Inside sales teams were a frustrated lot, earlier. This is because they constantly had to deal with dead end calls as they worked with incomplete lead contact information. Marketing automation tools have made this process simpler by capturing qualified leads visiting the website. By tracking down leads that show buying interest, teams could generate faster sales and develop a more targeted responses to those browsing the website.

When leads are generated using lead intelligence, they have a significantly higher conversion success rate than cold contacts. When lead website activity is tracked, they can be scored based on the profile set by the marketer. This way, marketers can pre-qualify their leads, and pass them on to sales teams when they deem fit.  A robust lead generation system combined with some smart marketing techniques will aid marketers in closing deals faster.

Email Marketing
Email marketing is the most widely used B2B marketing technique that is used to connect with prospects. It can be used to send personalized and targeted messages for lead generation and lead nurturing purposes. Marketers can choose to email exciting offers, propositions, events, newsletters, etc. Analyst reports, survey results or website metrics are always a good draw with prospects. So, sharing these reports through email will aid in increasing click through rates for landing pages.

Content Marketing
Marketing collaterals like newsletters and articles are an effective way to touch base with subscribed prospects. When prospect is in the awareness stage, he will be actively looking for information about related products and solutions. So, well-written and researched articles/whitepapers/case studies/success stories can help to engage him on a regular basis.

Nurture
Marketers need to follow up on all leads that have shown interest in the product, irrespective of their buying stages. With the help of marketing automation systems, marketers need to install a regular follow-up system on all leads and customers to ensure they remain warm.  Integrating their own CRM system with marketing automation software will help to automatically nurture these leads.

Display Customer Success
The company website has to project the product’s benefits and the customers who have benefited from it. Customer success stories or case studies are widely read by prospects in the considering state. Therefore, it is important to have a testimonial column on websites which displays the customer success stories as well.

Marketing automation
Using automated tools, marketers can build a pipeline of qualified leads in the marketing funnel (who will be nurtured through email marketing), track visitor intent in real time, shorten sales cycles and boost revenue, and align marketing and sales goals.


Also read more on - Lead Scoring Model, Search Engine Optimization Tools

 
Many B2B companies today are opting for marketing automation solutions. Generating quality leads and managing demand generation campaigns can be complex and demanding in a competitive business environment. To effectively respond to a rapidly changing landscape, and streamline marketing and sales functions businesses need to adopt marketing automation solutions. And this makes good business sense as there is no point in losing out on possible sales opportunities when a business is trying to do everything possible to drive traffic to their web site.

As the name suggests marketing automation is about automating the marketing activities of any organization. Marketing automation facilitates business growth by effectively managing all activities involved in marketing and sales starting from generating qualified leads to converting them into customers. Marketing automation enables companies to systematically nurture and cultivate existing prospects, yielding more opportunities and a better return from marketing programs executed weeks and months earlier. Efficient solutions help accelerate the pace at which both cold and warm leads move along the sales cycle by providing information of value independent of sales follow-up.

Advanced marketing automation solutions analyze the campaign data to achieve the best possible ROI. Performing these tasks manually can be extremely time consuming for professionals and nearly impossible for beginners. Marketing automation solutions simplify the whole lead process to allow anyone to run advanced campaigns. It assists in focusing your sales funnel and significantly increasing your ROI. B2B Marketing automation helps companies get more from their marketing budget by making the most of the leads they have. There is greater marketing efficiency due to more effective marketing spend and less demand for expensive campaigns designed to bring in net new prospects. Marketing automation systems also make it easier to track the true ROI of marketing programs, so companies can make smarter marketing investments.

Usage of marketing automation solutions can streamline sales and marketing operations to a great extent and make the best use of all leads. The implementation of an efficient and advanced solution the close integration and working relationship between sales and marketing with key information learned about the sales cycle and buying cycle. Seek a solution that can provide you with tangible and quantifiable outcomes. It should be able to effectively save on costs while providing the best lead generation and lead nurturing abilities.

Ensure that every lead receives a prompt, systematic, personalized response regardless of how good sales team is, by putting in place effective marketing automation solutions.


