1. TECHNICAL FIELD

This disclosure relates generally to lead nurturing, and more particularly to techniques for generating, tracking, and nurturing leads within an electronic document.

2. DISCUSSION OF RELATED ART

Lead generation, tracking, and nurturing is one of the core aspects of any marketing solution since it is used to generate content from which a list of potential customers can be derived. The content can be streamed to a sales team for converting these potential customers into paying customers.

Without leads, or more particularly, without the right leads, a sales team cannot be very effective. Business-to-Business (B2B) marketers believe lead generation is likely their most important marketing goal. Top priorities for B2B professionals include increasing the quality of leads and the volume of leads. Most B2B marketers use content marketing to generate leads and most B2B companies say content marketing generates more leads than traditional marketing strategies. Thus, there is a need for a mechanism through which lead generation is made more intelligent, personal, and effective.

Through online advertisers and search engines, a small business can cost-effectively target its primary demographic without having to purchase leads and without having to engage in costly market research. Online advertisers and search engines usually have extensive databases that a business can use to identify its primary demographic and thereby direct a marketing campaign to such persons. However, a shortcoming of such marketing is the low conversion rate that results. Consequently, online advertising and search engine marketing usually results in poor value-to-volume ratios.

Another form of online marketing involves using promotional tools and services such as those provided by e-commerce providers such as GroupOn (www.groupon.com). These providers facilitate businesses to market promotions to their primary demographic with a higher value-to-volume ratio. Specifically, promotions are sent to a set of leads and if a lead is interested in the promotion, that lead is able to purchase the promotion which can then be redeemed for a good or service at a future time.

Marketing through e-commerce providers still does not address the issue of client loyalty and client retention. In some instances, these forms of marketing actually promote the opposite behavior by appealing to clientele seeking the best current promotion or onetime transactions.

Leads may also be generated by monitoring a user's interaction with a marketer's website. For example, a score can be calculated for a user and incremented by a set amount each time the user interacts with a certain part of the website. The score may be incremented further if the user downloads a document from the website. The user is considered a potential lead if their score is greater than a preset value. However, the incremented score is merely an indicator of how often the user accesses the site and not an indicator of any level of further interests the user may have on the site's contents.

Thus, there are several technical problems with regard to conventional systems that generate promising leads.

SUMMARY

According to an aspect of the disclosure, leads are generated and nurtured by monitoring a user's (e.g., a customer user) activities and consumption behavior after the user downloads information from the marketer, e.g., a brochure or a white paper on a product.

A cloud-based system for nurturing leads is described, the system may include a cloud-based service configured to execute on a server and connect to a plurality of client devices over a computer network, the client devices including a marketer device and a customer device, the marketer device including an editor program comprising a graphical user interface (GUI) configured to enable a marketer user to generate initial content and contextual content, and specify a condition with respect to the initial content, and transmit information comprising the initial content, the contextual content, and the condition across the computer network to the cloud-based service, wherein the cloud-based service is configured to generate an electronic file including the initial content and executable code in response to the transmitted information, wherein the initial content is presented on a display of the customer device when the electronic file is opened by a reader program of the customer device, wherein the reader program executes an instruction of the executable code to monitor interaction of a customer user of the customer device with the initial content to determine whether the condition has been satisfied, and wherein the reader program executes an instruction of the executable code to present the contextual content on the display and notify the cloud-based service that the customer user is a possible lead, when it is determined that the condition has been satisfied.

A computer-implemented method for nurturing leads is described, the method may include: opening, by a reader program of a customer device, an electronic file to present initial content of the electronic file on a display of the customer device, the electronic file further comprising contextual content and executable code; executing, by the reader program, an instruction of the executable code to monitor an interaction of a customer user of the customer device with the initial content to determine whether a condition has been satisfied; executing, by the reader program, an instruction of the executable code to present the contextual content on the display when it is determined that the condition has been satisfied; executing, by the reader program, an instruction of the executable code to set a flag within the electronic file when there is no network connection between the customer device and a server that is remote from the customer device; executing, by the reader program, an instruction of the executable code to determine whether the network connection between the customer device and the server has been established; and executing, by the reader program, an instruction of the executable code to notify the server that the condition has been satisfied when the flag is set and it is determined that the network connection between the customer device and the server has been established.

A server for nurturing leads is described, the server includes a memory storing a first computer program and a second computer program; a network interface for communicating with a computer network; a processor configured to execute the first and second computer programs, wherein the first computer program is configured to enable a marketer user of a marketer device connected to the computer network to remotely generate initial content, generate contextual content, and specify a condition with respect to the initial content, wherein the first computer program is further configured to generate an electronic file including the initial content and executable code including instructions for monitoring interactions of a customer user on a customer device with the initial content and sending a notification message from the customer device to the server based on the monitoring, wherein the second computer program is configured to transmit the contextual content across the computer network to the customer device in response to the notification message.

