How do you manage your mountains of data?

In my last post, I wrote about the importance of assessing the health of your database. Because if you don’t know what is wrong, then you cannot fix it. Once you have assessed the state of your database against your ideal customer profile and your total marketing reach, it is a good idea to benchmark the current state of your databse so you can track improvement.

After benchmarking, there are a couple of ways you can go about cleaning and appending data; you can choose to do all of this internally or you can hire the services of an organization that does it for you.

If you choose to do this internally, there are several ways:

1. Offer content or a giveaway with a form that enables progressive profiling for the fields/data that are unknown
2. Re-engagement campaign to inactive prospects to try to get them to opt back into mailings or  verify their contact information
3.  Tele-prospecting to suspect accounts

There are also several companies that specialize in this type of activity as well:

1. They can append missing data and verify emails through automated queries that bump against external databases
2. They can telephone to verify information
3. They can identify role-based contacts as well

Regardless of which route you choose to go, once you have cleaned your database and appended information, you need to make sure you take steps to keep it as clean as possible. Business data tends to degrade at the rate of 3 to 6 percent per month so ongoing maintenance is essential to the health of any database.

I would love to hear some of the ways that you have appended and cleaned your data.

As the senior demand generation manager at ReadyTalk, Mike helps manage and execute ReadyTalk’s demand generation programs, which include email, online advertising, telemarketing and tradeshows. He also oversees ReadyTalk’s lead management process and marketing funnel by using Eloqua and Salesforce.com to automate ReadyTalk’s nurturing programs and lead follow-up.

There are really three stages to cleaning your database. Assessing the current state of your database, cleaning/appending  current data and then looking at all your inputs and standardizing those. Within each of these steps there are multiple stages, but that is it at a high level.

Let’s look at the first phase assessing the current state of your database. First, you need to decide which contact fields are critical to your marketing and sales efforts. These are the fields you lead score, fields that relate to your ideal customer profile and fields that impact deliverability.  You can assess these fields in a couple of different reports.

Total Marketing Reach:  # of contacts with a valid email or phone – (bounce backs + unsubscribed)

Total Email Reach: # of contacts with valid email – (bounce backs + unsubscribed)

Profile Completeness:  % complete of your marketing critical fields in your DB. This report (shown below) gives you a view of your database and what fields need the most work.

Armed with these reports you can begin to assess the health of  your database as it relates to your marketing efforts.

As the senior demand generation manager at ReadyTalk, Mike helps manage and execute ReadyTalk’s demand generation programs, which include email, online advertising, telemarketing and tradeshows. He also oversees ReadyTalk’s lead management process and marketing funnel by using Eloqua and Salesforce.com to automate ReadyTalk’s nurturing programs and lead follow-up.

The attendance at my session also reinforced our perception that marketers are very interested in solving this pain. While it was the last session of the show, the room was packed and there were a lot of questions during my presentation and also quite a few people who came up to me after the session to ask very detailed questions. I was very impressed with their engagement and knowledge of both Eloqua and the webinar process.

While we did not win a Markie Award in the category of Sales Impact it was an honor to be a finalist and to sit up front during the awards ceremony. Joe Payne, the CEO of Eloqua, hosted the event and is very dynamic and entertaining speaker.

I would like to thank Eloqua for such a great event and I am looking forward to next years already!

“Spreadsheet hell” is what we call it at ReadyTalk.

It happens when your conferencing service data is isolated from your marketing automation service. It delays lead follow-up, lead scoring and the lead nurturing process. It complicates the entire process and can lead to data errors.

As a marketer, I am always looking for ways to accelerate lead conversion, arm my sales team with valuable information, simplify reporting and gain a solid understanding of metrics.  The new Eloqua Cloud Connectors for ReadyTalk allow me to take advantage of Eloqua’s platform without falling into spreadsheet hell

.Let’s look at the old way vs. the new way:

As illustrated in the steps above, integrating ReadyTalk webinar services with our marketing automation platform, Eloqua is saving us significant time and eliminating manual processes that can lead to errors and other problems.

If you’re interested, you can learn more about Eloqua Cloud Connectors for ReadyTalk.

What marketing automation platform do you use? Are there other marketing platforms that you’ve integrated and seeing the benefits? If not, what would you like to integrate?

Working for a web conferencing company, I see daily the amount of effort and time it takes for us to host our webinar series. Booking speakers, building registration pages, dry runs, practice sessions, content building are only some of the tasks involved.

Admittedly, this is a paradigm shift in the industry where free webinars are the norm. The jump into paid webinars should be a well thought out move taking into account your audience and the value you are offering.

On March 30, we are having a webinar entitled Turn Your Webinars into a Revenue Generator. The webinar is at no charge and will feature 2 speakers who currently charge for their webinars and are very successful. They will tell you how they do it, the lessons they learned and what it takes to be successful.

Join us on March 30 at 2pm EST for this complimentary event.

As the senior demand generation manager at ReadyTalk, Mike helps manage and execute ReadyTalk’s demand generation programs, which include email, online advertising, telemarketing and tradeshows. He also oversees ReadyTalk’s lead management process and marketing funnel by using Eloqua and Salesforce.com to automate ReadyTalk’s nurturing programs and lead follow-up.

