Collaring leads in today’s cutthroat market place is no longer a sufficient condition. Businesses looking to see their sales really take off need to be able to manage their leads in smart way – something that captures leads, sure, but that also nurtures and converts them effectively. Enter marketing automation lead management—a technology-based method that helps teams increase sales velocity and efficiency.
This ultimate guide goes in-depth on best practices when you’re using marketing automation to streamline and improve the efficiency of your lead management process. New to automation or not, your organization will learn how to drive higher quality leads, scale lead nurturing programs, and close deals faster than ever before.
The Importance of Lead Management and Its Role in Sales Growth
At its most basic, lead management is about directing prospects through the buyer’s purchasing process — the initial outreach to the ultimate buy. Here’s why it matters:
- Increases Sales Efficiency: Automation can help ease some of the burden on your sales team by handling time-consuming activities like data entry and lead qualification and providing timely reminders of follow-ups.
- Drives Conversions: When customers receive up-to-date, customized messages, it increases likelihood that leads will engage with and convert from those messages.
- Reduces Sales Cycles: Automated nurturing keeps leads warm at all times, which lowers the amount of time it takes for a prospect from interest to purchase.
- Improves Customer Experience: Trust and loyalty are increased by prompt responses and clear messaging.
- Delivers Informative Analytics: Analytics reveal which campaigns and strategies are the most effective, enabling ongoing improvement.
Poor lead management can cause lost sales, wasted marketing dollars and you’ll eventually lose control of your revenue. Automation solves this problem by putting automated process in place.
What is Marketing-automation Lead Management?
For the uninitiated, marketing automation lead management is the application of software to automate the lead lifecycle – and that right from lead generation to lead conversion (also helping in lead nurturing along the way).
- Lead capture across channels including web, social media, email campaigns and events.
- Behavior-based (downloads, page views) and demographic-based (job title, company size) lead scoring features.
- Engaging campaigns with personalized content triggered by lead behaviour or timed events.
- Distribution of leads to sales reps by territory, skill set, availability.
- Ongoing reporting and analysis to monitor leads in progress and the effectiveness of campaigns.
When they replace disjointed, manual processes with automated systems, companies see speed, accuracy and growth in their sales funnel.
7 Kick-Ass Tips for Marketing Automation Lead Management to Drive Sales
Grab Leads Wherever You Can Get Them
Be sure to only post your lead to website forms though. Today, lead capture is throughout:
- Social media lead ads
- Chatbots on your site
- Event Register and Webinars
- Downloads and Gated Resources
- Email list sign-ups
Leverage automation tools that funnel leads into 1 central CRM, so no contact info is ever missed — or entered twice.
Create a Solid Lead Scoring Model ‘Score’ every lead of your business.
The guiding values in lead scoring are as follows: It is the method that priority ranks activities of your sales team, which include leads, and visits are granted points with lead scoring.
- Activities (website visits, email opens, demo requests)
- Criteria (industry, company size, job title) off the fit line.
- Level of engagement (interactions with frequency and recency)
Establish a benchmark for scoring eligibility, known as “sales-readiness.” Leads under the threshold stay in nurturing until they are ready.
Pro tip: constantly iterate and update your scoring model based on sales feedback and data trends.
Customize Your Lead Nurturing Campaigns
Generic emails don’t convert. Leverage marketing automation to develop customized nurture streams prioritized by following criteria:
- Buyer persona
- Lead source and behavior
- Stage in the buyer’s journey
Automate personalized emails, educational content, and, well, pretty much everything else, from channels to product recommendations and more, so you can guide prospects through all the stages of the buying process.
Connect with Prospects on Several Platforms
Email alone isn’t enough. Continue to nurture with the help of:
- SMS campaigns for reminders and alerts at specific embedded times
- Ads retargeting you on social media and the internet
- Direct mail for high quality leads
- Phone outreach with automation initiators
Multi-channel engagement keeps your message top of mind and in front of leads wherever they are most active.
Automate How Leads Are Routed to Sales
Quality lead distribution needs to be fast. Establish system whereby leads go to the appropriate rep folllowing these rules:
- Geographic location
- Product interest or segment
- Lead score or priority
Enrich leads with profile data as well as behavioral information so that sales reps are armed with context when reaching out personally.
Outcome: Teams see 20 – 30% higher conversion rates when traffic is routed in real-time and intelligently.
Data analysis and ease-of-optimization for a better performance.
Marketing automation creates tons of data. Use dashboards and reports to:
- Find where the cake falls out of the funnel
- Find out the best selling content
- Measure campaign ROI
- Test and optimize nurture series
Ensure ongoing sales success through personal and team enhancement.
The ways in which marketing automation enhances sales efficiency
Aside from the quality of lead, automation helps to relieve sales reps from monotonous manual jobs like:
- Entry of data and maintenance of contact lists
- Manual follow up emails sent by man
- Scheduling calls and reminders
This allows sales to focus on good conversations and closing deals, which results in faster revenue.
Picking the Best Marketing Automation Tool for Lead Management
Here are the things you should be looking for in a platform:
- Integrated into CRM so that users have the same data everywhere
- More advanced lead scoring and segmentation capabilities
- Simple nurture templates and programs to roll out
- Support for campaigns across all channels
- Real-time reporting, and custom reports
- An easy to understand interface with excellent training material
Common applications include HubSpot, Pardot, Marketo, ActiveCampaign, and SharpSpring, PowerinAi available in a range of strengths to accommodate business size and complexity.
Implementing Marketing Automation Lead Management Best Practices
- Coordinate Sales and Marketing: Collaboratively define what a lead is, how it will be scored, and under what circumstances it will transition to sales.
- Keep Your Data Clean: Perform deduplication and validation of lead data frequently to keep your automation rolling.
- Pre-flight Check: Try out automation workflows and monitor performance in minute detail prior to scaling.
- Lead Segment Thoughtfully: No more one size fits all campaign, but focused nurturing streams created.
- Train the Team: Make sure everyone is aware of the tools and steps for adoption.
FAQs
Q1: When should I see results from marketing automation lead management?
Most of our businesses see increased engagement and book sales within 1-3 months.
Q2: Will marketing automation take over my sales personnel?
No, the automation aspect is taking care of qualifying and nurturing a lead but you need human sales reps for the personalisation and closing.
Q3: How do I not pester leads with automation?
Concentrate on pertinent, value-added information, keep message frequency to a minimum, and provide effortless opt-outs.
Q4: Is it difficult to implement lead scoring?
Begin with amateur rules and behaviors and adjust based on performance data and sales feedback.
Q5: For lead management, which metrics are most important right now?
Monitor conversion rates, lead velocity, average deal size and campaign ROI to measure success.
Conclusion
Using automation to manage leads is a way to increase sales, enhance productivity, and provide better customer experiences. By tracking more leads, scoring more intelligently, and nurturing more personally, you can nurture more leads with less effort, and close deals faster.
Make the investment in the right tool, align your team and focus on continuous optimization for best results. The future of sales is automated — and the time to begin is now.
