How Marketing Automation Can Make Following Up on Leads Easy

While the exact numbers vary, one thing remains constant: generating and converting leads into sales requires time and effort. Much to the chagrin of sales managers and business owners, the majority of leads are not properly followed up on—if they’re followed up on at all. Roughly 20% of all leads are abandoned after the second follow-up attempt. Converting a lead into a sale requires nurturing, and nurturing takes time. Fortunately, there are ways to improve your follow-up process without bogging down your sales team.

Here’s a few suggestions to improve your MSPs lead conversion process:

Use Marketing Automation

When it comes to sales, response time is a huge factor in conversion rates. More often than not, an IT decision-maker goes with the first company to respond—especially if they’re reaching out after experiencing a technology issue that’s interrupting daily operations. In fact, a lead followed up on within five minutes is nine times more likely to convert.

Suggestion: There are several ways to ensure a lead or opportunity gets timely follow-up—without putting extra pressure on your sales team. Marketing automation is a popular method for supporting your team in this area. For example, with the JoomConnect platform, when a prospect submits a form on your website, an automated response can immediately email them to confirm next steps.

JoomConnect also lets you:

• Add the lead to specific marketing groups
• Schedule follow-up activities for your sales team
• Attach related services, products, and marketing campaigns
• Apply marketing tracks to automate multiple touchpoints

You can even ask leads for consent to join your mailing list, or automatically add them to nurture tracks—helping increase the number of touches they receive from your MSP.

Be Prepared for the Response

Whether it’s a phone call from a pay-per-click campaign or a website form submission, all leads should be responded to quickly and appropriately. While form submissions usually reach their intended contact, leads that call a number listed on your campaign may be routed to an operator, receptionist, or admin—someone who may not be prepared to handle sales conversations.

Suggestion: JoomConnect’s Quick Capture add-on is a great solution for this scenario. It enables your gatekeeper to:

• Quickly collect a caller’s info
• Create activities for the appropriate team member
• Assign a source to the lead
• Schedule a follow-up or demo

Set up a Quick Capture form specifically for your campaign, so all the gatekeeper needs to do is input the caller’s basic info. The rest can be automated to ensure the lead is routed correctly and followed up on.

Offer Educational Materials

Here’s a critical stat for lead nurturing: 95% of buyers chose a solution provider that “offered ample content to help them through each stage of the buying process.” (DemandGen Report) A strong marketing strategy includes a mix of informative collateral, including case studies, testimonials, white papers, and blog articles. These not only demonstrate your capabilities but also give insight into the prospect’s interests based on what they engage with.

Suggestion: When a customer successfully submits a form, they are generally routed toward a success page. Don’t waste that space! Use it to:

• Share relevant educational content
• Link to your blog and social media
• Reinforce that your business is the right fit

Using JoomConnect’s Quick Analytics add-on, you can track what the prospect views on your site after form submission. This activity is logged in a closed historical activity report for your sales team—giving them valuable context for their follow-up. 

One of the biggest themes in lead follow-up is marketing automation. Many marketers are surprised by how much time and effort they save by automating key pieces of the sales and marketing process.

Interested in learning how JoomConnect’s automation platform and add-ons can help your MSP? Let us know—we’d love to show you.