B2B Email metrics are broken – here’s what to do instead

Every day on LinkedIn someone says “MQLs are dead” or “Email Clicks and Opens are Vanity Metrics.”

Yet, I never see anyone offer a real solution.

Today you will learn how to tell a story about how your email nurturing programs drive faster pipeline velocity and higher average selling prices (ASP) than doing nothing.

I’ve done this. In real life. And it works. Completely shifts the conversation from volume to executive outcomes like pipeline, revenue, and more.

Here’s how to prove Email is a B2B revenue accelerator.

Why Vanity Clicks and Opens are Dead

Opens and clicks helped a lot back in 2002 when they were more accurate and when there wasn’t much else to go on. It felt good to click and to see clicks.

The challenge is many email marketers at the time were in B2C ecommerce leveraging early UTM parameters to track if a click went straight to a sale. And this is still a great way to track email revenue–for an ecommerce play.

But we’re B2B for life, right?

Starting around 2017, spam filter companies began spam bot clicks to test every single link in an email. It wasn’t enough to block content with the word “free,” now it was about viruses and all sorts of things. For us email marketers, that meant our CTR went through the roof! Opens went up. Things are good!

Nope.

All fake.

Huge false scoring problems resulting a huge spike in false positive MQLs and some very confused BDRs.

So then I had to analyze the pattern and work with the Analytics team to strip out the very clearly fake clicks. Then eventually Marketo started to filter them out too.

So what’s an email marketer to do now?

First, forget clicks and opens and “engagement.” You can’t measure it accurately because the recipient doesn’t want you to.

Second, forget “influence” because that’s difficult to measure and you’ll spend more time trying to prove it than creating compelling copy.

B2B Email is About Velocity and ASP

If we can’t use the vanity metrics, how do we link Email to revenue in B2B?

It’s about Velocity and Average Selling Price (ASP).

Back in the day, the second generation Marketing Automation Platforms raved about Email Nurture saving time for Sales to stay in touch, manage lead flow, keep up campaign velocity without the web team. As a former salesperson, that resonated because I had all sorts of Task reminders to follow up with those “not ready” yet.

What never quite happened was showing that impact.

One day I was asked to prove the ROI of Marketo. When I looked at what I had Revenue Cycle Explorer, I realized this question wasn’t about how many more campaigns I could build, it was about showing Nurture Worked.

Let’s dig in.

Case Study 1: Free Trial + Ads vs Nurture + Demand Gen

In this first situation, I had 10 regions around the world with fully tracked acquisition funnels showing Lead and Opportunity Velocity, Pipegen, Stage conversions. 

When I compared the Regions, I saw the 2 regions with Nurture were performing better than the regions that still focused on Ads to drive Free Trials.

*Data is directional, not actuals.

Wow. Demand Generation works! This is also an interesting view into Sales Generated only vs Marketing “Touched” deals which deal size was greater when responses to marketing were clearly involved, proving that Marketing has a clear ROI.

Keep in mind the ROI of having Sales relax while automated follow ups and the reduced ad spend isn’t even calculated here.

Case Study 2: Prove Nurture “Works”

Having seen the power of taking a new angle on an old story, I helped the Email Nurture team tell their story better. They came to me scared – the CMO had questioned their value because all they had to show were email clicks.

Ask the Right Questions – the Report Mockup

I ask everyone who requests a report a few questions:

1. What’s the real question you want to ask?
2. If you had the answer, what would you do differently?
3. What’s your end goal?
4. Are you going to continually monitor this metric and on what frequency?
5. What’s your hypothesis?

In this case, we wanted to tell their story with the hypothesis:

• if you are nurtured pre MQL or on Downgraded (not closed lost), do you perform better than no nurture at all?
• How does Lead and Opp Velocity differ?
• How does ASP differ between Segments and Nurtured vs Not Nurtured?

Use the Experiment Treatment Framework: Control vs Experiment

It’s important to compare journeys properly, ensuring the Control Group is not nurtured by Email. Here is a basic example of how to structure this continuous experiment. There are a lot of great documents out there on how to manage this kind of experiment. The key takeaways are

1. Randomly select 5% or 10% out of the existing Leads in a Nurture.
2. Compare only Nurture vs Not – avoid making this complex matrix.

Data Capture & Systems

If you haven’t already setup a Data Warehouse, now is a great time to do so. If you don’t have one, then it will be very hard to reach the insights you want.

1. Build a Datawarehouse
2. Use API and ETLs to export CRM Opportunity and People data with unique IDs into the dataset.
3. Select Marketo Activity Log entry types to export. (Here’s a list of what to look for)
4. Use Marketo Bulk API in a nightly job to export this back to DWH.
   1. Be sure to leverage Marketo ID and SFDC Unique IDs to match this up to revenue data.
   2. Create job to scrub spam clicks and opens.
   3. Bring over List Membership or other Hold Out flag to know who is in Nurture or not.
5. Join the Data together.

The goal for your data engineer is to show:

1. Cohorts that are Nurtured or Not
2. Which Nurtures are they Members Of
3. Tie each person and Account to Opps and Revenue
4. Slice by Company Size, Product, etc.
5. Show funnel or sankey with conversion rates side by side with Nurture vs Not.

Example results table. You can make this much more interesting with Cohort analysis and charts.

Why does Email Nurture Work?

The real question is What’s the Psychology of Why this Works?

If there’s anything business has taught me is that Psychology and Math are powerful tools.

Nurture’s real purpose is repetition as much as helpful ideas. Nurture can be a part of a larger Brand strategy to keep your company, solution, and helpfulness top of mind so that the prospect puts you in the top 3 companies to call for that next RFP. 

People pretend to search google for the “best vendors” but the reality is they call the first 2 or 3 they have heard the most about. Remember, ad or influencer repetition can have a huge impact on placing your brand in the “first to consider” part of your brain. It may take 5 to 20 repeated views to establish this brand recall.

Now think of all the free, helpful advice a small percentage of your audience took you up on. Now they are grateful, deep in their psyche. So when that Demo Request or Salesperson calls, people are predisposed to reciprocate your small gift. (Gifts for meetings, in my opinion, are close to bribes and should be carefully vetted for this very reason).

So it’s no wonder that it may take awhile for a Lead to reach MQL and then suddenly go through an accelerated sales cycle.

Now that you can prove Nurture delivers revenue, keep on sending!