Laying the groundwork

Website

At the core of any successful digital marketing strategy lies a website that delivers an optimal user experience. A website must load quickly, respond seamlessly, feature engaging visuals, be easy to navigate, and, above all, make it simple for users to find what they're looking for

In the case of Xeikon, a leading digital printing pioneer with a vast range of solutions for various printing applications, crafting an effective website involved careful attention to the information architecture. This approach led to the development of six site-in-sites, ensuring that users can effortlessly navigate and access the information they need. As a result, Xeikon's website delivers a seamless and intuitive user experience, driving engagement and conversions with ease.

Engineered marketing

In addition to the already existing downloadable resources such as whitepapers and product sheets, we developed a suite of conversion tools to enhance the user experience. Among these tools is the Opportunity Survey, which identifies potential opportunities for printing businesses seeking to transition into digital printing or those already involved in it, with just a few targeted questions.

These tools offer great value to prospective customers while enabling us to collect data for lead scoring, thereby simplifying the process of differentiating between high-potential and low-potential leads for our marketing and sales teams.

Setting up scoring & grading

What’s lead scoring?

Lead scoring is a crucial process that helps marketing and sales teams rank prospects based on their potential to become a customer. This is done by assigning a numerical score to various digital actions such as downloading a whitepaper, clicking on an email, watching a video, or submitting a contact form. The score assigned to each action is determined in the CRM platform. Once a prospect reaches a threshold, followup actions can be determined. 

For instance, let's say someone downloads a whitepaper by filling out a form, which earns them 100 points. Later, they click on a link in an email, which is worth 10 points, and then they register for a webinar on the linked page, earning 140 points. All these actions combined result in a total score of 250 points, which may be the benchmark for reaching Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) status.

What’s lead grading?

Lead grading is a process that evaluates prospects based on the information they provide, rather than the actions they take. This enables marketers to determine the quality of leads based on factors such as job title, company size, or budget, using a grading system that ranges from F- (the lowest) to A+ (the highest) to evaluate prospects.

For instance, if a person fills out a form and provides information that identifies them as a CEO with a high budget, their grade will improve significantly to an A since they are a perfect audience for a salesperson. On the other hand, if an intern with a low budget fills out the same form, their grade will decrease significantly to an E since they are not the right audience for a salesperson.

Scoring + grading = bingo

By combining the previous examples, a CEO with an A grade and a score of more than 250 would be considered a highly qualified marketing lead, and sales would receive a notification to reach out directly to them. On the other hand, an intern with an E grade may also reach a score of 250 or more, but marketing knows that they are not a valuable lead for sales, so there is no need for outreach. 

This allows marketing and sales teams to work together more effectively and efficiently, focusing their efforts on the leads that are most likely to result in conversions and revenue for the company.

Of course it’s never this black and white. But in general, we follow the matrix below:

Implementation

To establish a framework for turning prospects into marketing qualified leads (MQL), we began by creating a scoring model tailored to Xeikon's customer journey and digital infrastructure. Through testing various combinations of actions in a simple spreadsheet, we established a threshold for MQL conversion together.

Then, drawing on insights from a previous workshop, we identified five key grading parameters critical to the sales team. Thanks to the data we already had in the CRM, we were able to map existing prospects to our new scoring and grading system to assess its effectiveness before implementation.

Once we were satisfied with the results, we streamlined the system for grading and scoring assignments, switched to high-value page tracking from site-wide tracking, incorporated progressive fields to gather more information and implemented our scoring model for launch.

From fantasy to fireworks

After launching our model on January 1st, 2023, we quickly began seeing results. As a B2B business, and based on our results from the previous year, we collaborated with Xeikon to set a goal of 16 opportunities in Salesforce for this year. By the end of Q1, we had scored and graded 584 prospects. Following the MQL-SQL process, we identified 10 of them as opportunities, and ultimately, two of them signed a deal.

To conclude, we were able to deliver on our promise of transforming Xeikon's dreams into fireworks by providing them with a lead generation machine within a year of launching their new website.