Investments in Automated Lead Management Tools Pay Off

As we’ve mentioned here on the Services Marketing Blog before, between 40% to 80% of leads are dropped. For over a decade now it’s been within reach of services firms to automate lead flow to make sure leads don’t leak out of the pipeline. But in the last few years, the lead management automation tools have come a long way.

Indeed, best-in-class businesses that employ automated tools are seeing a significant return on their investments.

According to Aberdeen’s report Crossing the Chasm with Automated Lead Management, best-in-class companies are more likely to leverage automated lead management tools. It found that 71% of the best-in-class companies surveyed are early adopters and are using such tools, compared with 52% of the other types of companies using the tools.

Best-in-class companies are firms that experienced revenue growth of 59% on average, email click-through rates of 23%, and growth of client/customer acquisition of 51%.

Driving this adoption is the need to increase customer and client acquisition, according to the report. Among the 205 businesses surveyed, 57% said that was the number one pressure driving investments in such tools.

The use of automated lead management technologies helps “address that pressure by automating customer engagement across two or more marketing channels to identify, track and nurture new revenue opportunities.”

What stands out in the report, however, is that best-in-class companies are 1.7 times more likely than all other companies to experience ROI as a result of employing such tools. Of the best-in-class companies surveyed, 63% have seen a return on investment, according to the report. They are better able to measure and account for their marketing efforts, they’re able to learn more about clients, they’re able to manage multi-channel activities from one application, and they’re better able to prioritize leads for sales.

While technology alone isn’t the key to success, it is proving to be critical to generating more relevant engagement and purposeful interactions with clients.

You might be thinking, “We’re too small to automate lead management.” You’re not, but if you think you are, you know what they say about self-fulfilling prophecies.

You might also think, “This is expensive.” It isn’t. The real cost comes in figuring out your business processes and then applying technology to help out.

Are you using automated tools to manage leads? What benefits have you seen as a result?