When marketing people talk with a potential client they keep track of body language – visual and auditory clues that might help close a deal.
For organizations that use corporate Web sites to attract customers, this powerful tool is off-limits.
One such firm, Kofax Image Products, an Irvine, Calif.-based data image capture firm, however, managed to double the sales performances of its channel partners by using a software suite that analyzes Web-surfing behaviour.
The Web-hosted product, Eloqua Conversion Suite, from Eloqua Corp. of Toronto, automated lead generation processes and enabled the marketing team to determine if visitors to the Kofax’s site were “ripe” for a sales pitch.
“Conversion Suite reads the electronic clues left behind by site visitors and presents these in a report which marketing and sales executives can easily interpret as they would a client’s body language,” said Jim Williams, director of field marketing for Eloqua.
He said the product integrates e-mail and Web-analytics functionality to enable users to evaluate data as well as push-out reports and recommendations to the Kofax’s branches and reseller partners in the shortest time possible.
Kofax, a 20-year veteran in the data capture industry, produces software that enables companies to convert various materials such as invoices, forms and certificates in to digital form for archival, transaction and transmission purposes.
The company has a user-friendly site that offers numerous research and informational materials for free to the public. Kofax, however, noticed that it has been unable to leverage the numerous visitors to its Web site primarily because there has been no way of identifying the visitors and determining their intentions.
“Unless the visitors fill out a voluntary registration form, we have no way of knowing their identity or finding out their needs,” said Laura Cross, marketing program manager for Kofax.
The company’s customer tracking and marketing campaign results were carried out by “extremely manual processes or not done at all,” she said.
Because the site’s voluntary registration was Kofax’s single form of contact point with the visitors, Cross feared “we were basically losing everybody that didn’t sign on.”
She said Kofax investigated several firms offering demand generation solutions but found their products inadequate for their organization’s needs. “Most offerings were merely e-mail software with a little bit of logic.”
Eloqua’s Conversion Suite touched-based with Kofax on three main areas:
Lead scoring – The product discerns so-called “implicit data” or the potential client’s pattern of Web-usage. This helps marketing and sales team members determine what products a visitor is interested in and at what stage of the buying process he or she is at. The software also ranks visitors for purposes of lead generation.
Integration with Salesforce.com – Kofax uses the on-demand customer relations management software, Salesforce.com. Information in Eloqua can be transmitted in real-time to a Salesforce.com user.
Automation – Lead generation and ranking as well as client contact tracking and management is quicker; document content can be substituted to suit various jurisdictions.
While other products concentrate on the explicit data such as a site visitor’s job title and company profile to build its ranking, Conversion Suite also sniffs around for clues such as materials searched, product features investigated and types of reports and white papers that were accessed from the site.
Just as car buyers go through a selection process before the final purchase, B2B visitors also have a method of product selection, said Williams. “By taking note of which materials visitors respond to, we’re able to determine at what stage of the process they are in.”
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