This problem isn’t new. For over a decade, marketers have been trying to determine how to make our content stand apart. We’ve written from different perspectives, we’ve wrapped it in creative call-to-actions and tried to engage our audience explaining why our content is more unique and valuable than the other guys. So how do we stand apart? How does our content rise above the rest?

We need to think differently. We need to start being human. Let’s imagine that all the web’s content is represented by a city. What brings that city to life? It’s people. When we think of our hometown, we think in context of our personal relationships and experiences. We don’t think of the data (i.e. population or square miles). We think of the high school we went to and the crushes we had. We think of our first job and how tough the manager was. These stories provide the context for the city.

Principles to Humanize Marketing Automation

If we recognize that storytelling humanizes us and is a vital ingredient to our marketing efforts, how do we incorporate it into our marketing automation processes?

• Become a farmer: Many of the expectations placed on sales and marketing teams is about quantity vs. quality. Skills are often based on the ability to convert or win. These terms immediately describe an “us vs. them” mentality. This is not how we build relationships. In a post written by Sean Jackson, he describes the value of thinking like a farmer vs. a salesperson.
  

  “But the farmer has a major advantage over the hunter. While the hunters must go into new territories each day to stalk their prey, farmers stay in one place, planting new seeds and reaping the fruits of their efforts on the same ground they have toiled over already. In return, the land they till becomes infinitely more valuable because it can consistently reap a harvest without the hits and misses of hunting.”

  You’ve likely heard the phrase lead nurturing? It’s marketing speak for building relationships. It’s staying in one place, listening to your customers and adding value by meeting their needs at each stage of the buying journey. But we can’t accomplish this by trying to “hunt for sales”, this must be done by building trust over time, adding value at each step.

• The power of empathy: Many articles have been written about the power of empathy in business. To think like a customer means that we have walked in their shoes. This goes beyond understanding the buying journey or the customer need. When we have walked in our customers shoes, we connect with them on a personal level. We are far more understanding of their needs when we understand their story. Michael Hinshaw states this about the customer experience:
  

  “Several studies back up the fact that no matter who your customers are (B2B or B2C), there’s a high price to pay for delivering a poor customer experience. The thing is, customer experience is really based on how your customers feel. And one of the best ways to make them feel better about the experience is to listen them, understand their concerns, and deliver empathetic service across multiple touchpoints.”

  So delivering a positive customer experience is more than simply knowing what kind of product they use. It’s having knowledge about how and why they use it. If you sell shampoo, you need to know what kind of hair they have, why they chose the shampoo, then deliver value around the entire experience. What do they need before, during and after they shampoo their hair? This information helps create customer empathy. When we deliver this kind of content via our automation processes, it will show that we have listened and seek to provide real value along the way.

• Getting personal: In his latest book X: The Experience When Business Meets Design, Brian Solis outlines the importance of the customer experience. It’s going beyond the data. It’s about getting personal.
  

  “Big data provides great information about customers’ interests, personal and professional networks, location, and many other characteristics. But creating meaningful experiences requires us to get more personal than just mining data. One of my least favorite expressions is, “It’s not personal; it’s only business.”

  This is where the rubber meets the road. Data gives us a limited view of our customers. It shows us open rates, but doesn’t reveal intent. It shows us downloads, but doesn’t indicate purpose. We must take the additional step to “micro-mine” the data. How do we do that? We must be curious. We must gather valuable insights. What are your customers interests, values and opinions? “Data storytellers” (or analysts) have the unique ability to reveal information that do reveal incredibly accurate stories about our audience. Gathering and listening to these stories will help us further humanize our content and create experiences that are meaningful and personal.

The Tactics of Humanization

In order to humanize our marketing automation efforts we must critically look at each interaction during the customer experience as it relates to our communications and determine how we humanize it. Here are a few thoughts to get you started.

• Be Relational: This goes without saying. Create an experience where your customer sees you as a real live person, not a large organization or automated system. Use the proper tags (first name, etc.) from your automation system to relate to your audience. If your customers all have a specific kind of goldfish, then tell them that you are running a special for that kind of goldfish. Speak in an authentic personal tone. Business speak will get you a one way ticket to Irrelevant-ville.
• Segmentation: Another way to humanize our marketing automation is to use one of the most powerful tools in our automation toolbox, segmentation. When we cast a broad net with our marketing and communication, it robs us of our ability to be relevant. Take the time to segment your audience into very specific groups. This will allow you to create communications that are personal and relevant. When we can provide very targeted messages that relate to our customers on a personal level, it will feel human.
• Logical Campaign Flow: This can be tricky. Now that we have this shiny new automation system, it’s tempting to automate our every interaction. But proceed with caution. Remember what it feels like to be the customer. If they don’t answer your email, then sending them another one the next day, is not good relationship building practice. Step back and consider the buying journey. At what steps are decisions being made? When does it make sense to re-engage your audience? Take time to ask some of your existing customers about their journey.
• Consider the Entire Customer Experience: The best way to add value and relate to your customer is to acknowledge them not only before and during the sale, but after it as well. Too often our marketing efforts stop at the cash register. Don’t allow the dollar signs to get in the way of delivering exceptionally personal experience by following up. Are there other areas of the customer experience you can add value to? How did their experience with your product or service go? Were they satisfied?

