Tag Archive for: ROI

Lead Liaison

How to Build a Strong Business Case for Switching to Marketing Automation

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How to Build a Strong Business Case for Switching to Marketing AutomationMarketing automation is one of the most important new practices a business needs to pursue to be competitive in the digital world, as any savvy marketing professional is already aware. However, even if an organization knows there might be a better marketing and sales process out there, it can be difficult to get an entrenched sales or marketing team to change the way they do things. Here are a few ways that you can build a strong business case for switching to marketing automation that you can pitch to your team.

Focus on the Specific Marketing Challenges your Business is Faces

When trying to figure out in what different ways your business will benefit from the implementation of marketing automation tools, first examine your current marketing and sales systems to see what their biggest weaknesses are. Download our sales and marketing alignment template to do an internal assessment of your company’s sales and marketing processes. Examine the current methods of lead generation, lead nurturing and lead scoring and see what is developing the strongest and weakest results. Look at how marketing automation can revitalize weaker processes – for example, by turning a lackluster lead nurturing program into a multi-tiered system that is intensifies as a lead demonstrates more interest in your services – and clearly communicates benefits.

Illustrate the Broader Benefits of Marketing Automation

After taking some time to examine specific areas in which marketing automation provides noticeable improvements, think about ways that marketing automation can bring broader positive benefits to your business as a whole. Marketing automation can help bring immediate improvements to things like internal communications, instantly streamlining the way that sales and marketers share information. A successful marketing automation program can also yield significant improvements to the overall organization of your business, and can help you improve structurally. Finally, marketing automation yields higher lead generation and decreases conversion time, making it simply a profitable sales and marketing tool for almost any business to take advantage of.

Use Specific Tools to Encourage the Adoption of Marketing Automation

There is a large amount of very convincing data available about the effectiveness that is at the tip of your fingers. Case studies are a wonderful way to illustrate how other similar sized companies went about implementing marketing automation, and gives direct examples of the benefits they enjoyed afterward. Have a full picture of statistics on how your current marketing tools are performing, and how they might improve with the implementation of marketing automation. And, finally, do your research. Be prepared for any questions that might come your way. If you are already getting pushback on marketing automation, you should have some idea of why it is being opposed – understand that viewpoint, and be prepared to counter it.

If you stick to these basic strategies, you should be able to develop a strong business case for switching to marketing automation. Learn more about marketing automation and how your business can benefit from it Lead Liaison’s marketing automation resource blog.

Lead Liaison

How Can Marketing Automation Save Money: How Does $181,059 Sound!

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How Can Marketing Automation Save Money?

“Marketing automation” has become such a buzz phrase over recent years that most vendors try to incorporate the term into their pitch, and sometimes go as far as completely branding their business as marketing automation. In reality, there aren’t that many pure-play marketing automation companies out there in the industry. 100s of providers stake claim on marketing automation to be part of the buzz, which causes confusion in the marketplace. Companies have a hard time understanding marketing automation let alone how marketing automation can save money. In this post we provide a quantitative analysis to answer the question, how can marketing automation save money? We’ll also touch on our approach to marketing automation.

ROI of Marketing Automation Based on Functional Usage

You’ll see some fancy calculators to add up the ROI of marketing automation, but not many resources provide a ROI analysis based on functional areas. We did that for you and looked at what a typical company would spend after investing in a piece-milled software strategy. When you list out the category of tools that companies use to help drive revenue, the list typically includes sales efficiency tools, landing page designers, form designers, email marketing, automation, and a handful of other tools. The problem with buying all of these ad-hoc solutions is two-fold. First, they don’t all play nice together as disparate solutions. Second, your wallet gets pretty thin when you’re buying all these pieces separately. We decided to do a little analysis and tally up individual, best-in-breed solutions to see how much money would drain from your budget over a five year period if a company were to acquire all of these solutions standalone.

