whitepaper: automated b2b lead generation

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Copyright © SMDI Ltd Aug. 2012 Contact: www.lamp-360.com 020 3397 0725 Version 1 Page 1 of 18 WHITEPAPER: AUTOMATED B2B LEAD GENERATION August 1 2012 AUTOMATED B2B LEAD GENERATION FACT OR FICTION? BY JULIAN POULTER SMDI LTD AUGUST 2012 WWW.LAMP-360.BIZ

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A whitepaper describing the LAMP: Lead Automated Marketing Process - supported by technology, out of the box, for SMEs.

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Page 1: Whitepaper: Automated B2B Lead Generation

Copyright © SMDI Ltd Aug. 2012 Contact: www.lamp-360.com 020 3397 0725

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WHITEPAPER: AUTOMATED B2B LEAD

GENERATION

August 1

2012AUTOMATED B2B LEAD GENERATION – FACT OR FICTION?

BY JULIAN POULTER SMDI LTD

AUGUST 2012

WWW.LAMP-360.BIZ

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Whitepaper on Automated B2B

Lead Generation

Contents

1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 3

2. LEAD AUTOMATED MARKETING PROCESS (LAMP) – THE THEORY ............ 3

3. CONTENT DISTRIBUTION ................................................................................... 9

Web site blog .............................................................................................................................................................9

Social media ............................................................................................................................................................ 10

4. OTHER CONSIDERATIONS ............................................................................... 11

5. TECHNOLOGY CONSIDERATIONS .................................................................. 13

6. APPLICATIONS OF LAMP ................................................................................. 15

7. WHY MARKETING AUTOMATION AND LAMP? ............................................... 16

8. BEST PRACTICE AND STARTING LAMP ......................................................... 16

9. ABOUT SMDI ...................................................................................................... 18

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1. Introduction

Lead generation is important in all industries, especially B2B and high tech. The challenge is educating prospects about new, complex and often niche propositions, especially if they are revolutionary products. Even when the proposition is evolutionary, the competitive high tech space can make getting ‘air time’ tricky for any company.

Lead generation is expensive and these industries will use a wide variety of techniques including PR, events, marketing communication and tele-marketing to name but a few. With complex propositions the “face to face” or “ear to ear” communication method is hard to beat, hence the proliferation of events and the wide spread use of tele-marketing.

The LAMP process consist of content marketing automation, blending email, social media and intelligent tele-marketing. This paper looks a the process and some of the considerations of undertaking such an approach.

2. Lead Automated Marketing Process (LAMP) – The Theory

We have coined the phrase Lead Automated Marketing Process or LAMP to describe this important process.

Traditionally tele-marketing essentially involves cold calls to a target list of prospects. Compared to many other forms of marketing it has many advantages; a complex proposition can be explained and the prospects circumstances uncovered, qualified and next steps agreed – far more than can usually be accomplished in an email. However it can suffer from low response rates such that 60 calls in a day may only result in 5 conversations with decision makers and often zero leads.

Recent statistics also show, that with the inexorable rise of search engines and availability of information on the web, that over 80% of people will refuse or not wish to take a cold call, as they do research on the web.

However, with technology and high tech industries in particular, typified by complex propositions and with long sales cycles, tele-marketing can be an invaluable door opener.

The ‘trick’ with tele-marketing is to make the initial calls as warm as possible, by being from a familiar source and to a qualified contact. The LAMP process explored here may help achieve this by allowing you to increase the quality and frequency of your contact with prospects, which in turn allows you to maintain higher visibility in the market.

The technology to support this process is a key component as we will explain as is the channel used to communicate, but the “content” of the communication is also very important. The old marketing maxim of the right message, right channel, right time still applies. In fact the LAMP process effectively provides a mechanism to set this up.

By “content” we mean the information and ideas that you have to tell the world about. If this is of low quality or uninteresting then there is going to be little reason for prospects to search you out and “listen” to what you have to say; irrespective of the medium or channel you use to communicate with (web, email or tele-marketing). You will need to think carefully about content in the form of whitepapers, fact sheets, case studies, web & micro sites, landing pages, videos & blogs to name but a few of the options available to the marketer today.

