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 * Revenue Acceleration
   * What is Revenue Acceleration?
   * Conversational Marketing
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THE MQL IS DEAD


HOW CONVERSATIONS ARE TRANSFORMING THE MARKETING FUNNEL

I Want The Book

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 * 
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CHAPTERS

00
Foreword: The MQL is Dead
01
Executive Summary
02
What’s Driving the Shift Away from MQLs
03
MQLs vs. Accounts
04
The Rise of the Conversation-Ready Lead
05
Exposing the MQL’s Achilles Heel
06
MQL Processing Delays: A Deeper Dive
07
Conversational Marketing: Helping Buyers And Salespeople Connect More Quickly
08
Getting Started with Conversational Marketing
09
The Way Ahead: Conversational Marketing – Better for Buyers, Better for Sellers
than MQLs


FOREWORD: THE MQL IS DEAD

Marketing and sales over the last few decades have been defined by three eras,

each shaped by the technology, trends, and people of their time:



When 2020 forced people home, the need to meet buyers on their terms rapidly
sped up digital transformation for B2B companies.

Buyers now want the same conveniences in their business buying that they get
when ordering a book on Amazon or a ride on Uber. And this shift has ushered us
into a new era of B2B marketing and sales – something Drift calls the Revenue
Era.

In the Revenue Era, the customer is at the center of everything. This means
marketing and sales teams need to be aligned around customer lifetime value and
revenue goals.

The problem is, many B2B companies rely on the same-old lead generation
processing and demand generation funnels developed 10 years ago. Processes that
create generic buying experiences and treat people like acronyms.

The antiquated processes of the Demand Gen Era put acronyms before people and
leads before revenue. In fact, many marketers still use MQLs (Marketing
Qualified Leads) and MQAs (Marketing Qualified Accounts) to measure their
performance.

And this has created three problems in the Revenue Era:

 * First, buying feels less personal. Technology meant to make us feel more
   connected is doing the exact opposite. Customers often feel like numbers in a
   database. Today’s technology should help companies get back to the personal
   connections you’d find at your favorite local shops. Where – when you walk
   into a store – employees know your name, what you like, and how to help you.
 * Second, marketing isn’t focused on revenue. By caring more about lead
   generation than sales conversations, marketers have lost the link to revenue.
 * And this has led to problem three: Marketing and sales teams keep feuding.
   Because they’re focused on different goals. Marketers are busy focusing on
   traffic and leads. Sales cares about SQLs and bookings.

That’s why at Drift we decided to make a change. A few years ago, we overhauled
our entire marketing funnel to be more people-centric. We skipped the acronyms
and are instead focusing on helping our buyers buy.

And because we know that words matter, we’ve changed the terms we use to define
the stages of our funnel. We no longer talk about MQLs; we talk about Interested
People. Our marketing funnel is goaled on connecting buyers and sellers around
conversations – something we call Scheduled Conversations and Held
Conversations. That’s what turns our Interested People into Future Customers,
and – ultimately – customers. And our sales team couldn’t be happier.

We’ve changed the way we think about demand generation so that we can double
down on revenue and conversations.

The best part? It’s working.

Our focus on account-based engagement powered by AI has made it possible to
deliver personalized buying experiences and conversations at scale. This has
translated into a 334% increase in opportunities and 122% increase in account
engagement.

We hope that other marketers will join us and ditch the outdated MQL in favor of
conversations. That’s where the connection is made. That’s where revenue
acceleration starts.

Mark Kilens
VP of Marketing
Drift


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

TIMING IS EVERYTHING. ESPECIALLY IN SALES.

The problem is that buyers get distracted. If you don’t engage them in the
moment, they move on to the next thing.

Harvard Business Review published a study from a sales technology company that
found if a sales team waited longer than five minutes to follow up with a person
who had completed a webform, their ability to connect with the prospect
decreased by a factor of 10. The study also found that only a tiny fraction –
4.7% – of companies were able to respond in that five-minute window.

According to Drift’s State of Conversational Marketing report, buyer demand for
real-time engagement has grown over just the last year. 46% of respondents
reported that they expect a chatbot response within five seconds or less. 43%
expect the same using online live chat.

Despite this reality – which is driven by massive changes in buying behaviors
and preferences, most marketers still approach filling the sales pipeline the
old way – with MQLs (marketing qualified leads). After decades of using this
metric to justify its business value, marketing isn’t eager to give up this
familiar approach.

But even the most revered models have to retire someday.

Over the last few years, it has become clear that – with the explosion of
digital consumer behavior in the B2B space – not all traffic sources or leads
are created equal. Therefore, not all MQLs are created equal.

