As an accomplished eMarketer, you may already have sophisticated Marketing and SalesForce.com Automation systems in place. You may also be using an analytics module to provide  in-depth stats by the minute, as well as a set of Automated Marketing Programs  to qualify, score and funnel Leads to your Sales system. With all of this in place, you will have a steady volume of prospects flowing through your system and a lead conversion rate on par with industry average.

However,  to add the ‘Customer Driven’ dimension to your automated marketing programs, one must design programs that elicit targeted actionable feedback from your prospects, leads, customers and marketing programs that are ‘Agile’ enough to adapt themselves based on customer feedback.

The key here is to ask the right questions to the right person. If you already have a lead/prospect/customer scoring mechanism built into your marketing programs, you could use the score to determine whom to ask what.

For Example:  When you lose a lead after he was assigned to a sales executive, you could send a satisfaction survey email asking to rate the salesperson. This feedback could be used by your agile marketing program to route your hottest (highest scoring) leads to one of your top salespeople in the future.

If one of your existing key customers gives you a very high overall rating, your agile marketing program would take note of this and send out an email asking for references or perhaps send another email to try and crosssell/upsell more products.

When reviewing automated marketing programs make sure you’re also evaluating just how agile and customer driven they truly are.

When is the best time of the day to send out an email?

You might think you know the answer to this question. After all, you have done your research and know the latest recommended weekly optimal email send time slots. But so does every other e-marketer, (including Spammers)! The reality is your email could end up competing with scores of other commercial emails sent at the same “optimal” time slot.

So why not make this decision more customer-driven and give your customer the choice of selecting their preferred email time slot?

How exactly do you do that? Here are a few examples:

1. Ask your customer when they subscribe (Direct)
2. Conduct an email/web survey to find out (Direct)
3. Segment your list into groups based on the previous mail open/click through time (Past Behavior)

Just goes to show – there is not always one “correct” answer!

Finding that there are just not enough hours in the day to do what you need to do?

You’re not alone – so many other organizations have leaner marketing staffs yet more on their plate. We hear this lament from customers and prospective customers and we appreciate that you’re pulled thin.

Marketing automation and lead nurturing through drip campaigns are tools to help you do more with less. For a quick overview of how True Influence could help you, we invite you to take a look at our 90-second tour. Its a tiny time investment to understand just how we can help you nurture leads and increase your marketing and sales effectiveness.