Automating Lead Differentiation: A Case Study on Lightmark Media

Lightmark Media is a digital marketing firm that specializes in pay-per-click (PPC) marketing campaigns on platforms like Facebook, Google, and Bing. They assist real estate investors and agents in finding motivated leads and closing deals. Their services extend beyond advertisement to include website design and creation, marketing automation, and branding. At Lightmark Media, Tatiana Sharp is responsible for all things systems- and platform-related. She strategizes on how different systems and tools can work together to make their clients' lives easier. Zapier is their go-to for connecting everything.

In the sales domain, distinguishing between new and existing leads is crucial. Different workflows are often employed for new leads, such as calls, demos, and onboarding email campaigns, which are not used for existing leads. The challenge lies in differentiating new leads from those already contacted without having to manually verify their status. This was the situation faced by Tatiana Sharp, Senior Systems Technologist at Lightmark Media, a digital marketing firm for real estate companies. The clients of Lightmark Media, busy real estate investors, often found it difficult to check a customer relationship management (CRM) tool to verify if they had already made initial contact with a lead. The majority of these leads came in via phone call or text message, and Lightmark Media used CallRail to track, analyze, and value these leads.

To address this challenge, Tatiana Sharp employed Zapier, an app automation tool that connects various professional apps. She created a few Zaps, or automated workflows, that helped her and the Lightmark Media team identify when a lead was brand new. By connecting CallRail with Zapier, Tatiana was able to automatically sift through all the phone calls clients received and only send new leads to their CRM. At the core of Lightmark Media's lead management were two Zaps: The first connected CallRail to their clients' CRM, typically Podio. When a lead called the phone number from a client's ad, Zapier took that information and created an item in Podio. A second Zap sent the new call information from CallRail to Google Sheets, creating a new row full of the lead's information. This created a back-up leads database, in case the client ever had trouble accessing their CRM. To only pass along new leads, Tatiana added Zapier's Filter to each of the Zaps.

• With the implementation of Zapier for lead management, Tatiana and the rest of the Lightmark Media team were able to dedicate more time to each client, enabling them to build relationships and craft successful campaigns. The automated workflows also kept their clients' CRM clean, organized, and easy-to-read, making the new leads easy to act on. The solution also provided a backup leads database, ensuring that the client would always have access to their leads information. By automating the process of differentiating new leads, Lightmark Media was able to bring even more value to their real estate clients, allowing them to focus more on their own clients and closing deals.