Essential Lead Generation KPIs to Track Your Sales and Marketing Performance

Are you getting a lot of followers and visitors, but no one’s clicking through your Calls-to-Action? As marketers, everything you do, from ideation to execution, is with the singular goal of generating hot leads. Increasing followers and visitors is a great indication that what you are doing is working. But if none of them convert, you need to look again.

Key indicators of lead generation performance don’t end at followers. Studies show that an average of 15% of your leads actually reach the bottom of your sales funnel and convert. If conversion is your overarching goal, your KPIs should include lead conversion metrics too. 

This article is your quick, comprehensive guide to lead generation key performance indicators to track success across your cold outreach, paid advertisements, search engine optimization efforts, as well as overall sales and marketing performance. We’ll also discuss 5 ultimate lead generation tools that can help you turn the odds in your favor. 

Let’s dive in. 

What are Lead Generation KPIs

Lead generation KPIs (key performance indicators) are metrics that can help you track the performance of your sales and marketing efforts. They help you understand how effectively you are achieving your objectives and what you need to change to see results.

You’ve probably heard of something like visitor-to-lead conversion rates, lead revert time, lead-to-conversion rate, and more. KPIs are great for tracking your performance in each stage of marketing, from email marketing campaigns, website traffic, and SEO to paid ads and outbound marketing like cold calls and emails. 

What are the Key Performance Indicators?

Financial Performance

Overall health of your lead generation efforts in terms of revenue growth and profitability. 

Metrics: Return on Investment (ROI) for revenue and Cost Per Lead (CPL) for budgeting. 

Customer Satisfaction

Examine customer satisfaction through surveys and feedback to estimate the effectiveness of your lead generation campaigns.

Metrics: Customer retention rate and Net Promoter Score (NPS) to track customer loyalty. 

Employee Engagement and Satisfaction

Employee engagement often delivers better results. Measure employee satisfaction through surveys or performance reviews. Promoting employee engagement, fostering teamwork, creating shared positive memories, and setting a positive example for employees can be enhanced through the awards, coordinating team-building activities, creation of photo books, which will blend together moments of positivity and contribute to a more collaborative and enjoyable work environment.

Metrics: Employee turnover rate to assess the health of your team responsible for lead generation. 

Strategic Alignment

Make sure your lead generation efforts are consistent with your business strategy.  

Observe metrics such as leads from target markets, customer segments, or specific products/services. 

Lead Generation KPIs for Measure Cold Outreach Success

Email Open Rate

Email open rate, also known as click-to-open rate, tells you how many recipients opened your email after seeing it in their inbox. A high email open rate indicates great subject lines and well-targeted content.

Email Open Rate = [Number of emails opened ÷ Number of emails delivered] x 100

Meeting Book Rate

Some business models offer free demos for customers, which are typically meetings booked with a sales representative. Book rates indicate interest and therefore qualify leads by intent. Consider two metrics to measure your book rate.

• Demos Booked and Deals Closed 

This gives you the number of demos booked and how many of them ended in a sale or a deal being closed. A high ratio of deals closed to demos booked indicates your strategy is highly effective in engaging your leads. 

How to measure: 

[Number of closed deals ÷ Number of bookings] X 100

• Demos Booked and Deals Lost

This gives you the number of demos booked and how many of them ended in a deal lost. A high ratio of deals lost to demos booked is an indicator that something isn’t working and the demo is not effective in engaging with leads. 

How to measure:

[Number of deals lost ÷ Number of bookings] X 100

Email Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the number of emails that weren’t sent to the intended recipient because of incorrect or invalid email addresses. There are two kinds of bounces. 

• Hard bounce – Caused by invalid, inaccurate, or non-existent email addresses 
• Soft bounce – Caused by a temporary problem with a valid email address

Your bounce rate indicates how many email addresses from your email list are in-valid 

How to measure:

[Number of bounced emails ÷ Total emails attempted to send] X 100

Lead Generation KPIs for Measure Paid Ads Performance

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

Your Return on Ad spend gives you the revenue you make for each dollar invested in paid advertising. It is one of the most important KPIs to include in any marketing strategy that includes a paid activity.

How to measure:

[Revenue from Ads ÷ Amount spent on Ads] X 100

Cost Per Click (CPC)

This is the amount you pay for every click you get on an advertisement that’s run by you. 

How to measure:

[Total Ad spend ÷ Total clicks tracked] X 100

Sales Conversion Rate

There are multiple ways sales can happen, but it’s important for you to track how many conversions happened because of paid ads. 

How to measure:

[Total clicks ÷ Total conversions] X 100

Lead Generation KPIs for Measuring SEO Performance

Number of Organic Clicks:

• Observe the traffic generated organically through search engine optimization.
• Situate the effectiveness of your SEO efforts by tracking the number of clicks. 