Also read more on - Lead Nurturing, Lead Management
 
Today the global banking industry is slowly recovering from the credit crunch and the subsequent financial crisis. Though the overall industry growth is considerably slower, profitability is showing a marked improvement. However, today banks are facing many stringent regulations and risk management standards, imposed as a way to restore the customer confidence in the banking industry. This (regulatory norms) coupled with the economic conditions have made the banking industry highly competitive.



Banks today are transitioning to a universal banking model as a means to control costs and increase profits. The universal banking model is “a corporate structure where a financial services company offers both investment services and commercial savings and loan services together.” Simply put, it is the marriage of retail banking with investment banking. Touted to be the best possible solution for the current problems of the banking industry, universal banking model changes banks to one stop source for all kinds of financial services. According to Bank of America's Brian Moynihan, “the model (Universal banking model) is the most important model there is because it gives consumers access to global information, capital markets, investment advice and basic banking all in one place.” Hence, apart from doing their regular services such as checking, savings, and loans they would tread new terrains such as peer-to-peer lending, micropayments, collaborative financial planning, and social savings.



The implementation of new regulatory directives such as the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and anti-money-laundering rules has made regulatory compliance a critical factor in day-to-day operations.



Hence, today the banking industry needs banking software solutions to

·         comply with regulatory requirements

·         make business lines more efficient

·         understand their customers more greatly

·         increase profitability

·         reduce costs



Banks can tide over the issues of ageing technology, complex processes, and low efficiency by collaborating with industry experts who can help build and support banking software solutions. Such a move would help banks to

·         Leverage SaaS models to incorporate SOA best practices

·         Develop financial reporting products that implement XBRL standards, adhere to SEC norms and generate statutory reports

·         Design lending applications that integrate with credit bureaus and credit reports

·         Develop frameworks for fraud detection and prevention

·         Build financial analytics and business intelligence tools

·         Migrate legacy banking software to a Cloud Computing model

·         Ensure banking software compliance with MiFiD, Basel II, trading & broking KYC and anti-money laundering regulations

·         Develop mobile banking applications



Thus by embracing innovation, the global banking industry is looking towards changing the landscape of this sector.


Related Links: mobile application developers, agile software development
 
Today, a business is not limited to its physical area of existence. Markets extend beyond borders and boundaries. With the growth of technology and collapse of geographic limitations, there is a need for a tool that can bring uniformity to business operations across the globe. With organizations demanding more accountability from marketing departments, businesses need to adopt marketing automation solutions in order to streamline marketing and sales functions, overcoming increased complexities of marketing and effectively catering to customers.

Improving Sales Pipeline with marketing automation tools
Gone are the days of solely relying on lead capture forms to gain the information you need to be competitive in today’s marketplace. As B2B buyers require immediate and relevant information, the sales teams need to understand the online behavior of buyers.  Companies intuitively understand that response time is crucial to bolstering close rates.

Delayed responses and unproductive callback attempts will lead to worse qualification and lower close rates. This is why marketing methods have changed from the traditional methods of direct mail, exhibitions and print commercials have been replaced by email marketing initiatives, search engine optimization, webcasts, etc. Shrinking budgets, and demands from sales teams to produce more qualified leads, can put organizations under immense pressure. Automation solutions can enable marketing teams to improve efficiency by strengthening their promotions and campaigns with cost-effective, yet sophisticated tools.

With effective marketing automation solutions ensure that the sales team is getting only better qualified customer leads. It maximizes the effectiveness and efficiency of your marketing promotions and campaigns with the added benefit of lower costs.   These tools simplify processes and functions, and provide end-to-end support starting from the planning stage through campaign execution and reporting. Marketing automation solutions aid marketing teams by giving them the information they need about the customers’ specific needs and wants. This ensures that your content is target driven and, with personalization, customers’ responses and conversion rates are enhanced.

Advanced marketing automation solutions analyze the campaign data to achieve the best possible ROI. It improves management of the sales funnel with more prospects becoming clients. Marketers can track movement in the sales funnel and automate message delivery to prospects to draw them through the sales funnel more effectively. Marketing automation solutions facilitate business growth by effectively managing all activities involved in marketing and sales starting from generating qualified leads to converting them into customers.

