Too many companies invest in marketing automation solutions and continue to run the same old batch-n-blast campaigns. Onward like ants, these organizations march forward without ever fully utilizing the technology. Organizations must adjust to the new era of campaign automation, elevating their marketing strategies and implementing a foundation for scalability and reporting.

I put the following list together to share a few insights on how to take that next step and turn a batch-n-blast email strategy into an revenue-generating machine.

1. Use The Lead Lifecycle to Enhance Lead Nurturing

The backbone of any successful digital marketing strategy starts with an understanding of where a lead is in its customer journey—from an anonymous web visitor to a final purchase.  Without this most basic structure in place, marketing automation can be daunting and will most likely result in undesirable outcomes. Carefully curated content must to be triggered at precise moments and to deliver a positive, engaging experience. Marketing automation (MA) tools like Marketo and Eloqua make it easy for marketers and business leaders to analyze key moments in the buyer’s journey, mapping the paths which transform an anonymous lead into a closed deal. SiriusDecision’s Demand Generation Waterfall provides a great starting point for defining key progressions in the marketing funnel:

1. Anonymous lead: Typically website visitors
2. Known lead: An email address
3. MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead): A known lead that has passed marketing’s threshold for qualification
4. SAL (Sales Accepted Lead): A sales rep has accepted ownership of follow-up
5. SQL (Sales Qualified Lead): Sales has qualified the lead
6. Opportunity: A sales opportunity, typically a meeting is generated and tracked via sales process stages
7. Customer: A closed/won opportunity
8. Retention: let it start all over again

With a clear communication strategy in place triggered by lead lifecycle stage, marketing will have insight into what content is most effective at moving prospects through the funnel.

RELATED POST: Kele Achieves Dramatic ROI from Marketing Automation Initiatives. 

2. Reopen a Dialogue with a Lost Prospect

Lead nurturing campaigns are not just for closing deals, they can be effective in re-opening lost ones too. Reasons for opportunity-closed-lost are an invaluable source of information for any organization. Closed-lost opportunities are also some of the easiest to prove ROI with future opportunities, because any response is a huge win.  

Consider this situation: Your company loses a deal to a competitor for an annual contract. You can create a lead nurturing campaign that leverages Salesforce.com Contact Roles, and reaches out to contacts that were part of lost deals 9 months ago. A sample message could be, “Just checking in—we haven’t spoke in a while but wanted to see how work was progressing with Company XYZ. Please let us know if you’re open to considering other options for the next year.” 

3. Progressive Qualification Emails

For many organizations, the handoff between Marketing and Sales comes with the understanding that, “Hey, this is a good lead which need to be followed up.” However, sometimes more information is required to ensure a smooth transition. Utilize digital channels to gather all required information before passing a lead to Sales, especially key qualification criteria. 

Surveys are an option, but click-based updates to records (called a Blind Form Submit) are also an effective measure. Instead of traditional qualification surveys that risk low response rates and tedious maintenance, you can leverage MA tools to trigger personalized emails to gather high-priority data points. Send an introductory email from the Account Executive that is managing the relationship with the new prospect. Include a important qualification question, e.g., “I was about to give you a call, but wanted to quickly confirm if tomorrow morning works for you before reaching out. If so, click here to confirm and we’ll chat tomorrow!” A response to this type of email can trigger internal processes to alert sales and book a meeting. No better way for a Sales rep to start a day than an inbox full of confirmed meetings without having to pick up the phone once.

4. NPS Tracking & Customer Satisfaction

At Bluewolf, we utilize a NPS (Net Promoter Score) initiative for quality insurance. Periodically, we trigger email surveys to primary contacts on our projects, asking them to provide feedback on our services. Results are fed into salesforce.com which give us access to extraordinarily valuable data related to the quality of our projects over time.

After a couple years of monitoring and iterating on this process, we now have visibility into quality trends and we’ve identified who to contact for reference calls, or any project issues. We use MA technologies to constantly improve the way our services, leveraging actionable data straight from the source.

Further, we can use NPS surveys to collect more information about our customers’ needs to grow existing relationships. These activities provide an additional opportunity to trigger other campaign types segmented by product interest, new offers, or other relevant announcements.

5. Internal Adoption Campaigns

What better way to get the Sales team revved up for a MA rollout than a campaign executed from your shiny new MA tool, truly showing off its capabilities?! 

How about this for a formula:

1. Announce the acquisition of the new tool with a list of some of its great sales enablement features
2. Include a click through to a landing page with a registration form for an internal webinar to review sales and time saving benefits
3. Send a confirmation email thanking them for registering
4. On the registration confirmation page, display personalized information and a link to a tip sheet about the tool
5. Send another email thanking the rep for viewing the web page ;) with an optional link to a feedback form

Read more about the importance data and segmentation play in your lead nurturing campaigns, or watch the webcast with Marketo’s Jon Miller: New Benchmarks and Insights into Lead Nurturing.