When we posted this blog in Sweden the traffic and Interest was overwhelming. GDPR is as we all know important for all companies that handles personal data and therefore needs to get a consent from each subscriber in there database.

We at Triggerbee have also launched a solution to handle the registering & documentation of consent that we named “Triggerbee Consent” so if you also need help with this don’t hesitate to contact us.

In any case we hope that this blog can be helpful in understanding GDPR in an easy way so keep on reading and please share it with others.

GDPR fulfills all the criteria to be probably one of the biggest talking points during 2017. People are worried and companies are forced to change their processes within their organizations.

But the truth is that the new data protection laws only brings positive benefits for all businesses.

With transparency as one of the main requirements we should rather see GDPR as an incredible opportunity to gain even more trust from our current and potential customers. To show them that we have nothing to hide.

This might not be measurable right away but will definitely make a difference in the long run.

In this blog post we have taken the assistance of data protection lawyer Axel Tandberg to really dive deep in this issue and to give you a short, easy to understand summary of what it actually entails for Swedish businesses.

You will learn what GDPR actually are, how consent works, examples of how consent must look like, what other laws that interact with GDPR, and what applies when your company handles and stores personal or customer data.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

• INTRODUCTION TO GDPR
• WHAT IS GDPR?
• WHAT YOUR COMPANY MUST CONSIDER BEFORE GDPR
• WHAT IS PERSONAL DATA ACCORDING TO GDPR?
• PROCESSING OF PERSONAL DATA ACCORDING TO GDPR
• LEGAL BASIS IN GDPR
• WHAT IS CONSENT ACCORDING TO GDPR?
• CONSENT – EXAMPLES OF RIGHT AND WRONG
• EPR – EPRIVACY REGULATION

Introduction to GDPR

In 1989 Tim Berners Lee started a project that would change the world in a way no one could predict…

A year later, on december 20, 1990, he published the world’s first web page on something called The World Wide Web.

And much have happened since:

Each day we send 205 million emails, upload over 350 million photos on Facebook, make over 3.5 million google searches, pay our bills, share documents and buy stuff online…

But we rarely think about how much information we actually leave behind (thinking smiley)

Information that could be linked to us as individuals, possibly sensitive information.

Personal data.

Today, the Data Protection Act decides how personal information are to be handled by companies, and these laws are based on an EU-directive from 1998.

When those laws were implemented, only 3,6% of the world’s population had a connection to the internet. At that time, the prediction that personal information and data would be as valuable as it is today, wasn’t so obvious…

On May 6, 2017, The Economist published an article that data — personal data — is the new oil, and companies such as Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google, thrive on it by adding more data on each individual and using it to increase their conversion.

But have you ever taken a moment to ask yourself…

“What actually happens to all my personal information once I have given it away?”

That question was posed by the European Parliament, and the response was the need for a new data protection act under the name of GDPR – General Data Protection Regulation.

Every day hundred and thousands of contracts are accepted where the most important information has been written only in capital letters, and where the text in the fine print is written in the smallest possible font size. (Emoji; pergament-rulle eller skrift-rulle)

Researchers from US University Carnegie Mellon conducted a study on how long it would take the average American to read through all the privacy policies they accept in a year…

What they concluded was astounding… It would take approximately 76 workdays.

If you have an account on Facebook, you probably know that their terms of use consist of over 10.000+ words (because you read all agreements before accepting them, right?) and that they have the right to do basically what they want with all the pictures you upload?

This is what is stated in Section 9 of Facebook’s Swedish Terms of Service translated to english:

“You give us your permission to use your name, profile picture, content and information associated with commercial, sponsored or related content (such as a brand you like) that we deliver or enable. that you grant us your permission to pay by company or other entity displaying your name and / or profile image together with your content or information, without any compensation. ” Kolla Facebook

And then, we haven’t even mentioned that Facebook owns nine other apps and services with tens, hundreds and millions of users – and these apps have separate terms, conditions and data policies.

But, having said that, the world’s largest social network is one of the companies that probably has the best data policy.

If you visit Facebook’s privacy policy, you’ll quickly see that everything is neat and tidy.

You can read how to change your visibility when using the service, how they use your data, and how to delete yourself and your data.

If the policy is transparent enough can be discussed, we will leave that to the lawyers to decide. We will continue to use Facebook regardless, since we all just read the agreement?

How your business needs to adapt depends on how far you have come with the preparations and how well you have followed DPA so far.

The truth is that when GDPR comes into force, you need to fully understand the new rights of individuals and how to comply with them.

What is GDPR?

GDPR is an abbreviation for General Data Protection Regulation, and it is a collective name for the new data protection laws that come into force across Europé on May 25, 2018.