Integrated Marketing - How Much Money Can Marketing Automation Save

How Much Money Can Marketing Automation Save You?

Below you’ll find the assumptions we used, cost of individual solutions, and a ROI analysis at the end.

The bottom line: Lead Liaison can save your company $181,059 or 362%! What we didn’t include are the incremental costs for:

  • Multiple learning curves
  • Multiple resources required to manage each ad-hoc solution

Add those in and you could very well double the ROI from what we’ve reported above.

Assumptions:

Assumptions
At least 5 sales people
Up to 10,000 contacts
No more than 100 forms
No more than 25,000 unique visitors per month
Email frequency to database 2x per month
Use each software package for 5 years

Cost of Individual Solutions:

SolutionMonthly PricePackagePurpose
Tout App$250TeamEmail for Sales
Blogging$6002 Posts Per Week, $75 per BlogMarketing Content
Litmus$149PlusEmail Testing
Marketo$1,795StandardMarketing Automation
VisiStat$500RocketVisitor Tracking
HootSuite$10ProSocial Posting
Gravity Forms/
Formstack		$99Business License / GoldWeb Forms
Unbounce$99Pro 99Landing Pages
Mailchimp$150Growing businessEmail Marketing
Opt-In Monster$199ProEngaging Popups

Total Spend on Ad-Hoc Solutions:

TOTAL$3,851
ANNUAL SPEND$46,212
LIFETIME SPEND$231,059

ROI with Lead Liaison:

AVERAGE ANNUAL SPEND with Lead Liaison$10,000
LIFETIME SPEND with Lead Liaison$50,000
ROI of Lead Liaison362.12%
SAVINGS with Lead Liaison$181,059

Lead Liaison’s Philosophy

We’ve got a different philosophy about marketing automation here at Lead Liaison. We don’t hate marketing automation, we just hate how the term is overused, misused, and misunderstood. The truth is that marketing automation is not software, it’s a strategy. You can’t really buy marketing automation software, but you can buy software that helps execute your strategy, which should include automation. No software out-of-the-box is going to automate your marketing – that’s wishful thinking.

Choices are getting “clouded” too. Some companies like HubSpot try to be the all-in-one solution, and get your CRM business too. Unfortunately, or fortunately for some, HubSpot is morphing into an Oracle or Salesforce.com type of company, is now public – trying to satisfy Wall Street, and now trying to take all your sales and marketing dollars with the emphasis on their new CRM. Lead Liaison fits in between the all-in-ones and marketing automation providers with our Revenue Generation Software® platform optimized for mid-market companies. Our mission has always been to focus on automation that improves a company’s sales and marketing operations but more importantly, generates more revenue for our customers. We believe companies care about revenue, not just automating marketing. We’re CRM agnostic, offer professional-grade sales and marketing automation functionality at killer prices, and have the industry’s deepest integration with 3rd party solutions.

Lead Liaison

Get the Most Out of Your Analytics

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Get the Most Out of Your AnalyticsWhat exactly are marketing analytics and why are they so important? First of all, marketing analytics help to put accountable numbers behind your marketing programs. By monitoring the right numbers, you can maximize ROI and ensure your marketing efforts are producing the greatest response. In turn, you’ll be able to get the most out of your analytics through applying the data to future marketing plans.

Traditionally, marketers are seen as the creative types that focus on sculpting an impactful message to drive prospect response. Recently, we’ve seen marketing analytics creep more and more into the marketers’ day-to-day routine. Why is this? Mostly this is because numbers are easily trackable and provide a means for interpreting how prospects interact with your business. Read more about bringing an analytical culture into your marketing practices here.

How to Get the Most Out of Your Analytics

 

Integrate analytics into the rest of the marketing plan.

Utilize marketing automation to track your web visitors’ activity. The data from those reports will show you which landing pages are the most effective and which CTAs your prospects are following. The tracking software will enable marketers to effortlessly integrate analytics into their daily routine and follow up with prospects, understanding where everyone stands in the funnel. A successful integration should reinforce your sales and marketing alignment. Use your marketing analytics to turn your sales funnel into data.

