Leveraging Web Surveys to Engage Prospects

We all know that the most difficult aspect of Lead Management process is keeping the prospect engaged, especially when the sales cycle is long. In B2B (Business to Business) scenarios, keeping the leads’ interest in your products or services over a period of time consumes lot of efforts and resources for the businesses small and big. Obviously, the most effective way is for the field sales person keeping in touch with the prospect’s primary contact either in person or using telephone and email. However it may not be the most prudent way of utilizing the sales resources as these in high demand in terms of cost and time perspective.

Email Marketing

In B2C (Business to Consumer) scenarios, though the sales cycles are smaller, most of the lead followup and management processes are handled online. Allocating time and resources to engage the leads on an going basis is not easy for marketing professionals, small businesses and entrepreneurs. Here is where the practice of email marketing comes into use as a lead nurturing tool. Done right, email marketing can be a great tool in the hands of the marketer to inform, educate and engage the prospective customers. The cost of email marketing is significantly less when compared with modes of traditional marketing such as direct mails, telephone calls and in-person visits.

However, most of the internet / online marketers tend to overdo the email marketing and end up losing the prospects totally by poking the subscribers often. The leads will simply opt-out from the subscription list and terminate the relationship prematurely, even if they have genuine interest in your products or services. Remember the three Rs: Right Message, Right Frequency / Timing, Right Target Audience! If you don’t figure this out correctly, you will end up losing the leads, though your intentions are good!

Step into Web Surveys

Marketers are finding out that online survey is a great addition to the online marketing toolbox. Web based surveys can be used not only to inform the prospects, but also to seek opinions / feedback from them. Hence this is a great two way communication tool between you as a marketer and your lead, as the potential consumer of your offer.

Again, this is closely tied to email marketing, as the surveys are administered and taken via the internet. The survey invitations also delivered through email invites. Hence, exercise caution while deciding the audience, deciding the survey subject, designing the survey questionnaire and delivering invites.

As mentioned above, you can learn a lot from the survey responses and fine tune your services accordingly. Online surveys can be a great method as a special purpose tool for Lead Nurturing.

Integrated Lead Management Tool

LeadPro, a leading lead tracking and management software tool, has developed and integrated an Online Survey tool with its Lead Management and Email Marketing suite of marketing automation solutions. The major advantage of using an integrated solution is that you don’t need to keep importing and exporting lead data among several tools. The email list management feature is used for survey panel / target audience list management. The same lead lists in the database can be used for sending out survey invitations.

Targeting specific segments of prospects is a breeze with advanced filtering. For example, leads at a specific lead stage / activity can be targeted to deliver concise surveys.

Drip Email messages can be used to automatically deliver Survey Invitations as the leads move through the sales process.

The Survey Analytics, which provides access to summary level reports and individual responses, can become a lessons learned knowledge base for improving the products and services.

Web based, online Survey tools can be a valuable addition for marketers and lead administrators, if used judiciously and executed properly.