If you can’t get honest answers, how do you know where to put a lead in the pipeline? To identify serious buyers, you need to understand a lead’s behavior. That’s where lead scoring comes in. With a lead score you can get an honest representation of a lead’s intentions, whether they’re actually ready to buy, and prioritize those that sales most needs to speak with. You Put another way, lead scoring is the new the opportunity stage. For better or worse, those days are over. The scenario today is far more complex. MORE >>

by Doug Sechrist | Tweet this Most of you regular readers have hopefully broached the sales and marketing alignment discussion within your organization and are on your way to a building a lean, mean, revenue-producing machine. If so, the days of “the leads suck” conversation is in the past. Now you’re onto “the leads still suck, but please give us more” conversation. healthy lead management process transcends sales and marketing, resulting in a unified view from inquiry through opportunity to revenue. used to get 100 leads a week, now I only get 15. MORE >>

by Jennifer Talcott | Tweet this I’ve been in the marketing automation community for about 7 years. In that time, I’ve seen lead nurturing go from “nice to have” to a hard-set business requirement for major, fast-growing businesses. While there’s something to be said for the standard use case meant to educate prospects, lead nurturing can do so much more. Not only does it automate marketing processes , but it also alleviates some of the pain sales feels when trying to build relationships. Let’s explore three really cool use cases. MORE >>

by Jesse Noyes | Tweet this If you work in B2B marketing, there’s a good chance you’ve heard about lead scoring. But maybe you’re wondering what exactly lead scoring means, who are the types of companies using it and why you should do the same. What is lead scoring? Well, lead scoring is a way to quantify the value of your leads. And there are really three factors that are part of lead scoring. The second part of lead scoring is really looking at the explicit information. So that’s what lead scoring in my opinion is really about. MORE >>

Summary: Alsa Marketing is a late entry to small business marketing automation. It’s harder every day for a new company to enter the business-to-business marketing automation industry. Of the three classic competitive strategies – low price, great service and innovative products – there are plenty of low price options and leading vendors work aggressively to help their clients succeed. So far as I know, this is unique in the lower end of the market (Alsamarketing starts at $750 per month for up to 10,000 leads and 25,000 emails). MORE >>