I’ve read a few posts lately on the value, or lack thereof when tracking anonymous visitors to your website.  Some have stated no value, and others minimal.  Well, I‘ll argue there’s value and here’s why.

Your Marketing Automation solution gives you a window into all visitors to your website.  As the Marketing manager you’re monitoring your campaigns and nurturing programs, along with assessing the success of your various PPC ads, etc.; fulfilling the value proposition of Marketing Automation.  Similarly, you’re assessing the anonymous or company visitors who have yet to convert via a form fill, webinar registration, etc.,  to ‘prospect’.

With most Marketing Automation solutions, the anonymous visitor will build a lead score based on their activity and expressed interest through navigation of your website, and will eventually attract your attention through an increasing score, or perhaps they’re a known target company, all before converting to a prospect.   Bottom line, anonymous or not they’re demonstrating appropriate virtual buy signals or trigger events that say they’re interested which arguably says you should be interested.

Many might argue that you should nurture and lead the anonymous visitor through to self-identifying first, and in reality, that’s exactly what will happen with the majority.   The anonymous leads at the top end of the sales funnel and under normal course of business are nurtured through to qualified status by Marketing and then assigned to a rep .   So, in the end, you certainly have to be mindful of tossing too many unsubstantiated leads over the fence to Sales – you can read all about the negative impact of that on the many blog posts on Marketing and Sales alignment – but once and a while you can do it and let your sales guys go into the more traditional hunter mode.   In our opinion, the key to adding this activity to your arsenal of lead management is to make it simple and efficient .

Here’s how we do it with ActiveConversion;

1. An anonymous visitor to the site is identified as meeting your requirements – usually demonstrated in their lead score or a target company.
2. The anonymous ‘company’ lead is then assigned to a Sales rep – albeit early in the lead management process.
3. Jigsaw (now data.com), a database of contacts and company information is  integrated into ActiveConversion-SalesView and allows the sales rep to quickly identify contacts within the function most likely looking for your product/solution – ie Finance, manufacturing, marketing, purchasing, etc.
4. A personalized email reaching out to each of the chosen contacts is done using the Outlook Plug-in for ActiveConversion allowing for direct one-to-one communication and ongoing monitoring – see who responds to your call to action.
5. The interested individual within the targeted function is usually quick to identify and in most cases glad to hear from you as they’re in that ‘window of dissatisfaction’ and looking for a solution to their requirements.

Simple, efficient and with positive results – after all, they may have been anonymous, but  they were on your website and exhibiting ‘buying’ behavior – don’t let the opportunity get away.

We use it to augment our marketing and sales activities when an accelerated approach is warranted and have had great results to date.