Marketing services firm Quaero, a CSG solution provides its clients with customer intelligence that aims to help them make better business decisions. But the company realized last year that it needed to practice what it preached. So the firm stepped up its own intelligence to learn how to manage and nurture leads, all the time keeping sight on the value of relationships.

"What we have to do through marketing is really build a dialog with potential clients, help them understand who we are, and learn who they are so we can prescribe the appropriate treatment to best suit their needs," says Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek, executive director of marketing at Quaero, a CSG solution.

Working with Marketo, the Quaero marketing team collaborated with the sales team to define leads, create scoring models, and determine interaction strategies for different customer segments while reducing manual intervention. Boockoff-Bajdek says that now her team can respond to new leads within 48 hours with relevant content based on each lead's demographics and behavior. "Not every lead is a lead sales should act on," she says. "We are now able to push leads to sales only when we determine when they are ready."

For leads not yet ready to buy, Boockoff-Bajdek stays in touch through a bimonthly opt-in newsletter, webinars based on different segments, and other periodic interactions. "When we see a change in their behavior that shows they are ready to talk to us [such as downloading a white paper or responding to an email], we more actively interact with them based on their area of interest," she says. This includes a phone call or visit from a salesperson.

Automation explanation
Boockoff-Bajdek points out that it's critical when working with automation not to eliminate the personal interaction. As an example of what not to do, she says that some call center IVRs have become over-automated and actually harm the customer experience. She says that key to Quaero's strategy is to balance the people and technology components.

"Automation allows us to give more personal attention to leads that need it at specific times," via phone, email, or face-to-face, Boockoff-Bajdek says. "It's not about automating an entire function. It's about being smart about automation in order to have those personal interactions when they're needed. Automation has not taken the place of more traditional interactions. We're never going to be able to sell something via an outbound email or communication."

Qualified Results
Boockoff-Bajdek says the lead management program has created more qualified leads than previous efforts because the marketing staff can prioritize and differentiate its contact strategy. In one recent campaign, for example, Quaero sent out an outbound email to a targeted group asking them to visit a landing page and fill out a Web form if they were interested in learning more about a campaign management solution. Boockoff-Bajdek's team got leads from the forms, but also tracked those who visited the page but did not complete the form. Her team followed up with those people with personal phone calls, which generated an extra group of qualified prospects.

With this level of outreach and customer insight, Boockoff-Bajdek says that the current sales pipeline contains three times the number of opportunities than it did one year ago. "We have improved and increased our marketing performance, we've been able to act on inbound inquiries in a much more timely fashion and prioritize those for our salespeople, and we have made significant improvements in the overall process by drastically curbing the amount of manual intervention," she says.

Next steps include getting more sophisticated about customer segments and customizing offers to a more granular level for each prospect, Boockoff-Bajdek says. "By figuring out what to offer a particular client at a particular moment of interaction, we can do a better job of meeting their needs and generating new sales for services."