Measuring Lead Attention Span

Here is an easy way to measure the general attention span of your active lead database. It borrows the same formula used to track Churn Rate.

definition -

Churn rate is a measure of customer attrition, and is defined as the number of customers who discontinue a service during a specified time period divided by the average total number of customers over that same time period.

So the formula looks like this:

# of customers who discontinue service during a specified time period
Avg. # of customers in same period

While churn rates are closely watched by companies that depend on subscribers, such as cell carriers and cable TV operators, we can adapt this churn formula to quickly detect the overall loss of attention within our active lead database.

In our churn definition above, let’s define customers who discontinue service as: Inactive Leads + Hard Bounces + Unsubscribes, within a specified time period

Let’s also define customers as: Leads with at least 1 web visit, 1 form submit and/or 1 email open, within the same specified time period

If we do a little napkin math, here is how this might look:

10,000 Inactive Leads (measured as the total # of once-active leads but now with no web visits, no form submits and/or no email opens) during the last quarter

+300 Unsubscribes last quarter

+200 Hard Bounces last quarter

= 10,500 total leads in last quarter that no longer pay attention to us

Divided by

75,000 = Average total of leads with at least 1 web visit, 1 form submit and/or 1 email open in the last 3 months

= Lead Attention Span Loss Rate = 10,500/75,000 = 14%

So essentially, we lost the attention of 14% of our active leads last quarter.

This is a good metric to trend quarter over quarter as it tells you in general how well you are improving your segmentation, messaging relevance and nurturing efforts.

It's hard enough to get a lead to respond, much less keep them engaged. Use this Lead Attention Span metric to guage the overall effectiveness of your engagement efforts over time.

Updated 5-8-12
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Steve Kellogg

-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant