Customer Engagement Can’t Be AutomatedPosted

Customer Engagement Can’t Be AutomatedPosted by Chris Kenton on May 2, 2007 10:57 AM
For the past five years, marketing has gone through a significant repositioning as
consultants and gurus seek to recast marketing as an efficient revenue generating machine.
It’s an idea whose time has come—after all, for how many more years could any CEO endure
marketing’s de facto tagline: “I know half of my budget is wasted, I just don’t know
which half.”
Marketers need to be accountable for every dollar invested in acquisition and retention
programs, and they need to demonstrate an ability to drive both top-line revenue and bottom
-line yield. But the transformation is far from complete, and along with the new
requirements for financial accountability, marketers face a host of other challenges they
need to understand in order to manage.
Companies serious about marketing exert tremendous pressure on marketers to transform their
operations. Marketers must assimilate new technologies, benchmark business processes and
develop entirely new skills to leverage emerging channels and respond to global competition.
They must integrate more effectively with sales, justify their programs to the CFO and
develop closer working relationships with IT. And at the end of the day, they are expected
to deliver precisely targeted customer acquisition and retention campaigns that
strategically position the company while driving measurable revenue and market share gains.
With all of these challenges to address, who has time for customers?
In fact, that may be the most significant question marketers face in navigating and
negotiating the new requirements for marketing. Despite the resurging trend in brilliant
theories and bestselling books about customer-centric organizations, the reality on the
ground appears to be that many businesses are becoming increasingly disconnected from their
customers. This at a time when customers are increasingly leveraging social media to take
control of brand positioning and messaging. At precisely the time when marketers need to
improve their ability to engage customers directly, they’re increasingly distracted by a
relentless focus on internal customer data systems and business process management.
In this age of increasingly advanced CRM systems, marketers report an overwhelming reliance
on their data systems as a primary source of customer intelligence, with very little insight
gained through customer service, distribution channels, customer organizations or
communities, or even online customer networks. The reliance on CRM might be acceptable if
systems were robust, but a study I managed last year with the CMO Council showed on average
40% of marketers rate their customer data systems as “weak” or “very weak” in critical
areas, including the timeliness and depth of transactional data; the availability of useful
data, reports and analytics and the relevance of available data to marketing strategies.
Despite the fact that businesses have generated strong customer relationships for centuries
before CRM existed, marketing executives have grown so focused on marketing technology that
in the CMO Council study, they cited the complexity of data and system integration
requirements as the most significant barrier to achieving optimal customer intimacy.
As important as it is for businesses to build effective CRM systems, creating a technology
infrastructure that serves, measures and responds to customers is not sufficient. Companies
need to follow the lead of businesses that have succeeded by first building a passionate
customer following, and then building a customer data system to support growing demand—
businesses like Apple, Nike and Nokia. Marketers can’t afford to get lost in the weeds on
internal systems and processes while losing their connection with customers. In fact, direct
engagement with customers should be the source of inspiration driving technology systems and
business processes.
How Lead Nurturing Improves Lead Generation ROIPosted by Brian Carroll on May 2, 2007 04:22 PM
In a complex sale, my experience is, most of the selling actually happens when the sales
person isn't there. I know there's a lot of emphasis on lead generation (that's a good
thing) but, getting a ton of leads doesn't guarantee that increased sales will follow.
Startling as it may seem, recent research (and even studies from ten years ago) shows that
longer-term leads (future opportunities), often ignored by salespeople, represent almost 80%
of potential sales.
You can increase your odds success by adding a lead nurturing program.
What’s lead nurturing?
Lead nurturing is all about having consistent and meaningful communication with viable
prospects (those that are “a fit” for your solution) regardless of their timing to buy. It
’s not “following-up” every few months to find out if a prospect is “ready to buy yet?”
Lead nurturing about building trusted relationships with the right people.
Walking in their shoes
Consider the following concerns that are going through a potential customers mind before
they make a buying decision:
• How will this product/service help my company? • We’re doing okay, why do we need it? • Is there another company out there that is better? • Will their solution really work? Can they prove it? • Is the company credible? • Can we afford it?
Lead nurturing helps people find the answers to these questions and remind them of the
benefits of working with you. You're creating value by giving them useful information in
digestible, bite sized chunks.
How to start lead nurturing
A typical lead nurturing program includes: a series of letters, emails, voicemails, case
studies, success stories, articles, events, white papers, and web events that are meaningful
to your potential customers. You’re providing relevant educational or thought leading
content.
The tactics employed and the frequency of touches will depend on the solutions being sold
and the buying cycle of the prospect.
Basic Lead Nurturing Plan
Below is a sample lead nurturing plan.
Initial Contact Introductory phone call and follow-up “thank you” e-mail Month 1 3rd party article on pertinent technology via e-mail Month 2 Industry relevant case study via e-mail with follow-up call Month 3 E-newsletter with voice mail alert to check Month 4 3rd party article on pertinent technology via e-mail Month 5 Relevant white paper via e-mail Month 6 Targeted campaign via direct mail Month 7 Relevant eBook via e-mail with follow-up call Month 8 Link to relevant Podcast via e-mail with follow-up call Month 9 Free report via direct mail with follow-up call Month 10 Invitation to webcast via e-mail with follow-up call Month 11 Call to invite to industry trade show and follow-up with registration link Month 12 Prospect calls you and becomes a sales ready lead
When we create lead nurturing programs, we create different lead nurturing tracks based on
demographic criteria such as size, industry, role in the buying process and more.
So what’s the ROI?
As a result of lead nurturing, companies will see more sales-ready leads, higher close
ratios, a stronger sales pipeline and shorter average sales cycles. Client’s that have
committed to lead nurturing program find that they can sustain their production of qualified
leads over the long term and build a much more predictable and sustainable sales pipeline.
Perhaps more interestingly, another client determined that their nurtured prospects brought
in nearly 100% more initial revenue than those that were not nurtured and another said
nurtured their prospects cite a greater overall positive impression of their company.
I’m giving a webinar on a multimodal approach to lead nurturing in June. I hope you can
make it.