Testing and Optimizing Your Lead Nurturing Campaign

How to Collect Quantitative Data 

KPI Analytics 

KPIs, or key performance indicators, tend to be best suited for quantitative data research. They are, in a sense, the most straightforward way to collect this type of data, as they can be tracked and statistically analyzed directly—with the help of the right software of course. They are also more directly relevant than other methods to testing for lead nurturing, as they essentially provide variables for the tests. 

A large variety of tools are at marketers’ disposal for data collection and compilation, suited to every budget and company type. From Google Analytics to Crazy Egg to KissMetrics, the range of features and options available can be overwhelming, so time should be taken to make a well-researched decision about the option that fits your company best. 

Heat Maps and Click Analysis 

Heat maps are visual representations of data that provide information on how site visitors interact with specific pages and elements on your website or emails. A color or monochrome gradient is used to distinguish areas of higher activity. Examples of variations on heat maps include hover maps, scroll maps, mouse movement maps, attention maps, and more. 

Click maps, similarly, demonstrate which page elements are attracting the most attention and are actually being clicked on, such as CTA buttons, links, and interactive features. Outside of analytics that track metrics like click-through rates, supplemental click analysis can help to identify which site elements are being visually perceived by viewers as clickable or click-worthy.  

What to Optimize and Test in Your Lead Nurturing Campaign 

To evaluate the areas in which a lead nurturing campaign can be optimized, let’s review the key components of lead nurturing:  

• Lead scores and segments 
• Email marketing campaigns
• Landing pages and CTAs  
• Nurturing content pieces
• Social media and other channels of outreach
• Workflows 

Each of these components has specific metrics that can be analyzed to assess its performance and, likewise, be the focus of our optimization efforts. But how can we figure out which parts need optimization? The first step is to compare your observed metric to an established benchmark.

Sources for benchmarks include:

1. Historical performance (best option)
2. Industry benchmarks 
3. Campaign goals

Once we have decided what we are comparing our rates to, we want to know the metric we observed is significantly better (or worse) than those benchmarks. Now how do we do that? Enter the chi-square goodness of fit test. You can learn how to use this test in the video below.

Once you have found your poor performers you will need to prioritize your optimization activities because you can’t fix everything at once. We suggest applying a prioritization model, such as ICE (Impact, Confidence, Ease) or PIE (Potential, Importance, Ease), to your list to identify the highest potential improvements first. 

It can be helpful to begin by outlining a few key metrics by which to measure your lead nurturing as a whole. From here, you can move into determining more specific metrics for the pieces listed above. 

Thus, your conversion rate is the percentage of recipients who complete a desired action, designated as an indicator of their progress into the next phase. This could be a form submission, CTA click, or email open. To be more specific, “convertees” can be broken down into three categories: Leads, Marketing Qualified Leads, and Sales Qualified Leads.

Leads demonstrate some interest in your content, particularly top-of-funnel offers, and may fill out a form requesting their personal information. Marketing qualified leads (MQLs), meanwhile, engage more actively, taking interest in middle and perhaps even bottom-of-funnel offers. 

Finally, sales qualified leads (SQLs) have thoroughly interacted with your company and its offers and content. They are all but ready for a sales pitch! Lead nurturing focuses on the span of the conversion cycle, tracing the progress of leads to MQLs to SQLs. 

In B2C marketing, conversions can be relatively fast and simple, as they are connected to more instantaneous actions. In the B2B sales cycle, on the other hand, the conversion process requires longer investment and is more complex, based on a series of smaller conversions. Your conversion strategy will, of course, need to be optimized to best fit your company’s needs. 

The answer to what constitutes a “good” lead conversion rate is rather complex and subjective. Average rates vary between B2B and B2C, industries, individual companies, and more—numbers cited by marketing sources range from 2% to 10%. Industry-specific reports can be good resources for establishing ballpark benchmarks, but remember that consistent growth often matters more than surpassing a specific number.

Now, let’s dive into some specific lead nurturing elements including the most common metrics associated with each, ways to improve those metrics, and aspects to test.

How to Improve Email Metrics

Email Deliverability 

Signs that you are experiencing issues with email deliverability include a high number of bounced emails and/or a high number of emails being marked as spam.

Ways to improve bounce rate include:

1. Frequent list updates
2. Removing hard bounced email contacts
3. Sending emails from your own domain
4. Ensuring a new contact’s email address was typed correctly in your database 

Ways to improve spam rates:

1. Reducing the number of emails you are sending 
2. Sending emails from your own domain for legitimacy
3. Avoiding spammy subject lines
4. Including straightforward unsubscribe options in all emails 

Email Open Rates

If your open rates are performing significantly worse than your benchmarks, here are some ways to improve open rates:

1. Utilize email subject lines that are short, actionable, relevant, and pique a user’s curiosity. 
2. Send your emails from a person (i.e. tammy@campaigncreators.com instead of info@campaigncreators.com). Emails that come from a human often have a higher open rate.
3. Write persuasive “preview text” in order to give the recipient email context and improve open rate.
4. Use personalization in subject lines to connect with your recipients and increase authenticity.

