Streamline lead generation nurturing for animal science

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hello good morning afternoon and evening everyone wherever you are i hope that you and your families are doing well i'm julia flaherty digital marketing specialist at ledgeview partners and i don't know about you but i really can't believe we're already at the end of july here where has the time gone i know how valuable time is to you especially now so i'm going to keep my intro short today before i let chad dive in though i want to tell you a little bit more about let you partners we are a business and technology consulting firm who partners with organizations like yours to transform sales marketing and customer service operations and processes that are supported by core technology including customer relationship management like salesforce and microsoft dynamics and marketing automation tools like click dimensions and act on software among many others in the marketplace today our team provides strategic business advice process definition and technology solutions that advance business processes forward helping you to achieve your unique business objectives in sales marketing customer service and crm today's webinar is going to take up about a half hour of your day it is being recorded and will be available on demand after the live session all of you will receive a follow-up email after it is complete with a link to access the presentation so if you haven't already add us to your safe senders list to ensure you get to email or if you do find any email from us in your spam folder mark it as not spam if you don't know how to do that that's okay i can send you a step-by-step guide that we created on the ledgeview partners blog to help you do that to ensure the best audio quality everyone's on listen only mode today but if you have a question or comment just submit those in the question pane of your go to webinar control panel and we'll be sure to follow up with you afterwards and now that that's covered it's time to introduce chad collette today's presenter and the director of marketing at ledgeview partners chad will be giving you an overview of how to get started with lead nurturing in today's marketplace we are shifting business and realizing new challenges we haven't had before in our lifetime this has made us rethink the way we work and especially the ways we work together chad is a leader when it comes to adapting in business he is a great person to learn from and to cover this topic his flexibility as both a marketer and a manager is undeniable so let's welcome chad and let him dive into today's topic thank you julia for the introduction and i'm really excited to be here today to talk about lead nurturing and 12 steps or best practices that can set you up for success with your program as marketers our jobs are hard enough before but connecting with leads prospects and customers in today's crazy world is really even more of a challenge now it's really difficult to get these down to just 12 steps and the fact that we only have 30 minutes means we'll hit on these at a really high level i don't worry i'm confident that you'll take home a number of concepts that you can put into action right now building these lead nurture campaigns is a lot of work not going to sugarcoat it it's no walk in the park and i don't want you to think that these 12 magic bullets will launch your program tomorrow and because it's a lot of work is why many companies either one don't do lead nurturing at all or two they skip several steps which really affects their outcome this is evident in this statistic now ing to the act on research study 61 of b2b marketers are sending all their leads directly to sales and only 27 of those are actually qualified or ready to talk to sales now do you see the major issues associated with this these numbers don't benefit marketing sales or the company now before we dive into my 12 steps or tips as they should be known let's first take a step back and look at the lead definitions a lead by definition is someone that you have identified or they have identified themselves as being a fit for your product or service now if we take this a level deeper and look at marketing qualified leads as someone who's raised their hand and identified themselves as being interested in learning more about your product or your service but they might not necessarily be ready to purchase for example let's say that you work in the real estate industry and i became a lead in your crm and marketing automation system i became a lead when i filled out a form on your website indicating that i was interested in information on let's say condos for sale in fort myers beach on the form i indicated i had an interest in purchasing in the next two to three years unless of course winners get way worse and worse anyway while this is a lead for your real estate business i would not consider it a hot lead that your sales team should be following up on immediately however this is certainly a marketing qualify lead and the marketing department should have a set plan to nurture this lead with information about condos for sale until the point in time that the triggers indicate that a one-to-one conversation is appropriate and the lead can then be assigned to a sales team for follow-up now the biggest change here is one of discipline and patience not every prospect that contacts you is ready to buy now if you're currently sending all your leads to your sales team and they are quickly disqualifying them because they don't have an immediate buying intent or if you have leads that you've indicated that they are not ready to purchase right now what are you doing with them are you waiting for them to contact you when they're ready or maybe your sales team has a phone call reminder set up to touch base every six months it's a mistake to ignore your prospects that are not ready to buy yet in most cases this prospect will purchase from either you or your competition within the next 24 months so if you want to find a way to stay connected and top of mind when they're ready lead nurturing