> B2B buying has become a much more fragmented experience, with each member of
> the buying team owning only a small piece of the transaction. In this new
> world, each member of the buying committee needs to be engaged at different
> times and with different approaches and value messages, all in the hopes of
> building consensus across a very diverse set of functions, needs, and
> readiness. You need to rethink the idea that an individual MQL is an indicator
> of where an account is in the buying journey.”
> — Latane Conant, CMO, 6Sense



Sources range from people who visit your website to attendees at a sponsored
conference to people who downloaded one of your white papers from a third-party
website. Unfortunately, the MQL approach doesn’t account for the fact that
website visitors are expressing a much greater interest than prospects from
other sources. Even if they don’t convert via a webform, website visitors are
almost always higher-value prospects. After all, these people made it all the
way to your virtual front door, and now they are knocking to come in.

This realization forces us to reconsider the traditional MQL-driven model of
measuring marketing funnel performance. In today’s market, no buyer or
salesperson is really interested in MQLs.

IN TODAY’S MARKET, NO BUYER OR SALESPERSON IS REALLY INTERESTED IN MQLS.

Your buyers certainly don’t want to become MQLs. Buyers want solutions to their
business problems and answers to their questions. They know that filling out a
web form will only drown them in marketing emails and annoying follow-up calls
from inexperienced SDRs. Not fun, and definitely not worth whatever is behind
that form.

Your salespeople don’t really want MQLs either. They may work with them because
that’s the status quo, but they’d much rather be having real conversations with
real people at the accounts they’re trying to land.

So, if no one’s interested in marketing qualified leads, what should you be
focusing on instead?

Conversations.

The “conversation-ready” lead is the new standard for effective lead generation.

> Marketers are facing an urgency to shift how they interact with leads and
> sales because of more aggressive sales goals and compliance rules. MQLs are on
> their way out the door. Conversation-ready leads are a more successful
> approach for marketing to work with sales to get over the MQL-sized hole left
> in our hearts. Being able and ready to chat with someone at the point of their
> need capitalizes on the moment of intent. And it can create a positive brand
> association with a buyer. We’ve found great success with pairing intent data
> and intent-qualified opportunities with conversation-ready leads to book
> meeting after meeting.”
> — Jessie Coan - Vice President, Marketing, Aberdeen



Savvy marketers are leading the charge as the industry shifts away from the
traditional MQL-centric model to newer models that are more effective in today’s
markets. These new strategies focus on generating conversations instead of
clicks. They provide new ways to connect with members of a target account’s
buying team in a more influential and “human” way.

> Lead measurement must start from when a buyer is ready to have a conversation
> with your team. MQLs distort lead measurement by focusing Marketing on
> generating new contact lists instead of delivering value to both buyers and
> the sales organization.”
> — Marko Savic, CEO and Founder, FunnelCake



We are well into a game-changing transition from the world of the MQL to a world
in which conversation-ready leads are the primary marketing currency. The game
is no longer just about numbers. Today’s marketing landscape is about engaging
customers in more authentic ways that build trust and – ultimately – stronger
relationships.

In this book, we’ll explore what it means when conversations become the primary
metric for leading demand generation teams. In our experience, it changes
everything.


WHAT’S DRIVING THE SHIFT AWAY FROM MQLS

IN EARLY 2017, GARTNER’S TODD BERKOWITZ ANNOUNCED THE IMPENDING DEATH OF THE
MQL. MOST B2B MARKETERS WERE SYMPATHETIC TO THE IDEA BUT UNABLE TO CHANGE. AFTER
FIFTEEN YEARS OF USING THE MQL AS THE PRIMARY DEMAND-GEN KPI, MARKETERS WEREN’T
READY FOR AN ALTERNATIVE MODEL. MORE TO THE POINT, IN 2017, ALTERNATIVE MODELS
DIDN’T EXIST.

Even so, it was clear that things needed to change.

Berkowitz called out the problem of scale that’s intrinsic to the MQL-centric
model. If sales targets grow by 2x, the MQL target also has to grow by 2x to
keep up. Unfortunately, since marketing budgets don’t automatically double when
sales targets do, demand generation marketers are forced to try to generate more
MQLs at a lower cost per lead (CPL).

> The first 1,000 leads typically converted at a much higher rate (all the way
> through the funnel) than the next 1,000 leads. And the next 1,000 converted at
> a rate lower than the previous 1,000. And because the conversion rates
> declined, you’d have to keep upping the MQL target.”
> — Todd Berkowitz, Gartner



The results of this upside-down equation: MQL quality suffers, MQL-to-close
conversion rates go down, and then the MQL target increases to try to compensate
for poor performance. It’s a painful, no-win cycle that every demand generation
marketer knows only too well.

Gartner was not alone in their prediction of the MQL’s demise. Also in 2017,
Kerry Cunningham and Terry Flaherty at SiriusDecisions introduced the Demand
Unit Waterfall, a demand generation model that shifted focus away from the
traditional MQL. They identified two major trends driving this shift:


DEFINING “THE BUYER” MORE ACCURATELY

The Demand Unit Waterfall approach recognized that the lead-centric model, which
is limited to one individual within a target company, was inherently inaccurate.
Most large purchases involve multiple individuals within an organization. Based
on this reality, the “demand unit” represents the B2B buying team, which
includes everyone participating in the research, evaluation, and purchase of a
solution.

