Welcome to Demo 2.0

Dear,

Runaware to launch Software Marketing blog

This month we are excited to announce that the Demo 2.0 newsletter will soon be evolving into an up-to-the-minute blog. Due to the fast-paced nature of software marketing and its supporting technology, it is important to stay abreast of what is happening in our industry. As professionals involved in marketing and selling software, we want to keep you aware and informed of our activities and experiences as it relates to software marketing. This new blog offers you the opportunity to have a voice and contribute to any of the topics we post. Through your comments, we can all learn and benefit from discussions that develop in software marketing. Stay tuned and we will keep you posted for the official launch date.

Special Feature:

Time to Revive your Lead Wasteland

The generation of leads is a classic marketing responsibility and with the way the overall economy is moving these days this traditional responsibility has offered more than its share of challenges. So now more than ever it’s important to, in the process of discovering and qualifying sales leads, realize that some of the most potentially productive ones are already in marketing's possession in the form of lost, discarded or overlooked prospects.

Sales can tend to feel that if only 5% of all leads are closing, that the other 95% are not worth spending their time on. However if marketing can take that discarded 95%, and pull out sets that shouldn't be in there and pull out another set that needs nurturing. The result can be a very large amount of leads that can be recycled and eventually brought in to contribute to a thriving sales conversion rate.

By utilizing sales re-engagement a marketing manager is getting more out of the dollars that have already been spent by revisiting and developing the opportunities that are already there. Sounds like common sense doesn’t it? However the truth of the matter is that only a few companies think about it because they assume it's the sales department’s job.

The lead-recycling process is one of those marketing tasks that hasn't really been affected by technology, and as such can appear dauntingly complex, requiring a handful of communication activities such as direct mail, e-mail, events and phone calls.

Leads that don’t close up front can potentially be a better group than brand-new prospects; they represent an amazing opportunity if well nurtured.

Getting the Support Technology You Need

Even though the lack of specific re-engagement automation might seem a problem, there are associated support systems that exist today. Technology from a company such as Eloqua.com can help identify leads initially through Web activities. For instance if 10 web hits from the same company have visited a vendor's product pages over the past few months, that company could be recognized as ready to buy.

After such leads are handed off to sales, other processes, such as those provided by companies like AdTrack and Runaware, manage leads and provide appropriate feedback to marketing, closing the loop. Included in the process you have CRM monitoring to help keep track of the lead progression or with automated campaign services, leads that didn't work out the first time can be sent back through for re-engagement.

In order to successfully stimulate seemingly lost opportunities, keep up a steady but non-invasive line of communication involving a flow of relevant newsletters, press releases, e-mails and white papers.

In trying to recycle leads, marketers might overlook all the sources that brought the lead to them in the first place not to mention there is a huge possibility for a disconnect to occur between the initial lead- gen process and the re-engagement phase. Omniture Inc., a company originally known for their Web analytics foundation SiteCataylist, now offers expertise in keeping track of leads from origination to re-engagement if needed.

An example of one company that worked hard to recycle leads that didn't pan out the first time is Sonic Software. The company worked with The Devereux Group to establish a series of emails to revive and promote response from a group of inactive leads. Through a series of well thought out emails Sonic Software was able to achieve an impressive 4% response rate from previously inactive leads. To get more details on how Sonic brought life back to their non-responsive leads check out the following link.

http://www.clickz.com

Remember you need to keep a slow approach when it comes to re-engagement because you never know; in a couple years time that lead will want to review its purchase decisions or go with a new vendor and your company will be on their window shopping short list.

Tips and Tricks

The IAB weighs in on Best Practices for Lead Generation

The following best practices were an accumulation of input from a cross section of the lead-generation industry and cover several important areas of publisher-agency-advertiser relationships. The complete document can be found at www.iab.net.

BROKERING

• Unless permitted in the contract by the advertiser or its authorized agency, a publisher should not broker a campaign to any other publisher, network or agency.
• If the advertiser does permit a campaign to be brokered, the campaign's terms and conditions offered by the brokering party to the third party should be absolutely consistent with the contractual terms and conditions stipulated by the advertiser, unless the advertiser provides written approval for any changes to those terms and conditions.

INCENTIVIZATION/PRESELECTION

• Unless permitted in writing by the advertiser or its authorized agency, a publisher should not offer incentives to consumers in return for submitting a lead, regardless of whether the campaign is hosted by the publisher or advertiser.
• If the advertiser does permit the publisher to offer incentives in return for submitted leads, it is the publisher's full responsibility to:
  
  Completely and plainly disclose the terms and conditions of the incentive opportunity, fulfill the incentive if earned, and promptly and professionally handle any customer service issue relating to the terms or fulfillment of such incentive.
• Publishers should not preselect offers without written approval by the advertiser or its authorized agency.

LEAD/DATA OWNERSHIP

• Publishers should assume that additional data gathered as part of an advertiser's campaign—beyond any data collected in the publisher's registration process—is owned solely by that advertiser.
  
  If the publisher intends to sell a lead it generates to multiple advertisers in the same industry vertical, the publisher should notify the advertiser(s) in writing, in the publisher contract, in advance of any such sale.
• The publisher hosting an offer should not duplicate or otherwise use any information contained within the lead data for its own purpose or interest, or for the purpose or interest of any third party or itself, except as specifically authorized or agreed to by the advertiser.
• In order to maintain the integrity of the data, the publisher should authorize the advertiser to seed the leads.
• In order to validate any lead filtering conducted by the advertiser as part of accepting leads from the publisher, the publisher should seed the leads.

SOURCE CODING

• The advertiser should provide each publisher with a source code that is unique to the campaign and should be appended to each publisher's leads.
• The advertiser should provide the publisher with clear information regarding the specific source(s) that are approved for the campaign.
• A source code should only be appended to those leads that originate from the advertiser-approved sources for a given campaign (see “Brokering” section).
• Ad networks should provide a unique source code to each affiliate and track placements at the affiliate level throughout the network, if requested by the advertiser.

Source: BtoB Online http://www.btobonline.com