If you were to focus on only one channel for your company’s lead generation, it should be LinkedIn.
The numbers show that the platform isn’t just a good choice for B2B marketers – it’s the best. The conversion rates are higher and the cost per lead is lower compared to other advertising networks. Plus, there are plenty of ways to do LinkedIn lead gen for free, and a couple of tools that make the process easy.
This guide will dig into the benefits, the paid and free strategies, and the tools that help streamline LinkedIn lead generation. By the end, you’ll have a method for generating leads on LinkedIn.
Use the links below to navigate to each section:
Why bother with LinkedIn? Why not focus on generating leads with search engine advertising, cold email outreach, display networks, email marketing, or more high-traffic social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter?
Simply put, LinkedIn is where professionals go to level up in business. The average user might log on to stay informed about what’s happening in their industry, look for new employees to add to their team, or seek out tools that can optimize their team’s workflows.
If your business offers a solution to their needs, LinkedIn is the best environment for attracting their attention.
There are a few other reasons why LinkedIn is the best place to generate leads for B2B companies:
It’s made up of professionals with purchasing power
Over 20% of LinkedIn users can make buying decisions for their companies. That’s at least 61 million senior-level influencers and 40 million decision makers that your business could be connecting with. It’s also the most-used social media platform amongst Fortune 500 companies, so there’s a good chance your potential customers are already on the site.
Its users are extremely active
LinkedIn has over 500 million total users, and over half of them (260 million, to be exact) actively use the platform every month. Of those 260 million users, 44% log on daily. That means a lot of potential leads to engage with on a regular basis.
LinkedIn lead generation is one of the most effective
Those 100+ million decision making users are proven to take action. The site’s own content marketing blog ran the numbers and found that 80% of B2B leads generated through social media come from LinkedIn.
There are plenty of case studies to back up the claim, too. Simplus, a Salesforce partner, says that 70% of their website form fills have come directly from LinkedIn. NetBrain Technologies Inc. doubled their click-through-rate with LinkedIn ads and saw 94% of leads generated accepted by sales team.
LinkedIn lead generation converts more leads for less
There are ways to do LinkedIn lead generation for free, but even if you go with a paid strategy. For B2B businesses, LinkedIn offers much high-quality leads compared to running a similar ad campaign on a search engine or another social media platform.
HubSpot aggregated all of their customer’s results with LinkedIn Sponsored Content and found that while the ads have a higher cost-per-click than Google Ads, they also have double the conversion rate.
With a $1,000 ad budget, you could generate 11 conversions for only $90 each on LinkedIn, while the same budget with Google Ads would generate 8 conversions for $125 each.
Its targeting audiences are tailor-made for B2B lead generation
LinkedIn Ads allow marketers to get extremely granular about the audiences they want to target. These are just a few of the many targeting options:-
Company industry, size and name
Job title, function and seniority
While competitors like Facebook Ads also allow marketers to target users by employer and job title, workplace networking is not the primary purpose of the platform. It’s possible that some users may not be listing their employment info at all, making this a less than ideal channel for reaching target audiences.
LinkedIn lead generation: the go-to choice for B2B marketers
According to the Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn, 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content. This means that either a lot of B2B marketers are wrong, or a lot of people are on to something.
In either case, you’d be remiss to pass up on what 94% of your competitors are already taking advantage of. Also content marketing has always been one of the best practices to generate leads.
Free Strategies for Finding Leads on LinkedIn
Many of the actions you already do on a daily basis in LinkedIn can help you find leads. You might only need to think a little more strategically in order to get the most out of your time on the platform.
Here are a few examples:-
Publish articles
Articles are the best way to generate attraction from your ideal clients and articles can also help your LinkedIn account position itself as an expert in your industry. You can use them to anticipate and answer prospect’s questions, which can instill confidence that you’re the right choice when it comes to solving their problem.
Publishing articles on LinkedIn comes with benefits you can’t get from blogging on your site alone:-
Your content gets shared with your connections and followers in their news feeds and sometimes in their notifications.
Users that aren’t already in your network can follow you from your article, so the next piece you publish will automatically appear in their feed.
If your profile is visible, your article is searchable both on and off the platform.
This is a great, free option for establishing your authority without having to convince users to navigate away from the site.
Post daily updates
Posting daily updates to your LinkedIn Page or Showcase Page is a great way to stay top-of-mind with your connections. Your updates will appear on their home feed, so it works as free, organic advertising.
Note that this doesn’t mean you need to publish a unique piece of content every day. Here are a few suggestions for how to keep this step quick and easy:
Repurpose content shared to your other social media accounts
Link to existing blog posts or resources on your site
Direct users to your most recent newsletter
Share your take on news from your industry
The name of the game is to make use of the content you already have and keep updating your page as often as possible.
Join groups
LinkedIn Groups are where people from the same industry can discuss interests, share insights, and ask questions.
They’re great places for networking with potential leads, and you can establish your expertise by answering questions or offering resources that are relevant to the conversation.
However, it’s important not to join a group and then immediately begin pushing your product or service. This comes off as disingenuous and can repel leads instead of attracting them. Build up a relationship with them first before making any sort of offer or pitch.
Engage with a targeted list of users
Your business should already have a set of criteria for what constitutes your ideal client. Use this criterion to search for users that fit the bill, then create a curated list of leads to begin LinkedIn outreach.
With LinkedIn, it’s far more common for people to accept requests for connections from people they already know or have had some interaction with.
Before you click the “connect” button, see if you can’t interact with leads in another way. The most obvious choice is to like or comment on an article they’ve written or shared.
Once your connection has been accepted, continue to engage with them on a regular basis. This could include endorsing them for skills or congratulating them when they announce news about their business.
This level of engagement will gradually warm you up to your lead. They’ll remember who you are the next time they see your articles or updates in their feed, and they also may be more likely to answer a personalized message about your product or service once you finally send it their way.
Engage with current clients
Referrals from current clients are a strong way to find new leads. If you already have a solid relationship with your client, asking for a referral might be as simple as firing off a quick email.
If you’re not as familiar with them, you can grease the wheels by leaving a recommendation for them on their LinkedIn Page, or endorsing them for skills and expertise. This will keep you top-of-mind and they’ll also be more likely to return the favor.
Paid Strategies for Finding Leads on LinkedIn
If you don’t have the time or capacity to use the free strategies for finding leads on LinkedIn, consider the platform’s paid advertising options for your lead generation efforts.
Sponsored Content
Sponsored Content refers to all of LinkedIn’s native ad formats. These ads run in the LinkedIn feed across desktop and mobile for the target audience that you specify.
There are a few possible formats, including single image ads, video ads, and carousel image ads.
Use Direct Sponsored Content if you want to share content in the LinkedIn feed to specific audiences without having to publish the content on your LinkedIn Page or Showcase Page. This is especially useful if you want to run slight variations of a campaign geared toward different target audiences.
Sponsored InMail
Sponsored InMail reaches your target audience directly by delivering personalized messages through LinkedIn messenger.
With Sponsored InMail, you can send personalized invites to webinars or events, promote a product or service, or encourage downloads of white papers, eBooks, and other resources.
Sponsored InMail messages are only delivered when a user is active, and delivery frequency caps ensure that your message gets noticed when it matters most.
VistaVu Solutions is a business management software company for the oilfield and energy industries. They used Sponsored InMail as part of their strategy and were able to achieve a 23.8% conversion rate.
Lead Gen Forms
LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms can be added to your Sponsored Content or Sponsored InMail to help collect leads from within the platform without asking visitors to go off-site. Use them to offer resources in exchange for their information.
Using LinkedIn lead generation ads will automatically populates the form with the user’s data so they can sign up with the click of a button. This decreases the chance that a user will lose interest and navigate away.
IR, a performance management software company from Australia, used Lead Gen Forms with Sponsored Content to reach their target audience. With this strategy, IR was able to achieve a 2x increase in conversion rates and reduced their cost per lead by 44%.
Dynamic Ads
Dynamic Ads appear in the sidebar on LinkedIn and work in a few different ways.
There are Follower Ads (pictured here) which encourage the targeted audience to follow your LinkedIn Page or Showcase Page.
Spotlight Ads look similar to Follower Ads but drive users to your site or landing page with a clear call-to-action.
Content Ads allow users to download content, such as a white paper, then stores lead info directly in your LinkedIn Campaign Manager.
Display Ads
Display Ads are images that run in the right column and above the fold. According to the company, users are 3x as likely to engage with content when exposed to both Sponsored Content and Display Ads.
Even when used on their own, case studies show that Display Ads are an effective form of advertising for B2B companies. Analytics software SAS used Display Ads to drive downloads for their whitepapers. The result was that their cost per lead was 10% the cost of the most expensive competing publisher.
LinkedIn Lead Generation Tools That Will Help You
From browser extensions to full-on software, there are several automation tools out there that will help you get more leads out of LinkedIn. Each has very different functions.
Some, like Skrapp.io, will only help you find email addresses, while a tool like LeadBoxer can automatically find b2b marketing leads (and their contact information) that are already interested in your business.
LeadBoxer
It’s one thing to generate leads through LinkedIn. It’s another to actually turn them into customers. LeadBoxer helps you identify visitors to your website, calculate their value as a lead, then retarget them with paid advertising, for example through effective LinkedIn lead generation campaigns until they become clients.
Let’s say you’ve published several articles on LinkedIn. Those articles then attracted visitors to your website. With the LeadBoxer Lead Pixel installed, you’ll be able to identify those individuals down to the company they work for, their specialties, and even their work email:
LeadBoxer also calculates a leadscore for visitors who engage with your website. This score gives you an idea of how likely that prospect is to convert, so you know whether or not they’re worth pursuing.
You can then use that information to create a highly targeted ad campaign on LinkedIn. Recall that LinkedIn allows you to target people by company name and job title, so theoretically, you could run one campaign aimed at a single individual with a high LeadScore.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is LinkedIn’s own solution for prospecting and finding leads. It enhances the platform’s existing features to give you a more premium experience. The most obvious example is its Advanced Lead Search function. With Advanced Lead Search, you can enter the characteristics of your ideal client in order to find the most relevant prospects.
Sales Navigator can also make recommendations about who is most likely your best point of contact at a target company. It’ll tell you if something big happens, like a potential lead who has a job change.
While Sales Navigator can give you an extended look at who has visited your LinkedIn profile within the last 90 days, it can’t identify who has visited your site or indicate how interested they are in your company.
Skrapp
Skrapp.io is a Chrome extension that helps you extract email addresses from profiles on LinkedIn. It also integrates with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, so you can use both at once.
Skrapp.io has a few other capabilities that help round it out. There’s a company search feature that allows you to find the email address of anyone working in any organization, regardless of whether or not they’re on LinkedIn. There’s also a cloud dashboard that helps store and segment all your lead emails.
All in all, it’s a nice, lightweight tool for small or single-member businesses on a budget.
Crystal
Say your lead has made it to the next step of the pipeline and it’s time to make a pitch. That’s where Crystal comes in.
With Crystal, you can get a feel for things such as how prospects prefer to communicate and what pitching strategies they respond best to. Crystal extracts data about your lead from LinkedIn and other places around the web in order to offer insights about their personality and suggestions about how to talk to them.
This provides a much-needed edge the next time the two of you talk. No more “winging it” in calls or meetings.
Crystal also helps you write better emails and faster, so it doubles as a productivity booster.
LeadFuze
LeadFuze works like a souped-up version of LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Like Sales Navigator, it can search LinkedIn for leads in specific roles and industries, but LeadFuze takes it a step further by looking at what a lead’s ad budget is, what software they already use, and whether or not they’re hiring.
LeadFuze comes with an AI-powered personal assistant that can automatically generate leads for you. Fuzebot, as it’s known, crawls the web looking for new leads that match your established criteria, then automatically updates your records for you.
Fuzebot even verifies email addresses before adding them to your list of leads, that way you’ll never have an email bounced back to you.
Discoverly
Discoverly is a Chrome browser extension that claims to make social networks work better together. In short, it cross-checks various social networks to show you if you have any more mutual connections in common.
Here’s an example of how it might look on LinkedIn:
Source (Discoverly)
Assuming that the person in this example matched your criteria for an ideal lead, you could then leverage your mutual Facebook connections (made visible thanks to Discoverly) to introduce yourself and strike up a conversation.
In short, Discoverly helps you warm up leads before making contact with them.
Dux-Soup
Many of the free LinkedIn lead generation strategies covered in the previous section are time-consuming. Dux-Soup is a Chrome extension that puts those tasks on autopilot so you can go back to focusing on closing deals.
Basically, Dux-Soup builds relationships on your behalf by sending automated messages, automatically endorsing connections, and even auto-following new profiles.
You can then organize leads by tagging profiles and taking notes on them. This data can also be exported as a CSV file to upload into whatever CRM you’re using.
Start Generating More Leads for Less with LinkedIn
If you’re a B2B company, then statistically you’re more likely to find your next lead on LinkedIn. There are several paid and free strategies that will help you find them, but some of these strategies can be tedious and time-consuming. For the best results, you’ll need a tool or two to help you make sense of things.
The best strategy is to publish some content (whether it’s an article or an ad) on the platform that attracts users to your site. You can then use a tool like LeadBoxer to identify those visitors, rank them by likeliness to convert, then retarget them with a highly focused LinkedIn ad.
This strategy takes all the guesswork out of who is a promising prospect, so you can contact them with confidence that they’re ready to hear from you.
Advertising and marketing campaigns are key to finding new customers for your business, but how do you know if those campaigns are working effectively? If you’re getting new customers but paying more than they’re worth in ad spend, it could mean an unsustainable future for your business.
Luckily, there’s an easy way to measure how cost-effective your campaigns are. Cost per lead (CPL) is a marketing metric that tells you whether or not your efforts and ad spend are paying off.
In this guide, we’ll take a deep dive into CPL, from what it is to how to lower it. Once you start tracking CPL, you can create more effective marketing campaigns and attract more leads for less money. Keep reading, or jump ahead to these sections,
The cost per lead (CPL) is the amount of money it takes to generate a new prospective customer for your sales team from a current marketing campaign. These prospective customers — or leads — have seen an ad, clicked on it, then given some of their contact details in exchange for a white paper or more information about your product, thus keeping your sales pipeline full.
CPL lets marketing teams know if they’re spending an appropriate amount on different avenues of customer acquisition, such as Google Ads or Facebook Ads. The higher the CPL compared to other businesses in your industry, the less effective the marketing campaign is. Naturally, a lower CPL is considered ideal.
CPL is only one of many metrics that digital marketers often look at. Try not to confuse it with these other abbreviations:
Cost per Thousand (CPM) – The cost of 1000 users viewing the ad
The Cost per Click (CPC) – The cost of one person clicking on the ad
Cost per Action (CPA) – The cost of one person buying a product
CPM is a more useful metric for companies who are trying to build awareness around their brand, like McDonald’s or Coca-Cola
Users who view the ad don’t necessarily take any action, but they might remember the brand later on. CPA comes into play for eCommerce companies that sell low-ticket items at high volume. If you’re a B2B company or a brand with a high-ticket item like a luxury car, it’s not as likely that visitors are going to buy a product the first time they click on an ad.
CPC measures how much it costs when a person clicks on an ad in a pay per click (PPC) marketing campaign, which is important for determining how much you should spend. If your average CPC is $1, your conversion rate is 10%, and you want 100 new leads this month, you would need to spend $1000 on that campaign.
How to Calculate Cost per Lead
Calculating CPL is relatively straightforward. The formula is simply divide the amount of money you spent on a campaign during a set period by the number of leads acquired through that campaign in the same period.
For example, if you acquired 100 leads through a Google Ads campaign that cost $1000, the CPL for that campaign would be $10.
There are plenty of cost per lead calculators in the market. However on its own, calculating the CPL for all of your marketing efforts across email, social media, and search engines would have limited usefulness. If the CPL was higher than the standard for your industry, you wouldn’t know which platform’s campaign needed adjustments.
This is why it’s so vital to know where your leads are coming from. You wouldn’t want to attribute John Smith to your Facebook Ad CPL calculation if he actually learned about your product through Google Ads.
How to track leads?
A common way to track where leads came from is through a UTM code. A UTM code attaches to the URL of a landing page so that Google Analytics can see which ad campaign referred visitors to the page. You can then count up the number of generated leads through unique campaigns.
Also you can use UTM code to track leads coming from other marketing channels not just ads. Hence this UTM code can also help you calculate cost per lead by channel.
Lead generation software like LeadBoxer automates this process. The Segments feature can add a tag to each lead acquired specifying their industry, location, and referrer, to name a few.
Finding your total attributed leads is then as easy as selecting the right filters to see who was acquired in a certain period from a certain campaign.
Cost per Lead Industry Benchmarks
Knowing your cost per lead is only the beginning. By comparing the CPL you calculated in the previous step to the industry average, you can know whether you’re paying too much or just the right amount for your leads.
To help out, GoConvert aggregated data from over one hundred sites and reports to come up with cost per lead averages by industry.
Source
As can be expected, higher-ticket items like marketing agencies and financial services have higher CPL which means higher customer acquisition cost and their average cost per lead is at $100. Media and publishing, meanwhile, have the lowest average CPL at $11.
6 Ways to Reduce Cost per Lead
If your CPL is a little higher than it should be, don’t worry. There are several ways you can tweak campaigns and acquire more qualified leads for less.
1. Personalize your campaigns
One possible reason why you’re not getting more leads for your money is that your ads and landing page don’t match. Message matching is when the expectation set by the ad is met by the experience on the landing page.
For an example of an ad that gets this right, take a look at what happens when you search for “best CRM” in Google. Zoho CRM claims the top spot with this ad:
Notice how the phrase “best CRM” is repeated in the title of Zoho’s ad. With a title like that, potential customers know exactly what kind of promise Zoho is throwing out there.
After clicking through, visitors land on this page:
“Best CRM” is repeated in the page’s header. Not only that, but a call to action and place to submit info is displayed clearly above the fold of the page. From start to finish, potential customers know exactly what to expect from Zoho.
Resultiks, on the other hand, misses the mark. Search for “marketing automation software”, and you might run across this ad:
There are some indications within the ad’s title that Resulticks is the right match for marketing automation software, but clicking through to the landing page only confuses matters:
There’s no sign above the fold that Resulticks helps with marketing automation. Customers might be left wondering if they landed on the wrong page and won’t be as inclined to submit their info for a demo.
2. A/B test ads
Between your keywords, copy, and images, there are several variables influencing how well your ads are performing. It can be tempting to go with your creative instincts when crafting an ad, but instincts don’t guarantee results. Only by running two versions of the same ad can you figure out which elements resonate most with your ideal customers.
Here’s how that might play out in an example ad created by AdEspresso for their eBook:
The first ad clearly outperforms the second ad with a higher click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate. The lower cost per sale shows the marketing team that they’re on the right track with the first ad.
Remember: When you’re A/B testing, it’s best only to change one variable with each test. Tweak the title of an ad during one test, then the image during another. By reducing the number of variables at play, you can be sure about what your audience likes.
3. Rethink your keywords
Every once in a while, go into your ads manager—whether it’s for Google, Bing, or another platform—and analyze how well your chosen keywords are performing for your marketing budget. Clean out the ones that aren’t driving quality leads and spend time optimizing the ones that are. Don’t worry if the keywords you deleted are highly searched. If they aren’t bringing quality leads to your business, they’re a drain on your ad spend.
Another way to improve your keyword performance is to target more long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are more specific and less searched than broad keywords, but the audience also tends to be more motivated and willing to convert. In this case, the cost per acquisition can be more because long-tail keywords are specific hence it makes lead quality better and also competition will be bidding on them too.
4. Lower keyword bids
Those keywords that are converting but with a high CPL? Consider bringing the bid down. Lower bids might drop your search engine campaign’s average position, but it would also give you longer exposure on results pages and more clicks.
It might also be that the manual bid you set months ago no longer reflects the average cost of landing on the first page, as was the case with this client at White Shark Media:
If you don’t want to manually adjust your bids all the time, Google offers Automated Bidding so you can hit your goals without a ton of extra labor. There are several types of automated bidding strategies, including one to maximize conversions. With Maximize Conversions, Google’s AI tries to get the most conversions for your campaign within your budget.
5. Retarget site visitors based on behavior
It’s one thing to retarget people who have visited your site with another round of ads. It’s another to retarget them based on the specific action they took on your site.
Start by analyzing the behavior of leads who have already converted. Keep your eye out for certain trends, like visiting a particular page or taking a specific action before finally making the sale. It may be that customers exhibit the same behavior before buying from you.
A lead generation tool like LeadBoxer tracks all leads from website and email activity for you, so all you have to do is go into a lead’s profile and check out where they’ve been and what they’ve done. Hence we will track your leads across multiple marketing channels in your funnel.
Once you’ve identified certain behaviors, you can create a retargeting campaign based around those behaviors. For instance, if a high percentage of prospects turned into customers after viewing the pricing page for more than a minute, you may want to retarget future prospects who take the same action.
This strategy can be applied to almost any behavior, whether they only visited your homepage for a few seconds or watched an entire demo video. Thus cost of acquiring a customer becomes lower.
6. Check performance by time, device, or location
There are several variables about your audience that may be influencing your CPLs. Take a look at your ads manager and compare how campaigns are performing by:
Time of day – When are most leads acquired?
Device – Are leads more likely to be on desktop or mobile?
Location – Where are the most leads located?
These aren’t the only factors that might be driving up your CPLs. Analyze trends in digital marketing, understand your audience, and try adjusting campaigns to focus on times, devices, and demographics that are performing well.
Use Cost per Lead to Make Your Marketing Campaigns More Effective
If there’s one metric in total marketing to keep your eye on, it might by CPL. Knowing where your marketing efforts stand next to your competitors’ lets you know if you’re on the right track or if you need to tweak some campaigns.
LeadBoxer simplifies CPL monitoring so you can focus on optimizing your marketing campaigns. The Segments feature quickly filters leads based on which ad campaign first brought them to your site so you can quickly calculate the CPL without having manually use a cost per lead formula for each campaign. When it’s time to optimize, use the website and email tracking feature to identify which lead behaviors warrant retargeting. Get started today and try out LeadBoxer for free.
Buying signals are those signs or activities that indicate how likely a prospective customer is to buy. Using these your sales and marketing teams would know exactly who to focus their efforts on. Taking a note of theses signals is key to giving prospects a better buying experience and increasing the efficiency of your sales process.
This guide will review ten of the most common buying signals to look for and how to look for them. It will also go over how to capture, analyze, and act upon those signals. With this information in hand, your team will be well on its way to gaining and retaining plenty of satisfied customers.
What are buying signals?
Buying signals are the actions prospective buyers take that may indicate they’re close to making a purchasing decision. For B2B sales and marketing teams, buying signals are especially important because they can help you hone in on the most promising leads, saving time and closing more deals.
Buying signals can occur at several different steps of a customer’s buying process. Some signals such as when a prospect visits a company’s website. Lead generation software such as LeadBoxer can capture this data and consolidate it into a lead score. A lead score is a way to easily visualize buying signals.
Other strong buying signals occur during conversations between the prospect and a sales agent. These are usually phrases or behavioral cues that show how interested the prospect is. Recognizing these signals requires training as a salesperson and keen attention to detail.
Here are the 10 buying signals which indicates to a customer with a purchase intent.
1. The prospect signed up for a free trial
Signing up for a free trial or other complementary offerings through a lead capture page is a clear indication that a prospect has some interest in the product.
Even if the prospect doesn’t immediately take advantage of the trial, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re no longer interested. It may show that they’re simply unsure how to use it.
Lead generation software can capture this action and use it as part of the data that generates a lead score. Hence helping businesses and sale teams understand who their potential customer could be.
To mitigate that risk, consider enrolling anyone who signs up for a trial into an automatic email series that provides tutorials or tips.
You can also offer free one-on-one meetings or phone calls with a customer service representative who can walk them through your product or service. A more personalized experience can help move some prospects further along on the buyer’s journey.
2. They filled out a form
If someone filled out any form, whether it was to sign up for an e-newsletter or a request for more information, it’s a sign that they want to know more about the company and it’s also because they are interested in asking question related to their problem.
Hence as a business, you should be excited to receive inquires through contact forms as well.
LeadBoxer also captures that data and uses it to populate a prospect’s profile. The software will help you log your future actions that this particular prospect takes on the site and use it to adjust their lead score.
3. They’re engaging with your brand on social media
Following your company’s social media profile and engaging with the content you publish strongly suggests that the prospect is interested in your product.
To identify who is engaging with the brand most often, encourage marketing team members to monitor mentions of the brand or associated hashtags.
Regular check-ins between the marketing and sales team are important for identifying the prospects who are active on social media and who share a common pain points of your ideal customer. With that information, sales agents can now know who might be most worth reaching out to or nurturing.
Another option is to integrate your lead generation software with social media sites like LinkedIn so you can capture a prospect’s actions on the platform. LinkedIn is an especially fruitful platform for identifying and cultivating B2B leads.
4. They’re interested in one product
Interest in a single product or solution shows that prospective clients are clear about what they want. They’ve done their research and are taking steps toward making a purchasing decision.
This signal might appear during a consultation between a sales agent and a prospect, but it could also occur on your brand’s website. Multiple visits to a product page, especially over a short timespan, indicate growing interest.
Hence tools like lead nurturing software can look for these actions and use the data when calculating a lead score.
5. They’re interested in the price
If a prospect asks about pricing during a sales call, it’s generally a sign that they’re at least thinking about buying.
Some sales agents might misconstrue questions about money as a pricing objection, or that the prospect finds the cost prohibitive. Instead, think of it as they’re trying to understand how this solution fits into their budget. Use their question as an opportunity to talk about why your company is the right fit for them with respect to the price.
Another way to know if a prospect is interested in the price is to check if or how often they’ve visited the pricing page. This information should be available within the lead generation software in the log of actions they’ve taken on the site.
6. They’re interested in case studies
Pay attention to prospects who are looking at case studies on your site or are asking about other customers’ success stories. These potential clients are trying to imagine how they fit into your business and want to know if you have a track record of solving problems that are similar to theirs.
To keep the conversation moving, sales follow-up process should start with rep talking about other case studies that are similar to the prospect’s experience or ask if they have any questions or concerns about the company’s previous work. Hence these interaction should lead towards customer buying not sales team pitching.
7. They ask for advice from their peers
Sometimes you’ll notice that more than one person from a company is visiting the site. This might be an indication that someone with purchasing authority has asked his or her peers for their input about the product.
This might also be true when someone copies their colleagues during email correspondences with a sales agent. If they’re cluing other people into the conversation, it’s a good buying signal that they’re discussing amongst themselves how the product fits with their needs.
In any case, if the main contact (or) decision maker is seeking the opinions of people they work with, it’s a good sign that they’re weighing the pros and cons and are close to making a final decision.
8. They ask about terms and conditions
When a prospect starts asking about warranty details or money-back guarantee policies, they’re likely feeling out whether or not they can trust you to deliver excellent customer service. These are some strong prospect’s buying signals, but to convert their underlying questions into buying intent, you should need to have good marketing materials in place while interacting with them.
Look for this signal during meetings or calls with sales agents. If there is a warranty page on your company’s website, check to see if the prospect has visited it. If they have, it’s a prime opportunity for an agent to reach out to them and see if they have any questions about moving forward.
9. They ask about contract specifics
customer buying signals will likely happen during an in-person meeting or phone call. Prospects who are asking sales agents about what needs to happen to move on to the next step are almost ready to pull the trigger on the purchase.
For example, prospect may want to know when the service or use of the product can begin. Show that your company can adjust to their expectations by asking how soon they need it by.
This is also a great time to ask if they have any other questions or considerations about moving forward. Any opportunity you can take to demonstrate outstanding customer service can be another reason why the prospect should go with your company.
10. They ask about methods of payment
Sales agents should be attuned to questions about when or how payment can be made. Prospects who ask about this topic are close to making a purchasing decision but need to make sure that payment options align with their company’s needs.
In this case, the more convenient options you can provide, the better. Automatic payments, payment plans, and accepting credit cards are just a few of the possibilities to make customers lives a little easier. The more convenience you can provide, the more likely you’re going to finish your sales cycle with this prospect.
Pay attention to buying signals and close more deals
We feel these are the 10 buying signals you should look into if you’re a salesperson trying to reach your quota.
Knowing when a prospect wants to buy doesn’t take a crystal ball or a sixth sense. The clues are all there in the buying signals they give off. Good old fashioned attention to detail as well as a mix of data gathered and interpreted by lead generation software makes it possible to take note of and act upon these buying signals in sales.
LeadBoxer is a lead generation software that makes much of this process easy and automated. It can also deliver alerts that let you know when it’s time to take action and make a pitch to a prospect. Get started with a free trial today.
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In one of our previous articles we discussed why warm leads are better for your business but we realised we got ahead of ourselves. So, we decided to double back and try to understand what are warm leads.
Every company needs to follow up and nurture leads as part of its sales process. Warm leads are nothing more than individuals who have expressed an interest in your company in the past or people with whom you wish to establish a relationship. It could be something as simple as a person filling up an online form and asking for more information on a certain product, or making connections with the staff of a particular organisation. When these people get a visit or a call, it classifies as a warm lead.
Whereas cold leads are taken by surprise and often turn negative, warm leads are formed out of a pre-existing relationship or expression of interest. That’s the difference between cold and warm leads. Hence its lot easier to approach a potential sale, and places warm leads on top of cold leads in the sales cycle. Warm leads result in more effective sales talk.
Why are Warm Leads Beneficial?
Think of it this way: Would you like it if someone tried to sell you something within the first five minutes of knowing you? Of course not! The same applies to your customers as well. They hate it when your company tries to push a product/service on them, and are more likely to walk away. Even worse, they will probably remember your company in a negative light.
This is exactly why warm leads are preferred. Businesses, especially small ones, rely on warm leads to establish a certain level of trust with possible clients until they make a purchase from them. Establishing trust is an integral part of the sales process because the warmer the lead, the higher chance there is of converting it to a sale. Sizeable companies have systems in place for a formal sales process, and these involve introducing the brand to a potential customer, referred to as the lead.
The more the lead becomes exposed to the name and message of the brand, the more it begins to trust the brand over time. Warm leads show interest in your brand in such a way that closing sales becomes easy. In fact, companies boasting of solid, well-thought-out sales processes are adept at monitoring calls, messages, emails, and outreach so that each sales rep understands precisely where every lead is in the process.
The Thing About ‘Warm Leads’
The term “warm leads” is quite flexible. For example, any prospect that has been referred to a business website also qualifies as a warm lead, even though the organisation did not contact that prospect directly. Just the fact that the referrer recommended that particular company to the prospect means that an indirect connection has formed between the company and the lead. It is not necessary that the prospect know the business; simply knowing the person who referred them to the company is enough. In this case, the referrer serves as a sort of middleman, which means that generating warm leads is not a linear process.
There is a flexibility associated with warm leads that is missing in others. This makes them all the more lucrative. When a prospect reaches out to the business looking for information, they usually try to find out the contact number or fill out a form on the website requesting a call back. Such prospects are intrigued to go through all the effort to reach out to the business by themselves, without knowing anything about the company. This shows just how easy it is to work with warm leads rather than cold leads in lead generation.
Warm Leads Mean More Conversion Probability
Though there is still some amount of rapport building to be done on your part, warm leads are simpler to convert into sales than cold leads. The fact that the business had previously established a connection or contact with the prospect is indicative of the fact that they already had some amount of trust between them. This is the reason why the prospect will actually read or listen to whatever you have to say. They are ready to invest their time, and will not be as quick to walk away from the product or service as a result.
Warm leads are actually quite pleasant from the standpoint of the salesperson. They find it easier to distinguish between warm leads and cold leads and interact with the former; all it requires is a little bit of common sense and practice on their part. In the end, what matters the most is the way the prospect views the interaction, instead of how the business classifies it. While interacting with a warm lead, the company should always make it a point to introduce itself and then immediately raise the topic of their pre-existing association with the prospect. The way they respond should be an indication whether the sales team should pursue this lead for conversion or not. The moment you get some sort of acknowledgement about your connection with the prospect, you need to move forward in the sales funnel.
A business is better of investing all their efforts on warm and qualified leads rather than cold leads due to the higher probability of conversion. You might have ten cold leads in your campaign, but compared to them one warm lead in your campaign is always a better use of your time. Firstly, it is difficult to try and monitor ten cold leads. A person who is familiar with your name or the name of your company and who is ready to make an invest in your services or products will be easier to pin down, rather than the phone numbers of people who have never even heard of you.
How to Generate More Warm Leads?
Some companies resort to paying for long email list and phone numbers. But this cold approach is a hit-and-miss, and less effective than building and nurturing existing relationships with customers. Your time and money is better spent elsewhere, namely creating new relationships and conversations with interested parties. Such a process can be time-consuming, but the payoff is always greater. Cold calling isn’t something that their sales people enjoy, but they need to do it as part of their job. The trick is converting the cold leads into warm prospects, thereby increasing the chances of a successful sale by the sales team. Some of the most effective methods are given below.
Forming a Blog
If you have an expert sales team on your payroll, chances are you won’t have to work too hard to reach out to customers who know nothing about your business; instead the sales lead will come to you. It becomes possible through the creation of a website that also hosts a blog offering good content. This, in turn, forms a lead nurturing process that sets your company up with warm and hot sales leads.
All you need to do is research, create a blog with the help of one of platforms for business and share good content on your blog. The blog creates a platform to help attract prospects particular a type of lead interested in your business, products (or) services. This not only improves the SEO but automatically alters the feel of the conversation. The tables are now turned in your direction, it’s warm leads vs you because prospects understand that you have valuable insight to provide them before they even engage you directly.
Using Lead Capture Techniques
Get your prospects to visit your website by setting up a well-aimed blog. However, you should make it a point to know who those site visitors are before they leave. Otherwise, it would all be in vain. Use lead capturing to get the details you require about your visitors. Lead capturing involves creating helpful content that solves the problems of your personas. This could be lead magnet, which can be as simple as e-book, Free webinar, or something of those sorts.
You need to link your blog readers to a specific landing page that requests them to fill up a quick form. As soon as the form is submitted, allow them to access the lead magnet for free. Once you have their email run an effective email campaign for these subscribers to warm them up about business and offerings.
Through email marketing catch their interests frequently to make your way towards building a relationship.
Using a CRM System
It is best if your company uses CRM software. This ensures that none of the information you gleaned from your leads go to waste. You will find lots of different tools on the Internet that not only monitor who visited your website, but what they looked at, when they visited, and what offers they downloaded as well. The purpose of this data is to provide you with a clearer picture of your lead and initiate a sales conversion if needed.
LeadBoxer integrated with your CRM system allows a sales representative from your team to understand the lead readiness to buy from you via assigning a lead score to each individual lead. This score is usually anywhere between 1-100, the higher the score the higher will be the probability to convert warm leads.
Harnessing the Power of Social Media
It is important you know how to use social media for the benefit of your company. Simply opening accounts on social networking sites is not going to help; you must know how to get the most out of them. It helps if you begin by thinking long-term.
You will be able to generate the initial interest via a clever post or a giveaway. New leads are always appreciated, but you should also have a plan on how to plan on building on that foundation. Otherwise, you are going to lose any lead as soon as you get it. Social media metrics are a great way to become familiar with your audience and their needs. Not to mention, a great way to generate warm leads.
However, you should first determine the market you wish to cater to. Also, it is important to link your company’s posts, tweets, and updates with the landing page. This will give visitors the chance to know your company even better.
Cross Promotions and Referrals
Warm leads aren’t always the tricky affair that people make them out to be. For instance, customer referrals are a great way to generate business-to-business leads. Customer referrals are built out of trust.
Another great option is cross promotions with other businesses. This method provides a cost-effective, easy and quick way to get more warm leads; leads who you otherwise would never have been able to gain access to. This is a highly exciting prospect. Planning cross promotions carefully is a great way to tap into an audience base that has high interest in your product.
Webinars and Face-to-Face
Despite the rise of social media techniques, the old-fashioned approach is long from dead. It works wonders, especially in the form of executive events and webinars, where it is possible to interact directly with the lead.
Due to the overwhelming focus on technology in the current digital age, the old ways are easy to overlook. But, these methods were used for a very long time and with good reason – they were effective. Because at the end, leads are people just like you and us, it builds when you listen from someone face-to-face rather than the content online.
So your company should try this out. Even telemarketing could be one of the strategies to generate warm leads who are ready to buy if done right.
Email
Generating a warm lead through email is possible if you email one of the higher-ups in the organisation and ask for a referral down to the correct individual, or email the decision maker directly. Irrespective of your approach, a lot rides on the subject line of your email. It needs to be interesting enough for the lead to actually read it and open the mail.
