Third Tip for Using Lead Nurturing to Improve Sales Pipelines: Use web analytics and tracking

Use web analytics and tracking to adjust and mold your messages to your targets

Modern online marketing tools allow marketers to see who visits their websites, which pages are visited, and how different activities affect web traffic and results. Tracking and measuring effectiveness of lead nurturing is just as important – or perhaps more so – as tracking keyword, search engine, and web page effectiveness.

We’ll assume you’re using a comprehensive online marketing system, made up of bulk emailing, blogging, inbound marketing, web visitor tracking, CRM, and database integrity software tools. A well-conceived, well-executed online lead generation system (See our white paper entitled 21st Century Marketing for Effective Online Lead Generation at www.WinGreenMarketing.com/resourcecenter.aspx) allows you to send trackable emails to your prospects. Once they have responded to your initial lead generation campaign and self-identified themselves on your landing page, you’ll be able to track not only their “footprints” through your web pages, but also the effectiveness of your drip marketing efforts.

All lead nurturing emails should contain links back to pages on your website for prospects whose curiosity is aroused by the email they've received. Your goal isn’t to close business with a well-crafted nurturing email, but rather to create interest in the benefits of your products and earn trust that you are subject matter experts who might one day help the prospect achieve an objective. Therefore, your links shouldn't take people to “hard sell” pages, but rather to pages set up to deliver more information to those who wish to find it.
You can and should track all drip emails for the following:

• Was the email opened by the prospect?
• After landing on your website, did the prospect visit any other pages on the site? Which pages? In which order?
• Were any of the links within the email clicked? Which link(s)?

With this type of tracking information in hand, you should be able to make improvements to your drip program. For example, since multiple prospects will be receiving the same emails, you’ll be able to set up control groups, i.e. two different groups receiving the same email content but different subject line (to measure which subject line does better at getting people to open the email), or two different groups receiving similar email content but different links to see which links are more attractive. With control groups and web tracking, you’ll be able to see across many recipients which emails get opened and clicked and which do not. Armed with this knowledge, continuous improvement of your drip marketing tactics and methods becomes a way of life.