Connect Marketing & Sales with better quality Marketing Qualified Leads
August Eloqua User Group Webinar | Episode 3
3 part series | Lead generation, capture & nurturing
Overview
The culmination of the lead generation & nurturing process is the delivery of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to the sales team. In this episode, we explored lead scoring & other functional areas of Eloqua that can help you deliver higher-quality MQLs.
Why this topic?
Lead scoring and MQLs seemed to be the logical conclusion to a lead generation and lead nurturing discussion.
In this episode, we wanted to show Eloqua users how lead scoring, combined with CRM integration delivers MQLs to the sales team.
Later in this episode, we talk more specifically about Lead Scoring and the basics of how a lead score model works.
Beyond the many benefits to Marketing of Lead Scoring, the impact on Sales reaches far beyond simply delivering better quality MQLs.
- It helps identify the most promising leads. By assigning weightings to factors such as lead behaviour, demographics, and firmographics, lead scoring can help identify the leads that are most likely to be interested in your product or service and are ready to buy. This allows sales to focus their time and attention on the leads that are most likely to convert, rather than wasting time on leads that are not a good fit.
- It helps prioritise leads. Lead scoring can also help prioritise leads so that sales can focus on the most important ones first. This is important because sales teams typically have limited time and resources, so it’s important to make sure they are spending their time on the leads that are most likely to convert.
- It helps improve the efficiency of the sales process. By identifying the most promising leads and prioritising them, lead scoring can help improve the efficiency of the sales process.
- It helps improve the accuracy of sales forecasting. By tracking the lead scoring of leads that have converted, marketing and sales can get a better idea of the factors that are most likely to lead to a conversion. This information can then be used to forecast future sales and design more targeted campaigns.
Episode 1 | Who is your buyer?
In the fast-paced world of digital marketing, the key to achieving remarkable results lies in understanding your target audience. By developing & designing ideal client profiles, digital marketers can enhance their lead generation, lead nurturing, & Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) objectives.
Episode 2 | Nurturing your buyer?
Once you have your ideal client profile in place, you’re in a good position to develop a more highly targeted lead-nurturing campaign. Personas will significantly enhance your content development and help you deliver a more personalised CX.
How do you literally pass MQLs to the CRM where Sales can either accept or reject them?
When you have an agreed definition in place for what constitutes an MQL, you can then have Eloqua pass leads directly to the sales team via the CRM. In some cases, you may use the Eloqua lead score model to be the defining value to trigger the handover to sales.
But not always…
Certain digital behaviour may warrant the immediate passing of a “lead” to sales or service
At a most basic level, if a person submits an enquiry form you’re not going to ignore them until their lead score reaches a certain threshold. You’ll clearly connect with them as soon as possible.
What about engagement of a specific type?
If a person accesses a specific piece of high-value content, that may be sufficient enough to have them sent directly through to the CRM as a lead, again – regardless of their lead score.
In this case, you would configure the specific form processing steps to manage that for you.
Try these 5 steps to avoid missed opportunities with Lead Scoring
The increasing focus on building inspiring digital experiences is also driving an increasing demand for a seamless connection to the sales experience to continue the conversation.
This month’s Eloqua Hack
How much data do you have to support your Lead Score model?
As you work through a lead score model, you will determine a set of values you need to help finalise an MQL. This may include first name, last name, company name and perhaps “country”.
The discussion will then typically turn to “How’s the quality of our geography data today?“. It’s a very valid question if you’re planning to weigh “country” quite heavily.
You can look at the current field population of a Contact or Account field by heading to Settings > Fields & Views in the database setup area. From there, you search for the field in question e.g. Country. See the screen shot below.
What impacts a Lead Score? Profile & Engagement data
Eloqua’s co-dynamic lead scoring accesses three key components:
- Profile data – data you have stored on the Eloqua Contact or a Custom Data Object. Some of this data will come into Eloqua from the CRM. Other data will be captured by marketing across various campaigns using Eloqua forms.
