Three Pillars of Lead Management Dissected: Lead Tracking, Distribution, and Analytics
Whether you sell auto insurance, real estate, or clothing online, every marketer depends on generating a steady stream of high-quality leads that can be converted. But you can’t stay on top just by scattering your ads around the web and working the leads that come. You must constantly track, distribute, and analyze your leads to understand and adjust to the ever-changing demands of consumers.
In other words, you must know which specific marketing channels drive leads, how those leads interact at every touchpoint, and how you can convert them.
Each of those initiatives can be achieved with Phonexa!
Phonexa’s all-encompassing lead distribution, tracking, and analytics ecosystem, LMS Sync, enables deep insight into customer data, optimizes the customer journey, and drives more conversions. Above all, it makes your customers happy and eager to buy from you.
Automated lead management software, such as the lead management system featured in Phonexa’s turnkey suite of automated performance marketing solutions, can take your lead-reliant business to the next level. Read on to learn the ins and outs of lead management software and how lead tracking, distribution, and analytics can help grow your business.
Lead Tracking
Throughout the customer journey – from the first ad display to the conversion – your leads leave tons of trackable data that can improve your marketing across the board. But this data must be collected first.
Lead tracking software collects trackable information on your marketing campaigns as your leads click your ads, browse your website, fill out forms, or interact with you. Leads are tracked using a unique code embedded in every link, making it possible to follow every lead independently.
Besides your own traffic channels, you can also track your affiliates. In this case, your affiliate link (among other things) will contain the affiliate program’s ID that connects clickers and your affiliate partner which is especially important if you work with several affiliates.
Trackable data includes demographics, psychographics, engagement, on-page activity, location, age, gender, preferences, budget, and more to give insights into your traffic channels and the customer journey.
The Benefits of Lead Tracking Software
Segmentation. Insight into customer data makes it easier to group your leads by specific parameters – location, purchase history, past interactions, etc. – and cater individually to each group. For instance, 59% of customers1 prefer tailored engagement based on past interactions.
Customer journey. Knowing your prospects, leads, and customers helps you adjust the customer journey so everyone gets what they desire, be it an instant purchase, a consulting session with a sales rep, or even a complaint request.
Budget allocation. Knowing your traffic sources helps you eliminate poor performing campaigns in favor of the most profitable ones. Likewise, you can estimate the odds of succeeding with a certain marketing strategy or channel.
Sales. Whether you sell through email marketing, website, or sales reps, the potential of all these channels increases when you know your customers. Lead tracking collects the needs and wants of your leads, unlocking an immense potential for each of your marketing endeavors.
Lead tracking software allows you to collect customer data in real-time and use it to distribute your leads while improving your marketing campaigns and increasing your sales potential.
Lead Distribution
With no more than five minutes to convert a lead, you must be extremely precise about where you direct your leads.
Lead distribution software connects your leads to relevant sales agents, buyers, or wherever you want them to go.
Among many lead distribution models, the most popular and effective is creating a leads market equally beneficial to sellers (publishers, affiliates), buyers (advertisers, merchants), and customers.
Real-time lead distribution software like Phonexa works as follows:
Leads are qualified. Different leads – web leads, live call leads, shared leads, exclusive leads, etc. – possess different values, prices, and availability. The qualification process determines each lead type while eliminating duplicated and fraudulent leads.
Qualified leads create a market. Generally, leads are sent on a path that is more likely to secure a conversion – usually the most relevant buyer or the highest bid – based on the publishers’ and advertisers’ bids: the number of leads to buy or sell, exclusivity, price per lead, and more.
The most popular lead distribution methods include:
Round Robin: leads are offered to available buyers, reducing the response time while sacrificing relevance (leads are distributed even to irrelevant merchants).
Location: leads are offered to local advertisers, increasing the relevancy of the distribution – local sales reps usually can serve locals best – while leaving buyers from unpopular locations without leads.
Performance: leads are offered to best-performing buyers – the highest bid – while leaving aspiring advertisers without leads.
Cherry-Pick: leads are picked by advertisers when any merchant can pick from the available leads.
3. Leads are sold or offered to the next best buyer. Suppose the best advertiser declines the offer or doesn’t need as many leads as are offered. In this case, the remaining leads are offered to the next most relevant buyer within the qualification criteria of publishers and merchants.
The Benefits of Lead Distribution Software
Lead distribution software allows you:
Trade leads at a competitive price. Whether a publisher or advertiser, lead management software allows you to buy or sell leads at the best price while offering only consumers that fit your criteria. By setting the maximum price per lead, you can sieve out expensive leads. By choosing exclusive leads, you can get high-intent consumers that haven’t been sold before.
Boost your sales. Combined with lead tracking, lead distribution software connects the lead to a buyer – for example, a sales rep – who already knows what the lead needs and wants. Remember, a knowledgeable sales rep is more likely to convert the lead.
Enhance the customer journey. You must create a perfect customer journey, turning prospects into leads, buyers, and brand advocates. Lead distribution software sends your leads to the desired destination.
Lead Analytics
Lead analytics software takes data from your campaigns to optimize your business across the board, improving everything from marketing campaigns to budget allocation to the customer journey.
Tools may differ depending on the product, but lead analytics software typically includes:
Traffic flow reports. Traffic flow reports help you analyze the quality of your leads, which is especially important if you buy leads from affiliates. Likewise, traffic flow reports can recognize duplicated and fraudulent leads.
