Strategy & Planning Series Preview: The Move Toward More Predictive Marketing

The growing importance of lead scoring and its impact on the sales process and strategies such as account-based marketing will be among the main themes of Demand Gen Report’s upcoming Strategy & Planning webinar series.

The week-long event, which runs from Nov. 17-21, is positioned to provide real-world examples and best practices to help marketers build cases for investing in the channels and formats most likely to connect with prospects.

Several webinars will cover lead scoring and predictive marketing, areas where B2B marketers are looking to potentially ramp up their budgets in 2015. Based on a recent survey of Demand Gen Report readers, 44% are doing lead scoring and 16% said they were planning to implement lead scoring over the next 12 months.

Lead scoring is an iterative process, and success requires collaboration between sales and marketing. Those are some of the key takeaways of Act-On’s installment in the series, Model for Building (and Adjusting) Your 2015 Lead Scoring Program.

While data is critical, lead scoring is as much an art as it is a science, according to Janelle Johnson, Director of Demand Generation at Act-On. “Talk to your sales team and find out the types of leads they enjoy talking to most.”

Service level agreements and editorial calendars help to keep the lead scoring process transparent to everyone involved. “First and foremost, it is most critical to view the sales and marketing teams as one team working toward revenue goal together,” said Chris Hardeman, Act-On’s VP of Sales.

Hardeman noted that service level agreements and regular meetings are needed to make adjustments and plan future campaigns together.

Looking To Get More Predictive In 2015?

While savvy marketers have embraced lead scoring, many are trying to determine if they should add a predictive element to their 2015 marketing plans. In the Adding Predictive Marketing to Your Mix in 2015 webinar, Kerry Cunningham, Research Director at Sirius Decisions, and Elle Woulfe, Director of Demand Generation at Lattice Engines, will drive the discussion around the business case for predictive marketing applications.

Cunningham will provide a glimpse into why marketers are adopting predictive scoring, how it compares to traditional scoring and what you should consider before you deploy.  

Woulfe will provide a peek under the hood at how the marketing team at Lattice Engines is using predictive scores for some creative, out of the box use cases and review some case studies for how to successfully adapt your marketing and sales process to a predictive scoring model and handle the subsequent change management. 

“Internally, we use predictive marketing to prioritize leads as well as identify new lead segments,” Woulfe told Demand Gen Report. “We want people to come away from the webinar with some guidance about whether they should be budgeting for predictive marketing in 2015 and an understanding of the benefits.”

Getting More Precise With Account-Based Marketing

As marketers and sales teams looking for a predictable stream of prospects coming through the funnel, one of the innovative approaches many are considering is account-based marketing.

Putting Account Based Marketing to Work in 2015 will feature Megan Heuer, VP and Group Director at Sirius Decisions, and Shari Johnston, Senior Director of Integrated Marketing Programs at Demandbase. They will outline discuss best practices for creating an account-based marketing program and putting it into action.

“We see companies embracing account-based marketing in a much more pervasive and disciplined way,” Heuer said. “And they’re looking to us for best practices and to companies like Demandbase for the tools to support them.” 

This installment in the series will cover:

• How to attract and engage your dream accounts and help sales close the business;
• Tips for working with sales in an account-based model;
• Why account-based marketing must include targeted lifecycle management;
• What to do first to bring ABM to life; and
• Examples of successful account-based marketing.

 

Other Notable Webinars In The Series

7 Ways to Enhance Webinar Promotions in 2015: Mark Bornstein of ON24 will share tips for increasing the effectiveness of your webinar promotions in 2015.

Upgrading Your Lead Nurture Program in 2015: Attendees hear from Amanda Halle of LinkedIn and Lucy Orloski of Localytics about how to expand their lead nurture program to include anonymous web site visitors across multiple channels.

Crossing the Conversion Gap: Sales Enablement Strategies to Ensure Generated Demand Gets Closed: The hand-off between Demand Generation and Field Sales follow-up is tricky in most companies. Tim Riesterer of Corporate Visions and Patrick Flanigan of ADP will cover the benefits of connecting the dots between marketing and sales to boost conversion.

The Roadmap For Real-Time Marketing In 2015: This webinar from Chris Baribeau of QuickPivot will present a hands-on look at how both leading retail and B2B marketers are applying insight, channels and content to ignite, extend and convert interest into purchases.

Increasing Marketing Confidence with Better Reporting in 2015: How much pipeline or revenue did your marketing campaigns influence in 2014?  Which campaigns provided the highest quality leads to sales?  Bonnie Crater of Full Circle CRM will help B2B marketers find the answers.

 

Click here to check out the 2014 Strategy 7 Planning Series, where a single registration gives you access to every session taking place throughout the week!

 

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