is you know helps you stay engaged now if you're new to this it's imperative that you have a strong understanding of how these leads are converted into revenue to do this you need to understand your target market what their purchasing behaviors are and how you can solve their problems this is critical to knowing which leads need to be nurtured and who is ready for a sales call now while there's no exact formula organizations will have a different criteria for what an mql or a marketing qualified lead and an sql or a sales qualified lead are defined as the key takeaway is that it's important to have a definition within your organization rather than treating all leads equally by aligning your sales and marketing the focus is on high quality leads which will lead to increased conversion rates and a more efficient sales process one aspect of that alignment and step number one is knowing the difference between marketing automation and crm and how marketing and sales utilize each of these solutions this topic is another webinar we're going to be hosting coming up and we'll be diving into deeper from the start marketing automation helps to foster leads and get them ready for the sales team once the lead has progressed through the bottom of the funnel and become a qualified sales lead and hopefully ultimately a customer that's when companies track their interactions through a crm while crms have evolved tremendously over the years and are nearly unlimited in possibilities at its core crm store information like how long a contact has been a lead a prospect or a customer records of opportunities an order history of purchases that they've made in the past the dates and notes of phone email and social conversations you've had with them a record of inbound emails that's sent to your sales and customer service team and a whole lot more now when it comes to marketing automation and crm the choice choices really seem endless these g2 crowd grids provide a plethora of options including leaders in marketing automation such as names like hubspot acton pardo and many others you may have heard on the crm side we see lots of familiar names which include two of our favorites salesforce and microsoft dynamics 365. now in some cases you'll find that crm software has limited marketing automation features and vice versa for marketing automation technology but to realize the full benefits of these systems most companies operate both a marketing automation system and a crm system however the most successful companies use these two technologies together and provide an integration or connector between the two of them since it's marketers nurturing leads for the sales team we're going to focus on marketing automation today we see many companies who have marketing automation but simply just use it for emails now marketing automation is much more than just sending emails at the core it's simply technology that helps streamline automate and measure marketing activities across your channels now to say that another way it's the engine that can ensure that the right message gets to the right person at the right time thinking back to all those companies listed on the gt crowd grid a good marketing automation solution will provide not only email marketing but web tracking lead scoring nurture or drip marketing campaign tracking forms surveys landing pages crm integration which is key and much more now if i need to point prove my point any further here's a few relative statistics for your marketing automation plan i'm not going to go through all of them but i want to highlight statistic number three which happens to be my favorite eighty percent of marketing automation users saw an increase in the number of leads and 77 percent had an increase in conversions now it just speaks highly to the power of marketing automation and how it really helps you meet and hopefully exceed your goals when developing your lead nurturing strategy before we can start to create and send all those messages it really starts with establishing your goals at the end of the day what do you want to accomplish why are you developing a lead nurturing strategy at all i believe for most organizations these high level goals are fairly universal when it comes to lead nurturing using lead nurturing programs will help you create better engagement with your target buyer and ultimately increase your conversion rates and in turn new and larger scale opportunities these are just a few examples of lead nurturing kpis that you may want to consider for each campaign you're executing items like delivery open and click rates on your messages your conversion rates or number of marketing qualified leads you're generating take time as you're planning to set goals as you execute your campaigns so you can effectively measure your goals versus your actual performance indicators if you are brand new to this yes it may be difficult to put some initial goal estimates together but you got to start somewhere and you can really adjust as you go with some goals and kpis in place it's time to connect with our buyer no that doesn't mean we're ready to actually jump on the keyboard and connect with them it's important to take time up front to develop your buyer personas remember patience is a true virtue for marketers developing buyer personas is one of the key steps that many organizations bypass because they think they know their customers and they just don't do this or that it might be already be done building your buyer's persona or profile is key in the beginning or your lead nurturing messages will likely miss the mark completely depending on your industry or your suite of products solutions or services you may have different buyer profiles for each of those product segments has your business evolved over the years even if you've created a buyer persona in the past it's a good idea to verify who you think your target buyer is and does that still hold true take the time to do this exercise and you don't want to do it in a silo engage with your sales team or others in your company that may play a critical role to learn more about your buyer the