What is the Value of a Lead?

Note: This post was archived from the Infusionsoft Blog. More details here.

While researching data for our weekly webinar, I dug up some interesting data about Infusionsoft customers and how much value they receive from marketing automation software.

As it turns out, the customers that use Infusionsoft for their e-commerce transactions have processed $782,374,314 in transactions this year so far.  Those same customers have also had 19,525,449 web form submissions (into their software). If you do the math, that’s $47.05 per web form submission!

Now, don’t go all crazy on me just yet…

I know there is no way to prove a causal relationship between the web form submissions and the e-commerce transactions. And, the way I pulled the data, I did not filter by unique person in either case (the e-commerce transactions include repeat transactions by the same customers, and the web form submissions also include people who filled out more than one web form or even filled out the same web form more than once). So, the data isn’t perfect. Having been in pharmaceutical sales in a previous life, I’m very familiar with how companies can manipulate data to make a point. (It’s easier than you might think.)

So, the data is interesting to say the least. It got me thinking about the value of a lead, or in this case a web form submission.  Most small businesses have no clue what a lead is worth to them. But this is one of the essential keys to growing a business.  You can’t grow until you understand the lifetime value of your customers, the value of a new customer, the value of a lead, etc.

You can do the simple math: total number of leads divided by the total amount of revenue. And that’s a start. What about looking at other measures like web form submissions, emails, etc? The more we can understand about our leads, the more we can turn the dials to grow our businesses. Imagine if you knew how many web forms the average customer filled out before becoming a customer, and which web forms.  Or how many emails they opened and clicked, and which emails they opened and clicked.  Imagine if you know which pages of your site they typically visited and in what order and what interval.

Data is powerful. Understanding this data would help you know which calls to action to put in what order. That would increase conversions and give you multiple places to test and increase conversions more. Making money is really a geek’s game now. Those who know what questions to ask, know how to get the data and are disciplined enough to look at it, will win.

Are you interested in interesting stats like this? If so, let me know in the comments and I’ll see what I can dig up.

[Image credit: foxymoron]

About Tyler Garns

Tyler Garns is best known for his work as the Director and VP of Marketing at Infusionsoft, where he led the marketing efforts that produced massive results between 2007 and 2012. But he’s also been the “go-to” Infusionsoft guy for many of the top marketers and Infusionsoft users out there. His combination of technical skill, Infusionsoft expertise, and marketing experience make him one of the most reliable sources of business breakthroughs for Infusionsoft customers.

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