If you’re not generating leads on your website, your business will eventually run into some problems.

I get it. Your company might not have “get more leads” as a specific goal for 2018, but generating leads equates to around 66% of organizational goals, which is a statistic that speaks for itself.

A lot of marketers rely on multiple channels to acquire as many leads as possible, but in most cases, it’s not working as well as they’d like.

In today’s fast-moving world of business, you need a data-driven marketing strategy to maximize your ROI.

According to the B2B Marketers Community, finding high-quality leads are what B2B marketers struggle with the most!

There are a number of strategies and tactics you could apply to generate more leads fast, but if you’re a B2B marketer you know it’s the quality of your leads, not the quantity, that matters most.

Any lead generation strategy also implies that you have an E-mail sequence in place or at least some way of following up with the people who give you their contact information.

This is why having an Email marketing strategy in place is extremely important.

It enables you to nurture and engage your prospects, and continually stay top of mind.

But, to really stand out from the crowd you need to do something extra.

You need to create something that truly delights your visitors – something that people really want to get their hands on.

How can you do that?

In this article, we’re exploring 7 little-known ways you can generate massive amounts of leads.

We’ve scoured the web for some of the most creative and innovative tactics to help you reach your goals – and compiled them in a neat little list for you to read.

We hope this will give you a few ideas of what you can do yourself to get more high-quality leads and generate more business.

Ready to dive in? Let’s go…

#1 – Exit Intent Popups

So, what’s special here is that Patel uses geo-targeting, dynamically changing the city he mentions in his headline to where you’re currently located.

In my case, it’s Stockholm.

Geo-targeting can be a little unstable sometimes depending on the provider you choose.

If you want to do this on your own site, make sure to keep an eye out for unexpected results, because you don’t want it to display “Bangladesh” when someone is actually browsing from New York.

Neil Patel is doing this in an Exit Intent Popup, but it could also be used on any landing page.

#2 – Generate Leads from Youtube Videos

Video is one of the most effective marketing tactics currently out there.

The brain can interpret visual elements 60,000 times faster than text, and you could increase your conversion by 80%, just by adding a video to your landing page.

What if I told you that you could generate leads from your own embedded videos, on your website?

If a user is watching a live demo of your product, you know they’re interested and engaged. This also means it’s also a perfect time to display a Conversion Widget, asking them to take the next step.

Interested in collecting leads from your video viewers? This is currently an experimental feature for Triggerbee but click here to book a personal demo and gain early access to this powerful  marketing feature.

#3 – Membership sites

Thousands of membership sites are scattered across the web. Whether it be niched forums or full-blown social networks, most people like the idea of being a part of something bigger than themselves.

If you can tap into people’s urge to fit in with the crowd, you’ll soon notice it’s one of our most primal instincts.

The guys and girls over at digitalmarketer.com know a thing or two about marketing. I mean, it’s not only run by marketing pros but built with and for the same people in mind.

To get in, you actually have to fill out an application, and they’ve made it a truly remarkable experience by making you feel explicitly chosen when you get that last e-mail from Ryan Deiss who tells you that you’re accepted.

Disclaimer: It’s actually a paid membership, so everybody is “in” if they’re willing to pay the membership fee – which you are prompted to do right after you get accepted.

Nonetheless, it’s still a great marketing tactic which I believe works very well.

They combine the use of social proof and authority to make you want it even before you’ve ever typed in your contact information.

Go check it out at digitalmarketer.com

How you can use it:

Any type of content that is locked behind a login could be considered “Member only”-content – thus making a small portion of your website a membership area.

You can utilise this by creating unique content which you only send out to your users, or perhaps even clients.

By producing unique content for your “members”, you impart a feeling of exclusivity and make them feel very special and privileged.

#4 – Conversational forms

Forms are one of the few things that haven’t changed in many years. Sure, the styling has gotten better, but the functionality is roughly the same…. Until now.

At Triggerbee, we first heard about conversational forms in a presentation at one of Sweden’s largest digital conference – Webbdagarna.

Our initial reaction:

:O

It’s basically a script you add to your website to make your forms act like a chat module.

Instead of presenting all the form fields at once like a normal form does, it asks you a series of questions that allows you fill it out one field at a time.

It’s pretty neat, so go check it out.

How you can use it:

Replace your normal forms on your website with conversational forms to create a more interactive experience for your users.

#5 – Facebook Messenger Bots

Being able to generate leads with Facebook Messenger is pretty new, but this means it’s a big opportunity.

It’s often the early days that generate the biggest results.

The first time I stumbled upon this was just a few months ago when Frank Kern posted on his Facebook page, saying:

“Hey, if anyone wants a downloadable PDF of how to get more clients fast, just register here”

Being the fanboy that I am, I immediately clicked the link thinking: “yass free stuff”.

Lo and behold, a minute later, Frank Kern sent me a message on Facebook Messenger where he asked me if I wanted to download his freedom multiplier book.

It was an automated message, of course, but it surely felt more accessible and easier than going to my inbox, confirming my submission, and then 5 minutes later receiving a link to the e-book.

Facebook Messenger could be a really powerful way to keep in touch with an audience that spends a lot of their time on their smartphone.

How:

Use it as a complementary tool or instead of a service like Mailchimp. Offer your audience a content upgrade or the usual E-book to get their information, but send it through Facebook Messenger instead.

But wait, why smartphone?

When you’re sending someone a message on their smartphone, a chat bubble appears on one side of the screen with that person’s photo.

When you’re sending someone a Facebook message while on a computer, they only receive a message in the bottom right corner of the screen.

Considering our modern day behaviour, it’s much more powerful if you can tap into automated habits – and the messenger bubble is one of them. At least for the younger crowd.

Since the conversations on messenger mainly consist of short stabs of text, like “hey, whats up?” or “guess what I just did”, it’s most likely not a place where you can write long-form content.

