Top-of-Funnel Analysis - Net New Names, Inactive Leads, and Reactivated Interest

Analyzing marketing actions at the top of the funnel has some interesting nuances. This is a direct result of the fact that having a contact’s name within your marketing database does not in any way imply interest. You may have a name in your database that is from many years ago and has not shown interest in recent years, there may be names that were input as part of a list purchase, and have never shown interest. In looking at the top of the funnel, it is critical to be able to carve out these “inactive names” from the rest. Without that, the measurement of campaigns targeted at the top of the funnel, and also your overall funnel conversion metrics will be challenged.

The best way to account for this, is to have a rigorous process of eliminating inactive names from an “Interested” stage at the top of the funnel. If a lead, interested at one point, has made no inquiries, and taken no actions in a period of time, say 3 months, then that lead is placed back in the inactive lead pool.

Campaigns targeted at the top of the funnel then, can have three main effects:

- Generate Net New Names via Inquiries; a campaign that generates buzz in the market may generate net new names for your database that come in as active inquiries. For example, if a whitepaper is offered as the call to action for a campaign, and an individual who was not originally in the database downloads it, they are both a net new name and are now part of the “Interested” stage of the funnel

- Reactivate Inactive Names; a campaign may target Inactive Names in your marketing database, and by doing so cause some of them to re-engage. This is a very valuable transition as those are names that were otherwise not showing any interest in your organization.

- Acquire Inactive Names; A campaign that involves a list purchase or other name acquiring techniques may add names to your database, however these are not people who are showing any interest, and therefore must be deemed to be part of the Inactive Name pool until a campaign succeeds in interesting them

In measuring the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns at the top of the funnel, it’s crucial to separate these transitions. If not, highly successful campaigns that re-engage large portions of your existing, but inactive, marketing database will appear to be minimally successful due to not creating many net new names. Similarly, campaigns that involve an element of list purchase may appear more successful than they truly were as they create many net new names, even though only a small percentage of these individuals will engage with your communications. Read More...

Driving Value for Sales: The Art in the Science

With Woods out of office last week, somewhere in the Caribbean, with limited WiFi (editorial) access, I thought this would be the perfect time to write my first post.

Let me start by saying I love salespeople. It takes a certain type of person, to get up every day and get hit in the face by a hammer over and over again, and come back for more.

As marketers, one of the best things we can do for sales is provide quality leads on an ongoing basis, and then get their feedback regularly to improve the quality we are providing. There are many strategies and tactics in demand generation to deliver on that promise, but what I have found in working with customers is that sometimes there is "art in the science" in ensuring sales gets the full value of everything that marketing is doing.

Let's talk about a few principles that will help you drive more value for sales.

1. It's all About the Deltas

There is nothing better than change in a stalled sales process. In the life insurance business, sales people talk about tracking "life events" - getting married, having a baby, etc. as critical times to engage a client to sell them more insurance. Well in B2B the concept is the same, but sales people track "business events" instead of life events.

• Make sure when setting up lead scoring dashboards, or campaign reports that you focus on the changes that have occurred instead of an overview
• It is better to error on the side of showing less, but everything is new, than showing more and only 10% have changed

2. Help Make Them Look Good

With all of the conversion analysis, website tracking , and Co-dynamic lead scoring algorithms out there, you sometimes forget that one of the best things you can do for sales, is help them deliver messaging in a professional and relevant way to their prospects. One of the best tactics to do this is to use Agent Personalized email campaigns - that brand the campaign as if the sales person sent it themselves. Sure, statistics show that you will get a 30% increase in opens and up to a 300% increase in click-throughs, but here are two other benefits that will really help you with sales:

• They stay top of mind with their prospects with value-add content, which will lead to more phone connections or call-backs
• And get this - they will get inbound calls. Forget web visits, forget form submissions, they will actually get inbound calls which lead to qualified opportunities. Now that is something that sales will get excited about

3. Match the Salesperson's Routine

If you are planning on sending real-time alerts, or lead reports to a salesperson, it is important to allow reps to receive this information based on their own daily or weekly routines. Matching a salesperson routine will drive rapid adoption of valuable information. Reports sent to them too frequently or infrequently, quickly are ignored - so spend the extra time to find out what will work best for each rep.

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