Marketing Profs

Chances are that you've heard of lead nurturing and are even using it, to some degree, within your marketing and sales strategy.

Lead nurturing is supremely valuable to ensure that long-term leads and qualified prospects do not fall into a black hole between marketing and sales.

Whether you are campaigning to gain budget approval to implement your nurturing strategy or need to illustrate ROI for an existing nurturing program—or you are just trying to evaluate your current tactics—effective measurement of your nurturing program is critical.

Outlined below are five steps to measure your nurturing initiative and start having it be viewed as a profit center rather than a cost center.

Step No. 1

The first step in measuring your nurturing strategy is to clearly define the criteria required for a lead to be considered "sales-ready," and thus handed off to the sales team for closure.

The mistake that many marketers make is defining the criteria for this classification without input and buy-in from the sales department. However, defining the criteria is a responsibility of both marketing and sales managers.

In determining the criteria, consider the length of your sales cycle as well as the steps within the sales process. This approach will help determine when a prospect needs to move from a nurturing representative to a sales executive.

The minimum criteria should include a planned and defined project, timeframe, budget, and willingness to consider your solution.

As part of your measurement, establish and report on the lead rate for the program. For companies with a complex and lengthy sales cycle, 10-15% of your nurturing conversations should result in a "sale-ready" lead.