Businesses haven’t adopted lead nurturing to the extent that they have embraced other tools such as email marketing or social media. However, all industry research shows that nurturing your leads, keeping them engaged with your content on an ongoing basis, and gradually introducing them to more advanced stages of the sales cycle can only benefit your bottom line.
Consider the Facts...
- Only 25% of leads are legitimate and should advance to sales. Only 50% of leads are qualified but not ready to buy. [Gleanster Research]
- Lead nurturing emails get 4-10 times the response rate compared to standalone email blasts. [SilverPop/DemandGen Report]
- Research shows that 35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first. [InsideSales.com]
Recently, we did an analysis of the HubSpot customer database to compare the performance of key metrics in lead nurturing and email marketing. The sample we analyzed included 1,212 companies using general email marketing and 1,241 companies using lead nurturing. (Note: some companies may have been present in both groups.)
We looked at both the median and average click-through rate (CTR) and unsubscribe rate, and found that in both cases, lead nurturing emails have a significantly higher CTR than more generic email blasts. In fact, lead nurturing emails generated an 8% CTR compared to general email sends, which generated just a 3% CTR.
Interestingly enough, lead nurturing emails also had a slightly higher unsubscribe rate (1%) than individual email sends (0.5%). While this can be viewed as a seemingly negative performance, it's actually an indicator that lead nurturing is doing its job of qualifying leads and eliminating people who are not interested in your company. Only the most engaged leads will move down the sales funnel and can potentially turn into great new customers.
Marketing Takeaway
Effective implementation of lead nurturing works, and it's a far superior way to move your leads through the sales funnel than general email blasts. Why? Because it's personalized, catered to a prospect or lead's point in the sales cycle, and it keeps your business top of mind as they're evaluating a purchase. Start experimenting for yourself. The proof is in the pudding.
Want to get started with lead nurturing, but not sure where to start? Download our free ebook, An Introduction to Lead Nurturing.
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Lydia Sugarman 3:42 PM on December 15, 2011
First of all, I will voice my objection to using the term "email blast." Every time that term is used it always brings to mind Cheney's shotgun blast to his fellow hunter's face. Really!? Is that how you want to try to engage with people? I think using that term breeds disrespect of the recipients.
Secondly, saying email is less effective than lead nurturing is just plain incomprehensible. Numbers can be manipulated to prove any point, but the reality is that most successful lead nurturing strategies that include enticing people to read your content use email to drive people to their blog to read and click. Email is *still* very much a critical part of lead nurturing and inbound marketing.
michael webster 10:34 PM on December 15, 2011
Have to agree with Lydia's comment. Email is lead nurturing, so I guess I am missing your point.
Coy Gupta 1:52 AM on December 16, 2011
I agree with Lydia. But I think the point Hubspot is making here is that many traditional marketers acquire email lists and blast them repeatedly. They don't even segment the list to target specific groups with customized email content. Hence rendering the email effort to a Cheney shot gun approach.
Sophisticated marketers use email much more effectively and it is a component of inbound marketing drip campaigns (on the Hubspot platform and other providers) combined with social media, link tracking cookies and a variety of other tactics.
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Peter Caputa 9:43 AM on December 16, 2011
(continued)
Based on the fact that lead nurturing produces a higher click through rate, we also recommend that sophisticated marketers do even more targeting using our Enterprise product. We're calling it behavior driven communication: http://www.hubspot.com/products/marketing-automation. With behavior driven communication, you can use data about your individual subscribers interests and actions across multiple platforms (website, email, social, mobile) to determine what messages to send them or what messages to present to them on your website or app, or even send internal notifications to your sales or customer teams based on this data. The events or triggers can be put in a sequence and different messages can be sent to subscribers based on as many factors as you want to track and sequence.
I do have one nit about one of Maggie's conclusions. I wouldn't assume that the most people who unsubscribe from lead nurturing campaigns are unqualified to buy at some point. With even better personalization and targeting, I'd imagine the unsub rate would go down. And some people just don't want to be nurtured by email, so the higher number of messages sent via a lead nurturing campaign probably triggers unsubs. However, based on the increased click through rate, as a marketer, I'd be fine with a slightly higher unsub rate. I think most marketers could live with that.
John Samson 6:16 PM on December 19, 2011
Correlation does not equal causation. Companies using lead nurturing are targeting customers in a specific life cycle, which obviously is going to have better lick through rates than a blast that tries to revive old leads.