3 Things to Remember About Marketing Leads

Richard McCrossan explains how the contact centre holds the key to marketing.

A sale can come from anywhere, but the more information you have on a customer or prospect, the easier it will be to determine how high a priority he or she should be.

Here are three things to remember when it comes to marketing leads:

1. You may require several “touches”

Not all respondents will want to buy something from you there and then, so you should create a “nurture” programme that ensures all respondents that aren’t immediate leads are not just discarded.

Start building a simple ‘live’ profile of your prospects and relevant nurturing material – they may have come back to you with queries about a product or solution – your contact centre holds this vital data to enable your next ‘touch’ to be spot on.

2. You need to keep them interested using multiple forms of media

Different people prefer different means of communication. Make sure you are considering a range of media in following up with a customer: webchat, video chat, instant messaging, as well as on the phone.

You could also try different media at different points in your sales process. This will keep customers engaged and gives them the opportunity to get in touch with you whichever way they prefer.

Again, your contact centre may hold the information that tells you their preferred method of communication – if it is email, then the phone call might just annoy.

3. Make sure you gather the right information and feed this into your CRM

You should try and keep prospect information as up to date as possible. This will make it easier for you to deliver a more personal experience for your prospective buyer.

If a customer has complained about one of your products or services, they will not want to receive promotional information from you until their complaint has been dealt with and they are happy. All of this information is held within the customer service department.

I have seen occasions where someone has just purchased a particular car only to be sent a mailer from the same company about purchasing the same car – but with a better deal.

No matter how ‘hot’ your lead is (in this case, having visited the car showroom that day), if you don’t consolidate data across both marketing and customer service, this will only lead to frustrated customers.

With thanks to Richard McCrossan, Strategic Business Director at Genesys.