Lead Capture Techniques: I Want You to Learn

Everybody wants more leads!

In this article, we will do our best to help you get more leads, by articulating several lead capture techniques and expertise, that we feel you probably are not using yet for your online business.

Here, I am going to share a few with you.

1. Lead Capture form

2. Footer Bar

3. Favorites

4. Text Messages

5. Chatbots

Having said that, shall we begin with..

1. Lead Capture Form

This is something you have probably seen a lot on the landing pages in the e-commerce world.

How Lead Capture Form works

1. A visitor comes to your site.
2. After 3-5 sec. an overlay appears.
3. The overlay message invites the visitor to register, subscribe, etc.
4. A cookie is set, so that the overlay does not reappear again for the visitor.
5. Should integrate directly into your CRM system.

Basically, it launches when a visitor enters your website. There is a little delay of approximately 3 – 5 seconds before an overlay pops up.

At this moment, the background gets slightly faded, and a special short message pops up; this is usually an invitation. It could invite the visitor to sign up for the newsletter, register for the site, or something else.

The visitor has an opportunity to put in their email, name, and answer one or two questions; then they continue forward. Whether they sign up or not, we set a browser cookie; this cookie allows your site to remember information, such as an item that has been added to purchase.

Accordingly, the Lead Capture Form will not keep popping up repeatedly. Of course, your ideal scenario is that you submit this contact information directly into your CRM system, whichever one you use.

Now, someone might ask, doesn’t that bother people?

Because, I don’t want to do anything that annoys my site visitors.

My practical answer is that we have been conducting an A/B test.

We found that there was actually no significant change in the bounce rate.

Bounce Rate is when a visitor enters your site then leaves immediately, without continuing further into the site.

In this particular test, visitors’ subscription rates increased, almost doubled, and their bounce rate did not dramatically change. Thus, adding the pop up simply increased signups on their newsletter.

Take Notice: if you are going to implement the best practices, you have to perform your own testing. Do not just relax, because one test had a positive impact.

Your site could be a different situation.

Best Practice

• Always perform your own test.
• Remember, give them a reason to act.
• Keep the message simple.
• Follow up with a relevant “thank you email”

Ask yourself, what is it for me?

“Me,” being them, not you.

Do not forget to keep it simple, do not enforce them to read a lot.

Remember: when you put that message, give your visitors a good reason to sign up. People don’t just give away their email addresses.

Motivate their interest with a reward, like get a coupon, sign up now and get some benefits that you can give them.

Do not just use the site as part of the feedback, but make sure you’ve got a follow up email as well, that sends back to them. A “thank you mail” that has more information. You should let them know what they’re going to start benefiting from you.

Clearly, all online stores and businesses desire for more visitors, but this is not the whole story. The most important factor is the percentage of your total online store visitors who convert into buying customers. This is called the conversion rate.

Measuring Conversion

The ideal indicator to measure the conversion rate is how many visitors did sign up?

To do that effectively, you are going to implement tracking tool in your analytics. How many times the Lead Capture Form has been viewed and how many times visitors have filled out the form. That does require a little of extra tracking code.

I recommend Google Analytics for you.

Google Analytics

Though there are plenty of Analytic Tools available for free, Google Analytics is what most online stores are using for this type of tracking. You need to make sure that you have the Event Tracking associated with those analytics.

When the Lead Capture Form shows, we get an Event, when a visitor fills out the form, we get a completion event, or hit the submit button, that is a Conversion Event. You can then check the rate and track it as well.

Make sure, as you run the test, that you have the conversion measurement implemented. To find out, are you getting more subscribers, and are they coming from the Lead Capture Form or is it coming from some completely separate effort?

Best Practices to Consider for Mobile

When we think about the biggest differences of mobile devices, definitely, a scroll Lead Capture Form is not a good idea. Here, you must keep it short and simple.

The lead capture form cannot be full of many fields that visitors have to fill out.

Typically, you can add just one field, just email address if possible. You might have other questions that you want to ask your visitors. You may do so but keep it three or less, so your visitors do not need to scroll on mobile.

2. The Footer Bar

The Footer Bar works on a site by simply inserting a code that we anchor to the bottom of the page, so it is type of sticky bar.

Make sure that you attach the key links for communication opportunities.

How Footer Bar Works

1. A footer bar is attached to the bottom of a browser window so it is always visible.
2. Particularly helpful in long scroll mobile pages.
3. Lead generation pages would include key contact links, call now, email, chat, etc.

This is especially effective on mobile devices, where these pages are intended to score more.  The readers are not obliged to go to the top or to the bottom to find your phone number, or the contact button.

Keep an “Add to Cart” button there as the visitors look at a product detail page, they need you to take the key action that you want from them. At this step, make sure that you are focusing on these contact links, like call now, chat, or email.

We have seen considerable impact on just adding this footer to the site.

In our client test, we noticed an immediate conversion rate increase of 29% by emails, and 17% increase in total emails.

Best practices

• Small online store, so keep it simple.
• On mobile, focus on call and chat.
• Ensure that contact info is context sensitive.
• Link to the correct phone number based on the page they are currently viewing.
• Always perform your own test.

Chatting is also a habit people love to do on their phones. Having that link here too is a good idea. Also, make sure that you have a Conversion Tracking Tool, like Google Analytics, to track phone calls that come from your website in general.