Look for a solution that provides quantifiable results and have superlative lead generation and lead nurturing abilities.


Also read more on - Search Engine Optimization Tools, Lead Scoring Model
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Securing the retail store computing platform has never been so crucial and essential, as it is today. The store technology is in a constant state of flux from being proprietary, closed, open to flexible systems that enable greater and better meaningful communication with the consumers, people at the headquarters, and other relevant partners. This apart it also leads to better understanding and control of the store operations. All these transformations are being confirmed by the advent of retail store technologies for instance, that comprises of:

·         Wireless networking
·         Store Internet access
·         Multifunction point-of-sale (POS) devices
·         Multi-channel selling
·         Customer kiosks
·         Handheld devices
·         Voice-over-IP (VOIP)
·         Remote frequency identifiers (RFIDs)


It is essential to note that these technologies need more time and effort around the safety, owing to its inherent nature of applications and the functionalities to which they are exposed. Furthermore, technology is offering less expensive operational alternatives, for instance store-to-corporate network connectivity, that leverages public networks exposing the retailers to other security hazards.


The adoption of high-end technologies has increased its base quickly amidst the retail stores over the last decade. Just like any other market that is expanding, the retail sector generally runs into concerns that include non-automated procurement procedures, outmoded architectures, restricted supply chain visibility and inadequate logistics. Eminent companies specializing in product engineering solutions have come up with efficient retail store solutions that help in resolving these core issues along with offering robust, reliable and safe products. Some of the selected focus areas include the following:


·         Point of Sales systems
·         Consumer relationship management
·         Store auditing and inventory management



Leading solution providers of retail store solutions have their own trained product engineers with sufficient experience of the retail market and the ever changing retail store concepts. These engineers work with precision and have an in depth understanding of the consumer demands and requirements. The companies efficiently work towards producing innovative inventory management software that tracks down the products in the warehouse and helps the user to have a view of multiple parameters. Furthermore, they also specialize in the audit management products that outline the parameters, define weights, generate compliance reports and track other findings. In addition to that, most companies undertake a partnering approach towards the end users that helps them understand the client requirements and offer customized retail store solutions that increase the overall productivity.


Related Links: advisory services, product lifecycle management
 
In today's technology-fueled business environment, the always-important speed to market factor has become perhaps the most critical factor in new product development. To beat competition, most companies strive to develop products in a quicker and more cost effective manner.

Successful product development is essential for any business if it hopes to exist. Product development is the process by which a company creates an entirely new product that either adds to an existing product line or modifies an existing product.  Organizations need to balance and bring together expertise from across the business to continually hone their sites, apps and services over a rapidly increasing number of platforms.

It is also important for the enterprises develop products in line with what users want and value, and balance those requirements with the needs of the business. It is also prudent to take customer inputs at the very early stage of product development to achieve product excellence through customer insights.

These inputs can help in building a successful product and gain share in a difficult and more competitive markets. By means of efficient, market-oriented product planning that takes the customer into account, other steps that can also be taken to speed product development.

With the speed to market being the most crucial part of product development, improved communication, increased globalization, and rapid changes in technology have put tremendous pressure on companies to get their product to market first.

To improve speed to market, a company should first make sure that it is making the best possible use of available technology. Understanding the complete need to associate technical, editorial, commercial, design and marketing functions at every opportunity of the development process, rather than let each function operate in a silo, is what an efficient product management service provider will ensure.


With the right service provider, organizations can build near-term capability, meet increased resource needs, reduce costs and bring a new development project perspective. With the right partner, your company significantly more productive, this in turn means that for growth-oriented companies, it means increased capacity and capability. Most of these service providers also offer advanced product engineering services that can provide immense scope to successfully boost revenue growth.

It undoubtedly makes good business sense to outsource either a complete or partial product development process. Accelerate time to market, multiply number of releases, get hold of additional expertise and design supplementary resources and ensure successful revenue optimization by outsourcing product development services.


Related Links: nearshore development services, product lifecycle management