Experienced BDRs and sales reps often describe an MQL as an invitation to begin
prospecting into an account. It’s a tentative starting point. In many cases, the
marketing qualified lead is only an influencer rather than a project champion,
technical decision-maker, or the person who actually has the power to make a
deal. Because of the complexity involved, MQL-to-opportunity conversion rates
are very difficult to measure accurately with a CRM system that is unable to
account for all the players or their relationships to one another.


ABILITY TO TRACK AND ANALYZE “PRE-MQL” ACTIVITY

A lot happens before someone in an account becomes a marketing qualified lead.
The evolution of sophisticated software tools gave marketers the ability to
track and understand pre-MQL buyer activity much earlier in the sales process
and at a much greater level of detail.

These superior data, analytics, and monitoring tools opened the door to new
possibilities for your marketing funnel:

 * What if marketers could understand who was in buying mode and researching a
   solution similar to their own?
 * What if marketers could track when three or four people from a particular
   company visited their website and consumed a lot of content without
   converting on a form?

As marketers gained access to this wealth of information, they realized there
was no reason to wait to tell sales. Timely insights about an account moving
into buying mode helped salespeople hone in on the highest-value opportunities
so they could prioritize their prospecting efforts and start focused research to
find the right contacts in those companies.

Waiting for prospects to generate sufficient behavioral data to trigger the
creation of an MQL results in a critical delay that puts sales one step behind
the competition. In addition, by limiting themselves to an MQL model focused on
individuals rather than teams, marketers are unable to uncover the signals that
tell sales an account is in the early stages of the buying cycle.

In addition to those two primary drivers, other trends influencing marketers’
shift away from the MQL lead-gen model include:

 1. MQL Conversions: BDR and sales teams have found that MQL conversion rates to
    SQLs or meetings (usually in the mid-single-digit percentages) are only
    marginally better than unqualified leads.
 2. Marketing’s Focus on Revenue: Marketers are shifting more focus to
    opportunity and revenue goals, which requires access to more accurate
    leading indicators of marketing funnel performance than MQLs.
 3. Better Go-to-Market Models: Better go-to-market models have emerged. Whether
    it’s the Demand Unit Waterfall from SiriusDecisions or one of several ABM
    (account-based marketing) models, each of these new methodologies is better
    aligned with how companies buy today.


MQLS VS. ACCOUNTS

EVER TRIED TO GET AN EXPERIENCED SALESPERSON TO FOLLOW UP ON AN MQL? MARKETERS
THAT TARGET MID-MARKET OR ENTERPRISE COMPANIES KNOW THIS IS AN IMPOSSIBLE TASK.

Salespeople aren’t interested in MQLs. They are interested in establishing
accounts. And, while an MQL in one of their accounts is a signal, it’s only one
of many. So, while the salesperson will add the MQL to emails, phone calls,
invitations to meetings at industry events, exchanges on LinkedIn, and so forth,
they know that MQLs don’t buy, accounts do.

On the buyer side, the situation is even more dire.

They don’t want MQLs either. They want answers to their questions and solutions
to their problems. And they want a buying process that’s tailored to the way
they want to buy.

The problem is, in most companies the processes between marketing and sales have
been optimized to measure and track internal metrics like how well you acquire,
score, process, and qualify leads. The external metrics – such as how fast and
easy is it for the buyer to connect with a knowledgeable salesperson – get
little if any attention.

So, what’s marketing supposed to do?

To better align with sales, marketing needs to look at the business from an
account perspective, not an MQL perspective. Marketers need to understand who is
on the sales team’s target account list for the year or the upcoming quarter.
They need to be able to identify which accounts are the most important, and then
help sales open those doors.

The best way for marketing to work in lockstep with sales is to align around
ABM. Marketing must provide sales with viable opportunities to build engagement
via conversations that consider the full breadth of an account rather than
focusing on a single, isolated individual within the account.

On the buyer side of the equation, marketers would do well to invert their
thinking by looking at the process through a buyer lens, not a seller lens. They
need to think about what technology buyers want:

 * To find helpful information relevant to their specific problem
 * To get their questions answered quickly and efficiently
 * To get what they want based on their timeframe, not how long it takes the
   marketing team to process a lead
 * To interact with humans, not gated content and web forms

In short, buyers want to be treated like real people.