This is not an easy task. It takes an immense amount of time to walk in the shoes of your customer. From the moment they discover the need, all the way through the moment their need is met, and beyond. But just as any relationship takes time to develop, so does automating your marketing. Marketing Automation is still relatively new. While the systems are vast, there is a simple philosophy that your team should adhere to before generating the campaigns, emails and landing pages that will capture your audience’s attention. It’s the philosophy of making every interaction human.

Although Mautic is still young, we’re amazed at the community that we’ve been surrounded by. As we seek to foster this growth, we thought we’d share some key themes for how to develop a vibrant, connected community.

Change Your Language

When we set out to develop Mautic, we started with an idea. We wanted to change the way people looked at marketing. We wanted to level the playing field for every business and help them connect with their audience in a meaningful way. But we knew it was going to take a special group of people who felt as connected to the vision as we did. This is true of any brand. But it had to begin by changing our language. How often do we talk about “converting leads”? Whether we like it or not, we are conditioned as marketers to consider our buyers as potential leads, instead of individuals who are part of a community. It may be semantics, but if your brand wants to build a true community, you will see them and describe them differently. It will also change the way you interact with them.

Would you rather be considered a lead or a guest? Disney has built a culture and a brand that seeks to interact with people in a different way. It permeates their brand and the language they use everyday. In the book Built To Last, Jim Collins describes the terminology that Disney uses to build the voice of the Disney brand.

• Employees are “cast members.”
• Customers are “guests.”
• A crowd is an “audience.”
• A work shift is a “performance.”
• A job is a “part.”
• A job description is a “script.”
• A uniform is a “costume.”
• The personnel department is “casting.”
• Being on duty is “onstage.”
• Being off duty is “backstage.”

These simple changes to their language reinforces the message they seek to communicate. It also greatly impacts the customer or “guest” experience. If you’re like Disney and your central message is “making people happy”, you will not call your guests, potential leads.

Make Community Sticky

In their book Made to Stick, the Heath brothers reveal the key elements to making ideas stick. These core tenets are vital to not only growing ideas, but communities as well. They are: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional and Stories.

• Simple: If your mother doesn’t understand your core message, start again. Your central value statement should be simple and easy to interpret.
• Unexpected: How do you get someone’s attention? You must be willing to do something that is out of the norm. How about giving away powerful software for free?
• Concrete: No business speak here. Your message must not mince words. You must say exactly what you mean, and mean exactly what you say.
• Credible: Does your message backup your value? How can people determine this? Are there reliable sources? Can your community test your product or service?
• Emotional: This often makes people in business feel uncomfortable. Research shows us again and again that we are driven by emotion or feelings. Don’t be afraid to get real.
• Stories: Who in your community uses your product or service? What are they using it for? Is it changing their life in some way? These stories will serve to further connect and fuel your community.

Mautic is filled with individuals who have gravitated to these principles. Leaders like Takuro Hishikawa in Japan, Rodrigo Demetrio in Brasil and even more in Europe, Thailand, the US and around the world. These individuals jump in and help others by equipping them with translated documentation. They gather their network to share common ideas and solutions. They take their free time to assist those who are trying to setup and troubleshoot. This is community.

Everyone who has contributed to Mautic has engaged and participated because they believe in one or more of these “sticky” principles. It connects them at a level that is deeper than simply intrinsic value. It’s a feeling.

Feelings and Idea Flow

In addition to the key elements above, when a community is developed, it must not remain stagnant. There is a flow that naturally comes from collaborating with others as we move toward the realization of a common ideal. In the book Social Physics, Alex Pentland highlights this with the concept of idea flow;

“Synchronization and uniformity of idea flow within a group is critical: When an overwhelming majority seem ready to adopt a new idea, this convinces even the skeptics to go along. A surprising finding is that when people are working together doing the same thing in synchrony with others— e.g., rowing together, dancing together — our bodies release endorphins, natural opiates that give a pleasant high as a reward for working together.”

It feels good to be part of a team that works together to realize a vision. This is not simply research. This is a physiological fact. When you feel connected to a community that is aligned around a common goal, your body engages. It gives you that sense of accomplishment, a sense that provides feedback in the form of emotional satisfaction.

The Right Kind of Community

We’ve highlighted some key elements to developing your community online. But we must be careful to grow the right kind of community. It is not simply a “group of people that share a similar characteristic”. This is more about facts and figures than principles and ideals. True community is a “feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.” This definition is what makes our communities sticky. Promoting this concept and designing an idea flow by helping each other achieve our goals, is what will truly connect us.

This translates directly to how we market and sell. When we recognize that sales creates customers and that community creates advocacy, it changes the way we interact. We will make efforts to connect with them using a different language, on a higher level and with a common purpose.

