6 Industries (Beyond High Tech) Where Lead Management is Essential

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Over the last decade, adoption of lead management technologies has blossomed across a wide variety of industries including Business-to-Business (B2B), Business-to-Consumer (B2C), and Business-to-Business-to-Consumer (B2B2C). Historically, the high-tech and software industries saw considerable early adoption growth in lead management. But more and more companies across a wide array of industries are starting to realize lead management can deliver unprecedented automation, cross-channel communication, and ROI. In industries like Financial Services, Healthcare, Sports & Entertainment, and Education, organizations are engaging lead management to help automate the cadence of communications, segment target audiences, and generally manage cross-channel customer engagement across digital channels more effectively than any siloed best-of-breed technology could.

Here are a few examples of industries that have showed a marked increase in lead management adoption over the last few years. This trend is likely to continue given validation of return on investment in lead management from the world’s most recognized brands in non-tech industries.

1. Financial Services

In the Financial Services, Mortgage, and Insurance sectors, leads and opportunities are sourced in high volumes and typically routed to agents for follow-up; in fact, the difference between a closed—and missed—opportunity is largely measured in seconds. And since leads are often routed to multiple financial service competitors, the first agent(s) to reach out to a lead hold the best chance of closing the sale. Lead scoring and routing capabilities in lead management tools allow financial organizations to prioritize leads by product, segment, region, and other factors.

Lead management also provides the infrastructure to govern and audit communication messages across marketing channels as multi-touch campaigns educate and engage prospects and customers throughout the sales cycle. Some financial services organizations are using lead management as a central point of consolidation for cross-channel customer data, providing a highly robust source of customer preference and behavioral data that can be used for more granular segmentation, up-selling, and cross-selling.

2. Healthcare

In the Healthcare sector, treatment options are an education-intensive process. Healthcare providers are increasingly adopting nurture marketing tactics combined with lead management technology to pre-configure educational campaigns for patients—complete with channel preference management, communication frequency preferences, and behavioral triggers that deliver communications at the patient’s rate of consumption.

In addition, some Healthcare organizations are using lead management to automate and streamline registration/application processes with parallel processes that capture forms from patients and route them internally, with agent alerts, to streamline information collection in CRM systems. The highly regulated nature of healthcare also demands tools and technologies that can be easily audited and meet regulatory compliance guidelines.

3. Sports & Entertainment

In the Sports & Entertainment industry, use of lead management technology addresses both B2B and B2C requirements. Sports teams like the Los Angeles Kings are using lead management to engage corporate sponsors in a more traditional B2B complex sale context.

However, lead management technology is also forming the basis for engaging sports fans and season ticket holders too. Some sports teams use a technique in lead management called “progressive profiling” whereby fans and season ticket holders provide personal information and preferences over a series of communications or offers. This information is used to augment the customer database and deliver personalized messages and offers which are translated to campaigns that span social, mobile, and email via lead management technology.

4. Professional Services

The Professional Services industry has seen considerable growth in lead management adoption over the last five years. In many respects, professional services offerings are tangential to a complex software sale, requiring a series of periodic communications over long periods of time. Professional Services firms are also engaging lead nurturing to pre-configure customer retention and cross-selling campaigns to increase customer lifetime value.

5. Higher Education

In the Education sector, reaching and enrolling new students typically involves a costly and complex combination of sourced leads, vendors, and technologies. Lead routing and scoring in lead management can help route leads efficiently to agents and provide templatized communication strategies based on the nature of an inquiry. Nurture marketing tactics can also help educate potential enrollments on the benefits of attending an institution based on targeted messaging such as curriculum, location, and other key factors.

6. Non-Profit

In the Non-Profit sector, lead management is being used to engage and retain a loyal member base. Non-profit organizations need ways to engage donors and members based on their unique interests. A templatized process that targets members based on their behavior—at the right time, in the right channel, with just the right message—maximizes donations. Non-profit organizations typically benefit from productivity gains in campaign execution, but since every campaign is directly and indirectly tied to donations, lead management technology tends to drive significant ROI.

As you can see, lead management adoption has spread far beyond its initial stronghold of B2B high tech. Leave a comment below with any industries we may have missed.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Ed Hadley
Ed Hadley is a B2B marketer with a decade of high tech experience. He is currently Senior Marketing Manager at Neolane, where he spearheads the conversational marketing technology provider's content creation efforts. Previously, Ed held marketing positions with Netage Solutions and PAN Communications.

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