Interpret the data.

So now you’ve got all of this data, how will you interpret it to get the most out of your analytics? You’ll see better ROI when you’re able to more personally connect with your prospects, so a thorough understanding of their activity and interaction with your brand will help marketers get their point across effectively. Interpreting the data will also aid in sales and marketing alignment in that you’ll be able to refine your funnel, maximize the CTAs that work and cut the attempts that aren’t as fruitful. It is important to prune your data—don’t waste time analyzing data that isn’t showing results or giving actionable items.

Review regularly.

Checking the stats once a year won’t create as much of an impact and certainly won’t help you to get the most out of your analytics. Make checking the numbers regularly a habit—have the data available for monthly or quarterly marketing meetings when the whole team is present so that everyone’s on the same page. Lead Liaison has a solution for keeping an eye on visitor behavior and enables you to gather information and metrics as they happen.

Incorporating these simple steps into marketers’ day-to-day will ultimately aid in gauging new marketing initiatives. You’ll be able to monitor unique visits as well as track return visitors to keep an eye on their buying interest and ensure they are qualified appropriately. Tracking the referring sites of your visitors will also help to point out potential marketing partnerships. Use this fact-based decision-making in order to get the most out of your analytics and ultimately the most out of your current marketing practices.

Lead Liaison

How to Maximize Marketing Automation ROI with High Quality Content

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How to Maximize Marketing Automation ROI with High Quality ContentHigh quality content is an essential element of modern marketing and one of the strongest factors in maximizing marketing automation ROI. Content is one of the primary ways that marketers generate, engage, and nurture leads. It is used to build brands, establish authority, attract new social media followers, and retain existing customers. All of these benefits can contribute to your marketing automation return on investment when they are effectively executed.

Here are a few tips on how to maximize your marketing automation ROI with high quality content:

Create Valuable Content

Every piece of content should provide prospective leads with real value. High-quality content will educate the reader and give them a reason to turn to your business whenever they require additional information. Basically it should be a subtle pitch that demonstrates your expertise while offering beneficial guidance. To consistently provide readers with significant value, the content must always be focused first on the concerns and needs of your typical consumers. Selling a product or service should also be the secondary focus.

Create Personalized Content

Marketing automation software generates detailed lead profiles based on a prospect’s online behavior and demographic characteristics. Utilizing the information in your lead profiles to personalize content will maximize ROI by creating a more meaningful connection with the prospect. It shows that someone is paying attention to their concerns, which will inspire loyalty and ultimately produce greater marketing automation ROI.

Create Newsworthy Content

Each article and email that is sent using marketing automation software must provide some unique and newsworthy insight. People that trust you with access to their email inbox do not want to read the same information over and over again. High-quality content that will maximize marketing automation ROI will offer original and worthwhile information that the reader doesn’t already know about your industry, product, or services.

Create Diverse Campaigns

Content includes more than just text. Every image and video can help to establish and strengthen a brand. Visual representations are more eye-catching and usually have a higher success rate than written copy on its own. You can add images to your emails and articles to grab a lead’s attention or create infographics and videos that use imagery to inform potential prospects. For additional information on creating effective video campaigns, please read How to make video marketing work for you.

Create Registration Forms

The content with the highest value should be hidden behind registration forms to obtain additional demographic information from potential leads. This will make it easier to further develop lead profiles and create more customize content. Content that is guarded by a registration form should offer a few trade secrets or particularly useful information that can’t be accessed elsewhere on your site. Individuals that fill out a registration form to access certain information will have higher expectations from the content they receive.
High quality content is a simple and proven method for maximizing marketing automation ROI. Make sure all of your content is valuable, personalized, newsworthy, and diverse. If it is particularly beneficial content, place it behind a brief registration form. All of these tips will help increase the return on your investment.

