Lead nurturing involves segregating and advancing leads based on their position in the purchase cycle. Evaluating lead nurturing process is rather complex as one cannot only look at revenues (otherwise considered the ultimate measure of success) to understand if the process is working or not. Here are the top three key metrics that one needs to consider in order to understand the effectiveness of one’s lead nurturing process:
1. Qualification Metrics
These metrics help you determine the quality of your lead nurturing by identifying the number of leads who demonstrate a strong potential towards becoming buyers.
Marketing Qualified and Sales-Accepted Leads
Marketing qualified leads are those leads that have been identified by the marketing team as having strong potential towards becoming customers. MQLs are identified by a combination of leads’ behavioral data such as their activity on your site or their interaction with the communication you send to them via newsletters, emails, etc., their demographic profile, and what you learn by actually talking to them. MQLs are the leads your marketing team passes on to the sales team. Sales accepted leads are those marketing qualified leads which are passed on to the sales team and are accepted and engaged further by the sales team.
2. Conversion Metrics
These metrics examine the interaction levels of leads by measuring the actual click-through on emails and the rate at which leads act on CTAs in your newsletters.
Email Click Through Rates
This metric examines the rate at which mail recipients’ click on the links sent to them. One needs to compare the CTR internally periodically and see if there are any hikes or troughs, and also compare the CTR with the industry average to see if it matches the benchmark or not.
Landing Page Conversion Rates
This metric measures how many leads act on a call-to-action on your newsletters or emails, visit the landing page and either complete a form or download resources from the landing page. If your landing page conversion rates are not high, it means your offers or call-to-actions are not compelling enough for recipients to take action and must be fixed immediately.
What might be considered a reasonable CTR or conversion rate varies significantly between industries. Our advice is to test out a variety of designs and offers, establish your own metric benchmarks, and then continually tweak to improve these metrics.
3. Cost and Profitability Metrics
These metrics give you a clear picture of how well the lead nurturing process contributes to your topline and bottom line.
Lead to Customer
This metric measures how many of the leads acquired as a result of the lead nurturing campaign are converted to customers.
Profit/Cost Per Customer
Cost per customer is the cost incurred for acquiring a lead and converting him/her to a customer. This is calculated by dividing the cost of the lead nurturing campaign by the total number of leads converted to customers attributed singularly to the campaign. Profit per customer is used to determine the profit derived from customers acquired as a result of the lead nurturing campaign.
With any measurement program, the key is to monitor and refine periodically. By measuring periodically you’ll be able to take corrective action as and always stay on top of your lead nurturing process.
