Shorten Sales Cycle and Boost Revenue with Marketing Automation Software

According to IDC, the overall market for automating marketing will grow from $3.2 billion in 2010 to $4.8 billion in 2015. Moreover, they predict that over the next 4 years, marketing automation is the only segment that is expected to grow faster than any other segment of CRM.This definitely shows that marketing automation is here to stay.However,before delving further into it, let’s first understand the term marketing automation.

Marketing automation is a technology that makes use of software to automate marketing management and customer engagement.An integral component of customer relationship management (CRM), marketing automation helps in customer segmentation, customer data integration (CDI) and campaign management. Marketing automation helps to streamline marketing and sales activities by automating the processes that have been traditionally performed manually.Thus, marketing automation allows enterprises to:

• Develop and analyze marketing campaigns and customers
• Manage marketing campaigns
• Appropriate customer data organization and storage
• Review traffic statistics
• Measure conversions
• Interact with customers
• Evaluate customer data
• Provide marketing content

Marketing automation software provides information across all phases of the marketing process and this includes:

• Marketing intelligence
• Workflow management
• Web-based archive and real-time traffic analysis
• Lead management, scoring and nurturing
• Marketing campaign creation and monitoring
• Built-in or integrated CRM
• Landing page development/management
• Blogging
• Data orchestration
• Email marketing
• Social marketing
• Marketing analytics

Enterprises need to deploy best of the breed marketing automation software to create and manage effective marketing campaigns.Here is a look at some of the important features and benefits of the best of the breed marketing automation software.

• Builds a pipeline of qualified leads
• Tracks visitor intent in real time
• Aligns marketing and sales goals
• Creates, manages and tracks campaign elements (emails, landing pages, workflow, social media, etc.) using built-in tools
• Enhance lead nurturing using campaign triggers from website interactions, social media activities, forms-fills, etc.
• Tracks and correlates disparate prospect interactions with social media
• Converts anonymous website visits into sales opportunities by correlating all related online activities
• Identifies and qualifies sales opportunities by measuring the online behavior of prospects
• Delivers an unprecedented level of intelligence about prospect intent and his/her purchasing proclivities
• Separates the high-intent, ready-to-buy leads from the low-intent, just-looking-for-info leads
• Provides complete lead data from company details to decision maker contact data
• Integrates easily with sales CRM system thereby ensuring a smooth transition of leads from marketing to sales

With today’s business environment becoming highly competitive, investing in marketing automation software that shortens sales cycles and boosts revenue can help enterprises in understanding their customers’ intent clearly and respond to them effectively.

Also read more on - marketing funnel,  lead management software

Understanding The Social Media Campaigns

The present day business environment being made up of stiff competition  enterprises need to be well equipped with their operational and marketing strategies besides being technology enabled with world-class information technology infrastructure. Innovations such as the  Internet and the World Wide Web has opened up opportunities for the enterprises to expand their business worldwide through e-commerce. The social media has further facilitated  the business enterprises with a more transparent and interconnected world.

The use of social media as a marketing strategy  is a comparatively new  concept. Nevertheless,  enterprises are realizing the benefits of engaging the social media to attract  new customers. Most of the techno savvy enterprises who engage their customers through various campaigns are today making use of social media campaigns as a marketing platform  for lead generation. This offline marketing technology is sure to bring in valuable returns on investment for the enterprises. The buzz created within the social communities facilitates to engage business prospects to discussions  which further encourages traffic to the websites leading to awareness about products and services.

The enterprises that use  social media campaigns as a marketing strategy need to stay in touch with the discussions at these venues so to be able to contribute and clarify the queries raised during the discussion. Such reach out to the prospects through specialized media campaigns makes social media an effective tool for lead generation. With technology enabling marketing automation, the B2B markets are further benefited with social media, as the leads generated can be followed and nurtured. The visitors to the social  websites are pulled into the sales funnel who then qualifies as strong prospects after effective lead nurturing.

The leading marketing automation service providers tend to blend the social media campaigns with other  lead generation activities  to provide their clientele an overall marketing program that will boost their credibility and trust in the market besides increased sales leads and closure of more deals. However, not all social media campaigns are meant to provide product or service information.  Most of the global enterprises who  use social campaigns focus on the interest of the people and create content assets to be shared across the network. Such activities besides helping to promote to other channels also helps in creating a customer or user dialogue forum.