If you can shorten it down to “Hey, here’s a new article. Wanna read it?”, you’ll probably do alright.

The first time Digitalmarketer.com tried a Facebook Messenger Bot, they saw a 400% ROI in the first week!

#6 – Quizzes for lead generation

Most people think long forms or long content is the ultimate fear of every person using the internet.

Especially when it comes to generating leads.

In fact, studies show that your conversion rate drops by about 25% for every field you add to a form.

What if someone told you, it all depends on the audience?

We’ll go out on a tangent here, but let’s say you’re opening up a steakhouse and you get to choose one feature or benefit to help you rise above all the other steakhouses in the area – or the world… What feature or benefit would you choose?

• Gold-plated silverware?
• Real unicorns serving BBQ spiked on their horns?
• Celebrity cooks?
• That you can be the only restaurant in the world allowed to serve Kobe Beef?

All of the above would surely drive a good crowd to any restaurant, but there’s one thing that actually would outmarket, outsell and outperform all of these answers combined:

A starving crowd.

If you could be the only restaurant in the world with a stomach-growling crowd, they would line up for miles even if you only served roadkill.

Luckily for personaltrainer.com, their main audience is that starving crowd. Literally.

Here’s the deal:

A personal trainer is probably one of the last resorts for many of us.

We try all kinds of diets or pills, and we read articles about foods that melts fat away, but we still don’t get the lasting results we desire.

That’s when we realise we need some help.

And this is when we are prepared to fill out the longest form in the world, as long as it helps us get to where we want to be.

#7 – Contests

It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book – but also one of the most effective.

Running a contest implies that you have something to give away, but that often solves itself if you have any good business partners or contacts within your industry.

Back in 2005 when jobline.com changed it’s name to monster.com,  offered Swedish students to pay off all of their student debt, they received over 276,000 leads within a couple of weeks.

One of our customers, Visauppskattning sells gifts for companies to give away to their employees. They ran a contest during Easter (which by the way is a very popular holiday here in Sweden, because, well… candy) where they gave away an easter egg full of chocolate to the one person that could motivate why they should win.

The result? Around 20 leads.

I know what you’re thinking…

“20 leads? That’s nothing!”

How about if you could generate well over $10k from those 20 leads?

Around 40% of the people who signed up for the contest later went on to make a purchase of at least $100, and a few even bought gifts for over $1,000!

This goes without saying – you don’t need a lot of leads to generate revenue. You just need the right kind of leads.

Running contests can be extremely efficient and lucrative, even if you probably won’t collect tens of thousands of leads like Monster did (unless you’re quite a big brand).

However, there are a few things you could do to supercharge your contests, and a great tactic is using a little urgency to make people act faster.

Adding a countdown clock to any of your popups or landing pages that you use to present your contest could increase signups by as much as 322%!

Conclusion

You’ve learned about 7 ways to generate leads, all which are very effective if done right.

Now you just need to find a strategy that works for you and your business, so don’t simply copy the examples mentioned above without giving it some extra thought.

Generating high-quality leads isn’t always about the tactic itself, but also brand recognition and authority in your space.

And last but not least, make sure to offer your visitors something relevant! If you don’t, someone else surely will.

It’s the holy grail of online marketing.

It lets you do almost anything faster, better, and more efficient.

Not only could it make you a greater marketer or salesperson, it also enables you to:

• Get closer to your customers
• Segment email lists
• Automate CRM entries
• Keep prospect information updated
• Track marketing campaigns that span over several channels
• Keep a close relationship with your customers, even when you don’t have the time for it
• Not spend time on boring stuff (like segmenting lists, ugh)
  

Marketing Automation allows virtually any business to grow faster with fewer resources.

Yet, some people talk about it as if it’s just another buzzword, destined to be dumped by the side of the road and soon forgotten.

Let’s take a look at this trend report from Google:

Marketing automation has been trending for almost 10 years! That’s a long lifespan for a buzzword if you ask me.

But why?

Probably because it solves a need that has been around for centuries…

Personalization.

Here’s why it matters:

People are more interested in themselves than anything else in the world, and there are studies that back this up. Let’s see what science says about it…

What science says about personalization

Researchers from Harvard University (The Neuroscience and Social Cognitive lab) conducted two fMRI-studies where they asked 195 participants to…

1. Talk about themselves and their own personality traits
2. Talk about other people and their personal traits

The researchers then compared the difference in neural activity between the self-focused answers and the answers focused on other people.

Unsurprisingly, the prefrontal cortex – an area previously known to be associated with self-thought – had an increase in activity while the participants talked about themselves and their own traits.

But on closer investigation, they discovered something more…

An increase of activity in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), and the ventral tegmental area of the brain. Both parts of the dopamine system often referred to as: “the reward system”.

Dopamine is a feel-good hormone that is released when you eat great food, have sex, or after a great workout.

It was previously unknown that self-thought was closely linked to the dopamine system.

But, the subjects in the room were alone in this experiment. They didn’t know if anyone actually listened to what they said.

So, the researchers wanted another experiment.

This time, the participants were asked to bring a friend or relative with them. The researchers then divided them into two groups:

• The first group was told their responses would be shared with their friend or relative.
• The second group was told their responses would be held private, never to be seen by anyone.

The result?

The reward system for the subjects that were told their responses would be shared, lit up like a Christmas tree when they answered questions about themselves.

The second group had a slight increase in neural activity, but nowhere near the first group.

In other words… We love ourselves.

It’s our favourite subject of all time, and with the help of marketing automation you can maintain a 1:1-communication with your customers or website visitors, from when you’re just starting out, to when you’re as big as Amazon.

And, it allows you to tailor almost any of your marketing activities to the individual needs of your audience – ensuring you always present an offer they’re interested in.

However…

There’s a flipside to it that most don’t mention.

There’s actually a few areas of your business that you shouldn’t automate.