decision maker that you ultimately want to reach what roles or titles are you seeking what is their background or their demographics what are their goals the wants the needs or the challenges that this buyer faces on a daily basis how can the product or service you are offering help them with input from sales what are the common objections that they hear in this nurturing campaign it is a prime opportunity to counter those objections early and how you position yourself as i said this step is one that too many companies just simply bypass they say and we target the vp of sales but then they fail to complete the rest of the worksheet leaving significant gaps in their marketing potential with your target buyer in mind it's time to decide how you're going to differentiate them from others in your database within your lead nurturing program now this is where lead scoring comes into play at the top for anyone unfamiliar lead scoring is a valuable shared sales and marketing methodology for ranking leads and prospects to determine their sales readiness as you take a look at your database of leads and prospects you can create lead scoring models across two main types you've got your explicit and you're implicit when we think about lead scoring many companies jump right to the implicit scoring and they leap frog right over explicit if you take a look at your lead list how many of those fit into your target buyer you know that exercise we just talked about with explicit lead scoring you can score a lead or prospect based on who they are that vp of sales buyer you want to target will get a much higher score than say a sales manager or a sales rep are they in territory does the company size match your target the list really goes on and on now from an implicit model this is really the fun one how are they engaging with you are they visiting your website are they clicking on your emails downloading your ebooks or are they attending your demos let's take a couple of minutes to dive deeper into each of these starting with the explicit scoring model now keep in mind all this information should be done in your crm by completing your buyer profiles you know who you want to target so as leads and prospects enter your crm and your marketing automation list you can determine how interested you are in them is it worth keeping them in your list at all carefully consider all the details that are important to you and how you want to score and ultimately segment these leads now when it comes time to score these leads the points they're really up to you make sure you vary your lead scores if specific job titles or purchasing authority is key to your target buyer you can see examples here how we score a vp or a director differently than a manager some people may use a scale of you know one to fifty to get to a marketing qualified leads some may go one to five hundred choice is really use yours but don't forget to also take advantage of negative lead scoring if they do not fit your profile this is really going to help keep them off your radar so switching gears let's talk about the implicit scoring model this is how marketers identify how engaged the prospect or the lead is with you your marketing and your content this is where your marketing automation really comes into play and all the amazing information it can provide you taking just uh like a dozen options here is what your scoring may look like less points for minimal action and greater points for focused engagement completing a form spending time on a webinar going from a standalone landing page to your website to learn more as a marketer it's exciting to see the content you're creating being absorbed by your leads but just like the explicit model feel free to use some negative scoring models for those that may be looking safe for a job and working for your company versus with your company with that lead scoring in place this really gives us a lot of options to segment our audience as we build our lead nurturing programs now there's so many ways to segment your database it is impossible to list them all but we can break down into four main categories is geographic demographic behavioral and psychographic now these are just a few ways you can segment your list based on each category and these can and often are combined if you're looking for a target buyer say on the west coast who is a vp of marketing and actively engaged with your content this will allow you to personalize the experience for this specific segment that you're targeting with lead nurturing and as it goes without saying these days but i'm going to say it anyway your lead nurturing should not be a one size fits all approach doing that will be reflected in the results that you experience and to personalize that experience we need content that is important to them it managers and sales managers have different needs different challenges and frankly they have different motivations the content that you choose to send should be aligned to that specific target audience you're trying to reach as well as the sales stage that they're currently in or the sales stage that you're trying to move them towards now here's a small sample list of content that may be relevant to the nurture campaigns you're building and what assets do you currently have do you have a list of your assets do you have ebooks promotional videos webinars or case studies do they relate to the target audience the nurture campaign and ultimately your goals are they dated are they still relevant it's time to take stock in what you have now roll up your sleeves and dig into your content library at this point you didn't you need to know exactly what you have to work with this exercise will help identify gaps in content and may affect the timeline that you release your nurture campaign if you need to develop additional resources knowing your target buyer and how they like to absorb content is key and having that content contain the right information to help them overcome their challenges position your product or solution and also have a strong call to action now developing content can scare many people but having