Lead generation is, shall we say, more than a complicated. First, you need to identify who you should be marketing to. Then you have to find and verify the right people that fit those personas. Then comes the email outreach to convince those contacts that it’s a good idea to start a partnership with you. Because different leads are ready for new business at different points along their respective buyers’ journeys, you need a way to decide who takes priority so that you see actual results and marketing qualified leads (MQLs).
While your sales team might use solutions like the buckets method, we’ve seen the most success for marketers by using prospecting automation and lead scoring.
Prospecting Automation
This is email automation that uses firmographic data from a potential lead — including their name, company, and company website — to find and verify their current email address. This process includes sending an initial email that asks the lead who the best person is to talk to about the service you want to offer. The reason for this is two-fold: verify the lead’s email address is accurate, and confirm they’re the right point of contact. Since people are prone to change jobs these days, and their job titles often vary in responsibilities between companies, don’t assume that who you contact first is always the best person for new business.
Lead Scoring
Lead scoring comes into play because most of the people you reach out to won’t immediately respond to your first message. They will, however, continue to open your emails and click on links to your website. The amount of this electronic activity they perform determines the score they’re assigned, which helps track who is engaged with your outreach. In turn, those scores confirm how accurate your buyer personas really are, and whether you’re targeting the best decision-makers.
Priority Leads
Priority leads are those who consistently open your material and visit your website, indicating their interest in what you have to say. They’re also the ones you want to focus additional resources on contacting, like call campaigns. We’ve said before how cold calling isn’t as effective as email prospecting, and we still advocate that. The difference with calling a lead at this stage is that they’re warmed up to who you are and what you do from the emails you’ve already sent.
Obviously, the ones who do respond should be your primary focus for getting on the phone (remember those calendar invites) and vet properly as MQLs. But if they don’t respond, keep emailing and try another phone call later. In our experience, this methodology gets far better results.
Are you open to a demo of our prospecting automation platform, Prospecto? Let us know by clicking on the link below for a free lead nurturing discussion.
