Five success factors to increasing lead conversions

Leveraging your campaign inquiry list is an essential best practice to successfully converting leads into sales. Not only does it convey you are interested in quickly satisfying a target prospect's needs, it positions your team to close more sales-ready prospects who are further along in the decision-making process. Measuring your progress over time can help you focus internal resources toward the core of your marketing efforts, but only if you truly understand what motivated a customer to inquire and how you can maximize the opportunity.

Here are five success factors that can directly increase your campaign lead conversions:

1. The most recent prospect inquiries tend to be the most valuable and viable to lead nurturing campaigns. As time passes, content becomes less valid in general due to changes in prospect responsibilities and demographics. A dialogue that was once important to a prospect may no longer be fitting or a purchase decision may have already been made. Stay on top of who has recently requested information about your brand! Consistently reach out to these prospects during the first three-to-six months after inquiry.

2. Use lead scoring methods to qualify the level of influencer your prospect is. By keeping your best salespeople in front of more customers who are closest to purchase decision, your marketing department will enhance lead conversion potential dramatically. Ask both behavior and demographic questions in your inquiry form and scorecardrespondents based on decision-making drivers (e.g. resources, authority, need, and timeframe). Cross measure the mediums that generate the most inquiry activity and analyze your tactics to create an efficient, ROI driven marketing engine.

3. Recognize that messaging relevance directly enhances lead conversion. Are you communicating what problem your brand will solve in the prospect’s lives? Many prospects stop listening to your message because they believe you do not understand what their needs are. Create a message map by professional role for email nurturing campaigns! For example, a CEO who responds to your campaign will have a very different company-wide strategic focus than a Marketing Manager entrenched in the day-to-day tactical programs of a specific vertical. If an inquiry hasn't responded over time, check if your content is properly segmented by audience to provide clear value at first glance.

4. Make sure you effectively promote to the nature and the source of your leads. For example, if a lead came from a trade show where a target prospect realized your brand offering first-hand, consider sending a product sample and a limited time purchase offer in your first lead nurturing campaign. Not only does this re-engage the prospect to what they experienced in your booth, it allows you to measure the effectiveness of your promotional offer across multiple events and test which tactics generated the greatest number of lead conversions.

5. Calibrate your lead generation process so that it closes the feedback loop. Many leads go cold simply because a prospect did not quickly receive the attention necessary to aid in the purchase decision process. Set a predetermined timeframe to reach out to your prospect after the first inquiry to understand how long it took for your team to make contact and if they were satisfied with the service received. Asking follow up questions can make sure your internal team did everything possible to maximize the opportunity while it was in progress.

Finally, using lead management software can directly amplify the success of each campaign. Thin client SaaS platforms like NitroMojo have real-time dashboards that cross analyze market-based responses to each marketing event. This will allow your management team to understand successes as they happen and make strategic changes much more quickly, keeping your team ahead of the competition searching for the same valuable conversion opportunities.

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Scoring leads critical to sales and marketing success

Lead scoring is the methodology of ranking an incoming consumer inquiry from a marketing event based on critical success factors to closing the sale. The rules of engagement may change from company to company based on the voice-of-the-customer but they have the same common goals: to best identify where a prospect is in the purchase cycle and create urgency for sales teams to contact prospects in order of those who have the most urgent decision making needs.

There are many benefits to scoring incoming leads from customer-centric criteria. First, sales associates have a limited amount of resources and time available at their disposal. By aiding the sales team’s ability to analyze the best opportunities that are the most likely to result in a sale, marketing management increases positive collaboration between all teams. In short, when a sales associate believes marketing understands how to drive their business, there is more likelihood they will buy in at a greater rate of speed, directly influencing the success of the program.

Second, a marketing team must maximize its potential to create events that consistently get the best sales associates in front of more customers who are sales-ready. This scenario presents the greatest likelihood of growth: leverage the most efficient use of company resources that generates the greatest marketing contribution to sales revenue. The sales team is a critical asset to marketing resource management: are you helping your team to accurately qualify prospects so they can maximize their time spent selling?

Finally, the initial conversion rate of an incoming lead plays a critical role in determining the potential for customer lifetime value. If a customer views your company as responsive to their needs, there is more likelihood they will purchase from you and have a greater loyalty response to future marketing events. This directly increases your channel pricing power and allows you to promote at a consistently higher price point instead of using heavy discounts programs that reduce margin. The ability to reduce follow-up marketing costs in retention programs is critical in building customer lifetime value.

When creating your rules, assess purchase decision drivers into a measurable scorecard. Recognize the sphere of influence the prospect resides in through campaign landing page questions. Simple behavior questions can also help in the scoring process, such as questions that involve product motives and patronage motives. Anticipate the needs of your target customer and the positive feelings your value proposition must conjure up to initiate a response. Have a clear call to action that encourages a passive user to inquire about how you solve problems in their world.

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Capitalize on low hanging fruit by making your product easier to buy

Close your eyes and imagine that you're one of your customers. You're busy. You're stressed. The big question is…are you frustrated?

With unprecedented access to information and product choices, today's consumers are less patient and less brand loyal than ever. If you're product is not easy to purchase or your sales process is frustrating, then there is a good chance customers won't take the time to do business with you. That's a whole lot of potential revenue down the tube.


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