
A recent comment by “insidesalesdotcom” on a previous post got us really thinking about how quick are we when it comes to responding to web leads and what the effect of time on this response are. The comment refers to a recent MIT study on lead response management times which concludes among several other interesting finds that ideally a web lead should be contacted or responded to within 5 minutes of it being created and received and the odds of contacting the lead are 10 times lower in the next 1 hour and even lower subsequently.
How many of us actually respond to web generated leads within the first 5 minutes, first one hour or first 24 hours even after its been created? The longer response times are delayed on web leads your chance of conversion reduces. While its easy to understand that some businesses may not have the bandwidth to keep such a close tab on every web lead that gets generated through downloads, form fills or otherwise, we have received web leads generated from such campaigns for qualification from companies which have let those leads sit for up to 6 months after they were generated. Needless to say that very few of those leads had any memory of downloading the white paper the filled a form to read and the effectiveness of that campaign was far less than what it could have been had those leads been contacted soon after they had filled up their details.
This study simply confirms the importance of having a strong process in place to route web leads to the appropriate person and respond to them as soon as possible to ensure that you make the most out of your web lead channels. Keep this in mind the next time you get an alert for a new web lead don’t let it sit!