There is a particular way to develop effective cold email subject lines. Use the names of the leads in the subject line only if it makes sense. Keep the subject as specific as possible. Make the subject line as personal as you can so that it appeals to the lead, and turns it warm. Make sure that the email doesn’t sound too much like a marketing email. Try to keep it casual yet professional. You could try experimenting with a question format for the subject line of the email. Always make sure that you deliver what was promised in the subject line in the actual email.
Customers are no longer the same, and sales and marketing are trying to keep up. The rise of search engines and social media, businesses and individuals do not have to wait for sales people to approach them. They themselves can go looking for the things they want and choose whichever company offers the same. Sales and marketing work together to bring in warm leads. This helps create more business than cold leads ever could.
When it comes to marketing, data is king. With in-depth data, marketers can personalize interactions with customers, market to them at the right times, create a more enjoyable experience, and overall, close more sales. However, capturing all of this data, organizing it in one place, and making use of that data has been a struggle. Because using traditional tools such as web analytics, CRMs, and marketing automation is very time consuming. Here a customer data platform software can help.
You typically have to spend a lot of time combining all of this data to get a complete picture of your customer. Even then, this process is limited and you can’t fully take advantage of this data to completely personalize your marketing campaigns.
In this article, we’ll discuss what CDPs are, the difference between them and traditional marketing tools, their benefits, and compare over a dozen CDP options.
Read on or use the links below to “jump” to the section you’d like to read:
The Customer Data Platform Institute defines a Customer Data Platform (CDP) as “a marketer-managed system that creates a persistent, unified customer database that is accessible to other systems”.
In essence, a CDP is a system that pulls together all the data you have on a customer in one place – customer data platform software. With it, you can create a unified view of that customer and see every action they’ve taken since first interacting with your company.
How many times they’ve visited a specific page on your website
When they opened one of your emails
When they clicked a link inside that email
How many times they opened your emails
Information on mobile app sessions, social media comments, purchase orders, and chat history
In short, CDPs can help you understand customer behavior by accurately assessing the customer journey.
Customer Data Platforms vs. CRM vs Marketing Automation: How Are They Different?
You may be thinking, “Don’t CRM or email marketing platforms such as Hubspot and MailChimp already do this?”. Not exactly.
The data that CRMs and email marketing platforms offer is limited. CRMs typically offer basic information and allow you to store customer information such as addresses, emails, etc. Some may even track interactions like email opens and live chat or email conversations.
The same goes for email marketing platforms such as MailChimp. These platforms will store a customer’s email and track email activity. On the other hand, they miss other key areas such as web activity, mobile app activity, and so on.
However, CDPs aim to combine all of this data into one place and try to capture a customer’s entire interaction with a company. A true CDP would have data on a customer’s chat history, email history, website visits, mobile app sessions, purchases, social media interactions. And anything else that would involve an interaction between them and your company.
Some CDPs also allow you to leverage that data to send emails, run marketing automation, optimize advertising, and more.
What Are the Benefits of Using a Customer Data Platform?
CDPs can expand your marketing capabilities with less manpower, saving you time and money. Specific benefits include:
1. Having a Single View of Your Customers
The most obvious reason to use a CDP is that you can get a “single view” of the customer, aka unified customer profile.
You can see their entire interaction with your company in one place, rather than trying to somehow manage and collect this data from multiple data sources and tools.
2. Being Able to Personalize Customer Interactions
Having access to both first-party data and third-party data in one place can allow you to personalize a customer’s entire experience with your company. Instead of going through each data point, you can use data segmentation target particular customer groups.
You can personalize names in emails, send out a coupon directly after a customer has visited a specific page on your website. Also, you can enter them into a B2B marketing automation process when they’ve had a chat with your company, or send them an email when they logged onto your app.
Hence segmentation like the above can help you personalize your marketing campaigns to each single customer. With CDPs, the possible personalized experiences you can craft for your customers are endless.
3. Being Able to Create Highly-Targeted Campaigns
With all of this information at your disposal, you can now create specific targeted campaigns, and in some cases, one-on-one experiences using your customer’s behavioral data.
Do you want to target customers who have visited your pricing page within the past month, have opened up and clicked in your last three emails, downloaded your mobile app and have been actively using it for the past two weeks, and have also contacted your company via email or your live chat widget?
With Customer Data Management Platforms, you can do that
Customer Data Platform Software Options
To manage customer data, CDPs have become common . Different customer data platform software work best for different industries, and each offers unique data across platforms that set each apart from competitors. However here are the top-rated tools in the field:
LeadBoxer
LeadBoxer is a Lead & Customer data platform that focuses on the sales side of the CDP spectrum, by collecting information about your customers throughout their entire customer or buyer journey
We collect and give you information such as:
When a customer visited your website, what pages they visited, and how long they spent on that page
What emails a customer has opened from you when they opened it, and what links they clicked
Get notifications when leads or customers are ready-to-buy or show buyer intent
All of this information is then organized into an Accounts view and a Leads view. And here each of your customers or leads are given a score to gauge how engaged they are with your company:
The score is called ‘Leadscore’ which gives you an idea of which prospects are most worth your sales team’s time and effort.
Each of these customers or leads can be viewed on a micro level to collect real-time data and to see every bit of that person’s activity.
To learn how LeadBoxer can help you understand your customer experience across marketing camapign.
What sets it apart: Instead of manually integrating all of your tools, Segment has a single API that allows you to share data and integrate your entire marketing stack at once. There are also tools for validating and protecting all of your customer data.
Who it’s for: Segment serves a variety of customers, from enterprise-level companies like IBM and Petco to retail like Peloton and SaaS like Zendesk.
Pricing: Segment is free for tracking 1,000 visitors or less per month. The mid-range option for teams, which tracks 10,000 visitors per month, starts at $120 per month. For the enterprise-level option, contact Segment for a quote.
What sets it apart: With the power of AI, Blueshift predicts how likely customers are to purchase, engage, churn, and more, all this based on the data collected. Customer scores and segments automatically update with each interaction, and the predictive affinities function ensures you’re targeting them with the most relevant content.
Who it’s for: Plenty of personal finance companies like ClearScore, LendingTree, and GOBankingRates use Blueshift, as well as B2C companies like Skillshare, Tuft & Needle, and Artifact Uprising.
Pricing: Blueshift doesn’t list their prices, but their solutions range from simple email automation to cross-channel marketing and AI for enterprises.
What sets it apart: In addition to tracking cross-channel data collection on individual customers, Exponea has experiment capabilities that allow you to tweak and test your website’s appearance so that you can always be improving customer experiences.
Who it’s for: B2C brands will get the most out of Exponea’s tools. Their top customers tend to be clothing and accessory brands like Topshop, Missguided, and FitFlop.
Pricing: Fill out a form to receive a custom pricing plan based on the needs of your company.
What sets it apart: QuanticMind unifies all your customer data to help you enhance your advertising and customer experiences. If you want to get more out of your advertising spend, QuanticMind customer data platform software can do it with automated bid optimization.
Who it’s for: QuanticMind is primarily geared toward large enterprises like WP Engine and Rosetta Stone, but it also serves leading B2B and SaaS brands like MOZ.
Pricing: QuanticMind doesn’t list pricing or product tiers on their website. Schedule a demo to learn which solution and pricing plan best fits your business.
What sets it apart: WithCustomerLabs CDP, you can select specific elements on your website to instantly create trackable events to collect customer data. The friendly interface erases the need to write any code, making it possible to start tracking all the website events you want within minutes.
Who it’s for: CustomerLabs has customer relationship management solutions for e-commerce, B2B, and SaaS companies.
Pricing: Personal plans start at $0 per month but tracks only 2,500 customer events. Business plans start at $49 per month and track 0.5 million events per month.
What sets it apart: The CDP is only one capability of Emarsys, a B2C marketing automation platform. With Emarsys, businesses can create personalized customer experiences at scale and show you where to focus on your next marketing steps.
Who it’s for: Emarsys is primarily a solution for B2C brands like Tupperware and Char-Broil.
Pricing: Emarsys doesn’t openly list its pricing on its website. Get in touch for a demo and pricing plans.
What sets it apart: Optimove’s self-optimizing campaigns use customer data to adjust triggered actions so that customers always receive the campaigns they’re most likely to engage with.
Who it’s for: In addition to retail, financial services, and apps, Optimove customer data platform software has solutions for the gaming industry to analyze player behavior.
Pricing: Optimove doesn’t list pricing or product tiers on the website. Request a demo to learn which features and pricing plan best fits your business.
What sets it apart: Tealium AudienceStream CDP is one aspect of Tealium’s Universal Data Hub platform. It claims the biggest integration marketplace in the industry, offering you to setup a data warehouse to unify your marketing stack.
Who it’s for: Tealium countslarge, diverse organizations like Providence St. Joseph Health and the Utah Jazz basketball team among their customers.
Pricing: Telium’s product tiers and prices aren’t listed on the website. To learn which features and pricing plans fit your business, schedule a demo.
What sets it apart: Pimcore CDP is open-source software that aggregates best customer data and customer insights to create real-time personalized experiences at any scale.
Who it’s for: Pimcore CDP serves a diverse and largely European customer view, from freight and port logistics company Rhenus Logistics to online marketplace Modile.
Pricing: Get in touch with a sales rep for a custom pricing plan.
What sets it apart: Boxever is CDP that collects data on web visits, mobile activity, email activity, calls, ads, and more. It combines all of this type of data into one place and allows you to personalize your marketing and deliver predictive offers.
Who it’s for: Boxever’s largest customers tend to be airlines like Jetstar, Emirates, and Ryanair.
Pricing: Pricing is crafted on a per business basis.
What sets it apart: Evergage allows you to personalize the content on your website, app, and emails on a one-to-one basis in real-time.
Who it’s for: Large companies like Intuit and Walmart use Evergage, as well as software companies like Autodesk and B2B solution providers like Citrix.
Pricing: Pricing is offered on a per business basis, so you’ll need to contact a salesperson for a quote.
What sets it apart: AgilOne is CDP specifically for B2C companies. The platform offers a “360 profile” where you can view customer interaction. The platform automatically cleanses, standardizes, and enriches customer profiles to help you deliver consistent experiences.
Who it’s for: B2C companies Lululemon Athletica and Tumi are among AgilOne’s customers.
Pricing: Pricing is offered on a per business basis and you will need to contact the company for a quote.
Customer Data Platforms are the Next Level of Marketing Automation
Having a customer’s data all in one place rather than hopping in between a suite of separate tools saves marketers and salespeople time and money.
Also with a unified view of customers, you can create personalized marketing campaigns that maximize your spend, increase conversions, and create delighted customers for life.
The best customer data platform from the list is definitely LeadBoxer and Segment. You can choose your CDP depending upon you current tech stack and business goals.
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Pop culture would have you believe that the most important part of any sales journey is the art of closing a deal. Equally important, however, is how you open it. Pursuing only the most viable prospects with the need, authority, and budget to purchase your product is a winning recipe for securing new accounts. Lead qualification is an essential part of this recipe. But what exactly is it, and how do you do it?
In this article, you’ll learn how to qualify a sales lead from the moment they first visit your website all the way through to after an initial discovery call. With the information you gather, you’ll be able to effortlessly determine which prospects are worth pursuing and which aren’t, saving you time and money.
Lead qualification is a process of marketing and sales teams working together to forecast the likelihood that a prospect will ultimately make a purchase. It occurs at every stage of the sales journey and ultimately decides if the prospect will be funneled down the pipeline.
The first step of lead qualification happens during the inbound marketing stage. At this stage, your company’s marketing team captures contact info via site visits, email subscriptions, email tracking pixel or social media, then decides if the lead fits the profile of your company’s ideal customer.
This qualifies the prospect to move on to the next step, which is a discovery call from a sales rep. The sales rep leads a conversation that reveals the prospect’s needs, project timelines, purchasing authority, and any budgetary constraints.
Information gathered during a discovery call further determines if the prospect is viable of the time it takes to craft a proposal, or if you’re better off pursuing someone else’s business.
Why Lead Qualification is Important?
Lead qualification is important because it saves you time, energy, and ultimately your bottom line. It occurs very early in the pipeline, ideally when you’re making initial contact or even beforehand. It helps you determine:
If the prospect is in the right industry and territory to benefit from your product
And if they have a need your product can solve
If the person you’re talking to has the budget and authority to make a purchasing decision
If there is some way you can provide value over your competitors or the prospect’s current vendor
But if the lead doesn’t meet your criteria for what makes a qualified prospect, then you can disqualify them. Disqualification may sound like a bad thing, but in reality it saves you time and allows you to focus on more promising contacts.
Bottom line, lead qualifications allows you to quickly assess whether or not you’re talking to a person that has any real intent in buying what you’re selling. This can also help make sales reps more efficient, productive, and motivated. Without it, you could waste time talking to people who will never close, and no one wants to feel like they’re just spinning their wheels.
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Lead scoring is a process of assigning a point value to a prospect at or near the beginning of the sales pipeline. It often happens before a sales rep ever makes a discovery call. In fact, it may inform whether or not a call is worth having in the first place. This ensures that reps spend their time talking to only the most promising leads.
Before you can calculate a leadscore, you’ll need to gather the following data about a prospect:
Buyer Profile
Does this prospect fall into your target industry and territory? Do they fit the profile of your ideal customer?
To find out, you’ll need to include fields in the forms on your landing pages that gather the relevant information. Anyone tasked with this level of qualification – be it a sales rep or a marketing team in charge of identifying prospects – should always keep the company’s ideal customer profile in mind.
From there, you’ll be able to award points to leads whose answers align with your buyer profile and take away points for those who don’t. You can also award points for those who fill out fields that were otherwise listed as optional on the form, as this demonstrates additional interest on behalf of the prospect.
Company Information
If you’re a B2B organization, then knowing the size of the prospect’s company and its contact information is essential to qualify the lead. You can add or take away points depending on how the size of their company relates to your ideal customer profile.
Online Behavior
The more time a prospect interacts with your site, the more likely that they’re interested in your product. Tracking page views, length of visit, downloads, and frequency of visits over a 30, 60, or 90 day period are all good data points to start with.
Email Engagement
Just because someone signed up for to your email list does not necessarily mean they’re ready or even interested in buying from you. Open rates and click-through rates are a more meaningful indication of interest.
Social Media Engagement
Tracking Facebook or Twitter likes, retweets, shares, and click-through rates from your posts are all ways of tracking social media engagement. The more engaged a prospect is, the higher their leadscore should be.
Spam Detection
Using all lowercase letters when filling out website forms is a red flag that the prospect may be a bot. The use of a Gmail or Yahoo email address instead of a company email address may also indicate that they don’t fit your buyer profile. These indicators can subtract points from the prospect’s leadscore if it doesn’t disqualify them altogether.
Now that you have a set of data, you’ll need to interpret it in a way that immediately communicates how qualified a lead is. To manually calculate an actual point value or leadscore, follow these steps:
Step 1: Set Your Benchmark
To do this, divide the number of new customers acquired by the number of all leads generated. This conversion rate is your control, which you’ll use to compare to other characteristics.
Step 2: Choose the Most Valuable Characteristics
Which characteristics did your highest quality leads exhibit? In addition to going with your gut, consult your sales reps, marketing team, analytics, etc. for their insights.
Step 3: Calculate Close Rates
As with setting your benchmark, divide the number of customers acquired by leads generated that exhibited certain qualities. Do this for each characteristic.
Step 4: Compare Characteristics
Which characteristics showed significantly higher close rates to your benchmark? Assign higher point values to those characteristics. For example, if leads who downloaded a certain whitepaper have a close rate of 25%, you might assign that characteristic 25 points on future leadscores.
Once you decide how you’re going to calculate leadscores, you can save yourself time and energy by investing in a lead generation and sales tool. Many will capture all the data you need, then automatically calculate it. Software dashboards are usually visual, easy to reference, and quickly identify who is the most promising prospect to pursue.
Here’s a look at how you can customize different characteristics or information in LeadBoxer to automatically calculate a lead score for potential prospects:
After a lead has been gathered and qualified with a leadscore by the marketing team, it’s time for a sales rep to step in and make a discovery call.
Lead Qualification Frameworks and Questions
At this level, sales reps determine whether or not the prospect has any real need or desire for the product. This is done by asking the right questions during a discovery call.
Several thought leaders and top sales reps have spent decades developing multiple frameworks for their lead qualification processes. The method you chose to follow will ultimately depend on your industry and the average size of accounts you typically work with. Your personal conversation style and comfort zone might also play a role in what framework you reference.
These questions have the added benefit of encouraging potential leads to open up about their needs, frustrations, and pain points. Should you decide that the lead is qualified to move forward in the process, you can use this information to tailor your pitch and deliver a more effective proposal later on.
BANT stands for budget, authority, need, and timeline. Although the brainchild of IBM, it’s the go-to framework for qualifying leads in a variety of markets and companies. Some relevant questions to ask during a discovery call would include:
Budget: How much of the budget is set aside to address this challenge?
Authority: Are you in the position to make a purchasing decision to address this challenge?
Need: What challenge are you dealing with and why hasn’t it been dealt with before?
Timeline: How soon do you hope to solve this challenge?
Strengths: BANT is simple and straightforward. For anyone with a low-stakes or lower priced product with no existing qualification framework in place, it’s a good option to start with and develop from there.
Weaknesses: BANT’s questions don’t follow a logical order. It would be a bit daring to open a discovery call by jumping straight to a question about money. Plus, according to CEB’s research, 5.4 people are involved in B2B purchasing decisions. When considering authority, the answer is likely that multiple people are involved and should therefore be brought into the conversation.
CHAMP
CHAMP was developed as a solution to the seemingly backward sequencing of BANT so that the more important questions are asked first for both the buyer and the qualifier.
Challenges: What problem needs solving in your business? What challenges are you still faced with that your current solution still does not solve or address as effectively as you would like?
Authority: In addition to yourself, who else is involved in this purchasing decision? Should we bring them into the conversation? What are the organizational relationships that influence the decision?
Money: What are your expectations for the investment necessary to purchase the solution?
Prioritization: When do you plan to implement a solution to your problem? Are you looking at any other possible solutions?
Strengths: The ordering of questions follows a more natural trajectory of conversation. For those just beginning to explore qualification frameworks, this may be the easiest to keep at the back of your mind during a discovery call.
Weaknesses: As far as conversations go, CHAMP is still a little shallow. For one, it doesn’t get into how a prospect would measure the success of the project. This leaves the sales rep ill-prepared to fully demonstrate value further down the pipeline during the proposal stage.
GPCTBA/C&I
Hubspot developed what is certainly the longest acronym in sales, but they swear by it. Although they break down their framework into more detail than this, in a nutshell GPCTBA/C&I stands for:
Goals: What’s your top priority right now?
Plans: How do you plan to achieve that goal?
Challenges: What difficulties do you foresee with your plan?
Timeline: When do you hope to solve this? If you don’t buy at this time, what remedial actions do you plan to take?
Budget: What have you spent on achieving this goal so far? What additional funds can you allocate towards it?
Authority: How does your company purchase products of this type? Who else is concerned with this buying decision and what are some of their concerns? What ego or ownership issues come up that need to be managed and respected that I need to be mindful of?
Negative consequences: What happens if you don’t reach this goal? What will it cost you and your company if you keep things the way they are today?
Positive Implications: What can you achieve next if you do reach this goal?
Strengths: In an era when multiple solutions to a person’s problem are just a Google search away, it’s more important than ever to get clear on how relevant your product is to their needs and how closely they fit into your niche. This framework gets into the nitty-gritty and can quickly indicate if a prospect is truly viable. Plus, it was developed by a SaaS company, so it likely translates well to other SaaS providers.
Weaknesses: Sales reps unfamiliar with this framework will likely need to practice holding a conversation that touches on all these topics in a natural way. Otherwise, you risk hosting a discovery call that comes off as more like an interrogation.
It’s possible that there are questions relevant to your product or industry that aren’t covered by any of the frameworks above. In that case, you’ll want to tweak your approach so that you’re covering all your bases.
Some additional questions worth considering are:
What are the concerns or roadblocks that could come up down the road and get in the way of us working together?
What are the timely and relevant issues that are going on internally?
Which is the overall mood of the company and its leaders towards this problem?
What internal resources can you leverage to try and resolve this issue on your own?
How will your current vendors react to the possibility you’ll buy from us?
Whatever framework and sets of questions you go with, don’t overload the person you’re speaking with by asking them too many. The idea is to engage them in meaningful conversation, not convince them that you’re an interrogator.
When to Move Prospects Forward
After making a discovery call, you’ll need to make a decision about whether or not to continue the sales process. Some good signs that prospects are ideal candidates for moving forward include:
Pain Points
The prospect clearly identified what challenge they have and talked about it at length. It’s clear this is an issue that is a top priority and needs to be solved soon.
Specific Goals
During the conversation, the prospect was certain on measurable goals and outcomes. This shows that they’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about the challenge and will be receptive to solutions that propose to meet those goals.
Knowledge
Overall, the prospect knew the ins and outs of the challenge or project like the back of their own hand. This shows that they likely have sway over the purchasing decision if they’re not in charge of it themselves.
However, if you encounter some of these signs during your discover call, you might want to consider stopping the process:
Short Answers
Whether it’s because they don’t have the time to talk, they haven’t thought about their challenges in detail, or they don’t have a pain point you can address, this is a clear indicator that the prospect isn’t interested.
Inconsistent Answers
Conflicting responses are an indicator that the prospect might not have that much influence over the project, or it’s not enough of a priority that they’re willing to find a solution just yet. In either case, you’ll want to save your time and pursue other business.
Qualify Leads and Close More Sales
An optimized leads qualification process serves two main functions: to forecast whether or not a prospect is worth the time and effort of a proposal, and to help reps tailor that proposal for maximum effectiveness.
The first step to qualifying a sales lead is to generate a leadscore based on their engagement with your website, emails, and social media posts. The second step is to make a discovery call to determine their needs, purchasing authority, and budget.
While this may seem relatively straightforward, there’s a lot of data and elements that need to be taken into consideration in order to calculate a leadscore. Thankfully, there are several different kinds of lead generation software out there that can gather, analyze, and calculate that leadscore for you. In no time at all, you’ll be filling your pipeline with qualified prospects and winning more accounts.
Looking for more qualified leads?
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The difference between demand generation and lead generation can be confusing. Both share similar traits, however, the goals and specific tactics behind each method are different. Thus, having an understanding of both can help you to create a more effective marketing strategy.In this post, we’ll define both demand and lead generation and how they differ from one another. We’ll also discuss specific tactics that each method uses and talk about when to use demand generation vs. lead generation.Let’s get to it:
What is Demand Generation?
Demand generation, or “demand gen” for short, is the process of creating awareness and demand for your company’s product or service. In short, demand gen aims to bring new visitors to your website or business in order to introduce them to your company.The end result is to build your target audience, establish trust, and to spark interest in your company.Types of demand generation content include:
All of this content is provided for “free” in order to attract new potential customers. At this stage, they shouldn’t have to provide their email or other contact information in order to access this content.
Demand Generation Ideas:
To get you started, here are a few demand generation ideas you can use:
Create SEO-Driven Content
One way to create awareness is to create content that your target audience is already searching for. There are many ways to identify keyword opportunities. For one, you can look at Google related searches. Simply search a keyword in Google and then scroll to the bottom of that page:
Here you will see a list of related keywords that people are searching for. You can also look at the types of questions people are asking in Quora or use a tool like Ahrefs for keyword research.
Guest Posts
Guest posting is the process of creating a blog post for another popular blog in your industry. This is a great way to reach your target audience and “piggy-back” off of the traffic that the established blog already receives.
Create Industry Expert Roundups
An expert roundup is a blog post where you gather quotes from experts in your industry on a particular topic that you know your target audience will enjoy. This type of content is often shared well. Not only that, contributors will typically share the blog post with their own social networks once it’s published.One way to find experts in your industry is by Googling your chosen topic and finding people who have already written on the topic or have provided a quote. You can also use a tool like HARO to help to collect responses.For a great example of an expert roundup, check out our blog post, “19+ Lead Generation Tools from the Experts”.
Advertise on Industry Blogs
Running display ads, investing in a sponsored post, or purchasing a sponsored email slot from an industry blog that you know your target audience already visits, can be a good way to take advantage of a site that has a larger viewership than yours.
Run a Viral Contest
You can create a viral contest by creating a contest where you allow participants to earn more entries by referring new people to the contest, sharing it on social, commenting on a post, etc. This increases the likelihood that contest will be shared, making it a good way to increase awareness.Three options for running a viral contest include:
Lead generation, or “lead gen” for short, is the process of converting potential customers into qualified leads (ie. someone who has a genuine interest in what you have to offer). In short, lead gen is a way to funnel-in eventual purchasers of your product or service down the path of buying.The end result is to find qualified leads for your company so that they then be added to a lead nurturing process or so that a salesperson can follow up.Lead gen typically involves creating “gated” content and then asking for someone’s contact information in order for them to receive that piece of content. Types of lead generation content include:
Any type of gated content (such as an eBook, PDF, checklist, cheat sheet, whitepaper, etc.)
Courses
Free-Trials
Product Demos
Viral Contests (where someone needs to enter their email or other contact information to enter)
In order to receive access to this content, the person must enter in their email and/or other contact information that the company wants to collect.To learn more, this guide breaks down the basics of lead generation and why it’s so important.
If you have yet to create any type of lead magnet on your site, an eBook is a good one to start with. Most eBooks tackle a broad topic in your industry, thus you can promote it across multiple blog posts on your site.
Create a Content Upgrade
A content upgrade is another type of lead magnet that is there to entice people to enter their email and/or other contact information in exchange for the content upgrade.Rather than an eBook which is typically more general, a content upgrade is typically specific to a particular blog post. This increases the conversion rate of signups since the content is more closely related to the blog post the person is reading.Examples of a content upgrade might include:
A PDF version of that same blog post
A checklist
Step-by-step instructions
A cheat sheet
Host a Webinar
Hosting a webinar with experts in your industry can be another way to collect contact information from your audience by requiring them to sign up in advance for the webinar. Software such as WebinarJam and Demio can help you get this set up.
Use a Lead Analytics Platform
While collecting contact information from potential leads via lead magnets and webinars are viable lead generation tactics, sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands. Not everyone is willing to fork over their email or phone number.This is when a direct outreach approach can be helpful. For people who don’t submit contact information but still might be qualified leads, a lead analytics platform like LeadBoxer can help you to identify these people and find their contact information so you can reach out directly.For more lead generation ideas, we recommend the following resources:
What’s the Difference Between Lead Generation and Demand Generation?
Lead generation is a subset of demand generation. Demand generation is used to create awareness and attract new people to your business, while lead generation is used to qualify those people into “leads” and get them ready for the next step in your marketing or sales process.
A simple way to understand the differences is to take a look at the different types of content each method uses.Demand generation uses free content (such as blog posts, articles, videos, etc.) in order to create awareness and to attract your target audience.Lead generation content is typically “gated”, meaning a person has to provide their email and/or other contact information in order to receive that piece of content (such as a PDF, whitepaper, checklist, etc.).
This allows sales and marketing to continue the relationship and nudge that person towards a purchase.You don’t need to choose one or the other. Both lead gen and demand gen can be used effectively within your overall marketing strategy.
When creating content, you want to consider the goal behind that piece of content. Is the goal to generate awareness or to increase leads?For example, if you create an eBook and the goal is to generate awareness, this is demand generation. In order to maximize your results, people should be able to download the eBook freely without needing to input any contact information.
This will make it easier for people to share it with their friends and colleagues.However, if the goal is to find qualified leads, this is lead generation and that piece of contact should be gated.As you can hopefully see, it’s nearly impossible to go with one without the other.
An effective marketing strategy will include both lead generation and demand generation. Demand generation is used to attract new customers and lead generation is used to identify qualified leads.
Finding someone’s email is a crucial part of cold email outreach. Here are 30 best email lookup tools that can help you in 2024
Without an email address, you’re left to call or message prospects. Options which are likely to lead to low reply/answer rates. With someone’s email address and the right email tracking app, you can reach out to them directly, know that the email has arrived in their inbox, and find out whether or not they’ve opened your email.
While some prospects list their email publicly on social media and their website, others require a little more work. The good news is you don’t need to be a professional detective to find a person’s email address.
Note:- The difference between email lookup tools and email marketing tools is that, email lookup tools help you find emails of your prospects and leads, whereas email marketing software are used to run email campaigns to your list of newsletter subscribers and sign-ups.
We’ve scoured the internet for to tools to find email addresses and these most popular email lookup tools on the net, are here to help you source and approach your candidates with ease. Take a look!
1. LeadBoxer
LeadBoxer is actually not an email lookup tool, but the ultimate tool for tracking and managing the leads that are generated by email lead generation. This GDPR compliant marketing tool comes with everything you need to safely capture and convert prospects for your business. LeadBoxer offers multiple ways to identify potential customers, filter your email lists, and qualify your leads through dynamic scoring. This is one of the best Lead Generation tools there are.
With the app, you can also receive notifications and updates when specific customers engage in conversion activities on your site or read your emails. Additionally, you can identify the contact information of your website’s visitors. This reduces the need for spending time finding leads to reach out to.
We offer Lead Identification and Lead intelligence through website & email tracking.
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2. RocketReach
RocketReach uses its large database of 700 million contacts across 35 million companies to help your organization reach the right person. Their browser extension makes finding information on LinkedIn and other sites super easy. Rocket Reach is probably one of the top tools to find anyone’s email in the current market.
Their plans start at $39/month, which offers access to basic email lookup and can be upgraded to fit your business needs.
3. ZoomInfo
With over 100 million companies, ZoomInfo allows your team to find the contact information for millions of employees. Their browser extension works with LinkedIn and other sites. Specialized search features help narrow down the pool to help your outreach.
While their pricing varies per team, starting a free trial is the best way to explore the tool. From there, a sales rep will reach out to help determine the best plan for your needs.
4. LeadGibbon
LeadGibbon cares about quality. With their program, your team doesn’t pay for email addresses unless they are accurate. This lead generation software checks deliverability on the domain before sharing the information.
Track verified email addresses with a single click using LeadGibbon. Starting at $49/month, your company can get 250 email credits and 25 phone credits to discover across LeadGibbon’s 26 million contact records.
5. Vocus.io
An email lookup tool designed for Google Chrome users, Vocus.io is a comprehensive email solution that expands your Gmail capability to find anyone’s email address. Just one of the features included in the system is email prospecting. The tool also includes email tracking, scheduling, and snooze functionality.
To use email lookup tools, type the name and company domain of the person you want to connect with into the search bar. Vocus.io will create a list of possible email addresses, which it runs through a “verification” service. There’s no bulk search available on Vocus. Pricing starts at $5/month.
6. Voila Norbert
Voila Norbert makes it easy to find any email address. Create an account and you’ll instantly receive 50 free searches. To find someone’s email, type the company domain and person’s name into the tool’s search bar, and Norbert will generate a result. You are only charged for emails that the tool is able to find.
The starter plan is available at $49/month for 1,000 leads (emails found).
For companies who prefer one-off usage, Viola Norbert provides pay-as-you-go email verification and email enrichment. For as little as $.003 per email address, this software can verify the contact information. Email enrichment starts at $.04 per email, which can help your team gain access to more leads through quality data.
7. Hunter.io
Previously known as “Email Hunter,” Hunter.io. is a popular email lookup tool that allows you to find an email address by domain. To use the tool, you simply enter a company’s URL and Hunter.io will return a list of emails that belong to that company.
There is a free plan available for 100 “requests” (email searches). Paid plans start at $39/month for 1,000 requests.
A free plan provides 25 monthly searches and 50 monthly verifications, whereas paid plans start at $49/month.
8. HireEZ
This email lookup service is geared toward recruiters, HireEZ helps push candidate information to your ATS or CRM. While their goal is to help find qualified candidates, B2B companies can benefit from their AI-generated search that pulls contact information for accurate outreach. Their email sequencing campaign feature allows your team to schedule touchpoints in advance.
Using artificial intelligence, the service collects information from around the web to build a full profile on the person you’re looking for. The service integrates with Gmail and Outlook. HireEZ pricing can be found by speaking with a sales rep.
9. Lusha
Tool that helps you find emails fast and efficiently, it’s also personal. Companies can customize the Lusha experience by adding the service to Salesforce, LinkedIn, or Twitter. There’s also a “Contact API” available for developers to plug into their existing technology stack.
Lusha has options for all business needs, starting with a free trail that allows 5 annual credits. The Pro plan is $29/month, Premium goes up to $51/month, and they’re happy to discuss pricing if your company needs a larger credit allowance.
10. FindThatLead
Intended for account-based sales, FindThatLead is quick and easy to use. Type a company URL into the search bar and click “Find Leads” to generate a list of email addresses within that company.
Billed monthly, FindThatLead’s plans start at $49/month for 5,000 monthly credits and can go up from there.
11. Skrapp
Skrapp is an email search tool that verifies information from LinkedIn. It syncs with your CRM to easily store leads. Pricing starts at $49/month for 1,000 emails.
12. AnyMail Finder
With Anymail Finder, you can look up email addresses by entering a person’s full name and company URL or name.
For smaller needs, Anymail Finder has a plan for $14/month that gives 50 verified emails. Premium plans are available at $49 per month for 1,000 verified emails, and pricing goes up for there. You only pay for emails that Anymail Finder knows won’t bounce.
13. Nymeria
If you’re hoping to gather prospects from your LinkedIn network, then Nymeria is the perfect tool for you. Offering users the chance to find emails with a single click, the browser extension scans through LinkedIn profiles to find right email addresses. Once found, you can export emails to a spreadsheet.
Nymeria offers monthly or annual billing, depending on which best fits your company’s needs. Their Nano plan is $33/month for 100 credits.
14. Clearbit
Clearbit is an advanced email finder tool that integrates with your CRM system. It currently supports Segment, Zapier, Marketo, and Salesforce. It also comes with a “Connect” feature which works with Gmail and Outlook.
The “Prospector” system scans through 20 million companies to create lists of targeted accounts that fit specific criteria for your business needs, like the number of employees within a company, or preferred technology stack.
Once you find the contacts you need, you can import them directly into your CRM system. Clearbit is a customizable platform based on volume, and their pricing varies. Schedule a demo today to begin chatting with a team member to see what best suits your company.
15. FindEmails
FindEmails.com is a cheap alternative for businesses who want the ability to look up bulk emails. While they don’t provide an accuracy guarantee through email verification process like some of their competitors, plans start at $29/month and go up based on the amount of credits your team needs.
16. LinkedIn Sales Navigator Lite
Another powerful email tool that integrates with Gmail, LinkedIn Sales Navigator Lite is an extension for Chrome owned by LinkedIn. Once you install the extension, you can compose new emails in Gmail by typing a potential address into the “To” field. The system will draw data from LinkedIn to help find email details.
Usually salespeople and other professionals find LinkedIn Sales Navigator to be the most useful sales tool for leads. However LinkedIn sale navigator lets you find LinkedIn profiles of your prospects but it doesn’t provide email address information with it. Hence you have use another tool on our list with this one.
Pricing varies based on your business needs, and you can contact a sales rep to get started with the conversation.
17. SellHack
Sellhack is a simple and effective browser extension. The service uses an “industry leading” 12-step email verification engine to identify correct email addresses. You can even use its one-click integration to sending an email with personalization from your email account to the prospects you find.
Prices start at $3/month for their ‘Lite’ version that comes with 100 email credits. Their ‘Pro’ plan is $60/month with 2,500 email credits and access to other features.
18. UpLead
UpLead focuses on bringing accurate data to the prospecting game. Rather than simply scraping the internet, UpLead spends time gathering clean and up-to-date data including email addresses to make B2B outreach easier and more accurate.
Plans start at $74/month, and can go up based on your needs.
19. Email Permutator
Email Permutator is a free tool that allows you to enter in a person’s full name and their company URL in order to generate a list of potential email addresses. There is no type of verification service with this tool. Using it will require a trial-and-error approach to correctly identify a person’s email.
20. Findymail
Findymail is another email finder… but not only! You can use their Chrome extension to export Sales Navigator search results with verified email addresses, but it also works on Apollo and any Linkedin profile.
They take great pride in the finding accurate email addresses, which means contrary to other email finders, you won’t need to use an email verification tool on the provided data. Pricing is $49-$249 per month, with unlimited users
21. BuzzStream
BuzzStream works by turning search result pages and website lists into a browsable list of prospects. When you search for blogs or influencers on Google, the tool shows up in the right-hand side of your browser to suggest possible prospects and email addresses pulled from those websites.
