Tools

Successful Sales Outreach Using AI & ChatGPT

Successful Sales Outreach Using AI & ChatGPT

Chances are you’ve heard of ChatGPT. This artificial technology is widely used by students to write term papers. It is also a powerful AI (artificial intelligence) tool for sales lead generation.

To learn more about how ChatGPT can be a game changer for your business, keep reading or “jump ahead” to the following topics:

What Is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT has become a buzzword, but what is it? It is a computer program that understands text data through a learning algorithm called the Transformer architecture.

The artificial intelligence program is based on the GPT-3.5 Transformer and is developed by Open AI. ChatGPT has learned word usage and sentence construction, resulting in text that reads naturally.  It performs various tasks including answering questions, making recommendations, and composing engaging conversations.

You can have a free ChatGPT account. However, the free version only grants access to users based on usage. With a $20 per month subscription, users have access during peak usage times and can use the program’s newest features.

ChatGPT generates a response to your prompt immediately. You can also ask more questions that will build upon previous questions. You can also create a new prompt.

What ChatGPT Can Do

ChatGPT gathers information from books, newspapers, social media, and the Internet. Its vast knowledge allows it to produce text that reads as if someone wrote it. It is concise, clear, and engaging.

The most popular use of ChatGPT is for research. Users ask ChatGPT for information on a specific topic and it provides its findings in a polished way.

Users also use ChatGPT to refine or improve what they have already written. ChatGPT can provide recommendations or creative ideas. ChatGPT can also help you practice a new language. ChatGPT has also become a popular tool used by entrepreneurs.

chatgpt research topics

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What ChatGPT Can’t Do

ChatGPT should not be the final, authoritative source for facts and statistics. When asking such questions, research the information using highly reputable sources.

The quality of the text output of ChatGPT is dependent on the quality of the research prompts given. You can’t ask vague questions and expect to get specific answers. Speaking of prompts, we’ll discuss how to compose prompts that will produce optimum results.

Use Successful Prompts to Get the Responses You Need

To get the most out of ChatGPT AI for sales lead generation, it is important to have the correct prompts. If you provide bad prompts, the results will sound like information from search results. Your generated text will be a rehash of information already out there.

As a rule of thumb, compose prompts that save you time on research and include a call to action (CTA). Here are some ways to write good ChatGPT prompts:

  1. Be clear and specific –When you ask clear and specific questions or prompts, you will get more accurate responses.
  2. Use the correct language and terminology – ChatGTP is a computer program, not a human. It will not know industry jargon or the terminology of your target audience. 
  3. Be concise – Short and concise prompts and questions will exclude unnecessary information and improve the accuracy of the results.
  4. Include necessary parameters – Asking broad questions will not give you the results you’re looking for. Some parameters to consider include length, tone, and target audience.
  5. Have examples – With ChatGPT, you can provide examples of the types of text you want.
  6. Test and adjust – Practice makes perfect. The more you test and experiment with your prompts, the better they will get over time.

Some specific ChatGPT prompts that produce good responses use the following formats:

  • “I want you to act as ___ for ___.”
  • “Your task is to ___.”
  • “___ should ___.”
  • “___ should not ___.”
  • “To get started, please ___.”
  • “Assuming I am ___, what would be the best way to ___.”
  • “Your job is to ____, I want you to___.”
chatgpt response prompts

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Using ChatGPT in Marketing and Sales

ChatGPT is a text-producing technology offering many possibilities to better your automated marketing and sales outreach efforts. You can use this AI technology for business in the following ways:

  • Lead generation – You can generate personalized outbound and inbound sales lead generation templates with ChatGPT.
  • Lead qualification – ChatGPT can improve the likelihood of your leads becoming customers by asking specific, targeted questions.
  • Customer service or emails – With ChatGPT, you can free up time by efficiently composing phone and email answers to customer questions and concerns.
  • Product information – ChatGPT can produce information like product descriptions, user guides, and support text.
  • Content creation –ChatGPT can produce engaging, polished blogs, sales and marketing material, product descriptions, and cold email templates. 

3 Stages of Outbound Lead Generation

ChatGPT can be a powerful AI tool for sales lead generation. Besides the aforementioned uses, the technology can boost outbound and inbound lead generation. ChatGPT improves both lead-generation strategies by enhancing the tactics used in each of the stages of both funnels.

1. Awareness 

ChatGPT offers many options to draw attention to your product or services. Here are some ways the AI tool for sales generation can enhance your current awareness stage strategies:

2. Social Selling and Personal Branding

You leverage your network to build relationships to find the right prospects through social selling. Here, you’re building trust with prospects. Figuring out the right way to promote your content is key to social media engagement and selling.

ChatGPT creates unique personalized branded content and offers suggestions on the type of content to create and branding types. The technology produces content that makes your brand stand out and appear credible.

3. Database Management and Cleaning

It is crucial to have a current list of prospects in your database for effective outbound sales outreach. ChatGPT works with Google Sheets to help you prepare, update, and manage your database lists. It can also generate content based on various spreadsheet templates.

LinkedIn Outreach

1. Awareness

As a sales professional, you know how valuable LinkedIn is for generating connections with prospects. ChatGPT makes your LinkedIn outreach efficient and effective by doing the following:

  • Producing engaging and personalized messages to leads and prospects.
  • Increasing the chance for your leads to read your messages with personalized call-to-actions, hashtags, and mentions.
  • Pulling market research data on your target audience.

2. Interest

In the interest phase, you’ve gotten the attention of leads and prospects. Chatbots and virtual assistants are useful at this stage because of all the questions people ask. You can use ChatGPT to create automated chat conversations and content that addresses prospects’ needs and pain points.

3. Decision-making

Once the prospects have gathered enough information, they are ready to make a purchasing decision. ChatGPT can create persuasive content for leads with the following:

  • Sales proposals that address the specific needs and pain points of prospects
  • Engaging content based on case studies, webinars, or blog posts
  • Education for leads about your services and products

4. Action

Finally, the lead makes a purchase and converts into a paying customer. ChatGPT can help reassure them they made the right purchasing decision. The AI for sales lead generation can also help with the following: 

  • Produce persuasive scripts
  • Compose negotiation emails and messaging to close sales
  • Create custom templates for contracts and proposals

5. Retention

Once a customer makes a purchase, it’s important to nurture them to become a repeat customer. ChatGPT helps with retention by the following:

  • Writing personalized follow-up emails
  • Composing questionnaires, surveys, and newsletter emails
  • Asking for feedback and producing feedback forms

5 Stages of Inbound Sales Lead Generation

As with outbound sales, ChatGPT can be a game-changer for your inbound sales funnel. Here is how ChatGPT is used in each stage of your inbound sales funnel

1. Awareness

ChatGPT raises awareness of your company’s offerings to prospects. The AI for sales lead generation does this by:

  • Creating ad copy 
  • Generating content for LinkedIn
  • Composing engaging landing pages, headings, and call-to-action copy
  • Writing web forms and lead magnets
  • Creating other web content like quizzes, assessments, and eBooks

2. Interest

When you get the attention of inbound leads, they will be interested in learning more about what you offer. ChatGPT can ease the barrage of questions people may have. It does this by gathering information on your target audience, creating conversation topics, and setting up Chabot scripts.

3. Desire

ChatGPT can move prospects toward a purchase by creating various online texts. These include surveys, chatbot scripts, blog content, case studies, and service pages. This content will give enough thorough information for leads to choose to work with your company over the competition.

4. Action

ChatGPT can produce relevant, engaging product descriptions, blog posts, and landing pages. This helps convert prospects into customers when they are ready to buy.

5. Retention

Once leads become paying customers, you must keep them. ChatGPT can take your email campaigns to the next level, keeping customers engaged.

The technology also produces unlimited email text, subject lines, and call-to-actions. Speaking of cold email outreach, we’ll discuss how ChatGPT can help.

customer lifecycle marketing funnel

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Using ChatGPT for Effective Cold Emailing Outreach

ChatGPT is a powerful AI tool for composing cold emailing outreach. It can effectively do the following tasks:

  • Recommend personalized placeholders
  • Writes various subject lines
  • Generate personalized cold email templates
  • Writes follow-up templates

With ChatGPT, you can customize your cold email outreach prompt by telling it to avoid using the following parameters:

  • Congratulate the prospect on a job anniversary.
  • Say that you would love to meet them.
  • Use buzzwords or industry jargon.
  • Use a formal tone.
ChatGPT for Cold Emailing Outreach

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ChatGPT is an AI text tool that can be a game changer for outbound and inbound sales outreach. The technology can produce various high-quality content, making your sales and marketing team more efficient and effective at closing deals.

Successful Sales Outreach Using AI & ChatGPT Read More »

9 (Free and Paid) Best Reverse Email Lookup Tools in 2024

9 (Free and Paid) Best Reverse Email Lookup Tools in 2024

Over 4.3 billion people use emails, and there’s no doubt that email communications have become abundant.

We know that you get a lot of emails every day. Some of them might be from email addresses you don’t recognize. When you see an unfamiliar email in your inbox, you naturally want to know who sent it.

Therefore, this is where you can use an email reverse lookup tool to find information about unknown senders.

Reverse Email Lookup is a process that lets individuals and businesses track the origins of an email address—information like location, phone number, company name, social media handles, and much more.

Much like the reverse phone lookup back in the day, where we used phone directories to get information about a random phone number. 

Reverse email lookup tools do the same thing. Once you enter an email address, these tools will search online directories to find the information related to that email.

We’re sure, you might be wondering. In a world, where people are paying for email lookup tools. Why would someone use reverse email lookup tools?

The answer is simple, but the reasons are many:-

1) To verify the authenticity of an unknown email sender in the inbox and to avoid yourself from any online scams and phishing attacks.

2) To reconnect with an old friend whose only source of contact is the email ID that you have

3) Business inquiries (or) pitches that land in your inbox. Reverse email search helps to know about the details before you start doing business chat with a random email

4) To enrich the email of your customers who subscribed to your newsletter

5) Trying to find any criminal records and bankruptcy details of a person for background verification

And more

Hence, for all those exact reasons, there are plenty of reverse email lookup tools are available in the market.

You should know that reverse email search is not just a process, it’s a gateway to a more informed and secure online experience for email users. 

Currently, several methods and tools exist to do a reverse email lookup. Some of them are free, and some of them are paid. With free tools, you can get limited information about your email entities, whereas with paid tools, you get access to additional information about an email address.

This section lists all the free and paid tools possible to do a reverse email lookup search.

BeenVerified Reverse Email Lookup Tool
BeenVerified Reverse Email Lookup Tool

BeenVerified is a comprehensive platform offering a range of search tools, including the “Reverse Email Lookup” feature.

The platform also offers Reverse Phone Lookup, Address Lookup, Vehicle Search, People Search, and more. Indeed, there’s no denying that this one tool stands at the top of our list of ‘Best Reverse Email Lookup Tools.’

However, that being said, you need to keep in mind laws such as Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) when it comes to how you can use the information you obtain from a reverse email lookup tool like BeenVerified.

For example, you cannot use it to check someone’s employment history, check educational qualifications, steal an Identity, do tenant screening, and check for any existing credit obligations.

Apart from that, if you want to use BeenVerified, here are the pros and cons:

1. Comprehensive Analysis: BeenVerified provides detailed information (reports) by sifting through vast public records. Usually, these reports will include data like property records, criminal records, vehicle records, and other personal details

2. Versatile Use: Useful for online dating, looking up your caller, reconnecting with old buddies, and understanding online sellers.

3. User-Friendly: Simple and intuitive platform design.

4. Broad Database: Access to extensive databases for high success rates.

5. Confidential Searches: Ensures the person being searched isn’t notified.

6. Positive Reviews: Many users have shared favourable feedback. Check their reviews here.

7. Customer Support: Provides live assistance for users.

1. Accuracy: Information might not always be up-to-date. However, it’s the best in the market compared to most tools on this list. Also, data is exclusive to the United States

2. Not free: BeenVerified doesn’t offer a free reverse email lookup. Also, it doesn’t offer a one-time payment option, you have to choose its monthly subscription. 

3. Report Cap: Limited to 100 reports per month.

4. Not FCRA Compliant: Can’t be used for employment or tenant decisions.

Reverse Contact Reverse Email Lookup Tool
Reverse Contact Reverse Email Lookup Tool

Reverse Contact is probably the most advanced tool on this list. What separates this tool from the rest is that it is specifically designed for businesses to enrich their data from emails, which is nothing but gathering information from email addresses.

But unlike the tools in this list where people manually use reverse email lookup to gather/check information of an email. Using Reverse Contact, you can perform multiple searches simultaneously, which is excellent for businesses who want to enrich their data in bulk.

Also, you can integrate it with your own CRM tool to perform a seamless data enrichment process of 10,000+ email IDs. This results in in-depth customer profiles, leading to a tidier pipeline and a significant boost in your marketing campaigns.

Masteos, a rental investment agency shared in their case study how Reverse Contact helped them enrich their 74k+ Contacts. This enabled them to elevate their profiling process, advertise more precisely, and save significant time for the business.

However, if you’re not a business and want to do reverse email lookup manually, you can use their free 20 credits to find the information you need for your anonymous emails.

Reverse Contact
Reverse Contact

1. Comprehensive data enrichment: Reverse Contact provides the same information, such as phone numbers, social media profiles, and possibly physical addresses too. You can leverage this data in your marketing and sales campaigns.

2. Versatility: The primary use case of this tool is for businesses. Businesses of any size and sector can use this tool.

3. High Enrichment Rate: Forest Admin one of their users, got access to 72% enriched emails within their database as they used Reverser Contact. Which meant a ton of opportunity for them.

4. CRM Integration: It seamlessly integrates with CRM systems like Hubspot, Pipedrive, Salesforce, and others, helps in streamlining the workflow for sales and marketing teams.

5. Customer Profiling: Companies can build detailed customer profiles by enriching the data from the set of emails, which is crucial for personalized marketing and customer service.

1. Potential Privacy Concerns: There might be privacy concerns when dealing with personal information, which businesses need to handle responsibly.

2. Learning Curve: Initially, businesses may face a learning curve in understanding how to best utilize this tool for their needs. Hence the ‘learning curve’.

3. High Subscription Cost: Their monthly subscription starts at $99. For $99, you get 2000 credits per month. 

4. Limitations in Data: If the email addresses are not linked to public profiles or if the users have a limited digital footprint, you won’t be able to get their information from an email address.

Google
Google

Definitely not a tool, but ‘Google’ is the best way to find information with reverse email lookup. You can simply paste the email address on Google Search bar to know the person’s details.

