Sales lead generation

SUMMARY: Personalizing your marketing messages can create a direct connection between prospects and your company.

See how a marketer encouraged prospects to arrange 15-minute phone briefings with a top company executive who pitched the company’s tools as ways to make the most of 2009 budgets. The integrated direct mail and email campaign used a creative theme, attention-getting gifts, and personalized email messages to deliver a 1,400% ROI. read the complete case study

SUMMARY: Lead nurturing and scoring are among a marketer’s best tools during an economic downturn. Even marketers who already manage a quality nurturing and scoring program need to adapt for economic conditions.

We spoke with several experts to come up with seven tactics that can help you continue to find qualified prospects in tough times. They gave advice on:
o Measuring lead quality
o Developing analytics to target your strongest prospects
o Adapting content to attract highly qualified prospects
o Researching conditions in target industries. read the complete article

SUMMARY: Not all contests and awards programs are created equal.

Dawn Brister, Manager, Integrated Marketing Communications, Cisco, says choosing the right contest or awards program can generate leads and boost brand awareness. Get Brister’s tips on fighting list fatigue while increasing the quantity and quality of contest entries.

Brister will be presenting the Case Study, “Boosting Demand Generation by Revamping Your Awards Program: How Cisco Increased Entries by 59%,” next month at MarketingSherpa’s B-to-B Demand Generation... read the complete interview

SUMMARY: Only a small percentage of the leads you generate are likely to be “sales-ready” – especially during tough economic times. So, nurturing prospects for conversion down the road is a critical process.

Sherpa partnered with Eloqua and ON24 to survey more than 1,000 marketers about best practices for nurturing leads. Here are the results, featuring 3 new data charts and practical advice to make sure your nurturing adheres to best practices. read the complete article

By Anne Holland, Founder

Thanks for all of your questions before and after our teleseminar, 'B-to-B Marketing: Top 10 Quick Fixes', last week. More than 100 Sherpa readers wrote in, and I and our senior reporter Sean Donahue are preparing answers to post with our compliments on Sherpa by next week.

In the meantime, I wanted to address one particular query which came up a few times: "Where specifically did Sherpa get that B-to-B marketing data?"

Here's... read the complete blog post