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Long Term Follow-up - Does it really matter?

eddyshaf

Hat Trick
Jun 12, 2009
91
27
First Name
Edward
I have asked several industry "experts" this question many times over the years and have never received a satisfactory answer...so I thought I would bring it to the floor for discussion. Engagement Rate with Ghost Internet Leads...first I need to establish a few definitions:
  • Internet Lead = email lead from any source which hits your CRM and has valid contact information - either in the form of a good email or good phone number
  • Engaged Internet Lead = any Internet Lead who responds to an email or connects via phone/text etc. In other words a two way conversation has been established
  • Engagement Rate = the rate at which you are able to engage with internet leads
  • Ghost Internet Lead = any Internet Lead who has not engaged despite multiple high quality attempts (phone, email, text, Facebook, IM, you name it, etc...) to contact over a 14 day period
  • Ghost Rate = the rate at which Internet Leads are not engaged within the first 14 days
  • Intermediate Follow Up = any follow up attempted with a Ghost Internet Lead after day 15
  • Long Term Follow Up = any follow up attempted with a Ghost Internet Lead after day 45 or perhaps day 60 or day 90
So - hypothetically lets say that a dealership gets 400 Valid Internet Leads each month - and has an Engagement Rate of $75%, or 300 leads, and therefore a Ghost Rate of 25% or 100 leads.

The Questions Are:
  1. Of these 100 Ghost Leads, what engagement rate are you able to achieve by conducting Intermediate or Long Term Follow Up?
  2. Is anyone tracking this metric?
  3. What engagement rate would you rate as worthy of devoting resources to these Ghost Internet Leads?
  4. If you are performing this Intermediate and Long Term Follow Up, is it causing any unforeseen negative impact on either productivity or morale of your team?
  5. Are you even tracking Engagement Rate??
 
Is anyone tracking this metric?

I would guess not too many. Few dealers perform actual long term (intermediate) follow-up. Which leads me to the question - what would you consider feasible as a follow-up?
  • The infamous "Are you still in the market" email - over and over?
  • Emails including "like inventory" (image, data, link)?
  • Dealership newsletter once a month?
If you are performing this Intermediate and Long Term Follow Up, is it causing any unforeseen negative impact on either productivity or morale of your team?

Good question and something I always consider. Can we be efficient and will too much with little reward cause negativity.

What engagement rate would you rate as worthy of devoting resources to these Ghost Internet Leads?

How about re-visiting the dealership website?

What if you segment the leads by source? That may be a measurement to consider.
We may want to reach out to an eNewsletter service. Maybe they would have some stats to consider. But then again, not sure if they segment the customer/leads out between Prior and Post purchase.
 
@eddyshaf

Here's a little insight from a long-term customer follow-up perspective that might help you.

Letting go of an email lead is hard to do, but it might be your best long-term strategy.

Many people may have 2-3 email accounts and the email they gave you may be the email they use for promotional sign-ups and they are not actively checking it.

Although it may seem like it's not that big of a deal to keep emailing inactive/ghost leads, the problem is their lack of engagement can impact the deliverability of your other emails.

Here's a great Returnpath article that explains this issue:

6 Reasons to Treat Inactive Subscribers Like Zombies
http://blog.returnpath.com/blog/cas...subscribers-like-zombies#sthash.X70Hz2Tc.dpuf

We create customer newsletters for dealers and for salespeople. I frequently get asked if we can send the customer newsletter to their prospect list which includes lots of inactive emails. Many are surprised that we want nothing to do with prospect emails. The reason for this is that newsletter engagement with prospects is typically very low while their spam complaint rates are very high.

Which makes sense.

If I log into my throw-away email account once a month to track down the Bed, Bath and Beyond coupon I need, and see a newsletter from a dealer that I sent a vehicle inquiry to over a year ago, I'm very likely to mark it as spam since I have no relationship with them and I'm not in the market anymore.

My advice from a long-term email deliverability perspective would be to cut off your ghost leads if they have never been active after a certain period of time.

Additionally, removing the ghost leads should make your metrics more meaningful since you will now be measuring your effectiveness with those leads that have had some time of engagement.
 
  1. Of these 100 Ghost Leads, what engagement rate are you able to achieve by conducting Intermediate or Long Term Follow Up?
  2. Is anyone tracking this metric?
  3. What engagement rate would you rate as worthy of devoting resources to these Ghost Internet Leads?
  4. If you are performing this Intermediate and Long Term Follow Up, is it causing any unforeseen negative impact on either productivity or morale of your team?
  5. Are you even tracking Engagement Rate??
Guys this is a great thread and we can definitely shed some light. We have much of this data but I am going to need some time to put it together.

I am happy to see engagement rate and the other terms defined. We refer to the two different leads as interest vs. intent. Interest where they sent a lead vs intent to move forward. Let me get with my analytics person and I will post some data on an aggregate scale.

I will caution that this data is also very dependent on lead source. We have lead sources that engage in the 90 percent range and leads in the low teens. I wont feel comfortable posting the sources for obvious reasons but can show some differences in the data to highlight this.

I think you will find the long tail engagements interesting too since things like deliverability and consistent med and long term follow up play roles and the data illustrates that. I look forward to the discussion.

Dave
 

I will caution that this data is also very dependent on lead source. We have lead sources that engage in the 90 percent range and leads in the low teens. I wont feel comfortable posting the sources for obvious reasons but can show some differences in the data to highlight this.

Dave

@David Marod - :thumbup: thanks for your input and for your willingness to share your data. Despite the fact that you would not be comfortable dislosing sources, if you would be willing to indicate if the lead sources are 1st party (dealer controlled web properties), 2nd Party (VIN Specific on various sites) or 3rd Party (Generic, non-vin specific leads) I would be most grateful. :bow:
 
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