Archive for the ‘Lead Capture’ Category

Building Awesome Landing Pages with Unbounce and LoopFuse [Video]

Friday, September 27th, 2013

We had a great session earlier this week talking about landing pages, how to use Unbounce to create awesome ones, and then connecting all that into LoopFuse for automated follow up, lead scoring, etc.  Replay of the webinar below.   Enjoy!

We would love you to try out LoopFuse here.

To find out exactly what LoopFuse does, click here.

You can try Nearstream for social lead generation here.

To add LoopFuse to Salesforce.com, click here.

You can follow LoopFuse on Twitter here or join us on our Facebook fan page here.

How to Use Twitter Cards with Nearstream Social Prospecting for Better Engagement

Tuesday, July 30th, 2013

We posted previously about how you can use Twitter Cards and our LoopFuse marketing automation platform to combine social ads and lead capture.  Taking that a step further, you can use our Nearstream Social Campaigns with Twitter Cards to provide a richer content response plus a one-click sign up for the offer or promotion.

To get it all to work you’ll need to have access to Twitter Cards in your Twitter ads account.  Once you’ve got that simply add the link to the card to your response flights in Nearstream and when you see a demand signal, simply reply.

When the person decides to sign up or learn more with a simple click, you’ll get their contact information (including email address) just like they signed up using a form…but all done with a single click.  The process from there is as previously posted where you can use LoopFuse to do nurturing, scoring, integrate to Salesforce.com, etc.

We would love you to try out LoopFuse here.

To find out exactly what LoopFuse does, click here.

You can try Nearstream for social lead generation here.

To add LoopFuse to Salesforce.com, click here.

You can follow LoopFuse on Twitter here or join us on our Facebook fan page here.

The Path to Landing Page Genius [Video]

Friday, June 1st, 2012

We had a great time this week with the smart folks at on-line marketing agency Clever Zebo doing a webinar on landing pages including digging into what makes a great one, things to consider, and some great A/B testing examples.  Josh & I created a summary of our discussion as a follow up and we wanted to share it with everyone!

Take a few minutes and watch the video below that covers:

  • A deep dive into an A/B test that lifted conversions by 90%
  • The best call to action text for your buttons
  • How the images you use impact conversion rates
  • An easy way to create and test landing pages

We would love you to try out LoopFuse here.

To find out exactly what LoopFuse does, click here.

To add LoopFuse to Salesforce.com, click here.

You can follow LoopFuse on Twitter here or join us on our Facebook fan page here.

Should you accept personal email addresses on your sign up forms?

Friday, May 4th, 2012

In a word, yes.

In an on-demand, try before you buy world excluding an email address because it is from Gmail vs. a branded domain is a big mistake.  Why?

  1. People try products with personal email addresses be it for their company use or personal use.  The line between the two worlds continues to blur and excluding someone’s preferred method of managing engagement with you is just not smart.
  2. You can see who visits, the actions they take, and prioritize them appropriately for sales engagement with LoopFuse regardless of the type of email address.
  3. Lots of products have emerged to let you paint a true picture of someone from their email address. NimbleRapportive (now part of LinkedIn), Gist (now part of RIM), and even FullContact can give you a quick, on-demand view of someone’s true social profile.
  4. The barrier to get a branded email address is extremely low via products like GoogleApps so even if you think you are keeping out less than qualified leads, you aren’t.

What do you think?  What do you do at your company?

Since it’s Friday, let’s enjoy the Who summing this up with “Who Are You?”

Less Really Is More – Getting The Right Number of Fields on Your Form

Monday, April 2nd, 2012

Yes, we know it is tempting to continue adding all sorts of fields to the form you are creating because you want lots of information to help segment and prioritize your leads. But is that really the best way to design your landing pages for best click and response rates?  According to the folks over on the Marketing Experiments Blog, it is not.  They ran a series of tests around fields in forms and came up with some interesting data to reinforce that less really is more.  Enjoy!

We would love you to try out LoopFuse here.

To find out exactly what LoopFuse does, click here.

To add LoopFuse to Salesforce.com, click here.

You can follow LoopFuse on Twitter here or join us on our Facebook fan page here.

Connecting Unbounce landing pages to LoopFuse [Video]

Wednesday, March 28th, 2012

We were really excited when we rolled out support for Unbounce landing pages and wanted to share this quick video that shows exactly how to connect the two products.  Please note: this integration is only supported for paid Oneview accounts.

