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.

While this blog serves as a lead management resource center for small and medium sized businesses and marketing professionals, a dedicated blog has been launched by LeadPro247 lead distribution, tracking and management service providers to cater to the Insurance Lead management needs of Agents, Brokers and professionals. Insurance lead segment is one of the competitive areas in internet lead generation and agents have started using internet generated leads increasingly. The entire insurance lead generation and management domain has undergone a sea change in the past couple of years.

The blog is located at http://www.Insurance-Leads-Management.Com. The subjects covered in the resource center include Insurance lead generation, leveraging social media by agents, buying internet leads, evaluating third party lead companies and lead providers / vendors, assessing insurance lead quality, lead tracking best practices, lead delivery and tracking processes, drip emails (autoresponders) for lead nurturing and automatic follow-up, insurance lead tracking software tools, lead management tips, tricks and guidelines, automating routing of leads to insurance agents, and effective lead conversion methods.

The entire spectrum of the insurance industry is covered. Health, Life, Auto, Home, Commercial / Business, Annuities, Renters and other insurance lead management professionals can benefit from these resources. The insurance industry centric blog will be a great complementary tool in you are in the insurance service industry.

With the economy shrinking, Google, Microsoft and Apple ruling the digital world, news papers and magazines folding every month, it is no wonder that businesses are forced to follow their customers and consumers. It is doubtful if any business can survive without leveraging internet for sales lead generation, engagement and conversion. If you are a newbie to the Web Lead Acquisition world or just planning to test the waters, here is a mini guide on why buying internet leads could make business sense.

It does not matter what business you are in, internet can / should be leveraged for marketing and web leads generation. However online lead generation may not be for everyone; certainly not for the fainthearted as you can easily bleed with pay per click, media buying, SEO and other related approaches, if you don’t know what you are doing.

What are Internet Leads?

As the terminology implies, sales leads generated using web sites are referred to as Internet Leads or Website Leads. You can generate your own leads or you can buy the leads acquired by other lead generation companies. Landing pages, which are basic web registration forms, are used to get prospect information. Generally, minimal information such as name, email and phone number will be collected. While designing and creating landing pages may look easy, there is a lot of underlying technology to be understood and used in order to maximize the value and increase lead quality.

Once the landing pages are up and running, the next step will be driving consumer web traffic to these pages. This is where the traffic generation approaches such as PPC and SEO come into play. These processes are time taking and costly in terms of efforts as well advertisement costs. While you may start testing these procedures with very little money, the end results may be insignificant.

Why Buy Internet Leads?

Firstly, you cannot ignore internet as a lead generation medium. Over 65% of the consumers start their buying process on the internet, though the final conversion may happen off-site or even in brick and mortar retail settings. Secondly, you can focus on your business and core competency; you don’t need to become an internet wizard. Thirdly, it is affordable. You can test with small investment and then grow as you become comfortable with the process. Finally, it is fully scalable. You can buy 100 leads in a week, if you have the resources for follow up and conversion. The next week you can just by 25 leads, if your work load is heavy.

How to Buy Internet Leads?

The most important factors to be taken into consideration while buying leads generated by third parties are: (1) Quality of Leads, (2) Cost of Leads, and (3) Timely Delivery of Leads.

Unless the leads are of high quality, there is no meaning in buying leads. Hence focus on the lead vendors, their lead generation processes and web sites used, and their past history. You may take a look at the post on 10 Secrets of Successful Internet Lead Buying for great Conversion rates for related discussion.

Follow the following steps in your day to day operations:

• Receive the website leads in a Lead Tracking and Management system. Lead Providers might provide access to a basic lead retrieval and tracking system as part of Lead Generation and Distribution Software; however, if you are buying leads from multiple providers, you may be better off with your own software subscription.
• Distribute the leads received from the provider to your sales team / agents immediately. Your sales lead tracking system with a flexible automatic lead distribution engine (with sales territory management feature) will be of great benefit here.
• Nurture, Track and Manage prospects proactively. Leverage Drip Email Marketing function of your lead tracking system effectively to communicate with the prospects.
• Measure, Analyze and Improve on an ongoing basis. Lead analytics reporting provided by the lead management system will provide a lot of information to analyze and measure the lead quality and conversion statistics.

Lead Response Management is the process of responding to and managing the inquiries / sales leads in a timely, consistent fashion. While choosing and deploying a Sales Lead Collection, Tracking and Management software system will help you in the process, this alone will not result in lead conversion. The business lead management software is just a tool in the hands of a marketer which helps to capture leads from internet and other sources, route to sales reps, provide real time alerts and management the sales process. Lead Management includes lead response management phase.

Lead Tracking and Management Processes

In the era of Internet Lead Generation and sky high expectations from the consumers and prospects, it is essential to equip yourselves with resources and lead management processes for achieving a great sales conversion rate. Here is set of great resources on lead response management and allied areas, including research studies from MIT and Kellogg.

http://www.leadresponsemanagement.org/research

If you are converting the leads for your business, then effective lead response management is a critical phase of your marketing and sales process.

If you are an internet lead generation company and distribute the captured leads to the buyers, it is essential to deliver the prospect information to the end buyers in real time using a lead collection and distribution software system as the delay in response will result in lost customers.