You can also use keywords like a person’s name to search for specific contacts and find their email address and social profiles. Once you find an email, Buzzstream adds it to a spreadsheet for you, alongside other information like the website the email is associated with, that site’s domain authority, and the prospect’s Twitter name. Their most popular plan is $124/month, which gives access to 25,000 contacts, bulk emailing, and link monitoring.
22. Ninja Outreach
Ninja Outreach helps with finding business leads and influencers by browsing through social profiles and websites online. Simply type keywords like “technology company” into the system, and it will list possible contacts from its internal database. You can also use the system to track your email campaigns and conversions with a built-in CRM system.
Their prices range from $155/month to $459/month, and all come with a free trial. All of the options allow for full search of their 120 Million influencers.
23. LeadFuze
LeadFuze is an email lookup tool that helps you to find the email and build your contact lists extension for Google Chrome. With LeadFuze, you can create relevant prospect lists without all the hard work and time. The system checks through social media profiles, email addresses, and prospect information on your behalf.
For scaling teams, LeadFuze starts at $147/month which provides access to 500 lead credits. However, they offer an unlimited plan for $397/month if more credits are needed.
24. Getemail.io
A simple yet effective email lookup tool from a startup in France, Getemail.io comes with 10 free credits to get you started. Each credit equals one email search. Although you won’t receive as many free searches with Getemail.io as some of the other tools on this list, the service comes with access to machine learning algorithms and big data for more accurate searches.
The “Basic” plan costs $49/month for 300 searches and email support. The “Standard” plan costs $99/month for 1,000 searches and instant chat support.
If you upgrade to the “Premium” plan at $149/month, phone support is also available, and you’ll receive 2,000 searches. They even offer an ‘Ultra’ plan for those who need 10,000 credits.
25. Snov.io
With Snov.io, you can find all the emails associated with a single person and verify them instantly. A green dot next to a prospect’s name means that the email is valid. On the other hand, a yellow dot suggests that the email may or may not be correct.
The Snov.io free account comes with a generous 100 domain searches a month, 100 verified LinkedIn searches, and the opportunity to upload and verify 200 of your own emails.
Their paid plans start at $30/month which provides the ability to use 1,000 credits and email 5,000 recipients. For custom plans, the starting rate is $999/month and features are determined to best suit your needs.
26. Email Magpie
Email Magpie is an email tool that searches through available public information on the internet and its own database. It finds influencer, company, and customer leads according to your chosen categories online.
For instance, you can look for tech companies, software brands, marketing companies, or any B2B clientele you choose. You can also search for lists according to geographical location or industry vertical. Paid plans $300 per month for 2,750 targeted emails.
27. AeroLeads
With AeroLeads, you can find phone numbers, email addresses, and social media profile information for businesses and their decision makers. AeroLeads is a Google Chrome plugin, so you’ll need to download and activate it before you start searching. With this tool, you can find emails through LinkedIn, Google, and various other blogs.
When you add a prospect name or domain to AeroLeads, the service automatically checks for verified email addresses and phone numbers. Pricing starts at $49/month for up to 2,000 searches.
28. Name2Email
Name2Email is a Gmail extension. To use the tool, compose an email and add a full name and domain to the address bar. The tool automatically generates a list of common corporate email addresses for the person you want to reach.
To improve your chances of finding a valid email with email lookup tools, you can hover your cursor over the generated addresses. If a popup shows the person’s name, then you’ve chosen the right address.
While using this tool will be more time consuming than using some of the other options on this list, the extension is completely free. All you need to do is add it to Chrome.
29. Discoverly
Discoverly works in the background as you search through websites and social media pages. It’s a Chrome extension that integrates with Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and AngelList, among other services, to automatically pull email addresses and profile information from pages.
The extension is completely free to use. You simply add it to your Chrome browser to get started.
30. ContactOut
A tool frequently used by recruitment teams, ContactOut helps recruiters find valid candidate email addresses. The tool installs as a Chrome extension that’s specifically designed to search through LinkedIn profiles.
ContactOut claims a 97% accuracy rate when finding email addresses. The extension is completely free to add to your Chrome browser.
Choosing from the Best Email Lookup Tools
There you have it, a selection of some of the best email lookup tools online today. Finding someone’s email is a crucial part of cold email outreach.
The perfect tool for you will depend on a range of factors including pricing, whether or not you need to find contacts from LinkedIn profiles, using an email tracking pixel, and if you want to find email addresses at scale.
While most of the tools on this list will help you find email addresses for a list of leads you’ve already identified, what about the ones you haven’t? What about the people who have already visited your website but haven’t contacted your company?
This is where LeadBoxer comes in. With LeadBoxer, you can identify your website’s visitors and their contact information without them reaching out to you first. This way, you’ll never miss out on connecting with a potential lead. To get started, schedule a free demo here.
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Want to stimulate interest in your brand without paying for ads? Content marketing is the answer. This type of marketing involves making videos, blogs, and social media posts that solve problems for your ideal customers, thus building loyalty to your brand and encouraging them to buy from you.
This strategy is essential for staying ahead of competitors. A 2021 report from HubSpot found that 70% of over 1,500 marketers surveyed are actively investing in content marketing. The same study noted that 40% of marketers consider content marketing vital to their overall strategy.
Creating and implementing a content marketing strategy doesn’t have to be time-consuming. The following techniques will set you up for success.
Great content marketing happens when everybody in a company collaborates. To do this, you’ll need to get the leaders of various teams and departments behind you.
Ardath Albee of Marketing Interactions explains, “You need executive backing to fund and source a content strategy. You also need the support to ensure there is enough commitment to see a content marketing strategy through.”
To get leaders of your company on your side, position content marketing as a way to help their departments reach their goals.
Understand Your Audience
Before creating content, you need to think carefully about your ideal customers and anticipate what videos, blogs, or resources they want. Consider these questions:
Who is the ideal person reading your content?
What information do people want that isn’t readily available?
What pain points are your customers feeling?
How does your target audience make buying decisions?
By creating content that anticipates and answers your ideal customer’s questions and pain points, you can simplify their decision to buy from you.
Invest in Branding
Consider hiring a reputable agency to develop your brand’s look. The visuals and messaging used to represent your company impact your bottom line. A 2019 Reboot study of 2,500 consumers found that the right color can increase brand recognition by 80%. Furthermore, a 2019 Lucidpress survey of 400 organizations found that a consistent presentation of brand imagery, messaging, and values across channels can increase revenue by 33%.
Publish Guest Blog Posts
Curating blog posts from thought leaders in your industry is a win-win for all involved. It creates new content for your website with less lift from your marketing team and gives contributing writers a platform for sharing their ideas.
Guest blog posts also encourage the creation of backlinks, or links connecting one website to another. This happens when the contributing writer shares the article on their personal site. Backlinks signal to search engines that your content is valuable, which in turn boosts your site’s ranking on search engine result pages (SERPs).
Here are some tips for finding and recruiting credible guest bloggers:
Visit other blogs in your industry and see who is writing for them
To grow your audience quickly, reach out to in-demand writers with large audiences and offer to pay them
Mention the benefits of writing for you, such as the number of monthly visitors to your site and the exposure writers will receive
Create Evergreen Content
While new content is helpful for keeping social media and email audiences engaged, there’s no need to churn it out all the time. Instead, invest energy in creating evergreen content, or resources that are always relevant. Examples include:
Frequently asked questions
How-to guides
Tutorials
Encyclopedia pages
Troubleshooting articles
Over time, these pieces of content will rise to the top of SERPs and draw new prospects into your audience.
Repurpose Content
Another way to save your marketing team time is to reconfigure content for different channels. For example, transform an interview between a member of the marketing team and one of your executives into a podcast episode, blog post, infographic, and series of social media posts.
This gets more mileage out of the original piece of content and can help you reach audiences on various platforms.
Organize Content on Pillar Pages
A pillar page is a high-level article that provides prospective customers with an overview on a topic. The page includes links leading to blog posts or pages that cover subtopics in more depth.
Pillar pages help keep your site organized. They’re also another effective way to reuse existing content.
Include Videos and Graphics
Visuals help break up long blog posts, appeal to visual learners, and can increase site traffic and the amount of time visitors spend there. A 2020 survey conducted by Wyzowl found that 86% of marketers say video has increased traffic to their website. The same survey noted that 83% of marketers credit video with helping increase the average time visitors spend on a page.
Measure Your Results
Analyzing the effectiveness of your marketing helps determine what types of content lead to the most sales and what parts of your strategy need improvement. To measure your results, use a tool like Google Analytics or LeadBoxer to study your site’s data.
LeadBoxer tracks what your leads do on your website or when you email them. You can see what pages they visit, how much time they spend there, and what resources they download.
By comparing customer journeys, you can identify common pathways or pieces of content that lead to sales. You then know which content types are most effective and worth replicating. You can also determine which pages to keep updating and sharing on social media.
Final Thoughts
Content marketing is vital for attracting, nurturing, and retaining customers. By anticipating and answering questions with your content, you establish your brand as a thought leader with unparalleled customer service.
Techniques like publishing guest blog posts, creating evergreen content, organizing content into pillar posts, and repurposing content across channels help your marketing team reach the most people with the least amount of lift.
A tool like LeadBoxer helps you analyze your strategy. With LeadBoxer, you can see what pages or downloadable resources are driving the most sales. Get started today with a free trial.
Your business wants to see revenue flowing in. Understandably, it makes sense that the more inbound leads you land, the more paying customers you’ll get. You devote your time and resources to gain new leads.
Lead generation is popular as 53% of marketers say half or more of their budget goes to lead generation. While over half of companies engage in new lead generation, only 35% of B2B marketers have a lead nurturing strategy.
What about your old leads? In the rush to get your brand out there in front of new prospects, they can sometimes be forgotten.
For years, marketers and salespeople have relied on outbound sales to generate new leads. Cold calling and spam emails are common outbound methods of reaching out to prospective customers.
However, people don’t like to be pestered by businesses. Today’s best leads will reach out to you through inbound marketing and sales. Inbound leads are much more likely to convert.
What are inbound leads? They are prospective customers that respond to a piece of content as part of a business’s inbound strategy. Some examples include filling out a survey, downloading an eBook, or contacting a salesperson after reading an article.
Why should you use an inbound strategy? Why is it necessary to pay attention to nurturing your old leads instead of continually generating new ones? The section below highlights statistics that may inspire you to alter your lead generation strategy.
Stats on Recapturing Old Leads
Your business needs customers to make a profit. Constantly devoting resources to generating new leads is not the best strategy. Here are some reasons why:
Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost. More than 35% of B2B marketers surveyed have established a lead nurturing strategy.
Inbound leads promise more for your business than outbound ones. To fully maximize the power of inbound leads, they need nurturing. Here are some reasons lead nurturing works:
68% of B2B companies will use landing pages to nurture new sales leads for future conversion.
The leads for 49% of businesses require “long cycle” nurturing with many influencers.
Those old leads you’ve forgotten are important. It is equally important to nurture them.
Maybe you have leads that have gone cold. How do you re-engage old inbound leads? Here are some effective strategies to try:
Continuously Offer Fresh Content
New leads are drawn to your company via interesting, valuable content. However, if the content doesn’t change, they will no longer engage with your brand and will go elsewhere.
To keep people coming back to your website or storefront, you need to continuously provide fresh, interesting content. This content can be website content, new product descriptions, blog posts, webinars, white papers, vlogs, etc.
Invest in Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most effective lead nurturing strategies out there. They can be sent with minimal effort and costs and they are received immediately.
However, email marketing is more than sending a massive e-blast every so often. Emails spared from the spam or trash bins are those that are interesting and personal. To have a solid email marketing strategy, you need to know your customers.
Categorizing your customers based on where they are on the buyer’s journey is the best way to get conversions. Researching who each audience is along the buyer’s journey will make your emails personal and eye-catching.
Use Paid Retargeting Ads on Social Media and Google
Customers are on social media and/or browsing the internet at least once a day. While social media marketing and SEO are great lead generation strategies, they may not be enough.
Paid Google ads and social media retargeting ads only show advertisements the customer would most likely be interested in. The customer won’t be overwhelmed by irrelevant products or services. This means your offerings will only be shown to those customers most likely to make a purchase.
Send Personalized Notes Through the Mail
In this day and age, it may seem odd to send notes to customers via snail mail. Because of the rarity, personalization, and thoughtfulness of mailed notes, they are effective in warming up cold leads.
The effectiveness and feasibility of mailing notes to leads also depends on your targeted audience and your customer base size. If your ideal customers are younger and your business has thousands of customers and prospects, email is a better option.
Ask For Customer Feedback Via Surveys
In most cases, an inbound lead grows cold because it’s either been neglected, or it’s been engaged in the wrong way. Asking the potential customer to provide feedback will empower them, which sparks engagement.
Asking a cold lead to provide suggestions for marketing efforts shows you care about the customer. Online surveys via email, text, or social media are quick and cost-efficient. They can also be viewed by the customer anytime, anywhere.
To improve the likelihood of survey completion, offer the customer a ‘thank you’ gift or discount.
LeadBoxer Integrations Can Boost Your Inbound Strategy
If your company hasn’t done inbound marketing or invested in lead nurturing, getting inbound leads can be a daunting task. However, you don’t have to go it alone. LeadBoxer is a sales and marketing platform that offers numerous features and integrations to help recapture and nurture leads.
With LeadBoxer, you’ll obtain valuable insights and analytics into your customers and their behavior. Learning who they are and what types of outreach they respond to will boost your marketing strategy and generate quality, loyal leads.
LeadBoxer works with a variety of marketing and sales tools you already use. The LeadBoxer platform identifies, enriches, and provides custom lead scoring so you know you’re targeting the right people. The insights provided also help you reach out to those most promising leads.
Some of the benefits of using LeadBoxer include:
Enjoying cutting-edge, big-data technology
The ability to identify, capture, enrich, score, segment your leads and customers
The ability to combine lead and customer activity and gain valuable insights into profiles and email/website behavior
Email Marketing Integration
You can’t recapture and nurture inbound leads without a strong email marketing strategy. LeadBoxer offers a variety of integrations for the email marketing programs you currently use. These include Hubspot, Marketo, Gmail, MailChimp, Outlook, Pipedrive, and Active Demand.
LeadBoxer provides thorough email tracking that allows you to import and export data. You can gain valuable insight into your audience and their behavior.
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MailChimp Integration
MailChimp is one of the most popular email marketing programs. LeadBoxer can help you identify your audience and track their behavior on your website. This offers valuable information about what your leads do once they click through from the email to your website.
Once an inbound lead is identified, you can see their future visits to your site. By learning who visits and returns to your website and which pages they visit, you will be better equipped to nurture your leads effectively.
Through the integration of your MailChimp email marketing platform with LeadBoxer, you can:
Identify more users on your website
Learn what your audience does after they land on your website
Better understand your email marketing campaigns
Be notified when your audience is ready to make a purchase
Qualify leads based on profile data and behavior
Segment leads based on scoring algorithms
Data can be exported and synchronized to multiple programs
Data Analytics
Why are data and analytics important to your inbound marketing strategy and nurturing old leads? The short answer is that it allows you to foster relationships with leads. Your marketing activities are personalized based on each lead’s behavior and preferences.
All your customers and leads are unique individuals who respond to different messaging and strategies. When you send out generic email blasts or paid search ads, they will turn away many leads. Effective inbound marketers know that one size doesn’t fit all.
Inbound leads come to your website looking for something. They chose to do business with you over the competition. To keep them coming back, you need to nurture them.
Lead nurturing involves a relationship between your brand and each customer. When your leads feel like your business knows them and values them, they are likely to come back. Using analytics to track audiences and preferences means you can alter how you connect with each lead.
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The insight you gain from data analytics will help you market to each lead in a way that sparks their interest. Additionally, the relationship they build with your brand will encourage them to become loyal customers.
There are people out there who want your products and services. If you don’t invest in an inbound marketing strategy, you miss these qualified leads. You need to recapture old leads by nurturing them.
LeadBoxer can help you with nurturing inbound leads and take your inbound marketing strategy to the next level. Contact LeadBoxer today and start generating high-quality leads who will become loyal customers.
Business-to-business (B2B) sales involve companies selling products and services to other businesses. B2B companies either sell items to another company so they can make their own products or meet a specific need.
The Purpose of a Good B2B Lead Strategy
In B2B sales, you’re likely to deal with several decision-makers within one company. In fact, salespeople engaged in B2B sales will need to work with an average of seven decision-makers. These people include CEOs, sales representatives, board members, and those in the financial and legal departments.
Selling to a group of people is different than pitching to an individual as in business-to-consumer (B2C) sales. The need to successfully make a pitch to individuals with varying perspectives differentiates B2B lead strategy from that required for B2C sales.
Relationship building is essential to both B2B and B2C lead strategies but takes on increased importance in the B2B arena. Here are some elements of a successful business-to-business lead sales and marketing strategy:
Know Your Prospects
Researching those you’re selling your product or service to will improve your chance of a successful transaction. Keep in mind, not every business prospect is a good fit. If you know this beforehand, you’ll avoid wasting time and energy that could be spent on quality leads.
Focus on Building Relationships
Typically, the B2B sales and relationship-building processes take more time in comparison to B2C. In B2B, businesses lose 45-50% of their clients over five years, which is significant and must be addressed.
To avoid losing B2B prospects, building and maintaining long-term relationships through a strong lead nurturing strategy is encouraged. B2B sales bring in more revenue than B2C sales as you’re dealing with companies, not individual consumers. When a B2B client is lost, thousands, not hundreds of dollars can disappear.
Build an Effective Website
Most B2B leads will do thorough research before making a purchasing decision. They will examine your website and social media profiles. Make sure these look professional, and that your website is easy to navigate and clearly states your company mission, background, and includes testimonials from satisfied clients.
Establish a Social Media Presence
Having a powerful social media presence is beneficial in many ways. It can offer your sales and marketing departments the following advantages:
Insight into your competitors and prospects
An avenue to establish credibility
A means for building trust with leads and buyers
Opportunities to reach out to prospects and buyers
According to Marketing Sherpa, 64% of respondents believe email marketing delivers the best return on investment. Email marketing is effective in cultivating relationships with business prospects and in nurturing them through the sales funnel.
As mentioned previously, relationships are a crucial element in B2B sales. Everything in your B2B strategy should revolve around building long-term relationships with business prospects. A strong business-to-business leads strategy will involve both the sales and marketing teams.
Your organization will appear more credible and trustworthy when the marketing and sales teams work together. Companies with a B2B strategy that features sales and marketing alignment are more successful in nurturing prospects into buyers.
Throughout the marketing and sales processes, both departments work together to provide a cohesive, smooth experience for prospects. Marketing produces valuable content at each stage of the funnel while sales provides personal and prompt lead follow-up. Both sales and marketing must do all they can to serve, nurture, and build relationships with each lead.
Market Alignment Goals
Your marketing message plays a big role in the success of your company’s B2B sales. Market alignment is defined as “the process of creating a marketing message that is appropriately aligned, or in sync, with the target audience the message is intended to persuade.” The goal of your market alignment is to deliver the right message at the right time to the right prospects.
This is achieved when you focus on the buyer’s needs rather than on emphasizing how good your company, products, and services are. Knowing your prospects, their pain points, and how your services and products can help, builds trust and a rapport. The early relationship-building formed by market alignment messaging improves the chances of a sale.
To fully understand which prospects your marketing department should be targeting, regular collaboration with the sales team is required. When marketing and sales are properly aligned, customer-centric messaging is incorporated into each sales funnel stage. Marketing can introduce market alignment messaging into content and sales can include it in lead follow-up and nurturing initiatives.
When sales and marketing aren’t on the same page problems ensue. Beyond the miscommunication and contradictory messaging issues that are bound to occur, misalignment can negatively affect the buyer’s journey. This lack of cohesiveness makes it more difficult to convert B2B leads into paying customers.
Issue #1: Poor Marketing Qualified Leads
A common marketing and sales misalignment issue is the failure to produce marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to sales. As a result, the sales team is stuck with poor prospects that do not respond to lead nurturing efforts. In turn, these leads fail to convert into paying customers.
Issue #2: Lack of Lead Follow-Up and Nurturing
Whether prospects are qualified or not, marketers can get frustrated at sales for not following up and nurturing the leads they are given. Once the marketing department hands off prospects to sales, its nurturing endeavors may end.
Issue #3: Poor Marketing to Sales Handoff
When the sales and marketing teams use different lead qualification requirements, the prospect handoff can cause problems. When prospective buyers are handed off from marketing to sales, mixed messaging can occur. Leads are quick to notice the inconsistency and may be hesitant to move forward along the sales funnel.
Issue #4: Lack of ROI Attributed to Marketing
In some cases, marketers don’t know how their lead generation impacts the company’s return on investment (ROI). This can alienate the marketing team and lower the incentive and motivation for your marketers to aggressively seek the new leads your company needs.
Strategies for Meeting Your Marketing Goals
Common B2B marketing goals include producing qualified leads for your sales team, creating valuable, targeted content, and building relationships with buyers. Successfully completing these tasks plays an essential role in bringing awareness to your brand, products, and services. These goals are more attainable when they are S.M.A.R.T goals (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely).
Establish MQLs Criteria: Work with your sales team to create uniform marketing qualified leads criteria. Only prospects that meet all of these established conditions should be referred to sales for nurturing.
Track Marketing ROI Contribution: Inform your marketers of how their lead generation efforts have directly contributed to the company’s ROI.
Involve Marketers in the Sales Process: Create opportunities for your marketers to sit in on sales calls and learn the overall selling process.
Utilize Marketing Automation Tools: Synchronize your company’s email and scheduling software between sales and marketing. Using the same program, a singular marketing message can be carried through in follow-ups by the sales team.
Create Unique Content for Each Step of the Buyer’s Journey: Marketers can create targeted content using buyer data, marketing goals, buyer personas, and lead generation strategies. The diversity of content is geared toward prospects in each stage of the sales funnel.
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Marketing Content
The foundation of your content marketing strategy should be centered around your buyers’ pain points and your company’s unique selling proposition. B2B leads will be more trusting of a company that demonstrates how it is focused on them and the ways it can help them to succeed. Referencing your company’s unique value proposition will make you stand out from your competitors.
Successful marketers build long-term relationships with B2B prospects, generate qualified leads, and help convert those leads into paying buyers. Throughout the buyer’s journey, there are opportunities to meet these marketing goals through content. Your content needs to build prospect trust, establish and reinforce brand authority, and resolve lead queries and concerns.
Your marketing content should provide valuable information to the right prospects, at the right time. The alignment of your marketing message should be adopted by your sales team when they interact with leads. Knowledge of the sales process will help form marketing content for each stage of the sales funnel.
Here are things to keep in mind when building relationships with B2B leads through content marketing:
Create a content library to guide prospects through the buyer journey
Share the content library with your sales department
Your content is for informing and educating, not selling
Keep the buyer at the center of your messaging
Use a variety of content pieces
To attract buyers, there must be sales and marketing alignment. Your market alignment messaging needs to be buyer-centered. There are many opportunities throughout the sales funnel to effectively use content marketing to reach prospects along the buyer’s journey.
Without a cohesive B2B lead strategy and sales and marketing alignment, you risk losing prospects. When your messaging is off, you may get unqualified leads.
Imagine knowing your leads’ level of engagement with your brand, the likelihood that they’ll buy your product, and even the best strategies for communicating with them. With that kind of information, you could increase the effectiveness of your prospecting and win more deals. Lead intelligence is what makes it possible.
But what is lead intelligence, and how do you start using it in your business? This guide covers the basics, including the most useful types of lead intelligence and the best tools available today. Once you learn how to leverage lead intelligence, you’ll wonder how you ever managed to make sales without it.
Lead intelligence is a form of data that significantly elevates your understanding of your prospects. So you can better address their pain points, communicate effectively with them, and win their business. When it comes to B2B sales, lead intelligence is invaluable.
Given how effective lead intelligence is for prospecting, chances are that if your competitor isn’t already taking advantage of this sales strategy, they will be soon. All the more reason why you should start incorporating this form of data into your company’s sales process today.
There are several different types of lead intelligence. Which ones you should focus on depends on the needs of your business.
Types of Lead Intelligence
Knowing your lead’s name, email address, and phone number is just the beginning of lead intelligence. The following data points tell you just how interested prospects are in your product, what their pain points are, and how you can better connect with them.
Site visitors
Who’s visiting your website that isn’t already on your radar? Some lead intelligence software can unveil a visitor’s name, contact information, and company before they ever fill out a form.
If you know your lead’s name and company but don’t know how to reach them, there are tools available that can dig up and verify their email address or phone number for you.
A Chrome extension such as this one from Lusha or a contact database like ZoomInfo both make it simple to find up-to-date info for all of your prospects.
Company details
If a company has recently received a big investment or has launched a new project, you should know about it. This information can give you insight into whether or not now is the right time to reach out with your offer. Updates about new hires or job changes also let you know if you’re contacting the right person.
Demographics
Study your company’s ideal customer profile, then make sure your lead intelligence software is gathering any details you need about a prospect’s age, job role, and geographic location. Knowing that a prospect has the essential characteristics of your ideal customer ensures that you spend time reaching out to the best leads.
Social media profiles
There are more ways than ever to connect with prospects. Knowing their LinkedIn profile, Twitter handle, or other social media profiles gives you more opportunities to engage with prospects outside their inbox and earn their trust. It also helps you come up with talking points based on the content they’ve recently posted.
Pages visited
Knowing the number of pages a prospect visited on your site can help you gauge their level of interest in your product. Lead intelligence can take it one step further and show you exactly which pages they’ve visited. And how long they spent on that page, shedding light on what problems they need help solving.
Emails opened
Ideally, you also want lead intelligence software that can integrate with your email marketing platform. To show you which emails a prospect opened, how long they spent reading the email, and if they clicked through on any links.
Site revisits
Does a prospect often return to your site? This can signal a greater level of interest in your product. Some lead intelligence software will alert you at the moment of a site revisit. So that you can reach out while your at the top of a prospect’s mind.
Personality characteristics
Knowing if a prospect prefers to communicate by email or phone is sometimes the difference between making or losing a sale. Some lead intelligence software can also clue you into their negotiation style, mannerisms, and questions that are most likely to prompt a desirable response.
Lead Score
Now that you have all this lead intelligence, how do you make sense of it quickly enough to take action? A lead score takes all the data you’ve gathered on a prospect and turns it into a number. This number indicates the likelihood that they’ll buy. There are formulas out there for calculating this yourself, but it can be a tedious process. Luckily, some lead intelligence software will make this calculation for you.
The Best Lead Intelligence Software
There are several different types of lead intelligence tools available that can find and help you interpret the best data on your prospects.
LeadBoxer
LeadBoxer is a solid all-in-one lead intelligence option that integrates with your CRM and marketing tools of choice. Not only does it help you identify and track website visitors and email behavior, but it also assigns them a leadscore based on their engagement with your brand across multiple channels and mediums. With LeadBoxer, not only do you know what kind of content prospects are most interested in, but you immediately know which prospects are most worth pursuing.
CRM heavyweight HubSpot offers sales tools that anyone can start using for free. The paid version of the platform comes equipped with features that identify prospective companies and their level of engagement. It can also track page views, pages visited, and the number of visitors from each company. However, HubSpot Sales doesn’t identify individual or anonymous visitors to the degree that LeadBoxer does.
In addition to identifying and tracking anonymous website visitors, VisitorTrack offers intent data about a business. Intent data indicates that a prospect has been actively researching topics relevant to your business at other locations around the web. For instance, if you sell a marketing automation solution and a visitor to your site has been researching similar tools or topics on other websites, VisitorTrack will let you know.
Like HubSpot Sales, Albacross identifies companies that are visiting your website and shows you how engaged they are. It also goes into stats like the company’s revenue, the number of employees, exactly which pages they visited, and how long they spent on the site.
Albacross doesn’t identify individual visitors, but it does offer a list of GDPR compliant email addresses for decision-makers at the companies visiting your site. With this tool, you can have a better idea of whether or not the person you’re contacting has the authority to make a purchase.
Buzz from LeadSift tracks what’s going on at a prospective company, such as if they found new sources of funding or launched a new product, eliminating the need to do that research yourself. In addition to curating all this news for you, Buzz offers guidance about what to do with that information, taking the guesswork out of conversation starters or talking points.
Crystal sets itself apart from other tools in this list by focusing on intelligence about a lead’s personality. This is especially useful for when you’re ready to contact a lead, deliver a proposal, or negotiate a contract. Few other tools can offer the same level of insight about a lead’s personality that Crystal can, but it doesn’t track their level of engagement with your brand or tell you how likely they are to buy.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator leverages a platform that both you and your prospects are already using. Sales Navigator comes with advanced search functions that make it easier than ever to find leads that match your ideal customer profile and can even recommend leads that you wouldn’t have thought of.
Lusha is one of the highest-ranked lead intelligence tools on G2. Its Chrome extension provides B2B contact enrichment based on profiles from places like LinkedIn or Twitter, making it easy to build up your list of prospects while you browse.
Use Lead Intelligence to Find and Engage With Qualified Prospects
If you’ve ever felt like you’re engaging with too many prospects and have not enough to show for your efforts, it’s time to integrate lead intelligence into your sales process. With lead intelligence, you’ll know exactly which prospects you should focus your attention on, plus which talking points you should use with them and how to engage with them in a way that earns their trust.
When it comes to choosing a lead intelligence tool, you can’t go wrong with an option that gathers data about anonymous visitors from a variety of sites and platforms, then interprets it into an actionable lead score. That way, you’ll spend more time on prospects who intend to buy and win more deals.
Email tracking has become a popular feature on a variety of platforms, and for very good reasons. Tracking B2B emails can help sales reps stay close to their most interested leads, automate follow-up messages, and close more deals faster. But of the hundreds of email tracking apps out there, how do you know which one is best for you?
We’ve compiled this list of 25+ email tracking apps and multi-functional tools with email tracking abilities, many of which work with Gmail, Outlook, and your CRM of choice. These include:
By the end, you should know which is the best email tracking app for your team’s needs and be well on your way to speeding up your sales cycle and help you to reduce cost per lead.
Email Tracking Apps with Web tracking combined
Email tracking alone will tell you a lot about the recipients behaviour in their mail client. But what about their behaviour across your company’s website, your lead capture pages, social media, and newsletter emails? There are tools or platforms that combine all this, and these will give you the best results:
1. LeadBoxer
Description: LeadBoxer is a lead & customer data platform that allows you to track the behaviour of your complete online audience: see who visits your website, reads your emails, and what company they work for, etc. It also identifies anonymous website visitors, and gives leads a score to gauge how engaged they are with your company.
Best Used For: Sales reps who want to spend time focusing on their most promising leads to help them make more sales.
Compatible Platforms: LeadBoxer works with Gmail and Outlook.
Pricing: The complete LeadBoxer Platform starts at $195 per month and includes 5 seats.
UPDATE: LeadBoxer now also offers a standalone version of their Outlook plugin. Get a 30 day free trial straight from the Microsoft App Source:
Description:Freshsales is a CRM that shows users exactly what actions a lead has taken across platforms, then uses that information to create a lead score. Freshsales has a strong focus on email tracking and leverages the data to prioritize leads and give sales reps relevant talking points to guide their next call or meeting.
Best Used For: Companies that are looking for a powerful but compact CRM with email tracking apps capabilities built-in.
Compatible Platforms: Freshsales can sync with your email client of choice so that all of your emails are synced within the CRM and your inbox.
Pricing: Freshsales starts at $12 per user per month for small teams.
Email Tracking Extensions for Gmail
If you’re looking for a simple and straightforward tool that works with your Gmail to identify what emails have been opened, these are the email tracking apps for you.
3. Boomerang
Description:Boomerang is an email tracking app that can also schedule messages to be sent at a later time. It also returns messages to your inbox at a later date that you set. This allows you to get back to an email when you’re ready for it and clean up your inbox in the process.
Best Used For: Whether you’re in sales or HR, everyone will love Boomerang’s follow-up reminders to help them stay in touch with people who haven’t yet replied to their emails, this makes sales follow-up process much easier.
Compatible Platforms: Boomerang works with Gmail/G Suite.
Pricing: Track up to ten emails per month for free. Plans with unlimited tracking but limited additional features start at $5 per month. Unlock all of Boomerang’s features for $50 per month.
Description:Gmelius installs via an extension and tracks email activity such as opens and clicks. Gmelius also includes functionality for scheduling emails, calendar scheduling, creating to-do lists, saving email templates, and more.
Best Used For: Teams who want to work together without leaving their inboxes.
Compatible Platforms: Gmelius works with Gmail only. It can be used with Chrome, Opera, and Safari internet browsers.
Pricing: Gmelius’ email tracking can be used for free. Other features are limited in the free plan. Paid plans range from $9 per user per month to $49 per user per month.
5. Mailtrack
Description:Mailtrack adds a series of checkmarks next to an email in your inbox. When someone has opened your email, the checkmark next to the corresponding email will turn green. This makes it easy to look through your inbox and see who has opened your emails at a glance. A popup notification also lets you know when your email has been opened.
Best Used For: Users who want to track emails at a glance with the help of visuals.
Compatible Platforms: Mailtrack works with Gmail via a browser extension for Chrome.
Pricing: The app is free to use for an unlimited number of emails. However, an email signature that says “Sent with Mailtrack” will be added to all of your emails. Paid plans range from $5 per month to $10 per month.
6. MailTracker
Description:Mailtracker is another simple app that provides email tracking only. The tool provides information on when your email is opened, how many times, and where the email was opened. The app is part of Hunter.io’s offering of products (Hunter.io is a popular tool for finding a person’s email address).
Best Used For: Users who want a lightweight and unobtrusive email tracking tool in their Gmail inbox.
Compatible Platforms: Mailtracker works with Gmail only and installs via a Google Chrome extension. Other internet browsers are not supported.
Pricing: Mailtracker is free to use.
7. Mixmax
Description:Mixmax offers email tracking, saved templates, calendar scheduling, in-email polls, and automated email follow-ups. A notification will appear in your inbox or Slack (if you use it) when someone has opened your email.
Best Used For:Teams who work in Slack and want to receive notifications without jumping between platforms and email tracking apps.
Compatible Platforms: Mixmax email tracking only works with Gmail. The tool integrates with Salesforce, Slack, and a few other platforms.
Pricing: Mixmax allows you to track 100 emails per month for free. However, an email signature will be added to any email you send. Paid plans, which include premium features and remove the email signature, range from $9 per user per month to $49 per user per month.
Description:Vocus includes features for email tracking, email reminders, email scheduling, and automated email follow-ups. It sets itself apart from competitors by specifying who engaged with an email when there are multiple recipients. It can also help you find the contact details of someone within a target organization.
Best Used For: Teams who need help finding a lead’s contact info without having to leave their Gmail inboxes.
Compatible Platforms: The tool works with Gmail only and installs via a Chrome extension.
Pricing: Vocus is available only via a paid plan. However, a 30-day free trial is available to demo the tool. Paid plans range from $5 per month to $20 per month.
Description:MailTag.io will let you know exactly when recipients open your emails with real-time desktop alerts. It also tracks the performance of your open rates, click rates, and more. MailTag allows you to schedule follow-up sequences or schedule personalized messages to send later.
Best Used For: Teams who want a lightweight email tracking tool with some automation capabilities.
Compatible Platforms: MailTag works with Gmail only.
Pricing: You can try MailTag for free, but paid plans start at $10 per user per month.
10. Checker Plus for Gmail
Description:Checker Plus for Gmail is simply a Google Chrome extension that enables you to track emails. Information such as who and when someone has opened your email is displayed as a popup notification. Features like email scheduling and email reminders are not available.
Best Used For: Users who want to add some functionality to their Gmail inbox without committing to a bloated or expensive app.
Compatible Platforms: The extension only works with Gmail.
Pricing: This extension is free to use.
Sales CRMs with Email Tracking Capabilities
If you’re in the market for a fully-fledged CRM, consider getting one that includes email tracking as a feature.
11. Hubspot Sales
Description:Hubspot Sales is a sales CRM offered by Hubspot. The email tracking extension shows who has opened your emails and who hasn’t. A notification will also popup when the recipient has opened your email.
Best Used For: Teams who need an all-in-one sales CRM that can also track email opens.
Compatible Platforms: With Hubspot Sales, you can track emails straight from your Gmail or Outlook inbox. Setup with Gmail will require you to allow Hubspot to integrate with your inbox. This is done by installing an extension to Google Chrome.
Pricing: Hubspot Sales is free to track up to 200 email opens. Paid plans start at $50 per month for one user.