If email ID isn’t good enough to give you some search results, you play around with search operators like Firstname last name” + “@gmail.com, Firstname + @gmail.com.

However, the problem with using Google as one of the free reverse email lookup services compared to others is that search engines can only generate results on public platforms like online directories and social media platforms. Not private databases unlike some of the paid tools in this list.

Also, one problem with using Google, which other paid tools take care of, is that the person behind the email might have ways to know if their email is being searched for, especially if they have set up alerts

In other paid tools on this list, the search is confidential, and you should know that they skim through a load of online and offline directories to give you all the details behind a random email.

Just like Google, you can use social media sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram to do a reverse email lookup and find the social media handles of your email sender.

Spokeo
Spokeo

Spokeo, as a tool, answers 500k searches per day. With over 12 billion records, Spokeo can provide you with phone numbers, location history, photos, social media accounts, family members, court records, work information, and much more. 

Apart from the reverse email lookup search, Spokeo offers name search, phone search, and address search. You can use these tools on your desktop and even via an IOS app.

Spokeo’s commitment to transparency and trust is reflected in its community efforts, including supporting individual volunteers, nonprofit organizations, and education through scholarships and technology donations. 

  1. Easy to Use: Spokeo is user-friendly; all you need to do is paste your email address in the search bar
  2. Comprehensive Search Data: It scans over 120 social sites for real-time user data, which includes dating sites, blog posts, and product reviews, amassing over 12 billion records to cross-reference.
  3. Manual Lookups: The service is geared towards manual lookups, which can be beneficial for detailed fraud investigations and background check-ups.
  1. No Automation: Spokeo does not provide automation, which means each search has to be done manually. Hence, you won’t be able to do reverse email lookups in bulk unlike in Reverse Contact.
  2. Tiered Pricing (not free): Spokeo offers three-tiered Pricing with custom plans, starting at $19.95 for 100 monthly searches.
  3. Limited Searches Per Month: Depending on the plan, there is a cap on how many searches can be performed each month, which could be restrictive for some users.

Spokeo is a simple tool that prioritizes the depth and comprehensiveness of data over automation and high-volume search capabilities. 

No need to mention that it’s best suited for people who require detailed background checks of their email and are not annoyed by the manual nature of the search process.

People Looker
People Looker

People Looker is another promising email reverse lookup tool where you can simply enter a name, address, or phone number to get the desired details. 

Assume you’re in an email chain where your old friends have gathered to discuss someone’s bachelorette or a possible reunion. In case you cannot recognize your old buddies from their emails. Then, you can identify them all by a reverse email search on People Looker.

Just like Better Verified, the information provided by this tool is not to be used for legal purposes such as tenant screening, employment, or credit checks.

  1. People Looker allows its users to search not just by email but also by name, phone number, and address, increasing the chances of finding the required information.
  2. They offer a data removal service for you to have your information taken down from the site.
  3. They offer a $1 trial for seven days for your email lookups. Hence, it is best for someone who needs to check a few emails

1) No automation like Reverse Contact

2) Their subscription starts at $23.99 per month, a little higher than the rest of the tools

3) This tool is not as powerful and fast as the rest of the paid tools on this list

TruthFinder
TruthFinder

TruthFinder helps users uncover a wealth of information about an email’s owner, including their name, address, phone number, and potentially even social media profiles. 

As the name suggests, the tool helps you find the truth behind those unknown emails you received, uncover the real person you connected with on a dating site, or research your business contacts with depth and detail.

TruthFinder offers a Dark Web Monitoring service designed to help individuals protect their personal information from being exploited on the Dark Web. This service actively monitors your data, such as Social Security numbers, email addresses, medical IDs, and bank accounts.

Also, TruthFinder alerts you if it finds your sensitive information on the Dark Web.

Regarding the pricing information, TruthFinder offers a range of membership options to suit different needs, ranging from $4.99 to $29.73 per month. Their reverse email lookup tool starts at $29.73, which includes unlimited reports.

  1. TruthFinder has access to over 150 million records, thus enhancing the likelihood of accurate and comprehensive results.
  2. Apart from the reverse email lookup, Truth Finders can help you with reverse phone lookup, people search, and Dark Web monitoring.
  1. A full monthly subscription of $29.73 is required to access all features. This means there is no standalone plan to use their reverse email lookup
Social Catfish
Social Catfish

Do you know, you save yourself from catfishing, if you use a reverse email address lookup option from Social catfish. 

As you can guess by the name, Social Catfish is a platform people use to make themselves aware of any possible catfish connections online. 

This tool offers multiple lookup options like:-

  1. Name Lookup
  2. Phone Lookup
  3. Reverse Image Lookup
  4. Address Lookup
  5. Email Lookup
  6. Username Lookup
  7. Reverse Email Lookup

Most of its users look for dating profiles, social media accounts, criminal records, and other public data linked to an email address. 

The platform is known for its image reverse search capability, allowing users to find profiles using photos.

Apart from helping people avoid romance scams, Social Catfish positions itself as a reliable tool for reconnecting with lost contacts and verifying the authenticity of online acquaintances. 

  1. It is an excellent tool for people who want to verify the identities of online dating profiles along with some ip address
  2.  Offers a wide range of lookups apart from reverse email lookups. Thus ensuring users to gather information is in multiple different ways.

Cons:

  • The Pricing starts at $27.48 / month, but for $ 5.73 you can use these tools for 3 days.
  • Their service primarily focuses on romance scam prevention, which may not suit for business-related lookups.
CocoFinder
CocoFinder

CocoFinder is another platform in this list that offers multiple lookups. Here the information is gathered from various places, including government records, data brokers, phone operators, and many offline sources that aren’t available to the public.

Apart from the reverse email lookup, other search tools include:-

  1. People Search
  2. Reverse Phone Lookup
  3. White Pages
  4. Reverse Address Lookup
  5. Who Called Me
  6. Inmate Search
  7. Mugshots Search
  8. Public Records
  9. Criminal Records
  10. Divorce Records
  11. Court Records
  12. Background Check
  13. Obituaries Search

Unlike the Social catfish, CocoFinder is a tool suits for business entities use for business purposes. Social catfish was primarily designed for individuals to gather information about their love interests.

Whereas CocoFinder tools are more dedicated to giving out valuable information for some severe checks and business identifications.

  1. CocoFinder offers a variety of lookup options
  2. It is better for businesses that are looking for serious and detailed checks 
  1. No clear pricing structure
  2. Their reverse email lookup uses information from other tools like BeenVerified, Sopkeo, and People Looker
RecordsFinder
RecordsFinder

RecordsFinder is an online tool designed to simplify the process of accessing public records, and their reverse email lookup service gathers information for your given email address by accessing the records available in their database.

If you check the list of records they own in their database should give you an idea that this tool is best for people trying to validate (or) verify someone’s existing criminal and legal records.

This tool indexes billions of records from over 3,000 public and private sources and brings you one comprehensive report on any individual in the United States

You can run some free reverse email lookups. But for extensive reports, you can use their trial plan for $2.95 for 7 days.

  1. The best option to access any email for criminal records
  2. They offer a paid trial plan
  1. It is not best for reverse email lookups where you’re trying to gather old friend’s information, business-related queries, and along those lines
  2. It has a subscription plan of $25 per month

Reverse and email lookup tools are often used interchangeably but serve different purposes. Email lookups are used to find someone’s email address using details like name, company name, domain URL, etc. Email lookup tools are used to create a list for email marketing.

On the other hand, reverse email lookup tools are used to find information about the person on the basis of the email address you already have. Hence, reverse lookup tools are used for verifications and cleaning lists.

Reverse email lookup works by taking an email address and searching through various databases and online sources to find associated information. This includes public records, social media profiles, digital footprints, and offline records. The tool cross-references the email address with billions of data points available in its database to provide you with information like owner’s name, sender’s ip address, phone number, and location in some searches.

Yes, reverse email lookup works. But it’s just that sometimes the databases might not be up-to-date with it’s data points. Therefore, you won’t need to worry if you’re using a reliable tool.

But anyhow, if you want to cross-check the information provided by an reverse email lookup tool, you’re free to do it manually by visiting their socials or maybe calling them on their phone (which is not recommended)

You enter the email address into the search field, and the tool will scan its databases and the internet to find any related information that is publicly available. It depends upon tools on what information they provide, such as location, criminal records, employment details, photos, social media profiles, and more.

The tools listed in this article will provide you with information publicly associated with the email address. This could include the person’s name, phone number, address, social media profiles, and more, depending on what the person has made publicly available.

Whether paid reverse email lookup tools are worth the investment depends on your specific needs and the quality of the tool. If you require detailed information, the tool has a comprehensive database that can provide accurate and up-to-date information. Such tools can aid in lead generation, fraud prevention, and customer verification processes for businesses. 

Reverse email lookups can be a significant asset for various business operations. They can help your business with enhanced lead generation by analyzing the right kind of emails, improving precise customer targeting by validating the emails, preventing fraud by detecting flags, and helping you clean lists by identifying inactive emails.

Often, when people search for the ‘Best Reverse Email Lookup Tool’ in 2024, they expect to land on a blog post that gives them one solution to their needs.

As we wrote this article, we sensed there might be two types of people who like to use such tools. One are individuals who are using it for personal and professional reasons. The other ones are businesses that are looking to incorporate such tools into their business.

For individuals who like to do manual checks, go with BetterVerified

For businesses who like to enrich their data in bulk, go with Reverse Contact

Those are our best suggestions, you’re free to play around with the others listed in our article

9 (Free and Paid) Best Reverse Email Lookup Tools in 2024 Read More »

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What is Lead Enrichment?

Imagine you have a lead in your CRM, basically other than their name you don’t know anything about them. What if you’re able to find details like their company, location, job title, and other relevant information.

Now that same lead which was is your CRM was just a random lead. After enriching that with relevant data you’re able to qualify the lead for sales. This is called lead enrichment.

What is lead enrichment and how do you incorporate it into your sales process and CDP software? This guide will cover all of that and more. By the end, you’ll know how to uncover lead details on autopilot so you can close more deals with ease.

To get started, keep reading or ”jump ahead” to these sections:

What is Lead Enrichment?

Lead enrichment is the process of data enrichment that gives your sales team enhanced insight into a prospective customer. With this data, sales reps can better understand how qualified prospects are and what’s the best way to interact with them so they can close the deal.

Lead enrichment is often presented in a profile that gives sales reps an overview of the prospect.

overview of the prospect for sales team

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Types of lead enrichment data points can include:

  • Identifying info about individuals, such as job title, email address, contact information, and social media profiles
  • Firmographic info, like a company’s industry, location, and size
  • Lead behavior, like how often a lead visits your company’s website or engages with your email marketing
  • Lead personality info, which can give you guidance on how to engage with an individual

Basic Steps in Gathering Lead Enrichment Data

Lead enrichment process is closely tied to lead generation and demand generation marketing. When you generate a new lead in the funnel, you should also have systems in place that gather additional data to help you qualify and understand that lead in detail.

There are a few ways to generate and enrich new leads.

1. Capture with a form

With this method, prospective customers learn about your company through email, social media, or blog posts. Prospects then give some of their personal information in exchange for a special offer, such as a white paper, demo, or free trial of your product.

special offer form for prospective customers

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When a lead fills out a form in exchange for an offer, enrichment really begins to happen.

Take a look at this lead generation form from Salesforce. Visitors who want to start a free trial of Salesforce’s product first have to answer a series of questions:

lead generation form from salesforce

lead generation form salesforce

free trial form from salesforce

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Once submitted, this info is sent to the marketing and sales team’s customer relationship management (CRM) software, where it’s turned into a lead profile that’s already populated with several data points about the individual and the company he or she represents.

2. Search social media

Another way to find and learn more about leads is through social media. LinkedIn is often considered as an excellent source of B2B leads. There are several free and paid strategies for finding leads and enrich your leads.

The most basic way to find and enrich leads with LinkedIn is to first create a list of companies that fit your ideal customer profile, also search LinkedIn for those companies. Their profiles often include many relevant data points, such as company size and location. You can also zero in on the employees that most likely have the authority to buy your product. Hence improving your conversion rates.

After finding all this info, you’ll need to manually input the data into the lead’s profile within your CRM.

How to Automate Lead Enrichment

There are several tools available that automatically gather lead enrichment data and sync it with your CRM or other software. Determining which one is best for your business depends on the kind of data you want. Here are just a few to get you started.

LeadBoxer

LeadBoxer makes it possible to identify and enrich leads without capturing their data through a form. With LeadBoxer, you can identify visitors to your website who would otherwise remain anonymous, and then populate their profile with contact info.

lead enrichment data from leadboxer

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LeadBoxer also records lead’s online behavior, such as how much time they spent on a certain webpage or what resources they’ve downloaded. This gives your team insight into what topics or pain points are most relevant to individual prospects.

To give your team even more of an edge, LeadBoxer scores leads so sales reps know exactly who is most likely to close. With a tool like LeadBoxer, your team will spend more time pursuing the most promising prospects and none of it chasing dead ends.

VisitorTrack

VisitorTrack is similar to LeadBoxer in that it can identify and track website visitors that would otherwise remain anonymous.

website visitors tracking from visitortrack

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VisitorTrack further enriches leads with intent data. Intent data tells you whether or not a lead is in the market to buy a product like the one you offer. It works by tracking and analyzing certain context clues, like what kind of topics a lead has been searching for around the web.

Crystal

Crystal is an app that tells you how to communicate with and pitch to a prospect. It works by gathering data about a prospect from their LinkedIn profile and around the web and then crafting clear dos and don’ts that are unique to that person.

communication with a prospect from crystal

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If you want to walk into any conversation with a lead feeling confident about your communication style, Crystal is worth checking out.

CRMs and Lead Enrichment

It’s usually possible to integrate a separate lead enrichment software with your main CRM so that both tools automatically work together.

However, if you prefer having an all-in-one system, consider using a CRM that comes equipped with needed features. Also most of these CRM helps you with lead routing where you can automatically assign your leads across the sales team.

These are just a few of the most popular choices.

HubSpot Sales

HubSpot Sales is a CRM that lets you track and accelerate everyone in your sales pipeline. There are also several helpful features that uncover new leads and enrich the ones you have.

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HubSpot can show you who is visiting your site, how often they visit, and what pages they’re most interested in. It also logs which emails they open and what links they click on. Predictive lead scoring then prioritizes the prospects that are most likely to become customers. Hence marketers and sales teams can focus right kind of leads for lead nurturing and right kind of leads for sales.