Not only will these things stump your growth, but potentially actually hurt your business.

Why?

Because if you go all-in, fully automating these 3 areas, your users and visitors experience can go south really quickly.

Let’s dive in.

#1 – Don’t automate customer support

Back when I still lived with my parents, over 10 years ago, I remember listening to my mother talking to the support of our landline provider – a company called Telia.

She was always frustrated when she encountered a problem because of one simple reason…

Their automated customer support.

When you called in, you spoke to a robot who would ask questions. Depending on your answer, it would connect you with the corresponding department.

Here’s how it would usually play out:

Telia robot: “Welcome to Telia, how may I help you? Please state your question now.”

Mom: “I want to talk to the billing department for landline phone services”

Telia robot: “I will connect you to a support agent for our broadband, say “NO” if you want to start over”

Mom: “No! Billing – BI-LL-ING”

Telia robot: “Welcome to Telia, how may I help you?”

Mom: “Billing”

Telia robot: “I will connect you to a support agent for installing fiber on Mars”

Mom: “BILLING, LET ME SPEAK WITH BILLLLLIIIINNGGGGG”

I know what you’re thinking…

“Yeah, but that was 10 years ago. Now A.I’s are much better at speech recognition, and some can even sense the tone of voice (irritated, happy, angry, etc).”

And, that’s true.

But… just because you can doesn’t mean you always should, and here’s why:

People want to speak with other people.

We’re not selling to companies or machines, we’re still selling to people IN those companies.

Sure, a bot can understand requests to a certain extent, but it can’t read between the lines or understand the context like your best support agents can.

Here are a few ways you can automate your customer support without going overboard:

1. Handling of support tickets

Assign your support agents to specific areas. That way whenever a new ticket is created within that area, it will be immediately sent to the right person. You can do this with a service like Zendesk.

2. Use LiveChat

Website chat allows you to streamline and speed up support services, especially if you can automate the first welcome message to help initiate a conversation.

While a fully automated chat is not a great idea, having a human ready to answer any incoming requests will make chat one of the best additions you’ll ever add.

Triggerbee integrates seamlessly with LiveChat. You can see who chatted, as well as get the full transcript so the whole team can review the conversation. Check this out:

3. Create a FAQ

A FAQ is essential to any business where you might receive a lot of questions about your service or product.

If you’re just starting out, you’ll soon see that many of your customers have similar problems and ask the same questions. A FAQ eliminates the need of repeatedly sending out the same answers.

#2 – Don’t automate your whole sales funnel

Don’t get me wrong, we’re all about automation here at Triggerbee. But, it’s important to know when to step in and how to help your prospects or customers.

For example, we have a demo request automation that looks like this:

This is only one automation, and things can easily get out of hand if you don’t keep an eye open.

In the first step, we send the lead to a list in MailChimp and create a new deal in Pipedrive, our CRM system.

Based on whether the visitor requests a demo from our Swedish or English site, we update a field in Mailchimp with the respective language for future communications.

After that, we send out a personalized email invitation, prompting them to suggest a time and date for the demo in the coming week.

For us, the response rate for this email is quite high– around 90% or so – but what if someone drops off at this point?

Sure, sending out a bunch of reminders could work, however…

We always keep an eye on incoming responses and make sure that someone from our team steps in and follows up with the person if they haven’t responded to the demo invite.

In our case, we can just look up the contact information from the lead in Triggerbee and forward it to someone on our team.

Check it out:

Just like we mentioned earlier, people want to talk with other people, and your customers want to talk about how your product or service can help them grow their business.

Creating more leads is one of the top priorities for companies, just look at this graph:

And while there’s nothing wrong with creating a sales funnel to send your sales through the roof, you’ll soon see your results decline if you don’t know when to step in and take over the conversation.

Here are two ways you can automate your sales without leaving it all up to the automation:

1. Create new deals in your CRM based on website activity

At Triggerbee we use Pipedrive as our CRM of choice, and it’s also our top recommendation for our customers.

Our seamless integration with Pipedrive lets you track your leads behavior on your website and send this information to their record in Pipedrive.

You can also set up an automation which moves your lead to the next step in your pipeline when they fulfill a specific goal (e.g. visit a specific page, fill out a form, or click a specific link).

Here’s an example:

Step 1: A website visitors downloads a whitepaper or eBook from your website.

Step 2: You create a new deal in Pipedrive and add your lead to the first step of your pipeline.

Step 3: You send out a few automated emails and you prompt the lead to visit your website and fill out a form to get a quote.

Step 4: Your lead clicks your link in the email, fills out the form and then Triggerbee moves them to the next step in the funnel.

Step 5: Send a notification to a salesperson via Pipedrive and make sure they follow up.

2. Create an email sequence

If you’re selling anything online, you need an email sequence. Not only does this nurture prospects automatically, but also enables you to keep track of who drops off at each stage.

As long as you keep track of where things are heading and know when it’s a good time to step in yourself to continue the conversation, you’re good.

#3 – Don’t personalize too much

Personalization is automation at it’s best.

On average, we spend 60% of all conversations talking about ourselves.

But when we use social media, such as Facebook or Twitter, 80% of our posts and conversations are about ourselves and our own accomplishments.

I mean, how many of these have you seen in the last 24 hours?

But when it comes to marketing?

Personalization is life (and there’s good reason). But – remember that it’s a fine line between being personal, and being a creep.

You don’t want your audience aware that you know everything about their online habits and behavior on your website.

According to the RichRelevance report, 37% of consumers considers geo-targeting creepy, and 64% of consumers would consider an in-app greeting containing their first name a bit too much.

This means that you’re never far from being too personal, even if it’s common knowledge that companies track almost everything we do.

Someone once told me that personalization is not about being able to address someone by their first name, but actually about making someone feel like they discovered something on their own – even though you know they’re interested in it.