THE RISE OF THE CONVERSATION-READY LEAD

WHEN YOU WALK UP TO A BOOTH AT A TRADESHOW, YOU DON’T EXPECT TO BE INTERROGATED
ABOUT WHO YOU ARE, WHICH COMPANY YOU WORK FOR, YOUR TITLE, YOUR ROLE, YOUR
COMPANY REVENUE, AND SO ON. YOU EXPECT TO HAVE A MEANINGFUL, “HUMAN”
CONVERSATION WITH SMART REPS WHO ARE INTERESTED IN WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY AND
READY TO PROVIDE YOU WITH THE INFORMATION YOU NEED. ULTIMATELY, YOU HOPE TO WALK
AWAY WITH A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF HOW THEY MIGHT BE ABLE TO HELP YOU.

This is not an unreasonable expectation at a tradeshow. And it’s not an
unreasonable expectation on a website either. Conversation marketing strategies
and technologies give brands the ability to replicate helpful, organic
conversations with prospects. And these kinds of conversations provide a better
buyer experience that builds trust and sets the sales team up for success.

Case in Point: Oracle Kicks MQLs to the Curb

At the 2019 SiriusDecisions Summit, Dave Ewart, Oracle’s head of digital
marketing and demand generation, told the story of how Oracle’s SVP of Sales
said he didn’t want his sales team spending any time qualifying MQLs because it
was a waste of valuable time.

Though he was new to Oracle, Dave was ready with a counter-offer. “What
percentage of conversation-ready leads would you accept?” he asked.

The SVP didn’t hesitate, “100 percent.”

Over the last few years, Oracle has transformed its marketing funnel through an
initiative called CoRe, which stands for Conversation-Ready. They distinguish
core leads (or CRLs) from non-core leads as “qualified responses with intent to
have a conversation.” The result: Oracle dramatically reduced leads being sent
to the BDR and sales teams while significantly increasing results in terms of
opportunities, pipeline acceleration, and conversion rates.

To be clear: fewer leads resulted in more sales opportunities.

Why does this work?

 1. CRLs are ready to talk. These hand-raisers have proactively engaged the
    company via live chat, an 800 number telesales line, or a direct request for
    a trial, demo, or meeting.
 2. Non-CoRe leads are not (quite) ready to talk. Non-CoRe leads have typically
    engaged in more traditional demand gen behaviors like downloading
    whitepapers, attending events, or signing up for newsletters or webinars.
    They may still be in research mode, so they are farther away from making a
    decision.
 3. CoRe leads convert better. What’s most interesting to marketing and sales
    teams alike is that there’s quite a large differential in the conversion
    ratio from a core lead to a qualified opportunity with the associated
    pipeline. CoRe leads simply convert at a much higher rate than non-CoRe
    leads.

While Oracle focuses on increasing the volume of CRLs, they acknowledge that
there’s a limited number of conversation-ready buyers in the market at any given
time. Because of this, they continue to generate non-CoRe leads through
traditional marketing activities. These secondary leads fill the top of the
funnel, and then marketing nurtures those buyers through the awareness and
consideration phases of the buyer’s journey.

Non-CoRe leads represent the highest volume of leads in their marketing funnel,
at over 80%, but their role is different. Oracle marketers no longer consider
these non-core leads as ready for the handoff to sales. Instead, they focus on
nurturing them to become CoRe leads that will be much more valuable to the sales
team.


WHY MQL PROCESSING DELAYS ARE AN OPPORTUNITY KILLER

In addition to understanding the difference between CoRe and non-CoRe leads,
Oracle knows that time is the most valuable commodity to both buyers and
sellers.

How you treat your buyer’s time makes a huge difference in lead generation
outcomes. Let’s consider two possible scenarios as an interested buyer visits a
product website:

SCENARIO 1: YOUR IDEAL PROSPECT, APPLINKS, ARRIVES ON YOUR WEBSITE AND COMPLETES
A FORM

Applinks’ technical decision-maker is in full research-mode because her
executive team gave the green light on a major new initiative. Your company has
a perfect solution for their problem, but she’s not quite ready to commit to a
30-minute sales conversation. She’s just researching, gathering ideas from
vendor websites.

This decision-maker is impressed enough by your content to complete a form to
download a whitepaper developed by your product marketing team. Her information
gets processed according to the traditional MQL process, and, 24 hours later,
she receives a generic follow-up email from a BDR with little industry
expertise.

Now, with the odds stacked against you, the BDR begins the cat-and-mouse game of
trying (often unsuccessfully) to get this high-value prospect to schedule a
discovery meeting.

It’s a cringe-worthy situation.

SCENARIO 2: YOUR IDEAL BUY ARRIVES ON YOUR COMPETITOR’S WEBSITE AND A CHAT
WINDOW POPS UP

Next, imagine the Applinks buyer landing on your #1 competitor’s homepage. This
time, instead of a form, a chat window powered by chatbot technology pops up
with a personal greeting:



The decision-maker engages in the chat. Based on her inquiries and responses,
the bot offers the decision-maker case studies and other content relevant to her
vertical industry.