This approach works. Over the last year and a half Mautic has seen tremendous growth. We have used these principles to grow a simple idea into 10,000 communicators who have used Mautic and a community of over 4,500 individuals who consistently interact with and share the vision of a marketing solution that thinks differently.

As you seek to reach your audience and develop your brand, what are other principles you’ve discovered to help your community grow? Share them in the comments below!

Regardless of this change, it still must maintain the highest service quality. And unfortunately the data doesn’t lie.

81% of study participants are unsatisfied with their healthcare experience.

This represents an immense gap. Yet, it also represents an immense opportunity. Patients, like customers, are seeking to connect and find value. For decades, physicians and healthcare workers have been perceived as cold, calculated and insensitive. They rush from one appointment to the next, not taking the time to truly understand how patients feel. Both in the physical and emotional sense.

“There is a misperception among providers about how well they are truly meeting consumer expectations,” said Jeff Gourdji, co-lead of Prophet’s health care practice. “Although they acknowledge its importance, providers are finding it challenging to focus on patient experience in the face of so many competing priorities.” (source: Loyalty-360)

How many of us assume we are adding value at each step of the customer journey? Organizations and healthcare providers alike can track and close this gap. A well developed marketing strategy and effective automation solutions can monitor activity and create a more aligned patient experience.

Patient Experience

But it begins with a clear picture of where the patient experience begins and where it ends. Each physician, practice or provider must see the journey from the patients perspective. And it starts long before the doctor opens the exam room door.

When this journey has been mapped out, there are clear intersections where the “brand” connects with the patient. Consider what value you are providing at each step. Where do patients go for more information? What pages of your website are getting the most traction? The most bounces? “But you don’t understand, I’m measured on how quickly I can get patients in and out and there are other priorities I’m responsible for.” Yes, this is true of every business. It may seem too simplistic, but patients don’t care about the competing priorities. They are seeking value, or in this case, the appropriate amount of compassionate care.

“It seems important, then, for physicians to have neither too much nor too little compassion. Aristotle put this succinctly when he wrote that, as a virtue, compassion should be shown ‘to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time.’ He didn’t define how much compassion is right: We have to decide that for ourselves.” (source: New York Times)

The concept of marketing is making it’s way into the healthcare lexicon. Recently I received an email from my primary care office. It was unexpected, so I opened it. It was a gentle reminder to get my flu shot. Wow, that was a well timed email campaign as we enter the cold and flu season. A few months later, I receive another email. Again, not expected. What kind gentle healthcare reminder might I receive today? An announcement that my primary care office is now providing “cosmetic injections”.

Talk about not knowing your audience. Epic fail. Simple patient segmentation would have revealed who would likely desire this service, making the content relevant.

Compassion

So it seems that the healthcare industry has their work cut out for them. They are responsible for ensuring all these important metrics are tracked and improved. And while doing so, exhibit the appropriate amount of compassion (or value) at the right time.

As marketers, what can we learn from this challenge? We are in a service-based industry. We track and manage many marketing priorities as well. But there is one thing we can not miss. We must connect our product or service and add value at each step of the customer journey. How?

Gavin Francis sums it up quite well;

Compassion means “together-suffering” or “fellow-feeling” — a sense of identification we feel when imagining another’s pain. The word “patient” means “sufferer,” and at its most basic level the practice of medicine could be described as the attempt to ease mental and physical pain.

We must seek to understand and connect value to our audience. When we make this connection, we identify with the challenges they face. This is what marketing is all about.

I was traveling the other day and found myself at a restaurant seated next to a couple of gentlemen from the local car dealership. Normally I don’t find myself listening in on the conversations of those around me, but the restaurant was quiet, and I couldn’t help but follow along. It started slow, and as they continued, I gathered that one was the manager and the other was the GM. As they began to discuss the current state of the dealership, the conversation began to take an interesting turn.

The manager was talking about how challenging it was to keep team members from leaving the business. He was expressing frustration that some of the individuals that had left, were now back asking for their jobs back. And as they discussed the nature of their departure and return, the manager began talking about the culture of the business. “It’s not like it was when I was on the sales floor”, he chided. “When I was working the floor we did whatever it took to make the customer feel welcome.”

The day was cold, overcast and it had been raining, and as the manager continued, he said, “You know, on a day like today, our team would have been standing at the front door with umbrellas, waiting for customers to arrive. And when they would, we would be out there asking the customers what they wanted before they event stepped out of the car. And if they did, we’d have the umbrella handy to cover them as they walked into the dealership. Now, the sales team simply stands at the front door and hovers, waiting for them to walk up to the door.”

And if they did, we’d have the umbrella handy to cover them as they walked into the dealership.

He continued to express his disdain for the current sales team and how they have lost the hunger or drive to meet the needs of the customers who have come to their dealership. “It’s a different group.” he muttered.

Why Automation

I think it’s important for us to do a bit of a reset on the purpose of automation. It has only been a couple of years since automation has really taken off, and already, there are marketers that believe automation can replace the entire function of marketing. They are like the sales team in the story our manager talked about. They have quickly forgotten the art of marketing. They have forsaken the customer and believe that they already know exactly what the customer wants, and will wait for them to “make the right decision”.