One of the most cost efficient ways to communicate with prospects is through the email channel. Technology allows us to set up sophisticated email campaigns. However the problem of email is not the cost but deliverability and response rates. Deliverability is largely a technical issue and not discussed in this paper.

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The standard of email campaigns are generally poor in our experience and many organisations still resort to the monthly email campaign. A few days before the end of the month, somebody realises the approaching deadline and a mad rush occurs to think of something to mailshot the customers or prospects with and a sloppily produced email is quickly sent out. if you are lucky the resulting responses are followed up by somebody. More often than not everybody in the database gets the same message and responses are passed off on a spread sheet to sales, or loaded into their CRM.

This is not a recipe for success or for staff retention for that matter! A more sophisticated campaign is better planned and might incorporate:

For instance:

Segments of the prospect list can receive particular topics

Clicking on an email and downloading a whitepaper from your web site can result in a specific offer, message or further call to action made at a time relevant to the event and with related content it is much more likely to get a response

Tele-marketing can also be scheduled to call at an appropriate time

The most important point however is that the messages and collateral being sent out must be matched to the buyer and his specific position in the Awareness Cycle and his journey along it. Getting this right will help significantly with the response rates.

Figure 1- The Buyer's Journey

In the diagram above, we show five stages of a typical buyer’s journey through the Awareness Cycle:

Stage Description

Unaware They have no concept of who you are or what you do, they may not even be are or acknowledge they have a problem

Aware

The buyer responds to one of your marketing campaigns and becomes aware of who you are and what you do, he recognises he has a problem

Interested If the buyer recognises a need for your solution, they may show interest and request information about your product. He recognises he has a problem and may be interested in finding out more about the issues and ways of handling them

Looking The buyer starts to actively research solutions. If the buyer is impressed with your solution, then they may consider actively

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looking at it. At this point, pricing, case studies and implementation issues are of most interest

Customer The buyer purchases and becomes a customer and you need to service and educate them

There are a few issues associated with the Awareness Cycle that need to be taken into consideration:

The 4 key issues behind the Awareness Cycle

1. You need to develop different marketing messages for each and every stage of the Awareness Cycle

As buyers move through the cycle, they need to make different decisions. It therefore makes sense that you should tailor your marketing communications to address each of those decisions at the time that it is relevant to the buyer

2. You shouldn’t skip steps in the buyer’s journey through the Awareness Cycle

If you try to skip steps then you may create resistance from the buyer.

As an example, if you attempt to demonstrate your technology to a prospect before they recognise a need for your type of a solution then, they will generally fail to see that it is relevant to them and will therefore resist your presentation and view it as spam

3. Individuals in the same company may be at different stages of the same journey

An important realisation that comes with the buyers journey is that it is a process that goes on “in the heads of individuals”. Decisions are not actually made by corporations, they are made by individuals in corporations and those individuals may be making decisions based on different information.

There may be one individual in a target company who is clearly at the “looking at solutions” stage, yet they have colleagues who don’t even acknowledge that there is a problem. In this case, you need to provide the “right” information to those that don’t yet realise there is a problem, so that they can start to make more informed decisions

4. Individuals start the buyer’s journey at different times and travel at different speeds

The fact is that your prospects do not discover you at the same time. They begin their buyers journey at different times and depending on their situation, they will progress through your Awareness Cycle at different speeds

The table below shows a typical simplified Awareness Cycle and the various stages in it along with suggested collateral that may be used in that stage:

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Awareness Stage

Description Suggested collateral

Unaware Initial contact with suspects where they are essentially unaware of your company or your proposition

Whitepapers – industry news and information useful to the suspect and his role

Events – keynote speakers/analysts

Aware Suspects are now educated and aware of your proposition and have interacted with you by email, phone or web. As they are still at an early stage collateral can be very similar to Unaware stage

White papers

Product demos

Events

Product specific/role specific brochure

Interested Suspects, may now be a prospect as they have usually interacted at least twice and may now be interested in your proposition. By now they will have been called by tele-marketing

Special offers, trials and proof of concepts

Price Lists

Case Studies and references

Brochures and fact sheets User group events

Customer Once a customer a different type of communication can now be established.