these assets will definitely set you apart from your competition how many times you heard someone say ah i'd love to help but i'm not a writer many think that creating all these assets is time consuming and expensive i mean it can be but doesn't have to be i know so many companies that they do webinars every month but don't have a blog infographics ebooks or promo videos the content has already been created in your webinar for example that ledge view we've taken a single hour-long webinar and we've turned that into a seven e-book series with accompanying infographics promo videos blogs and just an unbelievable amount of social media posts and that is all from just taking content that we had in one piece and the turnaround is faster than you can imagine as you analyze your content you need to know if you have the right pieces to match the buyer's journey that you want to create for your target buyer now this is a great infographic for marketing automation provider act on that i love to share it outlines a content strategy based on the sales stage that you want to move your leads down the funnel from the awareness or the attract stage all the way to marketing qualified and really beyond as you assess your content and determine what you need the content should map to the buyer stage to help bring them down the marketing funnel again these stages may not map specifically to you but it's a good check against your current process or a guideline as the one you're developing at the awareness or the attract stage you want to focus on the problem or the pain points that the buyer is experiencing with use of social media surveys blog posts infographics and webinars as their lead score increases and they get interested focus on your solution by educating the leads and prospects with content like ebooks checklists videos events live and on-demand webinars as they move to the evaluation or the consideration stage show them what it's like to work with you you can offer them a demo a free trial provide case studies or product or solution comparisons as you make them a marketing qualified leads and are ready to pass them along to sales now at this point marketing's job is not done as sales engages with them marketing can continue to provide content in that purchase phase to validate their decision with additional content like webinars again and as they move to the post purchase and repurchase stage using content to keep them up to date with your products and solution and you want to ensure user adoption with continuous learning or loyalty programs for example at leggy partners we hold monthly crm user group webinars and focus on a specific training topic each month and field of how-to questions this keeps users continuously learning and engage with the product as well as new enhancements that are coming in services that we can offer to assist them as your leader prospect or even your customers move through the buyer's journey they will continue to engage increase their lead scores which we discussed earlier segment into newly engaged groups and get closer to being marketing qualified and sales ready and not to get off topic but this doesn't just include new leads automated programs have a wide range of uses to keep your contacts engaged with you sales ready prospects new and existing customers and many other uses now that you have all the moving pieces it's time to start drafting your lead nurturing program and start building a relationship with your prospective customers now the look and feel of the technology will differ a bit but for the most part they accomplish the same things as you build up emails needed for your nurture and buyer's journey here's a few best practices to kind of keep in mind as you develop your automated campaign the actual setup will vary based on the marketing automation solution that you're using but these will need to but you will need to create your emails for each of these campaigns and it all starts with the subject line that is what is going to get your email opened now a few best practices to consider are avoiding keywords associated with spam email like using the word free help percent off sale reminder just to name a few now do you know that 69 of emails that are flagged are spam are flagged as such because of the email subject line you want to include content of interest inside your subject line when appropriate for example if you're creating your august sales promotional email you might state in the subject line what it contains that's different from july or june keep it short both subject line and the body of your email messages unless you know your target buyer responds to a lot of text you want to avoid tricking the reader and opening your email it's not going to build trust let them know what the email contains and what they can expect and of course a b testing your email subject line is a must but that a b testing goes way beyond just testing your email subject lines as we'll get deeper with step number nine think about your from address will your target buyer be more receptive to receiving mail from say your company or from a person test your body content including opening lines use of different graphics and your calls to action the day and time that you send your emails however many marketing automations now and even crm solutions are using predictive analytics to send emails and optimal time your recipients may have the best chance to engage with them and it goes beyond email because your emails only do so much now it's rare these days that someone will immediately pick up the phone based on an email sent many times they are sent to a landing page typically with a gated form to gain access to some of your awesome content similar to email a b test your landing page copy a b test your headlines your graphics and the calls to action on that landing page and for your forms utilize your marketing automation technology to pre-fill forms making it easier for that lead that prospect that customer to complete your forms or better at utilize progressive profiling to keep your questions to a minimum and only ask information that