Friends, marketing automation will not, and should not, replace your marketing team. It was developed to help you see your marketing environment in a more holistic way. It helps you take into account the location and potential needs of your customer and help you provide information and value to them in a quick and efficient manner.

Personal Automation

So let’s get back to our manager. When he was on the sales floor, he was always thinking about the customer. When the rain clouds were out, he was prepared with an umbrella, ready to meet their needs before they even asked. As marketers, we should always consider the needs of the customer based on their environment.

Where are your customers? What is their environment? Is it raining or is it sunny? Who are they with? Is it lunch time, are they hungry? The list goes on and on and on. These questions help us gain a critical view of our customers. When we see them in a way that is not a data point, but a person, seeking value, we will look at them and our marketing in a different light. Here is a great article on developing a value-based model for your business.

Time to Get the Umbrella

As you continue to seek the perfect automation tools to help you share your product or service to your audience, please take a long, hard look at your customer. They are the reason you are in business. Providing value to them goes beyond the sale. As we’ve discussed, you certainly want to maintain a healthy view of your goals, but if you don’t keep your customer front and center, your automation efforts will feel not feel personal. They will end up feeling like the car sales team that our manager talked about.

So stop staring out the window, get the umbrella, go out in the rain and put your feet into the shoes of your customer. Because when you do, your marketing efforts will feel less automated and will start to feel more personal.

Well that depends. Before we go too far down that track, we’d like to offer some guidance. No, we’re not trying to sell you anything. We’re here to give it away.

In full transparency, we’ve been working tirelessly on a marketing automation solution that is top shelf. It’s open source, filled with flexibility, plays nice with others and is, well…free. At the core of who we are, we want to make marketing tools available to every organization that needs it. But what is a valuable solution without the instructions? This goes beyond documentation and how-to’s. It is strategic. We’d like to share an approach that we trust will help you understand the marketing automation landscape and determine how all these solutions fit together for your organization.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, we’d like to offer our thoughts on how to assess your current state, further understand your customer buying cycle and develop a plan for implementation. All in an effort to help you customize your own unique approach to marketing automation.

The Touchpoint

In today’s post we want to highlight the value of the customer touchpoint. So many organizations today think that a few simple email campaigns will unlock the door to endless customer engagement and profits. This is simply not true. For your company to be truly successful you must learn that marketing automation is about understanding the big picture of your customer.

It’s critical in today’s marketplace, that you not only understand what customer need you’re meeting, but understand each touchpoint you have with them. During the buying cycle, there will be many times that you have an opportunity to create a meaningful, value-filled connection.

Step 1 of understanding how marketing automation fits within your business, begins with laying out your purchase/sales process and evaluating each customer touchpoint. We would like to provide you with a few thoughts to help get you started;

• First, write down the steps in your sales process from left to right. (Tip: This process should be cyclical. You never want to end the process with a sale.
• After you have identified your sales process, under every step, write down all the different touch points where the customer is involved/connected with that step. Does it involve contact with an associate? When do customers interact with your product or service? List all of them out. Even ones you think are outliers.
• Now you’ve written down each touch point your customer has with you and your product or service. There are a couple of additional questions that will take this exercise to the next level. Evaluate each touch point. Are you being proactive or reactive? What value can you bring the customer at each step that would delight them?

We’ve provided a high-level example of a sales process to get you started. Keep in mind this is a 50,000 foot view. If your process is more complex, there are likely many additional channels under each step that will require further evaluation.

Don’t Go It Alone

You should not lay out this process or answer these questions alone. Each and every function in your business likely has a touch point and channel they are responsible for. Whether it is the cashier or the accountant, the salesperson or the receptionist, these touch points will provide you with a holistic picture for the areas where you can add over-the-top value to your customer, with the ultimate goal of developing a long-term relationship. To start you off, there is an HBR presentation that could assist you in beginning to see and understand the cumulative customer journey.

But outlining these customer touch points is just the beginning. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, the opportunities to connect with your customer will continue to grow. So it’s important to make each and every connection count.

Understanding the big picture of your customer buying journey, and the touch points that impact them, will help you assess the areas you need to improve. But before you invest in a marketing automation solution, it is important to realize that automation will not increase your sales, creating meaningful customer experiences will.

Stayed tuned for the next installment of the Big Picture of marketing automation where we will discuss how to outline your goals. The blueprint for your marketing automation efforts.

This year, one of the conference tracks in the “Marketing Reinvented” category is titled, “If It Looks and Sounds Like TV…Is It TV?”. Having worked in the video/TV industry before, it got me thinking about all the change that has occurred.

I used to sell all kinds of video equipment; cameras, routers, tape decks, character generators and more. It was during the mid-80’s when there was a lot of industry disruption. Jurassic Park had become a box office hit. It was a thrilling blend of digital video and 3D animation. More post production facilities and television stations were taking notice, wanting their shows to standout in the same way. Digital video was becoming the new normal, leading to disruption…and change.

