Great marketing plans need even better follow up.
Often times there are missed opportunities from Marketing campaigns because we are not following up correctly, or at all. How many times have you attended an event or an online webinar and received a random follow up call or email weeks, or months later and the topic is no longer relevant in your mind? Or worse, no follow up at all.
I see it happening all the time. I also see that when you have an organized follow up plan that goes along with Marketing’s campaigns, you get prospects on the phone or to respond to emails... The key words in that statement are “follow up plan”. Every marketing campaign should have one, whether it’s a webinar, event, trade-show, etc.
Here are a few ideas on how to make following up on marketing campaigns a little more integrated.
Follow up messaging
A follow up message should be created specifically for each marketing activity and be ready to send immediately following the event. Two things that will get you ahead right away: quick and relevant follow up.
Properly enabling your sales team to follow up
Is your sales team (inside and direct) prepared to talk about your messaging and make the connections back to the marketing events your prospects came to? Taking time to train the sales team on this messaging will enable them to internalize the message and have meaningful conversations with a variety of prospects they are responding to.
Prioritizing your follow up efforts
If we are lucky we have hundreds of attendees that need to be followed up on. How do you prioritize this? I like to break it into 2 steps to get started.
1. Target Accounts - They always get priority in follow up. Every rep should have a list of target accounts they want to get into, so if you see them attending an event follow up with them first.
2. Opens or click throughs - Most CRM’s out there let you know if your prospect has opened your email, and in some cases offer even more detailed information like number of times opened and if they clicked through on any links back to your site.
Always follow up on these before the rest of your list because they have shown interest and will (in most cases) remember the event and your company. We all know follow up is key, and with an organized approach it can be the difference between making the most out of marketing’s efforts or missing out on them completely.