12. Accelo
Description:Accelo is one part sales CRM and one part team task manager. It offers the ability to schedule and track emails for your leads, then assign related tasks and projects to team members based upon their future workloads.
Best Used For: With its team inbox, Accelo is a solid choice for sales teams that work closely together to make more deals.
Compatible Platforms: Accelo integrates with G Suite, Office 365, Salesforce, and several other leading platforms.
Pricing: Accelo for sales starts at $39 per user per month.
13. PhoneBurner
Description:PhoneBurner is a power dialer that helps streamline the post-call workflow so that sales reps can spend more time on the phone and less on manual data entry or email follow-ups. Based on the call result, PhoneBurner can suggest personalized emails to send with one click.
Best Used For: Phone-focused sales reps that are looking for a tool that brings their calls and emails closer together.
Compatible Platforms: PhoneBurner is a CRM that can work with Gmail, Outlook, and a few other email servers.
Pricing: Unlimited dialing with PhoneBurner starts at $149 per user per month.
14. Streak
Description:Streak is a CRM that works in tandem with your Gmail inbox. The tool includes email tracking, scheduling emails, and email reminders. Team members can share emails, notes, and call logs to help tackle leads together.
Best Used For: Teams who want a lightweight CRM that meshes beautifully with their Gmail inboxes.
Compatible Platforms: Streak is a Chrome extension for Gmail only.
Pricing: Streak is free for personal use but has limited features. Paid plans start at $49 per user per month.
Sales Communication Automation Platforms with Email Tracking Capabilities
Perhaps the best way to handle your sales pipeline efficiently is with a platform that can automate much of your sales communication – like sales prospecting tools. Email tracking is an essential part of knowing when to trigger certain actions, such as a follow-up call.
Description:SalesHandy includes functionality for tracking emails, saving templates, scheduling emails, and creating automated email follow-ups. It’s free to use to track an unlimited number of emails. However, other features are not available in the free plan.
Best Used For: Users who are looking for a simple, free tool to track their emails without any frills.
Compatible Platforms: SalesHandy works with both Gmail and Outlook.
Pricing: Paid plans range from $7 per user per month to $40 per user month.
Description:Autoklose draws from a huge database of B2B leads to help prospectors connect with the right person every time. Schedule email sequences, track opens and clicks, and fine-tune the process at any time to continually boost engagement with leads. Reps can also choose to check in on leads who have ignored emails and try to re-engage with them.
Best Used For: Autoklose works well with any size for any sized companies, but solopreneurs may especially like its functionality for the price.
Compatible Platforms: Autoklose supports Gmail/G Suite and Outlook/Office 365.
Pricing: Autoklose starts at $50 per user per month.
17. Yesware
Description: On top of email tracking, Yesware includes email scheduling, saved templates, calendar scheduling, and automated follow-ups. It syncs with Salesforce to make sure that all of your data is saved across platforms.
Best Used For: Sales reps who want email automation assistance that lives right in their inbox.
Compatible Platforms: Yesware works with both Gmail and Outlook.
Pricing: The tool is only available via a paid plan. However, a free trial is available. Paid plans range from $12 per user per month to $55 per user per month.
Description:SalesLoft specializes in automating email cadences that nurture leads. Use email tracking to see how individual leads are engaging with the process, then use at-a-glance email analytics to find ways to improve the open and click rates of your automated messages. The email tracking feature also helps informs sales reps about the best time to reach out by phone.
Best Used For: Salespeople who want to automate their emails, improve their messaging, and make their phone and digital outreach work better together.
Compatible Platforms: SalesLoft works with Gmail, Outlook, or your CRM.
Pricing: Contact SalesLoft to learn about current pricing.
Description: Outreach is the platform for automating sales touchpoints and personalizing emails at scale so sales reps have more time to book meetings and close deals. Email tracking allows you to categorize and prioritize prospects according to who opened and responded to a message, giving you a better understanding of the sales cycle.
Best Used For: Sales teams that want to quickly know who is most engaged with their emails so they can schedule more meetings with the right prospects.
Compatible Platforms: Outreach works with Gmail, Outlook, or your CRM.
Pricing: Contact Outreach to learn about current pricing.
Description:Cirrus Insights lets sales reps schedule drip campaigns, track email and attachment opens, set follow-up reminders, and schedule more meetings with the most engaged and promising leads. With Cirrus Insights, you can even update or take back attachments after you’ve sent them, which means no more embarrassing follow-up emails with the correct document.
Best Used For: Salesforce clients that are looking for a simple but highly useful add-on to their Gmail or Outlook inbox.
Compatible Platforms: Cirrus Insights works with both Gmail and Outlook. It also integrates with Salesforce and a few other CRMs so you don’t have to jump between platforms.
Pricing: Cirrus Insights starts at $27 per user per month for both Gmail and Outlook.
Description:Reply automates email outreach so that sales reps can focus on calls, meetings, and closing. It uses AI to track emails, then sorts leads by their level of interest. The program can even suggest email copy that is most likely to convert. There are optional plugins that make it easy to find contact information for new leads.
Best Used For: Single-person businesses might forgo a bulky CRM and instead rely on Reply as their main prospecting platform.
Compatible Platforms: Reply can be installed for Gmail and Outlook/Exchange accounts.
Pricing: Reply starts at $70 per month for an individual user and $200 per month for a team of three users.
22. InsideSales.com Predictive Playbooks
Description:InsideSales.com Predictive Playbooks uses AI to create outreach cadences based on the previous behaviors of individual leads. Playbooks can suggest better email addresses or phone numbers for contacting leads than what sales reps already have on file. Email tracking allows reps to always be connected to their leads and follow-up at the right time.
Best Used For: Sales reps that want to let AI do all the heavy lifting and drastically increase the efficiency of their outreach.
Compatible Platforms: Predictive Playbooks can integrate with your email client and CRM of choice.
Pricing: Get in touch with InsideSales.com to learn about the pricing of Predictive Playbooks.
Description: PersistIQ has a lot of the features you’ve come to expect from a sales engagement tool, including email templates, multiple touchpoint scheduling, and open and click tracking. What sets PersistIQ apart is its clean, intuitive design that teams can use intuitively and adopt immediately.
Best Used For: Sales teams that are looking to augment their existing CRM or Gmail inboxes with personalized sales emails at scale.
Compatible Platforms: PersistIQ integrates with many CRMs. It also has a plugin so you can access its templates within Gmail, then log emails to Salesforce.
Pricing: PersistIQ starts at $40 per user per month.
Description:SmartCloud Connect is a tool that appears as a sidebar within your Gmail or Outlook account. The sidebar can pull data about a lead from Salesforce, show email open and click tracking, and supply message templates from Salesforce. With SmartCloud, it’s easy to log emails to Salesforce and set reminders that keep you on task.
Best Used For: Sales teams that want a tool that can maximize productivity within their inbox and reduce the amount of time they spend switching over to Salesforce.
Compatible Platforms: SmartCloud integrates with Outlook, Gmail, and Salesforce to keep everything synced across platforms.
Pricing: SmartCloud starts at $15 per user per month.
Email Tracking Apps with Unique Features and Use Cases
Looking for something with specific functionality? These email tracking apps work well for internal communications,
Description:Bananatag is an email design and tracking app specifically for internal communications. With Bananatag, you can create beautiful company memos and newsletters within your email client, get feedback from employees, and measure open and click rates.
Best Used For: Managers who want to make sure that employees are opening and engaging with important company messages.
Compatible Platforms: Bananatag works with both Gmail and Outlook.
Pricing: Get in touch with Bananatag to learn more about their custom pricing.
26. Contact Monkey
Description: Contact Monkey is an app that can work for internal communications or sales. The app features email tracking, email scheduling, and saved email templates.
Best Used For: Teams who want a sidebar within their inbox to help compose, schedule, and track emails.
Compatible Platforms: Contact Monkey works with both Gmail and Outlook.
Pricing: Contact Monkey is available via a paid plan only. However, a free trial is available. Paid plans for sales range from $10 per user per month to $25 per user per month. Get in touch with Contact Monkey to learn the price of their internal communications product.
Description:Nimble is true to its name and organizes events, tasks, your pipeline, and email tracking into one clean, easy-to-understand dashboard. Sales reps can quickly see where they stand and make smart decisions about their next action. Reps can also get more detailed views of their leads, including their history of activity and the upcoming activities scheduled for them.
Best Used For: Sales teams looking for an intuitive dashboard should look to Nimble. Office 365 users in particular will love Nimble’s CRM solution.
Compatible Platforms: Nimble is designed to work Office 365 and G Suite.
Description:Groove frees up hours of employee productivity by syncing Salesforce, Gmail, and Google Calendar data. It also offers email open and click tracking, as well as the option to schedule a message to send later. Plan automated email sequences and let Groove take care of the rest.
Best Used For: Groove works best for teams that are already using Salesforce and want to have their emails, calendars, and CRM data automatically synced.
Compatible Platforms: Groove works with Salesforce and Gmail.
Pricing: Get in touch with Groove to discuss the best pricing for your business.
Description:ClearSlide is a content creation and management platform teams can use to help engage their leads. With ClearSlide, not only do sales reps get alerts about email opens and clicks, but they also get detailed reports about how leads are engaging with their content. Users can see what parts of their content are working and what needs to be improved to maximize engagement.
Best Used For: Teams that need help making email content, then analyzing it to see what needs to be tweaked.
Compatible Platforms: ClearSlide integrates with Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Pricing: ClearSlide starts at $35 per user per month.
Description: Tellwise has a ton of features that make it a natural addition to your inbox. The tool alerts you when a lead is reading your content, then gives you the option to immediately engage with them via a chatbox. Know when leads read a proposal and shared it with a colleague. Tellwise even offers one-click calling to help you get prospects on the phone faster.
Best Used For: Sales teams that want a lightweight but effective tool to supplement their Gmail or Outlook inboxes.
Compatible Platforms: You can use Tellwise from within Gmail, Outlook, or Salesforce.
Pricing: Get in touch with Tellwise to learn about current pricing.
Use Email Tracking Apps to Speed Up Your Sales Cycle
For a complete look at how to get started with email tracking apps, how it can benefit you or your business, and best practices for success, we recommend you take a look at our email tracking guide.
If you want to up your game and track your lead’s entire customer journey map (including email activity, website activity, and more), take a look at LeadBoxer and request your free trial today.
Not seeing the sort of close rates you want? If your primary marketing strategy has been to “cast a wide net”, consider only going after your white whales – your ideal accounts – instead, use account based marketing tactics. Known as account-based marketing (ABM), companies that treat individual prospects like an entire market can generate 208% more revenue than those who don’t according to MarketingProfs.
In this article, you’ll learn 20 of the best ABM techniques, from how to choose which accounts to focus on, to mapping out their personalized marketing experience. You’ll also discover 7 ABM software solutions; since there are more moving parts in an account based marketing tactics versus a one-size-fits-all marketing strategy, you’ll need the right tools to keep everything running smoothly.
What is Account-Based Marketing?
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategy of making marketing decisions based on the characteristics of target accounts and prospects. It involves creating a highly specific list of potential accounts, then creating personalized marketing experiences to engage those prospects.
This account based marketing tactics require that a business’s sales and marketing teams work more closely together. Sales reps in charge of those accounts can give crucial insight to their marketing peers, who can then develop custom content, targeted ads, and other unique methods of engaging with prospects.
Depending on the needs and resources of an organization, ABM can take either a one-to-one approach or a segmented approach, where a few or many accounts with common traits are targeted with similar content.
Account Based Marketing Tactics & Techniques
Since ABM is a more holistic marketing strategy, plan to incorporate at least a few of these techniques into your final marketing plan with sales enablement on board.
1. Market to current customers
Before filling your target account list with companies you don’t yet work with, take a look at your list of current customers. Upselling to current customers is proven to have greater ROI than converting new customers; SaaS companies on average spend just $0.28 to earn a dollar of revenue from an existing customer, whereas they’ll spend $1.18 on a new customer.
To market to these existing customers, make content that will help them get more out of your product. Blog posts are just the beginning. Consider offering free training sessions or reports that analyze how effectively they’re using your product.
Another way to market to this group is to target them with ads for discounts or special offers on additional products that are relevant to them.
2. Define target accounts with look-alike modeling
You should also look at your current customers to see who is the most valuable, in other words, which existing accounts have the highest ROI or send the most referrals your way. Highlight what attributes these customers have in common, then use them to build a look-alike model to help you identify the best prospective accounts.
Once you have your look-alike model defined, search for companies with similar characteristics in places like LinkedIn. A data vendor like D&B Hoovers can also help you zero in on accounts that fit your look-alike model.
3. Identify accounts using intent data
These days, the average B2B buyer is 67% of the way through the buying journey before seeking out a salesperson. That’s a long time to wait before engaging with a prospect. Intent data can tell you who is researching topics that are relevant to your product before those accounts ever land on your website, helping you target them sooner.
Vendors like Bombora and Aberdeen can identify companies who are expressing intent but haven’t yet interacted with your site. However, they can’t give you details about the individuals doing the research. A solution like LeadBoxer can provide the contact information of individuals who are engaging with your site but haven’t yet reached out to your sales team.
4. Build a list of role-based contacts
While building a list of target accounts, you’ll also want to build a list of contacts within those companies. Researching people based on their job title can be tricky, especially if they’re part of a small company and tend to wear many hats. Instead, focus on what roles people have within a company.
This isn’t easy to do manually, but some vendors exist that can help compile lists for you, including ReachForce. ReachForce can enrich your contact data and validate it for you, so your CRM will never be clogged with defunct contacts.
5. Map an account’s decision-making structure
It’s imperative to know exactly who is responsible for making purchasing decisions, as well as how they work with or answer to other people within the organization. Says Scott Albro, founder, and CEO of TOPO, research, and advisory firm:
“Detailed account profiles that focus on the organizational structure can be effective tools….but the holy grail is understanding how things like power structures, personalities, and coalitions impact purchasing decisions.”
6. Engage with target accounts on social media
Once you have your list of target accounts, it’s time to engage with them. One of the most immediate (and free) ways you can do that is by following them on social media, then interacting with them. Here are a few tips for keeping engagement authentic and effective:
Comment on their content only when you have something of value to say
Reshare their content to your feed when it makes sense for your audience
Join groups they’re in and establish your expertise by answering questions or offering free resources
For more ways to generate leads through a channel like LinkedIn, check out this guide.
7. Pay attention to current events
What’s going on at a company can play a big role in the kind of messaging you incorporate into their marketing. Follow their Twitter or LinkedIn and keep an eye open for any press releases, announcements, or other news that they’re putting out.
You can also set up a Google Alert, which will scan the web for certain content and inform you of any relevant article. If something significant changes with the company, you’ll be able to pivot your marketing strategy or rework the messaging.
8. Segment and personalize email campaigns
Evidence abounds to support the idea that one-size-fits-all email marketing is going the way of the dinosaur. According to Experian, personalized subject lines are to thank for a 26% increase in open rates, while DMA claims that marketers who use segmentation have seen a whopping 760% increase in revenue.
If you’re not already taking advantage of this tactic, here are some tips to get started:
Segment email lists by job role and where prospects are in the buyer’s journey
Adjust messaging of emails to reflect segments
Personalize the subject line and content with dynamic tags, such as the ones above used in HubSpot’s platform
9. Create custom content for individual prospects
Though you might groan at the thought of creating even more content, this is a strategy that’s proven to get people’s attention. A survey from CEB shows that prospects who received content personalized to their specific needs were 40% more likely to buy from that supplier.
Custom content also doesn’t have to be time-consuming. Take the video above. Kyle Jepsen, a HubSpot Academy Sales Professor, received this personalized video from Cole, a representative at Vidyard.
Cole doesn’t stick to a script but instead mentions Jepsen’s colleagues and the interactions he’s had with them. Not only is this guaranteed to grab someone’s attention, but it comes across as a more natural and genuine attempt at forging a connection. It also took Cole only a few seconds to make and is on-brand with Vidyard, a video making and hosting solution.
10. Mention target accounts in content
One way to get on an account’s radar is to feature them in your published content. By giving them free publicity, you’re benefiting the prospect as well as opening the door for further contact.
Featuring target accounts in content is just one of nine different account based marketing tactics employed by Thomson Reuters Legal Professionals, a company that offers legal management solutions. Including the tactic in their holistic approach contributed to their astonishing 95% win rate.
11. Target individuals with custom ads
The ability to target particular demographics through PPC ads has never been more sophisticated. However, you can get even more specific by uploading a list of email addresses or phone numbers of individuals you want to target, then serving them a custom ad.
With Facebook, this works if the person has their Facebook account registered to that email address or phone number. This isn’t always going to be the case, especially if they’re meticulous about keeping their work life separate from their social life.
Google Ads offers a similar targeting option in the form of Customer Match.
12. Create custom ads for retargeting
Retargeting is placing an ad in front of someone who has already interacted with your website. This is crucial for nurturing leads over time and keeping your business top of mind.
Creating a custom retargeting ad is a good first step, but even better is having an ad that’s tailored to an account’s previous behavior on your site.
Demandbase is one ABM solution that has made exciting innovations in ad retargeting. By placing carefully targeted and personalized ads on a network of properties, Demandbase can cut past the clutter and get clicks only from your key accounts.
13. Create personalized landing pages for ads
If you’re going to be investing the time, effort, and money into creating personalized PPC ads, then you’ll want the messaging of your landing page to match the messaging in the ad. This means building personalized landing pages tailored to different audiences.
Luckily, there are plenty of solutions to make this a painless process. Instapage is a drag-and-drop style landing page builder that simplifies the personalization process. They also have a product called AdMap, which makes it easy to visualize the flow of ads to landing pages, then connect them.
14. Send a personalized gift
A sure way to grab someone’s attention is through a physical gift. This doesn’t mean you should send a box of branded thermoses or pens that will get shoved to the back of an office cupboard. The key is to send something fun, unique, and charming.
Influitive, makers of advocacy and engagement software, experimented with three types of personalized gifts for their ABM campaign. The most notable were pinatas shipped directly to companies. The pinatas contained positive online reviews of the account, social proof about Influitive, and candy (of course). The pinatas received a 36% response rate and a 3.4% sales-qualified opportunity rate, making it their most successful gift-giving tactic.
15. Build one-on-one, c-level relationships
Some accounts will require multiple relationships across different levels of the organization. This ensures that all the decision-makers or people with influence over the buying process are on the same page.
Rather than have one sales agent connect with multiple contacts at the same company, pair employees from different hierarchy levels and divisions with their counterpart at the account. For example, pair a CMO at your organization with a CMO at the prospective company. The CMO should lead with an email or direct mail about the reasons for connecting, then follow up with a phone call and an invitation for a meeting.
16. Send direct mail to executives
Executives have plenty on their plate. They’re not known for promptly answering unsolicited emails or spending a lot of time engaging with other businesses on social media, and rightfully so. Initiating a meaningful connection may take old fashioned direct mail and a little creativity.
Matt Heinz of Heinz Marketing relayed an anecdote about using this tactic to Craig Rosenberg at TOPO:
“We sent two-day packages to executives in advance of a big conference. The package was an empty iPad box. We wrote in the direct mail to come by our booth to pick up the iPad. Most executives came by just to compliment us. It worked.” (Source)
17. Look for an “in” elsewhere in the account
It’s not just your sales reps, marketing managers, or c-level executives that you should be tapping for connections. Reach out to the rest of your organization to see if there are employees in other, seemingly unrelated departments that might have a relationship with a contact at the target account.
Still struggling to find a way in? The TeamLink function through LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a handy tool for unearthing unthought-of connections between organizations.
18. Offer a free, in-person evaluation
Despite the rise of digital communication, meeting in-person is still critical for business success. One study claims that face-to-face meetings are what it takes to convert 40% of prospects to customers.
One way to tweak meetings to fit your account based marketing tactics is to offer free, in-person evaluations of a target account’s current situation. For example, if you’re an advertising agency, offer a session where you compare the account’s current advertising efforts to their competitors’.
Even if you have to travel to the prospect to hold the meeting, take heart: for every dollar spent on travel, businesses on average reap $12.50 in revenue.
19. Plan ahead for conferences
Conferences are jam-packed with opportunities to meet contacts face-to-face, and that level of familiarity is sometimes what’s needed to push an account over the finish line. Here are some tips to plan ahead and make the most of those few days:
Research sponsors and cross-check it with your list of target accounts
Monitor accounts’ social media activity for mentions about conference attendance
Reach out to known contacts and invite them to your booth
Set aside personalized gifts or swag for contacts that swing by
20. Host a local event for prospects
Whether you’re organizing a thought leadership session or something as simple as a mix and mingle during happy hour, in-person events are prime places to invite contacts from target accounts. This gets you valuable facetime while also offering the prospect a free resource or experience.
Inviting accounts to events is another one of the account based marketing tactics that Thomson Reuters used in their journey to achieving a 95% win rate.
Software Solutions for Account Based Marketing Tactics
ABM can be more complex than traditional marketing strategies, but the right tools can help you find the data you need and use it to create customized marketing experiences from start to finish.
LeadBoxer
LeadBoxer is a lead generation solution that can assist your ABM strategy by identifying anonymous or partially identified visitors on your site and automatically populating the rest of their contact information.
This helps you flesh out your list of target accounts. It also allows you to find and engage with qualified prospects on social media, send them custom content, target them with custom ads, send direct mail or gifts, or invite them to in-person events.
LeadBoxer also gives your prospects a leadscore, which tells you which accounts are most qualified and worth pursuing.
Marketo
Marketo is one of the heavy hitters of the ABM industry. Its products can help you identify ideal target accounts, discover contacts, and engage with accounts across channels with personalized content.
While certainly a powerful product, Marketo’s solutions come in the hundreds of dollars per month to the thousands of dollars range, making it a serious (or unrealistic) investment for small businesses.
Terminus
Terminus is an ABM solution used by customers like Thomson Reuters, the case study from the previous section who used tactics such as inviting contacts to in-person events and creating content that featured accounts’ expertise.
Terminus comes with features such as the account breakdown above, which shows how engaged accounts are and how much you’ve spent nurturing each one.
Aberdeen
Aberdeen is a vendor of intent data, so it can help you identify accounts that are expressing interest in topics relevant to your product. This can help you add target accounts to your list that you might not have thought of otherwise.
Aberdeen integrates with Salesforce, so team members can immediately see which target accounts are expressing intent. Use this as a cue to start targeting those accounts with custom ads and content as soon as they’re ready for it.
ReachForce
Never worry about old or inaccurate contact data again. ReachForce can help you flesh out a list of contacts within an account, show you who is responsible for what, and continually validates and cleans old data.
If you’re trying to keep track of and engage with multiple contacts within one account, ReachForce is an invaluable source of information and automation.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is the platform’s solution for helping businesses find, understand, and engage with accounts on the social media channel.
Not only does Sales Navigator come with advanced search options for finding leads, but it also integrates with your CRM and can notify you of significant shifts within a company, such as job changes.
Instapage
Instapage takes the stress out of making personalized landing pages. Its big draw is a drag-and-drop landing page builder built for collaboration. If you’re a small business cranking out your own personalized advertising and web content, this tool is worth looking into.
Instapage also has ad mapping solutions, so you’ll never lose track of which ads match which landing pages. Plus, Instapage’s affordable pricing tiers makes personalization accessible to any size business.
Take Advantage of Account Based Marketing Tactics and Grow Your Business
Given the level of research and personalization of content involved, it’s understandable to feel overwhelmed by the idea of ABM. Supplementing your existing inbound marketing strategy with ABM is a process that can take years, but the payoff is well worth it. The first step is to gather together your teams and begin discussing which tactics and tools best suit your company’s needs and don’t forget about implementing the cross-domain tracking too.
LeadBoxer can help you zero in on the right target accounts, find their contact information, and show you what content they engage with most so you can create better marketing experiences. Start your free trial today.
Integrating different platforms within your sales and marketing stack not only saves you time and headaches, but it also helps you close more deals and make more sales. These 30 Mailchimp integrations for marketing and sales teams leverage the power of email at every step of the buyer’s journey, turning business growth into an all but automatic process. Mailchimp has integrations that work at almost every step of the sales pipeline and marketing process, including:
By integrating Mailchimp with your preferred sales and marketing tools, you’ll be able to run otherwise tedious processes on autopilot, gain valuable insights about prospects and customers, and make more informed decisions about your business.
Integrations for Capturing Leads
The first step to increasing sales is to capture more leads. With these Mailchimp integrations, finding and recording potential customers can happen in your sleep.
Typeform is a tool for creating surveys, quizzes, and forms, making it easy to keep in touch with current customers or learn more about potential ones. Don’t worry about aesthetics. With Typeform, it’s easy to build content that’s beautiful and on-brand. With the Mailchimp integration, you can map any field in a Typeform survey to a field in a Mailchimp list. Not only does this negate the need to export and import data to build email lists, but it can create tags and flesh out data for more effective list segmentation.
OptinMonster offers pop-ups, floating bars, and more that helps convert visitors into email list subscribers. The designer lets you create website elements that feel on-brand and make it possible to add discounts, value offers, and countdown clocks that spur visitors to action. The program also shows you stats on which forms or pop-ups are performing best. The Mailchimp integration instantly adds captured email addresses to lists. You can create unique lists based on what form or popup visitors subscribed from. OptinMonster offers multiple account support, a big plus if you’re managing several different businesses or brands.
Unbounce helps businesses craft landing pages that are primed to capture more leads with no coding required. With Unbounce you can also create pop-ups and floating bars to attract more subscribers. There are even templates to help get you started if you don’t have a designer on staff. The Mailchimp integration streamlines the process, funneling email addresses from the point of capture on an Unbounce page straight to your email list on Mailchimp. Say goodbye to the days of manually exporting and importing lists of email addresses between platforms.
Instapage is similar to Unbounce in that it builds landing pages with a drag and drop interface. Instapage takes it to the next level by specializing in advertising personalization and post-click optimization. With Instapage, you can easily duplicate and alter landing pages to match the messaging of the ads you link them to. The Mailchimp integration then saves all leads captured on those pages to the email list of your choice. There are several different options for saving those contacts, such as adding them to groups. You can also create new email lists from within Instapage.
Whether your business has a Facebook page with scores of followers or you’re just starting out, it’s important to try and get as many of those followers as possible on your email list. With email, your content will make its way straight to subscribers’ inboxes instead of having to fight its way past Facebook’s news feed algorithm. Mailchimp can add an email list sign-up bar to your page, turning those followers into email list subscribers. Even if you don’t yet have a big audience, it’s worthwhile to set up the form to capture traffic as your business gains attention.
Businesses that host their site on WordPress may want to make use of the Mailchimp integration. This integration adds a simple sign-up form to any post or page, giving site visitors plenty of opportunities to subscribe to your email list. Any sites operating on Jetpack version 7.1 or higher already have the Mailchimp integration installed, so adding a sign-up form is as easy as clicking a button. The option will appear as a drag and drop block that you can place anywhere you want on a post or a page.
Integrations for Nurturing Leads
Now that you’ve grown your email list, it’s time to nurture prospects into happy customers. These integrations make it easy and automatic to send the right email at the right time.
Pipedrive is a lightweight and agile CRM solution for sales teams. It’s rated one of the easiest sales tools to use on G2. It’s functional right out of the box and doesn’t require days of training before you start using it. The Mailchimp integration makes closing deals even easier by allowing you to send the right email to the right lead at the right time. It works by getting granular about the criteria for creating a list of prospects within Pipedrive, then exporting those contacts to a Mailchimp list with a single click of a button.
BigCommerce, a popular platform for e-commerce and point of sale businesses, already collects customer data when someone places an order. The Mailchimp integration makes use of that data with marketing automation solutions that follows up with customers after a purchase, collects feedback, and re-engages with potential customers who abandoned their cart.
Fresh Relevance makes marketing automation a breeze for e-commerce companies. It generates personalized and contextually relevant email marketing for potential and current customers, helping to increase conversion rates and revenue per visitor. The tool integrates with Mailchimp to send triggered messages after cart or browser abandonment and can also create detailed reports in real-time.
Outgrow lets you build calculators, quizzes, and other interactive content to help you better engage with customers. In addition to gathering data about content users, Outgrow’s products can generate referrals and help segment leads. The Outgrow-Mailchimp integration works by importing all the data gathered by Outgrow into your Mailchimp lists. You can also design different list segments, allowing you to send more precisely targeted emails.
Smile.io is the secret weapon for turning customers into loyal fans. It works by creating loyalty programs around points, VIP tiers, or referrals, incentivizing customers to keep engaging with the brand in return for perks. The Mailchimp integration simplifies the process of creating personalized emails for rewards program members and building segmented lists. With Smile.io and Mailchimp, you can let customers know when they’re close to earning a reward, send referral links, let program members know when they’ve earned points and more.
Hippo Video leverages the power of video to increase email opens and engagement among your email list. By the company’s estimates, video emails have open rates upwards of 19%, while personalized email content has open rates of at least 29%. With Hippo Video and Mailchimp working together, you can quickly create personalized videos by using text or image merge fields. You can then tweak the video thumbnail, giving you greater control over how you hook and engage with customers. Any leads captured through Hippo Video are automatically synced with your Mailchimp lists.
Integrations for Qualifying Leads
Lead scoring is the key to qualifying prospects and knowing where sales teams should focus their energy. These integrations with Mailchimp ensure that all leads’ email activity is captured and quantified.
LeadBoxer is vital for businesses who want to increase the efficiency of their sales process. Using a lead scoring system, the tool tells sales reps exactly which leads are most worth pursuing and which to pass on for now. LeadBoxer does this by tracking a lead’s activity and engagement across websites, social media, and emails. It can even identify visitors who otherwise would have remained anonymous. The Mailchimp integration tracks when a lead opens an email, clicks through a link, and how much time they spend reading an email–all data points that you can use to adjust a prospect’s lead score.
With Autopilot, understanding and designing every facet of your sales and marketing process has never been simpler. Autopilot lets you visualize and map customer journeys with a drag and drop style interface. Autopilot comes with additional lead scoring integrations that can take data from places like Salesforce, Hubspot, or Typeform and change a prospect’s lead score. It also integrates with Mailchimp, so actions prospects take with your email further influence their lead score.
SalesWings tracks visitor activity such as videos watched on YouTube, reviews read on Capterra, or (you guessed it) Mailchimp emails clicked and read. It then uses that data to calculate a lead score for that prospect. The Mailchimp integration can curate a list of email subscribers who click through to your website after receiving an email campaign. SalesWings then identifies the top 5 to 15% of prospects as the hottest leads to invest your time and energy in reaching out to.
Leadfeeder leverages the power of Google Analytics to help you identify who exactly is visiting your website. It scores leads based on their activity and places them at the top of your list, so you know exactly who you should reach out to at that moment. Integrating Leadfeeder with Mailchimp lifts the veil on even more of your website visitors. The integration lets you see what email list subscribers are doing on your website, giving you extra insight into who is visiting your site and why. You can also check out what email campaigns they’re visiting from.
Lead Forensics gives companies insight into anonymous website visitors in real-time. The program provides contact information, demographic details, activity history, and more. It can also generate a lead score and help you prioritize who to focus on. Lead Forensics doesn’t yet offer a proprietary integration between them and Mailchimp. In the meantime, a tool like Blendr.io can create an integration that shares some information between the two platforms, such as contact details. For more information about the differences between LeadBoxer, Leadfeeder, and Lead Forensics, check out this comprehensive guide.
Velocify is intended to help sales teams make sense of large volumes of prospects and increases sales efficiency by automatically scheduling contact reminders. It scores leads based on their attributes, such as company, job title, and location, but it’s not built to track visitors’ activity on a website. Like Lead Forensics, Velocify doesn’t yet have an official integration with Mailchimp. Tray.io can create a working integration for you, but it’s unclear how much this can contribute to the accuracy of lead scores generated by Velocify.
CRM Integrations
Stop wasting time syncing contacts across multiple platforms. These CRM and Mailchimp integrations keep contact lists up to date no matter what program you’re in.
Nutshell is a CRM and sales pipeline management tool. GetApp named it as one of the best Mailchimp integrations, citing the software’s “timely communication and follow-up with prospects” as a key feature. This integration automatically subscribes and unsubscribes prospects based upon where they are in the sales process, reducing every sales rep’s worst nightmare of entering contact information across multiple platforms.
Salesforce, one of the most popular and robust CRMs available, works with Mailchimp in a couple of ways. The most notable is that the integration automatically syncs contacts between the two platforms. Mailchimp can also send information about a subscriber’s activity back to the contact’s page within Salesforce, updating the Notes and Attachments pages of that contact. It’s an extremely useful tool for sales reps who want to know how engaged prospects are with emails.
If you use Hubspot as your CRM platform, then you’re hopefully already taking advantage of the Mailchimp integration. The integration automatically imports contacts from Hubspot into Mailchimp so that you can instantly engage with prospects. The real selling point is Hubspot’s Intelligent Error Handling, which promises to identify and resolve any sync errors with minimum fuss. Instead of scratching your head wondering why your apps aren’t working together, you can get back to connecting with contacts.
Insightly is a CRM that promises total control of the customer experience, from how you market and sell to them to even the projects you deliver. It’s no surprise to see it integrated with Mailchimp, where it goes above and beyond to help you get the most out of both platforms. With the Insightly-Mailchimp integration, you of course get the basic function of syncing contacts across both platforms. The real draw is the informational display about each subscriber, including their activity and a lead rating out of five stars.
Capsule is the ultimate in user-friendly CRM tools. Businesses can install and start using Capsule intuitively, so there’s no painful learning curve like there is with more intricate programs. As such, the Mailchimp integration is similarly straightforward. After integrating with Mailchimp, you’ll be able to subscribe and unsubscribe contacts from email lists from directly within Capsule. No more switching back and forth between platform doing duplicate data entry. It’s a dream come true for small teams already stretched thin on time.
Zoho CRM is a robust tool that can automate many facets of your business while still being intuitive enough to use out of the box. Over 150,000 businesses around the world use Zoho, so it’s only natural that it integrates with Mailchimp. The Mailchimp integration does the standard duty of syncing contacts between both platforms. However, you can also sync it so that all campaigns created within Mailchimp get saved with Zoho’s campaign modules.
Analytics Integrations
To make data-driven decisions about marketing or sales processes, you need access to website, social media, and email analytics. These integrations with Mailchimp ensure that you’re covering all your bases.
Google Analytics is perhaps the analytics platform that most businesses are familiar with using. It offers data on almost every facet of your website’s activity, down to even being able to identify the company that visitors are coming from. Its integration with Mailchimp brings that same level of thoroughness to tracking stats for your email marketing. The integration can pass data both ways, sending Google data to your campaign reports and vice versa. This helps give you a more complete picture of conversions, as Google will be able to follow visitors from email clicks to the final purchase. If you create campaign pages hosted on Mailchimp, Google can track the metrics for those as well.
Power BI is Microsoft’s answer to the need for analytics and insights. It’s much more sophisticated and customizable than something like Google Analytics, as it’s able to help enterprises like Heathrow Airport run more smoothly. Still, no job is too small for Power BI. It integrates with Mailchimp to bring that same enterprise-level of detail to analyzing your email marketing. With the Mailchimp integration, Power BI hones in on the most engaged subscribers, which campaigns get opened the most, and other trends that can help you get more out of your email efforts.
Dasheroo lets you compile all of your business KPIs and metrics into one dashboard. No more switching back and forth between Google Analytics and the sales reporting tab of your CRM to find trends or problems with marketing. Dasheroo integrates with dozens of platforms and Mailchimp is no exception. With the integration, you can see overall list health, campaign details, engagement, bounces and unsubscribes, and more all within the Dasheroo platform.
Geckoboard is a close competitor to Dasheroo, letting you create customizable dashboards that teams can see in real-time. Geckoboard is specifically meant to be projected on TVs around the office. This keeps business health at top of mind so everyone is clear on what needs to be done to move forward. The Mailchimp integration can take key email campaign metrics and incorporate them onto the TV dashboard. Whatever data is most important to you and your team, you can select from Mailchimp and project onto the TV for a constant reminder of how your performance is stacking up.
Klipfolio is another real-time performance dashboard for business. Trusted by brands like IKEA and GrubHub, Klipfolio allows you to compile dashboards from apps, spreadsheets, databases, and more. There are over 100 different services available for connection. The Mailchimp integration does everything you’d expect from a product like Klipfolio. It can pull the standard metrics from Mailchimp and import it into Klipfolio’s dashboard, giving your team access to data at a glance. However, with Klipfolio you can also create custom queries to specify unique data sets and time periods to pull from Mailchimp.
