February 21,2013
B2B Fortune 500 Companies Missing Critical Lead Management Elements
According to recent research from ClickZ, nearly all surveyed B2B Fortune 500 companies track visitors in some way but most are missing critical elements of successful lead management strategies. The data collected is based off survey results from 38 B2B companies that would be likely to adopt marketing tools.
Survey data shows 78% of respondents use content creation such as white papers, case studies, and videos to generate leads, but just 25% use forms to protect content and capture email addresses. Ninety-seven percent of companies use visitor tracking such as Google Analytics; however, just 25% use marketing automation tools to properly gather and store these interactions. Nearly all (97%) of respondents use forms for email newsletter sign-up or demo request, but just 55% reach out by phone or email less than 48 hours after gathering leads.
A quote from a Forrester report explains the importance of marketing and lead management automation tools: “Lead management automation (LMA) requires a degree of process maturity many business-to-business (B2B) firms don't possess, resulting in underachievement by vendors and users alike. Yet, the benefits of adopting LMA are clear: B2B marketers that successfully carry out lead management practices enjoy more predictable conversions, faster sales cycles, and real alignment between marketing activity and sales results.”
While most Fortune 500 B2B companies take the appropriate steps toward acquiring leads, collecting customer data and following up with these leads are areas that seem to be lacking. Lead management is as important as lead generation, and appropriate use of marketing automation software could help simplify the process.
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