The traditional video and digital video industries were on a collision course. Many industry experts claimed that traditional Hi8 tape was better quality, and that viewers would be able to tell the difference and reject digital video altogether. Well, we all know how that story ends. Can you say #netflixeverywhere?

Today, almost all video is digital. Although there are a few holdouts (Star Wars Episode VII was shot on Kodak film), it isn’t for the reasons you might think. So what does this disruption have to do with marketing automation?

I’m glad you asked.

Some marketing experts would have you believe that marketing can’t be automated. We agree. Marketing is about playing the long game. It is not a finite activity. It has been, and always will be, about communication. It’s about the sharing needs and challenges, then ultimately listening and understanding them. We are all seeking solutions to our problems. If you’re like me, you probably solve your problem this way;

• Your toilet breaks.
• You search Google and enter the problem statement; “toilet keeps running after flushed“
• You scan search results to find an answer/solution/video that seems to resolve the problem.
• You then view the content to confirm the problem and proposed solution.
• You might purchase a product/service to assist in fixing the toilet.

Have you ever solved a problem this way? I’m guessing 9 out of 10 of you have. This disruption is the modern day “digital video”. We aren’t calling the local handyman to assist us in solving our problem. We are going online.

For many supporters of marketing automation, this represents a huge opportunity. It provides us with the ability to make a connection and learn more about our customers around the world. Automation seeks to understand and connect customers to solutions in a manner that is efficient and user friendly. Some wonder if placing more technology between the customer and the product/service is harmful to the buying process, ultimately disrupting customer relationship development. These individuals think marketing is about the short game. You know, the same folks that thought Hi8 was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Many have gathered at CES this week to see the latest products in consumer electronics. They are seeking new solutions to problems and needs that exist in the marketplace today. Just as Mautic has created disruption in our industry, we look forward to seeing all the other disruptive products that provide simplicity, accessibility and convenience to consumers.

Do you have a green thumb when it comes to marketing? Do you just barely touch something and it springs to life?

The idea of lead nurturing is a common topic in marketing chats and a frequent point of discussion whenever marketers and sales people get together. I used the term “green thumb” because that’s a very common gardening term that usually refers to someone who is naturally gifted (or at least appears to be) when it comes to nurturing plants or flowers in their gardens. They seem to be able to make something grow out of nothing and they can keep plants alive for a long time. That last point is especially tricky for me. For some reason keeping plants alive and growing is insanely difficult for me. Just ask anyone in the office and they’ll tell you – the ideal plant for me is a cactus.

I think just as with gardening there are some people who are just naturally gifted at nurturing and growing leads in business as well. And just as with having a green thumb in gardening I believe everyone can learn this ability and talent. What is lead nurturing you ask? Well, quite simply put lead nurturing is the process of growing and keeping alive a potential customer for your business until they become a customer. This process involves paying attention to their needs, watering them, and providing optimal conditions for their growth. It really is quite similar to gardening. Nurturing in its simplest form is simply the act of encouraging growth and life.

3 Steps to Amazing Lead Nurturing

If we can identify what lead nurturing is and how the lead generation process funnels directly into a lead nurturing process then we can begin to identify how to do lead nurturing right. The process shouldn’t be tricky or confusing. Don’t let the unknown words trick you into not doing amazing lead nurturing. Let’s get started.

1. Lead Nurturing Starts Early

When you’re growing a plant or a flower many times you will start with a seed. There’s not flower, there’s no root system, there’s really nothing more than a tiny seed. It doesn’t look anything like the beautiful flower you believe it will be in the future.

Now I want you to imagine with me that you’re in a garden with your friend. The two of you have gotten up on a cool spring morning and met in the flower bed behind your house to plant some beautiful tulips you’ve just gotten in. Now as you kneel in the dirt next to your friend you begin the process of digging the holes to place the flowers into. But your friend is not helping! In fact, he’s sitting there with a tulip bulb in his hand. As you watch him he turns it over slowly in his hand and then carelessly tosses it over his shoulder before selecting another from the bag. He does this again and again, until finally you stop him and ask what he’s doing throwing these great tulip bulbs away! What would you say if his response was that these weren’t tulips at all because they didn’t look anything like a tulip. They weren’t even green!

Obviously you’d be shocked and a bit confused that your friend didn’t understand the potential these tulip bulbs held to become stunningly beautiful tulips…when they bloomed. You would have to explain to him that these seeds would turn into beautiful flowers, over time and with the proper care. They might not look like something beautiful now, but with the right care and love they would eventually grow to become a beautiful tulip. Lead nurturing should be done the same way. Lead nurturing must start early, well before your lead actually even looks like a lead. You have to nurture them with attention, love, and care. You have to understand the potential each lead has to become a beautiful customer.

2. Lead Nurturing Is Consistent

Continuing with our story in the garden, the tulips you planted are continually in need of care. You will need to water them regularly, ensure they get proper sunlight, and maintain ideal temperatures. In short, you have to care for their survival with constant and consistent attention. The same happens when you are nurturing leads in your marketing. You have to consistently water (sending timely information), you have to make sure they get proper sunlight (providing relevant information), and maintain ideal temperatures (offer easy ways to respond). Did you get those? Let me highlight them again and provide a sentence or two more detail on each.