Sugar Sell

Sugar Sell is a sales CRM solution from SugarCRM. The platform includes a feature called Sugar Hint, which automates lead enrichment.

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Sugar Hint gathers data from social media, news, and business sources, and then automatically offers insight and intelligence within the platform. Sugar Hint can also give you actionable intel so you know to act when prospects are most engaged, open to upsell or cross-sell opportunities, or at risk of churning.

Freshsales

Freshsales is a CRM offered by Freshdesk. The platform comes with AI-based lead scoring and automatic profile enrichment.

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With Freshsales, you no longer have to spend hours combing through LinkedIn for info or doing manual data entry. Their lead enrichment helps you dig into leads social media accounts and publicly-listed info, then saves the data for you.

Benefits of Automated Lead Enrichment

Automated lead enrichment increases the efficiency of your sales process in a few ways:

  • It reduces the time sales reps spend manually mining lead data on social media platforms or around the web
  • Lead scoring tells reps which leads to focus their time and energy on converting
  • Insights guide reps on when and how to interact with leads so they’re more likely to make the sale

All of these factors work together to increase your team’s productivity, and ultimately, your revenue.

Automated lead enrichment can also help improve your lead generation efforts. Without automated it, you may find yourself relying on lengthy lead generation forms like the Salesforce example shown earlier in this article. However, the longer the form, the more likely that some prospects will lose interest and leave the page before completing it.

If you’re using the right lead enrichment tool, you can shorten or in some cases forgo the form. LeadBoxer, for example, only requires an email before you can start a free trial.

the best lead enrichment tool

Prospective customers can start using the product for less effort, and since they only have to submit their email, they’re less likely to become distracted or navigate away before submitting their info.

By attracting more leads and enriching their data later, you can further optimize your lead-to-conversion rate.

Start Using Lead Enrichment Today

There’s no doubt about it: lead enrichment can massively improve the efficiency of your sales process. The goal of lead enrichment is to help with lead conversion, close more deals faster, and increase your revenue with less effort.

However, manual lead enrichment can be a time-consuming and inefficient process. The key to getting the most out of it is to use a tool that automatically mines as much data as possible, then gives you actionable insight into each prospect. The same goes for sales intelligence tools.

LeadBoxer can help. With LeadBoxer, you can identify anonymous website visitors or enrich profiles of existing leads with contact info, company details, and their online behavior. LeadBoxer then creates a score that tells you whether or not a lead is worth pursuing. Take it for a spin and try LeadBoxer for free today.

What is Lead Enrichment? Read More »

What is Cost Per Lead Why You Should Be Using It

What is Cost Per Lead (CPL) ?

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,

What is Cost per Lead?

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
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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:

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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:

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Notice anything familiar?

“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.

This degree of campaign personalization might seem like overkill, but according to a survey by Evergage, 88% of today’s customers expect to have personalized shopping experiences.

Resultiks, on the other hand, misses the mark. Search for “marketing automation software”, and you might run across this ad:

marketing automation software

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:

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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:

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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:

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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.

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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.

What is Cost Per Lead (CPL) ? Read More »

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What’s a Customer Data Platform (CDP)? 10 Best CDPs

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.

This is where Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) come in.

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:

What is a Customer Data Platform?

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. 

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Ideally, you’ll discover:-

  • When that person first visited your website
  • 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 Customer Data Platform

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.

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To learn how LeadBoxer can help you understand your customer experience across marketing camapign.

Schedule a product demo

Segment

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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.

Blueshift

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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.

Exponea

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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.

QuanticMind

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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.

CustomerLabs CDP

CustomerLabs
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What sets it apart: With CustomerLabs 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.

Emarsys

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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.

Optimove

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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.

Tealium AudienceStream CDP

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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 counts large, 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.

Pimcore

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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.

Boxever

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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.

Evergage

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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.

AgilOne

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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.

Looking for more qualified leads?

We offerLead Identification and Lead intelligence through website & email tracking

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What’s a Customer Data Platform (CDP)? 10 Best CDPs Read More »

7 Reasons for the Growing Demand for Lead Management Software

7 Reasons for the Growing Demand for Lead Management Software

You know how important it is to find potential customers most interested in your products or services. These are the consumers who will make a purchase. Quickly finding these prospects with a lead management platform shortens your sales cycle, increasing profits. 

To learn more about lead management software and the importance of qualifying leads, keep reading or use the links below to jump ahead:

The Purposes of Lead Management Software

To make any sale, you need to invest in building relationships with the best prospects. 

Relationship-building takes time and energy. A lead management platform helps salespeople qualify good leads and disqualify bad ones.

Why is it important to qualify leads? 67% of lost sales are a result of sales reps not properly qualifying potential customers. Unqualified prospects will not go through the entire sales process, so they won’t become paying customers. 

Qualifying leads will not only result in more sales. It shortens your sales cycle and betters the use of your sales team’s time by focusing them on ideal leads. Sales teams can prioritize building relationships with the most promising prospects with lead qualification tools.

There are people out there who want your product or service. Lead qualification software helps your sales team identify and build relationships with them. Engaging the right people will bring more sales at a quicker pace.  

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What Is Lead Qualification?

Lead qualification is the process of identifying prospects most likely to make a purchase. The process prioritizes the nurturing of the most promising leads.

Below are the three types of qualified leads: 

  • Marketing qualified leads (MQL): These leads gain interest in a brand, product, or service through marketing strategies. These leads come by clicking on a link in an email, downloading an e-book, or subscribing to a newsletter.
  • Sales qualified leads (SQL): These leads are interested in a brand, product, or service after interacting with a sales representative. They often will ask about pricing and agree to a presentation or demo.
  • Product/Service qualified leads (PQL): These leads are interested in a company, service, or product. They usually contact a salesperson after a free trial or consultation.

Lead management platforms identify the prospects your sales team needs to prioritize in nurturing. Qualified leads will progress through the sales funnel at a more rapid rate, resulting in revenue.

MQLs vs Other Types of Leads

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Lead Qualification Tools

Qualified leads are crucial in generating revenue for your organization. Lead qualification tools can help you quickly identify your most promising prospects. Here are some lead qualification tools you can use to attract and nurture quality prospects: 

Interactive PDFs

PDFs are effective ways of informing people in a way that is easily accessible. They are downloadable, saveable, and shareable.  Interactive PDFs add engagement and shorten your sales cycle.  

Interactive PDFs are lead qualification tools that allow you to add filtering questions, thereby identifying your most promising prospects. These PDFs can help tailor your follow-up and move them quickly down the funnel. 

Solution Finders

Other effective lead qualification tools are solution finders. They help identify and provide a custom-tailored solution to a customer’s problem. When leveraged appropriately, solution finders can shorten the sales cycle. 

Solution finders, also called product pickers, help leads navigate the various products or services your company offers. Prospects get personalized product or service recommendations with short assessments. 

Qualified leads may not always know what they want or the best solution. Through solution finders, you help prospects avoid frustration and headaches. This goes a long way in building relationships between your salespeople and customers. 

ROI Calculators

ROI calculators work similarly to solution finders in that they provide tailored customer service. These tools generate numeric results for each lead based on a formula generated by customer input. These calculators quickly identify and evaluate pain points, speeding up the qualification process. 

ROI calculators offer personalized, valuable content tailored to each stage of the buyer’s journey. ROI calculator data can be used for scoring, disqualification, and trigger campaigns.

ROI Calculators

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The Lead Qualification Process

Leads don’t automatically get qualified or disqualified on their own. There is a lead qualification process that is simplified using lead qualification tools.

1. Establish Lead Qualification Criteria

The first part of the lead qualification process is establishing prospect criteria. This has two parts: whether the lead is a good fit and how interested the lead is in your offerings. 

When looking at whether a lead is a good fit for your offerings, use the BANT methodology. This looks at the following four factors a lead will consider when faced with a buying decision. 

  • Budget: What is the financial capacity of the lead to make a purchase? What budgetary constraints are there that will affect their willingness to spend? 
  • Authority: What is the lead’s position, authority, or power to finalize a deal or make a purchasing decision? 
  • Need: How useful are your products or services for meeting the wants and pain points of the lead? 
  • Timeline: When does the lead need to make a purchase? 
What is BANT

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2. Lead Generation

The second stage of lead qualification is lead generation. Once you have the qualification criteria set up, you’ll need to attract prospects. There are a variety of inbound and outbound strategies you can use for lead generation.  

Inbound lead generation involves methods to get leads to come to you. These include referrals, social media ads, and web form submissions. 

Outbound lead generation strategies involve seeking potential leads and using sales strategies. Cold calling, introductory emails, and meetings are examples of outbound lead generation activities. Once you’ve generated leads, you can begin the process of qualifying them. 

3. Lead Score and Categorization

Once you have your lead qualifying criteria and the prospects pouring in, it’s time to score and categorize them. The leads that show the greatest interest through your inbound or outbound sales activities will earn more points.

It’s important to separate sales and marketing qualified leads. As you’re interested in sales leads, assign fewer points to prospects that interact with your marketing campaigns. They will be nurtured differently. 

You can score and categorize leads manually, though lead management platforms and customer relationship management software does this automatically. After you score your sales prospects, it’s time to rank them. 

4. Distribute and Rank Leads 

Once you generate your leads and score them, it is time to distribute and rank them. MQLs and SQLs require different lead nurturing techniques. 

For example, a sales qualified lead will get a sales presentation or demo to understand your product or service better. Each sales prospect should be ranked and prioritized by lead score or BANT analysis.  

To nurture MQLs, offer more in-depth content. Start with emails and free trials for top-of-funnel prospects. Offer an e-newsletter and then whitepapers and e-books to bottom-of-funnel leads.

Once you categorize and distribute your leads, it’s time to rank them. Lead qualification tools prioritize sales-qualified leads with the highest score and rank. These will be your most qualified leads.

5. Continue Qualifying Leads Throughout the Pipeline

The last step for lead qualification is to continue down the steps of your sales pipeline. The goal of lead qualification is to move prospects through the funnel. 

For SQLs, your salespeople may ask additional probing questions during presentations and demos. They are qualified and nurtured to move on through the sales funnel.  

For marketing-qualified leads, you need to get them sales qualified and handed over to your sales team. MQLs will continue receiving lead scoring points as they show additional interest and interact with your campaign. 

Lead management platforms that qualify leads make it easier to move prospects through your funnel. The quicker leads become paying customers, the more closed sales you’ll have.

Steps to Effective Lead Scoring

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The Importance of Qualifying Leads

Every company has a sales process or funnel whereby prospects enter as mildly interested leads and leave as paying customers. Along the way, you employ various marketing and sales tactics to move them onto the next stage. If your sales process is long, there are more opportunities for leads to drop off before becoming customers. 

When you nurture your ideal prospects, they quickly progress through your sales funnel. As they are already excited and knowledgeable about your service or product, a long sales process is unnecessary. 

Lead qualification tools shorten your sales cycle. A shorter sales funnel leads to more conversions and quicker sales.

The Growth of Lead Management Software

Lead management software is by no means going away anytime soon. Lead qualification software use will increase. Technavio predicts that the lead qualification solutions market will increase by 17.5% between 2021-2028.

Some of the driving factors that contribute to the growth of lead management platforms include: 

  • The development of cloud-based and SaaS software and solutions (especially on mobile)
  • Increased demand for social interaction between companies and consumers
  • The heightened popularity of crowdsourcing 
  • The increase in CRMs integrating lead qualification into their marketing and sales automation platforms
  • More companies looking to improve the relationship between their sales and marketing departments
  • The higher likelihood of sales conversions
  • The increased need for enterprise-level lead management software

With information at their fingertips, your leads and prospects will be selective about who they do business with. Building relationships and nurturing the right people will make them paying customers. Lead qualification platforms do this.

Lead management platforms like LeadBoxer are becoming increasingly popular because they allow salespeople to focus on the most promising prospects. There are various lead qualification tools to move prospects through your funnel. Maximize your prospect generation efforts by following a lead qualification process. 

7 Reasons for the Growing Demand for Lead Management Software Read More »

The Value of Pre CRM and Marketing CRM

The Value of Pre-CRM and Marketing CRM

Using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software and strategy is vital to a successful B2B sales team. CRM software has become a major asset for many companies as it helps organize, integrate, and streamline customer management.

With more businesses offering remote or hybrid work options, keeping up with customers has begun to rely heavily on the successful use of CRM software. While using a CRM is great once a lead has come into the pipeline, there is value in developing a pre-CRM strategy.

To learn more about the function of pre-CRM strategy and the usage of a marketing CRM, keep reading or use the links below to jump ahead:

What Does Pre-CRM Mean?

Traditional vs Modern CRM

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Tracking website activity and importing potential customer data into a CRM is usually the first step in creating a relationship. Although, there are probably more website visitors than contacts in your CRM. Not every prospect is going to input data into your web forms, so there needs to be a strategy in place to anticipate prospects who may eventually enter the sales pipeline.

Having a Pre-CRM strategy means your departments are working to improve initial customer interactions to begin developing a strong business relationship. Before companies were able to have a strong digital presence, salespeople needed to greet customers and have organic interactions to cultivate their pipeline.

By taking these old-school tactics and adapting them to fit your company’s digital presence, the pre-CRM stage can help present your company to prospects. Engaging potential customers before they’ve been entered into your CRM can be tough. Utilizing social media, email marketing, and a website can help introduce your brand before customers are familiar with your team.

Most importantly, taking advantage of the Pre-CRM stage means your company is using its marketing and digital presence to help create product awareness. Many customers only become active when they have a need, but engagement can start before then. Marketing should focus on sharing what your company offers while allowing customers to interact with your content.

Reaching Out to Pre-CRM Leads

How do you reach out to customers before you know their needs, or before they understand what your company specializes in? Finding ways to engage pre-CRM leads takes creativity, but the payoff can help boost your sales pipeline.

Thinking of it as similar to greeting customers in the offline world can help map out the best way for outreach. Find ways to humanize digital communication, like displaying employee profiles and making contact information readily available. Encourage engagement through chatbots, and utilize video features to showcase products and salespeople.

The goal of this outreach is to improve initial customer impressions. When your company is able to create a positive first touchpoint, prospects will be more inclined to continue engagement with the brand. This will help filter leads in your pipeline and CRM, which will help boost sales. 

What Is a CRM?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is software that can be used to manage your company’s relationships and interactions with clients and prospects. This technology helps streamline your business, grow your pipeline, and organize goals across departments.

