LinkedIn launches lead accelerator to "nurture and target" on and off platform

According to LinkedIn, of the visitors to a typical brand’s website, only five per cent provide an email address. Nellie Chan, director of marketing solutions, South East Asia and North Asia at LinkedIn, reflected on the significance of this figure.

“Of the 5 per cent, the average email open rate is 20 per cent,” said Chan. “And from there, only about one per cent takes action. How much do marketers understand about the other 95 percent of their customers?”

This is the problem LinkedIn’s Lead Accelerator product suite aims to tackle. By combining LinkedIn’s data on professionals with Bizo’s “algorithms and ability to nurture prospects at different stages of the buying cycle online”, the platform aims to “engage the other 95 per cent with relevant messages both on and off LinkedIn”.

 

 

As part of LinkedIn Lead Accelerator, the new product set includes LinkedIn Onsite Display, LinkedIn Network Display, Sponsored Updates and Sponsored InMail.

An analytics tool built into the new range of products combines LinkedIn’s global audience data with brand website visits for cross-platform measurement.

“You’ll be able to gain insights to users’ behaviours off the LinkedIn platform and do retargeting,” said Chan. “The interface is easy for marketers to use and features a seven-step ‘nurturing stream’ allowing to them to see what stage users are in and apply the appropriate messages at the right time and place.”

 

“B2B marketing has a long cycle and users typically do a lot of research on high-consideration purchases and require the right ‘nurturing’,” said Chan. “It’s different to FMCG goods or other types where users have pretty much made the decision to buy something or not by the time they reach out.”

Another area the product will take advantage of is influencers. “B2B marketers know that it’s not only the C-Suite that make major purchasing decisions but that influencers play a big role in affecting decisions.”

 

LinkedIn Lead Accelerator will be available in a self-service format to enterprises and SMEs that have over 20,000 unique monthly users on their website. Packages include a quarterly or yearly subscription with “one month of consultation” from LinkedIn’s product team.

eCornell, Lenovo, Salesforce.com, Samsung, VMware and Groupon are among the customers that have been trialling the service. According to LinkedIn, eCornell doubled its landing page conversion rates, Localytics’s marketing-qualified-lead conversion rate increased by 50% and Lenovo’s cost-per-lead decreased by 60 per cent.