Send Timely Information: Don’t flood new leads with information immediately upon the first time you make contact with them. Just like when watering a plant, you want to send information consistently over time. Nurture leads daily, weekly, or monthly as appropriate for your particular market or industry.

Provide Relevant Information: Don’t spam your leads with information that’s not relevant. You want to shed light on questions they have and provide answers to problems. You want to be sunshine and warmth for them in the sense of being an environment that encourages their growth and development. Continually.

Make Responses Easy: You want to be listening to your leads as you nurture them. You need to consistently provide ways for leads to become customers. This is the ideal temperature aspect of nurturing. If you provide a consistent way for leads to respond you give them an optimal “warm and fuzzy” feeling for growth and development.

3. Lead Nurturing Takes Time

The last thing to remember when nurturing leads is the important aspect that everything takes time. If you’ve ever planted anything before you know the results are not instant. You have to follow the process. You have to trust that the things you do day in and day out without seeing any immediate results are serving a purpose and doing something greater. You’ll see the results if you are consistent in following your processes. Your ongoing watering, providing relevant information, and making feedback easy should begin very early and must be consistent. You’ll see results over time. Now, some leads may be much faster to grow and bloom but most will take time.

Lead nurturing requires patient and persistent marketing.

I know one of my own biggest weaknesses is patience. I work all the time on being more patient and letting things unfold but it’s still a struggle I must face every day. Nurturing leads takes time. But let me be clear on this point about one thing. Just because this takes time does not mean passively waiting; instead we must do active waiting.

Lead Nurturing Software

Lead nurturing software like Mautic helps you accomplish these steps. No longer stress about being consistent or contacting each lead at the optimal time. With a strong lead nurturing platform you can automate the lead process and still personalize each point of contact with your potential customer. A lead management software system helps nurture leads by making you consistent in your approach. This is one of the greatest benefits to using a marketing automation and lead nurturing platform like Mautic. I know for myself, this struggling to be patient and consistent is one of my biggest problems and Mautic makes it easy to be both consistent in my lead contact and patient in my approach.

We must stay actively engaged in nurturing and growing a lead using the steps mentioned above. So don’t lose heart, don’t give up easy. Be consistent and be patient. And understand that nurturing your leads takes time. Water those leads and watch them bloom into an awesome customer!

If you’re looking for more detail about lead management then be sure to check out this far more comprehensive step-by-step guide.

Transcript

These are the four roads that will lead to a better sales funnel. Not a comprehensive sales lead model but should get you started in the right direction.

1. The Right Technology

   • Know Your Needs: Before you can select the right technology you need to fully understand the problems you want this technology to solve.
   • Prepare to Scale: Don’t select the marketing software you will use based on your current situation. You expect to be successful; plan for the future.
   • Identify Your Costs: What you spend on the right technology is an investment in your future; identify what you will spend implementing marketing tech.

2. The Right Beginning

   • Sales Team: Sales teams and marketing teams must work together to create the best strategy for customer growth.
   • Marketing: Marketing begins when your business begins. There is no such thing as too early to begin marketing.
   • Audience: The identified target audience dictates a sales and marketing focus from the very beginning.

3. The Right Campaigns

   • Timing: Campaigns need to be bold in sharing the right information at the right times with your leads.
   • Repetition: Campaigns should always have a clear and distinct purpose or goal to be accomplished.
   • Purpose: Campaigns should be organized to execute at the ideal times.

4. The Right Reporting

   • Lead Tracking: Right reporting focuses on lead activity: such as time spent on page, pages visited, and social sharing.
   • Engagements: Reporting should include engagement activity between company and lead.
   • Conversions: Right reporting identifies which pages and forms provide the best conversions.

Need help with your lead management or other marketing help? Then Mautic is here for you! Just Download Mautic or Launch Your Demo.

How good is your lead management?

Lead management is one of the most well-known struggles in all of the marketing and sales world. How a business finds, nurtures, and generates leads is the topic of many conversations and a source of constant worry within a company. The process of managing these potential leads and converting them into customers takes time and much work. In this comprehensive article we are going to uncover what many businesses may be missing. We’ll begin by looking at the current tools that most businesses are using in their lead management.

Existing Tools Being Used

Examine each of these three tools and recognize how they are used. Identify which you are familiar with and see if the description below is how you also would use them. There is nothing inherently wrong with each of these tools and indeed many businesses find success with them. There is however, something missing.

The Timeless Contact Form

There are very few businesses who do not realize the importance of the internet. This is a great starting point and one which has become quite well-known today. One page which exists on almost every website is of course the infamous contact form. This form is used as a way for visitors to easily send a request for contact to the company. This is the equivalent of an old-school open door to a business’s brick-and-mortar store. Only it’s worse. This isn’t an open door to an entire store, but rather an open door to a sales person.