It basically means this:

Don’t talk to your prospects directly, simply present offers and content similar to what they already like and make it seem like you just happened to offer them something interesting.

Humans are explorers, and we want to discover things by ourselves.

Marketing Automation and personalization lets your visitors explore and discover new things on your website, on their own terms.

Conclusion

If you are looking for a way to gain a competitive edge, you should definitely look into implementing a marketing automation system.

The truth is that once you pass a certain amount of incoming leads, it’s virtually impossible to maintain the communication with each and every one by yourself.

And that’s where you need marketing automation to step in.

Just make sure you have a clear plan of what and how you want to automate.

Now, the only remaining question we have for you is this:

What are you going to automate first?

E-mail is one of the most effective marketing channels you can use, and the statistics back this up.

And in this post, you’re going to learn exactly how to use email marketing to sell your stuff.

First, we’re going to give you a competitive edge. We’ll study the psychology behind what makes people click and buy.

Then, we’ll talk about the tactics: 

• The ONE thing you can add to a landing page to instantly increases CTR by 17%
• The secret to making people say “Yes” to almost any offer (hint: it’s not what you think)
• A 6-word phrase that removes any doubt from your prospects mind, and in what situations to use it.

Are you ready? Let’s dive in.

Tap into people’s emotions

Emotions guide nearly every part of our lives.

It’s our northern light, our inner compass for when we are in doubt.

Emotions are also what drive us to spend money.

We rarely buy anything based on facts and rational decisions.

We buy stuff because we want to!

Experts in the field even suggest that over 95% of buying decisions are made unconsciously. This is where marketing psychology kicks in. if we had to choose between two identical products from two different brands, we would buy the one with the most emotional appeal.

This means if we had to choose between two identical products from two different brands, we would buy the one with the most emotional appeal.

In fact, Martin Lindstrom who wrote “Buyology“, conducted a study where he found the following:

“Brands and products that evoke our emotions, like Apple, Coca-Cola or Nivea, always win.”

But which emotions should you try to tap into, to trigger that instant “SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY” reaction?

To find out, we’ll look at what Nancy Harhut discussed when she was on stage.

According to her, you should…

Start with Urgency or Scarcity

What would you do if you visited a store to purchase a specific item, only to find out upon arrival… there’s only 1 item left, and you can see it standing there on the shelf?

I don’t know about you, but I would reach out and grab that thing faster than a frog can swat a fly, and then proceed to give myself a mental high five.

That’s the power of urgency.

Here’s what Sarah Jamieson from Persuasionworks, says about urgency:

“If something is only available in limited quantities or for a limited time, we make a mental shortcut and assume it is more valuable and of higher quality – because it’s harder to get.”

Here are a few ways you can use urgency in your own strategy:

• Set an expiration date for your offer
• Limit the quantity of your product
• Make an “Email only”-offer (or “Only for Facebook users”-offer)
• Add a countdown clock

Urgency also works GREAT when you’re generating leads.

For example, if you add a countdown clock to your landing pages, you could increase the CTR by 17%.

You could also use it to collect leads, like this:

If you have a limited offer, try to include your expiration date in the email subject line.

Over 33% open their emails based on the subject line alone, so make sure to write a headline that taps into the interests of your subscribers.

However, the subject line only tells you what the email is about, and by itself might not be compelling enough to get someone to open it.

Then what will?

The “From” line. 

What does this tell us?

People want to hear from other people.

Our suggestion is that you use your full name, or at least your first name when you send out email campaigns.

This will make your emails more trustworthy, and when someone trusts you, it’s easier for them to say “Yes” to your offer.

This brings us to the next point…

Make someone feel special (Exclusivity)

This builds upon the principle of exclusivity.

We are more easily persuaded by information and offers that are exclusive to us, personally.

Spotify is a great example of this.

During their release campaign here in Sweden, you had to give away your email address in return for an exclusive invitation to try out the new music streaming app.

Also, every user that got free access to Spotify received 5 invites of their own to give away. This created some much-needed virality and made people feel special.

Here’s how you can use it in your own marketing:

• Use exclusive offers in your subject lines:
  • “You can be one of the first to try X”
  • “You are selected because of your expertise”
• Only make your offer available through an invitation
• Use words like “Sneak peak” or “Secret” in your headlines or body copy

To make an exclusive offer work effectively requires some additional planning, but it’s worth the extra effort.

Even if exclusivity and urgency can be powerful on their own, nothing compares to the results you’ll get if you…

Use Social Proof

Let’s say you’re looking for a new summer jacket, but unsure which to buy.

You might consult a friend, your partner, or your parents for advice, but something else which might affect your decision is what everyone else likes… Right?

People naturally trust people more than businesses.

When in doubt, we tend to do what everyone else does. You can see this in marketing campaigns everywhere, across all industries.

Despite what you think of Donald Trump, he and his team utilized the power of social proof during his campaign. 

With the help of social proof, we can remove most doubt from our prospects minds and gain instant credibility.

Nancy Harhut shared an example with a 6-word phrase that I found very interesting:

“This is what everyone else bought”

It works because we have always looked to our friends for advice, so it’s natural for us to check out what others have done.

Conclusion

The most persuasive emails consist of a lot of small and subtle things, executed masterfully.

When it comes to email marketing, the relationship you have with your subscribers or customers is the most important thing.

If your subscribers don’t trust the email sender, they won’t buy anything no matter what tactics you attempt to use.

Here are the biggest takeaways:

• Connect with people on an emotional level
• Use persuasion tactics to improve results
• Make people feel special
• Add a countdown timer to urge quicker decisions
• People won’t buy anything if they’re not first interested, no matter what.
• You can create demand, but not a basic need.

When I sat down to write this post, I started by googling “spam pop ups.”

The result?

1 810 000 search results of images picturing scary, flashing popups from the 90’s.

