What is Closed Loop Marketing?

Business decision makers have to keep an eye on the bottom line. With marketing and sales so essential to revenue generation, closed loop marketing represents one way to effectively impact B2B marketing and sales ROI.

Above: A depiction of the bi-direction information and insights feedback loop that can exist between marketing and sales to drive more effective efforts.

Before going into greater detail about a closed loop relationship’s advantages. Let’s first answer the question: what is closed loop marketing?

This approach typically involves four steps based on employing closed loop analytics in connection with website traffic and activity:

• Set up a marketing automation solution that can gather lead conversion, source, and referral data to a converted contact's record. Assign a tracking URL to every marketing campaign sending traffic to the website.
• Track where visitors are coming from, which pages they are viewing, and what actions they took prior to converting. Closed loop reporting will be easier to record with marketing automation software.
• Convert visitors into leads by sending them to landing pages that capture sales lead information. Submission forms and form fields help grow a leads database and can gather details needed to differentiate marketing or sales qualified leads.
• Collect information through all points of contact (web forms, click to chat, calls) that aid the sales process.
• Use progressive profiling (collecting lead information in stages) to better profile and segment leads.

Close the loop by analyzing which marketing channels contribute the most sales qualified leads and sales opportunities. This will be easier when your customer relationship management (CRM) software speaks to your marketing software. (We use Hubspot for this.) Use the insights drawn from this data to optimize other marketing channels. Then, continue to analyze progress and keep an eye out for trends as email, social media or referrals may all crest and fall at different points.

It’s easy to accept that closed loop reporting can help marketing prove its efficacy. However, the benefits extend beyond that department alone.

Closed loop marketing also:

• Enables sales and marketing alignment.
• Provides valuable insight for marketing to attract high-quality leads
• Dictates smarter channel decisions and supports campaign efficiency
• Offers a 360-degree overview of the sales cycle

Cuts cost per lead by:

• Helping marketing to efficiently target the right leads and qualify them
• Shortening the sales cycle
• Enabling better targeted paid advertising

Not to mention that closed loop marketing improves the customer experience as well. After all, they are now being met throughout the process with more targeted information that has been continually honed to accurately address where leads are in the buyer’s journey. Additionally, the sales team can use lead acquisition data and lead browsing data to inform their sales pitch strategy and sales nurturing efforts.

Data insights are the new currency of business. A business that cares about outcomes can better harness its data and its sales and marketing resources with closed loop reporting.

Sources:
Georgieva, M. (2012). Why Every Marketer Needs Closed-Loop Reporting. https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/32019/Why-Every-Marketer-Needs-Closed-Loop-Reporting.aspx#sm.00012g66czam8e61x1p1jlvdtvz6t