A common way to identify sales leads with marketing automation is to use visitor tracking + website behavior to learn more about prospects interests, intentions and current buying status.
When new to marketing automation, this is one of the most eye-opening functions to people. In fact it was this very functionality that made me a marketing automation believer when I was first exposed to it.
Marketers have long been used to using web analytics for aggregate and anonymous analysis of website behavior. With the introduction of marketing automation and website visitor identification/tracking, everything has changed. Now you can see who is visiting your site, when they are doing, and what they are interested in. (If you don’t know already, the key here is to get someone to fill out a form so they self-identify. From there, further website interactions can be tracked. Offer them something valuable in exchange for their email is an excellent starting point to accomplish this.)
It’s the pages that they’ve actually visited that makes up the key to executing this tactic. Using a “Demo Request” as an example (forgive me, I’ve been marketing SaaS-based software for awhile now), I used a technique that helped me predict when a demo request is likely to occur.
This is not an original thought, but it is an effective technique nonetheless so I’m going to share it with you.
- Identify what your conversion goal is. For me it’s demo or trial requests.
- Look back at a sample set of people who’ve completed that goal and compile their “Specific Pages Viewed”.
- Review the data and look for patterns in the specific pages viewed that lead to the conversion, e.g. viewed Pricing, Features and a Case Study.
- Create a segment and alert that triggers when someone visits those combination of pages you’ve identified but DOES NOT convert.
This segment is a perfect example of helping your sales team cherry pick the pipe, so to speak. From your analysis, you know that X% of people (I would suggest at least 60%+) convert after viewing that combination of pages.
When you are alerted that someone visited that combo but didn’t convert, that is a prime prospect to reach out to and see if there are any remaining questions that are unanswered.
This can be done either via an automated nurture campaign or initiated, at first, with a call. My recommendation would be a call first and if no touch is made, have the assigned rep set the automated nurture campaign in motion (as simple as adding to a list or setting a field value).