Marketing or advertising agencies may be interested in integrations to help streamline their client reporting process. AgencyAnalytics helps agencies create analytics reports for clients about SEO, PPC ads, social media, email, reviews, and more. The software integrates with Mailchimp to automatically generate white-label reports about a client’s email performance. Instead of wasting hours each period creating reports about Mailchimp campaigns from scratch, AgencyAnalytics does it for you and sends them to clients with a click of a button.
Automate Your Sales and Marketing Process With the Right Mailchimp Integration
From capturing leads to measuring email marketing performance, there are Mailchimp integrations that can help automate almost every step of your marketing, sales, and analytics process. The only question is, which of these integrations will you take advantage of? For sales teams that are trying to get a more complete picture of who their leads are and which ones they can best help, an airtight lead qualification tool is key. Lead qualification sorts through the hundreds or thousands of people who visit your site after clicking through a Mailchimp email and tells you which ones are most poised to buy. LeadBoxer integrates with Mailchimp in seconds to accomplish this very thing. Request a free trial today.
Is your business operates across multiple domains and you aren’t already taking advantage of cross-domain tracking? Then you’re probably missing out on the sort of insights that could turbocharge your marketing and sales. Cross-domain tracking is a tool that’s all but essential for businesses with two or more sites. For example, the main website, a cart checkout site, a knowledge base, or a marketing campaign site.
In this guide, you’ll learn what cross-domain tracking is, why it’s important, and what tools are available to help you access it. By the end, you’ll know if this tracking is right for your business and which tool is best for your needs. With this kind of tracking and sales prospecting tools in your tool belt, you’ll be able to market more effectively to individual users and earn more sales.
What is Cross-Domain Tracking?
This kind of tracking gathers data about two or more sites. In particular, the navigation path from one site to another during a single session.
One Domain Tracking
For businesses with one domain, such as www.example.com, Google Analytics has made it simple and free to install a tag so that you can monitor data like:
Pageviews
Unique visitors
Average session duration
Acquisition
The flow of traffic between pages
You can even see what specific businesses are viewing a site thanks to Google’s ISP identification.
If your business has a second domain, you can install a separate Analytics tag that will record data for that site. However, the reports for both sites are kept separate.
Therefore, if a user begins a session on www.example.com and then navigates to www.mysite.com, the data report from www.mysite.com will treat it as a new session. Instead of a continuation of an activity that began on www.example.com.
Cross-Domain Tracking
If you want to treat a session that begins on www.example.com and ends on www.mysite.com as a single entity instead of two unique sessions, then you’ll want to use cross-domain tracking.
The data for both sites will then be presented as a single report, like so:
It’s possible to use Google Analytics or other software to enable cross-domain tracking, as you’ll see in a later section. Depending on which tool you use, you’ll either get a bird’s eye view of how the average user engages with your sites, or you can follow the experiences of unique visitors and then get actionable insights that your sales and marketing teams can use.
Why is Cross-Domain Tracking Important?
This kind of tracking can have different benefits for multiple divisions in business, chiefly marketing and sales.
For Marketing Teams
Marketing teams who are looking to improve the buyer’s journey across multiple sites and create a better customer journey map likely need to use it.
For example, if your business has some form of Lead Generation component or shopping cart checkout housed on a separate domain, cross-domain tracking allows marketing teams to analyze what’s working across multiple domains to help convert visitors to buyers and what needs more refinement.
Here’s an example of how this might look in Google Analytics:
This User Flow report shows what pages visitors navigate to and from over the course of their sessions. You can see which paths are most common, as well as which pages users are more likely to bounce from. With cross-domain tracking, you can observe this flow across more than one site.
Cross-domain tracking can also make it possible to serve specific content to users across multiple domains based on their previous behavior, especially if you’re using a tool that’s designed to identify website visitors and respond to their behavior. This kind of targeted marketing can increase conversion rates.
For Sales Teams
Sales teams who prioritize a user’s level of interest when qualifying leads will find cross-domain tracking useful. It provides a more detailed picture of visitors’ engagement with one brand across multiple domains, giving sales teams a better frame of reference for how engaged, qualified and possibly interested a lead is.
Data about a user’s engagement or intent data is often used to calculate a lead score or a number value that describes how promising the user is as a lead. The example below shows a site user with a lead score of 83.
Tracking engagement across multiple domains is essential for qualification and accuracy. Without cross-domain tracking of user engagement, you might be missing out on leads who are more engaged on one site but not the other.
How Do You Install Cross-Domain Tracking?
There are a few different tools that can enable tracking, including Google Analytics and LeadBoxer.
Google Analytics
Setting up a Google Analytics tag for one domain is pretty straightforward. Most people with basic web maintenance skills can figure it out on their own.
Things get more complicated when it comes to cross-domain tracking. If you decide to go with this method, it’s best to bring an experienced engineer into the picture who can install it correctly and maintain it as necessary.
Check out this guide for a complete rundown of how to install it with Google Analytics. As you’ll see, it’s a fair bit trickier than installing single domain tracking.
Even with this method, you won’t be able to track individual users. Google Analytics can give you a sense of what businesses are using your site and how users on average are engaging with the site, but it’s not designed to get any more granular than that.
LeadBoxer
LeadBoxer is platform for identifying and tracking individual users and their actions across one or more sites, where it is enriched, segmented and used to calculate a lead score. This lead score helps sales teams know who they should invest their time and energy toward to nurture that lead into a customer.
Marketing teams can also benefit from LeadBoxer. They can get under the hood of individual users and see what content they’re engaging with across one or multiple sites, then target them with content that’s reflective of their previous behavior.
In short, the big difference between Google Analytics and LeadBoxer is the ability to zoom in on a single user and take action based on their behavior. LeadBoxer also makes it possible to identify visitors who would otherwise remain completely anonymous, so you can reach out and make contact with these users in the event of B2B sales.
Cross-domain tracking is a standard feature included in LeadBoxer and can be enabled for you without doing any additional work.
To get started, schedule a call with LeadBoxer and ask for a trial with cross-domain tracking.
Installation is easy, simply install the same pixel in all your domains and we will take care of connecting the users/sessions without the use of 3rd party cookies!
All in all, LeadBoxer is a painless way to get cross-domain tracking at your fingertips. For more information about how to install t tracking with LeadBoxer, click here.
Opentracker
Opentracker offers a blend of Google Analytics and LeadBoxer features. Its primary purpose is to track unique visitors in realtime. Cross-domain tracking comes standard with this tool and is easy and intuitive to access.
Unlike LeadBoxer, Opentracker doesn’t calculate a lead score or provide actionable insights about prospects to sales teams. It can identify a visitor’s company, but it doesn’t capture name and contact information the way LeadBoxer can.
Turn Visitors Into Buyers With Cross-Domain Tracking
If you have multiple related websites that users are likely navigating between during the same session, then cross-domain tracking is essential for capturing a complete picture of visitors’ online experiences. Cross-domain tracking is possible with Google Analytics but installation can be tedious and prone to mistakes. Analytics also doesn’t allow you to identify unique visitors.
If you want the ability to give visitors a face and a name, gauge their potential as a lead, and notify your sales team about when they should reach out and turn that lead into a customer, then LeadBoxer is a more appropriate tool. Best of all, installing cross-domain tracking with LeadBoxer is so easy that anyone with basic web maintenance experience can install it.
Sign up for a demo call of LeadBoxer today and try out cross-domain tracking in minutes.
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According to research, the average B2B buyer is already 67% of the way through the buying journey before having extended contact with a salesperson. By that time, they’ve likely formulated some ideas about possible solutions to their pain point. And might even be leaning toward buying from your competitor.
Intent data is the key to identifying those leads sooner, nurturing them earlier in their buying journey, and making more sales. This comprehensive guide will outline the fundamentals of intent data, including:
By the end, you should know exactly how intent data fits into your marketing and sales processes. You’ll also learn how to pick the right intent data supplier for your needs. So you don’t end up with the wrong strategy for your business.
What is Intent Data?
Intent data shows the likelihood that a person or company is in the market to purchase a solution for a pain point. It’s derived from information about the online research contact or account is conducting about a particular topic. As well as context clues that might signal their purchasing intention. Topic and context data are the two main types of intent data. Both rely on tracking cookies, cross-domain tracking and IP addresses to form a complete picture.
Topic Data
If a hiker needs to buy new hiking boots, she may scout online reviews of top brands. Before she ever goes to the store and tries on a pair. Anyone looking at her search history might assume she’s interested in the topic of “hiking boots”. The same is true of B2B leads and target accounts. Forrester claims that 68% of B2B buyers research by themselves, a significant increase from 53% in 2015.
In addition, 47% of buyers viewed 3-5 pieces of content before connecting with someone in sales. Even before signing up for a free trial of the software that might solve their problem, your lead is probably researching their pain point and weighing multiple options. Topic data tells you what they’re researching. There are four types of topic data available.
Anonymous First-Party Behavioral
These are unknown visitors to your company’s site and the actions they take while there. They haven’t yet filled out a form or explicitly revealed information about themselves. However, it’s possible to identify their company by tracking their IP address. A lead generation tool like LeadBoxer can help fill in the gaps and show more contact information about these otherwise anonymous visitors. Consequently giving a more complete picture of who they are and what they’re researching on your site.
Known First-Party Behavioral
These visitors to your company’s site have provided their contact information by filling out a form, therefore they are “known” individuals. Lead generation or marketing automation software can track what pages they visit and other ways they engage with the site.
Anonymous Third-Party Behavioral
These are unknown visitors to sites you don’t own but that might still be relevant to your business. You can track different topics over a network of sites and see what’s most popular.
If you’re a supplier of project management solutions, and someone from a company that fits your ideal customer profile is reading articles about “project management” on Business Insider, you can access that information through intent data suppliers. A few of which we’ll review in a future section.
Known Third-Party Behavioral
These are visitors to sites you don’t own that have shared some of their contact information. Like with anonymous third-party behavioral, you can access their information and the topics they’re researching through the right supplier.
Context Data
Context data tells you whose intent data is valuable and who only has a passing interest in a topic. There are a few details that are especially useful for establishing context.
Job Title
If a sales professional is researching “sales pipeline management”, it’s possible they’re looking for a CRM tool that can help manage leads. If a marketing professional or content creator is researching the same topic, it may be more likely that they’re putting together a blog, video, or another piece of content on the subject.
Job Postings or Leadership Changes
Job postings and leadership changes can tell you whether or not to reach out to a lead. If you sell advertising services but the target account is in the process of looking for a new marketing director, now might not be the best time to approach them. And if the account has announced the recent hire of a marketing director, it’s a better opportunity to pounce and offer a better option than what the predecessor left behind.
New Funding
A new round of funding is another indicator that a company could be open to new solutions, both because they have a bigger budget and because they may be growing their operation and need more sophisticated tools to manage their company.
New Legislation
Did new legislation just pass that requires an account to operate their company in a certain way, or opens them up to new business? If you have the solution they need in response to these changes, this context lets you know if you should act.
Press
Keep a close eye on accounts that make the news. Press about an expansion of operations or increase in earnings might indicate that they need new solutions, while bad press may mean that they need some space to do damage control before focusing on other things. However, not all bad press is a sign to stay away. If an account makes the news for poor customer service, maybe now is the time to reach out and offer information about your CRM software.
What to Use Intent Data For
There are several uses for intent data, but before diving into the specifics, know that if your competitor isn’t already using intent data, they might soon. Polls show that nearly a quarter of B2B companies are already using intent data, while another 35% plan to use it within the next 12 months. Using intent data in some capacity will become increasingly necessary to stay competitive. These are the main ways that it can benefit your business.
Reaching Leads Early
The most obvious use of intent data is to establish contact with leads earlier in the buying journey. Getting in touch with leads before other salespeople do is one of the biggest ways to get a leg up on the competition; research shows that in 70% of cases, the first salesperson to connect with a lead is ultimately who they give their business to.
Lead Prioritization
Context data can help make a distinction between who is actively researching a pain point and who is just reading about a certain topic without any intention of making a purchase. This information illuminates whether or not a lead fits your ideal customer profile. A tool like LeadBoxer quickly shows you the highest priority leads by allowing you to search by filters such as location, industry, and company size.
Automated Outreach
First-party leads that give off certain signals can trigger automatic marketing or sales processes, such as an email series, that can instantly start nurturing them when it matters most.
Account-Based Marketing
Hone in on what content works best at engaging first-party leads, and what needs more refining.
Personalization of Outreach
By knowing what topics and articles leads are researching, sales agents can personalize how they make contact and develop a relationship with them. They can mention specific topics and establish relevance quickly to capture and hold a lead’s attention.
Targeted Advertising
Get even more granular with your advertising strategy by honing in on leads who give off certain signals. That way, you’re not wasting any of your advertising dollars on people who only have a passing interest but have no intention of buying your product.
Targeted Account List
Develop a list of accounts who are engaging with third-party sites about relevant topics but aren’t yet engaging with your company. You’ll be able to connect with leads who your sales team might have otherwise never considered.
Analyze and Retain Customers
Intent data works with existing customers, too. Monitoring what current clients are researching so you know if they’re thinking about switching to a competitor or if there’s something you can upsell them on. With intent data in your toolbox, you can continue to anticipate and solve problems long after the initial purchase has been made.
How to Obtain Intent Data
There are several intent data vendors out there who can help you access intent data on your site or data available on third-party sites.
First-Party Intent Data Vendors
First-party intent data is nothing new. You may already have access to some thanks to free tools such as Google Analytics. Other vendors can provide you more details about who is visiting your site and turn anonymous visitors into known visitors.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free tool that monitors the activity on a site, such as page views and how visitors arrived at the site. While it can’t identify individuals, it can hone in on IP addresses and show you what accounts are active on the site.
In the example above, several businesses use branded aliases, making it possible to identify which accounts are visiting a site. However, Google Analytics can’t provide any further context than that. It also can’t go into detail about what the visitors’ unique actions were on the site.
LeadBoxer
LeadBoxer catalogs all known visitors to your website. If a visitor fills out a form, the information they provide automatically populates their profile within the software. LeadBoxer can then calculate a lead score for that person using other data points such as what pages they visited, what topics they seem most interested in, and how engaged they are with the site.
With this information, you’ll know exactly when to act on a lead. LeadBoxer takes it one step further and can help identify previously unknown visitors. For example, if the visitor didn’t fill out a form but arrived at the site via LinkedIn, LeadBoxer can trace back to that person’s LinkedIn profile and use the information to populate the visitor’s information within the software.
BounceX
Like LeadBoxer, BounceX can identify many website visitors (40-70%) who would otherwise remain anonymous. It then creates personalized marketing experiences – similar to account-based marketing – for these visitors based on their engagement.
BounceX can automatically engage with visitors who have not yet filled out a form or appear that they’re about to leave the site. In a way, it identifies users who are displaying intent and then begins to nurture them before a sales agent ever steps in.
While sophisticated, BounceX is said to have nearly a $4,000/month price tag, making it a serious investment for most businesses. It also doesn’t prioritize showing you accounts who express high intent but instead tries to let the AI nurture users through website personalization.
Third-Party Intent Data Vendors
If an account is researching topics around the web that are relevant to your product or service, these solutions will help you find them.
Bombora
Bombora can tell you what companies are expressing active intent to purchase your products or services long before someone from that company ever lands on your site. This tool does this by monitoring 6,000 intent topics across 3,800+ publisher websites.
Bombora only tracks IP addresses, cookie IDs, and company domains provided by the publishers’ registration data. They can tell you what companies are expressing intent, but they can’t tell you exactly which employee is doing the research or who your sales team should engage with. In short, there’s no context data with this vendor.
Aberdeen
Aberdeen bought The Big Willow, and intent data supplier, back in 2018. They offer a lot of the same value that Bombora does but take it a step further by integrating their solutions into Salesforce.
Companies expressing active intent pop up in the Salesforce dashboard so sales teams know exactly which accounts to jump on. You can also see how those accounts will impact the pipeline. You can also choose to integrate Aberdeen Marketscape, a product that shows all the topic keywords researched by each account showing intent.
This helps establish more context. If you’re not already using Salesforce, getting started with Aberdeen’s intent data (and then Marketscape) might be a little too complicated and cost-prohibitive.
How to Select an Intent Data Vendor
There are several different suppliers of intent data out there. It’s important to work with the one that best fits the needs and size of your company, or else you risk losing time and money. Here are a few considerations to keep at the top of mind when screening vendors.
How many sites are in the vendor’s network?
Ask this question if you’re considering third-party data vendors. The network refers to the websites they monitor, which tend to be publisher sites like Forbes. The larger the network, the better, as this gives them a bigger pool of data to draw from.
How many topics does the vendor monitor?
Third-party data vendors monitor a finite amount of topics. At the time of this writing, Bombora claims to have nearly 6,000 topics in their system, while Aberdeen claims to have hundreds of thousands of keywords at their disposal.
Can the vendor give context?
On its own, a list of names and topics they’re researching isn’t very useful. You need context to know if their company fits your ideal customer profile, as well as what their job title is and if they have any purchasing authority. Third-party data vendors can’t give much context at this time, but some solutions for first-party intent data can.
How to Use Intent Data
Trying to make use of intent data in its raw form is inefficient. Intent data works best when used to calculate a lead score. A lead score is a concise, visual way to describe how promising the lead is and therefore how much it’s worth pursuing them.
Some solutions, like LeadBoxer, will not only capture intent data but will automatically input it into a lead score. You can adjust what data points to use for calculating a lead score based on the needs of your company.
Here are three of the most important factors to keep in mind when adjusting what data points to use for a lead score.
Fit
This is as simple as asking the question: does this lead fit our ideal customer profile? Are they the right size company, in a certain location, etc.? If an account showing active intent doesn’t fit the mold of your ideal customer, then their lead score will go down.
Intent
Take into consideration not only the topics researched by that account but the frequency and recency of the research.
Engagement
Has this account not only engaged with relevant third-party pages, but with your site or social media profiles? A solid first-party data vendor will be able to track and show you individual actions. Use that information to increase their lead score. The more specific the data points used to calculate a lead score, the more accurate and useful the lead score will be. This will help weed out accounts that aren’t the right fit or are researching topics without having any intent to buy a product or service.
When Intent Data Isn’t Enough
Intent data isn’t a magic bullet for identifying leads earlier. There are limitations to this technology that will hopefully improve as time goes on. Be aware of the following when incorporating intent data into your marketing and sales processes.
When a Visitor is Registered Under the Wrong IP Address
If an unknown visitor to your site or a third-party site is registered under the wrong IP address, you won’t be able to tell what company they work for. This often happens by accident but nevertheless makes it impossible to identify the correct account.
When a Buyer is Conducting Research Out-of-Network
Third-party intent data vendors like Bombora and Aberdeen don’t aggregate data from every corner of the internet. They only draw information from sites within their networks. If a buyer is researching on sites not covered by that network, then you’ll never know.
Decay Rate of Third-Party Data
Given the amount of content people consume regularly, you shouldn’t expect sales agents to always be able to reach out to a lead and reference content they read a week or two earlier.
Third-Party Data Lists Account But No Contacts
Bombora and Aberdeen only list the account, not the contact information of the individual who was searching.
While it’s certainly useful to know which accounts have an interest, you’re still limited by not knowing who to reach out to.
When Used At the Expense of a Sustainable Sales Pipeline
Relying on intent data is no reason not to have robust marketing strategies that help draw new leads into your sales pipeline. Like most sales tactics, it’s best used in tandem with other processes.
Get an Edge Over the Competition With Intent Data
Intent data is a hot technology that more and more businesses are using to gain an edge over their competitors. By seeing what topics leads are researching, you can reach out to them sooner and have a better chance at closing the deal. While it’s not the end-all, be-all way to keep your sales pipeline full, it is a valuable tool to have at hand.
Third-party intent data still isn’t as precise as some would hope it to be. Vendors can only provide accounts, not individual contacts, and don’t offer much in the way of context data. Third-party data also decays more quickly than first-party data.
Some first-party data is free and already at your fingertips via Google Analytics. A tool like LeadBoxer can keep you apprised of who exactly is visiting your site whether or not they’ve filled out a form. It’s also easy to get context data and use each data point to calculate a lead score, showing you exactly which leads to act upon at that moment.
If you haven’t already started taking advantage of the intent data laying untapped on your site, now is a great time to start. Try a free trial of LeadBoxer today.
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You know that a full sales pipeline is imperative for business growth. Without an airtight system for B2B lead generation in place, you’re sure to slow down your already hard-working sales team.
At first, B2B lead generation might seem like a complex process, but don’t let that discourage you. In this article, you’ll learn the three essential components you must have for an effective system of B2B lead generation:
Strategy – the digital channels you use to attract your clients
Best practices – the details you must include to make sure those channels work well
Tools – the software that will ensure your system is optimized and automated
With these components in mind, you’ll be able to craft a system that appeals to your ideal buyers and starts generating leads quickly and with less effort.
Assessing that information to determine which are the highest quality leads
An optimized lead generation strategy can deliver increased ROI for your marketing budget by filling a sales pipeline on autopilot. It saves your sales team the frustration of cold calling or cold emailing, helping keep productivity and morale high.
The Top Strategies for B2B Lead Generation
There are several different strategies for gaining prospects’ attention. Which of the following or combination of the following you should use will depend upon the online behavior of your ideal buyer.
Social Media
If the user is interested in learning more about the product or service, they click the ad and a form appears. Facebook pre-populates the form with their information so there are only a few taps between you and a newly qualified lead.
Secret Entourage, a mentorship service for entrepreneurs, reportedly restructured and streamlined their ad strategy by focusing on Lead Ads. Compared to their original campaign, the new one led to 40% more purchases with 88% fewer ad sets. They were also able to lower their cost per purchase by 10%.
While this case study shows promise, the average click-through rate (CTR) of Facebook ads for B2B companies is 0.78%. While the average CTR across all industries is 0.9%.
LinkedIn
A more effective platform for social media ads may be LinkedIn. Source
Although similar in form and function to Facebook image ads, LinkedIn ads are proven to generate more leads for B2B companies. According to the company’s content marketing blog, 80% of B2B leads generated through social media come from LinkedIn.
It makes sense why. A sizable chunk of LinkedIn users are in the position to make purchasing decisions for their companies. Of its 500 million members, 61 million are senior-level influencers and 40 million are decision makers.
Several case studies back up the claim that LinkedIn is the king of B2B marketing on social media. Simplus, a Salesforce partner, saw 70% of their website form fills come directly from LinkedIn. As a result, they’re shifting most of their ad spend to the platform.
HubSpot took a look at their customer’s results with LinkedIn Sponsored Content and found similarly promising results:
While LinkedIn has a higher cost per click (CPC) than Google Ads, the conversion rate is twice as high. This leads to a lower cost per lead overall.
PPC Ads
Don’t write off Google Ads or other pay-per-click (PPC) ads just yet. These are some of the most popular channels for lead generation. And there are benefits to having them as a part of your lead generation strategy.
The average conversion rate for B2B industries is 3.04% in the search network and 0.8% in the display network.
While both the CTR and conversion rate for B2B ads is lower than most other industry averages, there are countless case studies out there that demonstrate the effectiveness of PPC ads for B2B businesses.
Digital marketing agency SevenAtoms executed a campaign that included Google Ads for Imperva Incapsula, a cyber security SaaS company. The results speak for themselves:
Mn this case, it definitely paid for Imperva Incapsula to have an experienced agency on their team to get the most out of their PPC ad budget.
If you’re interested in other PPC ad options, consider review directories such as FinancesOnline, G2, or Capterra. These platforms can have lead conversion rates as high as 24%. Making them solid alternatives for companies who are more concerned about their budget.
Capterra is a review directory dedicated to software, making it the perfect choice for SaaS companies. In Capterra, companies can pay to be a sponsored post so they rank at the top of a search:
The “Visit Website” button in this example takes visitors to a landing page tailor-made for that ad. Leads acquired through this channel are clearly searching for a software solution, making them highly qualified.
Blogging
Blogging is a popular method of content marketing for B2B companies, and for good reason. It gives businesses a chance to:
Answer prospects’ questions
Demonstrate their expertise
Show what makes them unique in a sea of competitors
Provide excellent service before any money has ever changed hands
To a potential customer, all these qualities can help increase their trust in your business. Provided you give them an opportunity to fill out a form for more information somewhere within the blog post or on the page, blogging can be an effective way of collecting leads.
They were also able to increase organic traffic by 182%, ensuring that their visibility on search engines would continue to grow.
HubSpot also knows that blogging is a major asset for their business. 90% of their leads each month come from posts on HubSpot that were published months or years ago.
Email
No matter the changing trends in social media or content marketing, email and email tracking pixel continue to be a valuable form of lead generation and nurturing. For every dollar spent on email marketing, businesses can earn $43.
In order to stand out, it pays to be thoughtful about the quality of emails you’re sending. There’s no sense in flooding a subscriber’s already crowded inbox.
Hammock, a B2B content marketing agency, thought creatively about its newsletter. It came up with the !dea Email, or one “bright idea” in a single email. Each email includes a single landscape image accompanied by about 350 words of copy.
By focusing on a simple, interesting concept sent every two weeks, Hammock was able to boost their open rates by 48%. They cut through the clutter of subscribers’ inboxes by adhering to the principle of more is less.
The 8 Best Practices for B2B Lead Generation
Now that you know the strategies of lead generation, it’s time to hone in on the details. These best practices will make sure your system for lead generation is airtight.
Tailor Marketing to Different Buyer Personas
Your business should have at least one buyer persona so that you know exactly how to structure your marketing and lead generation efforts. Knowing your ideal buyer will help you know where you should direct your ad spend. And also what kind of content you should be creating to attract them.
Not all prospects with decision-making or purchasing power will have the same online behaviors. For example, Pew research found that Twitter usage among U.S. adults drops as age increases. On the other hand, 61% of LinkedIn users are in the 30 to 64-year-old age range. You may be able to reach some mid-level decision makers on Twitter, as well as some senior-level influencers on LinkedIn.
Be Mobile-Friendly
If there’s only one best practice to follow, let it be this one.
In 2018, 52.2% of all website traffic worldwide was generated by mobile users. That means there’s a good possibility that over half of the visitors to your site could be viewing it on their phone.
If your site isn’t built to be mobile-friendly, then chances are you’re losing a devastating amount of leads – and sales.
Optimize Your Website
Even if your site has a professional design and is mobile-friendly, you still might be losing visitors before they have a chance to become viable leads. Use Google Analytics to view an overview of behavior flow so you can see exactly where and how much traffic is dropping off.
This will help you hone in on what pages are attracting and retaining visitors, and what pages still need some work. You can then use tools like Hotjar (discussed in a later section) to get even more specific and discover exactly what elements on a page are working well and what needs to be updated.
Use Video Content
There are a few powerful statistics that suggest that video content can drive significant traffic for your website. A white paper from Cisco states that internet video traffic made up 69% of all global consumer internet traffic in 2017.
Meanwhile, a report from HubSpot showed that when given the choice to skim or consume thoroughly, 55% of users will pay close attention to video – more than any other type of content analyzed.
Create Long-Form Blog Content Consistently
Just because video is a powerful content marketing tool doesn’t mean that you should ignore blogging. Long-form content is still king when it comes to generating traffic from search engine results. In fact, posts with at least 2,000 words are more likely to rise to the top of search engines than any other article length.
Keywords alone won’t ensure the top spot on search engines. To increase your ranking, create high-quality articles and guides on a regular basis so that Google knows your site is relevant and engaging. This also increases your brand awareness and credibility with leads.
Capture Leads on Every Site Page
Your blog and video content gives visitors a reason to come to your site, so be sure to give them an opportunity to stay. At least one newsletter sign-up form, comment form, trial sign-up button, or other lead capturing form should be available on each page of your site.
To make capturing leads through forms even more effective, structure your content so that it naturally segues into the sign-up form. Be sure to test and analyze how well each page or post is at capturing leads, then adjust accordingly
Use Lead Magnets
Lead magnets are offers such as white papers, ebooks, or other free resources that are used to entice visitors into giving you their information. These resources also help you qualify leads, as they can help indicate the lead’s needs and pain points.
To create an irresistible lead magnet, follow these examples and come up with a resource that solves a problem, is specific, easy to digest, and has high actual and perceived value.
Score Captured Leads
Not all leads are created equal. Lead scoring is the process of generating a number, typically between one and 100, that shows just how qualified that lead is. The process can be done manually with a formula, although this is time-consuming and has a lot of variables.
Luckily, there are some options for automating the lead scoring process, as you’ll see in the next section.
The 8 Best Tools for Optimizing B2B Lead Generation
All these strategies and best practices might seem overwhelming, but there are several tools to help you automate, execute, and optimize your lead generation strategy. Best of all, many of these tools are free or free to get started.
Best Lead Scorer: LeadBoxer
LeadBoxer doesn’t just score leads captured through forms or lead magnets on your site. It’s able to identify 50% of site visitors who would otherwise remain anonymous. Not only that, it can populate data such as contact information, the prospect’s industry, and their specialty.
LeadBoxer also tracks visitors’ online behavior while they engage with your brand (website visits, social media engagement, email opens, ad clicks, etc.) It uses this information to automatically calculate a lead score, which tells your sales team who is most likely to convert.a
This saves your team time, increases sales, boosts morale, and ultimately saves you money.
Price: Professional Plan – $11.25/month, Turbo Plan – $41.25/month
Free trial: Yes + limited free forever plan
What it’s all about: LimeLeads is a great tool for sales prospecting as it doesn’t cooperate with fake data.
The tool was built by a bunch of B2B marketing veterans that were sick of a lack of credible data being available. Its main goal is getting you prospect lists that are accurate.
The tool integrates with CRMs and will enable sales teams to put together a list of prospects in 30 seconds or less.
Thanks to an intuitive interface and a slew of features, Instapage is the perfect tool for building landing pages that integrate seamlessly with your PPC advertising campaign.
You can easily optimize pages for lead generation by using features like heatmaps, A/B testing, mobile-responsive pages, and drop-in pixel tracking for easy remarketing. Best of all, Instapage’s drag-and-drop interface is user-friendly, negating the need for a web designer to get your campaign started.
With Instapage, you can create several landing pages that are individually tailored to target unique buyer personas, all with a few clicks of the mouse.
While Instapage has several features that help you create optimized landing pages, you need to make sure the rest of your website is working just as hard for your business. A well-optimized website is an essential part of the user experience and can generate more leads, regardless of whether or not they discovered your brand through a landing page.
Hotjar tracks users’ journeys through your site and shows you exactly where they’re dropping off and why. Powerful tools like heatmaps, visitor recordings, form analysis, and feedback polls eliminate all the guesswork about why certain visitor behavior is happening and what can be done to improve their journey.
A robust social media presence helps your business establish credibility and trust. Luckily, you don’t need an overly complex strategy or need to devote a lot of time and manpower to sustaining your social presence.
A tool like Buffer keeps all your posts organized and automated. Use it to schedule posts in advance, then review the analytics to see how well posts are performing.
Buffer also collects conversations from your followers in one inbox, making it easy to respond to questions or comments about your business.
Best Content Planner: Google Analytics and Keyword Planner
Creating high-quality blog content that visitors will find extremely useful and interesting is one of the best ways to attract new leads. Free tools like Google Analytics and Keyword Planner can help you pick article topics that are sure to perform well.
Keyword Planner is actually a function of Google Ads, but it can help you pick blog topics, too. Use it to check out average monthly searches and competition for a potential keyword and its variations. You can quickly see if there’s an interested audience, room to rise to the top of the search page, or a keyword variation where your future content might perform better.
With Google Analytics, you can observe user behavior on your site and see what content you’ve previously published is performing the best. With this insight, you can plan follow-up content to build on the success you’ve already had.
One of the best ways to nurture leads and keep your brand top-of-mind is through email campaigns.
Mailchimp makes it easy to visualize, create, and test welcome email sequences designed with conversions in mind. It also collects and analyzes information about how subscribers are interacting with your emails. Helping you optimize and create more effective campaigns.
Mailchimp integrations with most of the tools in the average B2B marketing stack. For example, data about your subscribers’ email behavior can automatically sync with lead scoring software like LeadBoxer. By this giving you even more insights about leads.
A customer relationship management (CRM) tool is necessary for tracking potential prospects and keeping a record of all their details.
HubSpot’s sales software is an extremely powerful tool that starts at $0/month. It’s able to track lead behavior on your website, then send personalized email sequences based on their actions.
HubSpot also tracks where leads are in their buyer journey, helping you visualize your pipeline at a glance. Integrate HubSpot with some of your other tools, such as LeadBoxer, to get an even better idea of who’s ready to convert and who needs a little more nurturing.
It’s time to turn your leads into clients. Take all the guesswork out of how to pitch to them by using a tool like Crystal.
Crystal analyzes a prospect’s LinkedIn profile, then provides actionable insights about their personality based on what kinds of posts they’re writing and engaging with. It also collects the feedback of people who have previously interacted with that person, increasing the accuracy of the assessment.
Use Crystal to decide the best ways for communicating with a prospect, that way you’re never flying blind when entering a sales meeting.
Grow Your Sales with Strategic B2B Lead Generation
Automatically generating leads for startups and others is the key to closing more deals and growing your business. There are several different strategies you can take. But the ones you choose will ultimately hinge upon the online behavior of your ideal buyers.
By following the best practices and using some of the tools outlined in this article, you’ll soon have an optimized, automatic system for generating and scoring leads that keeps working even when you’re not. Sales enablement tools can help you make this process even better.
The next time you log back on, there’ll already be several prospects with high lead scores ready for you to reach out to.
Pipedrive is built to help you close more deals and keep your sales team on track. But one of the perks of Pipedrive is the number of tools you can integrate to save your team time and enable you to ramp up your marketing and sales efforts. In this list, we’ve found 12 of the best Pipedrive integrations and broke them down into four categories:
Let’s dive into how you can save your sales team from data entry and lead gathering using integrations in Pipedrive and top lead strategy. This will provide them more time to do what they want to be doing—closing deals.
Best Pipedrive Integrations for Lead Generation
LeadBoxer
LeadBoxer is a sales tool that grabs information from your leads when they start their buying journey. The tool identifies and collects information like a visitor’s company name, when they visited your website. And even what actions they took when they were there.
In other words, LeadBoxer collects your website and email newsletter data and identifies, segments, and scores your leads automatically based on their behavior and profile data.
Once all this valuable data is collected, it is fed directly back into your Pipedrive database. Which will automatically update deals, persons, and companies.
Looking for more qualified leads?
We offer Lead Identification and Lead intelligence through website & email tracking
This integration from Adlots gathers leads using an algorithm. Every time a lead interacts with your website, Facebook page, or submits a form, Adlots will scrape their details for you.
Adlots will store the information from every website visit and also track the lead media source. Leads and deal cards are then automatically created for you based on the data scraped by Adlots.
The tool also gives your lead a quality score. If they’ve visited your site a bunch of times or handed over their contact information, their score will be higher on the tool’s dashboard.
Once your leads have been found, you can then distribute them amongst your sales team. And even put them into different pipelines. Adlots allows you to assign values of specific fields in leads, deals, and organization cards so you can match them with the perfect rep on your team to close a deal.
SnapADDY
With snapADDY, your sales team can automatically transfer newly found contacts and addresses directly into their Pipedrive dashboard.
The big win with snapADDY is that it’s built to shorten the pre-qualification process for your sales team. All your sales reps need to do is highlight the address data in an email or a web page, and snapADDY will transfer it into your CRM. You can also use it to transfer data from Linkedin and automatically send company data straight to Pipedrive.
No matter what the format of the email address, snapADDY recognizes the data reliably.
The tool can stop sales reps from doubling up on lead information, too. It has a duplicate recognition tool, so your rep will know if a contact already has a spot in your Pipedrive account. If a contact already has an email address in your Pipedrive account but you’ve found another address, snapADDY will add to their contact information.
Best Integrations for Boosting Productivity
Zapier
If you don’t already use Zapier, chances are you are missing out on a massive opportunity to implement your current tools using the king of integrations!
Zapier is an app that allows you to automates tasks between other apps by following a recipe you create. Simply put, you tell Zapier what you want to happen when A meets B. For example: “When I get a new lead in Leadboxer, add that contact to a Trello card”
By integrating Zapier into Pipedrive, you’re able to connect Pipedrive with more than 500 business apps and create a workflow with unlimited steps. Some sales teams use Zapier to connect marketing platforms to Pipedrive, while others find it useful for taking care of the boring stuff like inputting business cards.
However you use Zapier, one thing is for sure—you’re going to save time.
Dealbot for Slack
Team collaboration tool Slack has built a special integration specifically to work with Pipedrive—Dealbot for Slack.
