Leads are the lifeblood of most businesses. And everyone knows that lead quality is important. But exactly how important?
A recent survey from research-based marketing firm Ascend2 puts some real numbers to this question. They surveyed 260 marketing influencers, mostly at the senior management level, across a broad range of B2B and B2C firms ranging from small businesses to 500+ employee operations. Their report “Strategies, Tactics and Trends for Lead Generation Quality” is literally hot off the press, with survey data gathered less than a month ago as of this writing in September 2019.
Survey says …
Here are some of the more interesting results from this survey:
Yes, lead quality does matter. 95% of respondents felt that a lead generation quality strategy was successful for them, with 35% viewing it as a best-in-class strategy.
Social media and email marketing are king. These two channels were viewed as the most effective tactics for improving lead quality by 59% and 40% of respondents, respectively, with website personalization coming in a close third at 38%.
Firms are putting their money where their mouth is. 88% of respondents plan to increase their budget for lead generation quality, with nearly 20% expecting this budget to increase significantly.
The key strategy: getting personal. Personalization of marketing efforts (60%) and improving content and content engagement (57%) were far and away the most popular strategies for improving lead quality among respondents – and also the two biggest challenges going forward. Data cleaning was also a key strategy cited by 15% of respondents, with 20% seeing this as one of their challenges.
These findings – particularly the last one – dovetail with a message we’ve been sharing for years: that lead quality is critical to marketing and CRM, and it starts with having clean, accurate leads in the first place. More importantly, lead quality is part of a larger trend in marketing: we are steadily moving away interruptive, “spray and pray” marketing, and towards building targeted personalized relationships that benefit customers.
Our take on lead quality
Our company was founded in 2001 with the idea of reducing the waste associated with unwanted and misdirected marketing contacts. Today, a similar goal has become one of the most important objectives of marketing: improving the yield and cost-effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
To us, this starts with contact data that is genuine, accurate, and up-to-date. According to figures cited by HubSpot, nearly a quarter of marketing emails never even make it to the recipient’s inbox, while nearly a quarter of your lead data degrades every year. This where the power of data quality plays an essential role.
Data quality best practices dictate that ensuring leads are correct at the time of capture and validating the accuracy before executing a marketing campaign is the most effective way to achieve ROI, assist in data privacy compliance efforts and improve customer satisfaction.
And the results are real. As the Ascend2 survey points out, lead quality has become a competitive factor that no one can afford to ignore nowadays. Thankfully, with the aid of a little automation, better lead quality is something every marketing operation can put into practice nowadays.
To find out how we can help your business ensure the quality of your leads, visit our product page and get started with a free trial key.