- Engagement data – We also call this Digital Body Language. It’s the online/digital behaviour of your audience. It includes all email engagement – opens and clicks. It also includes all Eloqau Landing Page interactions as well as your website/CMS visits, clicks etc.
- Recency – This is a critical part of the Lead Score model. It helps you weight engagement behaviour more highly within a time frame. e.g. “Visited the website within the last e.g. 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days, 6 months or 12 months etc.” How recently a person has engaged with your campaigns is a critical indicator of intent.
How can Eloqua Page Tags help you improve your Lead Score model?
Essentially, using Page Tags enables you to be far more targeted in the engagement portion of your lead score model.
In place of “Did they visit the website?” you can ask “Did they visit any of the 6 specific pages related to Product X or Service Y“.
You can begin to target engagement behaviour that relates to the buyer’s journey.
In addition, Page Tags can be applied as filters in your Segments and also added to Shared Filters and used to measure far more specific behaviour in your Multi-Step Campaigns.
What are Page Tags?
“A page tag is a tool that allows you to mark or categorize a page or groups of pages on your website. Page tags allow you to identify, with greater ease and in more business-relevant terms, what your website visitors are accessing.
You can then use the information as a more intuitive way to segment, build lead score models, and report on web page performance.”*
*SOURCE: Eloqua Help Centre
When your Lead Score model is underpinned by a well defined Marketing Automation Strategy, your entire organisation can benefit
The more aligned your various teams are, the better your ability to provide a CX to be proud of.
Building a Lead Score model is a collaborative process. The best outcome is when Sales, Service and Marketing work together and agree on the lead score model variables.
We find the process becomes difficult when you have competing strategies and objectives across the various teams.
Stress test your marketing automation strategy today with our 5-minute assessment.
Complete the Design for Automation mini-assessment today to identify strengths and gaps in your marketing automation strategy and processes.
What’s news? What’s coming soon?
While not specifically related to Eloqua Release 23C, Topliners has a new home at Oracle Customer Connect. Click here to learn more and find the links you need to log in.
Release 23C Highlights
23C will conclude in mid-August with various Eloqua clients already live on the latest release.
- Additional feature areas added to Eloqua’s new Redwood Experience: Redwood is Oracle’s award-winning user experience (UX). Sign up for our controlled availability program to experience Redwood in Eloqua yourself! If you don’t have access to Redwood Experience, click here for details. Marketing Cube Support can request Redwood be turned on for our customers. Email Support today.
- Auto Expiry / Redirect for Landing Pages: Great for time-sensitive campaigns, redirect an Eloqua landing page to a new destination URL at a defined time/date. This is a game-changer for your event registration pages. Now you can ensure event registration pages are not available once the event has commenced or if you want to close registration e.g. 24 hours before the event starts. This is a new function, separate from the ability to simply re-direct a landing page which you’ve always been able to do.
- Hyperlink Tracking Updates: Simplify the configuration of hyperlink properties and redirect tracking
- New Webhook App for Eloqua Controlled Availability Program: Push contact data to 3rd parties from Eloqua campaigns or programs
- API updates including exporting external activities via the Bulk API, new lookup table Application API endpoints available, and Reporting API has new endpoints available
Marketing Automation Agency Services
Since 2007, Marketing Cube has been a trusted partner for marketing automation clients, specialising in Eloqua. In 2018, we expanded our expertise to include services for Salesforce Marketing Cloud clients. Our team excels at implementing your chosen platform and providing comprehensive agency services.
With a track record of assisting nearly 150 customers across diverse industries and geographies, we offer traditional application support and efficient help desk services.
If you’re seeking agency services, such as strategic guidance, end-user coaching, training, campaign support, and more for Oracle CX Marketing or Salesforce Marketing Cloud, reach out to us today to discuss how we can best assist you.
