Top tips for post-event lead handling

Handling leads from events is a common headache for B2B marketers. After all, with the challenges and stress of a big event or trade show, it’s always tempting to focus on the logistics of making the event run smoothly on the day, and plan to handle leads after returning to the office.

Once the event finishes, it can be days or even weeks until the marketing team manages to process leads, especially if data is held on business cards or paper sheets. Then there’s the question of follow-ups. Which leads should be passed to sales and which should be nurtured by marketing?

If all these issues are tackled in advance, the whole process can be optimised and streamlined. Pardot includes features which can help:

• Forms & Kiosk Mode – A Pardot form can be set up in advance to collect data at the trade show. This will save data entry time post-event and ensure the right data is collected about each prospect using mandatory fields. Kiosk Mode ensures that cookies are not dropped onto the device used to complete the form at the trade show.
• Engagement Studio – This feature can be used to build a customised nurture program for prospects post-event. Engagement Studio Rules allow different paths to be defined based on prospect criteria including field values. For example, a visitor defined as a hot lead could be sent a thank you for visiting email and be passed to a salesperson to be contacted within 48 hours. A visitor defined as a cold lead could be sent a series of nurturing emails to help move them along the buying cycle.

Setting up the right processes in advance can ensure that leads are followed up quickly, with vastly reduced requirements for manual intervention.

For all the effort spent to govern leads and support database integrity, the inefficiency of typical lead processing drastically slows lead follow ups, which doubles back to hurt the prospect experience.

Take event-generated leads for example; according to a recent report by the event lead capture software company, Certain, 73.5% of survey respondents say they can’t follow up with leads as quickly as they’d like to. And the No.1 reason given for delayed follow-up was: “Preparing leads for follow-up takes too long.”