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Tracking lead nurturing KPIs makes it easier for B2B marketers to understand what resonates with their target audience. In lead nurturing programs, companies use various methods like segmentation, scoring, automation, etc., to make the processes more efficient. By giving data insights into the operation and strategic performance of different lead nurturing campaigns, KPIs ensure that a healthy lead volume is always maintained.
But even after having KPIs and world-class automation tools, 37% of marketers find generating quality leads difficult. And 30% say reaching the right audience also poses a challenge.
In this blog post, I will explore why marketers fail to utilise lead nurturing KPIs to their full potential and the five prominent KPIs essential for lead nurturing campaigns.
Why do B2B Marketers Fail to Scale Their Lead Nurturing?
Companies need to track metrics that record different campaigns' performance to build an efficient marketing system.
Every marketing strategy has different goals. For example, lead generation attracts and converts visitors into qualified leads. In contrast, lead nurturing involves sharing personalized content with prospects that motivates them to become paying customers. So every B2B marketing strategy needs its own set of fundamental KPIs that helps companies optimise different marketing efforts.
But B2B marketers use the same metrics for lead generation, nurturing, and retention of customers. Even if companies have a defined set of KPIs, they are mostly limited to the content shared through nurturing emails with the prospects. Due to such reasons, companies fail to accurately scale their lead nurturing workflows.
Businesses need to understand that lead nurturing is not just about email nurturing sequences but also roots for:
- Customer retention
- Lead qualification
- Return on investment (ROI)
It becomes crucial for every business to employ specific lead nurturing KPIs to achieve the set goals for a specific lead nurturing campaign.
Focusing on a list of KPIs that quantitatively report the successes and shortcomings of a brand helps in
- Building marketing standards
- Better decision-making
- Keeps efforts goal aligned
Let’s understand the five most crucial lead nurturing KPIs companies need to watch.
Important Suggestion: Elevate your lead nurturing tactics with this comprehensive PDF resource. It provides expert insights and step-by-step guidance on how to implement successful lead nurturing ideas, ensuring your prospects stay engaged and move closer to conversion.
5 Lead Nurturing KPIs You Should Track
Curating content based on buyer personas helps businesses get started with lead nurturing plans. But what makes the workflow flourish is when the lead nurturing strategies get optimised by consumer feedback. KPIs help understand the target audience’s reaction toward a particular marketing action and points out the areas where the company needs to pivot its focus.
Let’s see what lead nurturing KPIs every B2B marketer needs to keep a log of:
1. Conversion Rate
Conversion rate refers to the percentage of prospects or clients who have completed a specific action. It helps determine whether a marketing strategy was a success or not. In lead nurturing, businesses have various personalised workflows catering to different prospect segments. By recording the conversion rate of every campaign, marketers can understand which lead nurturing tactic is driving prospects through the sales funnel.
The desired action can include downloading an e-book, opening an email, booking a discovery or demo call, etc.
How to Calculate Conversion Rate?
For example, if the landing page for downloading an ebook has 5000 visitors and the conversions amount to 200, then the conversion rate is 4%.
A monthly conversion rate record can help set better growth standards for a company.
2. Email-Related KPIs
Email marketing plays a significant role in lead nurturing, which is why it has its own set of KPIs. Close monitoring of all these KPIs assists in creating better email copies, CTA buttons, and layouts.
(i) Open rate
Open rate signifies the impact of an email’s subject line and preheader. It records how many subscribers are opening the lead nurturing emails and looking through them.
(ii) CTR
The click-though-rate of an email records the subscribers performing the desired action highlighted in the email. The action can be clicking a hyperlink, an image, or a CTA button. While an open rate ensures an email gets read, CTR helps understand whether the content shared in the emails motivates the prospects for more brand exploration.
High CTR rate results from a great email copy personalized according to the prospects’ pain points.