Now solving the problem with your product

Newsletters

Upsells offers Education in use of product/service

Renewals

Loyalty programmes

User groups

In the simple Awareness Cycle shown above there are only 3 stages before becoming a customer. This could obviously become more sophisticated if required, however we recommend starting simply for almost any organisation. In addition, at each stage there can be different propositions A,B & C etc.

For each Awareness Stage and proposition combination a prospect contact strategy is developed – that is, a “Stream” of emails (and other contact channels such as tele-marketing and SMS) and associated collateral / content that should be of interest to the prospect at his stage of the Awareness Cycle.

For instance, in the Unaware stage a Stream of collateral could be emailed in the following way:

Time period Collateral

Week 1 Whitepaper – industry issues and possible solutions

Week 4 Whitepaper – additional industry issues or analyst’s report

Week 7 Invite to educational seminar on a relevant topic of note ideally with a keynote speaker

Week11 Case study based video or podcast for variety

Week x,y,z ….additional collateral and emails

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NB. Contacting Unaware people more than every 3-4 weeks may be deemed spamming in a B2B environment. However, as we are trying to increase brand awareness and demonstrate thought leadership, contact less than 5-6 times per year may not produce any product recall.

The “collateral” referred to here needs to be useful to the people it is being sent to and demonstrate thought leadership. It is not “special offers”, not product brochures and promotes a responsible trusting attitude.

In addition, interactors (after clicking in an email or responding to a call) can be profiled online which allows them to be qualified and receive more targeted communications delivered in future campaigns. Profile questions need to be very quick and simple or a large drop out may occur (see section below on Profiles and surveys).

Overview

The diagram below shows a typical LAMP process:

Figure 2- Buyer Engagement Process (email)

Key points:

Initial batches of bulk emails drip fed out at x100 per day

Each email is customised and relevant to its associated piece of collateral

Mainly whitepapers used as collateral in the Unaware stage

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Interactors of emails are ‘profiled’ and called by intelligent tele-marketing who refer to other databases and sources (social media)

Leads qualified and passed to sales or move to appropriate Stream for further email communication

Leads scored as appropriate

Buyers move through the Awareness Cycle at their own speed

Nurture or Lead Nurtures become very important (see Application of LAMP section 6 below)

The diagram below shows a more comprehensive LAMP process with additional steps in each of the main Streams of communication. Set up at one time in a few days, subject to availability of collateral, the lead generation process can then run automatically for many months.

NB In the Nurture stages, you should be able to schedule telemarketing calls as part of the Stream.

Figure 3 - Buyer Engagement Process: Email and Social Media

Collateral or content

As can be seen a variety of different collateral can be used in conjunction with emails. The table below explains the main types available to a marketer:

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Collateral item Comment

Whitepaper Written from a 3rd party point of view rather than your company/product perspective. Explains or educates prospect in industry issues, usually where your proposition can uniquely help

Event Seminars with industry expert speakers (ideally). Seminars should be small and regular rather than large and “one off”, so that executives can attend one of several events at different times and locations

Web cast A live event or a recording of a seminar can work, particularly in large geographies like the USA. Alternatively a live demo or presentation can be useful

Webinar / demo A product demo can often be a useful thing to promote

Meeting Offering face to face meetings, especially with industry experts (not sales people) can be appealing to some organisations

Brochure Not used until a relationship has been developed. But relevant for those in the Looking at Solutions or Interested Streams

Please note that whilst the LAMP process demands the use of collateral, once created this collateral can be disseminated through many channels such as sales meetings, events, web, whitepapers sites, blogs, LinkedIn and other social media.

Good quality collateral will usually last many months or years, whereas product information will often become quickly superseded. Hence, the initial investment in collateral will usually continue to provide payback over many years.

3. Content Distribution

So far we have concerned ourselves mainly with email channel of distribution. Email can be personalised and can be directed at the prospect based on his stage in the buyer’s journey.

However, over recent years, publishing to Social Media and company blogs has also become important.

The diagrams in section 2 above shows the distribution using email and social media. Articles, images and other content are posted on the social media sites. This process is described in more detail here.