I remember it like it was yesterday. The time when everything digital was still scary.

Internet was a safe haven for anonymous pirates, and a hotbed of for digital freedom fighters.

Do you remember?

But…

Now – in 2017 – it is different. Now, most websites use some kind of popup, and it works.

If its not to collect leads, it is to give a discount code, or to drive traffic to a specific page.

Popups has recovered from being blinking ad monsters, to be a natural part of most sites around the world.

If you are one of those who don’t like popups – I understand. I also find it annoying at times.

But, you can’t get away from the fact that popups are one of the most effective ways to grow your e-mail list.

Don’t just take our word for it.

Lars Lofgren is a marketing consultant / Growth Hacker who helped building companies like:

• Dropbox
• KISSmetrics
• Type Form
• Mesosphere

He works with some of the world’s leading companies and people daily, and this is what he says about popups:

“The single best way to drive email subscribers is with a popup. I add one to every business I have because the conversion rates are just too good.”
– Lars Lofgren, Director of Growth @ I Will Teach You To Be Rich

A survey by Aweber also shows that pop ups could give you 1 375% more leads compared to a “regular” newsletter form.

Here’s the results from a cooking blog who replaced their regular forms, with popups:

Can you see where they started using them?

When they didn’t have a pop up in place, they collected around 50-25 subscribers per month.

But, as soon as they started using pop ups, their email list started growing quite fast.

In two months, they collected over 850+ e-mail addresses.

Impressive? Yeah.

Many businesses are still afraid that they will scare away their visitors by using pop ups.

I can guarantee you, that it will not happen.

Here’s the truth:
A pop up is not enough to scare away a loyal customer or visitor for life.

If you have an offer that are relevant and interesting to anyone visiting your site, they will take it.

I have yet to find proof that the right kind of pop up, used in the right context, will reduce engagement on your website.

Your bounce rate is calculated based on how many pages a visitor visits.

Generally, you want to aim for a low bounce rate, but it depends on what type of website you have.

For a blog – as in the example above – it’s not uncommon to have over 80% bounce rate.

This is because most people are looking for specific information in the moment.

It could be that they click on a search result, read the blog post and then leave the page.

The graph above shows an example of Brian Dean’s blog, Backlinko.

The faint blue area indicates the period where he switched off all the pop ups on his site.

The result?

The number of new subscribers to his newsletter more or less dropped by 50 %.

Of course, bounce rate is not the one and only metric to look at when measuring engagement, but it’s a good start.

Popups in 2017 and beyond

Google recently released an update about a few changes in their ranking algorithm.

2017 is the year they will prioritise the mobile experience.

Over 60 % of all searches now come from mobile devices.

This means that if your website doesen’t load fast enough, Google considers this a bad experience.

To ensure that the best sites will be ranked as high as possible in search results… “Big G” changed the rules once again.

Google will punish websites that aren’t using mobile friendly pop ups, and those covering large areas of your content.

Regardless of what Google thinks about pop ups, it’s a feature that has always been annoying.

Here are a few examples of what Google does not approve:

• Pop ups that displays instantly when you visit a page
• Pop ups that cover large chunks of the content, and prevents you from reading the information on the page
• “Welcome mats” that are placed above the fold, but inlines the original content below the fold

Google has, as usual, created graphics showing more precisely what they will crack down on:

What you must think about is that this is a small part of Google’s otherwise 100 or 1 000 ranking factors.

The only solution to avoid punishment is that you follow their developer guidelines.

From the perspective of the user, it’s a problem with large pop ups showing up on smaller screens. We’ve all been there and it’s annoying when you have to swipe, scroll or search for the “X” that sometimes almost doesen’t exist.

This is something we take seriously at Triggerbee. That’s why we have developed several alternatives to popups, so that you don’t have to annoy your visitors just to collect their email address.

With that said, here are three reasons why you don’t need to worry about this update…

1. There are very good alternatives to pop ups

Embedded Forms (Approved by Google!)

Content Marketing and SEO goes hand in hand.

Instead of using pop ups on every page, you can collect leads with embedded forms that are placed within the content instead.

Google looooves embedded forms because they are already inlined in the content when the page loads!

The example above shows you how it can look like when you have an embedded form in a blog post.

Although, it’s not the only place where you can use them.

Here’s a few examples:

1. In your footer, to collect subscribers to your newsletter

2. On your product pages – If you run an ecommerce website (ex. “Send me a notice when this item is back in stock”)

3. On a landing page, as part of a registration process.

4. In a blog post

5. In your shopping cart, to be able to e-mail your visitors a discount code.

The list is already long, but as you can see, you can use it almost everywhere with good results.

Callout (Approved by Google!)

It’s no secret that you can create popups that are well-liked by controlling them based on your visitors behavior and interests.

Google says:

“Banners or modules that take up a reasonable area of ​​the screen will not be affected by the new signal.“

In Triggerbee, you can create banners that only cover a small area of your mobile screen, and we call them “Callouts” .

A Callout appears in the bottom right of your screen with a custom message, like this:

Not only are they friendlier to your visitors, but they also get the thumbs up by Google!

Trigger Link (Approved by Google!)

A trigger link works like a regular popup – but the difference is that it doesen’t appear unless you click on a link.

Since it’s often used when you give away a resource in a blog post, there are many who call this type of link for “Content Upgrade”.

The blogger and marketing expert Neil Patel uses it like this, and you may understand why he calls it a “Content Upgrade”:

Exit Intent (Approved display rule by Google!)

Your e-mail list should always be priority #1.

When it comes to collecting leads on your website, it’s important that you have the right kind of timing and display rules on your widgets.

If you choose to display a popup or a widget on Exit Intent the visitor will not see it until they are about to leave your website.

Google doesn’t want your visitors to be interrupted in the middle of their visitor session.

