What Should You Do With Low-Quality Leads?
What Should You Do With Low-Quality Leads?
This is the first of two parts in a two-part series. The first part of this article discusses what to do with your low-quality leads. Part two goes over how to collaborate with your SimpSocial Customer Outcomes Manager to get the best results. Keep an eye out for next week’s episode!
Many of our customers have told us that they want our Intelligent Virtual Assistants to work all of their leads, even if they know they’re low-quality. It can be difficult to get results with these leads, but we’ve learned a lot along the way.
Here are three simple steps to ensure that we are working your leads as effectively as possible and, as a result, getting the best results possible.
#1 Examine your lead segmentation strategy.
The first step is to assess how you go about identifying and working leads for work. Are you selecting the best SimpSocial skill for each lead bucket with care?
Consider the following questions: Are your leads’ backgrounds consistent with the descriptions of each skill in our articles? Are your objectives in line with the conversation’s direction? Are you rejecting leads based on certain characteristics, such as the ones listed below?
When your Marketing Automation System (MAS) or reps emailed you previously, it bounced.
You may have previously unsubscribed or marked your emails as spam.
The “Created Date” is older than two years, or the “Last Activity Date” is older than 100 days.
A representative has recently or is currently disqualifying you.
At the moment, I’m working on a new project.
Existing Clients
Resellers or Partners
Accounts that aren’t in your ideal customer profile should be targeted (ICP)
Leads in these categories, if not carefully segmented and targeted, may appear unhealthy, negatively impacting your results. It’s a good idea to think about what you know about your leads and target them appropriately.
#2 Take a look at the Lead Quality Report.
The second step is to review the Lead Quality Report in your SimpSocial dashboard to determine which leads may require additional nurturing before being worked by your Intelligent Virtual Assistants:
On the right, you can see our healthy lead thresholds. We understand that no one has 100 percent healthy leads in their various systems, but there comes a point where continuing to email low-quality leads is too risky. On the right-hand side of each health scale, this is indicated (i.e. no more than 5 percent of your overall lead volume should bounce). To put it another way, if you see red, you should be aware that something requires your attention.
Most of the time, all you need to do is educate a specific segment of leads before contacting them with your Intelligent Virtual Assistant. When leads bounce, unsubscribe, or mark our emails as spam, they’re telling us they’re not ready for sales, and thus aren’t ready for SimpSocial. They are, however, ideal for your Marketing Automation System.
Use your MAS to further educate your leads about your product or service and warm them up. You should be able to send content-rich emails with images, pricing and discounts, and links using your MAS. This is ideal for informing your leads and piqueing their interest in your product.
Your MAS can be used to direct leads to consumer content or webinars. These actions generate organic leads for MQL and prepare them for SimpSocial outreach. This is a perfect scenario.
However, we recognize that not every situation is ideal. If you don’t have a MAS, you could use a free/low-cost solution like MailChimp for manual uploads, or you could use SimpSocial’s Drive Action Standalone conversations to encourage your leads to consume your content or attend your events.
If you want to use SimpSocial to drive content consumption rather than sales conversations, you’ll need to filter and suppress bounced email addresses, leads who say they don’t want to be emailed (in writing or over the phone), and those who opted in to your outreach more than 270 days ago.
You should set up an ongoing cadence of adding unconverted leads into SimpSocial every few months, regardless of whether you use MailChimp, a MAS, or SimpSocial to drive content consumption. You can do this with conversation types that refer back to the nurturing emails you sent, such as Reengage (if nurtured by MAS 3 months ago), Sales Attempted Contacts (if DQd or unconverted by Sales recently), or Dual Outreach (if contacted in any way recently without converting). SimpSocial then checks in to see if they’re ready to talk about sales now.
#3 Figure out where your low-quality leads are coming from.
The third step is to pinpoint the common source, list, or campaign that is supplying your account with the lowest-quality leads.
Begin by concentrating on the metrics that are red or cause the most concern. Hover your mouse over the red bars to see what’s going on. Then click “View Leads” to see if any of them share a Lead Source value or a campaign name. If you can find a common source, weigh the benefits and drawbacks of continuing to contact those leads or considering putting them through a MAS nurture stream before re-entering them into SimpSocial.
You can also use the “Compare” button to see unhealthy metrics across conversations, lead sources, client lists, and other areas to see which ones contribute to the most unhealthy leads. To identify contributors on a relative basis, percentage metrics can be selected from the comparison report (e.g. which lead source has the highest percentage of leads unsubscribing).
If you’re getting a lot of bounces from a paid source or a partner, you should try contacting them and asking for compensation, exclusivity, or newer leads.
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