Next – having been alerted by the chatbot – the company’s sales rep joins the
chat to answer the decision-maker’s top three to four technical questions.
Satisfied with the sales rep’s responses (and impressed by how personal and easy
the process has been), Applinks’ buyer responds:



Emily, the sales rep, gives her a choice of two options:



Emily and the decision-maker have a meeting that afternoon, and Emily opens an
opportunity for $100K by the end of the day.

But what happens if Emily isn’t available to respond? In many cases, rule-based
chatbots are great at managing “this” or “that” questions. Rule-based chatbot
software responds based on predetermined actions built into chat playbooks. In
several cases, rule-based chatbots can be linked to a sales rep’s calendar to
book future meetings for buyers.

But your competitor went one step further. Not only do they want to facilitate
buyer conversations outside 9 to 5 work hours (and provide bandwidth support for
reps) – but help all visitors answer their questions – big and small.

That’s why the competition also leans on artificial intelligence to help Emily
and her buyers. Specifically, AI chatbots or Virtual Selling Assistants. An AI
chatbot can answer more complex queries. For example:



Meanwhile, your whitepaper download-triggered MQL is sitting in a BDR’s queue –
because they only qualify whitepaper leads between 9 and 10 each morning. And
your MQL arrived at 11 am.

You don’t know it, but you’ve already lost this deal to the competition.


EXPOSING THE MQL’S ACHILLES HEEL

A MARKETING QUALIFIED LEAD IS DEFINED AS A LEAD THAT WARRANTS SALES FOLLOW-UP
BECAUSE:

 1. It represents a good FIT for your company (the firmographic score) and
 2. It is based on the buyer BEHAVIOR exhibited (on your website, a 3rd party
    website, or at an event) that suggests they are interested in your solution
    (the behavioral score).

The Q in MQL – the qualification – is usually performed by the marketing
automation platform (MAP) using a scoring model that considers both the
firmographic and behavioral scores.

The firmographic score is typically based on a combination of the following
criteria:

 * Number of Employees
 * Annual Revenue
 * Industry
 * Country

The behavioral score is typically based on whether the prospect:

 * Downloaded content
 * Attended an event
 * Registered for a webinar
 * Registered for a free trial
 * Or engaged with various other marketing touchpoints

Using this approach, a marketer determines a score for each of the above data
points, and then the automation platform calculates an overall score by adding
up all the relevant values for each data point. The marketer assigns a threshold
score value that dictates whether a lead qualifies as an MQL worthy of being
routed to a BDR or sales team. If the lead is routed, the BDR or sales rep
typically has 24 hours to accept the MQL, and another 24 hours to start working
it.



You can already see the problem, right? That’s almost 48 hours until first
contact. That’s not good enough to get ahead of the competition.


MQL PROCESSING DELAYS: A DEEPER DIVE

What happens when an interested buyer lands on your website? If your lead
generation flow is designed to deliver marketing qualified leads, the buyer
probably browses some free content while you try to guide them to some gated
premium content. Once the prospect fills out the form, the MQL process is set in
motion.

Here’s a look at the typical MQL flow and (and how each step in the process
represents a delay):




B2B WEBSITE ENGAGEMENT

 * B2B businesses in the USA invested $5.12B in digital advertising (eMarketer),
   yet B2B landing pages are only converting that traffic @ 2.3% (Search Engine
   Land).
 * According to a LinkedIn survey, 81% of tech buyers don’t fill out forms when
   they encounter gated content. Translation: Even in the best-case scenario,
   marketers only have a real shot at capturing 19% of the demand they generate
   on their websites.

 1.  Form Submission: As soon as the prospect submits the eight or 10 form
     fields, that info is captured in the marketing automation platform (MAP).
 2.  Sync Lead from MAP to CRM: Often, there will be insufficient firmographic
     data on the form-captured lead, so leads are synced every few minutes to
     the CRM, which is typically responsible for lead enrichment.
 3.  CRM Data Enrichment: The CRM appends data to the lead so there is enough
     information to score it. If a third-party data enrichment tool is used, the
     CRM system sends a real-time request to the third-party data company, which
     returns the enriched lead.
 4.  Sync Enriched Lead from CRM to MAP: Because it is the MAP that manages
     scoring and lead lifecycle stages (e.g., Inquiry → MQL → SAL → SQL, etc.),
     the lead needs to make a return trip back to the marketing automation
     platform for additional processing.
 5.  Lead Scoring: Using the behavioral data tracked in the MAP and the
     firmographic data acquired from the CRM, it’s now (finally!) possible to
     score the lead.
 6.  Set Lead Lifecycle Stage (MQL, SQL, etc): MAPs are a system of record for
     identifying where the lead is in the funnel. For example, if a lead is
     already part of an open opportunity, it would be marked as an SQL.
     Alternatively, if the lead fits both the firmographic and behavioral
     profiles, but no opportunity is open, then it’s identified as an MQL.
 7.  Sync MQL Lifecycle Stage from MAP to CRM: The lead lifecycle stage now
     needs to be re-synced with the CRM so it can be properly routed.
 8.  CRM MQL Routing: Using CRM or a third-party lead management tool, the MQL
     is routed to the right BDR or salesperson for follow-up.
 9.  Wait for MQL Acceptance: Assuming the MQL is routed to the correct person
     (which is, unfortunately, a generous assumption), the BDR or sales rep
     responsible for follow-up typically has 24 hours to accept or reject MQL.
     Delays associated with an incorrect lead assignment are unavoidable in a
     fast-growing organization where people are regularly promoted or change
     territory/business segment. Routing rules also rarely account for absences
     due to vacations and other real-life circumstances.
 10. MQL Accepted: If accepted, follow-up begins. If rejected, the lead is sent
     back to marketing for further processing.
 11. MQL Follow-up: If the lead is accepted, the game of tag begins as the BDR
     or salesperson tries to connect and engage the marketing qualified lead via
     email and phone and any other points of connection at their disposal.