A CRM can be used throughout the entire customer lifecycle, including marketing, sales, and customer service. This software stores prospect and customer information, which helps build out your database for maintaining relationships.

By keeping data all in one platform, your CRM can help make sure all of the necessary steps are being done to provide clients with quality service. It also allows your teams to track customer engagement, plan outreach, and identify future sales opportunities.

Many teams have turned to a remote or hybrid working environment, so utilizing a CRM can make a big difference in collaboration when employees are stationed across multiple locations. This software can also align your sales and marketing departments to tighten up the lead generation and nurturing process.

Along with creating more efficient workflow within departments, CRMs can integrate with other technology to streamline the sales process. Many CRMs have the ability to work with your current tech stack to free up time and resources for customer outreach. For example, Leadboxer integrates seamlessly with CRMs to improve lead-generation processes.

The CRM Cycle

CRM is a great strategy for improving the quality of your outreach, and in turn, creating stronger customer relationships. Rather than aiming to cast a wider net, successful customer management will help encourage repeat sales and brand loyalty.

There are seven stages within the CRM cycle, and each plays an important role in customer success. Walking clients through this journey will help fill your pipeline with quality prospects and increase sales.

The Pre-CRM stage begins with brand awareness and creating an environment that encourages customer engagement. Inputting a new lead into the CRM happens once your team has contact and basic information about the prospect. Log the details in your CRM and begin walking them to the next step in the cycle.

Once a prospect begins interacting with your brand, like clicking on an email link or filling out a web form, the nurturing process can begin. By using features in your CRM software, you can tag clients and track their engagement. This helps your sales team determine which leads are cold or warm.

Moving toward the sales opportunity happens once a lead schedules a sales call. This moves the customer from warm to hot. 

Your team should be tracking the movements of this client as they move through the sales funnel. Enter the details from the sales call to log the outcome in your CRM. This helps your team see which leads are actively working their way toward closing a deal.

A little over halfway through the cycle, the goal is to have hot leads converted into closed deals. Once the client says ‘yes’ to your sales pitch, you can consider them an active customer. 

However, the CRM cycle does not end here.

Next, delivery of your product or services should be scheduled. It’s important to create follow-up reminders to keep in touch with the customer as they begin using your product. This phase should also include gathering feedback and providing any additional training or information that the customer may need to be successful.

Instead of moving on to the next cold lead once a deal has been completed, try bringing your customers into the ‘upselling’ stage. If clients are happy with the product and experience they’ve had so far, pitching an upgrade in your services can help boost the overall sale. Engage with customers to see if there are any additional needs your team can help fill.

Lastly, the CRM cycle relies on continuity to cultivate strong customer relationships and promote lasting brand loyalty. Continue reaching out to current clients. 

Schedule regular check-ins and encourage feedback. These actions can help increase repeat purchases throughout the length of the business relationship.

The Benefits and Challenges of a Marketing CRM

CRM Strategy Enablement

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Implementing a CRM can play a huge role in the success of your marketing department. Since the goal of marketing is to create awareness and generate leads for the sales team, a CRM can help align the efforts of these departments.

By breaking down barriers to avoid organizational silos within your company, a CRM helps increase the flow of information between teams. This will improve the overall quality of customer service as your marketing campaigns direct qualified leads into the sales pipeline. 

As website visitors interact with content and email recipients click on links, a marketing CRM can help your team track these actions to qualify leads. By integrating with other technologies like lead generation software, the CRM increases conversions and campaign effectiveness.

While a CRM can be a huge asset to many companies, there are a few challenges to be aware of before implementing the software. For employees who are unfamiliar with the system, learning how to use a CRM effectively can be a daunting task. Provide extensive training to make sure your team is confident in the program.

Integration with tech stacks is a great benefit to using a CRM, but it is important to make sure the CRM you choose works with your current technology. Marketing campaigns can benefit from tracking customer engagement, and a marketing CRM can help organize this data. 

Key Takeaways

A Pre-CRM strategy can help humanize your company and begin nurturing leads before they have entered your pipeline. Use this strategy to create positive brand awareness with potential prospects. Encouraging early engagement will help drive customers to your business when they have a need for your product.

Utilizing a marketing CRM is a great way to create a communication flow between departments and increase campaign effectiveness. Tracking and tagging engagement from customers can help inform future marketing efforts and outreach for sales pitches. 

To see how Leadboxer can integrate with your CRM, click here for a free trial!

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Automated Lead Sales Intelligence Platforms

Automated Lead & Sales Intelligence Platforms: The Key to Successful Sales Strategies

Automated lead generation software is paving the way to success for B2B companies. These highly integrated platforms have continued to rise in popularity. For businesses who want to keep a competitive edge within their sales and marketing departments, lead generation software has become a necessity.

Diving deeper into the market trends and forecasts, several reports have closely inspected how lead generation and automated marketing will trend through 2029. Keep reading, or use the links below to explore these findings:

According to an Insight Partners study, the lead generation market was valued at 3,103.80 million USD in 2021. It is expected to see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.5%, and reach a value of 9,589.11 million USD by 2028.

The Global Lead Generation B2B Software Market Research Report 2022 shows that the lead generation market is split up into four areas. They are lead capture software, lead intelligence software, lead mining software, and lead scoring software. 

These sections each play a role in successfully generating and nurturing leads while saving companies time and valuable resources. 20% more sales opportunities are created when leads are properly nurtured. However, 65% of B2B companies have not established a process for lead nurturing.

Technology-driven processes are crucial for companies to identify quality leads. In fact, 44% of marketers are already using software like automated marketing for lead scoring.

On average, sales leads for B2B companies can cost between $31 and $60. Within six to nine months of utilizing lead management automation, companies can see a revenue boost of 10%. This software helps drive sales and increases (return on investment) ROI. 

Lead generation software continues to increase in popularity due to its flexibility, low maintenance, and resistance to corrosion. As businesses continue to grow within the digital space, this software helps companies remain competitive within their industries.

Forbes reports that 58% of business leaders see lead generation as a key challenge. Lead generation platforms like Leadboxer are instrumental in helping companies find qualified prospects to fill their pipeline. Through automation, data collection, and software integration, these platforms are able to improve processes across multiple departments.

Lead generation software has benefited from the advancement of technology, and it will continue to optimize its product performance. Integration between customer relationship management (CRM) and lead generation platforms is a step toward success.

52% of companies have already integrated their marketing software and CRM. 88% of marketers will use web analytics to continue improving their lead-generation strategies. Lead generation platforms like Leadboxer integrate with CRMs and other technology to provide quality leads and analyze data.

Lead generation priorities of marketers

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The Global Marketing Automation Market Analysis Report 2022 released by researchsandmarkets.com takes a closer look at the current environment for this software. The report finds the market was valued at 5.45 billion USD in 2021. As automated marketing software continues to gain traction among businesses, it is projected to reach 8.58 billion USD by 2026.

Due to the increased usage of these platforms, the market is expected to grow by 9.49% between 2022-2026. The report notes the advantages of using this software include improved efficiency, reduced staffing costs, and an overall increase in revenue. 

Cloud and On-Premise are the two studied segments of marketing automation deployment types. Cloud deployment was found to cover a market majority at 58%.

This report studied eight channels of marketing automation: 

  • lead nurturing
  • mobile application 
  • campaign management
  • inbound marketing
  • social media 
  • email
  • reporting/analytics 
  • other

Out of the channel categories, email marketing automation led the way with 17%. 

A Demand Gen Report found that 53% of marketing teams say that early-stage lead generation is most effective when done through email. With email automation pulling ahead of other channels, automated marketing software can help companies save time and resources in producing email campaigns. 

Across industry applications, it was observed that healthcare began utilizing marketing automation software strategies. This implementation has helped create consistent messaging and improved customer service. During 2022-2026, the use of marketing automation in healthcare is expected to grow by 12.5%.

As for regions, this report discovered that North America made up the largest share of marketing automation at 34.3%. Over the forecasted period of 2022-2026, Europe and North America are expected to be the largest markets. Due to a rise in mobile usage and increasing use of advertisement campaigns, the Asia Pacific is projected to be the fastest-growing market. 

How the COVID-19 Pandemic Shaped Automated Software

COVID-19 continues to show lasting effects on the way businesses handle sales outreach. With quick switches to digital communication as in-person meetings were canceled, many B2B companies had to adapt to a virtual environment.

58% of experts believe poor technology infrastructure led to businesses struggling to deal with the pandemic.  The Global Marketing Automation Market Analysis Report 2022 suggests that the pandemic highlighted the importance of marketing automation as companies made the switch to digital channels to keep in touch with customers.

Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are playing a significant role in the post-pandemic world. 50% of businesses plan to push forward with their AI strategies as they enter into post-COVID operations.

While the pandemic caused upheaval across all industries, it also helped drive innovation and advancement. 43.42% of B2B marketers plan to switch their in-person meeting budgets to digital efforts. 

By investing in automated marketing and lead generation software, B2B companies will be prepared to face a post-pandemic world. 

The Future of Lead Generation and Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation Valuable Features

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Lead generation software and B2B marketing automation is a growing markets. The Global Marketing Automation Market Analysis Report 2022 found several factors for these upward trends including higher social media usage and trending mobile marketing.

While many marketing budgets continue to shrink, a survey from Gartner finds 26.6% of Chief Marketing Officers plan to increase their spending on automated tools. Statista Research Department shows that 2.6 billion USD was spent on lead generation in the United States in 2019. This number is predicted to hit 3.2 billion USD by the end of 2023.

The demand for these tools continues to increase, but this market does face challenges as well. Cyber security and data quality issues were found to be impeding issues for market growth. The quick nature of social media and continued internet usage has posed security and compliance challenges for marketing teams.

Despite advancements in automated software, 40% of businesses find their marketing tools are outdated. This suggests companies are still working to find the best lead-generation platform for their needs. 

As the B2B industry continues to evolve within the digital sphere, lead generation and marketing automation will increase in marketing and sales departments. The content marketing platform is expected to grow the fastest between 2022-2026. Global Marketing Automation Market Analysis Report 2022 suggests it will increase at a CAGR of 17%

85% of marketers say their biggest focus from content marketing is lead generation. Research shows an emphasis on producing quality customer experiences and a growing need for analytics-based content will drive content marketing growth. 

AI integration, predictive analytics, and a focus on personalized marketing are contributing to the market increase.

The combination of AI and automation software is pushing businesses toward better customer service and creating stronger interactions with prospects. Lead generation platforms help target the correct customers to drive marketing efforts in the right direction.

Key Takeaways

Lead generation and marketing automation are paving the way for companies to save time and resources when filling the sales pipeline. 80% of marketers saw an increase in their leads after using marketing automation. 

Both markets continue to grow and are projected to rise to new levels by 2029. B2B companies will need to include lead generation platforms and automated marketing into their business strategies to remain competitive in their respective industries.

Marketing automation provides a huge boost in sales leads. Using this software for marketing campaigns can increase these numbers by 451%. Content marketing is used for lead generation by 80% of companies. It is expected to be the fastest-growing channel for automated marketing between 2022-2029.

Lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to push companies toward digital communication. Customer trends show that many prefer buying in a virtual space. These habits will most likely increase as social media marketing trends upward.

While lead generation and personalized outreach benefit from automated software, challenges with consumer privacy and data quality will continue to be part of the conversation. Salesforce found that 86% of consumers want more transparency regarding the usage of their personal information. 

Investing in highly integrated platforms like LeadBoxer will help departments utilize their existing tech stack to its full potential for lead generation, marketing automation, and customer management.

See what LeadBoxer can do for your business. Get your free trial today!

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16 Best WordPress Plugins for Business

16 Best WordPress Plugins for Business

Generating leads is a crucial part of building revenue for any business. This involves having a constant stream of new customers to nurture into repeat, loyal patrons. Your prospects are looking online for products and services to meet their needs and solve their problems. 

The lead generation process begins with your website, your company’s online presence. With more than 455 million websites built on and hosted by WordPress, chances are yours is too. WordPress is a solid website builder that offers easy customization and SEO-friendly items. 

If you use  WordPress, the many plugins can be overwhelming. Which ones are best for your business? Which ones will generate leads?

Below are the 16 best WordPress plugins for business – read on or use the following links to jump ahead:

1. WPForms

Your website must have a way for customers to reach you. WPForms allow you to easily create surveys, payment forms, order forms, contact forms, and subscription forms. With WPForms, you can access 300+ pre-built landing pages and forms and see valuable analytics like tracking and abandonment. 

2. MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights connects websites to Google Analytics which allows you to gather data on who visits your site and how they find it. With MonsterInsights, you can make the necessary changes to boost subscribers and traffic. 

3. All in One SEO

More than three million websites use All in One SEO. This plugin is SEO-friendly and offers all the tools you need to maximize your on-page SEO. With an SEO-maximized site, you’ll boost your website traffic, which increases revenue. 

4. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is the most widely-used plugin for boosting sales and email subscribers. It allows you to convert bounced website visitors into email subscribers. With hundreds of conversion templates, it is easy to build personalized campaigns. 

OptinMonster WordPress Plugin

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5. PushEngage

Push notifications allow you to send targeted announcements to website visitors. PushEngage plugin offers A/B testing, drip campaigns, tracking, segmentation, and opt-in reminders. 

6. Shared Counts

Social sharing effectively allows your customers to tell others about your company. With Shared Counts, you can add social sharing buttons to your website. Additionally, this plugin lets you see how many people shared your content. 

7. WPML

With the Internet connecting people worldwide, you likely have customers in different countries speaking various languages. WPML allows your business to create multilingual websites. 

8. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a must-have plugin for e-commerce businesses. More than five million websites and online stores use WooCommerce. WooCommerce offers a  WordPress ecosystem that includes hosting and themes.

WooCommerce WordPress Plugin

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9. Nextiva

Believe it or not, people do still contact you by phone. Nextiva’s plugin allows your business phone to have online faxing, unlimited calling, call routing, and more. 

10. Ahrefs

With Ahrefs, you can get an inside look into your competition. You’ll be able to see the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. Ahrefs also track your and the competition’s backlinks.

11. Smash Balloon

Smash Balloon boosts website engagement by sharing your new content. It offers plugins to many popular social networks. Smash Balloon allows you to customize your feed anywhere on your website. 

12. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo helps you get your content out there with the ability to connect with influencers and generate high-performing content. It also allows you to find trends in your industry. 