Using this Pipedrive integration, your team can send and receive instant deal updates. This is ideal for coordinating multiple people to help close deals across your sales teams. Or if you just want to keep everybody in the loop about what’s going on with a deal.
You don’t need to do anything. No more meetings or lengthy emails with your sales team. The Dealbot will automatically handle it directly within Slack from the information being passed around in your Pipedrive dashboard.
Fireflies
Fireflies is an AI integration that joins in on your sales meetings and takes notes for you. It works by recording the audio from your meeting and translating it into call notes and a complete transcription in your Pipedrive dashboard.
Not only will this save your team a load of time completing manual data entry. Fireflies will also make sure records of every single meeting are kept automatically on file.
It also works for interactions with prospects, too. Once you turn it on during a phone call, the integration will make a full transcription of your conversation with your prospect. This will help you build a more powerful relationship with them, and you won’t ever have to take notes of your phone calls again.
SigParser
SigParser crawls your emails and looks for new email signatures.
This integration is super handy because a lot of email signatures also have juicy contact details like phone numbers, addresses, and titles in them too. Whenever SigParser finds a new signature, it scrapes all of the details, feeds them into your Pipedrive account, and creates a new contact for you.
If your sales team sends a lot of outbound emails hunting new leads, this can save them a ton of time. Plus, the data will be valuable as it comes straight from the prospect’s own email signature.
Best Pipedrive Integrations for Lead Engagement and Email Marketing
Klenty
This integration from Cliently allows sales teams to manage lead engagement within Pipedrive.
Using Cliently, your sales team can stay on top of their contacts and engage them by sending personalized emails. Not only that, but the integration also gives you the power to send quirky engagement messages through video, physical postcards, handwritten notes, and gifts directly from within Pipedrive.
Sometimes, prospects want something more than just a bulk standard cold email. Cliently can help you bridge that gap with your prospects.
Autopilot
Autopilot is a smart integration for your email marketing campaigns because it gives you a birds-eye view of exactly what your campaign will look like. From start to finish.
By using Autopilot’s visual marketing automation, you can build campaigns using a drag-and-drop builder. This allows you to automate repetitive tasks, improve your sales workflow, and win more business by nurturing leads that aren’t ready to buy.
Autopilot’s big advantage is nurturing your leads automatically based on where they’re at in your pipeline. The tool can also schedule tasks based on activities like someone filling in a lead form.
It will also score your leads based on their buying behavior and feed the information straight to your Pipedrive dashboard.
Best Pipedrive Integrations for Accounting and Invoicing
Paycove
Invoicing tool Paycove can automatically create custom quotes and invoices that sync with your data in Pipedrive.
This Pipedrive integration allows sales teams to move a deal to a selected “trigger” stage in their sales pipeline, and Paycove will automatically generate and email an invoice. Worried that the invoice or quote won’t be 100% accurate? Don’t be. The quotes and invoices in Paycove are always synced with deal, contact, product, and custom fields data in Pipedrive.
Once an invoice is sent, the app will update all your deals automatically, and alert you once a client has paid, too. It’s a perfect way to cut out an element of time-wasting data input from your sales team. So they can spend more time selling.
Socket
Socket was built with one goal in mind—making sure you get paid faster.
The cloud-based Pipedrive integration can eliminate mistakes in your quoting process through a simple template system. The tool automates the process of configuring, pricing, and quoting so your reps can send off quotes in seconds without second-guessing the end figure.
When a quote is created in Socket, the client’s information will be automatically added to your Pipedrive account. And a deal will also be built in the CRM dashboard. The quote will be attached to the deal, so you can follow up with a lead about an opportunity without having to rummage through emails.
Use the Right CRM Integrations to Help You Save Time & Increase Results
If you’re using Pipedrive, there’s a good chance you’re using the tool to keep your sales team on track. But if you aren’t taking advantage of Pipeline’s massive list of integrations, you aren’t using the CRM to its full potential.
Pipedrive has teamed up with some of the biggest names in productivity, lead generation, and engagement to automate tasks that will save your team a huge amount of time, and ensure they stay on track.
Don’t be afraid to automate daily tasks—your sales figures along with your bottom line will thank you in the long run for this Pipedrive integrations.
Your company has a website up and running, the blog is full of valuable content, and your sign-up forms are ready to go. But without lead identification and generation tools, you don’t actually know who is visiting your site. As a result you have no idea what they are interested in, or how to push them down your sales funnel. Lead identification software enables your team to convert visitors into leads, and leads into customers. And LeadBoxer is a powerful lead identification tool — but it is not the only one. Certainly it can be time-consuming to look through different lead generation tools to know which solution to invest in. So we’re here to make it easier for you. In this article, we’ll cover three popular options for lead identification software: Leadfeeder vs LeadForensics, and LeadBoxer.
In other words, we will break down the features, pricing, and unique qualities of all three. After that you’ll have a clear picture of what these solutions can do for you.
LeadBoxer 101: Meet Your Visitors, Capture Leads, and Boost Sales
LeadBoxer is a lead and customer identification tool that automatically identifies your website visitors and their companies. It can measure visitor traffic engagement with your site and emails — whether they are new visitors or logins. Most importantly, LeadBoxer gives you automatic insight on their companies, their company contact information, details on their industry, their LinkedIn profile. And then calculates a leadscore. All of this before they have filled out a form.
Moreover, all identified leads, including those who have been identified by email or submitted their information on a form, are automatically ranked with a leadscore. And with LeadBoxer, you can track all interactions with your online and email touchpoints.
What Else LeadBoxer Has Got to Offer
You can see leads’ interactions with pages, email opens and clicks, contact forms, sign-ups, PPC click-throughs, and downloads. In addition, when the lead information is ready to be passed on to your other tools, LeadBoxer exports the information to your CRM, sales software, collaboration tools, or task management tools.
Most importantly LeadBoxer can be set up in a matter of minutes. All you have to do is sign-up for the free trial, receive your Lead Pixel, and insert that Lead Pixel into your site. And then you will get immediate, real-time results on your leadboard. So once you are signed-in, you will see your leadboard. This leadboard lists all your leads, their leadscore, and all relevant information:
.And if you want to continue after your free trial, all you have to do is sign up for a subscription plan.
However, LeadBoxer is not the only lead identification software on the market which you can use for sales enablement purposes. Leadfeeder and Lead Forensics are two alternatives that marketers and sales reps consider before making their decision. Here is a comparison of the three solutions broken down by features, pricing, and unique sales propositions.
Key Features of Lead Identification Software
In short, there are some key features of any lead identification software to keep your eyes out for. And before jumping into each software, it will be good to have an understanding of what the key features are and what they do.
Automatic visitor identification: identify your site visitors by name, company, and links to social profiles.
Lead Scoring: rank visitors and/or leads based on activity and other information.
Email Alerts: be notified about dream customers or lead updates.
Page Tracking: track how long leads are on certain pages, where they came from, where they go to next, what they click on, etc.
Integrations: different software integrate with tools you already use like Google Analytics, CRM solutions, Sales Solutions, Email Management Platforms (Mailchimp Integrations), Collaboration Tools, etc.
Compliance: is up to date with the latest regulations, like the GDPR.
Leadfeeder vs LeadForensics vs LeadBoxer Features
LeadBoxer Features
LeadBoxer features work together to bring a holistic picture of leads to both your sales and marketing teams. And this helps you to work on lowering the cost per lead too. These include:
Automatic visitor information and lead scoring.LeadBoxer ranks visitors and automatically updates rankings when visitors fill out forms.
It captures leads and integrates them into the viewing platform.
Leadboxer tracks their customer journey and data. This solution tracks all their web and email behavior.
LeadBoxer sends you notifications for when a lead is ready-to-buy.
So companies can set custom scheduling based on custom segments. To then route this information to relevant team members. Most importantly, team members will be notified when data shows that it is the prime time to talk to the email leads.
Other LeadBoxer Features Include
Email & Newsletter tracking.
Full Data Search.
Auto Form Tracking.
Campaign Tracking.
Traffic Dashboard.
GDPR Compliance.
Share and Assign Leads.
Lead Tags or Labels.
Channel Groupings and Source.
LeadBoxer integrates with 25 business solutions that you probably already use. This includes popular CMS, communication, CRM, marketing automation, and other business solutions:
Leadfeeder is a website visitor tracking software platform. To clarify, it tells you who your visitors are, where they come from, and what they are interested in. Moreover Leadfeeder offers alerts when your target companies visit your site. And then software breaks their features down into four action areas: identify visitors, see what they look at, get email alerts for when they visit, and send leads to your CRM.
Above all this software integrates with Google Analytics to identify the companies that visit your site and how they engage with your pages. Most importantly, Leadfeeder provides company contact information and shows if your users have LinkedIn connections with any of their company representatives. And this solution is also GDPR compliant. Teams have unlimited amount of users on this solution, no matter the plan.
Leadfeeder integrates with twelve other business solutions, including MailChimp, various CRM solutions, Pipedrive, Slack and more.
This solution features lead scoring, auto-assigning of leads, notifications, labeling dream customers, and a customizable portal. And it helps sites convert visiting traffic into leads, track them from their first click to sale, and measure digital ROI.
Lead Forensics integrates with Salesforce, Zoho, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Workbooks, and Infusionsoft.
Leadfeeder vs LeadForensics vs LeadBoxer: Comparing Pricing
LeadBoxer Pricing
LeadBoxer offers a two-week free trial. After that, pricing is based on monthly or annual subscription plans. The Starter plan starts at $79 per month (billed annually). Business Plan is $199 per month (billed annually). The Corporate Plan is $399 per month (billed annually).
Leadfeeder Pricing
Leadfeeder offers a free “Lite” plan that only shows 7 days worth of leads. Premium pricing is based on the number of leads you have:
Lead Forensics offers a free week-long trial. Based on this trial, Lead Forensics will understand how much traffic your site receives and will determine pricing for a future contract based on your volume of visitors. To learn more, you must contact Lead Forensics directly.
What Makes LeadBoxer, Leadfeeder vs LeadForensics Unique?
After delving into the research, it can be hard to determine what features differentiate these solutions. And even though there is significant overlap in use cases, each tool is different in some way.
LeadBoxer: Bringing Sales and Marketing Together with Data
LeadBoxer stands out from competitors because it acts as a bridge between marketing and sales teams. For example, it stores all visitor, lead, and customer information in one platform. Unlike other lead identifying tools. LeadBoxer doesn’t just track online visitors. For instance it also keeps tabs on all email activity of the companies on your newsletter list. And knows when leads are signaling that they are ready to buy or are up for contract renewal.
So your sales team will know exactly when to reach out to them and have the details they need to make the right pitch. Not only that, but LeadBoxer informs your sales reps of when to push up-sell opportunities, which other solutions of its type don’t do.
The LeadBoxer team has more than a decade of analytics and software development experience. And for this reason, this solution uses its own algorithm to boil all the data down to a simple view for clients. Ask the search tool any data question, and you will find the answers you need.
Leadfeeder: Putting GA to Use
Leadfeeder does not have its own algorithm. But uses Google Analytics data. So customers don’t have to install a pixel — they only need access to their Google Analytics account.
Leadfeeder offers a unique tool that filters out leads that aren’t that interesting or valuable for your team. As a result you don’t have to sift through visiting bots or visitors who certainly won’t buy your product.
Lead Forensics: Dedicated to Customer Success
Lead Forensics offers many of the features that LeadBoxer and Leadfeeder do. But it’s unique because their solution comes with a customer success manager for each client.
Most importantly, they offer consultation and proactive support to marketing and sales teams on how to use this tool to generate the most ROI.
LeadBoxer vs Leadfeeder vs LeadForensics Takeaway: Keep Your Goals in Mind
Capturing qualified leads doesn’t happen overnight. To sum up, your website, online content, chat bots, social media campaigns, email newsletters, email tracking pixel and advertising efforts all work together to attract clients.
But once your prospects visit your site, it is up to you to use the most powerful tools. Which can identify visitors, capture leads, and track the success of your content. And lead identification and generation software provide a path for visitors to become customers but you’ll need s lead strategy too. It’s up to you to determine which software will work best with this goal in mind.
Are you struggling to find enough time in the day to fill your prospect pipeline? Truth is, every sales rep has the same amount of time in their day. But the difference? Only some of them use sales prospecting tools to help them find prospects faster, and close deals quicker.
Let’s look at the best 30 sales prospecting tools on the market that can fill your prospect pipeline:
Tools to Help You Find Prospects
1. LeadBoxer
Price: Starts at $99/month
Free trial: Yes
What it’s all about:
LeadBoxer is a one of the best sales prospecting tools that tracks activity on your website and email behaviour and finds prospects before they even contact you. The tool provides vital information you need to follow up with a prospect such as their interests, their company name and the size of their organization:
By giving you a birds-eye view of the lead or customer, you can then decide if they are worth following up, or if they aren’t a good fit for your company.
Plus, you can set criteria to exactly what you need from a website visitor to flag them as a prospect. LeadBoxer will automatically assign the profile with a leadscore. This gives you a super clear visual of prospects who are a good fit for your product. And don’t forget about lead generation versus prospecting, there sure is a difference between.
If you’re prospecting and would like to focus on identified leads, you can do that easily with LeadBoxer. When you’re setting up your criteria in the LeadBoxer dashboard, all you need to do is adjust the email address slider and visitors with a known email address will be given a higher lead score.
The same criteria can be added to company size, phone numbers and number of times the person has visited your site.
No more dead ends, LeadBoxer only puts verified leads into your pipeline.
Looking for more qualified leads?
We offer Lead Identification and Lead intelligence through website & email tracking
Price: Professional Plan – $11.25/month, Turbo Plan – $41.25/month
Free trial: Yes + limited free forever plan
What it’s all about:
If you find the majority of your prospects on LinkedIn, this tool is about to save your life.
Dux-Soup automatically scrapes leads for you and invites them to connect with you over LinkedIn.
What the tool does is looks at your LinkedIn prospect profiles, tracks their movements and then, sends them a personalized message from your account. What’s more, the tool will also follow up on warm leads through 2nd and 3rd LinkedIn connections for you.
Not only does it contact prospects for you, but the tool interacts with your CRM as well and not all sales prospecting tools do that. Once Dux-Soup reaches out to a prospect, it then tracks the progression of the interaction and transfers everything into your CRM. This means your entire team will stay in the loop with the clients you bring into the company’s pipeline.
3. LeadSift
Price: It’s a mystery! The company offers “custom” price plans.
Free trial: Yes + forever free plan for first 50 accounts
What it’s all about:
How many times have you contacted a prospect and found out that they aren’t actually ready to buy?
It’s not only frustrating, but it takes a big chunk of time out of your working day as well.
That’s where LeadSift comes into play. It tells you when you’re prospecting and only targets people who are on the buying journey.
No more wasted time on those who aren’t ready to buy.
According to LeadSift, only 3% of leads are actually interested in buying a product, which means a lot of people you’re putting an effort into are never going to buy your product. This tool eliminates prospects who are months or years away from purchasing and leaves you with a pool of prospects who are ready to buy. Right now.
But we’ve saved the best until last with this one. LeadSift steals some of these prospects from your competitor’s websites. The tool automatically watches your biggest competitors and, if a prospect begins engaging with one of them, you’ll be the first to know (along with getting their email address, too).
4. Capterra
Price: It’s free!
Description:
Not exactly a prospect scraping tool, but Capterra is great for finding new companies to target.
Depending on what industry you’re selling your product to, Capterra can filter through millions of companies in a matter of seconds and give you a list of potential targets. And there are few sales prospecting tools that are capable to do this.
From there, your sales team will be able to filter through them and find prospects a lot quicker than they would if they stuck to Google searches.
5. MatterMark
Price: Starts at $49/month.
Free trial: Yes! You get 14 days.
Description:
Mattermark is a sales rep’s best friend because it searches for prospects using super specific filters.
Want to narrow down a prospect search by company size? How about a business model? B2B? Industry? Niche?
You can do all of that on Mattermark – one of the best sales prospecting tools.
It’s also integrated with a lot of the big name CRMs on the market, so the tool can cut back on dreaded admin time.
A neat hack with this tool is it lets your sales reps save a specific list. If one of your reps has searched for B2B companies with 50+ employees in the Seattle area and found promising results, they can use the same search for next time (and change it up when they need to).
6. CrunchBase
Price: Starts at $29/month, then moves up to a custom plan
Free trial: Yes, CrunchBase offers a free plan
What it’s all about:
CrunchBase is THE tool to use if your company is looking for prospects in growing companies and innovative startups.
For sales teams, the tool gives your reps an important insight into a company’s funding rounds, business category, and their date of establishment. A lot of companies on the database also have contact information on their listing, along with a bit of information about the company’s structure.
Once you’ve conducted a search, you can export your findings into a CSV file and add them straight to your CRM to make following up easier. This is very convenient for any sales prospecting tools.
Price: Professional Plan – $11.25/month, Turbo Plan – $41.25/month
Free trial: Yes + limited free forever plan
What it’s all about:
LimeLeads is a great tool for sales prospecting as it doesn’t cooperate with fake data.
The tool was built by a bunch of B2B marketing veterans that were sick of a lack of credible data being available. Its main goal is getting you prospect lists that are accurate.
The tool integrates with CRMs and will enable sales teams to put together a list of prospects in 30 seconds or less.
8. Salespanel.io
Price: Custom pricing plans depending on your needs.
Free trial: Yes + free forever plan.
What it’s all about:
Salespanel.io is a relatively new tool in the sales space. The tool scrapes your website visitors and tracks their activity.
It finds the person’s social media profiles, company details and bio before feeding them straight back into your dashboard to follow up.
9. ZoomInfo
Price: Custom pricing depending on your needs
Free trial: Yes
What it’s all about:
ZoomInfo is a huge database that can help your sales team qualify prospects.
It gives you more than just a company’s name and address. It can also find an email address of key decision makers in a company.
Tools for Finding Email Addresses
10. ViolaNorbert
Price: Starts at $39/month
Free trial: Yes, your first 50 leads are free
What it’s all about:
To use VoilaNorbert, you’ll need a prospect’s first name, last name, and company website. In return, you’ll get their email details:
11. Hunter
Price: Starts at $39/month
Free trial: First 100 email lookups are free
What it’s all about:
Hunter is a Google Chrome extension that can dig up any email addresses linked to a specific domain name.
If you are looking for an address for a key decision maker but you can’t find it, Hunter will figure out a pattern behind the company’s email addresses so you can effectively guess the email.
For example, let’s say you’re trying to get in touch with Mirko Rakic, a software engineer at Hunter. Just let the tool do its thing:
We are going to hazard a guess that Mirko’s email is mirko@hunter.io
The tool also has a Google Sheets add-on so you can gather email addresses in bulk automatically, and then add them to your CRM.
12. Prospect.io
Price: $99/month for 1000 leads.
Free trial: No
What it’s all about:
Prospect.io is one of the few sales prospecting tools on this list that can integrate with most big name CRMs.
Apart from being able to work with CRMs like Salesforce and Hubspot, you can build and manage email campaigns from the tool’s dashboard as well.
If you’re working on Google Chrome, Prospect.io has a custom extension to use on the browser.
13. SellHack
Price: Starts at $3/month for 100 leads
Free trial: Yes
What it’s all about:
SellHack sells itself as a tool for sales reps who want to completely automate the prospecting process.
The tool can gather a list of prospects automatically, so sales teams can spend more time closing.
But you won’t get a list full of bogus emails either—SellHack verifies every single email it pulls through LinkedIn.
14. LeadFuze
Price: Starts at $97/month
Free trial: First 25 leads are free
What it’s all about:
Here’s another tool that works well with LinkedIn. It takes a look at your prospect list, with a focus on those on LinkedIn, and switches them from contacts into prospects.
If you feel like you’ve run all your resources dry, LeadFuze has an email finder tool that can fish out emails from a bunch of third-party sources.
According to LeadFuze, they “find the most accurate email possible.”
15. AeroLeads
Price: Starts at $49/month
Free trial: Yes
What it’s all about:
AeroLeads is more than an email finder, it provides a full breakdown of information on a prospect.
With the tool, a sales rep can do a simple web search and find out not only an email of a prospect, but also their business name, key decision maker names, phone number, location, and even social media profiles.
It’s a tech tool. AeroLeads has an algorithm that filters through all the results and only gives you the best ones.
Not only does the tool scrape the entire internet for you, but when you’re finished, you can download your results into a CSV file and add them straight to your CRM.
16. Skrapp
Price: Starts at $49/month
Free trial: Free for your first 100 emails
What it’s all about:
Skrapp is built with one goal in mind—finding email addresses from LinkedIn accounts.
The tool has a Google Chrome extension which you can use when you are on a prospect’s LinkedIn profile to see what email address they used to sign up to LinkedIn with.
Once you’ve found their email, you can save it to a list to use later while you search for more targets.
Tools to Help Pitch Prospects
17. Charlie
Price: It’s all very hush and varies by team size
Free trial: No
What it’s all about:
If you want to set yourself up for a pitch with as much information as possible, Charlie is your guy.
Just provide a prospect’s details, and it’ll return to you a one-page sheet on your prospect. You’ll be given information on prospects like their passions, hobbies, professional history, and any news about their current company.
Who knew prepping for a pitch could be so informative?
18. Owler
Price: It’s free!
What it’s all about:
Owler is a free database that’s filled with information about who a company’s top competitors are.
Plug in the company of a prospect, and you’ll not only find out who they’re up against, but you’ll also be given their social media accounts, number of employees, and annual revenue.
Plus, you can find about their funding history and any acquisitions that have taken place.
Crystal is like having a coach for pitching prospects.
It doesn’t give you links to a prospect’s Twitter account. But what it does do is provide eerily detailed insight into how your prospect talks, how they behave, and what drives the decisions they make in their business.
The tool uses social media and text analysis and runs them through an algorithm to figure out exactly what conversations and tone you should approach a prospect with.
It’s like a mind-reading tool for sales teams.
20. Nudge
Price: Starts at $19.95/month
Free trial: Yes
What it’s all about:
Nudge digs into the background of a prospect so you don’t have to spend hours doing it yourself.
Ever prepared for a pitch and thought, have I contacted this person before? Maybe I’ve dealt with their company on another occasion? Is there anyone at the company who has actually worked for your company in the past?
Instead of spending hours of your day trying to find out yourself, Nudge does it for you. Plus, it can rate the relationship you have with a prospect from “very weak” to “very strong”, so you know if you need to put in a bit more work with them.
21. Mention
Price: Starts at $25/month
Free trial: Yes
What it’s all about:
Struggling to get a prospect on board? Try sharing in their successes with the help of Mention.
Mention is a media-monitoring tool that can help you follow a prospect’s success. If a prospect’s company just celebrated a major win, or they were recognized for an award in their industry, congratulate them first.
What better way to shine a good light on yourself and your product by shining the light on them first?
22. Siftery
Image source
Price: Starts at $160/month
Free trial: Yes
What it’s all about:
Siftery does one thing and it does it well: finds competitors. You can plug in a prospect’s company to find out exactly what products they’re using so you can plan your next move.
Not only that, Siftery can filter what tools your prospect’s company is using down to individual departments. So if your prospect is in the marketing department, you’ll uncover all the sales prospecting tools the marketing team uses.
23. Apollo.io
Price: Custom plans available
Free trial: Yes + forever free plan
What it’s all about:
Apollo finds the perfect things to say to your prospect for your next email or call.
The tool gives you recommendations on what to say by judging a prospect’s online persona. It also integrates with your email, CRM, and professional networking sites like LinkedIn so you’re covered no matter what platform you’re using.
24. Emissary
Price: Custom plans depending on your needs
Free trial: No
What it’s all about:
Emissary was built by a product leader at Google, so you know it has to be good.
Using the tool, you can unlock critical information. Information that goes beyond the standard analytics and data you’ll find on other sales prospecting tools.
Is a prospect you’ve been working on really a key decision maker in the company? Or is there a hidden influencer that you’ve failed to spot? Emissary can tell you.
Plus, the tool will chart the best paths on how you should approach your prospect.
Tools to Automate the Boring Stuff
25. PandaDoc
Price: Starts at $49/month
Free trial: Yes
What it’s all about:
Nobody likes doing admin work, especially your sales team. We all know they would rather be out selling than creating quotes.
This is where PandaDoc comes in. The tool can save your team a massive amount of time by automating daily tasks like quote creation and tracking contracts. It also gives your sales team access to a bunch of proposals so they can just fill in the blanks, rather than drawing one up from scratch.
Everything is kept in the PandaDoc dashboard, so your team can track sales activity and check if a contract has been signed. If it hasn’t, the tool will automatically send a reminder.
26. Calendly
Price: Starts at $8/month
Free trial: Yes
What it’s all about:
Back and forth emails to organize a meeting with a prospect is high on the list of the worst parts of preparing for a pitch.
If you’re constantly getting caught in a 15-email exchange before settling on a meeting time, you need Calendly.
The tool lets you set up a schedule, and then your prospect can choose what times suit them best.
Once your prospect has picked a date, Calendly automatically removes the time slot from the system so you won’t be double booked, and adds it to your chosen calendar.
27. Outreach
Price: Custom pricing depending on needs
Free trial: Yes, a demo is available
What it’s all about:
Outreach sets up touchpoints for your prospects so that when they’re interacting with you, they are replied to straight away.
The earliest stages of a customer’s journey are the most important, and if they aren’t looked after, they’ll leave. Outreach will automatically reply to a prospect, and then if you don’t receive a reply from them, it’ll follow-up with them again.
Don’t think of it as a bot, but more a sophisticated messaging system. It’ll A/B test every message that’s sent, so you know which ones work best and why.
28. Boomerang
Price: Starts at $4.99/month
Free trial: Boomerang offers a free basic plan
What it’s all about:
Are some of your prospects in a different timezone? Maybe you get distracted by new emails hitting your inbox every 5 minutes?
Boomerang can help your team stay on track with scheduled emails. It has a function that will let you schedule an email to be sent in advance, so it hits your prospect’s inbox at the perfect time.
Plus, you can set it up for automatic follow-ups. If a prospect hasn’t replied to an email in a couple of days, Boomerang will follow up automatically.
29. Yet Another Mail Merge
Price: Starts at $24/year
Free trial: First 50 emails of the day are free
What it’s all about:
Want to see who’s opening your emails?
Yet Another Mail Merge links your Gmail with Google Sheets and tracks your email opens. If you’re casting a wide net to prospects and want to know who is actually biting, this tool is for you.
30. GlobalMeet
Price: Starts at $12/month
Free trial: Yes + limited free forever plan
What it’s all about:
Every company uses different tools for meetings, so it can be frustrating when you end up with dozens of tools on your desktop.
GlobalMeet lets you have meetings through their cloud-based software, so no download is required.
To get a prospect to join you in a meeting, all you need to do is send them a link and the meeting is ready to go!
Smarter Prospecting Closes More Deals
If filling your pipeline is taking up too much time, there are ways to automate a lot of the work that goes into landing a new client.
Spending hours trawling through LinkedIn, following up on emails, and preparing for pitches are all tasks that can now be done with a sales prospecting tool.
Picking the right tools will save your team hours of time on admin work and get them back to doing what they do best—closing deals.
Looking for more qualified leads?
We offer Lead Identification and Lead intelligence through website & email tracking
The key to giving your customers a great experience is to walk in their shoes. And by empathizing with your clientele and understanding their motivations, your company will be able to drive product design and service based on what customers need most. As Kevin Stirtz says, “Know what your customers want most and what your company does best. Focus on where those two meet.” And a customer journey map is one tool that can help you look into customer behavior, motivations, and needs. Most importantly, this knowledge will help improve your relationship with customers, boost sales, and help you accomplish your business’s goals. So in this article, we’ll cover the following questions you may have about customer journey maps:
A customer journey map is a visual representation of the stages a customer takes before accomplishing a certain goal a company has for them. To clarify, it takes into consideration a customer’s pain points, emotional needs, and actions. So this type of map illustrates the customer narrative as they engage with a brand.
Most customer journey maps look at the entire customer lifecycle. Starting with the introduction to the brand and continuing to post-sale support services – with all the steps in between.
Often, these stages are displayed in a linear fashion. However, a customer’s engagement with a business is not always so simple. And graphs can display cyclical customer journeys or journeys through multiple channels.
Source
Companies can take this opportunity to creatively communicate analogies about how different leads interact with the brand, such as through a tornado analogy:
Common Elements
Though customer journey maps can vary, they have shared essential components. Here are the following elements that the diagrams will have in common:
Persona: A profile of the brand’s clients, offering demographic and psychographic information. Companies usually have diverse client groups. So each customer journey map should be catered to each unique persona that the company wants to learn more about.
Designated Touchpoints:Important moments when clients interact with the brand. (Paid advertisement, sign up form, social media engagement, a purchase, etc.).
Moments of Truth:Touchpoints that can make or break it for a customer.
Performance Indicators: Evaluative factors that measure how customers are responding at certain touchpoints. To clarify, these often measure the customer’s emotional state or satisfaction levels along their path.
Visuals: The visual element of the journey map displays the path the customer takes on their journey. In many cases, this can be a linear illustration. In other cases, it makes more sense to show the cyclical nature of the customer cycle.
These diagrams are not internal pipelines, sales processes, or any other funnel your business might create from a developer point of view. These are purely focused on the customer experience. And visual demonstration needs to make sense for your company, product, and most importantly, your customers’ perspective.
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As Sam Walton wisely said, “There is only one boss. The customer.”
And with that in mind, companies know the importance of understanding their customers. There is no use in designing a product without understanding those who will potentially use the product. In other words, what their needs are, what their communication style is, and how they feel about the product in their life.
Companies that take time to study and analyze real data on those they serve yield better results. And brands that strategically map the customer’s journey showed a 24% increase in return on marketing investments and reduced service costs by 21%.
On the other hand, assumptions about a customer base can be the downfall of a company. Take Shyp for example.
Shyp had a great idea for easy and cheap package delivery services for individuals. But neglected the fact that people don’t actually ship personal products very often. Building a financial model around what could’ve been, rather than the customer’s reality, led to the ruin of a startup with high potential.
What can we gather from this information?
So assumptions lead to failure, or at the very least, large loss of opportunity. Data and real customer insight can lead to significant returns.
Certainly, journey maps are critical in knowing customer realities. And this is the most important information to have when running a business. Other benefits of journey maps include:
Provide framework for assessing customer experience ROI.
Types of Customer Journey Maps
There are several different types of customer journey maps. Here are four main frameworks to consider when organizing a potential diagram.
Current State
Current state maps are an honest assessment of the present experience users have when interacting with your brand. And this is not a graph showing the ideal way a customer would move through the pipeline. But rather the current reality. In other words, the journey map shows how certain touchpoints are succeeding or failing.
Are clients falling through the cracks on social media? Are they dissatisfied with customer service? How are email campaigns performing? Current state diagrams can give you the answers you need to improve the customer experience.
Future State maps are what you would like the customer process to be. This type of mapping is helpful for communicating to different departments the ideal process for achieving customer goals.
Future state maps are not primarily based on current data. Instead, designers use their imagination and customer empathy to anticipate what users will experience after certain decisions are put into practice or marketing material is produced.
The goal of this type of map is to show what the daily life is of specific personas. These maps dig into the pain points of customers, their motivations, their emotions, and what they need from a product throughout their normal daily routine.
They are also helpful in understanding specific demographics and their behavior at certain points during the day.
Marketers can learn when personas are distractedly browsing on social media and likely to make a purchase or when they are stressed trying to get kids to school. Knowing the timing of a particular email or message can make all the difference.
Blueprint graphs are based on another current or future state map. They also include systems, processes, and tools that are used to bring all elements of the customer experience together.
They give a more detailed picture of how the customer is actually engaging with the company, allowing for deeper insights into pain points and the necessary support needed.
Businesses have different strategies, different demographics, and different products. Each company will have to determine which touchpoints and associated factors they want to understand. Different factors can include:
B2B vs B2C business models
Subscription-based vs transactional services
Size of scale
Types of personas
Because journey maps are tailored to the specific needs of each individual company or department within that company, we are going to take a look at three case studies that provide insight into how these maps can allow business people to walk with their clients.
The YMCA
The large YMCA branch in the Greater Twin Cities undertook the process of customer journey mapping in order to improve member wellbeing and loyalty. This business model is based on subscription services. Customer journey mapping was a valuable tool to grow customer retention rates.
After leaders met and agreed that putting the customer first was a top priority in their organization, they put their heads together to make hypotheses about their customers and to determine which personas they were going to study and within which parameters.
Research led to the development of different personas and richer understanding of their motivations, pain points, and moments of truth.
After gathering and organizing customer insights, the Y was able to put their new knowledge into action. This has lead members to greater trust in the Y and a greater user experience.
A Health Insurance Provider
An anonymous health insurance provider needed to conduct customer mapping with the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This company was interested to see how certain personas were choosing health coverage and their behaviors before deciding.
This image is not the exact customer journey map used but is a close hypothetical example:
The insurance company found that different personas could not be treated equally.
Some groups wanted to do most of their research online, whereas others wanted human interaction with a support specialist before committing to this insurance company.
The company was better able to field questions that each persona asked and understand what channels to use when communicating with potential clients.
Amadeus ePower
Amadeus ePower is an online travel booking engine. When this company prioritized understanding their customers’ journeys, they saw great change in their organization.
When starting the mapping process, Amadeus aimed to learn more about their website usage across the customer journey, unmet customer needs, and to generate ideas based on these findings.
Their customer mapping project took place over five weeks. The process started with determining personas, which included travelers and travel agents, and doing interviews with real customers. They also used previous research they had already collected.
Secondly, they conducted a workshop with stakeholders where they identified key elements of their map and created potential illustrations. After this, consultants and their creative team used these ideas to create the final customer journey maps.
In this case, the company had two specific personas so they made two separate customer journey maps.
According to Tran Dzien Nguyen, Head of Amadeus’s Online Solutions, “Customer journey mapping has changed the way we perceive unmet needs and approach the development process…it’s a game changer for us.”
These three businesses serve different customers with varying needs. Going through the process of customer mapping allowed these companies to organize their customer data into an easy-to-understand, big-picture diagram.
These clear illustrations enabled the businesses to know the different types of clients they serve and how to cater to their needs.
Steps to Create a Customer Journey Map
Designing an easy-to-read and informative map can be a daunting process. The key to yielding a successful result is to develop the map one step at a time. Here are seven necessary steps to build your map:
Prepwork
Setting Objectives
Discovering and Defining your Personas
Determining Touchpoints
Identifying Performance Indicators
Do the Research
Put your Map to Use
1. Prepwork
First things first. Executives have to come together and show buy in. Stakeholders need to believe that customer journey mapping is important enough to warrant company time and resources.
Once all key players have agreed that understanding their customers through this process is necessary, they will need to have specific conversations to direct the rest of the project.
Some key topics stakeholders need to discuss include:
Why is this project important?
How many resources will be allocated to the journey map?
Does our company need advice from professional consultants?
What time frame will be given to this development?
What conflicts or challenges might arise with this project?
Which type of map will be most useful for our company?
2. Setting Objectives
Once your team is committed to understanding the customer journey, leaders will need to determine what the goals are for the map.
The objectives chosen will be influenced by where the business is struggling or experiencing change, what research and pre-existing assumptions they have and the vision they have for the future of their company.
3. Discovering and Defining Your Personas
Companies often think they have a good idea of their customer base, but when they take a closer look, they find surprises.
A critical part in the mapping process is doing research on the types of customers a company has. Once they have determined the different segments of their client base, they can determine which personas they want to narrow their journey map on.
Not all personas will experience one company in the same way. To yield the most benefit of a customer journey map, each map needs to be tailored to a specific customer profile.
4. Determining Touchpoints
Working in groups to brainstorm all the different touchpoints a customer experiences can be helpful. In this day and age, customers are being funneled to companies through multiple channels and each channel needs to be noted and later measured.
Sign up forms, social media engagement, emails, call centers, and organic traffic online, all need to be considered and evaluated. During your research, it will be clear which of these touchpoints are often moments of truths.
Understanding how touchpoints are working or where inefficiencies lie is key to understanding why retention rates are down, why customers abandon their carts at the last moment, or any other common experience that is trending within your company.
5. Identifying Performance Indicators
As a team, leaders need to put their heads together and determine what they want to measure when a customer engages with the brand. Usually, these factors include:
Customer Actions
Thoughts
Customer Emotions
Motivations
Points of Frictions
6. Do the Research
Once you have decided which touchpoints and customer factors you want to chart, it is time for the legwork of the project: research.
For compiling an effective map, there is a place for both quantitative and qualitative research.
This solution has the ability to capture visitors’ contact information before they make contact. This allows sales teams to track their journey whether or not the visitor has signed a form.
