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5 Lead Nurturing KPIs To Measure for Better User Experience

Lead nurturing KPIs are a great way to measure whether your marketing efforts are going in the right direction. Most lead nurturing programs combine segmentation, scoring, and other strategies. Tracking all these automations simultaneously becomes impossible. Hence, you must have a set of KPIs to rely on to help you measure your lead nurturing success efficiently.

This blog post will explore the five essential lead nurturing KPIs you need to track to optimize your lead nurturing.

Table of Contents:

Why do B2B Marketers Fail to Scale Their Lead Nurturing?
5 Lead Nurturing KPIs You Should Track
How To Improve Your Lead Nurturing KPIs?
Boost Your Lead Nurturing KPIs

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 involves attracting and converting visitors into leads. In contrast, lead nurturing involves sharing personalized content with prospects that motivates them to become paying customers. So, every B2B marketing strategy needs KPIs that help companies optimize different marketing efforts.

However, 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. For these reasons, companies fail to scale their lead nurturing workflows accurately.

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)

Every business must employ specific lead nurturing KPIs to achieve the set goals for a particular lead nurturing campaign.

Focusing on Lead Nurturing KPIs Helps in

Let’s understand the five most crucial lead nurturing KPIs companies must watch.

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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.

Formula of CTR of email from lead nurturing kpis

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:

Formula for measures the percentage of subscribers

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.

List Growth Rate formula for Lead Nurturing KPIs

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 converting a fresh lead into a paying customer. The calculation of the sales cycle starts with the lead's first touchpoint with the brand and ends with 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. According to a study by Hubspot, 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.

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.

The formula for evaluating sales cycle length is:

How To Improve Your Lead Nurturing KPIs?

Let’s focus on improving all five lead nurturing KPIs discussed above.

1. Optimize Your Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the most crucial KPI for lead nurturing and marketing. Here are some ways to improve it through better lead nurturing tactics.

A/B Testing

Regularly examine unique versions of your web pages, forms, and CTAs. Experiment with layout, wording, and layout to see what converts better. For example, test two unique CTAs: the control "Get Your Free Demo" and the challenger "Schedule a Demo Today" and track the conversions.

Optimize for Mobile

Ensure your pages and forms are mobile-friendly. As mobile site visitors grow, a web page that isn’t optimized for mobile can cause potential leads to bounce.

Streamline the User Journey

Reduce friction by simplifying forms (ask for less information upfront) and making the path to conversion as easy as possible.

Personalization

Use customized messages and offers. Tailor your content to exclusive consumer personas and their stages within the consumer journey. Dynamic content and customized content boost engagement and conversions.

Clear Value Proposition

Ensure your value proposition is evident and compelling. Prospects should recognize what advantage they may gain by taking the preferred action.

2. Email KPIs Improvement

Emails are a huge part of lead nurturing. Here’s how you can optimize various aspects of it.

Open Rate

Write compelling and personalized subject lines. Avoid spammy language or heavy jargon. You can also A/B test your email headlines.

Marketers often forget to ensure their emails don’t land in junk mail by frequently clearing their lists, fending off spammy phrases, and maintaining an appropriate email frequency.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Ensure the email's content is relevant to the recipient. Use segmentation to send notably centered content. Increase click rates by using engaging visuals, films, or content.

Unsubscribe Rate

Send emails to segmented leads based on behavior, hobbies, or expertise. Avoid mass emailing at all costs. Ensure every email provides value—educational content, a helpful tip, or a unique offer.

Another thing to consider is to make the unsubscribe procedure simple and user-friendly. Instead of unsubscribing altogether, users can be offered the option to lessen the frequency of emails.

3. Better Customer Retention Rate

Here’s how NPS and churn rate can be analyzed and boosted.

Analyze Together: Segment your clients based on their NPS rankings—promoters, passives, and detractors. Track churn quotes within those lists to see which segments will likely leave. It will help you understand the relationship between customer satisfaction and retention.

Compare Feedback: Match the feedback from NPS surveys with churn records to identify why clients are upset or leaving. Such evaluation will pinpoint specific issues that need to be addressed.

4. Customer Acquisition Cost

Here are the ways to improve your CAC.

Optimize Paid Campaigns: Monitor and optimize paid ad campaigns (Google Ads, social media advertisements) using Google Ads UTM parameters to improve targeting and decrease charges. Use testing to determine which campaigns generate the most significant ROI.

Increase Organic Traffic: Invest in SEO and content marketing to grow organic visitors and decrease dependency on paid campaigns. Organic leads usually have lower acquisition prices.

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Leverage Referral Programs: Referral programs can lower CAC because new customers come from recommendations, which are more inexpensive to acquire than paid advertisements.

Align Sales and Marketing: Improve collaboration between your sales and marketing teams to ensure they’re aligned on lead quality and customer messaging. It provides marketing efforts focused on high-quality leads that are more likely to convert.

Automate Marketing Processes: Use automation tools to nurture leads via personalized email sequences, retargeting ads, and ranking at the top of SERPs. It reduces the time and manual effort involved in acquiring new customers.

5. Improve Average Sales Cycle Length

Here’s a study that highlights the problems leading to a longer sales cycle. Unqualified leads and targeting the wrong audience are the top reasons. Let’s see how we can solve these.

Qualify Leads Early: Implement a robust lead scoring system to qualify leads early in the procedure. This will ensure that your sales focus on high-potential leads, which can shorten the sales cycle.

Streamline Sales Processes: Identify and eliminate bottlenecks in the sales process. It could include simplifying the sales pipeline stages or automating repetitive tasks to speed up the overall process.

Enhance Product Demos and Proposals: Ensure your product demonstrations and recommendations are reasonably applicable and tailored to the prospect’s desires and pain factors. A properly executed demo can notably reduce the time required to close a deal.

Implement Effective Follow-Up Strategies: Develop a follow-up method that keeps prospects engaged without overwhelming them. To maintain momentum, use email sequences, scheduled calls, and content tailored to their pursuits.

Boost Your Lead Nurturing KPIs

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. Marketers can refine their content and generate better lead nurturing results by selecting a few metrics as KPIs and tracking them.

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.

KPIs and testing can help companies update their marketing workflows for a better user experience and overall success.