BuzzSumo WordPress Plugin

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13. WP Super Cache

With the speed of the Internet, customers are impatient. If your website takes too long to load, people will abandon your site and head to another. WP Super Cache improves your site’s speed by converting dynamic pages to static ones

14. Pure Chat

Having more than one way for customers to contact your company will help you retain them. In addition to contact forms, offering live chat with Pure Chat will allow customers to talk to someone at any time. With someone always available, your customers will be satisfied. 

15. MailChimp for WordPress

It is crucial to have an email list. MailChimp allows you to access customer emails from comments, contact forms, and opt-in pages. MailChimp is one of the best and easiest-to-use email platforms around. 

16. LeadBoxer

LeadBoxer tells you who visited your website. This notifies your sales team and lets them know who they need to reach out to. People who repeatedly visit and spend time on your site are interested in what you offer. 

LeadBoxer WordPress Plugin

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Leads are what generate sales for your business. One of the most important lead-generating options out there is a WordPress website. A website will ensure your company will be found online.

Having a website for your business is a great start. However, if you want to maximize the effectiveness of your website, you need customization. With these 16 WordPress plugins, you’ll be on the fast track to building your business. 

16 Best WordPress Plugins for Business Read More »

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Outlook Email Tracking Plugin: Customer Data Integration (CDI)

Tracking the online behavior of customers and prospects is becoming increasingly important. This helps to understand who’s visiting a website, why they’re there, and how the organization can contact them. While understanding website behavior is vital, tracking emails is also essential. That is where an email tracking plugin comes into play. These tools can attach to a user’s email provider and track who opens a message, when they do so, and much more. LeadBoxer is happy to introduce their new, sophisticated Outlook email tracking plugin. Before giving it a try, it is important to understand how it works and the benefits it provides for organizations.

Keep reading, or use the following links to “jump” ahead:

How Does the Outlook Email Tracking Add-In Work?

The LeadBoxer Outlook plugin is a feature that gives organizations better control of their email management process.

LeadBoxer outlook plugin

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The picture above is an example of how the tracking details appear in an Outlook account. The user can clearly see what email was opened, the time it was seen, and how many people viewed it.

This advanced tool can easily be downloaded to an Outlook account, giving instant access for improving lead generation efforts. That is not all; this sophisticated plugin also provides the following:

  • Link Tracking

Aside from tracking who opens emails and when the LeadBoxer Outlook plugin also tracks link behavior. The tool understands what links are clicked on, allowing a business to learn more about its customers or prospects.

When an email link is clicked, users of the plugin are able to see which exact link was chosen. This may help to paint a clearer picture of the customer’s needs.

  • Auto-On or Off Capabilities

Users may wish to employ the Outlook email tracking plugin only at certain times. Luckily, this advanced tool allows teams to do this with ease.

Users can simply switch the plugin on or off, giving them complete control. Users can also schedule the add-in feature to automatically turn on or off at set times. This customization is very convenient and can make an organization much more efficient.

  • Automatic Lead Scoring

While the Outlook plugin brings many benefits, it also effectively integrates with Leadboxer’s other valuable tools. When a customer or prospect opens an email, LeadBoxer will determine if that user is a qualified lead. If they are, LeadBoxer will give them a lead score.

This Outlook email tracking add-in helps sales teams understand more about their customers and where they are in the sales funnel. It can help organizations learn more about the user’s interests, making it possible to strategically target prospects for further engagement.

  • Website Activity

Those who integrate this plugin also have the ability to see the website behavior of their email users. When someone clicks on an email link, it will take them to the organization’s website. This advanced tool then tracks everything the user does on the site, providing many valuable insights.

What is even more beneficial is that LeadBoxer will remember the website and email behavior over long periods of time.

For example, let’s say someone clicks on an email link and looks at a few site pages. Years later, they go to that same website for more browsing. LeadBoxer will remember every detail of the online behavior from both instances.

The lead generation platform will then use those valuable insights to determine qualified leads and understand more about customers. If a user ever returns back to the same website, LeadBoxer will track every move. This can provide extremely valuable analytics to help power lead generation efforts.

Email Tracking Pixel

This Outlook plugin solution is all made possible thanks to something called an email tracking pixel. To learn more about how these can help lead generation efforts, read this post from LeadBoxer: How to Use an Email Tracking Pixel to Identify Sales Leads.

A tracking pixel usually comes in the form of a 1 pixel-by-1 pixel transparent image. This is then placed in the header, body, or footer of an email. When an email that contains the image is opened, the tracking pixel will load.

After the email has been seen, a message is sent to the server that indicates the action taken by the recipient. This is exactly how the process works for the LeadBoxer Outlook add-in. When the plugin is integrated, these tracking pixels are placed in every single email sent to customers.

how email open tracking works

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Benefits of Email Tracking

While estimates show there are currently 3.9 billion daily email users worldwide, having an effective email marketing strategy is imperative. As technology has advanced greatly over the years, email tracking services are becoming more popular.

Here are a few benefits of utilizing an email tracking solution:

  • Provides Context

Email tracking provides users with many insights regarding their customers and prospects. These can be used to boost outreach efforts and cater to the specific needs of the user. Learning which emails are opened, what’s clicked on, and how the user maneuvers around a site can provide tons of useful insights.

One example of this involves a customer that opens up an email multiple times in one day. In this case, the organization may reach out to this user to see if they need any assistance. Chances are, they may be highly interested in buying a product or learning more.

  • Saves Time

Some email users get annoyed if a business continues to send them emails, even if they have never opened up a single one. Email tracking allows organizations to better understand how successful their emails really are.

If a recipient did not open up the first, chances are they will not view the follow-up emails. When email tracking is used, businesses can make smarter decisions about who should be on their email list. These details can also help businesses determine if changes should be made in their email development process.

  • Team Benefits

The LeadBoxer Outlook plugin allows teams to work smarter than they ever have before. Instead of blindly sending emails to potential customers, this tool helps specify the best prospects to target.

A team within an organization may spend countless resources trying to reach potential customers. When they are unsuccessful, it can be difficult to understand the best course of action moving forward.

When email tracking software is integrated within a team, it provides more clarity on the success or failure of the group’s email strategy. If there is room for improvement, changes can be made to gain better results.

How Email Tracking Impacts Lead Generation

Lead generation is a hot topic for businesses around the globe. However, many businesses struggle to have the right strategy in place. That’s when leads drop and profits shrink.

Email tracking is geared towards powering lead generation efforts. It does this by providing valuable data for organizations to make faster and smarter decisions.

The LeadBoxer Outlook plugin offers a wide variety of details once a customer or prospect opens up an email.

detailed metrics of leadboxer outlook plugin

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Once a user opens up an email, details will then be displayed, similar to the graphic shown above. The information populated may include:

With all of this data at the fingertips of the user, targeting customers or prospects becomes that much easier. Businesses can use these detailed metrics to build ads, adjust marketing campaigns, and execute lead generation strategies.

  • Unlimited Emails

While some email tracking solutions limit the number of emails that can be tracked, that is not the case with LeadBoxer. Its Outlook plugin enables users to utilize this feature on each and every email they send. This means ample opportunities to gain more leads.

  • Unlimited Users

LeadBoxer’s email tracking Outlook solution provides users with an unlimited number of accounts. Whether an organization has two employees or two hundred, each and every person can utilize this plugin. This feature can also help drive more leads.

Installing the Outlook Plugin

LeadBoxer has made it extremely easy to integrate their email tracking plugin into an Outlook account.

To take advantage of this feature, be sure to follow these steps:

  1. Open Outlook, then download and install the add-in
  2. Restart the Outlook app, then click on the setting symbol
  3. Find your LeadBoxer dataset ID, then copy and paste it into the field that populates

Note: This number can be found in your signup email

how to integrate email tracking plugin into outlook

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Next, compose an email as you normally would, then click on the track email icon located near the top of the screen.

how to enable email tracking in outlook

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While LeadBoxer offers an exceptional email tracking plugin, they also provide many other incredible tools to help organizations succeed. Schedule a demo with LeadBoxer today to find the high-quality leads that drive business growth.

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Customer Data Security: What You Need to Know and How LeadBoxer Does it Better

“We guarantee 100% privacy. Your information will not be shared.” All businesses pursuing leads through emails try to reassure their clients of the security of their email services. However, customer data security is not only different from data privacy. It’s also more complex as it involves the collection and processing of data along with its protection from unauthorized sources.

Read on to learn about data collection and customer data security, why they are necessary, and how LeadBoxer is helping you keep your customers’ data secure or “jump ahead” to the following subtopics:

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Lead Generation and Data Collection

Lead generation is an integral part of the sales process, and identifying quality leads is important. LeadBoxer has been using data-driven lead qualification for a number of years.

By collecting and analyzing tracking data from websites and emails, platforms such as LeadBoxer help you generate, identify, and follow up on promising leads by providing you with an individual lead score. This method of quantifying makes it much easier for you to evaluate the quality of leads.

Modern email marketing is automated with the help of tools that can be integrated with major platforms such as Gmail and Outlook. Tools such as a tracking pixel may be used to uncover data on who has opened your emails, or clicked on a link, or started drafting a reply.

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Some popular email tracking plugins compatible with Outlook include those provided by HubSpot, ContactMonkey, SalesHandy, and Bananatag. LeadBoxer has integrated a new Outlook email tracking add-in to further enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your lead generation process.

Data may also be collected via other means, such as social media profiles, particularly LinkedIn. Intent data, including topic data and context data, is a useful up-and-coming indicator of a potential lead. Leads generally respond favorably to the first ones to approach them in a timely manner. That’s why LeadBoxer’s data collection and analysis tools are built for speed.

While data is not infallible, it highlights major trends and subsets in your potential leads. It also showcases which parts of your service are being more frequently used, which calls to action (CTAs) are working well, and which marketing strategies are most productive. In the modern, data-driven world, lead generation is more reliant on data collection than ever before.

With highly detailed data being collected on an unprecedented scale, customer data security is more important now than ever before.

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What is Customer Data Security and Why is it Necessary?

Customer data security is the process of securing data against all forms of unauthorized access and corruption. This is done using a variety of techniques, including encryption, secure cloud storage, designated channels for data transfer, and more. In the case of email security, databases containing email tracking and other information are secured to prevent data breaches.

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When a client hears the word “tracking”’ or approves of their data being collected and used by a business, they worry that their sensitive information might fall into the wrong hands. That’s because data can be misused in many ways.

If email data is made public, phishing and spamming agencies will begin harassing clients. Potentially even widening the data breach. Multiple online accounts can be compromised, intellectual property can be stolen or misappropriated. Or worse, data can be sold to the darker sides of society.

In order to prevent a data breach—which would lead to these scenarios—data security is necessary.

When talking about the importance of customer data security, trust is another aspect to consider. The entire sales process is based on building brand awareness and trust. A breach of security would cause a breach of trust, greatly hampering your brand image. In a study conducted by IBM in 2018, 78% of respondents in the US said a company’s ability to keep their data private was “extremely important.” You can also read about brand persona more.

Lastly, leaked data may be used by competitors in order to steal your clients, reversing all your hard work. Needless to say, data security is critical to the success of a data-reliant lead generation system.

Where Do Businesses Go Wrong?

  • Not Keeping Track of Access Permissions

Instances of multiple access permissions can cause confusion within an organization. In cases where employee turnover is high, former employees may still have access to data. All databases should be strictly monitored to reconfirm who has access. Access redundancy should be eliminated.

  • Not Being Aware of Internal Threats

In many cases, internal stakeholders may “betray” the company by initiating a data leak. It is important for an organization to assess and monitor those potential threats to customer data security. It is also important to educate all internal stakeholders about safe operating procedures, ensuring the security of emails, and the importance of keeping company and client data secure.

  • Not Knowing How to Respond to a Data Breach

Many organizations do not have the knowledge or experience to effectively react to a data breach. This aggravates the issue: it leaves data compromised for a longer period of time. And encourages data thieves to expose much more data than would normally be possible, painting the organization in a poor light.

In the event of a data breach:

  • Identify the source and the extent of the breach. When you have a proper security log, this task and improving security for the future will become easier.
  • Alert your breach task force so they begin work on containing the breach.
  • Test to ensure that the temporary fix is completely secure, and implement the fix on any similarly vulnerable systems.
  • Inform all concerned authorities and affected customers of the breach. Make sure you have complied with all applicable laws in this regard.
  • Work to recover customer trust and reduce the economic impact of the breach.
  • Not Accounting for Physical Factors

Software is not the only risk factor for data security. Companies should make sure that all hardware is protected against risks such as side-channel and Trojan attacks. They should further ensure that hardware is protected against environmental and physical hazards, to prevent data loss and corruption.

  • Not Caring or Knowing Enough About Customer Data Security

Hackers and others with malicious intent often pick out “easy” targets for attacks. When an organization doesn’t put in proper safeguards to protect customer data security, there may be backdoors into your network. Remove them as soon as possible.

Organizations should routinely scan all systems for malware that may create such weaknesses, and remove them. They should also routinely check for improper configurations and corrupted files that may create weaknesses in your network. It is also important to educate employees so that user errors are kept to a minimum.

Organizations with poor data security make themselves more vulnerable to multiple/consecutive attacks. Because hackers are more aware of the weaknesses in the system, and how to exploit them.

What are Good Personal Data Security Practices?

  • Maintaining Strong Passwords

Weak passwords are hackable, providing those with malicious intent an entry into the system. A strong password should include lowercase and uppercase letters, at least one numeral, and at least one permissible special character. Take care not to repeat passwords (often). If you have a poor memory or too many passwords, use a password manager.

  • Educate Yourself (and Others)

Make sure to know the best customer data security practices, to use them. And to help others in your professional network, particularly colleagues, with the process. It will help you and your organization.

  • Be Conscientious

Integrate good data practices into your daily life! Use a virtual private network (VPN) when possible. Don’t share secure data without checking for HTTPS or a security certificate. Don’t share sensitive information over public networks. And don’t leave yourself logged in to online accounts.

How LeadBoxer is Keeping Client Data Secure

  • GDPR Compliance

LeadBoxer understands the potential risks of a data breach, and endeavors to keep your clients’ data secure. In accordance with this ideal, LeadBoxer’s lead generation process is fully GDPR compliant. GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation, is a regulation agreed upon by the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union, and the European Commission. It applies to all companies who market to—and therefore collect the data of—citizens of the European Union, irrespective of where the company is based.

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The regulation is stringent, ensuring that companies are transparent in their data privacy policies, and do their best to maintain data security. According to a 2018 survey by DMA, 62% of UK respondents felt more comfortable sharing their data once these laws were in place. General public response to the regulation is positive, and LeadBoxer’s compliance reflects a commitment to data and email security.