Qualitative research consists of interviews with smaller groups of people (or “Focus Groups”). This research can be useful for getting a deeper look into the emotional state, needs, and thoughts of clients that quantitative data has a hard time capturing.
7. Put Your Map to Use
Journey maps should be actionable and relevant to different stakeholders. Find a simple way to illustrate multiple factors that will compel leaders with different perspectives to action.
This journey map focuses on one persona, has quantitative and qualitative feedback displayed, includes various performance indicators, and has a section with opportunities listed:
With all the research and data organized in a clear way, it will be easier to convince stakeholders why certain actions need to be taken and what opportunities the organization needs to take advantage of.
Another good idea to convince fellow stakeholders to make change is to take the customer journey yourself when possible.
Teams that go through all of the customer journey themselves will have an enhanced understanding and empathy towards the customer every step of the way. After all, we are all human and have some shared expectations of modern technology, customer service, and other business practices.
Once actions are put into place, your team will need to decide when and how to evaluate the changes. Customer journey maps will need to be updated periodically to show how changes have impacted the customer.
Customer Journey Map Templates
As we saw in the case studies, every company has a different path when building their customer journey maps. There is no one size fits all approach with this process. Though different companies will have to shape their diagrams uniquely, looking at different templates can be helpful when designing your own map.
When deciding on a template, be sure to keep these considerations in the back of your mind:
The template must be persona based
The type of journey map must make sense for the goals of your organization
Design can incorporate the customer phases specific to your brand
There is space for the touchpoints and evaluative indicators your team determined
Both qualitative and quantitative data is incorporated
Actionable items are displayed
With these factors in mind, continue reading to get a sence of the templates that could be modified for your business.
Current State and Future Map Templates
Current and Future Map templates will appear similar. The only difference is that the information your business puts in will represent the present reality or what your business expects to see in the future.
A Day in the Life Template will include customer insights from their daily life. Here is a simple template to get started:
Service Blueprint Template
A service blueprint can be a good graph to have alongside a current or future state map. These diagrams show what physical evidence is used to give the customer their experience.
For example, this would include staff, product, physical tools, or any other tangible tool that is along the customer path. Service blueprints usually include front-stage interactions, back-stage interactions, support processes, physical evidence, and customer actions.
At the end of the day, it is the customer who determines if your product is worth spending money on or not.
Some products, like B2B services, take an entire team of people and extensive research to agree on a subscription. Other business models rely heavily on impulsive buyers. No matter what type of business you are in, what matters most is happy customers.
Knowing what customers want, need, and feel is the most essential part in ensuring their happiness. A customer journey map will help you get a lot further down that road
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We all know that making a sale is the act of exchanging a product or service in return for cash, but there is far more to selling than what meets the eye.
With B2B e-commerce sales predicted to exceed B2C e-commerce sales by 2020, B2B selling is constantly growing. So, what are B2B sales, and how are they different from B2C sales?
In this article, you’ll learn how businesses use varying strategies to sell to each other and what type of software they can use. Using the information provided, you’ll be able to determine which selling techniques are best suited for your company and how you can use these to effectively increase B2B sales.
B2B sales refer to business to business selling: when one company sells products or services to another company. B2B selling uses a multitude of strategies; some which we’ll cover later in this article.
Business to business selling is often a complex process, involving several decision makers to close a sale.
There are two types of B2B sales that can be made:
A business selling products or services to a company which can then use these to manufacture or sell their own products. One example of this is a food wholesaler selling ingredients to a bakery, so they can produce their own baked goods.
What Are B2B Sales?
B2B sales refer to business to business selling: when one company sells products or services to another company. B2B selling uses a multitude of strategies; some which we’ll cover later in this article.
Business to business selling is often a complex process, involving several decision makers to close a sale.
There are two types of B2B sales that can be made:
A business selling products or services to a company which can then use these to manufacture or sell their own products. One example of this is a food wholesaler selling ingredients to a bakery, so they can produce their own baked goods.
BidFood is an example of a B2B business providing food for businesses who serve their own customers.
A business selling products or services which meet a company’s needs. For instance, a company selling software services, such as email or an e-commerce platform.
Decision makers in the B2B selling process can include sales representatives, senior executives, board of directors, the financial department, legal services, researchers, CEOs, and more.
In contrast to business to business selling, B2C sales refer to business to customer sales: when a company sells products or services to an individual customer.
A few examples of B2C selling include:
A sales representative selling a gym membership
Grocery store selling groceries
An online fashion store selling clothing to an individual
Retail stores selling a range of goods
Essentially, the buyer of the goods or service is the end user of the product.
It’s possible for a company to offer both B2B and B2C selling – a hotel selling rooms to individual consumers and conference rooms to businesses is one example.
B2C selling strategies can include using marketing campaigns to provoke an emotional response from the buyer, using social media influencers to create a connection with the buyer, and hosting contests.
B2B sale techniques require marketing strategies which are usually directed to a company’s specific requirements.
Let’s delve into eight B2B strategies you can use to make sales.
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How to Do B2B Sales: 8 B2B Sale Strategies You Can Use
Every product or service needs a sales strategy, no matter how great it is. With several decision makers to impress, using an effective marketing technique is the difference between a no and a yes.
So, how can B2B businesses close more deals? Here are eight sales strategies to use:
Research Your Prospects
Knowing who your prospects are can make or break your sales. Research has shown that at least 50% of prospects are not a good fit for your business.
While 100% conversion is relatively unknown, gathering data from your prospects will give your sales team an increased chance of closing a sale.
Researching your prospects doesn’t need to be time-consuming, especially if you have a large pool of potential customers to contact. Knowing which specific aspects to research before that important phone call or email will enable you to create a tailored conversion.
Your research can include
The Prospect’s Background
What is your prospects mission and values?
How many employees do they have?
What do they offer?
How large is the company?
Search their website or LinkedIn page to find answers to these questions. For example, here’s a look at ConvertKit’s LinkedIn with a link to a list of people who work there:
Additionally, explore their social media platforms, search for company mentions in publications, and read any blog posts they’ve written to help shape your conversion – what products or services are they talking about? Have they attended any events?
Who Are the Decision Makers?
Reach out directly to key decision makers to save time on your sales process. You’ll often find key decision makers are listed on your prospect’s website, which may appear in the ‘about us’ section or ‘our story’.
For example, Eight Hour Day Studio use their about page to provide visitors information about their founders:
The contact page may also provide suggestions on who to contact for purchasing decisions, for instance, a contact name in a specific department.
LinkedIn is a goldmine for finding key players in a company. See if you can find information on who works for the company, their job role, and how long they have been employed at the company. Those who have only just started working at the company may not have as much influence in decision making as others.
Once you’ve found a few potential prospects, you can use an email finder to identify the prospect’s email address.
What are Their Pain Points?
Before you contact your prospect, you’ll need to be aware of how your product or service addresses their pain points.
What does your prospect require that you can offer a solution to?
Are they currently using any products or services which you can offer a better alternative to?
You can include this information in your conversation with your prospect. For example, if your prospect is using social media adverts to drive traffic to their website, you can ask them if this method has been meeting company goals. This presents the opportunity for you to offer an alternative which may be cheaper, more cost-effective, or provides improved results.
Who are Their Competitors?
Analyzing your prospect’s competitors allows you to determine what they’re doing better.
While decision makers don’t enjoy hearing which aspects of their business are not performing as well as their competitors, you can use this to your advantage by showcasing how your product or service will give them an advantage over their rivals.
Focus on Building Relationships
As the B2B sales process is longer than the B2C selling process, developing a close relationship with your prospects can be highly beneficial. Relationships are important as the majority of B2B businesses lose 45 to 50% of their clients over the course of five years.
In comparison to B2C businesses which tend to have one-off payments or small subscription payments, B2B sales are generally of higher value than B2C sales, representing thousands of dollars in revenue. Losing just one customer can create a huge dent in revenue, so it’s essential to place your customers at the heart of your business.
Focus on developing valuable relationships with your customers to fuel your marketing efforts. Customer satisfaction prevents your customers from leaving and helps you to hook prospects.
Having a valued relationship with your customer also encourages them to talk about your product or service. Word of mouth is the most powerful aspect influencing a purchasing decision.
With the B2B sales cycle increasing by 22% over five years due to more people becoming involved in purchasing decisions, building a relationship with your prospects is extremely valuable.
How can you build meaningful relationships with your prospects?
Create a lead nurturing strategy. In other words, help your prospects to get to know your business. According to Forrester Research, businesses with an effective lead nurturing strategy generate 50% more sales.
Educate and inform via your marketing strategies. This can include content marketing.
Build trust by acknowledging your prospects concerns. We’ll go into detail on this topic shortly.
When it comes to building customer relationships, think about the long-term focus of your B2B business. Stop concentrating on closing the sale and start putting customer satisfaction at the center of your goals.
Build an Effective Website
94% of B2B buyers conduct online research before making a purchasing decision. This includes social media, online reviews, blogs, search engines, and websites. Having a dedicated website for your B2B business helps prospects to understand more about your business.
Your website helps you to stand out from your competition by allowing you to present your company’s mission and values.
What is your unique selling point?
One way to develop your unique selling point is to state a result plus target sector plus guarantee. For example: “we help B2B businesses to implement a content marketing strategy and increase leads by 10% or we’ll return your money.”
Additionally, your website is the center of your content marketing strategy, such as blog posts and lead magnets. Your website is where you can present your products and services to your prospects.
Your content plays a key role in lead generation. However, if your website is clunky or poorly designed, it’s not going to entice potential customers. Your website design should focus on being accessible and aiding business goals with a simple navigation, contact page, social media links, designated pages for specific resources, and optimized for mobile usage.
Establish a Social Media Presence
Being present on social media helps you attain customer research, as well as discovering more information about your competition.
Social selling is another option to consider. Companies incorporating social selling into their B2B sales strategies perform 15% better than those without a social selling strategy.
Social selling helps you to find and target key decision makers, focus on real people, and establish warm leads, helping guide them through the buying process. In contrast, traditional selling involves cold leads and finding random contacts, making the selling process more difficult.
67% of a buyer’s journey is now through digital means. Research has found that 90% of decision makers never respond to cold callers, emphasizing the importance of nurturing your prospects before closing a sale.
Using social media as part of your content marketing strategy helps you to establish yourself as an expert in your industry, aiding trust with your prospects. You can share content you’ve already published on your website or share exclusive content, such as interesting statistics, behind the scenes information or stories from satisfied customers.
One of the best places to start with your social strategy is LinkedIn. LinkedIn boasts over 560 million members and 80% of B2B leads are generated via the social platform.
Why is LinkedIn so successful for B2B lead generation?
Many business decision makers are present on LinkedIn
These decision makers use LinkedIn to actively make business decisions. Let’s face it, they’re not on LinkedIn to scroll through your family photographs
Promote your website content, including blog posts, eBooks, white papers
Connect with decision makers
Use your company page to generate leads by stating your mission, values, promoting a piece of content, and regularly posting updates
Join relevant B2B groups which are in your target audience
Create your own LinkedIn group to help establish your authority
Publish tailor-made content directly to LinkedIn publisher
Create Content to Aid Your Prospect
Your content marketing strategy should include resolving any queries your prospect has, helping you to build trust. It also helps you to establish your brand as a leader within your market as you can share your expert knowledge.
Your content should focus on teaching rather than selling to nurture relationships with prospects. Creating high-quality content early in the buyer’s journey aids this process. Educational and authoritative content which is consistently published can drive organic traffic to your website via search engines and inbound links.
Gated content allows you to offer your best content in return for your prospects email information, allowing you to add more prospects to your lead nurture strategy.
Your content marketing strategy might include
Blog posts
Educational articles
Webinars
eBooks
Videos
Whitepapers
Reports
Guides
Quizzes
Courses
For example, HubSpot has their own academy, featuring a range of recognized free courses which are available in return for a prospect sign up:
Create a content library to guide prospects through the buyer journey and provide knowledge to help them make a buying decision. Your content library should include content which answers your prospects queries.
This can help to ease concerns from prospects worried that they won’t be able to afford the software.
Your content library can also be shared by your sales team when interacting with prospects. Research has demonstrated that decision-makers are more responsive to salespeople who include articles, case studies, and/or white papers in their outreach.
Utilize Email Marketing
In a survey by Marketing Sherpa, 64% of respondents believed that email marketing delivers the biggest return of investment in comparison to other marketing tactics.
Email marketing is a crucial part of your B2B sales strategy, assisting in turning prospects into buyers. Once a prospect has given their consent for you to email them, you can use a variety of content to nurture them.
Types of emails you can send include:
Newsletter – an announcement, blog post round-up, events, or recent news. Think about what information you can offer to benefit your prospect. Maybe you could announce a free guide on one of their pain points or announce a free workshop where they can learn new skills.
Educational content – this could be an extract from one of your articles, a preview of an eBook, or a separate piece of content which your prospect will learn from. Remember to focus on education rather than selling in your emails.
Personal email – when your lead is getting closer towards the end of your sales funnel, you may wish to send a personalized email. This type of email enables you to directly contact an individual rather than addressing a group of people. Personal emails can address an individual’s queries and personal pain points, potentially closing the sale. As an example, LiveChat use a personalized newsletter to hook prospects:
Provide Real Results
Prospects don’t just want to know about your product or service; they’re interested in real results! What can you do for your prospect to help them achieve their goals? Be specific with numbers.
Real results can be fantastic for presenting in case studies on your website. Your case studies allow prospects to see your success stories, viewing your strategies and work process.
An engaging case study can use a question and answer format, a who, what, where format, or your own unique format – just remember to clearly state what your prospects goals were, what you did, and the specific results you achieved.
Attend Events
Attending events or hosting your own brings you closer to your prospects. 69% of B2B marketers say events are effective, while 64% of marketers use events and trade shows for lead generation.
Your event marketing plan could involve one of your sales team speaking at an event, hosting an exhibit at a trade show, sponsoring an event, or co-hosting an event with a company not in direct competition with yourself.
Sales Software for B2B Sales
Sales platforms assist B2B businesses in serving their customers. B2B sales software can involve order processing, nurturing prospects, membership only areas, marketing, and more.
There are varying sales software for B2B sales. Here are 5 sales software to consider:
LeadBoxer
LeadBoxer is a lead generation platform which provides real-time information about visitors to your website. It helps you find new leads by analyzing your web traffic to identify and segment users. All website data is examined, including logins, downloads, forms, and clicks.
You can generate new leads for your business, pursue them quickly due to real-time analytics, and create segments.
Who is LeadBoxer suitable for: Any business with an online presence.
Free trial available: Yes.
Campaign Monitor
Campaign Monitor is an email marketing platform that allows you to send personalized emails to leads and customers. Sign up forms can be customized and transactional emails can reflect your brand image.
Campaign Monitor offers an array of templates for your email campaigns. A drag-and-drop email builder provides simplicity to users.
Who is Campaign Monitor suitable for: Any business using email marketing as part of their B2B sales strategy.
Free trial available: No. However, users can access all features for free. Payment only occurs once emails are ready to be sent.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
We’ve already noted that LinkedIn is an effective platform for lead generation. LinkedIn Sales Navigator assists you in this process by offering an advanced lead search, an easy way to saves leads, lead recommendations based on an algorithm, and a method of engaging with prospects.
Pursue the right people in your target audience and keep track of any changes.
Who is LinkedIn Sales Navigator suitable for: Any business searching for new leads.
Free trial available: Yes, to eligible users.
ClearSlide
ClearSlide is a sales engagement platform that allows users to share sales materials, track email campaigns, host materials for sales calls, provide web conferencing, and create slides for presentations.
It can be used for product demonstrations, sharing presentations with customers, and recording meetings.
Who is ClearSlide suitable for: Any business using video in their B2B sales strategy.
Free trial available: Yes.
HubSpot
HubSpot is an inbound marketing software platform containing a content management and customer relationship management system. With HubSpot, you can convert visitors into leads, drive web traffic to landing pages, and get your content in front of your target audience.
You can record every interaction you have with a customer, organize a workflow for teams, automate marketing, and much more.
Who is HubSpot suitable for: Any size of business
Free trial available: Yes, HubSpot offer a free customer relationship management system for clients.
Business to Business Selling with Multiple Strategies
B2B sales is often a complex process with several decision makers. Several strategies can be used to gain leads and close sales, with some businesses using multiple strategies for lead generation.
Identifying who visits your website provides important data your sales team can leverage to scale your business. People visit your website because they are interested in what you offer. Not all website user data is equal and the more detailed information you get, the better.
As great as your website is, only 2% of your visitors will contact you. That means 98% of your website traffic will visit, browse and leave without heading a call to action. Additionally, you don’t know much about these passive website visitors, which makes it difficult to develop a strategy for convincing them to return.
In this article, you’ll learn what website visitor information is available, how to access it, and why it’s important. You can go further and learn how to contact those visitors and make them more likely to become customers. That way, you and your sales team can keep your pipeline filled with high-quality leads.
Continue reading or use the links below to “jump” to topics:
Why is it so important that you know who visits your website? What is the value of using technological tools to identify them? Gathering and properly analyzing this information or data is crucial to your sales success for a number of reasons:
For one, there’s no telling why 98% of visitors are leaving without taking the next step in the buyer’s journey.
Are they outside your target market?
Is there an issue with the landing page?
Identifying visitors to your site will help you find the answers to all these questions.
The major problem is that by not having an understanding of who is coming to your site, you are missing out on huge opportunities! There is no way to measure who among that 98% of visitors might convert and become a loyal customer provided the right user experience and proper nurturing. Knowing your visitors can make a big difference to your bottom line.
What Website Visitor Information is Available
Google Analytics does a great job at showing a snapshot of a website’s overall performance. It breaks down a website’s audience, their demographics, behavior, how they were acquired, and what the conversion rates are. Best of all, it’s completely free.
Some key performance indicators and reports to keep in mind when looking at Google Analytics are:
Demographics – The age and gender of site visitors will let you know if who’s visiting aligns with your ideal client profile.
Location – Like demographics, knowing the geographic location of visitors is useful for understanding if your digital marketing strategy is attracting ideal clients.
Device – This shows whether visitors are using a desktop or mobile device.
Acquisition – Knowing how a visitor arrived at the site can show you how well your marketing strategies are working and help identify potential areas for improvement.
Behavior Flow – This shows the journey from popular landing pages to other pages on the site, highlighting where traffic drops off and visitors leave.
Session Length – Knowing how long visitors are staying on a site provides insight into how useful and engaging it is.
Bounce Rate – If there’s a high bounce rate associated with a site, you may need to look into the time it takes to load pages or the overall site design.
Popularity – Knowing which pages are most and least popular can help you decide which are best suited to connect to paid advertising.
Google Analytics 4
Google Analytics has long been the gold standard for collecting and analyzing website visitor data. The platform provides information such as the number of users, the type of device used and the user’s source. Google Analytics 4 is a great starting point for learning about the type of people who visit your site.
Google Analytics offers a variety of reports that highlight different website traffic data. Here is how to use the new Google Analytics 4 platform to identify website visitors:
Log into your Google Analytics account (or create an account)
Create a property (the website you want to track traffic for) and add a tracking code
Go to Acquisition, then All Traffic, then Channels
For more detailed analysis, go to the Source/Medium Report under All Traffic
For step two, here is how you add the tracking code to your property (website):
Under Admin, select the right account in the account column.
Go to the Property column and select create a property
Enter a name for the property and select your time zone and currency.
Click on show advanced options
Turn on Create a Universal Analytics property
Enter the website URL and select either the HTTP or HTTPS protocol
Create both a Google Analytics and Universal Analytics property (code tags).
Accept the terms of service and data processing amendment and hit finish
You can further identify website visitors with the Network Report which looks into acquisition data, behavior and conversion rates. This is found under the Audience category and the Technology sub-category in the Google Analytics menu. The Network Report bundles visitors into the service provider they’re using to access the site.
However, when it comes to gathering and qualifying leads, Google Analytics falls short. The Network Report doesn’t show the name of individual visitors, their role within a company, their contact information or their unique behavior.
Not all website visitor identification tools are created equal. Some are bare-bones but budget-friendly, able to identify visitors and nothing more. Others can turn that data into action, showing you which of those visitors are worth pursuing as a possible client.
New Tools Available to Identify Website Visitors
Tools that analyze website visitors have been around for years. However, the online lead generation landscape has changed since 2020 with the Coronavirus pandemic. More people are browsing the web and shopping online than before the pandemic, which increases the importance of website visitor tracking.
With the ease and speed of online shopping, you’ll get more website visitors. The increased importance of website conversion means you can’t rely on people merely finding your site. Below are tools that help you take advantage of increased web traffic and land more conversions:
LeadBoxer
Cost: $195/month for the basic plan and $505/month for the premium plan. There is also a free trial.
LeadBoxer not only identifies website visitors, it turns that information into actionable data that accelerates your sales pipeline. This is done by capturing around 50% of visitors that would otherwise remain anonymous.
You can track your users’ online behavior including website visits, email opens, newsletter clicks, advertising and social media use. This offers a comprehensive view of website visitor engagement. LeadBoxer can also provide visitor details such as the prospect’s industry and specialty.
Based on the criteria set by the organization, LeadBoxer calculates a lead score for each prospect. The higher the lead score, the more promising that prospect is. Sales reps know instantly who is most likely to convert and who isn’t.
Cost: Free for individual salespeople. There is also a $50/month option and a $1200/month enterprise option that utilizes all HubSpot features.
Hubspot Sales Hub is a tool for managing a sales pipeline with visitor identification and lead qualification tools built in. Hubspot shows what companies are visiting a site in real-time and how many visitors there are from each company. You’ll see what pages they’re visiting and the number of page views they’ve made.
Hubspot collects information like company size and geography, then turns them into filter options. Using filters helps sales reps hone in on only those prospects that meet specific ideal client criteria.
Salesforce Sales Cloud
Cost: Has four pricing tiers ranging from $25/month/user to $300/month/user. There is also a free trial.
Salesforce Sales Cloud is a pipeline management system with added features that identify website visitors. It highlights what marketing campaign generated a lead and what effects that campaign has on the pipeline. This allows organizations to make informed decisions about where to invest their marketing budget.
There are also functions like lead scoring that help sales reps follow up with only the most engaged prospects. With Salesforce Sales Cloud, it’s easy to route and assign leads to the right rep.
Overall, Salesforce best accumulates data on existing customers. It combines a customer’s social content, the deals they’re involved in and what they’re saying about a product or service.
Visitor Queue
Cost: Ranges from $16 to $160 per month. The basic plan identifies up to 100 company visitors per month and the top-level plan identifies up to 1,000 visitors per month.
Visitor Queue is a user-friendly, simple visitor identification tool that tracks company contact and visit information. It also tracks visitors’ social media accounts. It displays the name, contact information and user data of visiting businesses.
Cost: $149/month. This plan identifies up to 3,000 visitors per month.
Leady is unique in that it helps you better invest in the right marketing campaigns. Leady automates your marketing process, enriches Google Adwords and creates highly relevant content campaigns for your ideal buyers. This helps you develop a list of prospects to fill your sales pipeline.
Happierleads
Cost:$69-$129 per month. Plans range from 100 lead identifications per month up to 1,000 leads per month.
Happierleads offers information on website visitors including contact information, the number of visits, length of visit and pages viewed. Features include:
Company-level visitor identification
IP and network data
Firmographic data of companies
Behavioral and demographic filters
Automated lead scoring
Real-time phone and email information verification
IPinfo.io
Cost: $99/month to $499/month
IPinfo allows you to find out who visits your website through IP data. This IP provider specializes in IP to geolocation, company and carrier, ASN, VPN detection, IP ranges and hosted domain data. IPinfo is simple, scalable, user-friendly and handles 420 billion API requests per year.
Cost: Starts at $249 per month and goes up to $1349 per month
User.com is an all-in-one marketing automation platform that boosts website engagement and improves conversion. This is done using a single data source for your customers. User.com allows you to reach clients through email, live chat, chatbot, push notifications, dynamic page content and more.
ExactVisitor
Cost: There is a limited, free tier available and a $50/month basic tier where you’ll have up to 100 lead identifications per month.
ExactVisitor is a B2B lead generation software that identifies the real person and companies visiting your website. It analyzes how they got there, their behavior and their purchasing intent.
With ExactVisitor, you’ll get alerts when key accounts visit your site, insights into technologies visiting companies use and website personalization.
LeadRebel
Cost: $19 to $305 per month depending on the plan.
With LeadRebel, you can get daily email summary reports, employee contact details and support for multiple websites. This software uses company-level reverse IP lookup for its data so you can get visitor information even if they work remotely.
Visitor Insights
Cost: You must call for a quote.
Visitor Insights offers a front-end funnel builder that uses information on buyer intent. It also allows customers to outsource marketing programs. Visitor Insights is not GDPR compliant in the EU.
Visitor Insights feature tracking pixels, user identification data sources, Identity Graph, user contact information and buyer intent details. Visitor Insights is not reliant on website visitors already in your CRM.
WatcherMe
Cost: $80/month to $299/month across three pricing plans. Some of the unique features of WatcherMe include:
Real-time email alerts
Website activity tracking and basic lead scoring
Smart filtering on good leads
LinkedIn company contact discovery
Visitor reports
Steps to Identify Website Visitors
Identifying website visitors with the right tool couldn’t be easier. LeadBoxer, for example, comes with a pixel that automatically starts collecting data as soon as the code is installed. There are also several third-party integrations you can use with your existing marketing stack and CRM platform.
If you want to try this out without committing to anything, LeadBoxer offers a free trial account. Setting up LeadBoxer with your site requires just a few steps. Best of all, you don’t need to have any coding experience to get it done.
After you start your trial account, follow the steps below to identify your website visitors:
1. Install the Pixel
LeadBoxer comes with a Lead Pixel, a snippet of JavaScript code that needs to be dropped into the backend of your site. To track incoming traffic on the entire site, install the Lead Pixel into the footer. For specific landing pages, install the pixel into the code for those pages.
If you have a WordPress site and you don’t want to code, LeadBoxer created a user-friendly WordPress plug-in. Once the pixel has been installed, all incoming visitors are automatically tracked.
LeadBoxer seamlessly integrates with many third-party tools, such as Google Analytics, MailChimp, Slack and Pipedrive. When it comes to enriching visitor profiles and qualifying prospects, start by focusing on LinkedIn, MailChimp and website contact forms.
Capturing a visitor’s LinkedIn information is a quick and easy way to populate their profile. You can easily connect to their LinkedIn page and reward them with a white paper when they provide their information.
Identifying and qualifying leads from your MailChimp newsletters is even easier. To track who is clicking newsletter links, add the “?email=*|EMAIL|*” merge tag to any links you want to track. To track email opens and reads, install the email tracking pixel into your email template code.
3. Establish Leadscore Criteria
LeadBoxer automatically calculates a lead score that will indicate how likely a prospect is to convert. This helps sales reps know which leads they should prioritize over others.
You can adjust how LeadBoxer calculates a lead score by establishing unique criteria. What criteria you set will depend upon the organization’s ideal client profile. Consider the following for lead scoring:
Buyer Profile
It’s important to have a thorough understanding of your organization’s ideal client profile. Include fields on contact forms to help gather information so you’ll have data to use when calculating the lead score. You can give points for answers that align with the profile and take away for those that don’t.
Company Information
More than likely, you want to know the size of the prospect’s company and how to reach them. Therefore, it’s a good idea to add points to the lead score for this kind of information.
Online Behavior
High levels of engagement with your site are a likely indicator that a prospect is interested in your product or service. Toggle points for page views, visit length, downloads and visit frequency over a 30, 60 or 90 day period.
Email Engagement
This doesn’t just mean that you should add to the lead score if someone is on your email list. Instead, prioritize high open rates and click-through rates. These are more meaningful indications of interest.
Social Media Engagement
The more a prospect interacts with you on social media, the higher their lead score should be. LeadBoxer can help track Facebook or Twitter likes, retweets, shares and click-through rates from your posts.
Spam Detection
Sometimes bots fill out contact forms and interact with your site. Things to look for include using all lowercase letters when filling out forms or using Gmail or Yahoo email addresses.
After establishing lead score criteria, you can automatically see which of your website visitors are worth following up with. You can then have LeadBoxer send alerts the next time ideal prospects engage with your site. That way you or the assigned sales rep can contact them while your company is still fresh in their minds.
Start to Identify Website Visitors and Increase Sales Leads
There are several reasons why it’s vital to know who is visiting your site and how they’re interacting with it. You’ll know if your marketing campaigns are working or if your ideal buyers are noticing your product or service. It also shows if there are weak points where visitors are dropping off and navigating away from your site.
But that’s not all website visitor identification is good for. With this data, you’ll be able to optimize campaigns and site design. Knowing your site visitors increases the number of prospects available to you, keeping your sales pipeline filled.
A solid website visitor identification tool automates this process and enables you to invest in the best prospects. Using the data collected about your visitors is the first step toward a highly productive pipeline.
It’s a commonly cited statistic that only 2% of sales are made during the first meeting. That’s about a one in fifty chance that your initial pitch will result in a done deal. A strategic and optimized sales follow-up process is your best bet for getting the results you want.
In this article, you’ll learn how to set up your sales follow-up process from start to finish so that it’s primed for success. While setting up the process may seem daunting, the right CRM tool or email tracking app can help you automate many parts of the process. This allows you to focus on the steps that require a personal touch so your leads feel valued and more willing to buy.
To set up your sales follow-up process for success, start by automating the process from the beginning of your pipeline. This is the point where you collect data on potential leads, pinpoint high-quality contacts, and make your initial outreach. Automating this process will help you invest time in only the most promising leads.
1. Capture Leads
The first step of your pipeline is to gather information on potential leads. Common ways of doing this include contact forms on your website, email list sign-ups and activity, or even simply interacting with certain pages and social media profiles.
To set up your sales follow-up process for success, start by automating the process from the beginning of your pipeline. This is the point where you collect data on potential leads, pinpoint high-quality contacts, and make your initial outreach. Automating this process will help you invest time in only the most promising leads.
1. Capture Leads
The first step of your pipeline is to gather information on potential leads. Common ways of doing this include contact forms on your website, email list sign-ups and activity, or even simply interacting with certain pages and social media profiles.
Not all leads are created equal. Some will be worth your effort more than others. A leadscore is a single number that helps you quickly identify who is most likely to buy.
Many CRM tools and lead scoring software calculate the leadscore by tracking a lead’s website visits, newsletter opens, website clicks, social media engagement, and more.
Using a leadscore offers numerous benefits for your sales process, including increased measurable ROI, conversion rates, and sales productivity. The infographic below takes a look at a few of these benefits in more detail:
Kentico’s 2014 survey showed that over 60% of companies already used or planned to use lead scoring techniques. If you’re not already taking advantage of this tool, you could be missing out on benefits that your competitors aren’t.
A tool like LeadBoxer can generate the most accurate leadscore possible by comparing the criteria for your ideal buyer to the online behavior of your potential lead. From there, you can use this information to decide whether or not to continue the sales process with this particular contact.
3. Create an Alert
After setting the criteria for a promising lead, you can create an alert with your CRM tool for when that lead next engages with your website, emails, advertising, or social media. By calling a lead immediately after they express interest in your brand, you increase your chances of establishing contact with them significantly.
Source
According to a study by LeadResponseManagement.org, the odds of contacting a lead if called in five minutes versus 30 minutes after that lead expresses interest drop 100 times, therefore it’s essential to make contact as soon as possible after lead activity.
4. Initiate Contact with Leads
When it comes to reaching out to leads, the email versus cold calling debate rages on. With so many studies, statistics, and lists out there touting the benefits of one method over the other, it can be difficult to decide whether or not you should initiate contact with an email or a phone call.
Your CRM tool can help you decide.
Take a look at what you know about the lead. Is this person higher up in the organization and likely to have a packed schedule? Email might be the way to go.
Are they older or seem like they might prefer a more personal touch? Consider picking up the phone. However, if you call and leave a voicemail, it’s good form to immediately follow up with an email recapping the purpose of your call.
Whether reaching out by email or phone, follow this formula for a message that gets noticed:
Open with a clear reason for connecting. Skip the bland and overdone openers like “I just wanted to touch base about…”. Get straight to the point by introducing yourself, then defining how your product or service can solve your lead’s potential problem.
Add value. This initial contact is not actually the time to make your pitch unless you want to risk turning some leads off. Warm up and nurture leads by offering them something of value for nothing, such as a free resource, whitepaper, or consultation.
End on a clear call-to-action. Give leads a reason to get back in touch. Offer to schedule a meeting so you can explain how they can make the most of the free resource you just sent them.
By beginning your lead qualifying process with this automated and strategic method, you’ll be able to easily book meetings where you can make your actual pitch.
Sales Follow-Up Timeline: When to Send Follow-Up Emails
You’ve made initial contact, had a formal meeting where you made your pitch, and feel confident about your lead. But remember that only 2% of first meetings end in a sale. More than likely, you need a consistent sales follow-up process to bring the deal home.
However, if your initial email (or even your post-pitch follow-up) receives a “no” response, don’t give up just yet. A popular statistic confirmed by multiple studies reveals that 80% of leads will say “no” to an offer five times before they eventually say “yes.” Sending follow-up emails at strategic times is therefore a necessary and common part of the process.
If you aren’t already using one, you should use a CRM tool or email tracking app to help you complete the next steps. Knowing whether or not your emails remain unopened or not will influence when you send a follow-up message, as well as what kind of message to send. This list of 10+ best email tracking apps for Gmail and Outlook can help get you started.
Free E-Book: Click here to download LeadBoxer’s free E-Book, “7 Things to Consider in an Email Tracking App”
Here’s a list of the kinds of follow-up messages to send and when to send them:
After You’ve Formally Met and Made Your Pitch
By now, you’ve hopefully had a meeting where you formally made your pitch and the lead was qualified enough to continue the sales process. You’ll then need to send a post-pitch follow-up in order to carry you to the next stage. Follow up 1-2 days later with a message like this:
Show your appreciation. Quickly thank the lead for meeting or speaking with you.
Review their pain point. Restate any of the lead’s pain points that arose during the meeting and how your product or service can solve those problems.
Answer any questions raised during the meeting. If you promised to look into a lead’s problem or question during the meeting, review your findings now. This is also a good time to attach a particular resource, such as a whitepaper, that would address the lead’s question or pain point.
End on a call-to-action. Don’t let a good thing go to waste. Be direct in asking the lead how they would like to move forward.
When the Lead Needs to Consult with Their Supervisor
Sometimes the lead you pitched may need to consult a supervisor before making the final decision to buy. In this scenario, you’d want to follow up 4-5 days after making the pitch. This gives the lead enough time to speak with their team. Use this structure to reach out:
Show your appreciation. As with the first follow-up email, quickly thank the lead for meeting or speaking with you.
Reference the boss. Ask what their colleague or higher-up thought of your proposal.
Make a clear call-to-action. Ask for a quick follow-up meeting to discuss the next steps.
When the Lead Opened Your Email But Didn’t Respond
Your CRM tool or email tracking app shows that the lead opened your email or clicked a link or attachment inside but didn’t respond. This might happen when you try to make initial contact, or if you send along an additional resource after making your pitch. Contact them soon (within 1-2 days) with the following message:
Ask how they liked the resource
A simple “How are you enjoying XYZ whitepaper?” will do.
Offer to walk them through it. Mention how you can help them get the most out of the resource in order to solve their business problem.
End on a call-to-action. Offer a time and date when you can talk them through their questions.
When You Need to Follow Up the Unanswered Follow-Up
If after a few more days your follow-up remains unanswered, try engaging them with more valuable content. For businesses that create blog posts or whitepapers as part of their content marketing strategy, this is a fairly pain-free step. Use this template for composing your email:
Ask again if they’ve taken a look at your resource. Even if they haven’t responded to your first follow-up, remind them of the valuable asset you originally offered them.
Offer another resource. A second article or piece of content from your company’s website may be a better fit for answering this lead’s questions.
Ask how to move forward. As always, end on a clear call-to-action, in this case by asking if they’re still interested in your product or service and would like to discuss how to move forward.
When It’s Time to Break Things Off
It’s a bummer, but it happens. After several unanswered and unopened emails, it’s probably time to break things off. However, some sales reps report that this email gets as much as a 76% response rate. Consider the following structure to make the most of a graceful exit:
Mention that you haven’t been able to get in touch. Keep this light and non-judgemental, or you risk putting off the lead. Things happen, and maybe they’ve just been really busy.
Ask if there’s a better time to connect. Fiscal years, budget planning, or waiting on additional sources of funding can play a huge role in whether or not your offer can even be considered at present.
