How and when to bypass lead nurturing

Are there times when Marketing should bypass nurturing and send a lead straight to Sales with "hot" status? Absolutely.

We have a Lead Nurturing webinar at 10am PDT next Wednesday and Thursday with NetProspex (ok that was shameless self-promotion), and it got me thinking about when NOT to nurture.(webcast of lead nurturing webinar is saved here).

FastTrack Existing Customer Leads instead of sending to a lead nurturing track!
Let's say you have a $200K/year existing account and its CEO suddenly decides to pop onto your website for the first time and download a piece of premium content requiring registration. Do you:

1. Ask her 20 questions including purchase timeframe?
2. Put her in a 9 month long drip campaign that pours out dreary whitepapers monthly?
3. Recognize that she is a customer based on her email domain?

The answer should be #3 of course. What you want to do is have the domain of every customer in a look-up list so you can compare all new leads to it, and then give them a boost in their lead score based their existing customer status. If a new lead shows up from an existing customer, the score should shoot to super hot (A+) and the lead should be sent to the Sales Rep immediately. Don't add them automatically to a drip campaign. Let the sales person decide when they review the lead if they are going to allow that person into a drip campaign, and which one.

FastTrack Strategic Account Leads After Lead Generation
The story is much the same for leads from target accounts. Just upload 500 of your favorite email domains, from strategic accounts or target accounts, and boost their score appropriately when they show up at your door. You might even consider making a unique score just for target accounts, and changing the subject line in the task (activity) you set for the sales rep to reflect that this is a new lead from a strategic account!

FastTrack Existing Account Leads
You may go one step further and decide that even if an account is not yet a customer, you don't want new leads from that account languishing in marketing land. You want Sales to be aware that another person in that account has just been added to the automated marketing system. Their score might be really low under normal circumstances, but because the account they are with is "highly qualified" you give their score a boost and deliver the lead to the Sales Force without delay.

SlowTrack Competitors, Analysts, and Vendors for more effective campaigns
Now that you have started to recognize visitors when they enter your marketing automation system based on their domain, you may as well have a SlowTrack. Recognize competitors, analysts, and vendors, and give them the lowest score, do not send them to sales, do add them to any lead nurturing programs, do not collect $200. If you want to have more effective campaigns, think about whom you exclude as much as you think about whom you include!

All of this is easily set up in Market2Lead with the derived attributes capability in the response funnel! Adding a "FastTrack" to your existing lead management process is important if you want to improve the quality and timing of leads sent to your Sales Force. Nurturing isn't for everyone!

Happy nurturing,
Kevin

Comments

[dan]

did you move the seminar site?