Clearly, there are a lot of steps in this process, but the issue is less about
the complexity of the process than it is about the sequence of events. In the
MQL flow, each step represents a delay – something standing between the prospect
and a conversation. The whole process has to be completed before a salesperson
can even begin the follow-up process to initiate a conversation. The entire
operation is rife with potential bottlenecks and roadblocks that can derail an
opportunity.


CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING: HELPING BUYERS AND SALESPEOPLE CONNECT MORE QUICKLY

IN CONTRAST TO THE PROCESS WE JUST OUTLINED, CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING ENABLES A
MUCH MORE STREAMLINED BUYING EXPERIENCE THAT UNFOLDS IN REAL-TIME, ENSURING THAT
THE BUYER’S NEEDS ARE MET IMMEDIATELY.

This instant response keeps the conversation going while lead processing systems
do their thing in the background. This allows a salesperson to step in at the
appropriate time to take the relationship to the next level.


THE CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING FRAMEWORK

Conversational Marketing doesn’t mean your marketing strategy needs to start
from scratch. You’re improving your existing customer experience and making it
easier to connect buyers with sales and solutions.

Implementing Conversational Marketing is grounded in three steps, known as the
Conversational Framework.



 1. Engage: Buyers can instantly access the information they need via chat or
    connect with a human. The real-time nature of Conversational Marketing not
    only provides a better customer experience but increases conversion rates as
    well.
 2. Understand: With Conversational Marketing, you know who your buyers are and
    can qualify them in real-time. By integrating Conversational Marketing
    software with your CRM, MAP, or data enrichment provider, you can engage
    buyers with personalized messaging.
 3. Recommend: Once your sales team engages with your buyers, they can direct
    them down the right path.

So, are these buyers MQLs? No, they’re a step ahead. At Drift, we refer to
buyers that go through this framework as conversation-ready leads (CQL).


BECOME CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING-CERTIFIED

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CONVERSATION-QUALIFIED LEADS (CQLS): THE SHORTEST DISTANCE BETWEEN INQUIRY AND
CONVERSATION

The process for creating conversation-qualified leads (CQLs) offers a much
faster, more direct route from a prospect’s initial inquiry to a productive
conversation with a salesperson. While the MQL process leaves the buyer hanging
during lead processing, routing, and sales follow-up, the CQL process engages
the buyer immediately.

The lead processing still happens in the background, but it doesn’t slow the
buyer down. And there’s no need to route the lead or give a salesperson time to
respond because the conversation is already happening.



Let’s walk through an example of a typical CQL process for an existing and known
buyer.

When an interested buyer returns to your website, the CQL process is designed to
skip any steps to profile the visitor, and instead get right to the good stuff:
connecting the lead to the appropriate rep to continue the conversation.

 1. Prospect Starts a Conversation with a Chatbot: Since this person already has
    an assigned sales rep, the bot will alert the appropriate rep that their
    lead is on the site.
 2. Sync Lead from Drift to MAP: While the conversation is happening, backend
    processes sync whichever fields are mapped within the bot (number of
    employees, website URL, etc.) into MAP.
 3. MAP Attributes and Scores: The MAP timestamps the lead in real-time and
    attributes the campaigns associated with the prospect.
 4. Lead Scoring: Using the behavioral data tracked in the MAP and the
    firmographic data acquired from the CRM, the system scores the lead.
 5. CRM/MAP Updates: Since ownership has already occurred, the system
    automatically assigned the rep and updated their status to “Sales Accepted.”


INTRODUCING CHAT DEVELOPMENT REPS (CDRS)

A Chat Development Rep (CDR) monitors chats between prospects and chatbots so
that, when the time is right, they can insert themselves into the conversation
to take over the task of booking an actual meeting.

