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Getting IT Pros to Respond to Your Follow-up Marketing Efforts

November 13th, 2007 | Maureen Beattie

A common question I hear from our technology vendor clients is how can they get IT pros to respond to follow-up marketing efforts after they download a content asset such as a white paper, webcast or podcast.  Too often we hear that telemarketing is used as the method of follow-up and the results are less than favorable.  I always advise my clients to use the same method for re-marketing as they did to capture the prospect’s information in the first place.  The audience has already demonstrated a comfort level or preference with that method - why change it? 

This seems like marketing common sense.  So why do so many vendors still use telemarketing when the audience is in the online research phase of the buying process? Last June, Garrett Mann posted on this topic, quoting that IT buyers are twice as likely to give vendors a valid email address than a valid phone number (MarketingSherpa & KnowledgeStorm, Connecting through Content, June 2007). The point was reinforced at the TechTarget Online ROI Summit this past September where many of our panel members (IT professionals) stated that they are not likely to answer or return a marketing call from an IT vendor.  They would rather have the vendor follow up via email with another relevant offer or content piece.  IT professionals receive so many phone calls from vendors each day that they simply can not respond nor are they ready to. 

So how can marketers help move prospects through the buying cycle, past research and on to consideration?  One of our presentations at the Online ROI Summit, Selecting Content to Match the Buying Process, addressed this with some best practices for choosing content type and topic to match the various stages of the purchase cycle.  This presentation addresses:

  1. Understanding the various stages of the IT buying cycle and the effectiveness of  different media types and topics at each stage
  2. Mapping out a plan to have the appropriate content pieces which will move prospects through the cycle
  3. Setting expectations on the number and quality of leads based on the content types and topics you are offering

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 12:12 pm and is filed under Best practices, Buying process, Email marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

2 responses to “Getting IT Pros to Respond to Your Follow-up Marketing Efforts”

  1. Carrie Maynard Says:
    November 14th, 2007 at 6:38 pm

    I think this brings up the question of when prospects are ready for a “human touch”. To make that decision, it is important to look at what you know about your prospect and their behavior.

    If they’ve been visiting your website frequently, downloading white papers, attending your events, then they are definitely demonstrating interest and may be ready for a call. But if this is the first time they’ve ever engaged with you, or they haven’t show a lot of interest these leads should be nurtured.

    And as you said, nurture them with the same kind of information they’ve responded to in the past. A lead may not be ready for that call today, but with some nurturing may be ready in the future.

  2. Mainframe Encryption Says:
    January 9th, 2008 at 2:37 pm

    Yes we are in this exact spot. We have customers that have responded to many types of online marketing. We want to maintain contact with them and mindshare until they are ready for human interaction. There is always the hope that any campaign will yield a few customers that are at that stage immediately.

    I would like to know more about such programs.

    Michael Rowles
    SMB Security
    CopiaTECH

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