Average Time on Page:

• Evaluate the average time visitors spend on your website pages.
• A higher average time on page indicates engaging content and better lead generation prospects.

Organic Conversion Rate:

• Evaluate the percentage of organic website visitors who convert into leads or customers.
• Optimize your website content and user experience to increase organic conversion rates.

Lead Generation KPIs for Measuring Overall Sales and Marketing Performance

MQL to SQL Conversion Rate:

• Once the MQLs are handed to your SQLs it is important that you keep track of these to ensure your marketing efforts are paying off.
• When MQLs are converted into SQLs, they have a higher chance of becoming customers. 

 Lead Quality:

• Keep track of the quality of leads generated from various channels
• Play close attention to metrics like lead source, lead scoring, and lead-to-customer conversion rates.

Web Traffic:

• Track the total number of website visitors to determine overall lead generation efforts.   
• Calculate the effectiveness of SEO, paid ads, and other marketing strategies. 

Cost per Acquisition (CPA):

• Calculate how much it costs to acquire a paying customer. 
• Optimize your lead generation efforts to reduce your CPA while maximizing conversions.     

Average Contract Value (ACV):

• ACV is the amount of money the average customer spends on your offerings. 
• Evaluate the effectiveness of your sales and marketing strategies in securing higher-value contracts.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV):

• Ascertain the expected revenue generated from a customer over their lifetime 
• Concentrating on CLV gives you a full understanding of how much each customer spends on your business

 Sales Qualified Opportunities (SQOs):

• Observe the number of opportunities that have been updated as qualified by the sales team. 
• Optimize lead generation efforts to increase the number of sales.   

 Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR):

• Predict the revenue generated from recurring subscriptions or contracts monthly.
• Observe MRR to assess the overall effectiveness of your lead generation campaigns.

Top 5 Ultimate Lead Generation Tools That Can Help Your Business

ReachStream 

ReachStream is a B2B sales prospecting tool that fits businesses of all sizes. You can connect with 22M+ company and contact data from across the globe, their easy-to-use firmographic database reduces the time and cost spent on training the end users to use the application. 

You can filter the data based on job title, industry, company name, revenue, employee size, and technology. Their narrow search option helps you niche down to your ICPs and connect with them. 

ReachStream’s opt-in data, with 7-step verification, makes them more accurate than anyone else in the market. Click here to get started on their freemium plan.

ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo is a widely known sales and marketing intelligence platform that provides access to vast databases of company and contact information. It offers various services like lead generation, data enrichment, and sales prospecting. ZoomInfo is mostly used by enterprises to build comprehensive lead lists. 

Lead411

Lead 411 is a sales intelligence and prospecting platform that focuses on delivering data business insights. This application is widely used by sales and marketing professionals to find and engage with potential customers and streamline the sales process. 

Lusha

Lusha is a sales enablement platform that primarily focuses on providing email addresses and phone numbers of potential prospects. 

Apollo.io

Apollo.io is a comprehensive sales engagement platform that incorporates features like prospecting and data management. It provides access to a rich database of contact and company information, allowing users to find new leads and engage with prospects.

What You Need to Remember About Lead Generation KPIs

Effective lead generation is vital for businesses. Tracking performance through KPIs is key. Ensuring lead generation metrics stay within desired margins ensures optimal marketing and sales results.

FAQs: Lead Generation KPIs

What are the KPIs for lead generation?

There are several KPIs that can help you measure your team’s lead generation efforts, for example – reply rate, click-through rate, number of leads generated, MQL to SQL conversion ratio, total lead value, etc. It all depends on the lead generation strategies you implement. 

What are KPI leading indicators?

KPIs are the metrics that help you keep track of your sales and marketing efforts. By tracking KPIs, you can discover what’s working and what’s not, enabling you to allocate your resources to the most impactful lead generation strategies.

How do you measure lead generation?

While running lead generation campaigns, key components like total number of leads, cost per lead, qualification, conversion rate, and ROI should be taken into consideration. Track these KPIs to determine how close you are to meeting your goals and what areas need improvement in your lead gen funnel.  

How often should I review lead generation KPIs?

Use your analytics software to monitor your performance regularly. A lot of businesses do this quarterly, monthly, or even weekly. Decide whatever frequency works best for you and your team, and set a recurring meeting to review results. If you see major changes in performance, adapt your strategy accordingly. 

What tools can I use to track lead generation KPIs?

You can use popular tools like Google Analytics, Microsoft Clarity, CRM systems, marketing automation platforms like HubSpot and MailChimp, and analytics dashboards. 

Is SQO and SQL the same? 

SQO (sales qualified opportunities) and (sales qualified leads) SQL are distinct from each other. SQOs are SQLs that have been qualified further and are more likely to convert.