How can enrichment for routing help your business?
The simple answer is ‘a lot’.
In this guide we look at what lead routing is, how enrichment affects the routing process, and how a healthy database with an intelligent routing process can achieve revenue growth for your business.
We examine:- Why Intelligent Routing Matters- The 8 Components of Intelligent Lead Routing- What Is Enrichment?- Your Database With and Without Enrichment- Is Enrichment and Intelligent Lead Routing Right For Your Business?
"Move fast. Speed is one of your main advantages." - Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI
Lead routing is a process in which data (or leads) are sent to a corresponding employee or team.
In other words: Matching a potential customer via their specific data (ie. location, role, company, department) with a corresponding salesperson.
Example: John fills out an online form inquiring about a Masters program at a college. John’s data is enriched as it enters the college’s database. Using an intelligent routing system, it detects that John studied a bachelor’s degree at the same college as one of the people in the sales team. That sales person gets in contact with John and builds a connection through their shared network.
Companies that prioritize lead routing have a strategic advantage and are better positioned to achieveexpansion and revenue growth.
Let’s take a look:
Meet Jana. Jana’s a Designer who’s in the market for a new laptop for her business. After going online and doing a bit of research, Jana contacts two different companies to inquire about their wares.
Company A responds to Jana after two hours. They begin a customer relationship and she buys her new laptop on the call. Company B responds to Jana the following day. Jana ignores them as she’s already purchased a laptop from Company A.
Why does this matter in business?
Company B lost the sale and potentially a repeat buying customer. Additionally, Company B has eroded their brand image as Jana remembers them as having slow customer service.
Routing can be complex, especially when including a CRM, Marketing Automation System, and varying system rules. These complexities are reasons why an organization might put off tackling this game changing practice until a later date.
If a lead isn’t processed in real time through an intelligent routing system, it just becomes another piece of undifferentiated data. This data must be manually sorted and allocated, losing valuable time and as a result, money.
An intelligently routed lead is a lead record which has been enriched with highly differentiated data, including both explicit, implicit and proprietary data, allowing for segmentation and action to be taken based on rules.
Highly Differentiated Data:
Slicing and dicing incoming data such as a phone number, can determine an area code and county andwhere to route that lead appropriately. The CRM, lead routing Rules, and other contributing factors canalso determine the differentiation of the data.
Example: A potential client fills out an online form. From the phone number given the system determines their location and they are routed to the most relevant sales team who then makes contact.
Explicit Data:
Existing Data or data that can be directly derived from incoming lead records is called explicit data.
Example: An area code is explicit data as it comes in the initial input.
Implicit Data:
Implicit data is derived indirectly from the input record. Enrichment of your database allows you to receive more implicit data points.
Example: From the company email domain, the company name, website, can be derived. From these firmographics and other data can be appended.
Proprietary Data:
Proprietary data is data that is owned by an organization and is considered important enough to give a competitive advantage, such as existing customer information. For effective lead routing, it’s integral to have proprietary data leveraged for incoming leads.
Example: Existing leads in your system over two years old could be missing information, such as an email address, requiring a merge of incoming data to keep relevant for routing.
Segmentation:
Segmentation is the mechanism of categorizing clients in your database, based on factors such as location, company size, lead score, or role. How a Lead is segmented can have exponential effects on sales efficiency.
Example: An intelligent routing solution can automatically enrich leads with states based on area codes and normalize the data into standard formats. Leads are segmented into standard cohorts & assigned based on territories. This provides the sales team with simplified territories & the ability to quickly build call lists in Salesforce.
Routing Rules:
Rules are what determine how implicit, explicit, proprietary and segmented data is routed to the appropriate sales team or person.
Example: Ensuring prospects from the same company are always owned by the same salesperson or team to build deeper customer relationships
Action:
An Action is the process of routing a lead with enriched & segmented data in the form of a task needing to be completed. Actions are important so that enriched and segmented leads are followed up on, these leads are usually determined by the rules in place.
Example: Actions can start a chain of events that include call, email, social and drip campaigns and create tasks for a sales rep to complete.
Enrichment:
Enrichment ensures your data is always fresh, accurate and up to date. Strategic enrichment can ensure data is routed as efficiently as possible.
Example: To better understand your customers, you merge your data with a third-party’s which provides amore complete database and allows you to make better, more informed decisions for your company.
Now that you have a fundamental understanding of the components of intelligent routing, let’s look at the benefits of enriching your data for your business.
Enrichment is the most important component when it comes to lead routing.
Having more complete data improves:
- your ability to segment
- the speed & accuracy of routing a lead
- Your database health
Enrichment is the process of adding 1st, 2nd, and 3rd party data to your own database to ensure that your data is up to date & comprehensive.
A thorough enrichment system enhances your database and streamlines your routing process in real time as leads enter the system, or if field values change. An intelligent routing system can also normalize &segment enriched data based on your specific business needs.
Example: Company A purchases data from several leading 3rd party vendors. Company A automates an enrichment process which fills out gaps or missing data in their database with the purchased data. This data allows us to segment & route more effectively. Company A’s leads, contacts, and accounts are now fresh & up to date & the sales team can avoid errors when handling new &existing clients.
Now that we’ve covered what intelligent lead routing is & how enrichment benefits the process, it’s time to ask how your business manages the data that empowers your routing.
Answer the following data-health questions about your company:
1. Do you have missing or incomplete pieces of data that prevent segmenting and routing?
2. Are your processes creating duplicates in your database?
3. Does your company lack implicit and explicit data?
4. Are your reps ever sent irrelevant or inaccurate leads?
5. Is your data segmented/ enriched inefficiently?
6. Are you incapable of taking action and making calls within one minute of receiving a new lead?
If you answered yes to any of these questions you are potentially missing out on revenue and growth.
Speed is the name of the game and RingLead’s cloud-based data orchestration platform gives you the power to manage, clean, and enrich all of your data so you can route as fast and accurately as possible. Powerful lead routing technology leads to higher conversion rates and ROI.