All posts tagged Lead Management

In the past few weeks, several of our clients have requested some help with a nurturing campaign. Not an uncommon request for our consultants here, but in my case, after reviewing the end goals and expected results, it became apparent that it was not so much a traditional nurturing campaign, but more of an on-boarding or AWP (automated welcoming program). Essentially, these clients wanted a way to welcome and introduce net-new contacts to their brand, products, services and resources using emails and hypersites.

One particular client had developed an idea wherein they wanted to leverage Eloqua’s Program Builder, Email and PURL-based Hypersites to direct all new contacts in the database to a personalized resource portal that featured their top 5 whitepaper/resources, their sales rep’s information (lead owner) and some personalized messaging based on their industry or vertical. Not to say that other organizations aren’t applying this type of program to their net new leads, but it dawned on me that the majority of nurturing efforts occur after lead scoring, and a few weeks of traditional communication efforts have not made them MQLs. This particular program engaged the lead within 24 hours of becoming an Eloqua contact and provided a tremendous amount of value right away to the prospective lead.

The determination of whether or not a lead qualified was fairly simple: Was the Date Created within the last 24 hours, or did the lead have a SFDC Lead Status of “Prospect, No Opportunity” and was Modified by CRM within the last 24 hours, and had that particular contact not run through the program previously? If all of those answers were true, then the feeder would fire and they would begin their path. An email was sent the following business day welcoming them to the company, and quickly let them know that there were some key, and more importantly free, resources available to them that they are encouraged to view on a personalized Hypersite page. When any of the assets were viewed/downloaded, a closed SFDC activity was written to their record, notifying the lead owner that the lead’s interest was mounting and that they were now far more educated about the client’s products and services than they were a mere 24 hours ago. On the Hypersite page itself, the lead owner’s information was clearly present, which gave an additional personalized touch to the resource page, and essentially put a name (and a face) to the connection between them and the next step in the relationship.

Now, we know that the first email isn’t always going to peak the interest of a particular contact, and as Steve Woods posted in his blog last week, evaluating which contacts clicked through and visited the hypersite and those that did not is the key to nurturing these welcoming messages. Putting a decision rule after the email send will allow you to ‘bucket’ those that did not action the first email, and allows you to change your messaging to this group and try them again at a later date. Steve referenced 4 days, but again, that is up to the client. With this particular example, the second email went out 3 weeks later, and a 3rd email went out 4 weeks later after evaluating visitors vs. non-visitors.

This is a very valuable tool/method for treating new contacts/leads in a way that will educate, empower and engage them quickly and effectively while passing on value immediately. If you have access to Program Builder and Hypersites this is a must have, and truly will help you gain that all-important first touch that you leads and contacts are probably really going to want.