Lead Liaison

Using Marketing Automation for Transparent Campaigns

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Using Marketing Automation for Transparent CampaignsMarketing automation can positively affect a company’s bottom line by creating much-needed links between investment and ROI. For CEOs, it’s more important than ever to get confirmation that marketing efforts are paying off for the company. Without the proper web tracking methodology and assets in place that calculate return on investment, marketers and their CEOs are left without a clue as to whether or not marketing budgets are really worth it. Make sure to use marketing automation for transparent campaigns.

MarketingWeek magazine recently took on the issue of how much CEOs truly trust their marketers – a dubious question that undoubtedly causes stress for both CEOs and marketing teams. You can read the article (and the very relevant and insightful comments) at  http://www.marketingweek.co.uk.

To summarize, the article suggests that 70% of CEOs surveyed earlier this summer in a project by Fournaise Marketing Group expressed a complete lack of trust in their marketing team’s ability to generate a positive ROI through their efforts. This begs the question – do these surveyed CEOs have a point, and is their dissatisfaction indicative of industry-wide views of marketers?

How Marketing Automation Makes the Difference

Accountability is the determining factor in whether a relationship between company executives and marketers is transparent enough to survive. Without some sort of measure of accountability, CEOs have no idea what their marketing teams are doing and whether the money spent results in any kind of return over the long term.

Tracking metrics is what defines that level of accountability. With solid numbers in place, even CEOs who micro-manage advertising campaigns won’t be able to deny the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of their ideas. With marketing automation, a solid set of tools that track advertising campaigns across platforms provides metrics that can’t be ignored. When CEOs and marketing teams have access to these metrics and use them to make marketing decisions, transparency is a sure thing.

Developing the Right Relationships

One of the more interesting comments on the MarketingWeek article states that if CEOs want to see the true impact marketing has on their bottom line, they should turn their marketing efforts off for a while and see what happens. We can all likely imagine that scenario and predict the outcome.

Varying factors contribute to the trust CEOs have for their marketing departments, but transparency will always be one of those key factors. Using marketing automation tools like Lead Liaison to provide transparency in cross-platform marketing efforts can make more difference than you think. Not only does the right marketing automation company save money – it can repair a spotty relationship between departments.

Visit Lead Liaison today to find out how transparent your marketing efforts can be!

Lead Liaison

The Real ROI achieved from Marketing Automation

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Real ROI from marketing automationMarketing automation is gaining in popularity among big businesses, but is it really worth the investment? What’s the real ROI from marketing automation?

Absolutely! Anytime a traditional system is changed from manual to automated, it increases efficiency and enhances its capabilities. Automation significantly reduces labor expenses while increasing the total volume of leads generated, since more can be achieved in less time. In today’s highly competitive and fast-paced marketplace, most time saving solutions are worth the investment. Let’s talk about the real ROI achieved from marketing automation.

Marketing automation uses software to automatically generate leads based on online activity. Every visitor on a site is a potential consumer and the only way to effectively track each of these visitors is by using an automated program. Every lead also leaves their own unique trail of evidence in regards to their purchasing potential. The manual labor that requires tracking and profiling every visitor’s behavior and characteristics would be astronomical, especially if the website generated a high volume of website traffic.

Being able to quickly capture leads and generate useful profiles on every lead is one of the real ways marketing automation is able to achieve ROI. Lead profiles can be used to categorize each lead into segments based on similar attributes. Rather than focus on thousands of individual leads, a company can focus on groups of related leads.

Another way to measure the true value of marketing automation comes from how these profiles can then be used to nurture and convert each lead into a sale. Marketing automation efforts should always be aligned with a personalized lead nurturing campaign. Content used to persuade each lead should be targeted to a particular concern or interest of a various lead segment.

