Closed-Loop Marketing in Lead Gen Campaigns: Lead Value and How to Track it

Online marketing has become a favorite of marketers due to the tracking resources that are available. Having the ability to attribute Key Performance Indicator metrics (KPIs) to campaigns is crucial in any marketing campaign. KPIs prove the value and success of campaigns. Armed with numbers that point to success, marketers can demand more budget and resources for future efforts. KPI metrics, from closed-loop marketing, also play a key role in optimizing campaigns towards success.

The availability of tracking solutions within many ad platforms makes understanding lead cost easy. Tools such as Google Analytics enhance ad platform tracking and work in place of limited or nonexistent tracking capabilities within ad platforms. Tracking form leads and understanding form lead cost is pretty commonplace at this point. Additionally, more advanced marketers are tracking chat and phone call lead generation.

However, most marketers stop at tracking lead cost and do not close the loop with sales to calculate lead value. The proper use of marketing automation (MA) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems to track and report on sales and lead value can set a marketer apart from the competition. The effort needed from sales to accomplish this is limited. This is no small thing as getting sales to report back accurately to marketing can be a cumbersome or impossible situation.

While there are certainly several tools and processes that can help close the loop. We’ll use as an example a solution where all the pieces may already exist within your organization – MA & CRM systems. This solution works for form submissions and can be adjusted to work for phone & chat leads. The first step in the process is to correctly set up MA to work across your site. Your MA solution should identify each user via a cookie and then capture users referring information on form completion. A savvy marketer will make use of a hidden form field to capture first referrer info to go along with last referrer.

The MA solution should now have all the relevant info needed to track the user – personal identification, contact information and referrer information. All leads in your MA solution should pass through to your CRM with the aforementioned data. At this point the sales team takes over. If the sales team uses the CRM to work leads and report on sales, then you should have everything you need to close the loop. If the sales team is not adequately using the CRM system, you will need to work with them on adopting certain processes and data entry within the CRM.

Once you have sales entering data correctly into the CRM, you have the ability to pull reports that will show sales revenue and potentially develop a customer lifetime value. Because you have pushed referrer information to the CRM, you can attribute these numbers to specific campaigns. This will allow you to tie costs to revenue and build a lead value for your campaigns. Developing a lead value and showing ad cost to sales ratios (Return on ad spend – ROAS) will prove a valuable weapon when fighting for more budget.

While you have closed the loop from marketing to sales, there is another loop that can be closed. That is sending internal revenue data back into the ad network’s system. Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising are good examples of systems that can import lead data from external sources. Since you have already captured the correct referrer information and attributed that information to sales revenue. You now need only to pass that information back to the ad network where the user came from. The referral info will identify the ad network the lead came from. There will be code in that referral string that will identify the user to the ad network. The ad network will be able to apply the conversion and revenue data back to a specific click, and its attributes, that led to the form lead. This is the piece that really empowers a marketer to optimize ad campaign components towards further success.

The process described above and other such processes, while known, have not been widely adopted. They can take time, resources and money to put in place. Marketers that have implemented closed-loop marketing are able to outperform their competition and prove it to their clients and leaders. The value in closing the loop is certainly worth the effort to put the proper systems in place.