In a post on the eConnect Email Blog at the beginning of October, James Trumbly, Director of Business Development at eConnect Email explained how to use an email marketing system to nurture leads. Trumbly discussed how the best lead nurturing approaches to email marketing consists of delivering high quality content to a narrowly targeted audience at regular intervals. In addition, they always provide incentives to opt in to an email list that contains your ultimate offer and leads to a sale.

I’d like to talk about how marketing should approach leads after they’re nurtured by email marketing when the prospect is ready for qualification. In my view, the lead qualification process, like the lead nurturing process, should stay within the marketing department. I also think that marketing personnel should take the additional step of getting on the phone to qualify leads. While this is a function normally left to sales departments, I think Marketing is in a better position to qualify leads- and by doing so will ultimately produce higher quality leads for your sales teams. Here’s why:

Marketing Doesn’t Have Near-Term Quotas to Close Deals
The reality of sales departments is that salespeople live quarter to quarter, and they have to hit a quota each quarter in order to stay in the good graces of their department. While this is a great incentive for keeping your sales team motivated to bring in revenue, that same incentive could be counterproductive in the lead qualification process.  So that is the reason I believe Marketing is better suited for lead qualification.

First off, the marketing department isn’t particularly concerned with hitting near-term quotas. This allows the marketer to engage a prospect in a more open and honest conversation about their needs, purchase time frame, budget and other factors that comprise typical qualification criteria. Beyond that, marketing departments should become more responsible for the quality of leads that they send to the sales team. By managing the qualification process, the marketing team becomes intimately tied to the quality of the lead.

In order to make this work however, marketing departments need to be methodical about whom they hire, how they compensate and how the lead qualification process is managed- and improved. Here are four tips for managing this process:

1. Hire at the Junior Level
In any role, hiring the right person is critical. For the role of lead qualifier, you want someone energetic, competitive and willing to spend time on the phone. You also want them to be junior enough to grow into a different Sales or Marketing role. Beyond that, you want someone that can really drive a phone conversation and has the inquisitive nature to dig beneath the surface to and uncover information from the prospect.

2. Compensate with a Sales-like Pay Structure
The biggest driver in increasing the quality of marketing leads is to tie compensation to the sale. The easiest way to do that is to start them off at a base salary while offering them a commission based on the total revenue of closed deals. You can also add incentives for qualification accuracy such as an additional bonus for a great sales-accepted lead.

3. Decide How to Route Leads
The natural lead category breakdown is to create three buckets of leads:
a.  Qualified leads
b.  Disqualified leads
c.  Leads that need to be nurtured

All of these are fairly self-explanatory but the last one is worth elaborating on. The real opportunity for shifting this role to a marketing department is that you can dedicate someone to nurturing leads with a human touch. As such, there should be an intense focus on the nurturing aspect of lead qualification.

4. Improve Sales and Marketing Alignment
While this is a long-standing issue in companies across the globe, it’s a necessary area of focus for making this model work. Both the sales and marketing departments should have regular meetings about lead qualification criteria. This allows the sales team to fully understand why Marketing is disqualifying certain leads (and to double-check that they’re not disqualifying a few hidden gems). The best way to manage this process is to have both departments meet frequently. Introduce weekly meetings and gradually move to once a month.

While this is not a comprehensive list of what needs to happen, I believe it to be the key area of focus. If you follow these steps, you can create a Marketing team that drives more sales, is more accountable and is better suited to see its contribution to revenue.

Introducing the new and improved eConnect Email, your go-to email marketing platform. Featuring enhanced usability, customization and security- the new eConnect Email will make building your email campaigns a breeze!

To begin, we restructured eConnect Email from the ground up with several new and exciting features. We now have a template builder where you can create custom rock-solid templates optimized for both desktop and mobile applications.

How about those clients of yours in different time zones? Yep, the new eConnect Email will automatically send your email campaign to your recipients in their specific time zone. In addition, we have beefed up security on both ends with back-end authentication and relationships with top ISPs and industry-leading mail servers.