The most useful and critical method to increase open rates is by constantly “Testing, Testing, Testing”. That’s because what works for another audience may or may not work for yours. Examples of useful tests to run to raise open rates include: 

1. Sender Tests - Sending emails from a brand name or an email address with company info in its name, from different representatives’ accounts, or from different email addresses (info@ vs. offers@ vs. tammy@).
2. Subject Line - Length, word choice, content, offer type and placement, etc.
3. Preview Text - Editing for length and content offers another opportunity to optimize the open rate of your emails.
4. Personalization - Placing a first name or even a company name in the subject line, preview text, or greeting of your email.
5. Time and Day - Determining optimal time and day of the week to send your email to a particular database.
6. Segmentation - Exploring numerous ways to create unique segments in your database.
7. Suppressions - Suppressing the segment of unengaged subscribers from the majority of email sends. 

Email Click-Through Rates

If your click-through, click to open, and/or clicks to conversion rate is underperforming, here are some tips for improving these metrics: 

1. Include a signature from a real person as well as their contact information with your email. This will improve trust, click-through rate, and email engagement.
2. Include bullet points, bolded text, and white-space to improve email skim-ability and the reader’s understanding of the email’s core message.
3. Include an image of your offer to give the reader a tangible connection to whatever it is you are trying to promote.
4. Include alt text with your images to ensure that recipients who have switched off images in their email provider still understand what value they provide and are encouraged to click.
5. Ensure each email has a single objective to improve clarity, decrease cognitive load, and increase click-through rate.
6. Include various CTA styles in your emails. Use a healthy mix of buttons, images, hyperlinks, and contextual links that lead to the same landing page.
7. Leverage an email testing tool to see how emails render in different email platforms (i.e., Outlook, Gmail, Apple Mail, etc.).

Again the best way to determine what works best for your audience is to test it. There are several test variables associated with click-through rates including:

1. Design - Tweaking elements including header banner, columns, and high vs. stripped-down design (see Lesson 5 for a standard example format).
2. Text-to-Image Ratio - Keep in mind the general rule that higher ratios of text to images tend to produce better-performing emails.
3. Length - Moderating the length of your emails and optimizing the design of those that are longer and guide readers short on attention or time.
4. CTAs - Type, color, placement, number on a page, etc.
5. Social Sharing - Deciding whether it is best to include social sharing links to engage your audience.
    

Improving Landing Page Metrics

If your landing pages are not converting at an acceptable rate compared to benchmarks, here are a few tips for improving them:

1. Ensure your form is above the fold when viewed on ANY device. Landing pages should be mobile, tablet, and desktop friendly. 
2. Be certain the number of required form fields are in line with the offer you are providing. For a top-of-the-funnel offering, simply requesting an email should do. 
3. If your landing page feels long, try including more than one form or CTA on the page. The user might forget about a form at the top after scrolling for a minute or two.  
4. Add a short video for explaining complex offers. PRO TIP: Try using a turnstile (embedded form) halfway through your video to boost video conversion rate. 
5. Create urgency by adding words on the page that will encourage your viewers to act sooner (on this visit) rather than later. Phrases such as “Limited Time Offer” or “Exclusive Deal” can achieve this. 
6. Figure out what your desired landing page action is and reinforce it numerous times with your CTA and supporting copy. 
7. Add visual and directional cues towards a part of your landing page, such as your form, that you would like to highlight. This will draw a visitor’s eyes and make sure they complete your desired action.
8. To speed up your page make sure your images are scaled appropriately for the box they are placed in, you minimize your CSS files, enable browser caching, turn on compression at the server level for your website, delete or deactivate any website plugins that are no longer in use, and reduce the number of redirects associated with your site. Redirects generate extra HTML requests and increase load time.

The best way to determine what works to convert your landing page visitors is to test it. There are several test variables associated with landing pages including:

1. Main headline
2. Main image (size, placement, people vs. no people, icon vs. photo)
3. Button (Text, placement, design, size, color)
4. Form (Length, color, layout, placement)
5. Long copy vs. short copy
6. Header image/banner vs. none
7. Bullets lists vs. paragraph copy
8. Testimonials vs. none
9. Call-to-action

Improving Social Metrics

The best way to find out what your audience will respond to (and what the social algorithms will like) is to test variables like:

1. Headlines and copy
2. Posting time
3. Posting frequency
4. Type (image, link, text, video, audio)
5. Content (question, opinion, news, stats, quote, poll, tip, etc.)
6. Calls to action
7. Hashtags

Improving Blog Metrics

Tips for improving the conversion rates of blogs include:

1. Using a mix of buttons and in-text hyperlinks.
2. Writing your blogs with your persona in mind first, and Google second.
3. Choose the right font—large and easy to read. This will keep your visitors from getting frustrated and leaving the page. 
4. Make sure your blog is responsive to being viewed on mobile.
5. Only insert links to your campaign in blog posts that are relevant to that campaign.
6. Match the tone and style of your blog, CTA, and landing page language. This will provide consistency and boost conversion rates.

