Study: Three Out Of Four Marketers Looking To Improve Lead Nurturing

New data shows that three out of four marketers are looking to further optimize their nurturing strategies and 82% plan to increase spend on marketing technologies in the second half of 2014. Those were some of the key results of the annual State of B2B Lead Nurturing. The study, conducted by Bizo in association with Oracle Marketing Cloud, gathered responses from more than 500 B2B digital marketers.

Nearly 60% of these marketers reported that they are delivering at least 20% of B2B company revenues, and almost 25% contributing more than 40%.

Despite the fact that 72% of the respondents currently have a marketing automation platform, only 30% can confidently say that their organizations have fully implemented well-integrated multichannel nurture programs. Email remains the dominant nurture channel, but it’s clear that having the ability to nurture multiple channels is invaluable.

"Relying solely on email for lead nurturing is preventing B2B marketers from getting to the next level of business impact," said David Karel, CMO of Bizo. "With only 5% of website visitors willingly providing an email address, marketers' need to find other channels or risk limiting nurturing efforts to a very small portion of their target audience.  Multi-channel nurturing represents a massive opportunity to reach prospects beyond the inbox and really boost the return on their marketing spend."

Other findings from the report include:

  • 36% state that less than one quarter of their budget goes to acquiring new leads, showing that more emphasis is put on nurturing existing prospects;
  • 79% state that their email open rates are not exceeding 20%, showing that there is still room for improvement in the email channel; and
  • Roughly 70% of marketers stated that their email, display, search and social are only somewhat integrated, or not integrated at all.

 

Click here to view the full report.