Worldview

See who is opening and what they’re clicking on with real-time data, all beautifully displayed on Worldview (our gorgeous maps app). Don’t forget about the bread and butter, you know, ROI- the new eConnect Email boasts in-depth reports on your email campaign’s performance and deliverability.

Social Integration

Social. Yes I said it and yes we did it. You can now allow your Facebook friends and fans to subscribe to your newsletter directly from your fan page. We also report every “Like” and “Tweet” your campaign receives as part of our stunning reports. So now you can see not only which subscribers are sharing with their friends, but also what they’re saying about you.

So what are you waiting for? Dive in and set up a new eConnect Email account today for free!

You’ve outlined a game plan, picked an email-marketing provider and even typed up some traffic-generating content but you failed to pull the trigger on the campaign. Why? Because you read some article about the migration to social communication and how it’s more effective than email? Well let me be the one to tell you that is an absolute fallacy and there is no quicker, more cost-conscious and measurable platform than email marketing. None. Don’t get me wrong, I love social media and the revolutionary candidness it is creating in people but no one likes to login to their Facebook or Twitter and see a bunch of ads or posts about a new polyester sweater that comes in a fruity sherbet color and runs two sizes too small. Social media is just that, social. The companies who are successfully using social media to market their business are the ones who are interacting and engaging their audience with real-life questions, answers and at times, unrelated content. So save your sales pitch for that email marketing campaign you’re about to send off as soon as you finish reading.

As pointed out in the infographic by b2bmarketing.net, there are numerous irrefutable metrics further solidifying my point that email marketing is:

• More visible
• More measurable
• More effective

And it’s a great tool for:

• Generating leads
• Building your brand’s identity
• Driving sales

Now if those aren’t some insanely valuable statistics then I don’t know what is. So log back into your email-marketing provider (hopefully eConnect Email), choose a catchy and thought-provoking subject line and hit the SEND button. You’re welcome.

Six months ago, if you had mentioned Dollar Shave Club to a room of people, you would have gotten all blank stares (even though the company has been around since June of last year). Today, there are over 4.5 million people who would nod their heads and smile. 4.5 million YouTube views. In just a few weeks. How did they do it?

A viral video incorporates strong planning, careful execution, and a little bit of luck. Fortunately for those of us who have never won the lottery, the strong planning and careful execution part carries a little more weight than the luck part. Can you design a video and guarantee that it will go viral? Maybe not, but by incorporating these lessons from Dollar Shave Club, you can at least ensure that it earns the right to be seen and shared.

Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously

Humor is something Dollar Shave Club does really well. Seriously. There’s hardly a straight line in the entire video. But they’re not just cracking jokes either. Some of the humor is obvious and some is a little more under the radar, but all of it works together to communicate the vital information you need to know about the company. And it leaves you with that “You’ve gotta see this!” feeling.

Create a Unified Approach

Take a long look at your existing website and craft your video so that it supports your current marketing strategy. When you visit the Dollar Shave Club site, every element hangs together and sends the same vibes you received in the video. Your website visitors shouldn’t wonder whether you’re the same company as the one that produced the video they loved.

Put the Most Important Stuff First

In the first ten seconds, we know what Dollar Shave Club does, how much it costs, and what the quality of the product is. We get our questions answered: How can they afford it and are the razors any good? If we decide to stop viewing (which we won’t, because their fabulous style holds our attention) we still have everything we need to know to pique our interest and entice us over to the website.

Put a Face On Your Company

Even if you don’t have the marketing background and camera-ease that Dollar Shave Club’s founder, Mike Dubin does, it still helps viewers connect with your company when you put a face behind the name. Make the story human and people will relate to it.

Creating videos people love begins with understanding how to communicate a message they can relate to and want to share. After that, who knows? You just might win the lottery.