How to Qualify, Score and Nurture Leads for Optimal ROI

How to qualify, score and nurture
leads for optimal ROI
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Introductions and expectations
• Jen Doyle, Senior Research Manager, MarketingSherpa
@JenLDoyle
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jenldoyle
Jen.Doyle@MECLABS.com

• Kaci Bower, Research Analyst, MarketingSherpa
@KaciBower
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kacibower
Kaci.Bower@MECLABS.com

• Chris Petko, Senior Director of Expert Services, Eloqua
@ChrisPetko
http://www.linkedin.com/in/chrispetko
Chris.P etko@eloqua.com

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How to qualify, score and nurture leads for
optimal ROI - Agenda
• Introduction & FUEL methodology for B2B marketing effectiveness

• Finding the gold with lead qualification and scoring

• Harvesting high quality leads with lead nurturing strategies

• MarketingSherpa Case Study: Lead-gen revamp with scoring,
nurturing and automation


Research Background
• Over 900 B2B marketers surveyed on:
• Top challenges
• Best marketing tactics
• Lead scoring, nurturing and management
• Marketing automation
• Marketing analysis
• Marketing operations

• Key finding: The B2B marketing environment is becoming increasingly challenging

• Result of this study – MarketingSherpa’s FUEL methodology to power marketing effectiveness
from lead generation to sales conversion


The Growing Challenges facing B2B Marketers
2009 2010

Generating high-quality leads
69% • B2B marketing challenges have
78% become more pertinent to
35%
organizations over time
Generating a high volume of leads
44%

39%
• Balancing quality and quantity of
Marketing to a lengthening sales cycle leads generated
41%

Generating perceived value in 37%
“cutting-edge” product benefits 37% • Sales cycles becoming more
complex
33%
Generating public relations “buzz”
36%

Competing in lead generation across 27%
multiple media 36%

Marketing to a growing number of 33%
people involved in the buying process 34%

Source: MarketingSherpa B2B Marketing Benchmark Survey
Methodology: Fielded Aug 2010, N=935


FUEL Up…….. and Drive Effectiveness
Uncover qualified Establish automated
Find and attract leads Lift results
leads marketing processes

Building a How to select
Bridging the gap
foundation for your marketing Lead generation
between Marketing
lead generation automation analysis
and Sales
programs software

Marketing
Identifying the
Mastering essential automation
Marketing-Sales Automation analysis
lead generation implementation and
funnel
upkeep

How to select your Identifying and
Metrics that matter
lead generation mix qualifying leads

Delivering marketing
Harvesting high value to the C-Suite
quality leads & marketing
leadership


Finding the gold with lead qualification and
scoring


Finding the Gold: Identifying and Qualifying
Leads

What is a lead?


Defining a lead

“By definition, a universal Sales lead is one that has been
determined to fit the profile of the ideal customer, has been qualified
as Sales-ready, and spells out the responsibilities and
accountabilities of the participants in the program, Sales and
Marketing.”

-Brian Carroll
Executive Director of Applied Research,
MECLABS & CEO, InTouch


Benefits of Lead Qualification
Lead Qualification will enable you to:
• Generate a greater volume of qualified, sales-ready leads
• Dramatically reduce any frustrations that exist among Sales
• Improve Sales and Marketing alignment
• Increase sales effectiveness
• Accelerate sales pipeline performance
• Ultimately increase overall revenues


Information Required Before Passing a Lead to
Sales
Lead has entered basic
contact information in a lead 80%
• 80% of organizations require
form on our website, a mail… contact information
Lead has indicated a valid
42%
business need
• Only 42% of organizations are
Lead has identified
themselves as a decision 26% verifying a valid business need
maker

Lead has reached a certain

• All other qualifications show
lead score through expressing 25%
interest in a number of…

Lead has indicated an 26% participation or lower
acceptable time frame to 23%
purchase

Lead has indicated an
23%
• B2B sales teams need sales
acceptable purchasing budget
opportunities, not just
Lead has potential for large
16%
inquiries
deal size



How to Get Started with Lead Qualification
Step #1 – Analyze past sales-ready leads
• Identify common characteristics among best leads and best
customers.
• Which leads closed the fastest and had the largest deal sizes?
• Which customers make the most repeat purchases and
recommend your products and services?
• Are there common job titles? Locations? Industries? Company
sizes? Etc.