For example, if automation software has established that a group of leads have all visited the site’s “do it yourself home renovation” page. These leads can then be targeted with helpful articles on how to successfully complete a home renovation project on your own.

Being able to tap into a lead’s needs is a priceless ROI and it is a direct result of effective marketing automation. The more a company can connect and develop trust with the lead, the more likely the lead will become a life-long customer.

Another ROI factor worth mentioning about marketing automation is its ability to produce higher quality leads. Marketers are only handing over leads that are truly interested and ready-to-buy. This pre-screening process will use the sales team’s time more efficiently. Since every lead is first profiled, nurtured, and scored before the sales team is involved, they are closer to being ready to make a decision.

Marketing automation is popular because it works. Big businesses benefit from a reduction in labor expenses, stronger lead profiles, a more personalized approach to lead nurturing, and a higher lead conversion rate. The ROI for marketing automation is certainly worth the investment.

Lead Liaison

10 Ways to Improve Email Marketing ROI

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Improve Email Marketing ROIEmail marketing can certainly boost your sales effectiveness. However, email campaigns can drag down your marketing ROI if the execution is flawed. Here are ten ways to improve email marketing ROI.

Clean Lists

Though B2B email list buying is not always the best way to go,  if you do purchase lists make sure the lists are “clean”. Studies have shown that on average over 20% of list records are not delivered. And ISP mail servers can prevent your domain from future messaging if your emails are repeatedly sent to invalid addresses. Random address checks can help determine if your lists are worth the money paid.

Chase Ambulances

With the digital footprints that can be seen today, there is plenty of data that can be used to target email recipients. For example, if a company recently leased new space and your business sells office furniture, a friendly email campaign saying “congratulations!” and offering discounted items can prompt a conversion.

Deploy Videos

Video marketing has skyrocketed for a reason. A 2012 study by Experian Marketing Services revealed that embedded video increased conversion rates by 21% for companies surveyed. In addition, CTR rates improved 7% to 13% by simply including “video” in the subject line for video messages.

Use Analytics

From video analytics to CTR, the data available through reporting programs is staggering. You can examine response rates, engagement duration, and message timing. Marketing automation programs, such as our Lead Management Automation™ platform, provide analytics that can be used to improve messaging, targeting, and timing.

 Go Mobile

Email messages should be designed to be easily viewed via mobile devices if you hope to compete. Email is often the preferred choice of marketers over SMS and IM (though each has their place in a robust marketing strategy) because it is less costly and easier to analyze. Plus, email can be sent to multiple recipients at a lower cost than text messages.

Combine Email and SMM

Email marketing provides a great partner channel with social media marketing. Through email integration with social media ROI from both channels can be improved. Email subscribers can easily share content, offers, and other information. Using Facebook or Twitter to provide email opt-in opportunities can be effective as well.

Make Landing Pages Convert

If your email recipients are routed to ineffective landing pages, your ROI drops. Even with solid CTR numbers, if your landing page cannot convert, the email was wasted. Align landing page copy with the email message but also provide more “meat”. A landing page visit should not simply rehash the email; provide an additional offer or include additional reasons to buy. Above all, make sure the landing page offers something substantial in exchange for the click-through.

Target Behavior

Frequent buyers should receive emails that encourage brand loyalty and repeat purchases. Email can also provide a feedback mechanism that allows customers to easily respond to customer satisfaction surveys. Take the time to analyze activities that have resulted from previous campaigns and implement messages that trigger similar behavior in subsequent campaigns.

Get Them Back to the Cart

Email can be used to target customers who abandoned ecommerce shopping carts during a site visit. An email message with a time-sensitive discount can be an effective way of resuscitating a pending purchase.

Avoid Being a Spammer

According to the February 2013 Symantec Intelligence Report, spam, phishing, and malware events have all decreased; however, spam still accounts for just over 64% of all email sent. Do everything possible to send “clean” emails so your company is not targeted as a spammer.