Web site blog

Most of the content on your company blog is fairly static and doesn’t change from month to month. This is not good for SEO and generating traffic to your site. To generate traffic you need interesting content and to publish this, hence the usefulness of the company blog. The blog can include all sorts of articles/topics like staff and product announcements but it’s also good place to host your “content”.

Any article or whitepaper, image or video can be a candidate for hosting on your blog site.

Please note its normal to host the blog in your company site, rather than on an external platform – this helps with the overall SEO for the site.

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Social media

Once you’ve written your article and published it on your blog you can now announce it to the social media world. There are two steps to this.

Firstly you will post your content on the main social media sites LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ as a minimum.

Figure 4 - Overveiw Content Marketing Process

These posts will often be a few hundred words describing your article, its summary or the first few paragraphs of it. Sometimes the article will be posted in full, but normally to get the full article the user clicks on the link embedded in the post and ends up back at your blog page or dedicated landing page.

A Landing Page is a web page optimised for converting a visitor to a lead. It should work well for its chosen keywords from an SEO point of view, has extraneous links and menus removed from it and normally has a registration form that can be completed by the user as the call To Action (CTA). The result of submission of the form is for the prospect to finally get to the content. Sometimes this “gated” approach to content won’t work and you just can go direct to the content without registration.

Finally you can announce all your postings on Twitter. A Tweet is a short 140 character message (which includes the characters for the link to the blog article). So the Tweet will announce the social media posting so people who follow the link in the Tweet will go to your social media post or direct to your blog post or Landing Page.

With your marketing automation software like LAMP-360 all of the clicks to the Landing Pages and blog articles register as visits and if a user completes a registration form they become a registered lead and you start the nurturing or sales process in earnest.

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It’s also worth noting that a single article can be published on multiple locations and with social media it’s reasonable to consider 3-4 slightly different posts relating to the same article over a period of a month. With Twitter this could be increased to say 8 Tweets over a month.

So in summary, each article can result in a relative “blizzard” of social media posts all driving traffic back to your web site and generating visits and leads. Hopefully whilst they are on your site they will explore, see more items of interest and subscribe to your blog or newsletter or give you a call – make sure your call to actions are set up.

4. Other considerations

Profiles and surveys, qualification and scoring

When leads are generated from email marketing you run the risk of obtaining poor quality leads. Therefore qualifying the leads is an important part of the process. Obviously this can be undertaken by tele-marketing but this is relatively expensive. Therefore we need a process to do this for us automatically.

When users click on an email link to obtain the collateral they are interested in it is possible for the user to complete a short survey. This is not an in depth survey of user needs, just a few simple questions trying to determine the prospect’s interest level, usually with simple check box options for quick answering.

Traditional sales qualification such as Budget, Authority, Need and Timescale (BANT) is possible but we recommend that this is largely left to the sales and tele-marketer roles to achieve when in a conversation. Asking questions such as “how much is your budget?” can be seen as rude and lead to drop out.

Depending on the answers given and the resulting qualification, the prospect can then be placed into an alternative treatment or communication Stream. For instance, the Aware campaign could have two different campaign Streams, one for each of product A or B.

In addition the responses a prospect gives can all be scored such that those who have given the most relevant responses are scored the most highly.

In addition, the responses will often provide “conversational opportunities” or topics for tele-marketing to speak to the prospect about, and get the conversation going.

In a sales environment where there are only a handful of leads each week lead scoring may not be necessary. However, where there are lots of incoming leads and relatively few sales resources, the lead scoring can be used to ensure that sales spends its time on the most relevant prospects.

Email content

There are plenty of references on the web on how to write a good email. However a few key points not normally mentioned are relevant in the early stages of a B2B campaign:

Keep email as text like as possible in the early stages (Unaware) – as if you were writing to a colleague

Don’t use lots of graphics, colours and banners, they smack of spam and email broadcasts. Perhaps just a company logo in a signature to start with. As prospects progress through the Awareness Cycle they can be exposed to more overt branding, higher up the email body and “above the fold”

Use bullet points and concise, tightly written text

Keep the subject line, key message and the call to action button or link in the preview window or “above the fold”

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Social media and the web

Once a lead has been generated by the system the telemarketer can call the prospect and has the benefit of the results of the profile questions to obtain conversational “hooks” or topics. Using the tools at his disposal the telemarketer can be well prepared and appear professional and informed, leading to a better result on the call.

