Before we can discuss offer rejection, we must define what we classify as an offer.

In B2B marketing, an offer may be a topic area or an asset.

  • A topic area. This is the focus area of the asset (e.g. specific use case or solution area) that was offered to the contact.
  • An asset or asset category. This is the actual asset offered to the contact (e.g. a specific calculator or white paper). This can also be an asset category (e.g. white papers vs. webinars vs. short, four-minute on-demand videos).

Offer acceptance analysis examines a contact’s offer engagement with the goal of helping marketers better understand the contact’s areas of interest (e.g. issues, solutions, products) and preferred content format (e.g. case studies, whitepapers, events). Marketers can use this insight to drive more effective targeting and messaging in their demand creation efforts to increase conversion rates.

On the other hand, offer rejection analysis – looking at the types of assets and/or promotions a contact opts not engage with – also provides insight into a contact’s area of interest by pinpointing what he or she is not interested in. Using the insights from offer rejections, a marketing team can more effectively determine the next best offer for a contact, which can help boost demand creation effectiveness. However, measuring offer rejection is not as clear-cut, nor is it frequently used by most B2B organizations.

Offer Rejection Analysis

In order to determine what comprises offer rejection, an organization needs to analyze its response history. The point at which an offer is defined as “rejected” can vary quite a bit among organizations due to differences in solution offerings, demand creation tactics employed and messaging effectiveness.

When performing this analysis, determine what percentage of the people who were presented with an offer and did not take it, ended up engaging the offer when it was presented a second time, a third time, etc. To give this exercise a timeframe, use the total length of the buying cycle for the solution in question (from awareness phase to purchase).

This analysis should be done using three lenses:

  • Persona. The different role profiles the marketing organization has defined.
  • Offer paired with delivery mechanism. The delivery mechanism (e.g. triggered email, batch email, physical mailer retargeting).
  • Buying stage. When the offer was made in the buying cycle (often measured by where the contact was within the sales cycle).

Through this analysis, an organization can more effectively define the likelihood of an offer being accepted the second, third or fourth time it is presented to a contact and enables the marketing organization to base its definition of offer rejection on historical data.