Exit Intent gives you a second chance to reclaim a lost purchase, collect an email address or to provide some much needed discount.

Now we have shown you some options for popups that are all approved by Google and how you can use them.

Most solutions doesn’t meet Google’s guidelines. Whenever you see a solution that is not named Triggerbee, you should always check that they use 100 % mobile-friendly templates.

2. E-mail is the only channel you can control

There are almost an unlimited number of channels that you can use to drive traffic to your website.

Here’s a few of the most common:

1. SEO

The rules for what is OK and NOT OK changes from month to month and all you can do is play along.

You have no control over what Google changes next, and you won’t get away with any black hat tricks, quite the contrary.

You can learn to master the channel and surf a long on the waves, but it is usually a long way to walk.

2. Social media

Facebook and LinkedIn drives the most engaged traffic. The only problem is that they have full control over everything you build on their platforms

If they decide to cut back on the reach or change the rules of the game – you can’t do anything about it.

3. Digital Advertising

Any company providing advertising services could raise their prices or cut down on their reach whenever they want to.

When it comes to email, there is no one who can take away your e-mail list. You can decide what information you want to send out and how frequently – or infrequently – you want to send it out.

72% of all consumers prefer to get offers and business communication via e-mail.

Here are some additional statistics that reinforces this point:

• E-mail subscribers are 3x more likely to share your content via social media than visitors from other channels – Quicksprout
• 64% of marketeers says e-mail marketing and marketing automation contributes to more sales. Even more than an increase in webshop visitors, engagement and better insights into target audience.
• E-mail is 40x more efficient than Facebook and Twitter combined, when it comes to acquiring new customers – McKinsey

3. Google is a business (just like yours)

Last year, over 80% of Google’s revenue came directly from AdWords.

Roughly $60 billion came from their own advertising network.

If you think about it, this is not “only” an update to make mobile websites more easy to navigate,it will also affect their own products.

Google doesn’t want you to build your own platform too aggressively.

Over 90% of all search traffic comes from the results on page 1 and if you live on page 2…

If you have a site that is popular and if you use the right kinds of widgets, or Popups in a responsible manner … you will probably not be affected by this update.

The importance of personification

AgilOne show that over 70% of your visitors expect you to use at least some personalization, based on their behavior.

This also means that you should customize the message in your Widgets to what page they appear on, and to the people that will see it.

As long as you collect e-mail addresses in a way that is not annoying, you will stay dry and safe.

This new update also proves that the timing and how you segment your visitors, are becoming more and more important.

If you can’t give your visitors any personalized offers or recommendations, it’s a solution you want to have in 2017 and beyond.

Your visitors are not stupid.

They are people with survival instincts on high alert, and it’s been like that ever since we lived in caves.

It’s not always about selling as much as possible, many times it’s the experience that leads to the sale.

The thing you must realize is that it’s a two-way street. If you let your visitors show you how they want to buy from you, they’ll let you tag along.

So, in what ways you can control how your popups appear based on user behavior and interests?

Here’s a few examples:

• Exit Intent is a so-called “Smart” display rule that tracks mouse position, speed and movement patterns to show your popup when the visitor is about to leave your home – not before.
• Click on a link – show your popup when someone clicks on a länk.
• Based on visitor interests – show a customized pop-up for a special visit segment. Then you can show your popup only

These display rules are both engaging and effective.

They also let you stay in control over how you choose to grow your email list, and drive traffic.

We call them Widgets in Triggerbee, and it’s a collective name for all our templates.

You can show them based on behaviour, interests, visitor segments and much more.

Many of our clients do an incredible job using different kind of widgets in a way that gives them impressive results.

Not to brag, but the average conversion rate for our widgets are a stunning 4,65%!

Conclusion

Don’t forget that there are alternatives to Popups that can give you the same results, or better!

Now you also know more about the alternatives available, when you  can use them, and how you can control them for the best results.

It’s not hard to create widgets that converts well, but it will surely take some time and a few experiments before you find exactly the right combination of copy and offer for your target audience.

Remember this:
If you stick to a plan that you can execute on regularly, you can always go back and analyze what went wrong, and build a new experiment based on that data.

When I sat down to write this post, I started by googling “spam pop ups.”

The result?

1 810 000 search results of images picturing scary, flashing popups from the 90’s.

I remember it like it was yesterday. The time when everything digital was still scary.

Internet was a safe haven for anonymous pirates, and a hotbed of for digital freedom fighters.

Do you remember?

Visiting San Jose the other day I met up with my old friend Alfonso de la Nuez, founder and CEO at UserZoom. Eric Rodriguez, Marketing and Demand Generation director at UserZoom joined in our conversion and we talked about inbound marketing and how it has been successful for them to grow their business.

It all started many years ago in the flat that Alfonso and I shared in Madrid. Apart from the many crazy parties we held there (where the police would usually show up) we were both busy developing our own respective startups in the living room. Using internet (ISDN from Telefonica), “Business 2.0”-magazines for inspiration and our computers we followed our passion for IT and entrepreneurship. The business Alfonso started with his fellow founders in that living room has now grown into what is now Userzoom with 4 offices in US and Europe, 130 employees and a recent valuation around $60 million dollar. I was curious to know how they managed to achieve this. It turns out Inbound Marketing was a key strategy to their success and Eric and Alfonso where happy to share their best advice and experiences with me.

UserZoom offers a suite of tools that allow companies to improve the user experience in their services. Their incredible growth has left many impressed, so impressed that they just a few months ago received a $34 million investment to further expand the business.

Alfonso, how has UserZoom evolved since the early years in our living room?

– Quite a bit! Started as a services model focused on one market (Spain) and evolved to an scaleable SaaS model with international coverage and HQ in Silicon Valley. Also, we were three founding partners with a notebook and about 10k€ from a Business Angel, and now we’re about 130 employees, offices in four countries and $15M in sales. Finally, we also have an amazing Silicon Valley investor and partner to help us continue growing. We still have a long road ahead.

