5 pts)Platform page (10 pts)

Joe Blow, VP Marketing, (50) Technology Inc. (20)SFDC (30)

A A2

40Implicit Score

Add/Subtract

1 2 4 65


Qualify

0 3 7 14

Joe Blow, VP Marketing, (50) Technology Inc. (20)SFDC (30)

A A2

Campaign Inquiry = 10

+10+20 A1-3(1 per day)

47Implicit Score

Add/Subtract

1 2

-7(1 per day)

4 65

-4(1 per day)


Qualify – tips for the first time


The hand off to Sales


Measure, Optimize … Repeat



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zTMaJlv764

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zTMaJlv764


Some sources of names provide more opportunities than others


Lead Source


Some sources produce faster wins. (later buyers stage)


Lead Source


Some sources give higher Win Rates


Lead Source


What is your biggest challenge to Lead Scoring?

1. Don’t have the knowledge to implement or optimize

2. Don’t have the bandwidth/not a priority.

3. Don’t know how to optimize it.

4. Internal adoption/don’t see the value

5. Hand off to sales/lack of support from Sales to follow up

6. Lead scoring is not relevant for my business.

Poll Question


In conclusion…

Define a leadCapture their DBL, Qualify, Hand off to sales,Measure, Optimize … Repeat


Connect with Chris Petko

[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]?subject=ReadyTalk webinar on Lead Scoring


• Marketers must qualify, score and nurture leads for optimal revenues and lead generation ROI

• Gain agreement from Sales on criteria for qualified leads

• Score leads based on demographics and behaviors

• Consider personas and stage of the buying cycle for optimal lead nurturing content

• Precise management of hand-off is critical

Top Takeaways


Send us your feedback:

[email protected]@[email protected]@eloqua.com

Questions, Comments


Thank you

how to qualify, score and nurture leads for optimal roi

Business

b2b marketing challenges

b2b marketing effectiveness

b2b marketing environment

b2b marketers

highquality leads

lead qualification

harvesting high quality

leadgen revamp