Step #2 – Meet with Sales
• Gain support from key influencers first
• Act as a facilitator of this meeting
• Plan ahead & prepare
• Ask “What is a qualified lead for our company?” then listen
• See Page #27 for more questions to ask

Step # 3 – Confirm with Sales
• Schedule a second meeting to confirm universal lead definition
• Establish accountabilities
• Set expectations


Step #4 – Draft and roll out
• Draft ULD based on insights that were consistent from initial meeting
to confirmation meeting

Step #5 – Confirm again
• Once drafted, confirm with Sales to make any necessary edits and
receive final buy in

Step #6 – Publish
• Make the ULD as public as possible

Step #7 – Edit and Republish
• Over time, leads change


Sample Universal Lead Definition

A sales-ready lead for our company has a need for CRM software, and 'gets it.' They
have some level of education on CRM and a clear understanding of the benefits.
They have an adequate budget set aside for their purchase and they have
downloaded one of our whitepapers on CRM software benefits. Approximately 30%
of leads generated from Marketing will be sales-ready and approximately 15% of
sales-ready leads will be closed by the sales team.

-CRM Software developer


Identify Qualified Leads with Scoring Processes
• Lead scoring – the process of adding or
subtracting points as a result of various
lead attributes and behaviors that
identify sales-ready leads.

• Once a lead enters the system, an initial
score is assigned

• Points are added and / or subtracted
over time

• Methodologies evolve over time


Lead Scoring Processes and Calculation
Lead has responded to a marketing
campaign by providing basic contact
information
80%
• 25% of organizations
Lead has indicated a valid business
following best practice for
42%
need lead scoring
Lead has identified themselves as a
26%
decision maker
• Behavior-based scoring
Lead has reached a certain lead score
through expressing interest in a 25% criteria both popular and
number of categories
effective
Lead has indicated an acceptable
23%
time frame to purchase

• Marketing automation
Lead has indicated an acceptable
purchasing budget
23%
enables automated behavior-
based scoring
Lead has potential for large deal size 16%



Components of a Successful Lead Scoring
Campaign

CRITERIA EXECUTION ASSUMPTIONS FLEXIBILITY FEEDBACK

Launch with a best
Manual execution
Demographics & guess for qualified Continual process Check in with Sales
for a small number
attributes lead threshold of trial and error regularly
of criteria or leads
score

Automated Test and adjust Gather qualitative
Identify problems
Behaviors execution to threshold over feedback and
early on
ensure consistency time quantitative data


Attributes and Behaviors for Lead Scoring
Lead Scoring Attributes Lead Scoring Behaviors
Industry Website visit
Company size (number of High-value website page visit
employees)
Annual revenue Email open
Location Email clickthrough
Budget Whitepaper download
Job title Webinar registration
Key problem / pain point Phone call
Current solution Email sent
Education Visited booth at tradeshow


Sample Lead Score Calculation
Lead scoring criteria Addition / Subtraction of points
Lead works for a company with more than 100 employees +3
Lead has indicated an acceptable budget of US $5,000 for +5
purchase
Lead has indicated a timeframe to purchase of three months +5
Lead has a job title that includes the word Manager or Director +3
Lead indicated that they wanted to be contacted by a +8
consultant or salesperson
Lead visited the website +1
Lead visited the pricing page of our website +2
Lead opened a company email +1
Lead clicked through on a company email +2
Lead unsubscribed from the email list -5
Lead has not shown any activity for 14 days -3


Harvesting high quality leads with lead nurturing
strategies


Harvesting High-Quality Leads with Nurturing
Programs
• What is lead nurturing?
• Ongoing nurturing
-Consistent communications intended to
keep brands on prospects minds
• Outreach nurturing
- Captures new leads, permissions,
additional data, etc.
• Engagement nurturing
- Targets early stage prospects to build
stronger relationships and increase interest
• Conversion nurturing
- Targets later stage prospects to convert
• New customer nurturing…


Six Steps for Establishing Lead Nurturing Campaigns
Step #1 – Define segments
• Deliver highly relevant content by segmenting based on multiple
factors, and developing unique lead nurturing tracks for segments
• Buyer personas identify traits, interests and needs
• Balance buyer personas with buying cycle stage – ongoing, outreach,
engagement, conversion and new customer nurturing
Step #2 – Collect and develop content
• Audit your library of existing content
• Develop content that meets the interests and needs of various buyer
personas in specific buying cycle stages


Six Steps for Establishing Lead Nurturing Campaigns
Step #3 – Add a human touch with teleprospecting
• Collect prospect information - Outreach nurturing
• Teleprospecting VS telemarketing
Step #4 – Further expand the types of lead nurturing touch points
• Deliver content in the preferred formats of your segments
• Consider original lead generation campaigns
Step #5 – Perfect your timing
• Deliver content to various segments when they need it the most
• Timing & frequency of delivery
• Scheduled & triggered nurturing messages
• Make an educated guess for launch
Step #6 – Test, test and test again


