17. A Glance at the “Drop-Outs”

The acquisition of new B2B customers is considered a multi-stage process in which only certain leads become real customers. To date, companies most likely advance their market intelligence and the effectiveness of their lead management systems based on successfully converted leads, while they tend to neglect the underlying reasons why certain leads could not be monetized. Likewise, existing research in B2B marketing, in particular on market intelligence and marketing automation, fails to address B2B “non-customers’ reasons for non-purchase.” Nevertheless, non-converted leads (henceforth called “drop-outs”) may have multi-faceted reasons why they decided against a product or service and, therefore, did not become customers. Categorizing leads in binary terms—“lost” and “won” customers—downplays the potential for data usage of those who did not eventually become customers. Analyzing the data of “drop-outs,” and in particular their reasons for non-purchase, allows companies not only to better cater their products to customer needs but also to exploit otherwise unused data. We address this issue by providing a typology of “non-purchase-reasons,” which highlights the reasons for drop-outs and makes them measurable. By doing this, we create a conceptually-grounded scoreboard template suggesting relevant KPIs to enhance and measure marketing campaigns by utilizing our data-driven approach. From a theoretical perspective, our conceptual framework contributes to the growing body of marketing automation research.