Unbounce + LoopFuse = Landing Page Awesomeness

Thursday, February 16th, 2012

We are very excited to announce that we now support Unbounce for landing pages.

We are always on the lookout for great functionality we can add to LoopFuse via direct integrations and landing pages are an essential element to on-line marketing efforts. Unbounce makes designing and launching landing pages dead simple plus they are a great company so adding them to the landing page options we support was a no brainer.

Connecting Unbounce to LoopFuse is pretty straightforward. Just place a bit of java script code on your Unbounce landing page and create a simple webhook to LoopFuse. Here are step by step instructions for connecting Unbounce to LoopFuse.

If you aren’t using Unbounce, go set up an account and try it for free. And don’t forget, we also support WordPress and Wufoo for forms and landing pages too.

Please note: this integration is only supported for paid Oneview accounts.

We would love you to try out LoopFuse here.

To find out exactly what LoopFuse does, click here.

To add LoopFuse to Salesforce.com, click here.

You can follow LoopFuse on Twitter here or join us on our Facebook fan page here.

4 Reasons Why LoopFuse Forms Are The Best Web-to-Lead Solution

Monday, November 28th, 2011

We’re always getting good questions from new users on the benefits of using LoopFuse in various ways. One question that seems to come up time to time is: “How do LoopFuse web forms differ from Salesforce.com’s Web-to-Lead feature?” Web-to-Lead and LoopFuse forms do share a lot of common functions, so I think that is where the initial confusion lies. LoopFuse forms can do everything Web-to-Lead does, such as capture data, return to a Thank You page, trigger an auto-response email, and assign registrants to a specific Salesforce.com campaign. There is quite a bit more, however, that LoopFuse forms can do for your Lead capture.

Here are a few ways that using LoopFuse can be better for capturing Leads on your website.
(more…)

4 Landing Page Designs for Better Lead Capture

Monday, September 26th, 2011

Landing pages designed for lead capture can help you determine the level of interest a visitor has as well as gather information about who they are.  Knowing when to ask for the right information makes all the difference in how often people are willing to fill out your forms.

Keep in mind that people are only willing to part with their contact information if you are willing to part with something relevant and valuable to them.  Be careful about when and where you put a form in front of a video, slide deck, or whitepaper.  Increasingly people expect access without giving up information so be confident that your content reinforces your value and give freely but be sure to have the proper balance between open access and form-based distribution.

We categorize landing pages for lead capture in the following four ways and suggest the fields for each one:

1. Minimal – use this format for newsletter signups, coupon promotion, etc. with the goal of capturing basic information from visitors.

  • Email address text field
  • Newsletter subscription check box
  • Choose interest from a drop down menu (could include case studies, best practices, events, etc.)

2. Light – use this format for webinar or content download forms to learn more about the people interested in the products or events you are promoting. Use fields found in the “Minimal” category as well as the following:

  • Text fields for first name/last name
  • A drop down menu to select Country
  • Company text field
  • Usage checkboxes to better understand their need and buying stage (research, evaluation, trial, production, etc.)
  • Company type drop down menu to help you segment the type of opportunity (consultant, end-user, etc.)
  • Contact me checkbox to give you a signal on who to follow up with immediately
  • A drop menu to select Role including both functional (sales, IT, etc.) and authority options (recommend, approve, etc.)

3. Medium – for your premium content you can ask for much more detailed information.  Use this type of landing page format for documentation beyond basic guides, tutorials, etc.  Those who desire this type of content are signaling more specific interest in your product or service. Use fields found in the “Minimal” and “Light” categories as well as some of the following:

  • Title
  • Phone
  • Address
  • City
  • State
  • Postal Code
  • Industry from a drop down menu to help you better categorize the inquiry and align it with internal expertise
  • Company size from a drop down using ranges (i.e., less than 20, 21-50, 51-100, etc.)

4. Heavy – use this form as above but you are adding specific questions related to budget, need, authority, and timing in an attempt to get a better understanding of where the opportunity is in the buying cycle.

  • Approved budget as a checkbox
  • Approved project as a checkbox
  • Timeframe to purchase from a drop down menu (less than 30 days, 60 days, none, etc.

So, there are the four different approaches to building landing pages for lead capture and suggested fields to include. You’ll need to mix and match based on your own goals and company objectives but, at a minimum, think about what type of form needs to be used for what type of content including where not to use them.

We would love you to try out LoopFuse here.