I hope you can find the time to join the two remaining webinars on using webinars for revenue and demand generation. They are listed below:

Webinars for revenue generation on March 30, 2011 at 2 p.m. EST, features two speakers, Mary O’Brien from PPCSummit and Larry Stearn from SIPA, who are successful at generating revenue from their webinar program. Mary O’Brien took her physical event and moved it online successfully, while Larry has been successful making money in a very tight industry that has been hit hard by the economy.

Demand generation is featured on April 27, 2011 at 2 p.m. EST, with demand generation specialists from Rally Software and NewsGator. They will share their tips on how to structure a successful demand generation webinar program as well as the critical features you need to be successful.

Register for one of these events or all of them. Visit our site to learn more about the different uses for webinars so you can start your own series or optimize your current one.

As the senior demand generation manager at ReadyTalk, Mike helps manage and execute ReadyTalk’s demand generation programs, which include email, online advertising, telemarketing and tradeshows. He also oversees ReadyTalk’s lead management process and marketing funnel by using Eloqua and Salesforce.com to automate ReadyTalk’s nurturing programs and lead follow-up.

There are certainly some great advantages to working from home but as I discovered some disadvantages as well. I came up with a short list (mostly tongue and cheek):

Advantages:

• Not having to run out the door in the freezing cold weather and scrape your car
• Having time to eat breakfast
• Quiet space to work in without man interruptions
• You get to work in your pj’s with crazy hair
• Have a great web conferencing product to assist me with my work

Disadvantages:

• No one to talk too if your kids don’t bother you
• Have to make your own coffee
• No free bagels
• My home office is cold and dark
• No office doggies to play with

In response to the increasing demand for online training tools, ReadyTalk is hosting an event entitled “Effective Online Training: Tips from the Experts.” on February 23 from 2 – 3 p.m. EST.

Who Should Attend:
You should attend this event if you currently train employees or customers virtually or at a physical location. Also attend if you are looking to improve on your current training program or start a training program for your own organization. You will hear from three speakers who run their organization’s respective online training programs.

What You Will Learn:
In this webinar, you will learn:
• The essential tools to any successful online training program
• How to increase attendance to training sessions
• How to build interactive and engaging online training programs
• How to measure the impact of your online training program

Register for this webinar and learn from the experts on how to make your online training program a success.

As the senior demand generation manager at ReadyTalk, Mike helps manage and execute ReadyTalk’s demand generation programs, which include email, online advertising, telemarketing and tradeshows. He also oversees ReadyTalk’s lead management process and marketing funnel by using Eloqua and Salesforce.com to automate ReadyTalk’s nurturing programs and lead follow-up.

Webinars are an extremely versatile tool. By their very nature, they are a engaging medium that provides an immersive and interactive experience for the participants. The experience, when combined with the technology behind the scenes, allows webinar hosts to learn a great deal about their participants. This information can be used to optimize online training programs, generate qualified leads for your sales team or increase revenue through a paid webinar program.

On February 23 at 2 p.m. EST, we are featuring a panel of speakers that are responsible for managing their organizations’ online training programs. You will learn about the impact their online training program has had upon their organization as well as tips on how to structure and administer your own online training program.

On March 26 at 2 p.m. EST, join us for a discussion of using webinars for ecommerce and two speakers, Mary O’Brien from PPCSummit and Larry Sterne from SIPA, who are successful at generating revenue from their webinar program. Mary O’Brien took her physical event and moved it online successfully, while Larry has been successful making money in a very tight industry that has been hit hard by the economy.

Demand generation is the featured topic on April 23 at 2 p.m. EST, with demand generation specialists from Rally Software and Newsgator. They will share their tips on how to structure a successful demand generation webinar program as well as the critical features you need to be successful.

Register for one of these events or all of them. Learn more about the different uses for webinars so you can start your own series or optimize your current one.

As the senior demand generation manager at ReadyTalk, Mike helps manage and execute ReadyTalk’s demand generation programs, which include email, online advertising, telemarketing and tradeshows. He also oversees ReadyTalk’s lead management process and marketing funnel by using Eloqua and Salesforce.com to automate ReadyTalk’s nurturing programs and lead follow-up.

The AMA has conducted over 100 webinars on the ReadyTalk platform. They use the ReadyTalk service to capture all registration data for the event, send out reminders and conduct post event follow. The polling feature is used to calibrate the content to the audience and all Q&A is moderated through the chat feature. They are also able to record and edit all of their events with ReadyTalk’s recording interface.

After the event is recorded, the AMA adds the recording to their resource library for members to access later. They are also able to add each recording to a podcast feed that ReadyTalk hosts free of charge. The resource library allows the AMA to increase their member benefits with educational material and in turn, this helps drive membership as well.

Here is a recording of our latest event co-hosted with the AMA,  “Integrating Webinars into your Marketing: Make Your Next Event the Centerpiece of an End-to-End Campaign.” I encourage you to check it out to get a glimpse of the type of content that the AMA provides to their members.