In a late-morning session on direct marketing, Inga Broerman—the senior manager of interactive marketing for Siemens—explained the unique challenges facing her company’s medical solutions division.

• Siemens is already well established with its core American market: The big hospital. As Broerman puts it, “You don’t have a new hospital popping up on every corner.
• And though one of Germany’s best known brands, with a presence in 130 countries and worldwide sales of €87 billion, the company has relatively low name recognition in the United States.

Further challenges for new lead generation:

• How to locate an estimated 14,000 small-scale customers.
• How to reach them when smaller deals don’t justify significant expenditure.

Siemens’ solution? “What sells our equipment,” said Broerman, “is the quality of the images. We need a great way to deliver them.” So they rely heavily on a digital marketing mix of online brochures with Flash-animated graphics, e-mail campaigns, podcasts and search optimization.

Then Siemens streamlines the qualification process by routing all inquiries through a single 800 number and a single e-mail inbox--between 6 and 8 percent typically qualify, and are forwarded to sales.