Comparison reports. Comparison reports compare data sets against each other to give you a better understanding of the performance of your marketing campaigns, traffic channels, sales reps, etc.
Filter analyzer. Filter analyzer gives you insights into how your earning potential would change if you adjusted your filter settings. This works similarly to predictive modeling by estimating your odds for success at no cost without launching a test campaign.
Predictive modeling. Like the filter analyzer, predictive modeling – for example, the Waves technology within Phonexa’s LMS Sync product – predicts your potential in new states and countries among different audiences.
Lead analytics software ultimately helps you understand where to focus your resources to generate and convert more leads with minimal risks. Likewise, it must enable data-driven modeling to give you an educated (data-driven) guess about the outcome of a particular campaign or expansion into other markets without putting your money at risk in uncharted territories.
The Benefits of Lead Analytics Software
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Customer data insight. Lead analytics software provides deep analysis of collected marketing data, including:
Engagement. Whether you acquire leads through social media, email, or affiliate networks, lead analytics software analyzes the engagement patterns to improve marketing on each traffic channel.
Demographics. Knowing your customers’ age, gender, employment, marital status, and education helps you understand how to target a particular group of customers.
Psychographics. The interests, goals, desires, and lifestyle choices of your leads – all processed by lead analytics software – can help you determine the most effective marketing hooks, such as FOMO, loss aversion, reciprocity, and more.
On-site activity. On-site activity – your website, landing pages, your affiliates’ sites, etc. – is one of the most valuable indicators of how customers react to your products and where you can improve. Lead analytics software groups heterogenous on-site activity into actionable patterns so you can customize your ads.
Lead quality. Whether you generate or buy leads, lead analytics software helps you focus on obtaining the leads you want in the quantities you want. For example, you can allow only qualified leads into your lead management system while custom-setting the qualification parameters.
Automation. The better you know your customers and marketing campaigns, the more processes you can automate and scale. Lead analytics reveals scalable touchpoints that pose no business risk, so you can free up the resources you previously spent on manual work.
AI-consumers interaction. Surprisingly, lead analytics can even help you with chatbots and other digital bells and whistles. For example, by analyzing customer-AI interactions, you can design helpful chatbots.
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All-round sales cycle improvements. Lead analytics effectively moves prospects and leads down the sales pipeline by interpreting data patterns into actionable marketing tips that you can apply throughout the sales cycle:
Discovery. Lead analytics dissects awareness ads to let you know the engagement, views, and clicks each of your ads draws.
Acquisition. Lead analytics measures your prospects’ and leads’ on-site behavior to understand where they look, what they search for, offers they find attractive, and what they lack.
Conversion. Whether the conversion path directs leads to a sales rep, on-site purchase, or even an email, the customer data your lead analytics provides can help you convert more leads.
Take, for example, AMP emails. These emails convert more recipients by transferring all interactive elements to the inbox. But do your subscribers like them? Lead analytics can help you understand the impact of dynamically updated emails on sales.
Retention and advocacy. The happier your customers are, the more likely they are to make recurring purchases or commit to expensive products. Lead analytics reveals patterns in regular customers and brand advocates just as effectively as it dissects prospects and leads.
Focus on customers. Every single component of a lead management system is designed to improve your customers' lives in as many dimensions as possible. Shifting the focus back to your consumers allows you to acquire and convert more of them.
Lead Management Software Precautions
As much value as lead management software provides, it cannot turn your business into a goldmine single-handedly. It does supply data insights and can even predict your success, but you must make strategic decisions (and set up the software).
Avoid these common mistakes with lead management software:
Feedback overkill. Whether you are creating a feedback form, setting up an interactive voice response (IVR), or trying to get feedback in any other way, don’t overkill. Your customer may want or reciprocate, but it’s unlikely they will be thrilled by an endless survey or countless options from your IVR.
Over-focus on leads. Lead management software does focus on prospects and leads, but it doesn’t mean you should ignore your customers. In fact, it’s easier to retain old customers than win new ones. Current customers also tend to buy more frequently.
Lack of updates. Setting up your lead management system is a strategic decision you must make on your own, as no software can be completely autonomous. More importantly, you must constantly adjust your software settings according to the insight you get (some features can adjust automatically, but not all). A lack of updates may render your marketing ineffective, nullifying the advantages of lead management software.
Is Lead Management Software Worth It?
Whether you want it or not, the evolving avenue of online sales heavily relies on data, making automated solutions like Phonexa’s LMS Sync indispensable for processing ever-increasing amounts of data.
Here are some statistics before we wrap it up:
80% of marketers generate more leads – up to 451%2 – with automation software; 77% convert more3.
74% of marketers believe automation saves time and increases engagement; 58%4 believe it improves communication and provides up-selling opportunities.
68% of B2B professionals see an increase in the quality of leads as their top priority5.
Impressive, huh? Get your lead management software now to draw more leads and close more sales!
List of References
1: https://en.freespee.com/guides/the-ultimate-guide-to-call-tracking-for-marketing-and-sales/
2: https://www.smallbizgenius.net/by-the-numbers/lead-nurturing-statistics/#gref
3: https://www.slideshare.net/ApsisInternational/33-great-statistics-about-lead-management-automation
4: https://uplandsoftware.com/adestra/resources/downloadable-reports/marketer-vs-machine/