In my last Marketing Tips post, we covered five tips that marketers should be utilizing in conjunction with their Customer Relationship Management system (like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, etc). You ready for five more?
The first set was about connecting your systems and gathering data, but now we want to focus on connecting to our leads, prospects and customers and turning those names into real opportunities.
Here are 5 simple and effective marketing tactics that you can implement with your CRM. Don’t have a CRM? Well, shame on you (just kidding). But, I will say that when you do get a CRM, it will be the greatest thing since sliced bread. – yeah, it’s that awesome.
These are ranked in no particular order.
- Lead Nurturing/Drip Marketing
Lead nurturing is all the rage – and for a very good reason. It works! As marketers, we often want to focus on getting our sales reps as many ‘leads’ as possible – but what is the quality and ‘temperature’ of those leads? Gleanster Research studies show that only about 25% of leads are legitimate and should advance to sales. If you think sales is going to run over and give you a big hug for all those cold leads, then I have a bridge I would like to sell you. Leads are just names – more often than not a cold name, so let’s warm them up. Just like watching a coffee pot fill up drip by drip, all good things come to those who wait. And when that pot is nice and full (and hot) then we know the coffee is ready. Just like our leads. So, take the time to segment your marketing lists, build your email templates, build your nurture and get ready to stay top-of-mind.
— - Lead Grading
Implementing a lead grading system allows you to spot leads that are a good fit for your product or service. Just because a lead is in your CRM does not mean they want your product, need your product or have the authority to even buy your product. Grades are based on specific factors like job title, industry, buying history, demographics, etc and how those align with your target buyer profile and ideal customer.
— - Lead Scoring
Okay, you just filled your CRM with a fresh batch of new leads. You graded them and now have them on an email nurture campaign, but now what? Wait and see what happens? By using a lead scoring system, your sales team can easily look at their list of leads and follow up with those with the greatest activity, and potential for opportunity. With lead scoring, point values are assigned when your soon to be customer open/clicks on your emails, downloads content, browses web pages and more. You can (and should) set up a workflow to automatically notify the lead/contact owner when a score reaching a specific value. That is a great reminder for sales to pick up the phone and strike while the iron is hot.
— - Get Personal, Not Creepy
We all get those emails, postcards and landing pages that are personalized to our name, our interests and even our location. Pretty cool or pretty creepy? What it is, is effective. Using CRM to personalize your messages will increase your open and click rates. The Aberdeen Group reports that 74% of marketers say targeted personalization increases customer engagement.
— - Split Testing Provides the Best Results
Will they respond better to my text based email or a colorful HTML version? I have two subject lines that I love but can’t decide which to use? Should I put my call to action on the top or on the bottom? To all these great questions, marketers should always let your target buyer decide. Whether it is an email subject line, a landing page or a Call-to-Action, using split (A/B) testing will improve your overall results.
With these tips and a great CRM solution like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics CRM, sales and marketing can be more effective and efficient each day.
If you don’t have a CRM system or are struggling with the one you do have, contact Ledgeview Partners for a demo or a CRM Audit.
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