Getting a lead is just step one. Step two is following up with that lead. And if you spend all of your time and energy just focusing on step one, and then resting on your laurels at step two, well… you’re wasting your time.
An effective lead follow-up strategy is, of course, absolutely vital to successful pipeline generation, and yet, so many organisations do not have a cohesive process, often leading to revenue being left on the table.
Research finds both B2B and B2C organisations have significant room for improvement
In order to understand the trends in lead follow-up strategies, Conversica recently investigated 1000+ companies and evaluated their engagement process according to the four Ps:
- Promptness: how quickly did a company follow up on an inquiry with a personalised, relevant response?
- Persistence: how many attempts did a company follow up with a response?
- Personalisation: to what extent was the response personalised? Did the response move the conversation forwards?
- Performance: did the email successfully reach the lead’s primary Gmail inbox, or did it land in Promotions, Social or Spam?
The test was simple. 1177 technology, telecommunications and media & entertainment companies were contacted by researchers, requesting to be contacted for more information. These companies’ responses were given an A, B, C, D or F on each of the four Ps. For instance, a response time of 0-5 minutes would earn a given company an A in promptness. A response time of more than a week, on the other hand, would earn a given company an F. Not surprising! Each of the four Ps had similar grading systems, and each organisation was then given an average grade across all of the four Ps.
Promptness
You may think that responding to a lead within a day is acceptable, and maybe it is, but it’s definitely not giving you the best chance to convert that lead into a customer.
Sonny stated: “Our research indicated that promptness is the most important factor when engaging with an inbound lead. The faster the connection is made, the higher the likelihood of converting a lead into a customer.”
But just how effective is a quick response? Well, it turns out, extremely. In fact, leads contacted in than less than one hour are nearly 60 times more likely to engage than companies that waited 24 hours or longer to reply.
As if that wasn’t reason enough to speed up your replies, Sonny added: “The conversion rate increases by 391% when companies make a call attempt within a minute of receiving a lead.”
391%.
This year, however, only a quarter of companies investigated in Conversica’s research earned an A grade for promptness (responding within zero -five minutes). Most companies investigated took more than a week to respond, earning an F grade. Sonny commented that, this new Covid-19 world, where everything has gone digital, taking a week to respond is nearly as bad as not responding at all.
Clearly, there is room for improvement.
Persistence
Although promptness has been revealed as the most important of all the four Ps, it’s not enough by itself.
“While promptness is critical,” Sonny said, “it’s also rare that a single response is enough to motivate a prospect to schedule a meeting with sales.”
Ultimately, Sonny explains that people are busy. Phone calls get missed; people research companies at their own pace, and so on. With this in mind, more attempts to contact leads are needed, and the research does not lie.
“If you attempt to contact a lead three times, instead of once, it will double the response rate,” Sonny says.
In fact, Sonny claims that companies with the fastest growing revenues are generally trying to contact a lead five to eight times.”
However, there is a fine line between persistence and nagging, and too much contact can actually have an adverse effect. With this in mind, the grading system for persistence was not as simple as “more attempts made = higher grade.”
The Goldilocks zone is around the 5-11 region, in which 15% of organisations investigated received an A grade. Most organisations, however, received a C grade, either responding to a lead 12 – 15 times, or 20+ times.
The takeaway so far is to respond quickly, don’t be afraid to follow up again, but know when to cut your losses!
Personalisation
“It’s no surprise that personalised communication with an inbound lead will significantly increase the likelihood of successful engagement and conversion,” Sonny said. And of course, he’s right, but it’s interesting to look at the data to understand where most organisations are at in their efforts to do so.
So, firstly, what are the key things we can personalise to ensure a more cohesive lead follow-up strategy?
- Personalised greeting: did the message refer to the inquirer by name?
- Individual sender: did the ‘from’ line of the email list a human name, or a generic name?
- Signature or contact information: did the message provide contact information for the sender?
- Success factor: did the sales associate move the conversation forward?
- Personalised content: did the content of the email reference the lead’s initial request?
To demonstrate just how important these things are, Sonny claimed: “Sending an email from an individual rather than a company name can increase your clickthrough rate by 31%.
“Including a signature in your email improves your response rate by 22%.
“Emails with personalised subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened by a recipient.
“Emails that resemble a personal letter are opened 137% more often and they enjoy 129% clickthrough rate.”
Clearly, the effectiveness of personalisation cannot be underplayed. And yet, 50% of organisations investigated by Conversica received an F grade, personalising just one element of their communications. 29.7% personalised five elements, receiving an A grade, while the remaining organisations fell fairly evenly into the B, C and D grades.
Performance
The quickest, most personalised and most persistent strategy means nothing if your email responses aren’t landing in the right place. With that in mind, the organisations researched were also graded on where their communications landed, receiving an A if it landed in a primary Gmail inbox, a D if it landed in Promotions or Social, and an F if it landed in Spam.
After all, leads are far more likely to respond if they find the communication in their primary inbox.
Sonny noted that it’s important to keep in mind that personalisation and performance go hand-in-hand here, as the “content of an email affects how it reaches the recipient”. In short, it’s absolutely critical for organisations to offer a human touch wherever possible.
Conclusion
Taking a look at the average scores across all of the investigated organisations across all of the four Ps, we can see that:
- 16% of companies received an A grade.
- 30% received a B.
- 17% received a C grade.
- 36% received a D grade.
- Only a handful received an F.
So, there is clearly work to be done.
Of course, even with the best of intentions and planning procedures, organisations cannot always be flawless in their lead follow-up approach. The main reason, Sonny explained, is capacity constraints. Put simply, business professionals simply do not have the time to ache over optimising their communication with leads.
The solution is technology and, whilst martech stacks are already something of a handful, the importance of the four Ps in this article hopefully goes some way in proving the importance of said technology.
Nevertheless, it’s important to realise that most tech tools (such as marketing automation platforms) simply cannot engage leads in a two-way conversation that drives leads to the next step towards a sale.
Therefore, AI virtual assistants can serve as the solution. These tools allow for all of the four Ps to be met, whilst not relying on a time-poor human being to operate them. These virtual assistants can ensure prompt, personalised and persistence messaging landing in the right place.
These assistants communicate in a human-like, two-way dialogue – it’s not just segmented mass-messaging. In fact, whilst there may be some misconceptions about how intelligent virtual assistants operate, Sonny claims the engagement of these tools can be dynamic across web chat, email or SMS text. In other words, these assistants can serve as the most productive member of your team, when used correctly.
Regardless of what steps you take next, hopefully you are now armed with the tools you need to optimise your lead follow-up strategy. Stop leaving revenue on the table, and start paying attention to the four Ps.
Remember: promptness; personalisation; persistence; performance. The research doesn’t lie.
