• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer, June 20, 2017

According to a new report from Salesforce Research, reported by the Marketing Charts staff, covering 21.3 million full-time B2B professionals, the average annual churn rate for any single persona is 17%. (“churn:” combined horizontal and vertical movement inside organization and external… invalidating email address)

Salesforce turned to LinkedIn, exploring data from more than 7 million records over a period of 4 years to better understand the lifecycle of a persona. One of the key points considered was that many individuals undergo both horizontal and vertical changes within an organization, meaning that they may keep their email address but still be removed from a target persona.

In terms of verticals, manufacturing and transportation shared the lowest churn rate (15%), followed by finance (16%). The retail and consumer products sector, by contrast, had the highest annual churn rate (22%).

• In high-tech, marketing personas’ annual churn rate was 23%, versus the lowest rate of 18% for finance personas;
• In manufacturing, marketing personas’ churn rate was 18%, versus the lowest rate of 14% for sales personas;
• In retail and consumer products, marketing personas’ churn rate was 22%, second only to sales (24%) and compared to the lowest rate of 17% for finance personas;
• In medical, marketing personas’ churn rate was 20%, versus the lowest rate of 16% for IT and finance personas;
• In transportation, marketing personas’ churn rate was 18%, versus the lowest rate of 15% for sales personas; and
• In finance, marketing personas’ churn rate was 18%, versus the lowest rate of 16% for IT, sales and HR personas.

Churn rates were higher for individual contributors (20%) than for managers (17%) and those at director levels and above (15%). This was true across verticals.

B2B growth rates were determined by examining how many new individuals enter into a vertical each year, says the report. In others words, the percentage of personas who are new to a vertical compared to the prior year.

On a vertical basis, retail and consumer products (19%) had the highest growth rate, while finance (13%) had the lowest.

The marketing department had the highest growth rates across verticals, Specifically, annual growth rates for the marketing department were:

• 20% in high-tech;
• 17% in manufacturing;
• 21% in retail and consumer products;
• 19% in medical;
• 18% in transportation; and
• 17% in finance.

Growth rates were higher for individual contributors (16%) than for more senior levels.

Considering the importance of email to B2B marketing, and the report’s estimation that it takes a B2B email database 4.2 years to completely churn, the study’s authors offer some takeaways and recommendations, including to:

• Compare the average cost of obtaining an email address against its lifetime value
• Measure the size of an email database against the total potential audience size to estimate penetration of that audience
• Consider email’s volatility and adopt a multi-channel approach that includes social interactions
• Deliver content that is based on an individual’s lifecycle in a particular role; and
• Identify churn within a database and use the data to be more proactive with paid ads and customer retention campaigns

The full report, which includes more data and recommendations, can be downloaded here.