  • Privacy Policy

LeadBoxer’s privacy policy is GDPR-compliant and highly transparent. Steps we take to ensure the security of all data, irrespective of origin, or function. While data security and privacy are not the same, LeadBoxer is striving to ensure that data security and data privacy are both ironclads.

LeadBoxer provides a digitally secure, automated solution for data-based lead generation. Security of emails ensures that you are getting genuine clients and that your clients are protected. Alongside providing a secure system for your sales team, LeadBoxer is committed to maintaining customer data security and email security for you and your prospects.

Customer Data Security: What You Need to Know and How LeadBoxer Does it Better Read More »

best sales ai tools

3 Ways AI Empowers Sales Enablement & 10 Sales AI Tools to Help

As a sales team manager, you want to see your reps improve their close rates. This means more growth for the company and a more enjoyable work experience for your employees. The secret to making it a reality? Equipping your department with tools driven by artificial intelligence (AI).

This guide takes a deep dive into what sales AI is, how it aids your team’s success and 10 of the best software options for the job. Read on or jump ahead to these sections:

What is Sales AI?

Your sales team deals with an immense amount of data, from prospects’ contact info, to what pages leads are visiting, to the number of emails they’ve received and opened. This is an essential part of sales enablement, or the process of supplying your team with info, tools, and training that help them close more deals.

This goldmine of data empowers your sales team by helping them identify, nurture, and convert more potential customers into clients. However, it’s impossible to make sense of it all without a little help.

That’s where artificial intelligence (AI) comes in. AI collects and processes mountains of data into actionable insights. This reduces the time reps spend on repetitive tasks or making unreliable judgments about prospects. It also increases close rates and the company’s profits.

3 Ways AI Improves Sales Enablement

If more leads for less effort is a priority for your business, you can’t afford to skip on AI-driven sales enablement. According to a study from Harvard Business Review, sales AI can increase leads by more than 50%, contribute to cost reductions of 40-60%, and reduce call times by 60-70%.

How exactly does it do this? There are three areas along your sales pipeline where AI can step in and optimize tasks.

  • It Identifies Ideal Leads

Gone are the days of having to search databases for possible leads, manually creating profiles in customer relations management (CRM) software, and deciding who to call or email first. AI turns what was once an imprecise, time-consuming task into an automated, data-driven process.

An AI-empowered sales tool can gather intelligence about the individuals and accounts actively engaging with your brand’s site or social media. It syncs and enriches their contact info and other details to your CRM platform, then analyzes each lead to determine which ones are most worth pursuing. This indication is often called a lead score, which is based on how closely an account matches your ideal customer profile and whether their behavior suggests an interest in your product.

  • It Automatically Nurtures Leads With Tailored Content

Your sales reps don’t have to guess which email or white paper leads are most interested in receiving. There are AI-backed software options that listen for signals from your prospects, such as clicking on a link, then emails them content relevant to that behavior.

  • It Tells You What Action Will Most Likely Convert a Lead

AI can do almost everything except hop on a call or step into a meeting with prospects. AI can, however, coach your sales team on how to close more deals. Some tools review the lead and offer insights on their communication styles and preferences. Other software options analyze the behaviors of sales reps, then provide feedback on what they can do to improve their close rate.

10 Top Tools for Sales AI

Here are the best software options to help you find the most qualified prospects, nurture them, and close the deal.

  • Identifying Leads

Need to pinpoint exactly who your team should focus on? These sales intelligence tools stand out from the pack.

1. LeadBoxer

top tool for sales AI

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The first step to increasing your sales is knowing exactly to who you should devote your time and energy. LeadBoxer finds that info on autopilot. The platform aggregates tons of identifying and behavioral data about prospects and then calculates a lead score illustrating how likely they are to buy. With this insight, reps don’t waste any time trying to woo the wrong people.

LeadBoxer’s clear, intuitive interface makes it easy to get started right out of the box. Within minutes, you can see exactly which companies are visiting your website, how long they stick around, and what pages they’re checking out.

2. HubSpot Sales

hubspot sales CRM with lead scoring capabilities

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If you’re looking for a tried-and-true CRM with lead scoring capabilities, check out HubSpot Sales. This lightweight tool tracks visitors to your website and creates a comprehensive profile on each one. You’ll be able to see who’s interested in your product with little to no effort.

HubSpot Sales has several flexible and affordable pricing options. Small business owners will love starting for free, getting used to the product, and growing their company before ever whipping out a credit card.

3. Everstring

everstring platform

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Everstring hangs its hat on intent data or an indicator that someone is interested in the solution provided by your company. For example, if an individual is actively researching project management tools, Everstring will let you know. The platform is great for finding and reaching out to leads that might not have heard about your product yet.

A common complaint is Everstring can be a little tough to learn. Fortunately, the company provides training to get you up to speed.

4. ZoomInfo

zoominfo supplies you with intent data

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Like Everstring, ZoomInfo supplies you with intent data about prospects, so you can know exactly who’s in the market for your products. ZoomInfo also automatically enriches contact info within your CRM, negating all the time reps would otherwise spend on confirming up-to-date email addresses or phone numbers.

Nurturing Leads

Lead nurturing software keeps your prospects engaged with content that’s perfect for them, freeing up more time for sales reps.

5. SharpSpring

sharpspring tool benefits your marketing and sales departments

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SharpSpring is a tool that benefits your marketing and sales departments. It combines CRM with marketing automation, like sending personalized emails after a lead completes a particular action. The visual builder, like the one pictured above, allows your marketing department to create, see, and optimize journeys that turn more prospects into buyers with less lift from your sales team.

At $550 per month for a small business, SharpSpring is a bit on the pricier side. Fortunately, there are month-to-month plans and no long-term contracts are required.

6. Keap

keap tool for sales AI

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Did your prospect book an appointment or download an ebook? Keap automatically follows-up with a personalized email sequence. In addition to lead nurturing features, the platform comes equipped with a CRM, lead capturing tools, invoicing, and payment processing. Plus, with plans starting at only $79 per month, it’s an affordable all-in-one option for many small businesses.

7. Marketo Engage

marketo engage platform

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Marketo has long been an industry heavyweight and for good reason. The platform can provide personalized experiences for leads both on and offline. Whether someone is checking in for a live event or visiting your site, Marketo Engage follows up with email campaigns tailored to their behavior. It also targets them with custom ads and even pop-up messages sent to their phone.

The downside? At a starting price of $1,000 per month, Marketo is almost exclusively a large enterprise solution.

Closing deals

When it comes to making the sale, nothing beats a personal touch from a rep. Even for the sales in the future. These platforms increase the odds that they say the right thing at the right time.

8. Gong

gong AI sales tool

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Gong gives you data-driven insight into what’s happening with the market, your leads, and your sales team. Most alluring are the people intelligence features, which analyze reps’ calls and offer suggestions about how they can close more deals based on the behavior of the department’s highest-performing members.

If you think AI can’t replace an in-person sales coach, think again. With Gong, some customers report increasing close rates by 30% and deal sizes by 33%.

9. Crystal

crystal personality assessment tool with AI

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Crystal gives you a peek inside what makes your prospects tick. Do they prefer a little chit chat before diving into business? Are they more of a straight shooter? With Crystal, there’s no need to guess. Reps can adapt their calls and emails to perfectly fit every lead’s personality, ensuring the best conversation possible.

10. Sugar Sell

powerful feature sugar hint

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Sugar Sell, a product of SugarCRM, comes equipped with a sneaky, powerful feature called Sugar Hint. Simply input a name and email into the software and then sit back as it gathers data from social media, news, and business sources.

Sugar analyzes this info before offering insights like when to contact the lead and what message to give them. The platform claims to increase your team’s productivity by over 30%.

Turbocharge Your Sales Team’s Success With AI

Knowing exactly what your prospects are thinking can massively accelerate your pipeline. Thanks to sales AI, you don’t need a psychic or crystal ball to do it.

Looking to implement your first AI-empowered sales tool? Consider one that finds leads and ranks them according to their likelihood to buy. A steady supply of top-notch prospects is the first step to increasing profits.

LeadBoxer can help. The platform analyzes who’s visiting your site, then assigns them a lead score. Get started today with a free trial.

3 Ways AI Empowers Sales Enablement & 10 Sales AI Tools to Help Read More »

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Lead Capture Pages 101: Importance, Strategies, and Software

If you spend more of your time scouring the internet for leads than actually closing deals, consider adding lead capture pages to your marketing strategy. With lead capture pages, you can automatically populate your CRM with fresh, highly qualified prospects, letting you spend more time connecting with people and less time combing through lead databases.

Best of all, lead capture pages can be implemented quickly. With the right software and strategies, you can get a lead capture page up, running, and working for your business in no time. Before you know it, you’ll find new leads for your business without lifting a finger.

What is a Lead Capture Page?

A lead capture page is an essential component of an inbound marketing strategy. Visitors usually land on the page after searching for business solutions or learning about your company through social media, blog posts, or search engines.

nutshell inbound marketing strategy

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A lead capture page attracts potential customers by offering a free resource, such as a white paper, report, or trial of a product. In exchange, the prospect fills out a short form with their contact information. This supplies your sales team with a continual source of leads.

The info collected from a lead capture page is then uploaded to your CRM, becoming the foundation of any contact record in your sales pipeline. Once you’ve identified a lead, lead intelligence software can uncover additional details about a prospect, analyze how engaged they are, and offer insights into how to best communicate with that person.

How Lead Capture Pages Help Sales Teams

Between calling clients and closing deals, your salespeople are busy enough. Lead capture pages give them the freedom to focus on these high-touch tasks and understand their prospects better.

Find qualified leads on autopilot

An efficient lead capture page reduces the time your salespeople would otherwise spend trawling LinkedIn or contact databases for leads. It also automatically begins the qualification process, as leads who express interest in your offerings are likely to be more receptive than cold leads to communications from your sales team.

Gain insight into prospects

Manual lead generation can’t compare to the level of contact enrichment that lead capture pages help provide. Many programs that build and run lead capture pages can take the data submitted and use it as a launchpad to uncover tons of other details about leads. This gives your sales reps a greater understanding of who they’re selling to.

Score and prioritize leads

If members of your sales team often wonder which leads they should prioritize over others, a lead capture page can help. When used in tandem with lead scoring software, you can analyze the online behavior of leads captured from a web form and more accurately predict which ones are likely to buy. That way, sales reps know exactly who to focus their energy on and who they can pass on.

15 Lead Capture Page Software Options

Many tools and sales artificial intelligence tools too with lead capture page functions come packed with additional features that help you get more from your leads. These software options usually fall under one of three categories:

  • Lead capture page software with lead intelligence and nurturing
  • CRMs with lead capture page builders
  • Landing page builders

Lead Capture Page Software with Lead Intelligence and Nurturing

1. LeadBoxer

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Out of the box, LeadBoxer can start identifying leads from forms, as well as IP addresses, email, and other touchpoints.

Pros:

  • Tracks leads’ online activity, including what web pages they visit on your website, how long they spend there, and what emails they click through
  • Creates a lead score to help your sales team prioritize prospects
  • Can identify website visitors who don’t complete a form

Cons:

  • Doesn’t include a CRM

Cost: LeadBoxer starts at $195 per month.

2. Leady

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Leady identifies and scores new leads based on their level of engagement. It includes features that help flesh out contact records, giving sales reps greater insight into who they’re selling to.

Pros:

  • Creates detailed profiles about people visiting your site so you can better segment leads for your sales team
  • Reveals where leads came from so you can zero in on the marketing strategies that work best
  • Tracks a lead’s activity with your website and email marketing, as well as all communications with your sales team

Cons:

  • Only downloads data once per day, so you can’t start nurturing new leads immediately
  • Basic plan only identifies 300 unique site visitors per month

Cost: Leady starts at $39 per month.

3. Autopilot

marketing automation software autopilot

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Autopilot is marketing automation software that can help you build lead capture pages, then nurture new leads on, well, autopilot.

Pros:

  • The interface allows you to visualize exactly how the customer journey will unfold
  • Can automate repetitive tasks like educating new subscribers, assigning leads to members of your sales team, and following up on new leads
  • Easy to build multiple drip campaigns tailored to lead segments

Cons:

  • Doesn’t come equipped with a CRM, so you’ll need to integrate it with a separate program
  • Integrates with a limited number of tools

Cost: Autopilot starts at $49 per month.

4. Act-On

web form builder act-on

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Act-On integrates with your CRM to help you attract, convert, nurture, and score leads with ease. Its web form builder tracks conversion rates and the source of form visits so you know which of your marketing efforts are working best.

Pros:

  • Automatically starts sending drip campaigns to leads
  • Comes with features that help score leads based on their website activity, so sales reps know their level of engagement
  • Easier to use than direct competitors like Marketo

Cons:

  • Incredibly feature-rich and on the pricier side, so it’s not feasible for many small and medium-sized businesses

Cost: Act-On starts at $900 per month.

5. Karta

marketing and sales solution from karta

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Karta was designed as the most complete marketing and sales solution on the market. It touches almost every aspect of the customer journey, from letting you build lead capture pages to scoring and prioritizing leads for your sales team.

Pros:

  • Includes lead tagging and scoring features
  • Doesn’t require integrations to manage all aspects of your business
  • Can create segmented campaigns that respond to specific behaviors, so you can start nurturing new leads automatically

Cons:

  • With so many features, Karta can sometimes feel clunky or unwieldy
  • Karta is newer to the market, so some kinks are still being ironed out

Cost: Karta starts at $99 per month.

CRMs with Lead Capture Page Builders

6. HubSpot

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HubSpot offers an all-in-one CRM and marketing platform that can build lead capture pages, organize leads, and prioritize them based on engagement.

Pros:

  • Comes with tools to build lead capture pages or embeddable forms with 1,000 form fields and a dozen different form types
  • Automatically uploads leads into the CRM and begins nurturing them with email campaigns
  • Gauges lead engagement, then prioritizes them in the CRM so salespeople know who to focus on

Cons:

  • While HubSpot CRM is free, you’ll likely need to invest in the sales and marketing bundle to get all the lead capture features you want

Cost: HubSpot Marketing Hub and Sales Hub start at $50 per month, while a bundle starts at $112.50 per month.

7. Pipedrive

marketing automations from pipedrive

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Pipedrive is a popular CRM known for working well right out of the box. With its web form builder, you can start capturing leads within minutes.