3. Favorites

You might think of “Favorites” as a “Wish List”. Sometimes people call it “Creating a Portfolio”, different names for the same basic concept.

This is a way to let visitors save what they are looking at, so they can easily find it when they revisit your site.

How Favorites List Works

1. Visitor views a specific product or page on the site.
2. Clicks on a button to save that item to their Favorites.
3. Creates an account to be able to return and view the saved items later.
4. Advanced features include allowing notes and annotation about added items.

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Because of that, you are attracting the visitors back to the site. While bringing them back you are also capturing some contact information as they create these accounts.

When the visitors are looking at a specific product or item you are selling, there is a button on the page, but “Favorites” sometimes takes a heart shape.

Once more, when visitors do that the first time and request to create an account, where you capture an email address, keep that account form as simple as possible.

You may also integrate that sign-up process with social media sites, which can make it a little faster for them to connect.

Now, you have just created this account, and visitors will come back later where they can log in to your site, and at the same time, you are now building this customer profile about their interests.

Remember, a Favorites List and a Shopping Cart are completely different things.

You can connect Favorites with some of your sharing tools, and try to exploit that a little and be able to offer them the right items when you send them an email and see how you can connect better with them.

The general idea is to allow the visitors to save something and have them create an account. By doing so, you get that lead capture from the account creation.

After that, are there any trends you’re seeing, regarding how people are authenticating or how they prefer to have that account associated?

4. Messaging as a Channel

• 91% of mobile time is spent in messaging apps.
• 98% of text messages are read within two minutes.
• 20% of emails marketing messages are ever read.
• 50% of all smartphone users download zero apps per month.
• Half of buyers prefer texting to phone calls, and yet only 15% of sales agents do it, according to Forbes.
• Sales prospects who are sent text messages, convert at a rate of 40% higher than those who are not sent any text messages. “Velocity.”

It is about communicating with people the way that they do with each other. In our daily lives, we have barely answered the phone.

In most cases, we text each other. We like it so much that we spend 91% of our mobile time in messaging apps.

98% of those text messages you are sending are read within two minutes.

Compare that to the dwindling rates for opening an email, and only 20% of email marketing messages are ever read.

That also is a simpler path or a lower barrier path than a mobile app. The number of apps people are downloading has really shrunk dramatically to 50%. Most of us use fewer than 6 apps on a regular basis.

Definitely, those messages have to contain relevant information. As the proverb says, “Give to Gain.” Therefore, we should not just bombard users with marketing messages.

You should actually provide leads with information that they are looking for, and soliciting feedback from them that you are actually able to respond to and act accordingly.

For example, look at Homebuilder clients. Half of Homebuilders prefer texting to phone calls; but only a very small percentage of agents are actually using text as a main communication method.

Meaning that, if you are sales professional, who incorporates that in the sales process, you will get a competitive advantage, just because leads will be more receptive to your messages.

The Desire for Real-Time Experience

Real-Time Experience

• Device agnostic, app-less
• Fluid channel
• On-demand
• Personalized
• Relevant

In the past, people used to be comfortable going to websites to navigate for information and downloading apps. As we started to have things, like Siri and Alexa, as friends in our homes, we adapted ourselves to simply ask for information.

We have become quite spoiled and we really want to search anytime, anywhere, on our mobile devices and to get the information that’s relevant to us in bite-sized pieces.

5. Taking Advantage of AI Chatbots

Buyers Expect Chatbots

• 59% have talked to chatbots.
• 86% believe brands should use chatbots.
• 48% would take recommendations from a chatbot.
• 67% would make a purchase from a chatbot.
• 85% of customers’ service interactions by 2021 will involve the use of chatbot.
• Millennials will have $1.4T in purchase power by 2021.

Although this sounds too fancy, but over the last two years, sales and marketing teams have been using chatbots, and it’s been a total game changer.

They’ve used the chatbot to capture emails on their blog, qualify leads on their pricing page, up-sell to existing customers, and ask visitors why they’re here in the first place.

Recently, chatbots have gained even more superpowers.

First, you can replace your forms, with a click of a link, you can trigger a chatbot conversation.

So, replace those buttons or share out links. It’s super easy, and you don’t have to be technical expert at all.

Next, it has one-click answers.

Now, if you have a default set of answers that you want someone to give, they can see those and click on them, and it goes right to the next question instead of asking them to type out an open-ended response.

Also, depending on how a visitor answers a chatbot, you might want to classify them into ranks.

For example, small business, enterprise, and premium leads.

Additionally, you can create goals with the chatbot. When someone reaches that goal, i.e., they answered the chatbot in a certain way, they get automatically tagged with that classification; then you can create segments to follow up with those leads later.

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Summing Up

Just to recap how we get more and better leads using different techniques we have and can take advantage of.

Lead Capture Forms which prompts visitors for information that we can make use of.

Persistent Footers to put that important contact information in all those various ways that you can contact an organization on every page you can.

Utilize Favorites to give people ways to not only engage with you, but also flag what’s important to them and give you some insight into their preferences.

Take advantage of messaging as a channel so that we’re putting our information where people already are or where they’re already comfortable communicating and then we can make those channels even more responsive by chatbots.

Using AI Chatbots to do a lot of that information capture, qualification, and engagement that can happen anytime anywhere and as we mentioned in any language.