Nurtures are the lifeblood of your marketing automation strategy, so tracking progression is a crucial metric. It provides feedback on how well you are aligned with the buyer’s journey. It also indicates how effectively you’re guiding leads through the process of learning about your business to prompt them to make a purchase.
Since journey nurtures are meant to align with the buyer’s journey, it’s important that marketers take a close look at where nurture campaigns are either succeeding or stalling, in order to improve future campaigns.
What Journey Nurture Progression Tells You
This metric gives you an indication of the overall quality of your content and messaging, as well as how well you’ve segmented your database. If there is an area where leads are not moving from one nurture stage into the next, it may be the wrong time to hit prospects with that particular message. Alternatively, maybe it is the right message, but going to the wrong audience.
If leads are not progressing nicely through the nurture journey, you’ll need to ask some basic questions:
- Is our content engaging enough?
- Should our messaging be resonating better?
- Are our nurtures segmented properly?
- Are we targeting the right segments?
- Are we reacting to our potential customers’ digital behavior?
The answers can help you course-correct. In the process, you may also learn more about your potential customers and gain insights into market trends.
How Journey Nurture Progression Works
Every marketing automation platform has its own approach to tracking this KPI. Marketo, Salesforce, or other platforms will likely require you to set up nurture membership along with goals for stage progression. Oracle Eloqua generally tracks journey nurture progression by default. Whatever the case for your company, get familiar with how your platform of choice handles this KPI. Regularly evaluate your entire nurture setup. That way, you can make sure that your lead flow continues to improve.
Don’t be afraid to experiment or get creative. This is the perfect place to learn what resonates with potential customers at each stage and what doesn’t, and it’s relatively easy to course-correct.
This is an excerpt from our eBook, “Building KPIs That Matter: A Tried-and-True Guide for Marketers”. Download and read the full eBook for free here.