You can also try testing the following elements on your blog:

1. Headline
2. H2’s (sub-headings)
3. Font (size, typeface, and color)
4. Images along with their frequency and placement
5. Call-to-action (position, color, text)
6. Adding multimedia like audio or video

A thoroughly researched hypothesis doesn’t guarantee a winning test. What it does guarantee is a learning opportunity, no matter the outcome (winner, loser, or inconclusive experiment).

Another consideration is the desired statistical significance of your results. Setting your confidence level to a higher percentage is equivalent to investing in the accuracy of results.

There are a number of sample size calculators available that will determine your needed sample size per variation needed based on these three factors.

For A/B testing emails, you just need to ensure that each variation is sent to the calculated sample size. For landing pages and website A/B testing, you'll translate sample size into the estimated time you need to run your test with two calculations:

Calculation #1: Sample size  × 2 = Total # of visitors needed

Calculation #2: Total # visitors needed ÷ Average # of visitors per day = Test duration (in days)

4. Go Forth and Test 

Though your variations should be tested simultaneously, there is nothing wrong with selecting testing times strategically. For instance, well-timed email campaigns will deliver results more quickly. Determining these times require some research of subscriber segments. As mentioned, depending on the nature of the piece, your site traffic, and the statistical significance that needs to be achieved, the test could take anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks. 

If you are interested in gaining some additional insight into the reasoning behind your visitors’ reactions, consider asking for qualitative feedback. Exit surveys and polls can quite easily be added to site pages for the duration of the testing period. This information can add value and efficiency to your results.  

5. Evaluate the Results 

Using your pre-established hypothesis and key metrics, it's time to interpret your findings. Keeping confidence levels in mind as well, it will be necessary to determine statistical significance with the help of your testing tool or another calculator. If one variation proves statistically better than the other, congratulations! You can now take action appropriately to optimize the campaign piece. 

6. In Case of “Test Failure” 

If your test failed to achieve a statistically significant result—that is, the test was inconclusive—several options are available. 

For one, it can be reasonable to simply keep the original variation in place. You may also choose to reconsider your significance level or re-prioritize certain metrics. Finally, a more powerful or more dramatically different variation may be in order for your next test. 

Most importantly, if your A/B test “failed”, do not be afraid to try again. After all, the adage “practice makes perfect” fully applies to testing methods. 

A/B vs. Multivariate Testing

Multivariate testing is founded on the same key principle as its A/B counterpart. The difference is in the higher number of variables being tested. The goal is to determine which particular combination of variations performs best, and examine the “convertibility” of each variation in the context of other variables rather than simply a standalone process. In many ways, it can be a more sophisticated practice. 

This type of testing is a great way to examine more complex relationships between optimizable elements. In theory, it is possible to test hundreds of combinations out side-by-side! Notedly, multivariate tests have their disadvantages, particularly with regards to the greater amount of time and number of site visitors needed to conduct them effectively.

As you can see, the launch of a lead nurturing campaign is only the beginning. If you want to experience success, you have to continually seek opportunities for improvement.  As Tom Peters aptly pointed out,

“Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence - only in constant improvement and constant change.”

-Tom Peters

Feel like you have a better understanding of testing and optimizing your lead nurturing campaigns? Take your learning to the next level by applying your knowledge in the Lesson 9 Exercise below.

Lesson 9 Exercise

Identify and Prioritize Optimization Opportunities

Select one element of your lead nurturing campaign to evaluate for optimization (i.e., an email, landing page, blog post, social post, or workflow). Under this lesson’s section, What to Optimize and Test in Your Lead Nurturing Campaign, find the section dedicated to your chosen campaign element. Use this section to guide you through the following steps:

1. Gather the observed metrics listed for that element.
2. Determine your benchmarks for each metric.
3. Compare your observed metrics to your benchmarks.
4. If this element is underperforming, create a list of optimization activities or tests you could run to improve this struggling metric.
5. Prioritize your list using a prioritization model such as PIE or ICE.

Next up in Lesson 10 of the Lead Nurturing Masterclass, we’ll wrap things up with the best practices for a winning lead nurturing strategy.