Inbound Lead Follow-Up Stats for 2023

When and how you follow up with inbound leads has a huge impact on the success of your pipeline. No matter how amazing your offerings or how convincing your Sales team, if the initial follow-up to an inquiry is hours or days behind a competitor, or worse, doesn’t make it to the lead at all, a sale is going to be pretty unlikely.

We’ve gathered some of the most illuminating statistics and insights on lead follow-up in 2023.

Lead Response Time Conversion Rates

How fast you respond to an incoming inquiry is one of the most important factors in converting an opportunity. Here are some conversion rates for various industries based on the promptness of the initial follow-up message.

Infographic by Velocify.

All Industries

• Within 5 minutes: The lead conversion rate is around 85%—this is the highest conversion rate for any response time
• Within 30 minutes: The lead conversion rate is around 60%
• Within 1 hour: The lead conversion rate is around 30%
• Within 24 hours: The lead conversion rate drops to around 10%
• After 24 hours: The lead conversion rate drops to around 5%

Source: Harvard Business Review

High Tech

• Within 5 minutes: The lead conversion rate is around 75%
• Within 30 minutes: The lead conversion rate is around 50%
• Within 1 hour: The lead conversion rate is around 25%
• Within 24 hours: The lead conversion rate drops to around 5%
• After 24 hours: The lead conversion rate drops to around 2%

Source: InsideSales.com. “The Ultimate Guide to Inside Sales.”

Business Services

• Within 5 minutes: The lead conversion rate is around 70%
• Within 30 minutes: The lead conversion rate is around 50%
• Within 1 hour: The lead conversion rate is around 20%
• Within 24 hours: The lead conversion rate drops to around 5%
• After 24 hours: The lead conversion rate drops to around 2%

Source: Velocify. “The Velocify Pulse: Lead Response Management.”

Entertainment

• Within 5 minutes: The lead conversion rate is around 80%
• Within 30 minutes: The lead conversion rate is around 60%
• Within 1 hour: The lead conversion rate is around 30%
• Within 24 hours: The lead conversion rate drops to around 10%
• After 24 hours: The lead conversion rate drops to around 5%

Source: Velocify. “The Velocify Pulse: Lead Response Management.”

Financial Services

• Within 5 minutes: The lead conversion rate is around 70%
• Within 30 minutes: The lead conversion rate is around 50%
• Within 1 hour: The lead conversion rate is around 20%
• Within 24 hours: The lead conversion rate drops to around 5%
• After 24 hours: The lead conversion rate drops to around 2%

Source: Velocify. “The Velocify Pulse: Lead Response Management.”

Health Care and Wellness

• Within 5 minutes: The lead conversion rate is around 70%
• Within 30 minutes: The lead conversion rate is around 50%
• Within 1 hour: The lead conversion rate is around 25%
• Within 24 hours: The lead conversion rate drops to around 10%
• After 24 hours: The lead conversion rate drops to around 5%

Source: LeadConnect. “Lead Response Management Study.”

Automotive

• Within 5 minutes: The lead conversion rate is around 60%
• Within 30 minutes: The lead conversion rate is around 40%
• Within 1 hour: The lead conversion rate is around 15%
• Within 24 hours: The lead conversion rate drops to around 5%
• After 24 hours: The lead conversion rate drops to around 2%

Source: LeadConnect. “Lead Response Management Study: Automotive.”

Persistence in Follow-Up

Engaging with leads in a timely manner is critical. But it’s rare that one response is enough to motivate a lead to schedule a meeting with Sales. This is for multiple reasons, including busy schedules, leads researching organizations at their own pace, buried emails, or missed phone calls.

According to market research, increasing your number of attempts yields increased conversions:

• Only 2% of sales are made during the first point of contact. Roughly 80% are made between the fifth and twelfth contact.
• Making more than 5 attempts to contact a prospect increases the probability of conversion by 70%.
• 92% of Salespeople give up after four attempts and 44% give up after just one.

Infographic by IRC Sales Solutions.

Making Follow-Ups Personal

Market research shows that personalized communications with an inbound lead significantly increases the likelihood of successful engagement and conversion:

• Sending an email from an individual rather than a company name can increase click-through rate by 35%. 
• Emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened by recipients.
• Personalized emails produce a 2.7x higher click-through rate and 5.7x more revenue.

Chart from VentureBeat.

Getting Into the Primary Inbox

More than 60% of mid-sized US companies and 92% of startups use Gmail for their business email provider, so paying attention to performance in Gmail is vital. Gmail’s popular tab structure adds one more level to email performance than just delivered or not. A few stats illustrating why tab sorting matters:

• Only 0.3% of commercial emails are delivered to the Primary inbox.
• Commercial emails delivered to the Promotions tab are 41% less likely to be read than emails in the Primary inbox.
• 17% of all emails sent are not delivered to the inbox.

Chart from ReturnPath.

The data is clear: Sales teams get the most at-bat opportunities when they immediately engage each and every lead in a tailored, 1:1 conversation. But we all know it’s not feasible when you rely on manual outreach or even standard automation like Sales Engagement Platforms.

With heightened buyer expectations for online experiences in the post-COVID world, the lead engagement process is more important than ever. The current rocky economic climate adds extra pressure for businesses to review their practices and find areas for improvement so opportunities don’t fall through the cracks.

Your inbound leads hold valuable potential as revenue opportunities and are critical to the success of your organization. Don’t miss out!