Lead Management Resources » Customer Relationship Management

Drip Emails Do Not Replace Lead Follow-up Calls and Personal Emails

Paddu — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:21:14 +0000

Drip Email Messaging is a great tool in the marketers’ resource kit. Most modern Sales Lead Tracking and Management Software Systems include at least some sort of drip email marketing feature to be used as part of lead nurturing process. Advanced lead systems (such as Leadpro247) include a plethora of event triggers and action choices that can be leveraged to send a variety of automated drip email messages. In fact these drip marketing messages blur the difference between the transactional messages and marketing /informational messages. However, marketers have to be cautious and make sure that they are not substituting the drip messages for personal email one-on-one email messages and follow-up phone calls.

Leading lead tracking systems such as LeadPro247 tightly integrate the drip marketing function with lead follow-up activities and feedback mechanisms such as online surveys. While these features can be leveraged to increase the prospect engagement, the same can never be considered as a replacement for old fashioned phone calls and direct email messages.

Reasons

There are several advantages of personal telephone calls and email messages, especially when the lead is in a warm ot hot stage. Here are some of the reasons:

Low Delivery rates – Drip email delivery will be much lower than the personal / direct email delivery rate. Important follow-up messages should not be missed.
Low Open rates – Even if the drip messages are delivered to their in boxes, the email open rates will be significantly less. Though right subject lines and other email header parameters could reduce this issue, a serious / hot prospect should not be left out for any reason.
Minimal Personalization – Though the email messaging is greatly improved with automated personalization feature, it cannot be equate to the personally hand crafted email messages. A human being can respond much more personally depending on the nature of follow-up and the action which triggers the email.
Missing Personal Touch – Personal telephone calls can produce significant results when the lead is in the advanced sales stage. By automating the follow-up messages, you miss out a chance for personal interaction and faster lead conversion.

Twitter populated by bots

Sue — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:28:53 +0000

24% of tweets are by bots: What does this mean?

Social media networks like Twitter have become and indispensable part of Internet Marketing. Giant Corporations use Twitter to reach out to their customers and get valuable feedback. A recent Sysomos study has revealed that 24% of tweets are by bots. Sounds cold, uncaring and not very social?? Probably but not actually so. There are a lot of situations when bots are useful.Tweeting of blog updates,collecting tweets on a specific topic from twitter users etc. Take a look at this Mashable article for more examples.

Most internet marketers automatically post their blog updates to Twitter. Although these are automatic updates, it does not mean that they don’t care (as long as the blogs contain relevant material). This is like drip- emails or newsletters; they are sent automatically but the content is original every time. Bots spell doom only if the tweets are from various sources and not very original most of the time.

A company using bots to follow keywords may still seem ’social’ if it replies to people with appropriate comments. Just following all customers based on keywords and automatically tweeting pages is not going to make anyone happy. Auto-reply bots; Not very cool!!

So the conclusion: Use bots wisely and only when needed. They cannot replace the human connection!!The whole point of Social media is to be social. Bots can only make it easier in part.

Hear the Voice of your Customers with Online Surveys

Sue — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:24:50 +0000

Most of the small businesses and entrepreneurs can find many prospects (or leads) in their own backyard -their past customers. They often forget the customers once the sale is made, payment is processed and product / service is delivered. While the profit margins may not support pampering of the customers and engaging them on constant basis (as done by few large customer centric businesses), tapping their shoulders once in a while in this virtual world is not a cost-prohibitive exercise.

Starter: Email Marketing

The moment “customer engagement” is mentioned, many of us jump to the conclusion that newsletter communications with Email Marketing is the only cost effective way. While there is no denying that email marketing is a great tool in the hands of customer engagement managers, we have to remember that email marketing is an one way street. Information is fed by the marketing organization to the customers. Email Marketing Campaign Analytics data does provide an insight into the customers’ interest and engagement. Metrics such as email open rates, click rates and unsubscription rates helps to understand whether the customers are reading the email communications and the level of interest.

High Pedestal: Social Networking Media

However there is no way to have a conversation with them. Social Networking and Web 2.0 tools such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Forums and Blogs stand taller than email marketing in the conversation aspect. You can hear their feedback, comments, opinions and complaints by listening to the customers’ conversations in the social media, if you have a good presence in these communities. With a plethora of social networking media crowding the current market place, it is often difficult to catch the conversations in all corners of the Web 2.0.

Direct Dialog: Online Surveys

Remember that we are talking about your past customers, not some unknown, futuristic consumers or generation X or Y crowd. You have all the information about these customers in your database, you had positive experience in dealing with them, you made money out of their purchases, and you have their permission to talk to them – or to tap their shoulders. Then, why do you need spys in the social networking communities or use one way communications? In fact, most of your customers would love to interact with you.

Enter Online Survey solutions and Customer Feedback Management systems. You can reach directly speak with them and request them to provide their feedback. You can segment the customers based on their profile (already available with you) and ask the right questions – relevant to them. Online survey planning, survey questionnaire design, data collection and results analysis takes only few minutes! And it costs (almost) nothing!

Interacting with customers with online survey tool takes many names:

Customer Satisfaction Surveys
Patient Satisfaction Surveys
Website Usage Feedback Surveys
Online Shopping Experience Surveys
Incident Response Satisfaction Surveys
Employee Performance Feedback Surveys
Product Satisfaction Surveys
Warranty Service Experience Surveys
What Else Can We Do For You Serveys

By whatever name you call it, it all means the same – getting feedback from your customers, engaging them with product updates, and preparing them for the next sale!

The surveys can be made of simple one question poll, or 5 question quick survey or 30 question deep conversation. It depends on the customer segment, purpose of survey, relevancy of the survey, and customers’ interest in taking up the survey.

Don’t Over Do It

This rule applies for any marketing strategy – whether it is the (hated) telemarketing, email marketing, social networking posts or online surveys. Make sure that the right sized surveys are sent to right customer segment (target), at right time with right content. Do it right, the customers will keep coming back to you.

Voice of the Customers

Surveys (or reserach?) show that surveys are the most preferred medium / source to obtain information from the market. Here is some statistics from the 2009 Voice of the Customer Survey conducted by 1 to 1 Media:

Satisfaction Surveys – 44%

Focus Groups – 14%

Call Recording from Contact Center – 11%

Customer Advisory Board – 11%

Pulse Surveys – 4%

Net Promoter – 3%

Branded Online Community – 1%

Social Media Sites – 1%

Other Sources – 10%

Go ahead and leverage the online surveys to hear the voice of your customers and make some more money! Online Survey solutions come in all sizes, shapes and colors nowadays. You do not need any software to install or get trained. Go online, subscribe to a survey solution and design and deploy a survey in few minutes. Do spend sometime in analyzing your customer lists and suitable survey topics before hitting the go button. The software solutions provide real time survey data analysis and reporting for you to see the results as soon as your customer clicks the ‘Done’ button.