Lots of options make asking the right questions the key to buying a lead-management solution
BY RICH KARPINSKI Marketing departments need to
MARKETING departments are think through some hard questions more than ever being before deciding they need a new asked to develop and lead-generation software platform. manage processes for nurturing As always, b-to-b marketers have that most valuable of marketing special needs to take into account, commodities, the lead. best practices including long deal cy-
While many b-to-b cles, complex products marketers have tapped their creative and services, and sales processes backgrounds to become experts at that tend to be highly consultative, using online to generate demand, Gerardsaid.
that’s just the entry point. Lead management is all about process—a required skill that successful b-to-b marketers must learn, and fast.
To aid in this evolution, marketing platform vendors—some old names with new tricks, others entering the market with a clear focus on the lead-management problem—are delivering an array of software tools to help.
This includes developing scoring systems to differentiate prospects from true leads; building a centralized database capable of pulling together disparate data to paint a very detailed view of potential customers; defining automated and rules-driven processes to effectively move leads deeper down the marketing and sales funnel; and tracking progress after a lead gets thrown over to sales, including pulling a strong lead back to marketing if the sales staff can’t close it.
“Best-in-class marketers are working hard on shoring up the foundation of their lead-management processes,” said IDC Research analyst Michael Gerard. “Above all, they’re taking a more process-oriented approach rather than saying, ‘Let’s get more leads and throw them over to sales.’ ”
■ What systems need to be integrated with the new lead-management platform to make it really hum? CRM? Business analytics tools? Web traffic engines? Even finance and enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms?
Interviews with lead-management experts, analysts and vendors revealed the following list of get-ting-started questions marketers need to ask before picking a lead-automation solution:
■ How are leads being managed today? Is marketing involved or is lead nurturing strictly in the realm of sales?
■ Is there an existing process on the marketing side for moving leads along? How is that process managed—i.e., on an ad hoc basis, via Excel, using an existing tool, perhaps a campaign management or sales force automation platform?
■ Can that existing platform (and existing investment) be leveraged, perhaps with some tweaking, to support more sophisticated lead-management processes?
■ If there’s support and budget to buy a lead-management tool, where do you turn? Does your existing campaign management or marketing resource management vendor have a lead-management solution or do you need a new vendor? Do you have IT support to install an internal system or do you go on-demand?
Lead-management platform vendors take a number of different approaches to answering these questions and addressing the challenge of helping marketers manage the lead process.
Vendor Neolane, for instance, touts an open-data architecture and a marketing process management engine built to allow marketers to define highly sophisticated work flows and rules. “Marketers need to move lead generation from batch-and-blast to a much more systematic, continuous interaction strategy,” said Patrick McHugh, exec VP of Neolane.
Neolane’s lead-management solutions enable marketers to build rules for lead scoring and qualification (and ongoing requalification) as well as define interaction strategies that automatically escalate hot leads to the appropriate systems and people, McHugh said.
“I have customers in the b-to-b midmarket where they’ve defined hundreds of different communications events across hundreds of customers,” he said. “The only way to manage that is with a rules-driven approach.”
Vendor Eloqua combines a strong focus on demand generation and campaign management with an
VENDORS, page 8
the question
Q: What is working well for lead gen?
“We are beginning to very tightly connect our lead management system to our CRM system—specifically, linking our Aprimo lead management system to our Microsoft Dynamic CRM system. The metric we are really keen on getting much more insight on is lead adoption rate on the part of our salespeople. One thing you really want to have is a line of sight into leads being generated by your marketing efforts. We have a Six Sigma project on this to make sure we have a best practice in this area.” —Lauren Flaherty, CMO, Nortel Networks
“Probably the biggest bang for the buck is our own Web site. We use radio to drive people to our Web site, where they can fill out a lead-gen form. We have customized the form for small-business owners, really paring it down to the basics.” —Elizabeth Williams, director-acquisition and customer-base marketing, small-business services, Rogers Cable Communications
“We do a lot of networking. We make sure we’re involved in networking organizations. We do a lot of lunches and dinners, and we make sure we’re involved in the industry, so we can get to know the top people.” —Lisa Burchard, president, Advance Office & Janitorial Supplies
“Where we’re seeing a lot of success is allowing customers to sign up for what’s relevant to them, such as newsletters, blogs and user-generated content. Companies are doing a better job working with their databases. It’s important to clean up the data, see who’s really there and what they’ve downloaded.” —Emma Warrillow, president, Emma Warrillow & Associates
“We have found that customers searching online for products at the local level are much closer to the point of purchase than those searching on category-level keywords. This insight has enabled us to leverage our search program to facilitate connections between customers and our channel partners.” —Mike Saad, global e-marketing manager, Armstrong World Industries
“We typically provide end-user leads to resellers, so the key to avoiding conflict between resellers is to know which end-user each reseller is already working with. Our position as a distributor provides us a unique advantage. We have a seven-year history of business done between resellers and end-users, so we can target our leads for maximum impact and without disrupting key business relationships.” —Carol Kurimsky, VP-marketing, Ingram Micro
Name Aprimo
Location Phone
Indianapolis (317) 803-4300
URL
www.aprimo.com
Eloqua
Vienna, Va. (617) 973-5123 www.eloqua.com
FirstWave
Atlanta
(678) 672-3100 www.firstwave.com
Market2Lead Santa Clara, (408) 907-2821
Calif.
Marketo San Mateo, (650) 655-4830
Calif.
Neolane Newton, (617) 467-6760
Mass.
RightNow Bozeman, (406) 522-4200 Technologies Mont.
Salesforce.com San Francisco, (415) 907-7000
Calif.
SAS Cary, N.D. (919) 677-8000
www.market2lead.com
www.marketo.com
www.neolane.com
www.rightnow.com
www.salesforce.com
www.sas.com
Unica
(781) 839-8000 www.unica.com
Vtrenz
Waltham, Mass. Fargo, N.D.
(701) 478-7704 www.vtrenz.com
Product/description
Campaign, dialogue and lead-management products that can be used as part of a lead-management process.
Eloqua Enterprise Lead Nurturing and Management solutions help marketers sort prospects from leads and include Co-
Dynamic Lead Scoring capabilities for identifying leads ready to be handed off to sales.
First Wave CRM Lead-generation and sales life cycle products for tracking leads generated by e-mails, newsletters, ad units and more.
Market2Lead Enterprise Lead scoring, nurturing and funnelling tools; Turbo Web2Lead focuses on small departments and agen-
Suite; Turbo Web2Lead cies gathering leads mainly online.
Marketo Lead Capabilities for manging lead generation, scoring and nurturing, as well as tools for tracking the progress of Management lead , including Web site monitoring, e-mail marketing and landing page optimization.
Neolane Enterprise Neolane's Lead Management Product features a centralized data repository, process automation capabil-Marketing Platform ities and work flows, and the ability to score leads, including defining action triggers.
RightNow Marketing Marketing automation software with capabilities to track leads through the sales process.
Product
Aprimo Enterprise
Salesforce Lead
Management
SAS Customer Relation-
ship Management
Affinium Enterprise
Vtrenz
Lead Management is an application in Salesforce.com’s Sales Management module; capabilities include online lead capture, history tracking and qualification. Solutions for marketing resources management, interaction management and marketing optimization, which factor into b-to-b lead management processes. Module for lead management as well as optional add-ons for managing lead referrals and lead contact follow-up. Marketing automation and lead-generation tools that include the Vtrenz Lead Score model for creating multidimensional lead-scoring rules.
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