 1. Prospect Starts a Conversation with a Chatbot: The CDR monitors the chat and
    jumps in to offer assistance at appropriate times. The CDR’s goal at this
    stage is to get more information and book a meeting.
 2. Prospect Requests Meeting: If the CDR already knows the prospect’s rep, they
    send a calendar drop so the prospect can select a meeting time that works
    for them. If the prospect has not yet been assigned a rep, the CDR manually
    triggers a round-robin rule to determine that assignment, and then sends the
    relevant calendar drop. In either situation, the entire exchange occurs
    within the bot.
 3. Sync Lead from Drift to MAP: While the conversation is happening, backend
    processes sync whichever fields are mapped within the bot (number of
    employees, website URL, etc.) into the MAP.
 4. MAP Attributes and Scores: The MAP timestamps the lead in real-time and
    attributes the campaigns associated with the prospect.
 5. Lead Scoring: Using the behavioral data tracked in the MAP and the
    firmographic data acquired from the CRM, the system scores the lead.
 6. CRM/MAP Updates: Since ownership assignment has already occurred through
    booking the meeting, the system automatically assigned the rep and updated
    their status to “Sales Accepted.”


FOURS WAYS TO INTRODUCE CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING IN YOUR MARKETING

With the advent of digital and artificial intelligence (AI), conversations are
more scalable than ever before.

And Conversational Marketing isn’t just the chat on your website. Conversational
Marketing and live chat solutions can be embedded across your website, email,
video, and more.

But, at a granular level, there are four ways to use Conversational Marketing:

FORM TO CHAT

In our ideal world, all business websites would be formless. No buyer would ever
have to wait, and messy CRM databases would be replaced with conversational
data. In fact, when we first started Drift, we decided to remove all the forms
on our website. And we’ve never looked back.

But we understand that ripping and replacing forms with chat isn’t always
possible out-of-the-gate. Company workflows are intricate and change takes time.
That’s why new chat software has emerged to make the transition to CQLs that
much easier.

Today, with static lead forms, buyers are forced to wait hours or even days to
be followed up with someone in sales. With form-to-chat – or conversational
forms – once someone fills out your form, they are qualified in real-time using
customer data on the backend. Once a buyer is qualified, they’ll be invited to
chat with sales – or book a meeting for later – instantly.

This process is ideal for several reasons:

 * Your ICP buyers are never left waiting
 * High volume lead forms never overwhelm sales
 * No great-fit leads slip through the cracks



LIVE CHAT

Live chat allows buyers, customers, and employees to chat online in real-time.
Live chat requires companies to have staff available to engage with buyers
accordingly. Like the CDR role we shared earlier or dedicated BDRs. Still, this
isn’t always scalable.

However, it is a great way to facilitate human-to-human interactions in a
digital space.



CHATBOTS

Chatbots help scale your website engagement and live chat.



Rule-based chatbot software uses a predictable, controlled experience to guide
website visitors towards a specific goal, like:

 * Talking to a sales rep
 * Answering straightforward questions
 * Downloading a piece of content
 * Navigating to an article or webpage
 * Scheduling a demo
 * And more



AI CHATBOTS

Where rule-based chatbots use tightly-controlled chat experiences and are not
programmed to respond to changes in language, AI chatbots provide flexibility.
AI chatbots – or Virtual Selling Assistants –operate more or less on their own,
using a process known as Natural Language Processing (NLP), combined with AI and
the annotation of human data. That means AI chatbots get smarter over time and
can be trained to respond like your best SDR and CDR.




GETTING STARTED WITH CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING

AS WE SHARED IN THE PREVIOUS SECTION, YOU DON’T NEED TO GO FROM ZERO TO 60 WITH
CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING.  AS YOU BEGIN TO MODERNIZE YOUR MARKETING FUNNEL,
THERE ARE A WIDE VARIETY OF OPTIONS TO INTRODUCE CONVERSATIONAL ELEMENTS INTO
YOUR LEAD GENERATION PROCESS – FROM CONVERSATIONAL FORMS TO CHATBOT SOFTWARE TO
VIRTUAL SELLING ASSISTANTS.

For those just getting their feet wet with Conversational Marketing, here’s how
we suggest getting started:


IMPLEMENT LIVE CHAT

Giving buyers the option to talk directly with sales via live chat can go a long
way toward boosting their engagement with your website and your sales team. Many
people simply prefer chat to other methods of communication. It’s convenient,
unobtrusive, and provides immediate gratification. Caveat: live chat can only be
available during business hours, but it’s still a worthwhile step that will help
close the gap between buyers and sellers.


ENRICH FIRMOGRAPHIC DATA IN REAL-TIME

Hitting website visitors with a barrage of annoying questions about the size of
their company and their revenue levels can be a turn-off. But, that information
plays a critical role in prioritizing incoming leads based on ideal customer
profiles. Without that data, your sales team won’t know where to focus their
efforts. Use technology like reverse-IP lookup to identify visitors in real-time
and access key firmographic information behind the scenes. You can also identify
people your sales team has already reached out to, and connect them directly
with the appropriate rep.