Frequency of Lead Nurturing Touches
Multiple times a day 9%
• Achieving the right timing
Once per day 5%
and frequency of lead
nurturing touches is of
A few times a week 20% paramount importance
Once a week 18%
• Majority have a frequency
Once every other week 17% of a few times a week,
Once every three
once a week, or once every
8%
weeks
other week
Once a month 12%

More than once a • Start with an educated
11%
month
guess, then test and tweak
over time


Drafting Lead Nurturing Content
Stage of the buying cycle

Ongoing Outreach Engagement Conversion New customer
Buyer persona 1

Buyer
personas
Buyer persona 2

Buyer persona 3

Buyer persona 4


MarketingSherpa case study


Case Study: Lead-Gen Revamp with Automation
and Scoring
• Software provider Jaspersoft used
automated lead scoring and
nurturing campaigns to increase
Sales conversion rates

• Segmented in-house database of
open-source subscribers, paying
customers, and subscribers
interested in making a purchase

• Steps to success


Campaign Goals
• Communicate effectively to all
“We’ve got this huge funnel. Plenty of people segments to improve sales
know us and use our software. My challenge conversion rates
is not to increase the number of leads, but to
get improved conversion rates throughout the
funnel.” • Profile audience and segment
their database
-Nick Halsey
VP Marketing
• Establish automated processes
Jaspersoft
for lead scoring and nurturing


Campaign Tactic: Centralize and segment
database
• The team had a lack of integration
between Marketing and Sales
databases
• CRM for commercial sales
leads, separate database for
open-source community,
email tool, web analytics,
accounting platform for
ecommerce transactions
• Created a centralized database by:
• Implementing a marketing
automation platform
• Integrated existing databases


Campaign Tactic: Centralize and segment
database
• Segmented database according to
demographics and behaviors
• Prospects who registered on
“Over time, we get a pretty good matrix of
the community site were
information about each contact.”
considered non-commercial
-Nick Halsey prospects until further actions
VP Marketing or demographic information
Jaspersoft indicated otherwise
• Allowed visitors to self-
segment by specifying
interests


Campaign Tactic: Customize Communications
• The team applied segmentation to
a series of scheduled outbound
email communications
• Four editions of their quarterly
newsletter
• Customer
• Community member
• Corporate Europe Edition
• Corporate North America
Edition
• Announcements for events and
new products


Campaign Tactic: Triggered Lead Nurturing
• The team set up triggered communications
• 30-day trial download triggered a series
• Thank you / welcome
• Links to tools
• Links to online documentation and forums
• Request for permission to engage with
Sales
• Behaviors triggered automated sub-
campaigns
• Indications of readiness to buy triggered
hand-off to Sales
• Purchasing documentation
• Signing up for a training course


Campaign Tactic: Dynamic Registration Forms
• Automation application enabled
the team to develop dynamic
registration forms
• Asked prospects for information
depending on the action they were
taking, or information already
collected
• Entry level actions only required
name and email
• Subsequent actions triggered
additional questions


Campaign Tactic: Lead Qualification, Scoring,
and Hand-off
• Lead scores were developed
based on demographics and
behaviors over time
“We have hundreds of thousands of names of
• Once a community member
people just simmering in the background.
reached the qualified lead
Scoring helps to make you aware when their
behavior shows signs of life.” threshold, they were handed off
to Sales
-Nick Halsey • They routed leads to the
VP Marketing appropriate sales person based
Jaspersoft on sales team expertise and
specialties


Campaign Results
• Since implementation, the team
has achieved a 190% increase in
sales conversion rate from
“Marketing automation is a must-have for
qualified leads to closed deals
us, it’s not a nice-to-have.”
• Top closing prospects asked to be
-Nick Halsey contacted
VP Marketing • 2nd greatest closing rates from 30
Jaspersoft day trial drip
• 3rd greatest closing rates from e-
commerce campaigns


Lead Scoring – great practices!

Chris Petko
Senior Director, Expert Services

Poll Question
What stage of Lead Scoring are you currently in?

1. Don’t understand it yet
2. Understand, but haven’t implemented it yet
3. Currently using Lead Scoring, but am looking to optimize it
4. Have been using lead scoring for years and have made many enhancements
5. Not relevant for my business.