Following sales lead tracking best practices using Lead Tracking Software solutions such as LeadPro247 significantly increases the chance of converting the Lead into a Sale. It is a known fact that over 70% of the prospects are never followed up in time. While employing a lead management software helps to reduce this rate to some extent, using the lead tracking best practices results in high lead conversion rates and increased prospect satisfaction.

Lead Tracking Process

Lead Tracking is nothing but the methodical way of following up with the prospects and recording the lead follow-up activities in the lead management database.

If the sales personnel are not in a position to log the follow-up actions and the results, especially in the case of small businesses, a lead administrator or lead coordinator can update the same in the central database. This practice helps the sale representative in getting an unified view of the lead during the next call or on site visit. Once the sales personnel realize the benefits of of centralized lead tracking, they will start following the process for their own betterment.

Tracking Log

The sales lead tracking log will include the following components, among others:

• Lead Origination / Capture Info
• Lead Assignment Info
• Drip Emails sent to the prospect
• Lead Reassignment or Transfer to another sales rep, if any
• Demo Requests from prospects
• Onsite Visits
• Telephone calls made and received
• Call Back reminders
• Gist of Email communications
• Snail Mails sent
• Marketing Literature fulfillment, if any
• Samples delivered, if applicable
• Movement of Sales Tracking Stage

Visibility to all this tracking information will save considerable time for the sales personnel. The sales support staff (at the back office) can also alert the sales reps based on follow-up triggers.

While many marketers and businesses have started realizing the importance of contacting the prospect at the quickest possible time from the point of lead capture, further follow-up activities have not caught up as required. Deploying a suitable lead management system and adopting simple best practices for lead tracking is imperative in today’s internet centric marketing era.

Lead Nurturing is the process of developing leads and converting them to customers using long term marketing, engagement and follow-up strategies. With the wide use of Internet by the consumers and businesses to locate, research and purchase goods and services, Lead Nurturing has gained a much wider and critical importance among marketing professionals.

While most of the time the prospects need immediate response from the sellers, it is also true that many prospective buyers look for information right at the early stages of buying process. Hence keeping those future customers engaged, educated, gaining their confidence and finally converting the leads to customers is a key part of today’s marketing process. Lead Nurturing Software helps to nurture the internet leads using automated software systems and processes.

Lead Nurturing Software Tools

Leads generated from Internet and online media such as social networking sites and web 2.0 tools, who are not looking for immediate purchase, can be nurtured using lead nurturing software programs with built-in Autoresponder Services, event triggered sequential drip email marketing automation programs, and lead tracking systems.

The nurturing process takes various cues depending on your nature of business. For example, if the telephone contact information of the prospect is available, it can also be put through a contact center (not focused on sales but nurturing). If the physical address is available, even a traditional snail mail can be sent in a suitable time interval. However, these traditional nurturing methods are loosing relevance, as there is remote possibility of having contact information other then email addresses. Over 80% of leads generated on the internet, especially using social networking media sites, will have only email address as the contact information.

Many integrated Lead Management Software solutions such as LeadPro247 marketing automation suite, come with relevant lead nurturing tools. These are generally web based systems and easy to use. Typically the following components can be used to develop and nurture the leads:

• Auto Responder Service: This tool is nothing but Email Marketing Automation service with built-in drip email marketing broadcast feature. Drip email messages are automatically triggered by the system by predefined events such as times lines, bahavioral actions, and online activities.
• News Letters: Electronic newsletters are great nurturing tools for educating and engaging the prospective customers. Email marketing service will be used to design, deliver and track email newsletters with marketing information.
• Online Surveys: The biggest benefit of using online survey software is that you can read the prospects’ minds. This will provide an insight into the thoughts of the prospect and your services can be tuned accordingly.
• Lead Tracking: When you are nurturing a lead online, tracking the behavior is the most important aspect. Unless you know how they are behaving and what they are responding to your marketing communications, you can not deliver meaningful messages or take corrective actions. Again, the integrated Lead Tracking software such as LeadPro247 could be leveraged to track the email message opens, clicks, site visits, survey responses, and whitepaper / document downloads.

Usage, Relevancy and Frequency

While there are several tools and systems available for internet generated leads, it is the the user who decides when and how to use the features available. As an online marketing professional, you must choose the right business rules, timing and frequency for delivering nurturing messages. Using a lead nurturing software tool itself is a not a panacea for all ills! It depends on how you use it.

For example, sending too many email messages might trigger the prospect to unsubscribe from your email list. Similarly, if you do not mail frequently enough, they prospect might forget about their research and your relevany product / service and might report your email message as a SPAM or Unsubscribe from the list.

The messages have to be relevant to the prospect’s needs and requirements. Use the segmentation features available in your email marketing or autoresponder service to deliver right messages to the right target audience.

Review the nurturing programs and business rules settings on a regular basis and tweak and improve the same on a continuous basis. What is right and relevant today may not be relevant tomorrow, especially in the online world. If you are dealing with B2B sales leads, you may also employ lead ranking or scoring techniques to improve the lead nurturing and follow-up process.