Case Study: Improving Win Rate With SQL Nurture Campaigns

Paid media is often associated with new customer acquisition, and getting B2B buyers to fill out a form on a website. However, ads can also be used to improve performance for leads and contacts that already live in a CRM.

Over the course of Q4 I worked with a client to test an SQL nurture campaign on LinkedIn. The goal of this campaign was to get the brand in front of leadership roles at companies which were existing SQLs to improve SQL win rate. My hypothesis was that we could get in front of key decision makers to influence how they ultimately selected a partner.

The campaign set up was fairly simple. I created a dynamic list in this client’s CRM that targeted any company which was associated with an active deal in a SQL stage. From there we used a handful of different LinkedIn video ads with various messaging angles.

As Q4 wrapped up, I pulled the data and found that this campaign did in fact improve win rate, and the incremental revenue associated with the deals that were exposed to these ads generated an iROAS which was many multiples above our breakeven goal.

With plenty of opportunities identified in this analysis, we’re continuing to run this campaign in 2025 and aiming to improve efficiency.

My analysis methodology was just as simple as the campaign set up. I went to LinkedIn’s company engagement report and pulled a 90 day report for this particular campaign. At the same time, I exported a CRM report of all deals that were active during the same date range the campaign was live.

From there, I ran a simple lookup to see which deals were associated with companies that saw impressions from this campaign and those that didn’t. This allowed me to easily compare win rate and calculate incremental revenue.

For example, let’s say the breakdown of data looked something like the below.

Companies that didn’t see LinkedIn SQL nurture campaign impressions:

• 20 total deals

• 8 wins

• 40% win rate

• $80,000 in revenue

Companies that did see LinkedIn SQL nurture campaign impressions:

• 20 total deals

• 12 wins

• 60% win rate

• $120,000 in revenue

To determine how incremental this campaign was, I used the basic equation below:

(60% test win rate - 40% control win rate) / 40% control win rate = 50% incremental impact

Then, I just multiplied the incremental impact by overall revenue:

50% incremental impact * $120,000 in revenue = $60,000 incremental revenue

By dividing the incremental revenue by campaign spend I got incremental ROAS.

While there are a few steps involved here, many of them are fairly straightforward and prove that even a simple campaign can drive a real impact.

Have questions, considerations, or critiques? I’d love to hear them! If you’re reading this via email, just hit respond. Otherwise, you can find me on LinkedIn.