Accounting Lead Drive Nets 80% Opens,133% ROI

A recent MarketingSherpa case study should convince financial businesses of the value of a lead nurturing program. Crowe Horwath, a public accounting and consulting firm, wanted to fill its sales funnel and increase ROI, so it set out to build a lead nurturing program focused on banking C-suite executives — such as chief financial officers, chief risk officers and chief officers of operations -- and large financial institutions with at least $1 billion in assets. Leads would be sent free offers for premium content via e-mail, with topics based on identified business drivers: Dodd-Frank, anti-money laundering, process improvement and core systems. A list of 4,000 executives was e-mailed an invitation offer for a piece of content once every four weeks, with the topics cycling through the four areas. Anyone who downloaded content from an invitation e-mail entered into one of the nurturing program's four tracks, one for each topic. Once in the program, leads stopped receiving invitation e-mails and received one e-mail every three weeks with an offer for free content in the chosen track (there was also the option to switch tracks). Using information gathered, the program developed a scoring system for sales-ready leads based on asset size, title, and behavior (such as whether the prospect downloaded three or more pieces, forwarded material, or switched tracks). Result? Although Crowe Horwath's sales cycle lasts from 12 to 18 months on average, the lead program hit 133% ROI after only seven months. The nurturing e-mails had a whopping 75% to 80% open rate, and 33% of invited executives entered the program! For case study details, see http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/case-study/b2b-email-lead-nurture-program