Don't be a drip when doing drip marketing...

The other day, I received an email from a real estate group that I had dealt with over two years ago. This got me thinking about drip marketing - and how to use it effectively.

You see, at the time, I had looked into renting one of their properties but elected not to - but they (Company A) captured and kept my email address from that point forward. During the same time, I was in talks with another real estate company (Company B) as well - and they too captured my email address.

Both companies were told of my deadline to move - let's call that decision time. Company A sent me an email 2x per week leading up to the decision time - and then when that date came and went - moved me into a longer cycle of communication. For the first month, I received an email from them once per week, the second month after decision time, an email came to my inbox twice per month.

I'd look at the emails briefly before deleting them - more out of curiosity since I had selected a rental and was unpacking boxes. During this time of settling into my new place, they placed me into an even longer cycle of communications - somewhere in the twice per year category.

On the flip side, Company B took a different approach to their drip marketing....the shotgun approach (or spray and pray as some people like to call it). Leading up to my decision time, a new email was in my inbox every day. On my decision day, I actually got two emails from them. And then - nothing.

Since that decision day passed, I have not received a single communication from Company B. In fact, I'm hard pressed to remember the name of that company today. With their spray and pray mentality, they elected to come at me (the lead) hard - but then forget about me since I didn't take the bait with their first shot.

Company A chose to take a more methodical, strategic approach - they knew that the lead may not be ready then but it may in the future. So by setting up a systematic drip marketing campaign, I have never lost sight of their company, their offerings, and at virtually no cost to them.

Especially in light of a softer economy, a company has to keep its customers happy - but also keep the lines of communication open to its prospects (leads). To lose that communication path to your leads takes the bar to entry that much higher for vendors to cross and engage.

As I am once again packing up a place - and looking for somewhere new to live - who do you think I'm going to call now?

The KISS Question is "what is your approach to drip marketing campaigns?"

When a lead goes cold....

So a lead that seemed so hot goes cold - what do you do?

It depends - in what way did the lead go cold? Did the person stop taking your calls? Or did the project get put "on-hold"?

Two very different scenarios - a project on-hold is not the end of the lead. First, try to determine if there is a tangible timeframe to the delay - and the reason behind the delay. A vendor can often help the client - both by not pressuring them and losing a trusted advisor position - but also, the project may be on-hold for a reason that the vendor has experience with in removing.

For example, let's say the project is on-hold due to budget. The client may be new to the idea of financing and could offer up partner vendors who specialize in financing. Or, the project is delayed due to the client wanting to do more due diligence on ROI feasibility - and you as the vendor, may have ROI benchmarks from other clients that could help steer your current lead to move the project from on-hold to "red-hot".

The other example of a lead going cold is that someone stops taking your calls - basically, stops engaging with the vendor. Is the lead totally dead?

Perhaps.

In today's uncertain economy and staff reductions, there is a possibility that your contact has been laid off. As someone who has gone through corporate restructuring, I can attest to the fact that calling your vendors about your layoff is not top of mind. For the vendors, have you been courting just one person at a specific company? That can spell disaster. It pays to engage as many people (and sometime from different departments) from a single company to form a comprehensive lead.

Another possibility is that they have decided upon a vendor of choice - and you are not it. Not the most polite way of letting you know - but depending on how far the lead got (did it go to RFP?, just RFI?, were they still kicking tires?), a vendor may be out of the running and not returning your call is their way of letting you know.

The most hopeful reason behind someone not taking your call is a simple matter of too many things, not enough time. As someone who has dealt with vendors and been a vendor in different times of my career, sometimes you are just swamped and conversely, you can continue to reach out to someone without leaving voicemail #100. For vendors, they should seriously consider the idea of "drip marketing" to those leads that have gone cold. I'll touch base on drip marketing in a future post - but in short, it is a great (hopefully automated) way for your demand generation folks to keep the line of communication open to the leads while not spending precious cycles on direct telemarketing.

The KISS Question is "how do you qualify a lead as "cold?"

and just for fun, I've included Katy Perry's "Hot and Cold" video link here since demand generation can sometimes be like this!

Lead Generation and Holiday Lights

A place for everything, everything in its place. - Benjamin Franklin

The challenge that most lead generation specialists have is how to assign where to place leads, how to know they are in the right place, and to peek into those places again and again to verify that the places are correct (again).

Let's take holiday decorations (since we just went through the holiday cycles)......unless you are the weird neighbor on the street that never takes his holiday lights down, you follow a pattern of:

1. Take the lights down.
2. Store the lights in the appropriate, rarely used section of your house or garage.
3. 9-10 months later, retrieve the lights from storage and (if smart), checking the bulbs on the light strings to see if any of the bulbs need to be refreshed.
4. Put the lights back up.
5. Sing the praises of your overall holiday decorations to your family, friends, and co-workers.
6. Feel pleasure from a job and decor well done (and compare your decoration style to your neighbors).
7. Realize it is time to repeat step 1 again.

Leads are no different than holiday lights.

1. There is a time and place for every lead - even the ones that seem "junky" today.
2. Know how and when to "store" a lead - does it require a drip marketing campaign to stay active, should it be put into a rotational call cycle since it may be relevant in six weeks?
3. Verify what data in the lead may have changed - or what may have been missing originally....and work to update the lead.
4. Share the lead information across multiple departments -perhaps your support team has a piece of data that your demand generation team failed to get. How do you share it? ANSWER: a solid CRM system like salesforce.com.
5. If the lead is ready, shout it from the rooftop - or in this case, alert your account executives, their managers, and their VPs. With each group, different levels of communication can be shared for relevancy but the goal is to promote your lead so that it can be accepted by the field.
6. Analyze why similar leads had different outcomes of acceptance by reviewing data points - does one Account Executive routinely take leads a bit under-qualified? Does another reject a lead if it is missing one critical part of data? Knowing your sales team and their preferences are half the battle in lead acceptance.
7. Re-evaluate your lead practices, sources, and your "places" routinely - typically, your market and your own company is evolving such that you will be behind if you don't adjust or tweak the system every so often.

The KISS Question is "have you checked your bulbs/leads recently?"

Next time, I'll describe how Procurement folks at your client/prospect company are like Eggnog!