In addition, the normal process in the age of social media is then for the software to look for connections in social media about the prospect. In the B2B world Facebook can be useful but the first choice is currently LinkedIn.

LinkedIn can be used for all sorts of things but at least will show you some of the prospects history and you will usually garner some additional contacts, which should be added into future communication Streams.

In the LAMP process the software will also generate leads using social media. When items are posted on social media such as Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook they should be posted via the LAMP system which then tracks the clicks on any link – for instance to a whitepaper that you have announced on social media.

When an anonymous person follows a link the system can track a click and also which pages they visit on the web site, but they will not be able to be identified. However, if this same person responds to one of our emails, the cookie on their PC will link the items together. When a telemarketer views their contact record they will also see evidence and an audit of their web browsing history and social media interactions.

Humans

The important human element in the LAMP process is the tele-marketer. Whilst there are people involved in planning and executing the campaigns and in the sales process itself, the most critical element in generating leads is tele-marketing.

This paper does not cover recruitment, training and motivation of this specialised team. However, it is true that even with the best processes, data and systems, if the people involved at the front end are not knowledgeable, professional and have all the relevant interpersonal skills, then the investment could be wasted.

Follow up time

Using the LAMP process there’s no excuse for not following up in a timely manner. Some interesting research from insidesales.com and others shows that:

1. The best ROI in follow ups occurs when around 9 attempts are made to contact a lead. This is a lot of effort but if your reps only try 1 or 2 times they are likely not to get through and disregard the lead

2. Response rates to follow ups made within a few minutes to an hour of a lead downloading or clicking on some content is far ahead of the response rate after 3 hours, 24 hours or several days. Best practice dictates that follow ups should be done within the hour

Lead Nurturing Benefits

The content marketing automation approach allows an efficient approach to lead nurturing. Several studies have shown some off the benefits of lead nurturing and we include a few here:

Marketing Sherpa:

80% of poor prospects go on to buy in 24 months

Communication: a differentiation during sales cycle

Aberdeen Group:

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Lead Nurturing lead to

107% better lead conversion

40% bigger deal size

Lower cost per opportunity

Overall we think it’s a vital process and neglected in most companies.

5. Technology considerations

There are several areas where the technology to support the process is probably different from standard CRM or email marketing tools available today. These include:

1. Email scheduling of Streams

Any email marketing system and most CRM tools will allow you to send emails out in batch using some sort of selection criteria or target list and email templates. Most will also allow you to track who has opened or responded to a campaign etc. However, please check as even market leading products such as Salesforce.com do not provide any marketing capability “out of the box” without purchasing additional add-ons.

However, the challenge with LAMP and dealing with each individual and moving them automatically through the Awareness Cycle at their individual speed means the normal batch email operation does not work. Any tool in this space will need processes or agents, normally residing on the server, that will examine each individual prospect and determine what communications he is due next. Of course if for some reason, the prospect has already been sent a specific mail he should not normally be sent it again.

With a batch approach you are normally list and specific email centric and that approach does not work with multiple emails, Streams and the Awareness Cycle.

2. Telemarketing workflow

Most email systems provide a crude, if any, interface for tele-marketing users.

CRM systems provide the generalised toolkit and 360 degree view of the prospect but it is not usually optimised for use by tele-marketing. They are normally cumbersome and hard to use for sales people. Telemarketers have their own unique needs and a marketing system needs to be optimized to their workflow requirements. A tele-marketer needs to make a significant volume of calls in a largely repetitive manner, whilst also taking input from any intelligence the LAMP process has thrown up. Key features as well as the normal contact details etc. the system must show:

Any web interactions the prospect has made on your site(s)

Which emails he has been sent and the responses to these

Allow changes to future communication Streams

Allow specific emails or campaign to be sent or registered

Provide access to, on a daily basis: o New leads o Follow-ups from previous activities o Cold calling lists

The system must record the result of a call and give very quick mechanisms to achieve o Log a call and the result o Schedule follow on call o Create an opportunity if required o Manage which Stream of communication the prospect receives in the future o Log any additional intelligence that may be relevant in the future

Many CRM systems, when an Activity or other entity has been created, will usefully (!) show you a list of all activities. Actually this is totally useless to a tele-marketer who

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needs to get straight onto the next call in his list or log an opportunity against the current contact

3. Profile questions

In clicking through from the email to a landing page the system must be able to intelligently select profiling/survey questions for the prospect to answer in a simple fashion.