Lead Liaison

Landing Page Improvements, Bounce Rate and ROI

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Landing Page ImprovementsKISSmetrics has a great article and infographic discussing the particulars of bounce rates by industry. Average industry bounce rates are at about 40.5%, while lead gen websites can expect a 30-50% bounce rate. Service and retail sites rank in at about 10-40%, while one page sites exist simply to gather info or as a cart tend to have a higher bounce rate – 70-90%.

What Is Bounce Rate?

If it sounds like we’re speaking Greek, it’s time to get in the know about your bounce rates. A bounce rate refers to the number of viewers who visit your site, then leave without looking at any further pages or taking any further action on your website. Bounce rate is one of the top ways you can assess landing page improvements. Once you make these improvements, you can bring in a wealth of new web leads. You can find your bounce rate by taking a look at any analytics tracking platform (might we suggest Lead Liaison’s stellar lead management software for this?).

Knowing your bounce rate is important because the higher the bounce rate, the more you’ll be able to get an idea of the necessary landing page improvements. Modifying landing pages is a good way to ensure your customers:

  • Know what you have to offer
  • Understand the value proposition of your services
  • Can get in touch with you multiple ways if needed
  • Will leave valuable information you can use to get the customer into your funnel

If your landing pages aren’t doing any of these things, you’ll see your bounce rates increase. Landing page improvements can keep people looking through your site for more information about your company, which better increases the chance they’ll engage.

Landing Page Improvements

Landing page tracking will show you what areas of your page need improvements. Some areas you might need to focus on:

  • Header. The top of your site should feature your logo and contact information. If users land on your page and aren’t sure what to do, they’ll bounce. Try to develop a common look and feel to your landing pages which provides visitors with “familiar territory”.  Consistency is good thing with your landing pages. Use Lead Liaison’s landing page builder to easily create templates, just like you would with a PowerPoint slide.
  • About your company. You’d be surprised how many companies leave this out – even on their homepage! Immediately tell your users who you are and why you’re the best at what you do.
  • Offer. Landing page improvements should focus around what you’re offering and what you’re looking to get from your customer. For instance, if you’re offering an eBook in exchange for an email address, make sure the sign up form is above the fold of your page.
  • Structure. Users are used to seeing crisp-looking professional pages that are well-put together. A graphic or video that highlights your service followed by more about your company and the offering should all be showcased above the fold of the page. Most users read from left to right- just like a book – so it’s good to give users a visual or text representation of who you are followed by a call to action (e.g. fill out our form, watch our video, etc.). If you’re interested in placing a video on your landing page then Lead Liaison’s landing page builder can help you drag/drop YouTube videos or other flash content directly on your page.

If you see your bounce rates are higher than industry standard for certain pages – particularly your landing pages – make the recommended landing page improvements and watch to see if your bounce rate decreases over time.

Landing page improvement tracking is best measured through landing page ROI. If you’re not sure your landing pages are getting you the best possible ROI, Lead Liaison can help! Our suite of solutions can help you assess whether your landing pages are performing as needed. Bounce rate assessment is an important part of that info. We’d love to hook you up with effective landing page ROI solutions today!

Lead Liaison

Calculating Email Marketing ROI: How it Works

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Email Marketing ROIAccording to the most recent Direct Marketing Association Power of Direct Marketing report, in 2011 calculating email marketing ROI returned $40.56 for every dollar spent. This blew away other touch points including:

  • Search engine – $22.24
  • Desktop display ads – $19.72
  • Mobile display ads – $10.51
  • Catalogs – $7.30

EmailStatCenter.com revealed in its 2010 Compensation & Resources Study that “70% of email marketers say they don’t have enough staff to prove (email marketing) ROI”. In addition, ClickZ claims that “44% of email marketers measure their email program using ‘customer engagement’ as a yardstick”.

