Measuring Qualified Leads

At some point in your working life, it's inevitable that this subject will be brought up by the client ...

Our conversions are booming, but how do we understand if these are quality leads?

Here are three different ways to measure or justify the quality of leads that your online marketing programs are driving:

• Trial to Paid: How many of the users that converted on a free, time-based trial of your product are actually moving from the free to paid version?
  • If you're seeing significant drop off from free to paid, then it's likely that you're driving unqualified leads who just wanted to download your white paper, not actually become a loyal user of your product
• Life Time Value: Once a lead is brought into your system, how much are they worth toward your company's bottom line?<>
  • Life time value is a great metric to measure against financial services or other long sales cycle type industries (insurance is another good category to use LTV for)
• Per Order Value: Every time a user hits the 'Buy Now' button on your website, how much money are they forking over?
  • Hotels, resorts & casinos are smart to use this metric. For example, a hotel room on the Las Vegas strip is always more expensive on a Friday / Saturday night compared to a Tuesday.

What verticals have you worked in? How did you measure the quality of your incoming leads?