To find out exactly what LoopFuse does, click here.

You can follow LoopFuse on Twitter here or join us on our Facebook fan page here.

Increase prospect & lead capture rates … create an “Engagement Zone”

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

Organizations are employing a variety of digital sales and marketing tools, channels, content and practices to generate awareness and traffic to their web assets. The percentage of that traffic converted to contacts, prospects, leads and actual business is woeful.  Why is that, and what can we do? 

Marketing’s Expanding Complexity and Closer Role with Sales
Marketing has changed dramatically over the last 5 years, where prospects and customers need to be engaged on their terms with relevant content, engagement and respectful communication. Marketing’s role has also expanded and coexists more with sales than ever before, especially as 90% of all purchases are researched online and decision makers no longer want to talk to sales until they are 60-70% down the decision cycle.

The purchasing process has also changed significantly, and so must your ability to create and leverage your digital ‘assets’. Marketing must attract and move prospects much deeper into the funnel than ever before, intelligently monitoring and engaging them with easily accessible content and automating more self-service until they are ready to connect with sales or business development.

Missed Opportunity + Need for Funnel Management
The diagram below shows how a mix of digital and traditional marketing creates traffic to a company’s prime online asset, its ‘master’ website. Once the traffic has arrived (at the top of the sales and marketing funnel), today’s tools and techniques used to engage/capture/convert are limited and ineffective. The discipline of digital funnel management is foreign to most companies, but is essential to generate strong ROI from marketing investments. Generating 25%, 50% even 100+% more business from digital traffic is absolutely possible with intelligently placed content + innovative conversion tactics/tools (such as Loopfuse).

What Limitations with Today’s Online Conversion Strategies Do We Need to Overcome:

  • Few attempt to engage visitors/prospects at all stages of the funnel. Engaging only at the bottom (ACTION step) of the funnel via a phone number and Contact Us form misses 80% of the opportunity to capture/nurture prospects until ready to close.
  • Few automate the nurturing of prospects until they are qualified leads ready to be closed by sales, and most allow leads to slip through the net due to human mishandling.
  • Few effectively enable access and distribution of marketing content at the right stage of the decision cycle.
  • Most websites are ‘leaky’, losing prospects that would like to take a next step but are not ready to contact sales, and have no other available call to action or engagement step.

Create an “Engagement Zone”

One way to overcome these limitations is to create an “Engagement Zone’ that integrates content access, next steps, calls-to-action and marketing automation.  This zone is so much more than a ‘Contact Us’ form as it should include all the possible options for connecting with your company, with the prime intention of allowing a visitor to select a next step or piece of content that would enable them to identify themselves to you.  That is the lowest conversion stat of them all; 2-3% of websites earn the respect of a visitor so they identify themselves and become a contact.  Execute this effectively and a greater % of those contacts will be genuine and not [email protected].

Rather than try to explain in words what an engagement zone is, take a look at a couple of examples out in the real world.  Click on the “Take Action Now” orange button at http://www.mikewittenstein.com/ and see an engagement zone appear.  There are 7 menu options which provide ways for a visitor to take a next step and educate themselves more.  Another example is at http://www.banyancapital.com where the zone is accessed via the ”Quick Info Access” green menu option.  This one has 8 options for a visitor to engage.  Tying marketing automation behind this type of  engagement and capture solution ultimately creates more business out of the bottom of the funnel.  It connects with visitors, prospects and leads no matter where they are in the funnel, as it can be designed to deliver content at the appropriate funnel stage. For example, you could have a menu option called “Competitive Benchmark” for someone evaluating your product(s) or service(s).

Once you have your engagement zone in place, take the next step which really can supercharge your contact and lead generation …. engage people from any digital location, placing links to your zone directly in content delivered via:

  • Company Blog(s)
  • Thought Leadership
  • LinkedIn/Facebook
  • Feeder/Community Sites
  • Online Ads/Adwords
  • Emails/Texts/QR Codes (e.g. add links back to the zone from inside emails for next steps or additional content)
  • Links in Current Website (e.g. for a PDF download link on a product page, point back to the zone)
  • Links Inside Collateral

An important point to note here … by bringing a visitor/prospect/customer into your zone, they are able to see other engagement options and may well connect in additional ways, increasing the acceleration down your funnel.

The idea of an engagement zone makes sense in many ways, so consider designing one for your organization, and let me know the improvement in your capture and conversion stats!

Regards to all,
Andy McCartney
[email protected]