It should be no surprise that email is among the most popular marketing channels available. If you’re not using email as a marketing tool, you should. But it’s not all about blasting messages and engaging respondents. The metrics should support your campaigns or money is being lost. So how do you determine the return on investment? Let’s take a look.

Email Campaign Results

The first step is to input data from your completed campaign into a formula. There are some online calculators that will compute the results for you. When you are examining your email campaign results a few of the generally accepted data points to include are

  • Number of email records (total list count)
  • Response rate (% of responses against total blast)
  • Conversion rate (% of respondents who purchased)
  • Unique buyers (first-time purchasers)
  • Average profit per sale
  • Campaign costs
    • Creating message (in house or contracted)
    • Delivery (Constant Contact, etc.)
    • Analytics (reporting and analysis costs)

Analyze Email Campaign Results

The next step is to review the results each campaign. Each company may use different metrics to judge the success or failure of a campaign, but some of the critical data points include

  • Number of responses (total opens, click-throughs, replies)
  • Number of buyers (Web purchases via landing pages or site links)
  • Cost per response (total dollars  responses)
  • Cost per buyer (total dollars  buyers)
  • Cost per first-time purchaser (total dollars  new buyers)
  • Cost per address (total dollars  total records)
  • Total profit from campaign

Keep in mind that ROI should not be calculated until a sufficient period of time has passed to allow for purchases to take place (up to 60 days following a campaign). Multi-release campaigns require a longer window to more accurately determine cost per purchase.

As with any business cost center, email marketing should be examined to ensure that marketing dollars are being well spent. ROI from lead nurturing email campaigns requires some different computations but is just as important as determining ROI from a direct marketing email campaign. Although email is not the holy grail of marketing avenues, statistics show a significant bang for the buck. The key is to keep track of the bang from each buck.

Let us know if you have other metrics you use for measuring your email marketing ROI. For more automated marketing strategies talk with a Lead Liaison account representative today!

Lead Liaison

Should You Invest in Lead Nurturing?

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Even in today’s competitive B2B environment, there are still some executives wondering if they should invest in lead nurturing. Let’s take a look at why lead nurturing should be incorporated into your lead management strategy.

Research done in 2012 reveals that nurturing leads increases sales opportunities 20% over non-nurtured leads. Another 2012 study shows that an effective lead nurturing strategy can:

  • Increase sales-ready leads by at least 50%
  • Reduce cost per lead by an average of 33%
  • Lower ignored or discarded leads from 80% to as low as 25%
  • Increase sales quota achievement by 9%
  • Reduce “no decisions” by 6%

So operational returns can be improved significantly, but what about financial returns?

Calculating ROI

There are several options when calculating a return on your lead nurturing investment. As an example, let’s use the number of leads converting from a prospect status to sales-ready lead in the sales funnel, with and without nurturing. Using a database of 1,000 existing leads, let’s assume a non-nurtured conversion rate of 5% – or 50 sales-ready leads. Next, estimate a reasonable increase in conversion from lead nurturing activities of 2.5x the existing conversion rate (Industry analysts suggest using an average increase of 2.0-3.0 times non-nurtured leads). Then multiply the non-nurtured conversions (50) by the nurturing conversion rate (2.5), which results in 125. This is an increase of 75 sales-ready leads.

Now, if you’re monthly marketing budget is $10,000, with 10% devoted to lead nurturing, you’ll spend $1,000 for lead nurturing activities. Divide that amount by the total new sales-ready leads (1000/125); this will give you an average cost per lead of $8.

If your average sales amount is $50 per close then your cost per lead is 16% of sales. Not a bad return.

Compare that result to the cost per lead without nurturing. If your budget is $10,000 to convert 50 sales-ready leads, then the cost per lead would be $20.00. By nurturing leads toward a sales engagement, your total cost per lead decreases by 60%!

By incorporating Lead Liaison’s proven lead nurturing strategies, you can boost your marketing results and decrease your cost per lead. Find out how – contact a Lead Liaison representative today!