15 Must-Know Statistics About the Importance of Lead Nurturing

According to Forrester Research, companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales leads at 33% lower cost per lead. As such, B2B marketers should understand that every lead is not instantly ready for a sales call. Just because they’ve downloaded your whitepaper or attended a webinar doesn’t mean that marketing should hand them over to sales, no matter how much they are clamoring for leads. In the end, locating potential buyers is easy but converting them to customers is more complex and requires some added TLC. From the first interaction to the point of purchase, building relationships with buyers during each step of their journey helps you move accounts through the pipeline more quickly.

Don’t believe me? The data below will prove how lead nurturing is essential to gain and keep your customers.

• According to the Annuitas Group, businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads and nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads.
• Lead nurturing emails get 4-10 times the response rate compared to standalone email blasts. (DemandGen Report)
• Nurtured leads experience a 23% shorter sales cycle. (Market2Lead)
• According to Gartner Research, lead nurturing can potentially save 80% of your direct mail budget and bring a 10% or greater increase in revenue over 6-9 months.
• Gleanster reports that 74% of top-performing companies use automated lead nurturing.
• B2B marketers say the #1 benefit of marketing automation is the ability to generate more and better leads (Pepper Global)
• Marketing technology streamlines the implementation of lead nurturing tactics and is ”extremely important” to 75% of companies and “somewhat important” to another 22% (Ascend2)
• 68% of B2B companies will use landing pages to nurture new sales leads for future conversion (Marketing Sherpa)
• 74% of companies say converting leads into customers is their top priority (Hubspot)
• 48% of businesses say most of their leads require “long cycle” nurturing with many influencers. (Ascend2)
• Only 29% of brands nurture their existing customers beyond the initial purchase. (Demand Gen)
• 79% of top-performing companies have been using marketing automation for three or more years. (Pardot)
• 80% of marketers using automation software generate more leads; 77% convert more of those leads. (VB Insight, APSIS)
• On average, organizations that nurture their leads experience a 45% percent lift in lead generation ROI over those organizations that do not. (MarketingSherpa)
• 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales, the common cause being lack of lead nurturing (Marketing Sherpa)

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at every stage of the buyer’s journey.