Experiential marketing is expensive and time-consuming so it’s vital to make the most of your consumer leads. Be sure to keep the following tips and statistics in mind when planning your lead follow-up plan.

Pre-event Planning

Following up with leads actually begins long before they are collected. Statistics show that a quick, well-planned response is vital, so you need to know exactly how to respond when the time comes. A good starting point would be to work with your teams to understand what lead follow-up tactics have worked in the past, as well as planning around well-accepted lead follow-up best practices. You should have a system in place to distribute leads (based on location, rotation etc.) and clearly identify who is responsible for assigning leads.

First Contact

The statistics are undeniable: brands who reach out the fastest, qualify more leads. It’s important to get out a first communication as quickly as possible. Best practices show that follow-up communication should come no later than one hour after initial engagement. Outreach could be as simple as a welcome email with something of value (special offer, white paper etc.) and a promise to follow up with a call in the next few days. According to insidesales.com, 50% of sales go to the first person to reach out to a new contact, so make sure that you are getting communications out as soon as possible

Persistence Pays Off

A high percentage of salespeople stop making attempts to follow-up after two or three tries. You may think that if you haven’t gotten a hold of them after two calls then you won’t ever, but statistics say otherwise. According to insidesales.com, in 2007 it took 3.7 attempts to reach cold prospect, but today that number has risen to 8. This applies to more than just cold prospects however. The same study says that 80% of all sales require five follow-up calls after a meeting with a prospect. These warm leads are abandoned after one call by 44% of all salespeople-a staggering number considering that these are the warmest leads imaginable. The key message here is that persistence pays, and a plan should be in place to monitor these communications to ensure they are completed.
 

Make it Easier with Marketing Automation

One way to raise your level of lead qualification is to implement a marketing automation platform. Not all sales teams have the time (especially at smaller organizations) to keep emailing and calling the same cold leads. This is where a marketing automation platform can come be instrumental. An email-based platform can send information to your prospects based on their behavior (interaction with your website, email activity etc). These emails can be segmented by things like industry, job type, company size and more. Marketing automation helps take cold leads and slowly warm them up over time, moving them through the pipeline. This way, when prospects are ready to be contacted, your sales team can take over. Remembering that you will likely have to reach out as many as 8 times to qualify a lead, this will take a lot of the burden off of your sales team.

These simple tips can help you make the most of your experiential consumer leads. To learn more, visit www.eshots.com or email us at info@eshots.com.