Unfortunately many seem to think this contact form is a fantastic piece of the lead management process. How many customers would be interested in knocking on a door to ask for a sales person? Not nearly as many as most companies would like. Still the contact form is one tool currently used for lead management by most businesses.

The Infamous Company Newsletter

This next current marketing tool is another vestige of old-school marketing. The newsletter is similar to the old mailers sent out by companies to all their existing customers. Today this mailer has turned from advertising to existing customers to attempting to advertise to new customers. This is due in part to statistics such as this:

70% of email readers open emails from a brand or company in search of a deal, discount, or coupon.
The Social Habit

These types of numbers are the reason why so many companies rely heavily on newsletters for generating new leads. But sending a generic newsletter is not the key of a strong lead management process. Indeed newsletters (emails) are a fantastic way of building a brand and keeping in contact with leads and customers alike, but newsletters alone are not a lead management process.

The Cutting Edge CRM

Those businesses working with customer relationship management tools are indeed the most advanced of these businesses using existing tools. These CRM tools let the business collect and organize their customers, manage data about their customers, and keep detailed records regarding each of these customers. The CRM works well for existing customers, and for manually entered leads.

A CRM can increase revenue by a whopping 41%!
Track Via

Many of these businesses do great things with sales teams focused around their CRM and they do well in their process. They do well, but perhaps they are still missing something. Perhaps even still they are lacking something. There is something missing from their lead management process.

The Lead Sales Funnel

Before we identify this missing piece of the sales lead management process let’s next look at the typical sales funnel and define each of the pieces of this process and the role it plays in the lead management process.

This sales funnel is a simplified version of everything implemented in a typical business marketing strategy. But even in this simplified form we can see the main aspects of this funnel. Let’s look at each stage in this funnel.

The Leads Stage

In this introductory stage you are simply looking to reach as many potential leads as possible. This is the widest of the stages and most broad form of marketing available to your business. You are seeking here to simply spread your name and your presence to your potential target market. This target market is every possible lead who may be interested in your products or services either now or at any point in the future.

The Prospect Stage

This is the very large and generic middle piece of the sales funnel. This is the prospect stage or the stage where you as a business must seek to engage new leads and persuade them to continue in the sale process. This is a smaller group of leads than the original general stage of all available target audience leads.

The Customers Stage

This is the desired outcome stage for all leads. The greater this stage of the funnel the better the business does. These are the leads who have been successfully converted from lead to a customer. This is the smallest of the stages and the most desired. This conversion is the stage where businesses tend to focus their time and attentions (obviously due to the direct relation to greater revenues).

Now that we have identified the three rather general stages of a sales funnel we must look at what is missing. What is the missing piece in a lead management funnel? Where do businesses fail to properly funnel their leads through the sales process?

Marketing Automation: The Missing Piece

Now let’s explore the missing piece of the lead management process. Marketing automation is a process which has been growing in popularity and usage. In fact, recently the statistic was shared,

“98% of all businesses are seeking to implement a dedicated marketing automation system.”
MediaPost

What an incredible percentage of businesses have recognized the power of marketing automation. This implies that the problem is not in failing to recognize the need for marketing automation but something else. Marketing automation, as stated earlier, is more than software. Marketing automation is a process. This is the missing piece of the lead management process. The implementation and execution of an automated marketing process is of utmost importance and requires a number of key steps. We will spend the next several sections looking at these steps and how to implement them.

New Visitors

The first area where marketing automation should be implemented involves new visitors. That’s right, the process of marketing automation begins even in the very top of the sales funnel (Leads/Target). Here is how marketing automation works with new visitors.

Contacting, Promoting & Marketing

The next part of the sales funnel where marketing automation helps involves contacting promoting, and marketing to leads and potential leads. Here we begin to filter down into the second stage of the lead funnel we’ve mentioned above (Prospects/Engage). This is the true power of marketing automation and the part of the funnel where marketing automation software and more importantly process is truly the missing piece for many. Here are a few ways this is executed.

Landing Pages

The landing pages are ways in which you can present relevant information to your leads as they visit your website. These dedicated landing pages are created for a specific purpose and with a specific call-to-action. We have written an article previously entitled, Landing Page Love, which gives details and examples of some great landing pages.

Forms

Remember when we spoke previously of the contact forms used by almost all businesses? These are in fact only one of the many types of forms which can be implemented and used by your marketing. These forms, rather than merely sending an email with the form submissions or collecting them in a single database, would serve to continue to fill-out the lead profiles for each of the visitors who submit the form. Dynamic forms that populate a lead profile are far, far more powerful than a mere submission-to-email form. These forms are also capable of building on top of each other and thus continue to build the lead’s profile as they fill out each form

Newsletters & Emails

The email and the newsletter is a powerful feature of marketing automation. Again, this involves much more than a stale monthly newsletter. As we now have established through the use of website tracking, landing pages, and forms to build a better lead profile we can now use that information to provide relevant information to each through the use of automated emails. More than just mail merge functionality however, marketing automation holds the power of multiple messages based on specific decisions and triggers

This is where marketing automation becomes dominant. This is the heart of the missing piece of the lead management process. This strategy involves multiple points of contact done at just the right time, and without direct involvement from your sales team.