CONNECT YOUR LIVE CHAT AND CRM

Once you have identified the visitor’s company, you can add available CRM data
in real-time, things like the account owner, whether they are a strategic target
account, whether there’s already an open opportunity, or an existing account.


USE LIVE CHAT WITH CHATBOTS TO QUALIFY AND SCALE CONVERSATIONS

Chatbots can handle a wide range of simple questions once you have established
key contextual information about the visitor. For example, a chatbot can inquire
about whether a visitor is interested in talking to sales, support, or learning
about job opportunities. It can ask questions that help establish where a
visitor is on the buying journey such as, “Are you here to chat with a rep or
are you just researching?” A chatbot can inquire about what specific kind of
information a visitor would like to access, or what department they work in, or
whether they already have an account manager. The use cases are endless.


BECOME A PLAYBOOK PRO (FOR FREE)

Creating chat playbooks is equal parts art and science. To help our customers
develop high-converting playbooks of their own, we created the quintessential
playbook certification.

Get Certified


USE AI TO SCALE FURTHER AND HELP WITH BANDWIDTH DURING WORKING HOURS

Rule-based chatbots move buyers down controlled paths. But, today’s buyers want
more control. And today’s sellers still spend a lot of their day researching and
qualifying buyers. With Virtual Selling Assistants and AI chatbots, your team
can engage buyers just like your SDRs would qualify buyers and book meetings for
sales. This means sales teams can focus less on repetitive tasks and more on
selling to target accounts.


ROUTE LEADS MORE APPROPRIATELY

You can use data enrichment and chatbots to help you determine the most
appropriate resource. 100-person company? Notify your small business team. Large
company from the strategic target list? Notify the enterprise rep on the
account. Company located in the UK? Notify the EU sales team. You get the idea.
The best part is that you can do all of this in real-time so that the
appropriate salesperson can join the chat with a friendly, “Human here!” By
inserting a live person into the conversation in real-time, you ensure that the
conversation doesn’t lose momentum like it would if the buyer had to wait a day
or two to get a follow-up email.


MAKE IT EASY FOR BUYERS TO BOOK MEETINGS

You never want to miss an opportunity to book a meeting. Connect your rep’s
calendar to your chatbot so the bot can propose meeting times. After that, sync
the meeting with your MAP or CRM system.


USE CHATBOTS TO GET EMAIL ADDRESSES

Even if a buyer isn’t interested in talking to a salesperson just yet, you can
still capture their contact information via relevant and helpful offers from
your chatbot. For instance, maybe there’s a particular piece of content that
would be useful to the buyer. Tailor your bot to request an email address so
that it can send the content. Or, have it ask for an email in case the chat is
disconnected.


IF YOU USE FORMS, MAKE THEM CONVERSATIONAL OR LEAN ON A SECOND NET

At Drift, we use Conversational Marketing for webinar and event registration,
newsletter and blog signups, and even capturing email addresses to send premium
content. Could we use forms in some of these instances? Of course. But we find
that the chat option usually drives better engagement and conversions. Still, we
know getting rid of all your forms right away isn’t possible for some. That’s
why our customers hesitant to remove forms altogether use:

 * Drift Fastlane to connect qualified buyers to sales or to book a meeting
   later

Or

 * A Second Net chatbot on a high-traffic form page


THE WAY AHEAD: CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING – BETTER FOR BUYERS, BETTER FOR SELLERS
THAN MQLS

IT’S AMAZING MQL-DRIVEN LEAD GENERATION HAS HELD ON AS LONG AS IT HAS. SO MUCH
HAS CHANGED IN THE LAST COUPLE OF DECADES. PIVOTAL SHIFTS IN TECHNOLOGY HAVE
INFLUENCED PROFOUND CHANGES IN THE WAY WE WORK, PLAY, AND COMMUNICATE. IT’S TIME
TO MODERNIZE THE WAY WE MARKET TO ALIGN WITH THIS NEW PARADIGM.

We have the data. We have the technology. We know Conversational Marketing
works. Now, all we need is the confidence to follow the lead of companies like
Oracle and say “No” to the old MQL method and “Yes” to a process that’s designed
to generate conversation-ready leads.

The potential is enormous for companies that are willing to embrace this new way
of engaging with buyers: happier customers, streamlined lead generation, better
conversion rates, more productive sales teams, and a healthier bottom line.

IT’S TIME FOR A CHANGE. SO IF YOU’RE READY TO DITCH THE FORMS, TREAT PEOPLE LIKE
PEOPLE, AND START HAVING MORE CONVERSATIONS WITH YOUR BUYERS, WE CAN’T WAIT TO
TALK TO YOU.

BOOK A DEMO WITH US HERE.




TREAT BUYERS LIKE PEOPLE. NOT ACRONYMS.

Learn how conversations are transforming the marketing funnel as we know it (and
what you can do about it).
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