you have not collected yet depending on your audience one method may work better than the other and trust the results even if it kind of crushes your spirits a little bit because that email or landing page that you thought would be a winner yeah just didn't make the cut in order to get our emails read we also need to make sure that we get the cadence right a few additional best practices to consider first don't overdo it based on your target buyer your promotion your industry and other components you need to find the right mix of messages to send and how often odds are people don't want to wake up to one of your emails every single morning if you see a spike in unsubscribe rates you may be sending too many emails space them out to allow people to digest and react select the date and time you want someone to receive your first message now if you bypass this step and they get added to a marketing campaign at 1am on a saturday night that could trigger the first message you need to know your buyers and when they typically open and engage with your emails for b2b marketers open rates are typically the highest and mid morning on tuesday wednesday and thursday but you also need to consider factors like the cadence if they'll be receiving multiple emails over a shorter period of time consider tracking and using send features that include time zones if you're on the east coast and have customers on the west coast or internationally consider when they will receive this email sending it out at 9am your time doesn't work for all your leads and prospects as i mentioned in a b testing you want to make sure your messages are going out on the dates and the times that are optimal not only to be opened but to really drive that engagement and that action this is one a few years old but testing never gets old as you can see here an overwhelming 68 of digital marketers rated the ability to test new campaigns as having the greatest impact on their email marketing efforts the world is moving faster than ever and buyers have so much more information these days than marketers have to rely on testing to ensure that they stay ahead of the curve and while we want success we're going to have failures but we don't want lost leads so we need a process to close that loop you worked really hard on this nurture but the fact is that not everyone is going to engage with you they may not open your emails they may not click on your emails and they may not advance to the buyer's journey as you had planned once a lead finishes with a specific nurture program they often are left on the cold neglected and lost cluttering up your marketing list try pushing them to a new nurture with new calls to action evaluate and see if they were mis-segmented and the content didn't resonate or maybe it's time to move on and you just deactivate that lead any way you decide to go make sure to have a strategy where non-moving leads go after their nurture they are stuck in one spot of your marketing funnel at the beginning we started with setting our goals as you create and execute your lead nurturing program you want to continually monitor and measure your results make changes as needed based on what worked and what didn't and yes you're going to have nurture failures along the way but you're going to have many successes but the key is to measure to learn and to adjust off both of those measure what goals you did hit or exceeded how did that happen which ones did you fall short on and can you pinpoint why was there a tactic or a piece of content that worked well that surprised you did you encounter any gaps in the experience that you need to adjust and what questions came up either internally or externally that you can really build on now if you were not on board before with automation campaigns you can see that lead nurturing emails get four to ten times the response rate compared to just those standalone email brass blast how do we know that we measure the results now i hope these 12 steps tips and best practices can guide you hopefully they get you excited and confident about lead nurturing i know we went through them kind of fast in a very high level but as i mentioned there's no silver bullet no magic eight ball but it's really hard work to pull it all together and to execute this with success but if done correctly the rewards can just be tremendous now as a recap here's my 12 areas that you need to make sure you include when developing your lead nurturing strategy and program and i know i mentioned a few times in the beginning and throughout but don't do this in a silo use your lead nurturing program to create a strong bond between sales and marketing through alignment and don't skip any of these areas you're only going to be skipping out on potential revenue now with that i want to thank everyone for your time today and hopefully you're ready to enhance your automated programs and effectively nurture your leads julie i'm going to turn this back over to you to share some of the great resources we have here at leggy partners all right well thank you so much for sharing your insight with the group chad i think everyone's going to walk away today inspired to rethink the way that they're approaching their lead strategies remotely or safely back at the office if you are looking for more ways to improve your business processes we've created a variety of ebooks as chad has mentioned infographics blogs videos and other webinars on topics like driving growth with marketing automation preparing for a successful crm implementation improving sales and marketing alignment leveraging inbound and outbound marketing strategies and if you can believe it even more you can download this complimentary content at leggypartners.com whenever you like before you log off of today's presentation subscribe to our blog so that you don't miss any of our upcoming webinars it's never too early to put them on your calendar it's top of mind today so it's best to do it now so you don't forget all right that's all for me today i hope you learned something new and i can't wait to see you back for more webinars have a great rest of your week