Pros:

  • New contacts in your CRM are automatically created from form submissions
  • Tracks all calls, emails, and contact activity for each lead
  • Pipedrive is so easy to use, you can train new users on it in just one day

Cons:

  • Doesn’t come equipped with predictive lead scoring, so you’ll need to integrate an additional tool if you want this feature
  • Limited marketing automation features compared to a CRM like HubSpot

Cost: Pipedrive starts at $12.50 per user per month.

8. Zoho CRM

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Zoho CRM, one of the top-rated CRMs available, comes packed with features like web forms for lead generation. The tool can meet your customers at every stage of their lifecycle, from marketing to customer support.

Pros:

  • Drag and drop web form builder makes it easy to launch lead capture pages in minutes
  • Multiple levels of billing is great for businesses that plan to scale up
  • The interface is so user-friendly, many customers claim not to need training before getting started

Cons:

  • Customers report that importing and exporting leads sometimes leads to corrupted files
  • Emails generated by Zoho CRM can sometimes get sent to leads’ spam or blocked entirely

Cost: Zoho CRM starts at $12 per user per month.

9. Agile CRM

lead capture form tool agile

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Like Zoho CRM, Agile CRM lets you manage marketing, sales, and customer service all in one platform, but with a slightly cheaper price tag.

Pros:

  • Lead capture forms automatically sync data with the CRM, which can then segment leads based on behavior and characteristics
  • Can help you find unknown email addresses for leads using only a lead’s name and their company’s website address
  • Allows you to purchase additional features without upgrading to the next subscription level

Cons:

  • Users find some of the marketing automation features buggy
  • Customer support can be inconsistent

Cost: Agile CRM starts at $8.99 per user per month.

10. Keap

marketing and sales processes from keap

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Keap is the solution for teams who want all of the marketing and sales processes within the same platform. From the moment you capture leads to the time they make a payment, Keap does it all.

Pros:

  • Automatically segments leads based on form answers, then nurtures them with emails and content based on certain behaviors and triggers
  • A great e-commerce business solution
  • Full range of marketing automation capabilities is notably strong

Cons:

  • Doesn’t work well at blocking spam form submissions
  • New users need significant training before they can expect to use the program efficiently

Cost: Keap starts at $79 per month.

Landing Page Builders

11. Instapage

landing page builder from instapage

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Instapage started as a dynamic landing page builder but has since transformed into an advertising conversion cloud. With Instapage, you have all the tools you need to optimize your advertising funnel and turn more leads into customers.

Pros:

  • Create an entire advertising funnel to attract visitors to your web forms, then convert them into leads
  • Automates the process of creating multiple landing pages that match the messaging of your social media or search engine ads
  • Drag and drop landing page builder creates stunning lead capture pages with no coding required

Cons:

  • Doesn’t integrate with email marketing platforms like ConvertKit, so you’ll need to find a workaround if you want to start automatically nurturing new leads from form submissions

Cost: Instapage starts at $149 per month.

12. Unbounce

lead capturing opportunities from unbounce

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Unbounce offers many of the same features as Instapage but at almost half the price. Small businesses that want to build unique lead capture pages to match all their ads will love Unbounce’s functionality and affordability.

Pros:

  • Drag and drop builder lets you collaborate with team members and make edits in real-time
  • Lets you create pop-ups and sticky bars for even more lead capturing opportunities
  • Uses A/B testing to automatically optimize pages for the best conversions

Cons:

  • The builder isn’t as intuitive as some of its competitors, so new users should expect a slight learning curve
  • Certain landing page features require additional coding

Cost: Unbounce starts at $79 per month.

13. Leadpages

lead generation tool leadpage

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Leadpages is a landing page builder and lead generation tool geared toward small business. It’s extremely easy to use and has almost no learning curve.

Pros:

  • Comes packed with templates so you can start capturing leads even faster
  • Has a feature that tells you exactly what you need to tweak on your landing page in order to increase your conversions
  • If you only want to build a few basic lead capture pages, Leadpages is the most affordable option

Cons:

  • Doesn’t integrate smoothly with software like Stripe, so if you want to add fields like coupon codes to your pages, you’ll have to find a workaround
  • The price of the fully functional version can be prohibitive for small businesses

Cost: Leadpages starts at $25 per month.

14. Landingi

landingi landing page creator

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Landingi is an affordable alternative to some of the bigger landing page builders in the industry but is just as easy to use.

Pros:

  • Customer service is receptive to user feedback and often implements suggestions into future upgrades
  • Includes a feature that tells you where site visitors came from, so you know which marketing efforts are leading to the most conversions.

Cons:

  • Not good for making several similar landing pages with tweaks only to certain blocks or modules
  • Less feature-rich than some of its competitors

Cost: Landingi starts at $29 per month.

15. Mailchimp

mailchimp all-in-one marketing platform

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Mailchimp has long since upgraded from an email marketing tool to an all-in-one marketing platform, offering features like a landing page builder, conversion rate tracking, and even free domains.

Pros:

  • Easy to integrate with almost any tool
  • Start building and hosting landing pages for freet
  • Its paid version is the most affordable of its competitors, making it ideal for small or new businesses

Cons:

  • A landing page builder isn’t nearly as dynamic as others on this list
  • Limited segmentation ability
  • No plugin with Spotify

Cost: Mailchimp’s paid plans start at $9.99 per month.

Tips for Creating an Optimized Lead Capture Page

Not all lead capture pages are created equal. To maximize your conversions, there are certain best practices you should keep in mind when designing a form.

Limit the fields in the lead form

Having too many fields, especially ones that feel irrelevant or invasive, can lead many visitors to navigate away before they finish completing the form. The quicker a visitor can enter their info, the more likely they are to convert.

For example, visitors who want to sign up for a free trial of LeadBoxer only have to enter their email address to get started.

lead form from leadboxer

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Even if they need to enter additional info before they can start using the program if feels less forced than a form that demands several lines of data upfront.

Compare that to this form, which requires visitors to fill out seven fields before they can access a report.

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Chances are, this company is losing out on valuable conversions because visitors aren’t ready to divulge that level of information.

Match the fields in the lead form to the offer

It doesn’t matter if it’s helpful for you to know a lead’s company or job title. If that info doesn’t relate to the gated resource you’re offering, it might reduce your conversion rate.

Check out this registration for a free webinar from Kinsta, a managed WordPress hosting provider, which only requires that attendees submit their name and email.

registration form from kinsta

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This is presumably so attendees can receive the link and a calendar reminder for the webinar. If Kinsta were to ask for less relevant information, such as company name or job title, visitors might be put off and leave the page before completing their registration.

Choose the right positioning for the lead form

There are three places you can position the lead capture form: above the fold, at the bottom of a page, or in a pop-up. Each has different benefits.

If the form is above the fold, that means you can see the form at the top of the page without having to scroll. This type of form is quick to grab a visitor’s attention and works best when used as a post-click landing page for a search engine or social media ad.

right positioning for the lead form

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Sometimes the form is positioned next to an image of the product. This serves as a visual reminder of what the visitor will receive in exchange for their info.

Another option is to position the form at the bottom of the page.

lead capture form from hubspot

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Visitors who read through all the info about your product or resource before submitting their info demonstrate a high level of engagement, which helps your sales team prioritize them.

Finally, you can put your lead capture form in a pop-up, as Instapage does for visitors who want to download a free guide.

pop-up capture form from instapage

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This method keeps visitors focused on the form, so they’re less likely to be distracted by other links or elements on the page before submitting their info.

Include your privacy policy

The info collected through lead capture pages is sensitive enough to qualify as personal data under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR, which regulates the personal data of all European Union residents, requires that you disclose how and why the data is collected, as well as how you handle the data and dispose of it.

In addition to including this disclosure in your existing privacy policy, you should also link to your privacy policy on the lead capture page. HubSpot, like many B2B companies, positions this link at the bottom of the form so that visitors are sure to see it before they submit their info.

privacy policy on display ob hubspot

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Aside from being a legal necessity, having your privacy policy on display shows your brand’s professionalism and commitment to the customer’s best interests.

Generate Leads on Autopilot for Your Sales Team

Your B2B marketing strategy is incomplete without a lead capture page. A lead capture page is the simplest way to find and qualify prospects for your sales team, who can then redirect their energy on nurturing leads and closing deals. In the long run, this relatively inexpensive strategy can end up generating significant revenue for your company.

However, even if you follow all the tips and best practices for creating an optimized lead capture page, the page only works as well as the software you pair it with. With the right software, you’ll never have another high-quality lead slip through the cracks because of pipeline mismanagement. Your best bet is to use a lead intelligence tool that can take the info you collect from lead capture pages and turn into actionable data that helps you prioritize leads and convert them into customers with ease.

Lead Capture Pages 101: Importance, Strategies, and Software Read More »

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Comparison: The 10 Best Sales Intelligence Tools

It’s no secret that to make sales, you need to know your individual prospects inside and out, from the size of their company to their most recent source of funding. However, gathering this data is time-consuming. Most sales reps are extremely busy communicating with their leads and working to close deals.

Meanwhile, sales intelligence tools automatically find and interpret this data so your reps don’t have to. With the right sales intelligence tools, your reps can focus more on delivering a better sales experience to prospective customers and less on data entry.

This guide offers an introduction to sales intelligence and a comparison of some of the most popular tools available. That is to say, with the right suite of tools, your team will be able to close more deals faster and with less data entry.

Keep reading or skip ahead to these sections:

What are Sales Intelligence Tools?

Sales intelligence involves gathering and analyzing information about prospective customers. As a result, sales reps can keep their pipelines filled with high-quality leads that are likely to close.

While a sales rep could do this manually by collecting data from social media, news outlets, lead capture pages, and company websites, in reality, the process is too time-consuming for this approach to be feasible.

That’s where sales intelligence tools come in. These tools automate the collection and interpretation of data, helping reps to:

  • Find potential new customers
  • Populate prospect records with details such as contact info, company size, and revenue
  • Track online behavior, including email clicks, website interactions, and search habits around the web
  • Qualify and rank leads according to their likelihood to buy
  • Update lead records so their data is always accurate
  • Gather relevant info from public sources like social media or news outlets

The Importance of Sales Intelligence

The main selling point for sales intelligence is its ability to streamline your workflow, therefore saving your team time and energy.

Moreover, without sales intelligence, reps can end up wasting time:

  • Searching for leads and accurate contact info
  • Pursuing leads with no real interest in buying
  • Passing up on prospects that actually want to hear from them

In short, with sales intelligence and sales AI, not only do reps know who they should contact, in addition, they’re already familiar with that company’s unique financial situation, any recent staffing changes, and other details that influence their pain points. As a result, reps can then refine their pitch to be sure they’re addressing each prospect’s most pressing needs.

The 10 Best Sales Intelligence Tools

1. LeadBoxer

sales intelligence tool leadboxer

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LeadBoxer helps you identify, track, and prioritize leads with ease.

Pros:

  • Identifies anonymous website visitors
  • Finds and fleshes out prospect profiles with contact info, company size, and other important details
  • Tracks website and email marketing behavior
  • Assigns contacts a lead score and helps prioritize prospects

Cons:

  • Doesn’t include intent data
  • Doesn’t gather insights from news outlets regarding recent company changes

Price: LeadBoxer’s basic plan starts at $195 per month.

2. ZoomInfo

zoominfo sales tool

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ZoomInfo keeps your lead database up-to-date with the most relevant and actionable details.

Pros:

  • Includes intent signals, so you know exactly which accounts are actively researching problems for which you provide solutions
  • Enriches contacts within your CRM, as a result, information like company size, funding, and technology use is always accurate

Cons:

  • Doesn’t score or help prioritize leads

Pricing: Contact ZoomInfo to find the right plan at the right price for your needs.

3. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

linkedin sales navigator

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LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps you find new leads and offers a ton of insight, for example, who they are and what makes them tick.

Pros:

  • Advanced search and lead recommendation options make it easier than ever to find prospects that fit your ideal customer profile
  • Integrates with your CRM so the leads you find are automatically saved as new contacts
  • Sends you alerts about job changes and other big shifts happening at target accounts

Cons:

  • Offers no insight into a lead’s behavior on your company’s website or around the web
  • Doesn’t help score or prioritize prospects

Pricing: LinkedIn Sales Navigator starts at $65 per month for a basic plan.

4. EverString

everstring business data tool

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EverString uses a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and human intelligence to monitor companies and give you the most comprehensive view of their current situation.

Pros:

  • Firmographics, news, intent data, and more certainly give you a 360-degree view of prospects
  • Tracks 20,000 intent signals per company, therefore giving you insight into who needs your product most
  • Automatically verifies contacts so you’re reaching out to the right person every time

Cons:

  • Requires significant training before you can use it efficiently
  • The cost can be prohibitive for smaller businesses

Pricing: EverString starts at $820 per month, so it is on the pricier side.

5. HubSpot Sales

hubspot lead searching tool

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HubSpot Sales is a CRM and lightweight sales intelligence tool all in one. As a result, making this a comprehensive solution for businesses on a tight budget.

Pros:

  • Tracks who visits your website in real-time so you can find new, qualified leads without actively searching
  • Prioritizes leads and scores them, showing reps who to reach out to first

Cons:

  • Doesn’t search for news or other insights that may impact your lead’s willingness to buy
  • Doesn’t automatically update or verify contact information

Pricing: HubSpot has a free version of its popular CRM, but Sales Hub starts at $50 per month.

6. Clearbit

sales contact database clearbit tool

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Much like ZoomInfo, Clearbit for sales is a contact database that updates your records with a range of insights.

Pros:

  • Includes a database of 200 million contacts at 20 million companies. So finding leads within your parameters is a breeze
  • Automatically enriches records with up-to-date contact and company information
  • Scores and routes leads to reps, who can strike while the iron is hot

Cons:

  • Doesn’t track website or search behavior
  • Some customers complain that Clearbit’s databases don’t update often enough

Pricing: Clearbit starts at $99 per month.

7. Adapt

lead builder tool adapt

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Adapt is one of the more lightweight and inexpensive tools on this list. However, it also offers limited features.

Pros:

  • The lead builder tool lets you build a list of new prospects in seconds using Adapt’s contact database
  • Chrome extension finds emails for leads on LinkedIn

Cons:

  • Doesn’t offer insights based on news or intent signals
  • Doesn’t score or prioritize leads

Pricing: There’s a free version, or you can choose a basic plan that allows more views and downloads. The basic plan is $39 per month.

8. InsideView

sales acceleration tool insideview

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InsideView integrates with your CRM to provide accurate information about target accounts and employees.