(iii) Unsubscribe Rate
The unsubscribe rate measures the percentage of subscribers that have opted out from the mailing list. Its formula is:
Marketers must keep a close eye on the unsubscribe rate, which also signifies lost leads. If an email nurturing sequence has a high unsubscribe rate, then companies should immediately start working on making changes to it.
(iv) List Growth Rate
The list growth rate tracks the rate at which the mailing list grows. It helps marketers set a standard growth percentage, after which the list gets segmented for better personalization.
3. Customer Retention Related KPIs
Marketers who use lead nurturing programs for customer retention as well must also account for KPIs related to the established client base. It acts as indirect feedback from the client’s side and assists in setting degradation goals for a service or product.
Below are some crucial KPIs for understanding a company’s customer retention:
(i) Churn Rate
The churn rate records the percentage of clients who no longer do business with a company. Companies usually evaluate it over a period to understand the impact of customer retention strategies.
A high churn rate records a weak customer retention policy. Companies must set a standard for churn rate. To reach the maximum standard value of churn rate, businesses must immediately reevaluate their lead nurturing strategies for customer retention and initiate plans to bring back lost customers.
(ii) Net Promoter Score (NPS)
It assesses overall customer satisfaction and how likely a customer is to recommend a brand’s services. Net promoter score is mostly evaluated with the help of a single question: “How likely are you to recommend our services?”
It records how customers experience the brand and look out for clients interested in referral programs. NPS is a much easier way to understand how a marketing tactic is performing than a long feedback survey. Marketers can utilise short NPS forms at the end of a landing page, email, or other web pages.
NPS relies on a scoring system where customers’ responses decide the results. The scale of rating extends from 0-10 or 1-10.
- Customers who give scores between 0 to 6 are detractors and are not satisfied with the company’s services.
- Scores between 7 to 8 are passive promoters and might consider recommending the brand to someone else.
- From 9 to 10 are the clients most happy with your services and would recommend it to others.
After calculating the scores, companies can evaluate the percentage of promoters it has and move forward with their referral, cross-selling, and up-selling plans.
4. Customer Acquisition Cost
The customer acquisition cost refers to the money spent by a company to earn a new client. CAC covers all expenses incurred for marketing, advertising, sales pitches, etc., to analyse how the overall lead generation and lead nurturing efforts perform.
It is a crucial metric for businesses that want to understand their ROI and make data-driven decisions.
Companies can also calculate CAC for a single marketing campaign and evaluate its performance financially. It will clarify which advertising campaigns are worth following.
5. Average Sales Cycle Length
Sales cycle length represents the average time to convert a fresh lead into a paying customer. The calculation of the sales cycle starts from the first touchpoint of the lead with the brand to the day they finally close the deal.
Companies that want to accelerate their business growth must focus on their sales cycle length, as the shorter it is, the faster a brand generates clients. 75% of B2B companies take an average of at least four months to win a new customer. Additionally, the average SaaS B2B sales cycle length is 83 days, according to a 2020 study by Hubspot.
A longer sales cycle often means weak content marketing strategies, and marketers must revamp and test the content of such campaigns to make them more efficient.
Conclusion
Lead nurturing KPIs help companies view marketing from the analytical side. It presents quantitative data to understand recurring conversion problems and the weak points of a marketing campaign. By selecting a few key metrics as KPIs and tracking them, marketers can refine their content engagement and generate better lead nurturing results.
The five KPIs discussed in this blog focus on forming a clear picture of gaps between consumer needs and brands’ approaches. The lead nurturing KPIs also assimilate a report of financial inputs to returns for a company’s various marketing ventures.
With the help of KPIs and testing, companies must update their marketing workflows for better user experience and overall success.
Related Blogs:
A/B Testing Emails: Best Practices to Follow
B2B Lead Nurturing: The Ultimate Guide
How to Create a Lead Scoring Model
Top 9 Mistakes in SaaS Lead Nurturing and How To Fix Them
B2B Startup Marketing Guide: Key Elements and Strategies
