If your sales team has praised your CRM one moment and cursed it the next, chances are it’s because of data, says Sales Hacker. In other words, your reps may be jazzed about the reporting that Customer Relationship Management software can generate, but they’re frustrated by the amount of data entry they have to do to make it all worth it. And let’s be honest: maintaining an active database of contact information for your lead gen does take a lot of work, especially when you’re dealing with purchased lists that are outdated and inaccurate. So what’s the best way your team can still leverage a CRM effectively that doesn’t require them to moonlight as a data processor? Here’s what we suggest:
Use automation to verify email addresses
First, you need valid data. As stated above, purchased lead lists can be hit or miss — more often in the miss column. That may not be the fault of the data provider, simply the reality of employees getting promoted, receiving different contact information, or leaving their companies. While some firmographic data about these businesses is more consistent — their names, website domains, telephone numbers, and physical mailing addresses, for instance — the best way to verify who’s still actually working at them is by verifying employee email addresses.
You can certainly purchase lead lists that come with emails, but these are usually very expensive and also inaccurate. That leaves you not only spending your time weeding through “hard bounce” notifications from nonexistent email accounts, but also courting the real possibility that your email’s digital reputation will be blacklisted as a spammer.
Your best bet? Prospecting automation. Marketing Armor’s Prospecto tool analyzes that same firmographic data to find and verify active email addresses for leads at the companies you want to target, then uses companion domains to automate this outreach without risking your core website.
Track your leads’ digital engagement
Leads won’t respond to every email you send, and that’s pretty normal. They’re already being bombarded by plenty of other marketing copy and direct outreach from your competitors, which means they only have so much bandwidth for addressing yours when it shows up in their inbox. That’s why it’s important to track whether these leads are at least opening your messages, clicking on links to your website, and visiting specific pages. That way you know they at least understand who you are, what you offer, and that you’re a legitimate business.
Record these electronic actions with an email automation platform — either through Prospecto, or with your own CRM. Your sales reps will then be able to refer to this data when they want to know who’s demonstrating the most engagement, and who they need to focus their efforts on contacting, whether it’s by continuing to email them, or by giving them a call.
Let others handle your data management
Your internal sales team doesn’t have the time for data entry because they should be busy vetting marketing qualified leads. Even your marketing department may have too much on its plate to worry about data verification, analysis, and automated campaign setup. Instead, consider having an outside agency do this work for you. For less than the cost of a single in-house employee, Marketing Armor offers a lead generation program that couples prospecting automation, content campaigns, and other digital marketing tools — all of which can be used to develop a database full of active contacts you can nurture and integrate with your own CRM. No lists to worry about purchasing, vetting, and regretting. No confusion when it comes to identifying the KPIs you need for evaluating your marketing material.
When you’re ready, click on the link below to schedule a free lead nurturing consultation.