Pros:

  • Includes data like finances, recent news, and competitors, therefore giving you the clearest picture of who your lead is and what their pain points are
  • The “corporate family tree” feature shows you all the key players involved in a decision-making process. As a result, allowing you to build all the necessary connections to make a sale

Cons:

  • Doesn’t score or prioritize leads
  • CRM integrations can sometimes be buggy or clunky

Pricing: InsideView’s Sales Acceleration tool starts at $99 per user per month.

9. Lusha

lusha tool for connections with leads

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Lusha makes it easy to enrich and verify contact profiles. In other words, you can make faster and better connections with leads.

Pros:

  • Can be used as a Chrome extension to verify leads during your browse in LinkedIn
  • Automatically updates leads in Salesforce
  • Comes with a feature that scores and routes leads. As a result, reps always connect with the right prospects

Cons:

  • Customers complain that the phone numbers for leads are often incorrect.

Pricing: Lusha offers a free version of the tool. A basic plan starts at $23 per user per month.

10. UpLead

uplead sales process acceleration

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UpLead is similar to Adapt or ZoomInfo. For instance, you can find verified contact info for leads, therefore enriching the records in your CRM.

Pros:

  • Their database of 46 million contacts in 200+ countries makes it easy to get in touch with key players at target accounts
  • You can search for contacts and companies using over 50 different criteria. For example, location, management level, and revenue
  • Verifies email addresses in real-time, so you’re always getting the most accurate information right when you need it

Cons:

  • Revenue levels are broad. However, you can filter for revenue in a range of $1m-$10m, but not $1m-$5m
  • Smaller database size than its competitors

Pricing: UpLead offers a free version or a basic plan that starts at $99 per month.

Accelerate Your Sales Process With Sales Intelligence Tools

To build a strong relationship with your prospects, most importantly you need the most up-to-date information about their company and its needs. Sales intelligence tools and customer data software automate the collection and interpretation of this data, letting sales reps focus on moments of actual connection.

However, not all sales intelligence tools are created equal. Some excel at finding accurate contact information, while others stand out in their ability to gather intent data and relevant news from media outlets.

None of this data is helpful if you don’t know which leads are most worth focusing your efforts on. In the end, sales intelligence tools with lead scoring or prioritization features and demand generation marketing strategies are perhaps best able to accelerate your pipeline and close more deals.

LeadBoxer does exactly that. With website visitor identification, record enrichment, online behavior tracking, and lead scoring, LeadBoxer can find and prioritize prospects on autopilot, putting sales reps closer than ever to the actual sale. Get started with a free trial today.

Comparison: The 10 Best Sales Intelligence Tools Read More »

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The 12 Best Lead Nurturing Software Options for Your Business

Engaging with a sales rep may be the core of a B2B or high-ticket item buyer’s journey, but lead nurturing is what moves the process along. Without a personalized marketing experience filled with carefully timed emails and retargeted ads to keep you top of mind, many of your leads could stall out or fall through the cracks.

Lead nurturing software automates much of this process, letting your sales reps stay focused on high-touch connections. With lead nurturing software, you can deliver tailor-made emails, texts, and other content in response to any number of lead behaviors, all at scale.

Whether you’re a small business with a limited budget or enterprise-level operation, there’s a lead nurturing solution and demand generation marketing strategy that’s the right fit for you. We’ve compared the pros, cons, and costs of the 12 best lead nurturing software options to help get you started:

What is Lead Nurturing Software?

Lead nurturing software cultivates a relationship with your lead even when your sales reps are off the clock. It usually works closely with customer relationship management (CRM) tool to deliver personalized content to prospects after they exhibit certain behaviors, like downloading an ebook or clicking on a link in an email.

Features you’ll likely find in lead nurturing software include:

  • Email Automation – Automatically send emails to leads depending on where they are in the sales process, then move them in the pipeline based on how they respond to the email.
  • Lead Scoring – Assign leads a number value describing how engaged they are with the process so sales reps know who to focus their attention on.
  • Campaign Management – Create campaigns across different platforms to engage with leads wherever they are.
  • Personalization – Switch up the messaging, tone, or details of content based on a lead’s characteristics and preferences.
  • Lead Segmentation – Group leads according to their characteristics or behavior in order to deliver them the right content.

The 12 Best Lead Nurturing Software Options

Whether you want just one feature or all of them, chances are there’s a lead nurturing solution to suit your needs.

1. LeadBoxer

lead nurturing software option

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LeadBoxer primarily nurtures leads through its lead scoring technology. The software assigns each prospect a number expressing how likely they are to buy based upon their previous behavior and interaction with your brand. With this level of intel, sales reps know exactly who to direct their attention to so they can better engage with top prospects.

Pros:

  • Includes lead segmentation for easy grouping and filtering
  • Website and email tracking gives you insight into who to retarget and what content to serve them with
  • Can identify and track anonymous leads

Cons:

  • Doesn’t include email automation or drip campaigns
  • Doesn’t include campaign management

Cost: LeadBoxer starts at $195 per month and includes everything you need to track and score leads.

2. Nutshell

email campaigns

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Nutshell is first and foremost a CRM that manages your sales pipeline. However, it comes packed with tons of lead nurturing features like personalized email campaigns and automated messages for each stage of the sales process, making Nutshell a good fit for small businesses that need an all-in-one tool.

Pros:

  • Combines pipeline management with basic lead nurturing
  • Lean and intuitive interface
  • Includes reporting function that analyzes how well your lead nurturing activities are working

Cons:

  • Not as many automated marketing features as HubSpot or SharpSpring
  • Starter plans don’t include all email automation features

Cost: Nutshell’s plans start at $19 per user per month.

3. HubSpot

marketing automation feature

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When working together, HubSpot’s Marketing and Sales Hubs are a lead nurturing powerhouse. The marketing automation features allow you to create emails, content, offers, and outreach that are personalized for specific lead behavior. On the sales side of things, reps can schedule a series of tailor-made emails that land in a prospect’s inbox at exactly the right time.

Pros:

  • Includes tools to help create blog content, landing pages, and emails so every step of a lead’s journey is optimized
  • Know exactly how much you’re spending on each lead with ad ROI tracking
  • Tracks lead email activity to show you who is engaged and who isn’t

Cons:

  • If you want the full range of features, prepare to splurge on a bundle
  • Doesn’t identify anonymous website visitors with the same depth as LeadBoxer

Cost: HubSpot Marketing Hub and Sales Hub start at $50 per month, while a bundle starts at $112.50 per month.

4. SharpSpring

visual marketing automation builder

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If you’re looking for a tool that can do it all and then some, SharpSpring might be right up your alley. In addition to its many features, SharpSpring nurtures leads by sending carefully timed emails at every step of the sales process to keep your brand on a lead’s radar. However, it’s features like the visual marketing automation builder and VisitorID that really set SharpSpring apart.

Pros:

  • A CRM combined with marketing automation
  • Personalized emails that send in response to lead behavior
  • Create marketing automation workflows with a visual builder

Cons:

  • Might be too bulky for smaller businesses
  • The introductory cost is nearly five times more expensive than HubSpot’s comparable product

Cost: The smallest plan for small businesses starts at $550 per month.

5. Keap

successful marketing processes

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Keap starts working for you from the moment a lead fills out an info form. The program instantly segments leads into different groups and sends them carefully timed messages based on triggers like downloading an ebook or viewing a demo. All these features fit snuggly inside Keap’s CRM, so you can keep all your sales and marketing processes in one place.

Pros:

  • Combines lead capturing, nurturing, pipeline management, invoicing, and payment all in one platform
  • Plenty of features while still easy to use
  • Stellar support team

Cons:

  • Some Keap customers complain of emails going to spam
  • Has a tendency not to save work if the program freezes or logs out unexpectedly

Cost:     Keap starts at $79 per month.

6. Autopilot

personalized email journeys

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If you struggle to visualize exactly how a customer journey should unfold, Autopilot is the answer. Users rave about how easy it is to build multiple drip campaigns with a series of triggers for different lead segments. The program doesn’t come equipped with its own CRM, but offers several integrations so you can connect it with the tool of your choice.

Pros:

  • The visual builder makes creating personalized email journeys a breeze
  • Comes packed with templates to make your messaging shine
  • Easy to use and great customer service

Cons:

  • Integration with Salesforce and other CRMs can be clunky and not work as expected
  • Can be slow to load in your browser

Cost: Autopilot’s basic plan starts at $49 per month.

7. Act-On

marketing and sales tools

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Act-On is a lead nurturing solution that caters to larger enterprises. It integrates with almost any CRM on the market to help companies automate their email marketing, track website visitors and their activity, then score and prioritize leads so sales reps know who to prioritize. Best of all, it offers an easier to use interface than Marketo but with just as many features.

Pros:

  • Comes equipped with automated campaign templates that are easily customizable to suit your buyer journeys
  • Includes lead scoring and list segmentation options to help you target leads at various levels of engagement
  • Can create different lead scoring rules for different audience segments

Cons:

  • Lacks lead attribution functionality, so you can’t be sure how people arrived at your business
  • Act-On is so feature-rich that the learning curve may be too steep unless your team has someone committed to using the program full-time
  • Cost is likely prohibitive for many small and medium-sized businesses

Cost: Act-On starts at $900 per month.

8. Karta

lead behavior

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Karta is perhaps the closest you can get to an all-in-one marketing and sales solution. From building landing pages to lead tagging and scoring, the software includes so many features that it practically negates the need to integrate it with any other tools. With Karta you can also create automated emails based on certain lead behaviors, so lead nurturing happens even while you sleep.

Pros:

  • Create behavior-based automated emails for your leads
  • No more fumbling with integrations and potential points of failure to get all your business tasks completed
  • If you want to start a business from scratch, Karta has all the features and tools you need

Cons:

  • It takes a long time to learn how to use the program effectively
  • Documentation and video tutorials are still in their infancy

Cost: Karta starts at $99 per month.

9. Marketo Engage

successful email campaigns

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If you want to reach leads wherever they are – literally wherever – Marketo has you covered. Marketo manages ad experiences as well as email campaigns so that leads are targeted with the right content at the right time across any possible platform. Marketo can even deliver experiences through mobile push messages or after lead behavior on social media platforms.

Pros:

  • Create and schedule email campaigns based on lead behavior like web visits, social shares, or checking in for an in-person event
  • Assigns a lead score based on unlimited dimensions and characteristics so sales reps know who to contact and when
  • Engage leads through personalized ads and even mobile push messages

Cons:

  • Cost of entry can be prohibitively expensive for some
  • The interface feels dated and lacks the email design functions of many competitors

Cost: Marketo starts at around $1000 per month.

10. Pipedrive

automated email capabilities

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Pipedrive is the highest-rated lead nurturing software on Capterra, but it’s also one that is lightest on features. Its main function is a standard-issue CRM with some automated email capabilities built in, but this is par for the course with many CRMs in its class. If you want some basic lead nurturing nested directly into a familiar CRM, Pipedrive might be the right fit for you.

Pros:

  • Good if you want a CRM with lightweight lead nurturing features, like automated emails at each stage of the sales process
  • Gives a probability for how likely a lead will be won so reps know which accounts to prioritize

Cons:

  • Lack of LinkedIn integration can be a serious downside for B2B companies
  • No way to design unique campaigns based on lead behavior

Cost: With email automation features, Pipedrive starts at $25 per user per month.

11. EngageBay

pipeline management

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EngageBay’s all-in-one suite offers the best in marketing automation, pipeline management, and customer support. The holistic customer profiles let sales reps know what the appropriate follow-up activities are and whether or not now is the right time to sell or to offer more service.

Pros:

  • Create automated messages to nurture leads across SMS, social media, email, and the web
  • Equipped with lead scoring and prediction
  • Customer segmentation allows you to deliver personalized journeys

Cons:

  • Email templates aren’t as easy to use or dynamic as competitors
  • Design limitations when creating sign-up forms to attract leads

Cost: Start using EngageBay for free or get a basic contract for $9 per user per month.

12. SalesExec

customer support

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SalesExec is Clickpoint Software’s solution to lead nurturing for companies that rely on a high volume of calls to reach their ideal customers. It also comes equipped with the email automation features that are standard in most lead nurturing solutions.

Pros:

  • Offers SMS nurturing and call routing to make sure a lead always reaches the right rep
  • The interface is easy enough for a first-time CRM user to use
  • Customer support is prompt and highly attentive

Cons:

  • Limited integrations
  • Limited reporting functionality

Cost: SalesExec starts at $46 per user per month.

Nurture Your Leads On Autopilot

These days, it’s hard not to find a marketing tool or CRM that comes equipped with at least some lead nurturing features. Whether you want to deliver personalized email campaigns that delight, track your social selling index, or segment leads for easier prioritization, it’s never been easier to find a software solution that delivers it all within your budget.

If you want to keep your sales reps focused on the most promising prospects, take a look at LeadBoxer. LeadBoxer helps you nurture the most engaged leads with its automated lead scoring technology. Set dozens of dimensions to grade leads, from company size to website activity, so sales reps know exactly which prospects are ready to be turned into customers. Try it for free today.

The 12 Best Lead Nurturing Software Options for Your Business Read More »

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What is Lead Intelligence & Why Should You Care?

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.

What is Lead Intelligence?

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.

What is Lead Intelligence

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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.

Given that only 2% of website visitors fill out a form, being able to tap into that other 98% is a game-changer.

Contact information

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.

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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.

HubSpot Sales

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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.

VisitorTrack

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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.

Albacross

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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.

LeadSift Buzz

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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

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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

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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

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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.

What is Lead Intelligence & Why Should You Care? Read More »

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12 Pipedrive Integrations You Need To Be Using

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.

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Adlots

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.

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Leadfeeder vs Lead Forensics

Leadfeeder vs LeadForensics vs LeadBoxer

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:

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 Leadfeeder Features

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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.

Lead Forensics Features

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Lead Forensics allows companies to see their visitors in real-time. This solution can identify anonymous visitors and provide the company, contact information, demographics, search behavior, and financial data. To clarify, the goal in using these features is to “convert ready-to-buy prospects, before your competitors even get close.”

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:

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Lead Forensics Pricing

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.

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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.

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sales prospecting tools

30 Sales Prospecting Tools to Fill Your Pipeline

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.

In this guide, you’ll find:

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?

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2. Dux-Soup

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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.

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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.

7. LimeLeads

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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.

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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.

19. Crystal

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Price: Starts at $29/month

Free trial: No

What it’s all about:

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

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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.

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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.

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