4. Activity recording

All CRM tools allow recording of activities (calls and meetings) and the creation of opportunities. When there are many campaigns underway simultaneously it is important that any opportunity or activity that is created by the system, tele-marketer or sales, is logged against the appropriate campaign. This is to allow tracking and reporting by campaign and Stream. As this is happening on a frequent basis with multiple campaigns it should also be automatic.

5. Sales and marketing integration

As well as providing for tele-marketers the system must also provide normal CRM opportunity management for sales and the managed interaction of leads as they pass between marketing and sales and potentially back again, several times. Sales and marketing should be working on a seamless process – the buyer does not need to know or care who is providing him with the information he needs at the appropriate time.

NB – if you are a telemarketing agency you may also be interested in the single contact single record issue – this is simply that if you are managing multiple campaigns for multiple clients you may be talking to the same person/prospect in an organisation on behalf of multiple clients at the same time. Therefore you will need a mechanism to maintain separately the results of calls and campaign to a prospect by client/project or even campaign. In addition when prospect unsubscribes from one campaign he is not automatically unsubscribing from your other client’s campaigns.

6. Opt-in and Opt-out

Opt-in and opt-out are particularly important in some jurisdictions and the software must record why opt-in has been granted, and when.

7. Data provenance and emails

It is important that the system can track exactly where a record of data came from, who owns it, what privacy and potentially licensing issues there are in using the data.

Obviously an automated marketing approach needs email addresses to function. Often these are available and can be professionally researched, if required. No single approach will always work and the automated marketing approach works best with a larger population of prospects with accurate email addresses.

A company should use all methods at its disposal to collect and cleanse emails – coupons, fax backs, web forms, campaign profile forms etc etc. Over time a large, qualified and opted in database will result which will gradually achieve higher returns from your campaigns as the messages are more and more relevant to the contacts in the database.

Technology Summary

We believe that that are many tools out there that typically cover part of the sales, marketing or automation process. Our belief is that the lead generation to closed deal, the “sales process”, should be as streamlined and integrated as possible and that a single tool will be the best way to achieve this. CRM tools with add-on marketing automation (MA) or marketing tools with add on CRM are not usually ideal.

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6. Applications of LAMP

Once a LAMP process is understood it can be applied to many different sales and marketing situations, the most common are:

Lead generation

Perhaps the most important use of LAMP is generating new leads. The LAMP process is ideal to create brand awareness and product knowledge in your chosen markets. Based on the quality and accuracy of your emails, contact can be obtained with very senior people in large organisations to be called by your experienced, intelligent telemarketers.

Lead nurturing

The perennial problem in sales and marketing is what to do with leads that are interested but not yet ready to move forward. The problem in most organisations and systems is where does responsibility lie. The challenge is that leads may move quickly from marketing to sales and back and it needs to be clear who and what is occurring with these leads. Often long lists of call backs are maintained in a spread sheet or CRM system, follow up is sporadic at best.

The LAMP process automatically handles this challenge and through the use of focussed emails and the collateral ensures that prospects are nurtured until ready to buy. If a prospect re-engages via email they can be swiftly be re-qualified by tele-marketing before being progressed to sales, again.

Call backs can be scheduled at the appropriate time, or with longer intervals, safe in the knowledge that regular emails will stay in contact with the prospect, and keep our company and solution in the front of mind.

Renewals

With many products and solutions these days, such as SaaS as well as traditional on-premise licence offerings there are often key periods, usually after each 1 or 3 year anniversary where the customer is susceptible to switching, as they come out of a contractual period.

A LAMP process can be set up to automatically recognise the shift in treatment of the customer as they come up to a critical deadline. As well as reminding them of the deadline and ensuring that new contracts or invoices are raised, the system can educate the customer in the new features, product road maps as well as considering upselling training and support.