Focus on the core scenario

Define a lead
Capture their DBL,
Qualify,
Hand off to sales,
Measure, Optimize …


Focus on the core scenario

Define a lead
Capture their DBL,
Qualify,
Hand off to sales,
Measure, Optimize … Repeat


Define a lead

Stage Owner Definition Action SLA Pass Fail
Suspect Marketing An email address in the Eloqua Record fits into ICP Not a good fit
database.
Inquiry Marketing A raw response, or hand-raiser An email click-through, Email CT, Form Submission, Not active, no hand raising
to an outbound marketing form submission, landing Scoring must be completed Landing page visit, Website
program or to our website or page visit OR a website within 4 hours. visit, Event Booth visit
to an event. visit.
MQL Marketing An Inquiry that has reached a Automated - Program Inquiry is scored and is at Lead Score is not high
certain threshold for both level assigns score, Custom A1, A2, B1, B2, C1. enough
2 hours
of fit and engagement from objects created
lead scoring.
SAL Marketing A lead that has an established A qualification call is made. Lead qualifies on ANT Lead does not qualify
need, authority and timing to
8 hours
move forward (pain, role,
buying stage).
SQO Sales An active pipeline opportunity A qualification call is made Sufficient interest and Discovery call does not
by Field rep to potential to warrant further uncover real need.
establish/validate the 48 hours investment to develop the
Buyers Stage, Pain and opportunity
Authority.


Define a lead - Explicit
Title – Normalized Score

Marketing Title (VP, Director, Manager, Professional)
50
C-Level
Non Sales Directors and VPs
20
“Vice President of Sales”
Sales titles
10
Exclude: Vice President of Sales

Industry Score

Business Services, Banking, Insurance, Technology,
20
Computer Hardware, Software

CRM Score

Salesforce.com, Siebel (on Demand), Microsoft CRM 30
Other
10
Exclude: blank or “None”


Define a lead - Explicit
Title – Normalized Score

Marketing Title (VP, Director, Manager, Professional)
50
C-Level
Non Sales Directors and VPs
20

Sales titles
Accelerator:
“Vice President of Sales”

10
Exclude: Vice President of Sales

Industry
Opportunity that was Score

disqualified, lost or stalled within
Business Services, Banking, Insurance, Technology,
20
Computer Hardware, Software

CRM
the last 12 months. Score

Salesforce.com, Siebel (on Demand), Microsoft CRM 30
Other
10
Exclude: blank or “None”


Define a lead - Implicit
HVWC Score
Services pages 25

Product Pages 25

Platform Pages 10

About Us 5

Customer Success, Case Studies, Videos, Whitepapers 5

Frequency Score
Website visits in last 7 days > 1 20

Inquiry Score
# of Inquiries in last 30 days > 1 10


Define a lead - Implicit
HVWC Score
Services pages 25

Product Pages 25

Platform Pages 10

About Us
Accelerator: 5

Contact Us Form Submission
Customer Success, Case Studies, Videos, Whitepapers 5

Frequency Viewed Demo on eloqua.com Score
Website visits in last 7 days > 1 20

Inquiry Score
# of Inquiries in last 30 days > 1 10


Qualify
Website


Qualify
Website Campaign Inquiry


Qualify
Website Campaign Inquiry

Think in terms of production


Implicit Score
40
Qualify Add/Subtract
Joe Blow,
VP Marketing, (50)
Technology Inc. (20)
SFDC (30)
A
A2
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 14

Website Visit = 40
Product page (25 pts)
About (5 pts)
Platform page (10 pts)


Implicit Score
47
Qualify Add/Subtract
Joe Blow,
VP Marketing, (50)
Technology Inc. (20)
SFDC (30)
A
-3
+20
+10
-7
-4 (1 per day)
(1 per day)
A1
A2
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 14

Campaign Inquiry = 10


Qualify – tips for the first time


The hand off to Sales



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zTMaJlv764


Some sources of names Lead Source

provide more
opportunities than
others


Lead Source

Some sources produce
faster wins. (later
buyers stage)


Lead Source

Some sources give
higher Win Rates


Poll Question
What is your biggest challenge to Lead Scoring?

1. Don’t have the knowledge to implement or optimize
2. Don’t have the bandwidth/not a priority.
3. Don’t know how to optimize it.
4. Internal adoption/don’t see the value
5. Hand off to sales/lack of support from Sales to follow up
6. Lead scoring is not relevant for my business.


In conclusion…

Define a lead
Capture their DBL,
Qualify,
Hand off to sales,


Connect with Chris Petko

chris.petko@eloqua.com


Top Takeaways
• Marketers must qualify, score and nurture
leads for optimal revenues and lead
generation ROI

• Gain agreement from Sales on criteria for
qualified leads

• Score leads based on demographics and
behaviors

• Consider personas and stage of the buying
cycle for optimal lead nurturing content

• Precise management of hand-off is critical


Questions, Comments

Send us your feedback:
Jen.Doyle@MECLABS.com
Kaci.Bower@MECLABS.com
Webinars@MarketingSherpa.com
Chris.petko@eloqua.com


Thank you


How to Qualify, Score and Nurture Leads for Optimal ROI

How to Qualify, Score and Nurture Leads for Optimal ROI

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