EduDirectResponse is a firm believer in optimizing statistics to increase conversion rates at all levels of the lead generation funnel. In order to do this successfully a company must either conduct a lot of their own research or find third party research and test those findings.
Available Research
We have recently found a handful of interesting research pieces, when combined, could account for increased conversions among leads. We’ll be testing the findings shortly in education but I wanted to list them for you here.
- Leads360 presented findings at LeadsCon Las Vegas earlier this year that outlined the value of persistence. They concluded that six call attempts lead to the highest probability for conversion. Their whitepaper does not break down the optimal wait time between calls but they went over this information in their LeadsCon presentation which I’ll try to dig up and update.
- Combine that with their most recent study on call center conversions by time and day of the week and we’re making headway.
- The last piece of interesting information is LeadCritic’s recent post about the 15 day clean up crew. The title caught my attention and I found a lot of parallels with Mike’s recount of the 2004 – 2007 mortgage boom and the education industry today. Although education probably has less volume demand than mortgage at its peak, it is still a big industry due to today’s high unemployment rates.
Mortgage lead buyers realized the importance of speed to contact, but many also realized what the consumer was experiencing during the first week after filling out a lead form. In most cases all 5 companies, and sometimes more, called the leads quickly and extremely often. Because of this many leads simply stopped answering the phones. They stopped answering the phone until the calls actually started to slow down or stopped altogether. The savvy lead buyers came through the back door, sometime around day 12-15, and began calling the lead again. Many of them were very successful with this tactic and increased their bottom line ROI. -LeadCritic
What Does All This Mean?
This means two important things that are basic in nature but easy to overlook.
- This research can be applied to any lead generation vertical.
- This data is extremely valuable if implemented. If you are running a successful lead gen business that relies on converting leads, why not structure or split test an approach that has proven data behind it?
Each of the three separate studies have shown to increase conversions to a varying degree. By combining all three approaches with methods that are already working well for your company, this should result in some type of increase to your bottom line.
Like I said before, we’ll be testing this data with various partners over the next couple of months in education marketing. If we find compelling data we’ll report back. In the mean time, lead conversion is mostly a numbers game so if tweaking and split testing your approach can help everyone’s margins, then what are you waiting for?