What has been the key to your success?

– Actually it’s pretty obvious now. The key was to put all these ingredients in place early on. I’d say that the key factors are: 1) Timing and market opportunity: The UX Design and Research space is way bigger now than it was back when we started. We have the first movers advantage. 2) Product: We’ve invested quite a bit on innovation and our product offers lots of capabilities and is quite versatile, making us very competitive. 3) Target: We focused on a clear target market pretty much since the beginning and stuck to it through the years. 4) Internationalization: If we hadn’t made the move to the US, we’d most likely gone bankrupt in Spain, especially after the 2008 crisis.

What role has inbound marketing played in the success story of Userzoom?

– Now we have a solid salesforce, but back when we started it was necessary to use cost-effective methods to get leads and build brand awareness. So Content Marketing played a key role for us in the early years. Instead of telling peole how great we were, we’d publish interesting content and articles. We started hosting bi-monthly webinars and sometimes we got over 800 registrants. Unbelievable, right? Later on we bought a simple version of Marketo and started lead nurturing programs. Our leads became warmer than before and our target prospects understood what we were all about, without so much need to evangelize.

What about traditional marketing – outbound marketing, advertisments etc?

– Very little. The one that stands out and was very successful though is the conferences and trade shows. It is expensive, but we were averaging one closed deal per show, which for us (Enterprise SaaS with high pricing and multiple touch points model) made a ton of sense.

Tell me something about the future: Will Inbound and Content Marketing contine to play an important role for Userzoom in the coming years?

– At the moment we’re actually more focused on outbound. That’s because the salesforce we have is a mean lean money making machine that’s performing really well. But we’re trying to balance things out more and have more inbound leads coming from content marketing, account-based marketing, etc. So absolutely YES, we’re definitely counting on inbound in 2016 and beyond.

I also got the opportunity to sit down with Eric Rodriguez. Eric leads a team of three marketing specialist; Digital Manager, Content Manager, Social Media Marketer, explains what his role is within Userzoom:

– Well my title is director of demand generation which means my function is to drive in as many qualified leads as we can and relay them over to the sales team so that they can build a relationship and ideally close the deals. My biggest challenge is to create well qualified leads – sales enabled leads rather than a billion that are weak and unqualified. And not only better qualified, segmented leads but also leads for bigger deals. That will then in turn of course lead to more referrals, more renewals and more upgrades.

Eric Rodriguez, Marketing and Demand Generation director at UserZoom.

For Userzoom a lead can both be a completely new customer or an existing or previous customer. The Userzoom software suite offers many different solutions and upgrades that existing customers could be interested in. So the demand generation team at Userzoom are not only focused on finding completely new prospects but also finding potentionally new business in existing and previous customers as well.

I ask Eric to explain their content creation process.

– Primarily our content marketing manager is writing all the posts with great collaborative help of the entire team. Rather than writing whatever topic comes to mind we have a content calender for the entire year. We have themes mapped out for every single month. And those themes play off one another, and are targeted at our target personas. And within that we have all sorts of content that we kick out on a regular basis. Blog post every week, “UX battle of the month”, sample studies that we kick out every other week, news letters that we send out every alternating weeks. So our content goes out like a drip schedule, regularly. And we know exactly what to write and when.  My content manager is a great writer, super well versed in what our customers wants and also taps into our research team to get that really indepth technical angle to everything he is writing. And it’s quality content, backed up with use cases and he bounces off ideas with the sales team to make sure the content is aligned with the sales priorities.

Once the content is published on their website they get attention to their content using their social media channels which are Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook. They also use Sprout Social to schedule and distribute posts in all these channels with analytics.

Also email newsletters, where they have seen a substantial growth to their newsletter subscriber lists since they reactived the newsletters some time ago. Eric thinks one reason is that subscribers are referring the newsletters to other people. Eric prefers to work with organic growth where visitors opt-in themselves rather than purchasing lists of email addresses. His experience of the purchased lists is that the data quality is poor. – “Organic demand generation is much better”.

SEO is not playing an important role for Userzoom. They had an agency help them with setting up keywords and do onsite optimization, but that was just a one time effort. It helped but now they are not working actively with any specific SEO efforts. They just produce good content that people wants to take part of.

“Just produce good content that people wants to take part of.”

Webinars has been a successful strategy for a long time where Userzoom can deliver strong valuable content to the user every single month. And it is practically free for them to operate. I asked Eric if they automatically add all participants of a webinar as subscribers to their regular newsletters.

– No, they are added to the Nurture Track in Marketo. We see who attended, who asked question. All the webinar transcripts are saved and sent to Salesforce and to the sales team.

How do you qualify a sales ready lead?

–  We are using Marketo as our marketing automation system. With that we have a lot of flows built in, when a lead comes in we measure the demographic that are important to us. We target the larger enterprises so the size of the company is important to us. Is the person a decision maker? Is he one of our key personas, involved in the user experience? What potential is there? Also existing customers that are perhaps not yet using all of the huge opportunies that Userzoom offers.

So you look at what business potential there is for you for each particular lead?

– Yes, exactly. And apart from the demographics we look at their behavior. How they are interacting with our with pages, are they downloading content. If they are involved in our webinars. Are they submitting enquiries out our forms, ask questions etc. requesting a sample report. Things like that.

And what about lead scoring?

– In Marketo we have lead scoring in place, and we use a custom scoring. When a lead reaches a certain threshold they are automatically passed over to the CRM. But remember, software is just tech. And technology is just an accelerator. To have that work well for you the underlining strategy has to be sound. You need to communicate and collaborate between your entire team to make sure everyone is on the same page. Define personas, so that the entire team knows exactly who each persona is. What attributes are really important to your business. If your strategy is bad the technology will make it worse more quickly. If your strategy is good technology will accelerate that good strategy.