Businesses who increase the number of times contacting a lead from 1 to 8 show a massive increase in contact ratios.
Ken Krogue

Integrate Everything

More than merely implementing a marketing automation tool the marketing automation process must be work closely with all the other aspects of your marketing strategy. As you should hopefully see, marketing automation processes should involve every stage of your sales funnel and work to provide a cohesive sales and marketing strategy. Being comprehensive means integrating marketing automation with the various other tools already in use in marketing. Here are a few ways marketing automation should be integrated:

1. With Your Website

Your marketing automation software and processes must integrate with your website. The reasons for this integration are many and can be seen in several ways above. Notice how the tracking pixel is integrated into the lead profile building process. Integrations with your website help make your marketing process a seamless experience for your leads.

2. With Your Forms

Again, as mentioned previously, integrating your marketing automation with your forms enables you to build robust lead profiles and continue the process of creating potential customers. Mautic helps in this regard through CMS-specific plugin which allow the dynamic insertion of forms directly within your website. These forms submit information directly back to the marketing automation platform.

3. With Your Email

Marketing automation must integrate deeply with your email marketing efforts. Integrating these two platforms has not been done often due to the silo that SaaS marketing automation tools employ. Mautic, as an open source platform, allows you to select the email marketing software of your choosing and integrate directly. This puts the power of your email within your marketing automation platform. This is a new level of integration and puts you firmly in control of your entire marketing process. Your lead management process begins to become complete.

4. With Your CRM

The final integration mentioned here is one which most marketing automation tools use and deem to be of high importance. A good marketing automation platform should integrate with your CRM. This is on the other end of the sales funnel. Marketing automation truly stretches the entire length of the funnel. At this end of the sales funnel and lead management process the marketing automation tool will finally integrate your now qualified leads with your CRM tool. Now, when your sales team opens their CRM dashboard they are greeted with a list of highly qualified “hot” leads ready to be personally contacted. You will notice this is the first time your sales team must directly contact potential leads. This marketing automation process must integrate with your CRM. Mautic allows you to integrate with any number of popular CRM systems and offers a powerful API for other integrations as well.

Marketing automation has historically had a problem with poor integrations* (VentureBeat) and as a result has found a somewhat difficult time being truly successful.

By the way, Mautic offers dozens of integrations and the open source nature of the code ensures that an unlimited number of additional integrations can (and will be) created.

Don’t Give Up

It is at this point that a word of caution and encouragement should be offered. Proper marketing automation, lead management, and sales funnel completions take time and energy. Very few businesses find overnight success as a result of their lead management process. Remember this statistic,

“79 percent of marketing leads never convert to sales”
HubSpot

“Once it’s up and running, a successful long-term content marketing plan will pay lifelong dividends . If you don’t see those immediately, don’t despair. Just focus on providing your followers with the most engaging content possible.” Forbes

So, don’t lose heart. Don’t give up. Keep providing strong, relevant content and information. Trust in the process of your sales funnel and your marketing automation and continue to pursue your target audience. As the article above states, remember this is a long-term commitment and not a short campaign.

Refine Your Strategies

Now, while you should not lose heart, and you should continue in your efforts you should also refine your lead management strategies. You should focus your sales funnel and you should constantly seek to improve your lead processes. There are a number of ways in which you can be sure your strategies are most effective.

1. Implementing A/B Testing

Marketing automation platforms, like Mautic, allow you to create multiple page versions for landing pages and emails. These A/B tests help you to determine which pages are most effective in converting leads. If you are new to A/B testing, here is a short MauticMinuteTM video to help explain the concept.

It is not a difficult job and one which will lead to wonderful improvements in your return should they be handled correctly. Don’t neglect this opportunity to maximize your return on investments and ultimately improve your lead management and sales funnel.

2. Continue Improving

Once you have identified ways to improve your content, your marketing, and your sales funnel you must do everything you can to continue improving them. Don’t simply identify improvements – implement them! Always be seeking improvements and make the most of your marketing automation process.

Reviewing the Funnel

You have now covered the sales funnel from the broadest aspects of your anonymous, targeted leads all the way to your highly qualified list of hot leads ready for personal contact. You have seen how the marketing automation process is the missing piece of your lead management and how to remedy this problem. The solution lies not in finding the software solution but in implementing the best processes involving every stage of your lead management sales funnel. Remember these key steps:

1. Marketing automation improves lead management at the highest level of the sales funnel.
2. Marketing automation offers ongoing contact and lead nurturing in the prospecting stage of the lead management process.
3. Marketing automation seamlessly integrates with CRM systems to migrate leads ready for direct, personal contact.

Implement these recommendations for your marketing automation process into your sales lead management and you’ll find the missing piece to your sales funnel.

If you’re looking for a marketing automation tool which can support and grow your B2B marketing efforts we recommend you take a quick look at Mautic, which provides cutting-edge features, an intuitive interface and a solid platform to help you turn suggested marketing tactics into actionable campaigns, informative landing pages, and ongoing email marketing.