Managing Leads on the Web

One company provided content management solutions to more than 1200 companies worldwide. In its marketing programs, the firm produced online events, conducted telemarketing, and sent out direct mail and email. Despite the advanced technology of its products, it did not have very good systems for lead management. A review of its situation disclosed that the company had

• No lead-management system or method of lead-quality measurement

• No system for lead reporting, distribution, or tracking

• No e-marketing campaigns

• No integration of outsourced telemarketing with other lead activities

• An average of two online events per month that produced about 300 leads per quarter

• An average cost per lead that exceeded $500—more than double that of other programs

To solve these problems, the company created a new, home-grown lead-management solution. The core component was a central database that cleaned and standardized information on leads for distribution to the corporate sales force automation tool, SalesLogix. The system provided a closed-loop tracking mechanism that assigned a unique ID to each lead. The system included

• An online event registration system that captured not only the contact information, but also data about the lead and its possible need for the company’s products.

• A global campaign information database that was used by marketing managers to input campaign details through a Web interface. The information was sent to the SalesLogix system to track the lead distribution resulting from the campaigns.

• The lead-submission process was changed from sending random emails, Excel spreadsheets, or voice messages manually to the use of an online Web form. This Web form allowed standardization of the information that was gathered about contacts.

• Marketing activities conducted outside the Web, including telemarketing activities, were transferred to the new system.

The three main functions of the new system were

1. Importing. The system used the email address as a key. When this was not available, it constructed a match key from the first and last names of the contact and the company name. A log was kept of all data imported to or exported from the database.

2. Processing. Country names, state names, area codes, phone numbers, zip codes, region codes, and activity dates were standardized. Competitors’ names were removed from the database. Standard SIC codes were appended. Leads were assigned to the appropriate salesperson. Incomplete records were flagged, and blank fields were populated, either by software or manually. Separate tables were set up for individual contacts, activity information, event details, and data sources.

3. Reporting. Leads were furnished to the SalesLogix system daily. Daily, weekly, and monthly reports showed the growth of the database in the past, as well as the current volume of leads in the database. The system also created a weekly partner report to show the leads generated by partners.

Results

The new system decreased the cost per lead to about $50. It did so through

• Establishing a 100 percent tracking mechanism for every lead that was generated worldwide

• Setting up lead-quality metrics that filtered out 25 percent of the raw leads

• Increasing lead volume from 300 to 9600 per quarter

• Increasing online events from 2 per month to 12 per month

• Introducing biweekly e-marketing campaigns for customer and partner communications

• Bringing telemarketing in-house and integrating it with the lead-flow process

• Setting up a global lead-distribution and lead-reporting system that operated through the Web