What to Do With Your Lower-Quality Leads

This is the first part of a two-part article. Part one discusses what to do with your lower-quality leads. Part two discusses how you can work with your Conversica Customer Outcomes Manager to achieve the best results. Tune in next week!

Over the years, we’ve had many customers who want our Intelligent Virtual Assistants to work all of their leads, including leads that they know are lower quality. Getting results with these leads can be a challenge, but we’ve learned a lot along the way.

Here are three easy steps to ensure that we are working your leads in the best possible ways and thus getting the best possible results.

#1 Evaluate How You’re Targeting Lead Segments

Your first step is to evaluate how you’re identifying leads to work and how you’re working them. Are you carefully selecting the best Conversica skill for a given lead bucket?

Ask yourself these questions: Do the backgrounds of your leads match the background descriptions of each skill described in our articles? Are your goals in line with what the conversation is driving toward? Are you suppressing leads based on certain qualities like the following?

• Previously bounced when emailed by your Marketing Automation System (MAS) or reps
• Previously opted-out or marked your emails as spam
• “Created Date” is more than two years ago or last activity date is more than 100 days ago
• Recently or currently disqualified by a rep
• Currently associated with an open opportunity
• Current Customers
• Partners or Resellers
• Target accounts or accounts outside of your ideal customer profile (ICP)

If not carefully segmented and targeted, leads in these categories could appear unhealthy and impact your results negatively. It’s wise to carefully consider what you know about your leads and target them accordingly.

#2 Study the Lead Quality Report

Your second step is to study the Lead Quality Report built into your Conversica dashboard to get a better sense of which leads might need more nurture before being worked by your Revenue Digital Assistants:

On the right, you can see our thresholds for healthy leads. We know that no one has 100-percent healthy leads in their various systems, but there is a point at which it’s too risky to continue emailing low-quality leads. This is indicated on the right-hand side of each health scale (i.e. no more than 5 percent of your overall lead volume should bounce). In other words, if you see red, you know that something needs your attention.

It is very likely that all you need to do is educate a specific segment of leads first, before reaching out to them with your Intelligent Virtual Assistant. When leads bounce, unsubscribe, or mark our emails as spam, they’re communicating to us that they are not sales-ready, and therefore not ready for Conversica, either. However, they are perfect for your Marketing Automation System.

Leverage your MAS to warm up your leads by further educating them about your product or service. Your MAS should allow you to send content-rich emails full of images, pricing and discounts, and links. This is ideal for educating your leads and stoking their appetite for your solution.

You can use your MAS to drive leads to consumer content or attend your webinars. These actions cause leads to MQL organically and prepare them for Conversica outreach. This is the ideal situation.

Then again, we understand that not all situations are ideal. If you don’t have a MAS, you could look into using a free/cheap solution like MailChimp for manual uploads or even use Conversica to drive your leads to consume your content or attend your events with our Drive Action Standalone conversations.

If you choose to use Conversica to drive content consumption instead of Sales conversations, you must filter out and suppress email addresses that bounce, leads who express (in writing or even over the phone) that they do not want to be emailed, and those who opted-in to your outreach more than 270 days ago.

Regardless of whether you use MailChimp, a MAS, or Conversica to drive content consumption, you should also set up an ongoing cadence of adding unconverted leads into Conversica every few months. You can do this with 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) conversation types that refers back to the nurturing emails you sent. Conversica then checks in to see if they might now be ready for a Sales conversation.

#3 Identify the Sources of Your Lowest-Quality Leads

Your third step is to identify the common source, list, or campaign contributing the lowest-quality leads to your account.

Start by focusing on the metrics that are red or most concerning. Hover your mouse over the red bars. Then click on “View Leads” to see if they have a common Lead Source value or campaign name. If you’re able to identify a common source, you’ll need to weigh the pros and cons of continuing to reach out to those leads at all or consider putting them through a MAS nurture stream before adding them back into Conversica.

You could also click on “Compare” to see unhealthy metrics across conversations, lead sources, client lists, and more to see which ones contribute to the most unhealthy leads. Percentage metrics can also be chosen from the comparison report to identify contributors on a relative basis (e.g. which lead source has the highest percentage of leads unsubscribing).

If you have a high number of bounces from a paid source or a partner, you might consider reaching out to that partner and asking them for compensation, exclusivity, or fresher leads.

Have questions? Schedule a meeting with your Customer Outcomes Manager about ensuring healthy lead quality in your Conversica solution.

And tune in next week for Part Two of this article.