Here’s the leads-now what do we do with them?
June 6th, 2006 | Marilou BarsamI often wonder what kind of help IT marketers want from publishers when it comes to assisting them with their lead management activities. From my perspective, IT companies are now engaged in this activity on a number of levels. As a generalization I’d say that most small and medium companies are still pretty hands-on, slowly but surely introducing sales focused software solutions to help them manage lead flow from marketing to sales and to track conversion from lead to opportunity to actual revenue. Dashboard analysis is seldom shared with my client consulting team but occasionally a client will offer us a perspective on what’s happening behind their lead collection “curtain”.
Larger companies are building out proprietary lead portals and systems, often partnering with sophisticated CRM systems. Ironically, even after they do this, they admit the leads get lost within a myriad of post-marketing activities or fall into a black hole over which they have no control.
In the midst of all this “here’s the leads-now what do we do with them” hoop-la, media publishers are coming up with programs and technologies that can complement marketers’ efforts. From your perspective, what kind of help do you need or want? Should publishers be assisting you in sorting out the leads or just generating them for you and handing them over to you?
June 6th, 2006 at 11:02 am
The key things for me as a consumer of these lead programs is a rich set of up to date information on which to base a fairly simple scoring approach. If I know the industry, location, size of company etc for a lead then I can give you some simple rules for scoring the lead. But this only works if the data is current. Thus keeping the data current and accurate is key.
The second issue is one of helping us do analysis on the data so that we can build rules derived from real experience not just judgment.
Do these things and scoring/rating leads is useful. Otherwise not.
June 7th, 2006 at 8:00 am
Thanks for asking. It would be great if more publishers provided real-time data on emails sent, bouncebacks, deliveries, opens, clicks by link, and conversions (since clients often fail to measure that end). An ability to do split-run tests of stuff like creative, offers, and subject lines can also be immensely helpful. Right now, some publishers are offering just about all of these capabilities, and others are offering next to none.
June 8th, 2006 at 4:03 pm
James and Robert,
Both your points make sense in terms of the data points and analysis you need to evaluate your programs. My team is used to providing performance analysis on the metrics you mentioned, as well as providing insight on the data leads provide thru qualifying questions. We especially like split-run tests as it tells us a lot about our clients’ offers and the market’s reception to them.
A larger issue becomes what happens after we provide the data. Often the marketers see the value in the information, but aren’t always able to convey the value to sales. It seems sales has different focus points or hone in on qualifying issues outside the
parameters of the original marketing program.