"Best of 2010" lead generation tactics

At Zend, marketing has an SLA. Every year we sign a "contract" with our sales team. Based on some pretty simple funnel mathematics, we're committed to delivering a certain number of qualified leads to every sales rep every week (the numbers vary based on role and geo). In 2010 we exceeded our goal by 30%. How?

These are the 3 lead sources that drove most revenue for us in 2010:

1. Inbound inquiries - heavy investment in inbound marketing paid big dividends in 2010! More people heard about us, more people found us online, more people were open to doing business with us
2. Free downloads - our products are real easy to install and try out, making registered downloads a highly effective means of generating good leads
3. Webinars - these have been working extremely well for us in 2010 - we've focused on educational content rather than on selling product, and we opened our webinar platform to partners and customers

What didn't work for us all that well? Renting lists, cold calling, doing broad offline events. No wonder I called my blog "Marketing 2.0".