Optimize Lead Generation by Testing Your Marketing Tech Stack

Organized, institutional testing is critical to operating a stable, scalable martech stack. Lead generation, and ultimately the health of your business, heavily relies on airtight system infrastructure. As your stack continues to grow, it’s important to build on a stabilized and vetted environment to identify gaps within any existing or newly added implementation. Understanding the impact of operational changes can seem impossible without a solid infrastructure to test against.

Identifying What To Test
But what is it that you should be testing?
Start by defining the key aspects of the process you want to test. Let’s use the example below:

Lead Routing Rules
Lead Stamping Rules
Operational Workflows
Integrations
Program/Campaign Launches

Testing yourSaaS software architecture is an important means of assessing operational health and stability of systems. Everyone has experienced the dread of sales knocking on your door asking why leads aren’t being fed into their queue – only to discover a key routing requirement has been missed.

Breaking Down The Testing Process
Beyond identifying the key aspects, what is it specifically that you’re looking to test? To illustrate this, we broke down each of part of the process with key questions you should be able to answer before giving the green light.

Lead Routing Rules

You want to be sure all streams of the lead management system being accounted for and have operational campaigns to manage them. Go down the check list and make sure all systems are a go with regards to:

API
List imports
CRM Syncs
Form Fills
Webhooks
Integrations

Lead management campaigns should require all the necessary fields for a multi-stack sync, and you want to be sure to know where to place them in your pipeline. Questions to answer for this are:

Leads may be coming in, but are they going where they should be?
Do all your inbound platforms have the required data to place them in the right marketing campaigns to propel growth and engagement?

Watch to be sure your lead routing rules between systems are not circular or result in a dead end. A lead may route to sales, but if they aren’t ready to buy, how are you placing them back into the marketing funnel, and within the right campaigns? Mishandled leads are a huge loss of revenue. No lead must be left behind!

Have you tested all your pass/fail lead scenarios? It’s important to understand how a lead can fail to enter your system correctly. For every ‘pass’ use case, you should have a ‘fail’ use case to test against

Lead Stamping Rules

Much like lead routing, this is the actual process of stamping leads correctly to give your Sales team the information they need to engage. It also helps place your leads in the right marketing queue. Your checklist here can include:

Are your field requirements the same across all inbound lead generation efforts?
Do you have the required fields to sync across multiple platforms and integrations?

Operational Workflows

Operational workflows are the plumbing of your system and keep everything orderly
Look to see that your data normalizes across platforms. This is imperative for your data to stay consistent across your marketing stack. Checklist items here are:

Have you tested pass/fail use cases for data entry against workflows?
Are your unsubscribe and opt in’s working consistently across platforms?

Integrations

Cross system functionality through integrations can be the most vulnerable. Disparate systems with separate development cycles and no cross system testing can result in broken integrations. Testing is critical here as errors can occur for no apparent reason. Be vigilant in asking:

Are syncs up and running on a daily basis?
Are leads and data syncing correctly across platforms (directional/bi-directional)?
Do inbound lead generation systems require the same fields in the same formats?

Program and Campaign Launches

Before any major campaign or program launch, the above testing recommendations should be taken into account. You should be able to answer the following in detail:

Are your leads being stamped correctly?
Are your leads routing correctly?
Are your leads running through operational workflows?
Are your leads syncing between platforms?

Test Regularly for Health and Maintenance
Understanding the key components keeping your systems up and running is imperative to overall system health and maintenance. The upkeep and regular testing of these backend configurations will ensure you catch any system change requirements or bugs that could cause leads to go amiss or lost opportunity for revenue generation. With lead generation being the main driver behind all new business, your tech stack needs to evolve along with the systems that support it.