Ask to close their file. If timing doesn’t play a role in their decision, ask the lead if you can close their file. This final call-to-action is sometimes enough to elicit the response of an interested lead who has simply been too busy.
With any of these follow-up emails, a CRM tool or email productivity app will allow you to compose your messages in advance. You can then schedule them to send at the desired time or in the event that one of your previous follow-ups is unopened or unanswered.
Sales Follow-Up Tips & Techniques
The following tips and techniques can help optimize your sales follow-up process, no matter where you are in the pipeline.
Schedule and Automate Follow-Ups…
Scheduling your responses to send according to the timeline above is essential for keeping your sales process moving. Many CRM or email productivity tools will allow you to compose and schedule emails to send at a later date, or in the event that a previous email went unanswered.
…But Don’t Automate Email Content
While it’s a good idea to consult email templates for how to structure your responses, avoid leaning too heavily on the same template and language for every lead. People know when they’re receiving a formulaic response and may opt to pass on your offer. Taking the time to craft a personalized response shows how much you value their potential partnership.
Keep Emails Brief
In a world where inboxes are becoming increasingly cluttered and attention spans increasingly short, it’s best to keep your emails to the point. Boomerang, a provider of email productivity software, did a study on over 40 million emails to find out what the response rates were for different email lengths:
Boomerang’s results show that there’s a bell curve to response for email lengths. Write an email that’s too short or too long and you decrease your chances of getting a response. The sweet spot for email length is between 50 and 125 words, which earn response rates of 50% or more.
Avoid Bland Statements
Opening statements like “I wanted to circle back…” are tired and signal that you don’t have a clear reason for getting in touch. Be direct instead, often by referencing the lead’s previously established pain point and how you can solve it.
Back Up Your Claims
It’s not enough to claim that you can solve a lead’s pain point. Back up your statement with a compelling result, metric, or customer testimonial. This helps establish trust between you and your lead at every stage of the sales process.
Stay Human
This long-standing advice is as true as ever: remember that you’re a human first and a salesperson second. The same goes for your lead.
Approach them with the same respect and understanding that you would afford a friend, colleague, or acquaintance. Not only will you see better results, but you may also see an increase in your own personal job satisfaction.
While the sales follow-up process is relatively straightforward, you quickly learn that there are a lot of moving parts. The right tools will help you automate and optimize the process for better results and better account expansion. While there are countless options out there, here are a five to get your search started:
LeadBoxer
LeadBoxer features automated solutions for many of the steps covered in this article. The tool collects and populates contact information for leads that visit your site, open your newsletters, or exhibit other online behaviors.
It then assigns leads a score to help you decide if you want to continue the sales process with them. There’s also an alert function so you know the best time to reach out and make initial contact. Once you do, LeadBoxer’s Gmail extension makes it easy to track and analyze all the emails you send.
HubSpot
HubSpot’s CRM has much of the functionality you need to automate your sales follow-up process. The interface features a kanban-style board so you can quickly see which stage of the sales pipeline each lead is in.
You can also schedule personalized emails, track opens and downloads so you can respond immediately, measure the performance of email templates, and show availability for easy scheduling.
Agile CRM
Like HubSpot, Agile CRM allows you to track which phase of the sales process each lead is in.
It records each interaction with the lead and creates events for calls, meetings, follow-ups, and more. On top of that, it analyzes lead behavior and calculates a leadscore so you can decide when and how to proceed.
Gmelius
Gmelius is a free solution for someone who wants a lightweight tool seamlessly integrated with their Gmail inbox. The tool tracks emails and delivers instant feedback so you can send the right follow-up.
You can even see which templates are most effective, then personalize and schedule them easily. Leadscores and contact overviews are not a feature, but Gmelius can be integrated with a more full-service CRM to cover all your bases.
Pipedrive
Like Gmelius, Pipedrive focuses on a few core strengths for sales teams that prefer a lightweight tool. Its key features include tracking emails and calls, an interface that provides a streamlined overview of where everyone is in the sales process, and prioritized follow-up tasks that automatically shuffle to the top of your to-do list.
However, emails cannot be composed and scheduled to send automatically and there’s little insight into how likely your contact is to buy.
Each sales team will have different needs and considerations. No matter how much or how little automation and functionality you want, there’s likely a reasonably priced (or free) tool that will optimize your sales follow-up process.
What to Do After Closing a Sale
You did it. With the help of the right tool, you were able to successfully nurture your lead and close the sale. However, the sales follow-up process doesn’t end there. Here are a few tips for making the most of the deal and laying the groundwork for a second sale:
Send a Thank You Note
While this step is hopefully common sense, it’s important enough to warrant repeating. Send a quick but heartfelt thank you note immediately after finalizing the deal. By thanking your customer for doing business together, you ensure a lasting partnership (ie. a repeat customer).
Check-In
After your new customer has had time to get to know your product or service, reach out to see how they’re enjoying it. Soliciting feedback is also useful for improving your product and your customer experience. This step establishes trust and grows the relationship in preparation for the next step.
Make a Second Sale
By developing a relationship with your customer, you will have hopefully primed them to resign their contract automatically. If they don’t need to resign a contract but there’s an opportunity to make an additional sale, now is the time to start that process. The work you’ve done to create your first follow-up process will help you do it.
Start Building Your Automated Sales Follow-Up Process
Reaching out to leads at the right time and with the right message can make or break your sales process.
From capturing and qualifying leads to making contact and setting meetings, a high-converting sales follow-up process can have a lot of steps and moving parts. It can quickly become too much to manage on your own, unless you like inputting data into spreadsheets and setting countless reminders on your calendar.
Luckily, the right tool for your needs can streamline much of the process. Setting alerts, tracking unanswered emails, and sending previously composed emails at scheduled times can simplify your job and allow you to focus on what matters, aka communicating in a compelling, meaningful, and human way.
A MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) is a lead that matches with one of your customer personas and, most importantly, has engaged with your business and shown interest in your product. Hence, such leads can be termed Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)
A SQL (Sales Qualified Leads) is a lead ready to become your prospective customer and who has been vetted by the marketing team. In short, this is lead who is prepared to make a purchase. Hence, such leads are Sales Qualified Leads (SQL).
Difference between an MQL and an SQL is the lead’s intent to buy. Regardless of your business, both types of leads are essential to your pipeline. Still, it’s important to differentiate between those two to know where to allocate your time and what sort marketing efforts to implement to keep your leads flowing.
In this blog post, we will go through mql and sql definitions, mql vs sql differences, and talk about lead transition of how mql becomes an sql.
What is MQL?
The acronym MQL stands for “Marketing Qualified Lead”
In the shortest definition we could find, courtesy of Hubspot, an MQL is a person who is more likely to become a customer when compared to a typical person.
Think of it this way: Many people may connect with your company. They may visit your website, attend your webinars, or chat with you at a trade show.
For some of these people, the products and services you offer are exactly what they’re looking for. But for others, your product or service may not be a good fit. They may never be in the position to buy anything from you at all.
The people in that first group — those who are interested and have the potential to buy your product — are considered as MQLs.
Separating MQLs from unqualified leads typically involves using a lead-scoring program. LeadBoxer assigns a score based on lead interactions and behavior with your business, between 1- 100.
This score can be efficient for ranking a lead’s sales readiness in your pipeline.
What is SQL?
The acronym SQL stands for “Sales Qualified Lead.”
This person has not only shown a deep interest in your products and services, but they have also shown some intent to purchase. They not only like what you offer but also need to buy what you sell. They also may need to make that purchase soon.
While defining an MQL can be done through automated software that assigns scores, defining an SQL is a little trickier. To move leads to sales, this involves a conversation between someone in sales and the potential lead.
An SQL is someone in the marketing funnel:-
Who may has some specific questions about how your product works or how much it costs.
Who may not understand how your product fits into their other products.
Who may not be entirely sure the solution is right for them.
Who may be unable to find the answers they need in the marketing materials they’ve seen.
At the end of that discussion, if the salesperson senses a real opportunity, this he pass leads to sales hence moving mql to an sql.
MQL vs SQL: What’s The Difference
Difference between MQLs and SQLs is essential because it ensures sales team to spend time on right qualified leads for sales, that can lead to more efficient sales processes and better conversion rates.
Also, at the same time, it helps the marketing team to understand which marketing channels and what type of marketing angle can bring in more qualified leads for their business goals. Hence they become more efficient in nurturing every lead.
Therefore understanding the difference between mql and sql helps a business drive both marketing and sales efforts in the right direction.
1) Decision-Making Stage
As you should know, there are various stages of the funnel that leads goes through before a lead becomes an MQL and later an SQL.
MQLs are typically at an earlier stage of the decision-making process. They are aware of their problem and know there are solutions out there in the market to help them.
Hence, you can say MQLs are in a sales funnel’s ‘awareness’ stage. They are more in a ‘consideration’ stage because they are interested in your company’s products or services but not ready for sales yet. Also, they have engaged with your marketing content, such as downloading an e-book, signing up for a webinar, or subscribing to a newsletter.
However, they have not yet clearly intended to purchase or enter a sales conversation. Most of your MQLs are open to options and might not be interested in a purchase right away. Basically they are in a lead nurturing phase.
Whereas SQLs are in the bottom stage of the sales funnel, they are in the ‘Decision Making’ stage. They might not even engaged with marketing content but have also taken actions that indicate a readiness to consider a purchase, such as requesting a product demonstration, filling out a contact form with specific inquiries, or engaging directly with sales material.
Their decision-making is more focused on selecting a vendor or product, comparing different offerings, and making a final purchasing decision.
2) Top of Funnel vs Bottom of Funnel
Another great way to differentiate MQL vs SQL is the type of marketing content they interact with.
MQLs are more about seeking information and educating themselves, they are trying to understand their problem better and are looking for potential solutions. They interact with top of the marketing funnel lead magnets and content like:-
Reading your blog post on ‘Best X Tools for lead generation’
Signing up for your lead magnet, which said ‘Generate Leads on Automation’
Signing up for your newsletter
Following you on social media
On the other side, SQLs are more focused on consuming content that targets the bottom of the bottom-of-the-funnel audience. The content can be relevant to selecting a vendor or product, comparing different offerings, and making a final purchasing decision. For example:-
Reading your blog posts on ‘Your Tool vs Competitor Tool’ or ‘X Alternatives For Competitor 1’
Requesting for a demo call on your website
Enquiring for your product features on social media (or) through contact form
Engaging and interacting with sales materials, which are more precise and designed for a bottom-of-funnel audience, indicates and differentiates the lead as an SQL.
3) BANT Qualified
BANT is a system (or) framework for Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline. It’s a B2B framework used by sales reps to qualify leads and prospects during their journey, and it can be applied while assessing MQLs vs SQLs.
It’s another great way to distinguish between lead as an MQL (or) SQL
If a lead is BANT qualified, it’s an SQL rather than an MQL.
In the following, let’s see how the BANT looks different for MQLs and SQLs.
For MQL’s:-
Budget:- At the MQL stage, the potential customer may not have a defined budget yet. Maybe they are still exploring solutions and may not know how much they should spend on their answer.
Authority:- If a mid-size business’s junior or senior executive employee interacts with your business, they might not have the authority to make a final purchasing decision for their organization.
Need:- The need for leads to purchase your product depends on their pain points and how your product (or) service can help them solve them. Also, it is majorly important for your marketing strategy to define their pain points and educate them. For an MQL, some might not be aware of these pain points; hence, there is a long way to go to educate them.
Timeline:- MQLs typically do not have a set timeline for making a purchase and are not under pressure to make an immediate decision.
For SQL’s:-
Budget:- SQLs are expected to have a clearer picture of their budget or at least have a range in mind. Most importantly, they can afford your product or service. It’s just that sales teams have to negotiate with them on pricing.
Authority:- SQLs are usually the stakeholders of the company or someone from an organization responsible for their final purchasing decision. Hence, they have the authority to buy from you.
Need:- SQL’s know their problems and what are the existing solutions for their issues in the market. Their pain points are clear, and often, it nails down to what specific features and benefits your product offers to help them feel the need to choose you over your competitors.
Timeline:- SQLs have a defined timeline to make the purchase. By offering them discounts and any other benefits with their purchase, they are more likely to buy immediately.
Transitioning a Lead from MQL to SQL
Transitioning an MQL to SQL in your pipeline isn’t something that will happen on your own. Your marketing and sales teams must communicate and coordinate to make this happen.
If you’re using software like LeadBoxer to track leads, it becomes easier to note down the MQLs with a higher probability of becoming a sales lead through lead scoring.
However, lead scoring is a critical process most businesses use while transitioning a lead from MQL to SQL.
Now, this involves:-
Setting Up a Scoring System: As you identify the lead actions and lead behavior, you assign points/scores to each interaction. For example, downloading an e-book might score lower than requesting a product demo.
Demographic Information: As we discussed earlier, not every lead has the authority to purchase even though they match your ideal customer profile. Factors like job title, industry, company size, and location can significantly determine the lead’s potential to buy.
Engagement Scoring: Track how leads interact with your emails, social media, and blog posts. Repetitive and frequent interactions tell you that leads in your system are MQLs, and some might be ready to be SQL.
Lead Score Thresholds: Establishing a threshold score is essential to help sales teams understand when a lead is ready to move to SQL. This threshold should be based on previous data of information with your business and marketing content.
Regular Review: Sometimes, SQLs who get on a call with you are not ready to purchase. Hence, do not fill your pipelines with leads with improper attribution. It’s essential to review and adjust your scoring criteria continuously. The best way to make it happen is to arrange regular meetings with both sales and marketing teams to help them understand better lead qualifications to help your business grow.
How LeadBoxer can help you transition MQL to SQL:-
One-time visitors to your website are most likely not a lead for your product (or) service. Those returning visitors who interact with your content are the ones who can termed as leads. Using LeadBoxer’s lead identification feature, you can specify what is a lead for you, and it identifies such specific visitors.
As these leads interact increasingly with your business, they can later be qualified as an MQL or SQL. Hence, using a leads scoring system and enriching those leads are great ways to qualify and differentiate leads.
For example, you know that leads interacting with Top-of-funnel marketing content (Reading your blogs) can be termed MQL, and leads interacting with Bottom-of-funnel content (Requesting demos) can be termed SQL.
Both MQLs and SQLs need to be in a lead management cycle where, with workflow automation, you retarget MQL leads with your marketing (It can be through emails or retargeted ads), whereas SQLs are given to the sales team to contact. Integrating your lead management tool with your existing CRM makes it more accessible.
As MQLs are being retargeted, potential buyers in your MQL segment will start to interact more with your business, like reading your email and asking questions with your marketing teams.
Once these MQLs are warmed up, Lead scoring suggests they are ready to move to SQL. Then, you move those leads and ask your sales teams to contact them.
Remember, not all SQLs will convert. The ones who didn’t convert should be moved to MQLs again so that the marketing team can nurture them with more marketing material.
Conclusion
We knew from the start that the distinction between Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) is crucial for the efficiency of your sales funnel and the effectiveness of your marketing strategies.
Differentiation MQL vs SQL doesn’t mean you need to neglect one set of leads, both are important for a b2b lead generation. Thus, both marketing and sales teams need to identify these leads and not get stuck up with the thought that ‘I am not gonna handle their lead’
Effective communication and coordination are essential between the sales and marketing teams to identify, nurture, and pitch their leads. Here, tools LeadBoxer are going to help them successfully.
Effective lead generation is more than using a specific tool. However, tools make our lives easier and allow us to generate leads at scale. Knowing which lead generation tools to use and how others use them successfully can save you a lot of time trying out each solution.
That’s why we’ve compiled this list of lead generation tools straight from sales and marketing experts who use these tools everyday.
Our question was simple, we asked these experts “What is your favorite lead generation tool and why?”.
One of my favorite lead generation tools that I’ve been using for years, is the LinkedIn Sales Navigator Lite extension for Chrome (formerly Rapportive). Once installed on your Chrome browser, the extension populates a nifty little sidebar full of useful prospect information to the right of your inbox within Gmail, like so:
When you hover your cursor over an email address, all of this information will pop up (if the recipient’s email address is connected to their LinkedIn profile).
Now, while this tool alone doesn’t generate leads for me, it’s been useful beyond measure
In helping me scale my extremely valuable B2B client base since my outreach approach is so high touch and my contracts often run into the six figures.
I use the extension to both verify that an email address is correct before hitting send, and to properly research a prospect with the goal of personalizing my cold emails before reaching out.
If you want more, I also recently wrote an epic guide breaking down several of my most successful lead generation tactics that I would recommend checking out.
Ryan is a writer and content marketer for the world’s top entrepreneurs and startups. He teaches over 200,000 monthly readers how to start and grow a profitable side business on his blog and podcast.
When it comes to collecting leads, it’s all about casting a wide net and using lead generation tools that will get people to respond to you. One tool that’s underutilized, but extremely powerful is an online form. Online forms are great for lead generation because they’re simple to set up, fully customizable, and integrate with many third-party apps.
My favorite lead generation tool is a combo of an online form builder and Callingly. When these two lead generation tools are integrated, calls will start immediately after a new lead is submitted to your form. I love it because your salespeople will automatically get on the phone with incoming leads—it’s efficient and effective!
Annabel is a Marketing Communications Specialist at JotForm, a popular, easy-to-use online form building tool based in San Francisco. Annabel’s marketing role focuses on generating leads for press.
I’ve recently started using Voila Norbert, and it’s the most effective lead generation software I’ve used. It’s simple: you type in someone’s name, and their company’s URL, and it finds the email associated with that name. I use Linkedin for sourcing the leads, and Voila Norbert for quickly finding the right email.
My favorite lead generation tool is Leadpages. There are two very important reasons why I use Leadpages:
Reason 1 – Leadpages Host The Landing Pages On Their Servers
Leadpages hosts all the landing pages I create on their server, I don’t have to worry about my website going offline due to my own web host issues. I remember once when I was self-hosting my landing pages and sent paid traffic to it, my web host suddenly had problems and my site went down for a full day. That cost me lots of money. Ever since then, I have switched to use reputable software for my landing pages like Leadpages.
Reason 2 – Easy To Create High-Converting Landing Pages
I have a pretty tight schedule as most of my time is spent coaching my clients. Hence it’s important for me to find a software that is easy and straightforward to use, without having to spend lots of time on it. Hence I use Leadpages because I can easily create a highly-converting landing page (which they have already determined from their own tests) and create one in 15 – 30 minutes.
Overall, when determining a good lead generation tool to create my landing pages, I look for reliability (in terms of their site being up) and ease of use. And on both fronts, Leadpages has done a good job for me so far.
Davis Lin www.clientacquisitionlab.com
Davis is the owner of Client Acquisition Lab, a site that helps businesses and startups generate leads and find new clients.
The one tool we’ve seen that everyone could benefit more from is any kind of lead quiz platform, like Lead Quizzes or Qzzr. With enough creativity, you can think of a quiz (personality or test-your-knowledge) that will fit your audience. Prospects find these interesting or fun in both B2C and B2C. To get their results, they have to first give up their email.
The lead quiz approach to simultaneously creating engaging content and opportunities can lower your lead costs because prospect interest in quiz outcome boosts your conversion rates, reducing the amount you need to spend to get each lead.
More educational content that sells will naturally suggest itself from the quiz you create
For example, with a test-your-knowledge quiz, how do they improve their score? Does their score indicate the need for your product or service? With a personality based quiz, what should each personality type do or buy? If you give valuable info, they’re more likely to remain an agreeable lead and not unsubscribe immediately.
Before trying lead generating quizzes, our best lead magnet for our ad agency had cost us over $29 a lead. But when we created a personality based quiz: “Which Celebrity Do You Market Most Like?” those leads averaged $1.87. That’s a dramatic improvement in cost because quizzes are so fascinating to people.
You definitely have to look at lead quality and nurture your leads as always, but with this approach, you drive a ton of visibility and lead volume. And that can translate into interest if your quiz fits the need or problem your business addresses in your customer. In other words, don’t make the quiz so fun and tangential that it doesn’t fit what you’re trying to sell.
When I was researching my Content Marketing World talk, I did some research on 11 lead magnet types across multiple social networks via Buzzsumo, and quizzes were the most shared kind by far
So, if you want some viral effect from your lead gen piece, quizzes are a great way to go. They definitely do best on Facebook and Twitter- not as well on LinkedIn, where whitepapers and case studies reign. But it is possible to come up with professional quiz topics that fit the B2B mindset. Or you could tie a whitepaper or case study into a lead quiz, linking one to another, and promoting both on all three social networks.
In a B2C context, we created a lead quiz for a self-help author who wanted to reach women on relationship topics. An ebook lead magnet yielded leads that cost more than $3.00, while her quiz leads cost only $0.44 each.
As you can see, lead-generation quizzes are both highly interesting to prospects, and highly profitable for marketers. The lead quiz is the one tool I would recommend more lead gen practitioners explore.
My favorite lead generation platform is HubSpot. I like it because of its comprehensive ability to track behavior and touch points across email, social media, website, landing pages, and calls to action. It’s an integrated system that provides all of the critical elements for lead generation and lead nurturing under one roof.
From its built-in CRM, you can see how your leads interacted at various points. You can even setup alerts for lead revisit notifications to alert the lead owner of critical activity.
As an example, a visitor may land on a blog article on your website via organic traffic. There is a HubSpot call-to-action (CTA) button in the blog article that takes them to a landing page with a lead magnet. You can get data on the call-to-action button that shows you how many impressions you’ve had as well as the click-through rate.
This helps you identify CTAs that are performing well and those that need improvement
When the visitor clicks on the CTA, they are taken to a HubSpot landing page. Similarly, you have data on the landing page performance and can look for what’s working and what’s not working. You can also A/B test landing pages to drive incremental improvements.
Once they complete the form on the landing page, they are entered into a HubSpot marketing automation workflow. This places them in a nurturing program and you can track when they meet campaign objectives or not. You have tracking on emails they open and when they visit your website.
You can setup automated tasks and alerts for the sales team to react to behavior that shows a high intent to purchase. All of your lead’s behavior is in the CRM, so the sales team has context when they reach out to them. Again, everything is measurable in the system so you can see what is working and what isn’t working.
Craig is the founder and owner of the digital marketing agency, allies4me.
My favorite lead generation tool is Hubspot’s CRM
The free version has a number of excellent lead generation tools to help you capture inbound leads:
1) You can sync an existing form on your website to both the CRM and your email provider. This allows you to seamlessly integrate people that visit your website into your lead generation pipeline and/or set up an automatic drip marketing campaign.
2) One of my favorite lead generation tools that comes with it is the ability to sync the CRM to your calendar. You can put a link on your website that allows people to book meetings with you. I think it’s a really great feature and I’ve actually gotten a number of new leads and clients this way. Here is an example of what it looks like after an inbound lead clicks on the link in your website: https://app.hubspot.com/meetings/maryclare
You can also use their Sales CRM. It is completely free and has tools to help you move leads through your sales pipeline. It has some excellent email templates to help you build and maintain a relationship with leads, qualify your leads and even close deals.
Mary is the founder of the digital marketing agency, Bespoke Digital Solutions. She works with a number of small and medium size businesses to drive traffic to their websites.
Out of all of the lead generation softwares I’ve worked with, I’d be quickest to recommend HubSpot
Unlike lead generation tools developed by other notable companies, HubSpot consistently stays up to date on everything they offer.
HubSpot offers a wide variety of features that are relevant to lead generation, but some of the features that save me the most time are: contact creation automation, form sniffing, and the easy-to-use CRM.
The real reason that HubSpot sets itself apart from other options is the user experience. Just learning the ins and outs of a similar program could require extensive training and would require careful implementation, but HubSpot can be useful from day one.
Eric is a Digital Marketer for Techware – a Sage software partner. He has experience with a wide variety of lead generation tools and software – from Salesforce to Leadpages and Hubspot.
My favorite lead generation tool is MailChimp because it streamlines so much of the lead generation process (forms, landing pages, marketing automation, email), and it’s free. Now that marketing automation is included in the free plan, it really seems to good to be true. But it’s true.
I use MailChimp for companies who want to start generating their own leads, but aren’t ready to make a huge investment yet. Then when they are ready to scale, they are able to decide whether they want to start paying for MailChimp or migrate to a more robust tool like HubSpot.
Roy is a digital marketing professional with over 8 years of experience generating leads in multiple industries. He’s also the owner of Advertoscope, an online digital marketing publication that covers paid lead generation strategies.
I’d have to say my favorite tool has been Wix ShoutOut. Primarily because I was paying to use an email lead service before I learned that my website builder and hosting solution Wix provided a similar service at no extra cost to their website clients.
My package only includes 3 shoutouts a month for up to 5000 emails, but that’s fine given I was using the other service twice a month for about a total of 1500 emails. I use it to find insurance brokers that have an interest in offering my health benefits membership as well as a way to generate leads for my health insurance agency.
I get the email addresses for the brokers for free using public information and I get the email addresses for potential health insurance clients from leads I’ve purchased online in the past. So the whole process doesn’t cost me anything additional.
This tool allows you to create and publish landing pages in a very simple and fast way. It has a great variety of templates adaptable to all devices. It is usually more focused on objectives such as registration or downloading information.
I would see it useful in your case if, for instance, you want to send the traffic of an advertising campaign to a page that is highly optimized so that for example the user registers, subscribes to your newsletter, etc.In the case of an e-commerce, the normal thing is that you send the traffic to the product page to generate the purchase.
Sophie Miles
Sophie is the the VP or Marketing and Co-Founder of CalculatorBuddy, a website for comparing loans and insurance policies.
I’ve been using CallRail for about 6 months now to generate leads through my site, and so far I’m finding it incredibly simple to use and I’m also finding the reports within the dashboard very insightful. My favorite type of lead to generate is calls because I truly believe that if you can get someone on the phone, you have a much better shot at getting them to convert into a buyer.
CallRail helps me by providing detailed reports which include recordings of the calls that I’ve generated for the business I work with. Plus, CallRail has loads of other ways to customize the calls by adding messages which only the caller can hear etc.
The tool we have seen the most success with is Facebook’s Lead ads. We knew that using a platform such as Facebook where we can specifically target certain audiences would be the most effective for our clients, and this ad-format works perfectly alongside any Lead Gen strategy.
It allows you to show consumers an advert, from which a form pops up that is already pre-populated with the contact information they’ve shared with Facebook. From there it’s only one ‘Submit’ click and you have a qualified lead from a user who has positively engaged with your ad-content!
The key here is that we don’t ask the user to leave Facebook to convert on a website
Social media is a very personal space so conversion rates will always be higher when the user is able to convert directly in their news feed.
On average we have seen 2x more leads generated through this tool compared to using traditional Facebook advertising methods.
Although on its own this strategy proves very effective, pairing it up with an Auto Responder such as LeadSync is the secret to our conversion success. This tool emails you the lead information in real time, which is often crucial for our clients as peak interest can drop if left 1 or 2 hours before a callback.
Being able to get consumers information sent directly to the call team means we can often follow up with leads within seconds of clicking ‘Submit’. This particular tool also gives you the option to send an automatic response out to the lead (which is handy if advertising out of hours), add their information straight into your CRM and many more useful features.
Lauren Beales www.haystackdigital.co.uk
Lauran is an Account Manager at the digital marketing agency, Haystack Digital. She has been with the company for 2 ½ years focusing solely on managing and optimising Haystack’s largest lead generation campaigns.
Right now, the best lead generation tool we use is Webinarjam. Why? Because it powers our main marketing webinar and fuels our email lead capture strategy.
Every week we use Webinarjam to run an informational webinar that shares with students tips they can immediately use to score better on the SAT or ACT, along with how to successful search for scholarships and get into the school of their dreams.
Through both email drip campaigns and targeted social ad spends, we use our webinar marketing funnel to capture leads, make sales, and also gauge general interest during our various seasons throughout the year.
In the year since we’ve started using it, Webinarjam is responsible for driving hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue to us that would otherwise go untouched and grow our lead lists by thousands of people.
Shaan Patel is the Founder and CEO of Prep Expert, a Shark Tank-funded test prep company based in Las Vegas, NV. His company helps high school students prepare for the SAT and ACT, using the latest online educational tools.
One of my favorite lead generation tools is Intercom. Our member registrations are the lifeblood of our service, and Intercom helps us connect with our target audience in a meaningful way, helping users connect with our panel of doctors in minutes based on primary health questions.
Intercom is user friendly for both consumer and brand, making it a powerful lead solution that nets results.
Stephen is the Director of Marketing at Your Doctors Online, a website that connects doctors with people who have health questions. The site currently generates around 2,500 member registrations per week.
Our favourite lead generation tool has to be Intercom
From using various lead generation tools over the years, Intercom has always been the one that stood out. Not only is it highly customizable, but it also seems to capture the user’s attention much better than a standard email pop up. I also like the fact that different messages can be used depending what page a user visits which really helps with targeting.
In addition to this, all the messages are sent from a person’s profile so it looks like a real person is talking to the user. This greatly increases response rates and gives people a personal connection instead of just entering their email and waiting for a reply back.
The software is also really powerful in its report and analytic abilities
Not only can you see what pages users are viewing in real time, but it also helps you collect data and information about the user. Why just collect an email address when you can collect lots of other juicy information that will come in useful in the future?
Overall, compared to a simple email sign up form, Intercom has plenty of cool features which makes lead generation a breeze. The only downside about the software is it can get a bit technical and it takes a while to learn how to use everything. Overall, it’s certainly helped us improve our number and quality of leads.
Sam is the marketing manager at PPC Protect with years of experience generating high-quality leads for startups and small businesses.
Intercom works best in its category and that is why I use it successfully for my coupon business.
Intercom allows you to establish direct communication with the audience who visits your website. It enables you to send direct display messages to the person when certain criteria are fulfilled.
Suppose a person stays more than 45 seconds on your product page of your website on his or her second visit, Intercom enables you to flash any product related message on the screen of the visitor.
If the visitor responds against that message, your sales executive can directly start a conversation with the visitor through text, chat, or even video chat channels.
Hunter (hunter.io) is by far, my favorite lead generation tool.
When I first started sending out cold emails, I would have no idea how to generate my own leads with the targeted company. I asked my CEO for help, and he told me about Hunter.
Finding emails only require the company’s domain, and Hunter does the grunt work by finding possible email addresses. A great feature they have is the ‘Hunter for Google Sheets’ extension.
The extension allows me to manage all my leads without switching back and forth between too many tabs. All in all, Hunter is a great tool that every company should use, if they have a need for it. Best of all, they include 100 free requests per month if you do not wish to sign up.
Jonathan Kong
Jonathan is the Product Manager at GrowthOK, a lead generation solution company.
As a digital agency in business for more than 10 years, we’ve used a variety of lead generation tools, platforms, and services at SEMGeeks. Our core preference for lead generation starts with a combination of Data.com (a Salesforce product), SEMRush, SpyFu, and a few others.
These lead generation tools help us scope out specific companies that we feel need help from a digital standpoint, with Data.com even providing core information about the decision maker so that we can make direct contact and educate them on what we do and how we can help grow their business.
Next, we utilize Infusionsoft (marketing automation tool) to capture contact form data
And automatically bring it into the platform, which then triggers a series of drip emails that educates the consumer about our agency, what we do, and how we do it.
Lastly, we use Salesforce to manage all of our leads/opportunities/accounts and keep track of our prospect pipeline. This unique combination of tools has been invaluable to our company and has helped us to become a leading agency in the tri-state area.
Pete is the Marketing Director and a member of the business development team at SEMGeeks. He has been working on lead generation for clients and the agency for more than five years.
Quora is a fantastic site when it comes to lead generation. In recent years, it has become as popular as Yahoo Answers once was for myth-busting, fact-finding and general advice; questions pour in from users from all over the world.
All a business needs to do is search for questions that are relevant to their industry and they are likely to find countless inquiries. This gives you the opportunity to submit insightful and well-informed responses to these queries (even giving you the chance to link your products/services if the person is looking for recommendations).
Doing this is a subtle and helpful way of promoting the knowledge and experience of your company, which then helps to drive potential leads to your website.
I prefer to use a “hands-off” approach to our lead generation and only capture leads that want to be contacted. We’ve found that most SaaS clients do not want to have to provide their email or contact information when they are in the decision phase.
So we removed all roadblocks that require any information in exchange for content. We’ve found that clients who voluntarily give us their contact information have much higher open and engagement rates.
I use Google forms to capture leads on our company website and blog. It’s very simple to setup and easy to style your own forms and embed them on your website.
We also use Zapier to automatically add new leads to our CRM and add potential clients to our mailing lists. We recently started using a chat application to help nurture leads at the top of our funnel, with great success.
Blair is a digital marketing professional and website developer with 3 of years experience managing lead generation campaigns for two high-tech startups.
Interseller.io is a hidden gem in the sales world, and the best tool I’ve ever used to generate leads. It combines prospecting and outreach into one simple (but powerful) platform, automates Salesforce integration, and uses 7 methods to verify emails.
My bounce rate is consistently under 4%, down from 10-20% using other tools. When you’re reaching out with personalized, thoughtful messaging, ensuring that your emails don’t enter a proverbial black hole can make the difference between hitting quota and falling short.
Sitora has 6+ years of sales experience in SaaS and advertising. She’s currently in an outbound, full-cycle sales role at a Series A supply chain company (Alloy.ai), and previously led a team of SDRs at a F&B SaaS startup (Partender).
My favorite tool to use to generate leads is autoresponders from Zoho CRM. Throughout our website, we have forms users can fill out to download free guides on software development, IT support, etc. After they fill out the form, they are enrolled in our “drip campaigns.” An autoresponder is sent to them every few days.
These autoresponders sound very personal and conversational, to the point that users think they’re from an individual and not scheduled beforehand. We’ve found these autoresponders to be very successful in garnering leads because of their conversational tone.
We’ve found them so successful that we’ve started using them to re-engage cold leads or lost deals with follow-ups as well
Autoresponders from Zoho CRM allow us to save time by not following up with every lead or contact individually. Instead, we write one email and let the CRM keep track of when contacts can use a little push.
Keri is the Marketing Manager at KDG, a web and tech solution company. Keri works with lead generation every single day and is always looking for new ways to garner leads.
We’ve found that building landing pages for newsletter posts on Nextdoor to be an effective form of lead generation. Hyper local social media platforms bring credibility since those interacting with the forums are locals. In the home buying industry, many sellers want to work with someone who’s local because they are more likely to understand the true value of their home and can often make the most competitive offers.
Products like LeadBoxer allow us to track response rates for our newsletters and email campaigns so we get a better idea of what content connects best with our audience.
Evan is a local home buyer with Dependable Homebuyers in Baltimore, MD. His expertise is in generating buyer and seller leads.
Our Favorite Lead Generation Tools
As a platforms that helps companies and salespeople generate new leads, we’ve seen and used quite a few different lead generation tools ourselves. To complete this list, we thought it would be helpful to list a few of our favorites:
Buffer
Buffer is a dead simple way to share and schedule posts to social media. You can schedule posts on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter.
If you opt to use the Business version of Buffer, you will also get detailed analytics that allow you to better understand your social media return on investment. This tool is important for lead generation because a strong social media presence is a simple way to drive qualified traffic to your website, while strengthening your brand.
LeadBoxer
LeadBoxer is a Customer and Lead Data Platform that allows you to see who visits your website, what company they work for; lists that person’s contact information and more.
With this information, you can pinpoint the “warmest” leads and find the perfect time to follow up with leads.
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Callmaker
Callmaker adds an automated calling service on your website. It allows you to collect more phone numbers from sales prospects and call them back almost immediately. It’s a great inbound tool that has the potential to help you start more sales conversations.
RightHello
RightHello allows you to solve the problem of not having enough customers coming to you. The tool allows you to easily create a list of thousands of potential customers, pick the companies that appeal to you most, and then send a qualified contact at the company a personalized email message.
Colibri IO
Colibri IO allows you to find conversations about your products, brand, and competitors. It gives you the tools you need to discover quality websites where you can build influence and get valuable mentions.
Reply
Reply is a method for automating the way that you do email outreach. It allows you to create cold email campaigns that feel like warm emails. This service puts your email outreach on autopilot and is a valuable addition to your lead generation and prospecting stack.
Conclusion – Get Started
If you want to up your game, generate more leads and track your lead’s entire customer journey (including email activity, website activity, and more), we recommend you take a look at LeadBoxer.
A lead generation tool like 
A tool like LeadBoxer quickly shows you the highest priority leads by allowing you to search by filters such as location, industry, and company size.
The more specific the data points used to calculate a lead score, the more accurate and useful the lead score will be. This will help weed out accounts that aren’t the right fit or are researching topics without having any intent to buy a product or service.
