Leading them on – secrets of successful lead nurturing programmes - The Marketing Practice

© The Marketing Practice 2012

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SECRETS OF SUCCESSFUL LEAD NURTURING


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Over the next 40 minutes…

Experiences based on programmes with companies including Canon, Oracle (Best Lead Nurturing Campaign 2010) and O2 (Best Lead Nurturing Campaign 2011)

What’s involved in setting up a lead nurturing programme?

What does it looks like from the audience’s point of view?

Some of the biggest potential pitfalls/myths of lead nurturing


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Sales & marketing infrastructure challenges

• Poor client and prospect information – Lack of marketing intelligence systems– Lack of data management expertise

• No planned and consistent client and prospect communications strategy– One-off campaigns that deliver an oversupply of high volume and low

quality leads (or none at all)– Too many tactical demands on too little time– Not enough advantage made of potential ‘inbound’ contacts (e.g.

website visitors, referrals, social media respondents)

• Sales prospecting resource is variable– Driven by bid priorities– No time to keep marketing ‘leads’ warm– Potential opportunities not converted


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A definition

Lead Nurturing:

Everything we do to our leads to pass more of the right quality ones through to sales


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A definition

Which just leaves the question:

“What do you class as a lead?”

Previous respondents

All verified prospect data?

or


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SETTING UP LEAD NURTURING PROGRAMMES


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The ROI case

March 2011 to dateUnweighted pipe

£55m

Marketing Investment£580k

Unweighted ROMI94 times investment


Generated:Weighted pipe - £5.37m

68 face-to-face meetings

Weighted ROMI20 times investment


Generated:Weighted pipe - £12m

Unweighted pipe - £40m

Weighted ROMI19 times investment


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Building the ROI model

• Tracking conversion rates through the funnel

• Factoring in profitability to see true ROI (and set a target cost per lead)

• Sense-checking that market size will support the target results


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Individual contacts converting to leads over timeOf the sales qualified leads generated from lead nurturing programmes, how long had the contacts been in the programme?


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ROI illustration of lead nurturing vs One-off campaigns

Number of leads

Cost over the year

Average cost per lead

Sales conversion (1

in x leads)Number of

sales Cost per saleAverage size of deal

(20% uplift with nurturing)

Value of sales ROI

One-off campaigning 55 £126,000 £2,291 6 9 £13,745.45 £400,000 £3,666,667 2910%

Lead nurturing 100 £208,000 £2,080 4 25 £8,320 £480,000 £12,000,000 5769%

• Plus, large elements of a nurturing programme can be set up once to work for ongoing inbound contacts


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Content-led approach & nurturing

• Chordiant customer experience management: signed Vodafone as a client and attributed £32m pipeline in EMEA to a 12 month programme

• Research and benchmarking tool promoted via LinkedIn, Google, Wikipedia, blog sharing, employee social media advocates and direct outbound communications

• 90 ‘enquiries’ per month converting to 180 sales leads over 12 months


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Canon Prospect Engagement


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Planning methodologyDiscovery: Sales alignment Strategy: Data auditSales objectives and business targets Review current data strategy and coverageMarketing objectives and responsibilities Gap analysis against full potential prospect universeHandover points and process (in both directions) Define strategy for augmenting/optimising data

Discovery: Proposition insights Implementation: Process designMarket and proposition maturity Inbound contact captureBuying process stages Outbound nurturing delivery and website integrationBuying knowledge/content requirements at each stage Lead qualification and handover to sales (and back)

Discovery: Audience definition Implementation: Campaign designSegmentation (by sector/size/customer/prospect...) Select inbound channelsFunctions comprising decision-making unit Design first nurture flows and website useTypical attitudes/expections from supplier Define how personalisation/segmentation will be used

Discovery: Audience access research Implementation: Team & GovernanceChannel preferences Internal team requirementsSocial Media usage Integration with other activities3rd party and influencer knowledge sources Reporting requirements specified

Strategy: Content plan Implementation: System designExisting content audit - what is suitable? Is there a gap between existing and required systems? Plan headline content hooksand message hierarchy Review potential solutions to support the planAlign to buying process and promote next steps Implement selected solutionDesign creative execution concepts


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MYTHS & LEGENDS OF LEAD NURTURING


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Marketing Automation

I’ve yet to see a situation where a marketing automation budget wouldn’t have been better spent (or matched) on data, core CRM system or sales integration processes

Reality:Targets, Data,

Content, Propositions,

Systems...

Nirvana:

Nurturing and

Automation


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Some misconceptions...

• That it’s anything different from good prospect marketing– Same content, same calls to action, same plan– It is a useful way to encourage thinking about long-term journeys

• That the telephone is a channel to save until the end– Teleservice not telemarketing – the mentality is critical– Focused on the right prospects (by demographics or behaviour)– Makes scoring a lot less relevant

• That scoring or BANT criteria are everything– Not necessarily what sales really need

• Content aligned to the buying cycle– Can’t assume we know everything they’re doing


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Varying types of content...


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The best marketing doesn’t always look like marketingAnd the best content can come from Sales


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Or it could look a lot like marketing…

• UK (19% conversion rate), Spain (24% conversion rate) and Portugal (33% conversion rate)

• A success rate of meetings with almost 1 in 2 organisations targeted


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O2 Business readiness

“It’s rather refreshing to see a big tech company actually do this kind of thing rather than just talk about it.”


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O2 Business readiness

Click screen to play


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Taking into account the rise of digital interaction, do you value the following forms of traditional communication more, less or the same as in the past?

Networ

king

at e

vent

s

Face

to fa

ce m

eetin

gs w

ith s

uppli

ers

Teleph

one

conv

ersa

tions

“Soc

ial” b

usine

ss a

ctivi

ty (E

.g. D

inner

s, h

ospit

ality

, tea

m b

uildin

g)

Inno

vativ

ely p

rese

nted

phy

sical

mat

erial

from

sup

plier

s

Hearin

g fro

m s

peak

ers

at c

onfe

renc

es a

nd s

emina

rs

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

19 20 22 20 22 23

43

31

4350

45 4438

49

3530 33 33

Less Than You Have Done The Same As You Have Done More Than You Have Done


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Tactical tip: lead generation in the summer

• It’s working in the UK…• …can report back on the Nordics next year!


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Closing thoughts

• Tom UpfoldTM ‘Natural’ calls to action

– Selling the benefits of the next step rather than the end proposition

– ‘Why should I give up my time to meet you?’

– Capture their interest first, then qualify them (not vice-versa)

• Aligned with Sales, not necessarily just to Sales

– Not a black and white handover: 90:10 => 10:90

– Find out what they’re bonused on

– If you can’t find out, maybe don’t try nurturing!

– Most important alignment is day-to-day (and lead follow-up)

• Plan Year 2 from Day 1

– How we will prove success? (don’t start without it)

– What else will we want technology to do?

– What will we do when data’s a year out of date?

• Holistic, real-time…– Holistic: look at company level, not just contact level (who else do we know that we should be targeting?)

– Real-time: monitoring starters/leavers or rapid response (aligned with PR)

– Holistic & real-time: all channels need to work together – the audience doesn’t see channels, they see journeys


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THANK YOU

Leading them on – secrets of successful lead nurturing programmes - The Marketing Practice

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Transcript of Leading them on – secrets of successful lead nurturing programmes - The Marketing Practice