Ensuring your CRM is properly organized to handle MQLs (marketing qualified leads) is a key factor in your buyer’s journey and provides your sales team with only the most valuable leads.
Effective lead tracking and CRM automations can identify strong sales opportunities with the highest chance of conversion. Knowing when to transition an MQL to an SQL (sales qualified lead) minimizes the risk of spending time and money chasing the wrong leads.
Use Your CRM to Optimize MQLs & Aid Sales Enablement
MQLs are in the stage between a lead and an SQL where an individual is interacting with your marketing channels but is not ready to buy, and it is not yet time for a sales team member to reach out directly.
A defined buyer’s journey paired with an optimized marketing CRM is critical to sales enablement. In fact, marketing automation software has proven to lead to a 14.5% increase in sales productivity.
To best prepare your CRM to handle MQLs, and their potential migration to SQL, there are three things you need to ask yourself:
- Do you use marketing automation software? (HubSpot, Pardot, etc.)
- If so, are you taking full advantage of key automation functions, such as lead scoring and drip campaign enrollment forms?
- And, have you set criteria for your lead scoring system?
The Magic of Marketing Automation Software
According to HubSpot, almost four-fifths (72%) of the most successful companies use marketing automation. CRMs and their integration of marketing automation tools have major benefits, such as the ability to merge your marketing functions with sales data to categorize leads best.
Key functions of marketing CRMs include:
- Organize lead lists
- House content calendars
- Track analytics (from individual tactics up to entire campaigns)
- Send emails & post to social media
- Various automations (including automation engagement, communication and tracking functions)
There are many options when it comes to choosing the marketing automation software that’s right for your company. Top tools in this space include HubSpot, Pardot, Mailchimp and Marketo. There are dozens more, and they all have slightly different functionalities. What works best for your team will depend on the size of your company, industry, types of marketing channels and CRM (or lack thereof).
Embracing Your System’s Automation Tools
Two tools are most critical for understanding and organizing your MQLs: lead scoring and forms.
Drip Campaign Enrollment Forms
Forms on your website created through your CRM can collect web visitors’ contact information and create leads. These contacts can then be automatically enrolled in email drip campaigns. This increases the number of individuals on your mailing lists and gathers their contact information directly based on their interest in your site and/or products.
Forms can collect as much or as little data as you see fit. Commonly collected lead information includes:
- Name
- Company
- Company Size
- Title
- Department
- Location
- Which product(s) or service(s) they are interested in
Now why would a web visitor willingly hand you this information? In exchange for something they want such as a resource or benefit. For example, if you have a whitepaper or case study on your website, you can allow visitors to download it in exchange for their contact information. This gives you new leads that you know are interested in the topic explored in that resource.
To learn more about how to best use forms, check out some ways to optimize forms here.
Lead Scoring
In your CRM, each lead has a number, or score, associated with it. This indicates how much interest a lead has in your company. Lead scoring systems can be completely customized to your company, your products and your marketing channels.
Scores 1-100 are common. But the range can be customized to be as big or as small as you’d like. Here’s a simple example of marketing tactics scored out of 100 for reference:
- Providing email for newsletter: 20 points
- Visiting “About Us” web page: 1 point
- Visiting pricing web page: 5 points
- Adding item to cart (without purchase): 20 points
- Requesting a call with Sales Team: 100 points
- Filling out a form: 50 points
- Opening a promotional email: 5 points
This score determines where a lead sits in the buyer’s journey. For example, for many ColinKurtis Advertising clients, their journey looks like this:
Lead → MQL → SQL → Opportunity → Customer
Scoring determines when a lead moves from one stage to the next. For example, in the scenario above, the MQL threshold would be 30 points and when it reaches 100 points, it moves on to become an SQL.
A defined scoring system gives your leads an easy-to-categorize numerical value and is critical to keeping your CRM organized.
How to Create Your Lead Scoring System
First, determine your scale. Will actions be scored out of 100? 50? 250? This depends on how many different types of marketing tactics you have and how you want to differentiate them.
Next, identify all marketing channels and tactics. Then choose which are the most effective sales tools. Those with the highest ROIs will have more points associated with them.
Examine your website and assign scores to individual web pages. It is key to determine which pages are most likely to drive sales; visiting these pages will increase web visitors’ scores. Meanwhile, general landing pages such as your home page or careers page should not have points associated with them.
Scoring can also be associated with an individual’s company size, industry, department, title and more. For example, Jane who is the president of a mid-sized B2C beverage company may be a better lead than John who is an analyst from a small market research firm. Say you use a scale of 100 for your lead scoring and, Jane’s title can give her 5 points, company size another 2 points and industry an additional 10.
Lastly, establish numerical thresholds to determine when a lead becomes an MQL and when it becomes an SQL. This is where automation comes in. CRMs track scores and re-categorize leads as they meet different thresholds. And they can facilitate smooth hand-offs to the sales team with automatic notifications once a lead becomes an SQL and it’s time for a salesperson to reach out to them directly.
These examples are just one way to handle lead scoring. Explore more scoring systems here.
The End Result: Optimized Leads
Properly organizing and categorizing MQLs allows marketing teams to smoothly hand off leads to sales and provide only the most valuable SQLs. With the right tools, such as lead scoring and forms, you can best capture and organize leads and ultimately optimize sales.
If you’re ready to take your CRM to the next level, the team at ColinKurtis Advertising is dedicated to developing and executing marketing strategies for companies in the ingredient, food, beverage, nutraceutical, health and nutrition industries.
Contact Mitch Robinson at Mitch@colinkurtis.com or call 815-965-6657 EXT. 1 to learn how we can build your team a personalized lead scoring system and optimize forms to capture your ideal leads.
Blog post from:
Valette Piper-Bledsoe
Vice President, Client Services
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