Looking back Eric feels the foundation for their lead generation machine is set and fully operational. But for 2016 he looks forward to go from the basics to the advanced stuff. Go deeper into the advanced analytics and tracking, predictive analytics, producing the fancy visuals, progressive profiling etc.  – It’s a challenge but that’s what’s fun! says Eric and smiles.

What advice can you share for other fellow inbound marketeers?

1. Strategy first. Technology second.
2. Communication in your team
3. Collaboration across all team  
4. Accountability (track everything)

“If your strategy is bad the technology will make it worse – more quickly.”

The term “Exit Intent” has been growing steady last years in the e-commerce community. What does this buzzword mean and can you benefit from it even though you don’t have a web shop?

What are Exit Intents?

So Exit Intent is basically a javascript that triggers an Opt In form just when the visitor is about to exit the web site.

Why are Exit Intents awesome?

Just as a physical customer might head hastily and in an determined manner towards the exit door in a physical store – the same applies in the digital world. 

The visitor has spent some time browsing around on your web site, checking cool products and reading about your business. But alas! in a moment of indecision he is about to leave the site. At this very moment we present him with one last message in an attempt to either 1) make him purchase, 2) make him opt in to your fabulous newsletter or something else with a clear Call To Action (CTA).  Studys show that Exit Intent can increase your conversion with as much as 15%.

The message dispayed is extremely important to get right. A wrong message can make the visitor annoyed. The right message might just be what the visitor needed to make that conversion we desire – that moment when he engages for real in your business.

How do Exit Intents work?

How can a script detect when the visitor is about to leave? Well there are certain tell tales that let us know that a visitor is about to leave.

Tell tale #1: The mouse movements

When the mouse moves hastily to the top of the browser -as if to close the browser window or enter a new web site adress. 

Tell tale #2: Keyboard short commands

When you use a keyboard combination to hightlight the browsers location field – with the intention of typing a new web site adress. 

4 tips in making successful conversions using Exit Intents

1. Provide one CTA. 

The visitor has reviewed your site and there are just some many options, products, offerings. When he leaves you want your message to be super simple and easy to understand. 

2. Just ask for the email adress

Forget about a long form, asking the visitor for his shoe size, title or music preferences. All you really need is his email.

3. Keep it relevant

If the visitor already is a subscriber to your news letter it doesn’t make any sense for you to ask him to subscribe again.

4. Use prefill – if possible

If you know the visitor already, perhaps he has made a previous purchase, come from a newsletter or somehow converted before and you have cookies to remember this you can have the Exit Intent be prefilled with the visitors email adress. This makes his decision so much easier. Receive 5% discount? No long form, not even entering my email address again? Yes please!!

How you can get started with Exit Intent 

If you can code you can script your own Exit Intent popup. Or talk to your web developer. With Triggerbee you can set up several different Exit Intents in just a matter of minutes. Style them, play with the content, configure rules to what audience should see them and publish them directly on your web site. Without the need of web developers.  Sign up for an account today.

In our next blogpost on this subject we will provide 5 awesome examples of Exit Intent.

Before you go, try Exit Intent on this page. Head quickly for the browser top area with your mouse!

Digital has always been a major sales channel for Informator, but their latest marketing drive made the real difference – fast.  

As number 1 in the Nordics, Informator has trained professionals in IT, project management and leadership for 25 years. Out of thousands of weekly visitors, some are customers – some could be. Some visit Informator.se to find ways to sharpen their knowledge, some want certification for their existing competence level.

Informator’s vision was to enhance the web site experience for each visitor – by providing relevant content based on visitors’ profiles and history. The road map included improved searchability of courses, optimized booking flow, traffic boost with SEO and advertising.

Adding Triggerbee Marketing Automation allowed Informator to increase conversion rates through:

• increased dialogue with customers thanks to content targeting and chat invites on the website
• segmented and relevant e-mails
• personalized website
• lead nurturing

“Triggerbee lets us work with our choice of email marketing platform and our choice of CRM. The cost paid off in the first month.”Emil Robertsson
VD
Informator

Every day Triggerbee identifies valuable visitors in the visitor stream – providing qualified leads to the sales team. 

Did it work?

By the end of 2014 Informator reached an all-time-high in website bookings: the overall increase was 20% from last year, while the sales increase from e-mail driven visitors was 41%.

Digital has always been a major sales channel for Informator, but their latest marketing drive made the real difference – fast.  

As number 1 in the Nordics, Informator has trained professionals in IT, project management and leadership for 25 years. Out of thousands of weekly visitors, some are customers – some could be. Some visit Informator.se to find ways to sharpen their knowledge, some want certification for their existing competence level.

Informator’s vision was to enhance the web site experience for each visitor – by providing relevant content based on visitors’ profiles and history. The road map included improved searchability of courses, optimized booking flow, traffic boost with SEO and advertising.

Adding Triggerbee Marketing Automation allowed Informator to increase conversion rates through:

• increased dialogue with customers thanks to content targeting and chat invites on the website
• segmented and relevant e-mails
• personalized website
• lead nurturing

“Triggerbee lets us work with our choice of email marketing platform and our choice of CRM. The cost paid off in the first month.”Emil Robertsson
VD
Informator

Every day Triggerbee identifies valuable visitors in the visitor stream – providing qualified leads to the sales team. “By adding Widgets and Chat to our web site, we have achieved a better dialogue with our customers, which in turn has led to better ability to spot and assist hesitant visitors in finding and registering for the right course. Conversion Widgets give the visitor increased support, and gives us at Informator a higher conversion rate.”Mikael Hollqvist
Online Sales & Marketing Manager
Informator Utbildning AB

Did it work?

By the end of 2014 Informator reached an all-time-high in website bookings: the overall increase was 20% from last year, while the sales increase from e-mail driven visitors was 41%.