When is a lead a dead lead? – Part 2: The marketing perspective

By Ashley Jessen, Co Founder and CEO, Profile Booster

Ashley Jessen is an FX industry marketing and content expert based in Sydney, Australia. His credentials include the publication of a series of books over the last five years on CFD trading, as well as having held senior marketing positions at Invast, CMC Markets and MF Global.

When is a lead a dead lead part 1 can be viewed here.

You’ve done enough (and paid enough) to earn the trust from your prospective client for them to open a demo, download your lead magnet or view your webinar. Now what?

The path you take to nurture your prospect across to a live, active trading client is critical at the outset, but even more so the longer they remain on your list.

The cost to acquire a live trading client is so high that every lead you have is incredibly important. It goes without saying, it is much easier to sell an existing lead on a new product or service than it is to acquire a new one. So the power goes to those who can utilise the most efficient methods of nurturing and credibility building, in order to win them across to their business.

Today I will take you through 2 key methods you and your team can employ to maximise your opportunities with every lead you generate.

The first 30 days – We’re talking absolutely Gold here

Irrespective of how you acquired your warm lead, the first 30 days is absolutely critical to your success in converting them from luke warm to an active trading client. For marketing and sales teams alike, the first 30 days are truly the ‘golden period’.

You likely have 5 main lead acquisition strategies in play at any one time, which will include:

• New demo leads
• eBook leads
• Leads generating from a video series
• Webinar leads
• Seminar leads (Meetups)

Each of these methods generate leads with certain expectations in mind and so your nurturing campaign to each must be specific and provide as much value as possible, especially in the first 30 days.

Segmentation of your lead lists and email nurturing

Each prospect who comes on board enters via the key areas mentioned above. Now your lead acquisition should be linked up to some sort of marketing automation platform, such as Marketo, Eloqua, InfusionSoft or Pardot to name a few.

Marketing Automation platforms allow you to work with your lead lists using segmentation. Segmentation is the ability to incorporate the key buying characteristics and behavioural patterns to personalise your messages to your database. If when you read that you thought of Amazon and how targeted they are once you buy a book, then you’ve got it. Amazon are incredible at segmentation and email nurturing.

Segmentation benefits include higher open rates, higher engagement and click through rates and a much more personalised service, making the customer journey enjoyable.

Your goal with segmentation and marketing automation

As a modern digital marketer, the goal is to utilise the digital technology available to you and create nurturing campaigns for each lead source. This will allow you to personalise the journey and give them a true sense of what you have to offer, but personalised to their interests.

But won’t some slip through the cracks?

Inevitably, and often a shock to the sales manager running the show, a large number of leads are not going to convert to live trading clients. Prospects will go cold, they will slip through the cracks or just simply lose interest in what you have to offer.

So when is a lead a dead lead?

There are 2 key aspects to consider with this:

• Leads from a sales departments perspective
• Leads from a marketing departments perspective
• Let’s take a look at the sales perspective

Always Be Closing (ABC) is a mantra from way back in the 90’s when it used to be popular to hit people over the head with your offer, ram it down their throats and beat them with pure frustration, in order to get the sale.

Nowadays, at least on the sales teams I’ve worked with, closing in the Forex space requires a consultative approach, getting to understand the style of trader you are dealing with and navigating them to open a live account, but in terms that are specific to them, which you identified by asking excellent open ended questions.

Often the timeframe to close a lead will sit at the 15-20 day mark (averages) and so anything after that period, then the chance of success diminishes considerably. For ease of example, let’s consider a sales lead (someone you can call and chat to on the phone) a dead lead after 30 days.

Leads from a marketing perspective

Marketing is incredibly important for online brokerage houses, simply because the sales teams are often thin on the ground and just do not have the time to contact every lead. Further to this, most sales calls ‘hit’ 50% of the time, meaning you cannot call all your prospects at their preferred time, all day every day.

Marketing is able to fill that void in the first 30 days and then nurture all leads once they are dead according to the sales team.

Campaigns marketing departments utilise to keep leads warm

Here are a few of the common email nurturing campaigns marketing teams can employ in order to keep prospects ‘alive’.

• Create an eBook giveaway to entice them to download it
• Deposit bonus offers or downside protection offers
• Refer a friend campaign to earn cash in their trading account
• Reactivation campaigns (make a trade and receive a bonus offer)
• New product launch or new trading instruments
• Regular weekly, fortnightly or monthly newsletters
• Daily trade alerts from recommendation services or in-house analysts

A concept to consider for your current prospects (Strategy 1)

Let’s say you have a regular weekly newsletter which initially goes to everyone. After 6 months, you find your open rates are sliding and people are just not engaging like they used to.
First thing you can do to improve this situation is for your next newsletter, use segmentation to send it to those that have:

• Opened an email in the last 6 months or
• Clicked on the website in the last 6 months

So after 6 months you find the least interested people drop off your communication and only those who are engaged and interested receive your updates. What you will find is your open rates and click-through rates will pick up.

Then after 9 months (3 months after implementing the 6-month segmentation rule), you can introduce an enticing offer, such as a new piece of cutting edge analysis or a new video series or a trade opportunity with the next big macro event coming up (such as the Brexit or Fed raising rates etc).

Your goal with this new piece is to get the old list activated again and engaging with your website and emails.

The great news is a percentage of these ‘not interested’ leads, will grab the new information and therefore the process starts again and they enter back into the ‘system’ to receive your regular communication. They will then receive your news and alerts for at least the next 6 months, giving you another opportunity to win them over.

Proactively killing off your old leads – Are they dead yet? (Strategy 2)

Another strategy to consider is to create a very ‘active’ campaign for those that haven’t engaged or done anything for say 12 months. These are truly old leads and will take some time to reactivate.

So, run a 5-part campaign focused on asking them to open a live account with only 2 options in mind:

1. Open a live account and trade with us; or
2. Our offers clearly aren’t for you, so please consider unsubscribing

Every day for 5 straight days, your old dead leads will receive either a compelling offer to open an account or just outline the key benefits for doing business with your company. Don’t be pushy, but definitely go for opening a live. Don’t ask them to grab a demo or download a new eBook guide.

Once you have given these 2 methods a crack and the lead hasn’t unsubscribed, it may be safe to say this lead is now dead from both a sales and marketing point of view.