Customer retention

Closely related to renewals campaigns the customer retention problem is ideal for LAMP. The key to keeping customers is training and service. Training is ensuring they understand the functionality and use of the product or service they already have. Ensuring they are aware of new releases and kept up to date ensures they will have a better experience. Service and support help create a good impression. Many companies have extensive support and maintenance services but are very poor at educating their customers.

Events and user groups

In addition marketing and relationship building opportunities such as customer events, user groups and entertaining can also be put through the LAMP process.

Events are attractive in the LAMP process because a single event is normally a justification for a whole series of communications:

Announcement of the event

Re-announcement of the event

Countdown to event email 30 days, 14 days 7 days, 3 days etc.

Day before reminder and tele-marketing confirmation call

Event follow up with content/slides attached

Tele-marketing to follow up attendees and non-attendees

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Invite to next event

So compared to a whitepaper an event can generate a lot of communication, and as long as the event itself is not considered SPAM then the whole series of emails will help raise brand and product awareness.

Attending events are also a softer approach than a face to face meeting and certain decision makers may respond well to this approach.

Finally a well organised, repeatable event can be a cost effective lead generation technique – you meet many people in ‘one’ meeting.

7. Why Marketing Automation and LAMP?

The main differentiators of the LAMP process compared to standard tele-marketing or email marketing are:

Email is used but it is just the vehicle used to communicate with a range of collateral including whitepapers, events etc.

Quality collateral is used through out

The communication is tailored to where the buyer is on the buyer’s journey down the Awareness Cycle

Cost effectiveness – automating the process with emails keeps costs down, and then expensive telemarketing is used as appropriate

As you can see, the cost effectiveness comes about from using email campaign management technology when there is a large enough population of email data and then applying the proven but more expensive tele-marketing resources when smaller volumes of qualified, warmer leads are in play, resulting from talking to only the responders to the e-campaigns. The tele-marketing is then not so much a cold call and much better response rates are achieved.

The costs of an automated marketing approach are not that different from a typical calling only campaign - partly because less actual tele-marketing is required, which is the most expensive component.

8. Best Practice and starting LAMP

A LAMP process should embody best practice partly as it involves close integration of many types of data (web, social, telemarketing and email) and also because of the link between sales, marketing and tele-marketing.

When you buy an accounting system you don’t design double entry book keeping, trial balances, ledgers invoices and journals. Whilst we would argue that if you invented accounting in the 21st century you wouldn’t need many of the above, but you buy the built in best practice accounting process when you buy an accounts package. An order becomes an invoice, an adjustment is a journal and you produce a P&L every period etc.

A good LAMP process needs a system and conversely the system should fully understand and provide a LAMP process. Whilst a typical CRM system can provide all of this functionality, the problem then is that for the average organisation, unless a lot of time and money is spent on consulting and add-on modules, it will never achieve remotely best practice.

Best practice covers areas of organisation, process and technology and either you need to buy a system that fully understands this from the ‘get go’ or you work with an implementation partner who understands the issues and associated business model from the start.

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LAMP is an efficient business process with closely aligned system, used to develop leads and relationships with prospects and customers. Best practice will need to cover the following:

Marketing automation; campaign, Streams, the buyer’s journey

Tele-marketing system and workflow

Marketing and proposition planning

Marketing and tele-marketing skills and support

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9. About SMDI

SMDI was founded in 2003 and has rapidly become one of Europe’s leading sales and lead generation consultancies. SMDI has provided market evaluation, lead generation and sales outsourcing services to a variety of companies, small, large and across multiple sectors.

SMDI provides services, consulting, best practice and technology around the LAMP process.

We operate in many sectors but our specialism is the demanding IT software sales sector. Within that sector we have particular expertise in:

Business intelligence & knowledge management Help Desk & service management CRM & customer service ERP Media Internet marketing

SMDI operates using a number of full time employed consultants, sales and tele-marketing executives, including in-house project and sales management. We supplement this with external associate resources to extend our skills and geographic coverage. Our external network consists of approximately 50 associates allowing us to operate in many sectors and geographic areas.

SMDI Ltd

Unit 12, The Power House

Higham Mead

Chesham

Buckinghamshire

HP5 2AH

Phone: 020 3397 07265

Email: [email protected]

Web site: www.lamp-360.com