Every marketer will tell you that the one metric they most desire, but struggle to acquire, is campaign return on investment (ROI). B2B marketers, in particular, feel this pain because the processes that have historically been in place to execute campaigns and track sales opportunities reside in two completely different systems and are governed by two completely different departments (CRM and sales).
In the evolving B2B marketing automation sector, vendors have transitioned from campaign management focus to lead management focus. The driving force behind this has been the realization that people research, evaluate and buy online, oftentimes with little or no interaction with sales personnel until the latter part of the sales cycle.
Kevin Miller, chief marketing officer of marketing automation provider Salesfusion (salesfusion.com), says there is a clumsy handoff between marketing and sales when a lead is passed, and all too often the data about the sales lead, once it converts to an opportunity, is not visible to marketing. The loop gets broken at this point and marketing and sales scramble to figure out how to match up opportunity values and revenue with the source campaigns.
While the marketing automation platform (MAP) will show a dizzying array of reports on the marketing side uncovering campaign metrics that would make any chief marketing officer salivate, the reality is we are still very much dependent upon processes, data and people who are out of our control.
All is not lost. There are a few steps that marketing and sales can take to ensure ROI is properly tracked.
• Integration: It may seem like this goes without saying, but ensuring your MAP and CRM are properly integrated at a database level is the first step. Select a MAP that has a proven track record of integrating at a deep level with your CRM.
• Alignment: Marketing and sales must come together and agree on the process of lead management. This includes the handoff and critical pieces of data that must exist in both systems. This must be a top-down approach that is driven and governed by both marketing and sales leadership.
• Preserve the data at all costs: Ensuring marketing source data like lead origin and campaign IDs are mapped to the CRM records is crucial. These should be fields that sales cannot edit or update.
• Retain data through the funnel: As a lead moves from prospect to contact to account to opportunity, most CRM systems will support workflow that automatically copies the originating lead source to each subsequent table in the CRM.
“While it may seem like pushing water uphill, there are solutions getting solid ROI in a B2B environment,” Miller says. “Start with the four steps listed above and you’ll be well on your way.”
