What Comes After Lead Generation? 4 Things You Need to Do

image

image

You’ve generated a lead. Congrats!

What are you going to do with them?

Think about a lead like a person walking around your brick and mortar store. They’re interested (they walked in the door after all) but they haven’t picked anything up yet. They haven’t even approached the counter with something they like.

In order to get that sale you have to show them a bit of attention, right?

This article will give you four things you need to do after a lead is generated (apart from nurture them with email marketing automation, which you should already know!)  in order to maximize the possibility of them converting for a real world sale.

Customer service never hurt anybody.

Let’s get rolling!


What to Do After a Lead is Generated: Thank Them


Sending a thank you email is absolutely essential after your lead converts. They need to know that you received their content request and you need to make a good first impression.

Many businesses tend to gloss over the “thank you” page or email, considering it a negligible step in the online marketing sales funnel.

It’s not.

The “Thank You” page or email is like the handshake of a job interview. Someone has come in, interested in what you have to offer. In response to their interest you (like your grandfather taught you), look them dead in the eye, stick out your hand and give a firm shake of the hand, saying “it’s good to meet you” as you do.

You don’t open the door for them and then immediately turn your back, saying “oh, hi” over your shoulder as you walk back to your desk.

Here are a few recommendations for an optimized Thank You page or email:

  • Put time and energy into making it visually appealing (see Pardot below).
  • Don’t use the standard Thank You template that makes it look like your business hasn’t quite ventured out of 2002.
  • Offer further value with a related ebook or exclusive discount(make a seriously good first impression).
  • Introduce your business with a video or images of your primary customer service people (the people most likely to interact one-on-one with your lead)

When you meet a possible customer for the first time, you smile wide and introduce yourself. You do everything you can to make a good first impression.

Why would an online relationship be any different?

 

What to Do After a Lead is Generated: Push for a Secondary Conversion


The moments after someone has converted to become a lead are some of the “warmest” moments of their lead lifespan. You’re giving them something for free, and your online ads and landing pages have convinced them of how awesome you are and how much they have to gain from engaging with you.

Don’t waste this conversion afterglow! Instead, push for another.

Here’s an example of the download email Pardot sent me after I asked to download their guide to content creation:

Screen Shot 2014-07-30 at 2.24.41 PM.png

 

Their thank you email has a three-fold purpose message:

  • Firstly (as I wrote above) it’s essential that they thank me for downloading and provide the link to the content.
  • Secondly (and, arguably, more importantly) they prompt me to a demo of the Pardot marketing automation tool.
  • Thirdly (if I’m not quite prepared to demo their tool) they prompt me toward social engagement.

A social Follow or Like gives Pardot (and your company as well) a dynamic way to communicate with your leads. Social platforms give you a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week window of communication (something we forget, sometimes). They allow you to promote your content, or (in the case of Facebook) find new leads with Facebook Advertising’s “Friends of Fans” tool.

 

What to Do After a Lead is Generated: Segment Them


Segmenting your leads significantly increases the chance that they’ll convert in the long run. This is because you can communicate with them far more specifically – delivering the content they’re likely to want at the time they’re likely to want it.

For instance, let’s say you write a blog on several different primary subjects (landing pages, online advertising and CRM, let’s say). If you have an ebook for each of those subjects, you know that the people who download the landing page ebook are more interested in your landing page articles than they are in your CRM articles.

Knowing that, and delivering targeted content, increases your value to that lead (it also means you’re not spamming them with stuff they don’t care about). This increases trust, increases open rates, and increases the chance that they’ll click on your free demo prompt at the bottom of your email.

Another way to segment leads is by their demographic and lead information.

Here’s an example of a submit form that gets a solid amount of info:

Screen Shot 2014-07-30 at 2.43.38 PM.png

 

True, this amount of lead information may scare off some leads (they may not be willing to give their job title or company name) but those leads you do get will be more valuable.

A sales team who knows the main marketing issue of a lead will have far more to talk about when the call is made.

 

What to Do After a Lead is Generated: Act if they Unsubscribe


Occasionally your lead unsubscribes. It happens. We can cry about it or we can act.

An optimized “Goodbye” page is one of my favorite ways to do this.

When a lead unsubscribes from your email list, it’s not always because they’re uninterested in your business or products. It could just be because you’ve been spamming a bit too hard lately, they’re fed up of having a full email inbox each morning, or one of your most recent emails or pieces of content just wasn’t for them.

That’s where the personalized, optimized goodbye landing page comes in. Instead of the standard “You’ve been unsubscribed” page, try something a bit different.

Here’s the standard:

image

 

God that’s miserable.

Here what I recommend instead:

  • Get something out of it. Try something like “To help us improve our service, let us know if you have any comments as we’d love to get your insight!”
  • Or “What contributed to you leaving?” Offer three or four options like “email content no longer useful”, “too many emails”, “just felt like it”, etc)
  • Prompt a lesser conversion. Try something like “Don’t want to subscribe to our email list but still like us? Why not connect on Facebook or Twitter?” with social media icons
  • Use Humor: “We already miss you!”, “Time to get out the tub of icecream…”
  • “If you’re ever interested in re-subscribing, we’ll be here tossing discounts left and right!”

Personally, I find the humorous “Goodbye” page to be the most successful. While this isn’t because your lead will necessarily re-subscribe, it is incredibly effective at leaving them with a positive opinion of your business.

Remember that an unsubscribe is often done in anger, frustration or pique. Turning this emotion around at the last moment with an effective “Goodbye” page can be the difference between a future sale and a poor review, a word of mouth recommendation or a word of mouth criticism.

 

Conclusion


Hopefully that’s given you a few ideas about strategies you need to implement after your lead gives you their information. All these tips increase the chance of a good impression being made, and all but the optimized unsubscribe page increases the chance of a conversion.

Remember (specifically for the segmentation section) that you need to balance how much lead information you get out of your leads with how many leads you get. In other words, are you decreasing your lead generation rates by asking for too much, or are you increasing your lead conversion rates with that information that it’s worth it?

Further reading:

 

By James Scherer

wishpond

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *