How has lead generation changed in recent years?
Melissa Davies: We’re doing more segmentation, which means we don’t give leads to the sales department until we know they are ready. We have key indicators — behavioral activity, demographic info — that tells us when that is. If a CIO or CTO visits the price comparison page on our website, for example, I’m pretty sure they are ready to engage in the sales process. Mac was in my office last week, and we were talking about how lead generation has become like online dating. You go to these big dating sites, and start off with hundreds of matches. Then you narrow it down by looking at their profiles and deciding who’s a good fit. Then you may date for awhile — you’re not just walking into a bar and asking everyone to marry you. Mac McIntosh: You also used to see a lot of one-shot kind of things. Now it’s multi-touch, multimedia campaigns. There’s much more “if, and, or,” kind of behavior — if they did this, then offer them that. We try to map the marketing messages, offers and call-to-acti