To establish an enterprise in the industry,  it is vitally important and necessary to connect with the  audience. Content rich social media campaigns help  in creating a conversation between the brand, customers & prospects leading excellent opportunities to connect with them. Interesting posts on the networking sites provokes comments and questions from the users and prospects helping the enterprise understand the consumer better. 

Read more on - Lead Management Software , marketing automation services

Importance of Effective Lead Management Software

In today’s competitive business environment, enterprises need to attract new customers to stay ahead of the competition. However, trying to reach new customers is not an easy task since not every lead turn into a winnable opportunity and not every opportunity turn into a sale. Hence, what sales team need is a better understanding of good and bad leads to filter out the bad from the good, nurture the potentially qualified leads so that they become sales ready. Since the process of managing leads is extremely complicated and laborious what is required is effective lead management to speed up the sales process.

Wikipedia describes lead management as “methodologies, systems, and practices designed to generate new potential business clientele, generally operated through a variety of marketing techniques.” In short, it refers to the entire business process and practices in an organization directed towards acquiring new customers, retaining existing customers, and establishing a brand reputation. Lead management is a complex process consisting of lead generation, capturing lead intelligence, filtering leads and distribution of qualified leads to the marketing team for lead nurturing and high priority leads to the sales team for conversions.

The most important aspect of lead management is not the quantity of leads but quality of leads. A good lead is the one that is ready for sales and results in profit for the company. Hence, more and more enterprises are using lead management software to prioritize and organize their leads.

Here is a look at some of the advantages of installing a best of the breed lead management software solution.

Lead Generation
Captures leads generated from marketing campaigns resulting in website visits and converts anonymous website visitors into leads

Business Intelligence
Unmatched lead insight using unique data mining and business intelligence technology, including identification of website visitor intent, resulting in enriched leads

Lead Qualification
Automatically scores and prioritizes leads based on pre-defined parameters related to activity, interest and intent

Lead Nurturing
Enables personalized and intent driven lead nurturing program aimed at building relationships and bringing prospects close to sale-readiness

CRM Integration
Integrates with existing CRM systems thereby aligning Marketing and Sales' efforts and offers a common platform with a consolidated view of the prospects.

Collaboration
Cost-effective collaboration opportunities with partners and affiliates, along with one-click integration with existing social networking platforms

Analytics
Provides an understanding of the effectiveness of the marketing strategies and channels, helping make appropriate decisions to improve overall performance, optimize cost and increase ROI.

Thus with good lead management software in place enterprises can easily ensure that their sales team is productive.

Read more on - Lead Nurturing , Marketing Automation

Enjoy B2B Lead Generation Success with Marketing Automation Solutions

In this competitive world, where business acquisition is the way to move ahead, without leads no business online or offline can attain success. Therefore, to be able to understand the way to form closely targeted leads acts as the powerhouse behind a successful business. However, not every leads are equal in nature just like not every lead generation technique is created equal. For instance, if leads were not qualified in the selling process then you might be frittering time on disinterested projects. As a result the sales response figures drop and the business too suffers loss.

Online and Offline Lead Generation
Lead generation can be a complicated task. Offline lead generation methods requires catering to prospects precisely in physical locations and even touching base with them through the phone.Also the leads that get generated at trade shows and other similar events needs to be placed in a database and the contacted one by one. Similarly online lead generation might appear easy, but it is not. The ones involved in internet marketing and multi-level business have realized that this can be time intensive as they are sailing in a huge sea of consumers who are not even aware of their core business.

Advanced Lead Generation Solutions
Today company’s specializing in lead management campaigns have come up with lead generation and marketing automation solutions to make the task easy.These companies provide a marketing automation platform that enables enterprises to recognize, capture and convert the online leads into sales opportunities by offering actionable lead intelligence.

Lead generation solutions identified anonymous website visitors and intelligently evaluate their intent and interest to help in targeted sales approach. Furthermore it also recognizes the place of the prospects in the purchasing process with a sophisticated behavior analysis.The marketing teams can thus concentrate on lead nurturing initiatives that would lead to improved qualified leads and the sales team can close the deals quickly and lessen the sales cycle. This results in enhancement of the entire sales and marketing productivity.The solution further allows you to capture qualified leads that are rich with the required data.The pre-qualified leads generated have a higher conversion rate than the other contacts with which the sales target can be attained quicker.

It is essential to understand that your lead starts and ends with you when the deal is closed. Therefore, what most companies require is a lead generation system that offers details about the latest technologies of attaining the qualified and centered leads.This apart, the system must also keep the companies on the same page with innovative marketing strategies that would help in building and enhancing the business better.

Read more on - Lead Management , social media campaigns