Question

Topic: Research/Metrics

Capturing/measuring Website And Event Leads

Posted by shellbell on 7/15/2014 at 11:30 AM ET 500 Points
I want to measure leads that come in from our website and the seminars that we hold. How can I accomplish this when I'm not the "contact point" (for example, the staff member that receives an emailed inquiry from our website)? The general manager receives all the inquiries from the website contact form and the sales staff at each office attend our seminars to interact with clients and gain new leads.

Before you answer, please note that I really need an explanation of the process we would use to accomplish this feat. Also note that my role is Marketing Communications, heavy emphasis on the communications. I can write and design great marketing pieces but have no education or experience in what I consider "real marketing" (measuring conversions, coming up with marketing plans, etc.). I've been trying to educate myself on these things, as I want to provide this to my company and my boss is interested in seeing the results. Besides me, my boss, the VP of Sales & Marketing, is the only other member of the marketing department. His #1 focus is and always has been sales. He doesn't have any answers for me, so I'm kind of on my own.


I'm responsible for creating the content for our website and for creating/designing email campaigns for educational seminars that we hold monthly in 6 different markets where we have offices. I do measure our website traffic and email open/click rates. My company sells international trade consulting services (B2B).

I apologize for such a wordy question but felt that the additional explanation of my role/situation would help to explain why this is an "extremely difficult" question.
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by telemoxie on 7/15/2014 at 11:45 AM Member
    if it's any consolation: I believe that establishing helpful friendly and productive relationships between sales and marketing is one of the most difficult challenges we face.

    I'm looking forward to seeing what others will say on the topic. But even if we new all the details about your company and situation in market and software and policies, and we selected the best of all possible marketing solutions, you probably don't have enough support from management to implement the best solution.

    if I were in your situation, rather than try to influence my sales oriented boss to become more marketing oriented, I would try to build consensus over time by providing services to sales. IBM is famous for saying: there are two jobs at IBM: sales, and service to sales. If you identify those lead tracking and marketing related functions which address the needs and wants of your sales team, you will be able to make progress and move the organization towards a more marketing oriented perspective.
  • Posted by shellbell on 7/15/2014 at 12:39 PM Author
    Please note that this is not about convincing my boss of something. He is on-board. He's asked me to find a solution.
  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 7/15/2014 at 3:52 PM Accepted
    Do you use a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool - such as Salesforce? If so, then the tool itself can likely give you access to the data. If the leads are coming in via a specific email address (leads@companyname.com), then you could get a forwarded copy of these emails from your mailbox software for tracking purposes. You could even have different email addresses for different events/campaigns for more granularity.
  • Posted on 7/15/2014 at 4:22 PM Accepted
    I think Jay's approach is probably the best solution. On inbound contacts (e.g., email notifications) you can set it up so you get an automatic copy of all email notifications. Then you have to go into whatever system logs new customers (i.e., conversions) and match them to the email notifications.

    For events, perhaps you can suggest a standard follow-up email message for new contacts, and have an automatic copy sent to you for the same purpose.

    That's the most obvious way to handle this. Understand that this kind of tracking is a very common problem across a lot of different companies and industries. You are not alone.
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