In short, new regulations are introduced to protect individuals within the EU from having their personal information involuntarily sold, and to prevent privacy impairment.

Since the GDPR is a regulation, it means that the laws enter into force immediately to become part of the national laws of each EU country.

In Swedish, the GDPR is called “nya dataskyddsförordningen” and when it enters into force, it will replace PUL (Data Protection Act), which since 1998 has regulated how organizations, associations and authorities can handle personal data.

But, because of the shortcomings in PUL, companies have been able to hide behind the unreadable agreements and hidden information to be able to do basically what they want as long as you have accepted “the agreement”.

Now, this comes to an end.

On a sidenote, it’s only within the USA that the privacy shield agreement includes all companies.

Within most other countries you need to have a separate agreement such as the standard model clauses with each separate company.

There are many reasons why GDPR is introduced into the EU, but here are the biggest three:

a) Individuals want more control over how their personal data are used. 

b) By giving all companies within the EU borders the same laws to adhere to, you hope to create a better and safer business climate.

c) Prevent personal data from being purchased and sold by companies, mainly outside the EU’s borders.

Just as Gustaf Wiklund writes in his opinion article on GDPR at IDG, the Data Inspectorate (the government entity in Sweden that make sure that these laws are enforced) is (unfortunately) alone in seeing the new regulation as something positive.

The 1998 data protection directive, that the GDPR is based on, already applied to all member states of the EU. The problem was that it was up to every country to interpret and implement the directives.

This resulted in a whirlwind of laws and regulations that made it difficult for companies to do business between different countries, and difficult for individuals to keep control of how their personal data are being used.

With the GDPR, the same legal text applies to all countries.

Companies must keep track of their databases and contact lists, there must be a documented legal basis for processing personal data, and individuals must consent that their personal data may be processed (e.g. in a contact form or in a Widget) for one or more purposes.

In other words, there is a great focus on transparency and personal data management, and for companies, perhaps the most comprehensive task will be to document how personal data is moving between different systems and for what purposes.

The truth is that if you compare GDPR with PUL, it’s not really that many changes.

Some parts of the PUL will be removed completely (the abuse rule (“missbruksregeln”)), some laws will be upgraded  (rights for individuals (“rättigheter för privatpersoner”)), as well as the requirements for order and good practice (från svenska: “kraven på ordning och reda”)) and some parts will remain unchanged.

PUL also requires that consent be given to process a personal data, but guidelines on how consent should be issued or documentation requirements does not exist – that is something that GDPR will take care of.

Something worth thinking about is that GDPR is not complete, many parts are still just suggestions and nothing is written in stone until May 25th.

There are about 50-100 different laws that need to be adapted in Sweden alone and according to lawyer David Frydlinger a new data law will be required.

Because personal data and privacy are so incredibly important, we proceed to explain what a personal data is in GDPR, and what applies when handling them.

Here are the most basic points your business needs to think about for GDPR:

• The new rights of individuals must be known and you must be able to accommodate them. The right to be forgotten is one of the most important rights.
• Inform your contact database about what rights they have, as well as how they can extract their information, correct them or delete them.
• Map and document where all personal data comes from and in what systems they are stored in.
• Report any data breach or leaked personal data to the Data Inspectorate within 72 hours, and inform the affected individuals.

What your company must consider before GDPR

The most basic preparations your company can do before GDPR are to map your data and figure out how it moves between different systems (e-mail services, CRM, databases, etc), establish security measures, create new routines for handling personal data and document all processes.

Since all european individuals get extended rights, this is also something you have to accommodate to.

You must for example be able to remove a person and all their data on request, according to the right to be forgotten.

Here are the rights that individuals get when GDPR come into effect:

1. The right to be informed – An individual has the right to be informed of what data gets collected and how it gets collected.
   
   
2. The right to rectify – An individual has the right to correct or update previously faulty or inaccurate data.
   
   
3. The right to be forgotten (deletion right) – An individual has under certain circumstances the right to be removed from a company’s entire database.
   
   
4. The right to limit processing – Individuals has under certain circumstances the right to request that their data are not allowed to be processed. The data are allowed to exist if this is the case, but the processing must be limited.
   
   
5. The right of data portability – An individual has the right to get all of his or her information extracted and be able to move it between different social networks, services and companies.
   
   
6. Right to object – In some cases, an individual is entitled to object to the processing of his or her personal data by the entity responsible.
   
   
7. Automated decision making – An individual has the right not to be subject to a decision made solely by automated decision making.
   
   
8. Right to complaint – If an individual deems his or her personal information are not used according to the consent given or to the data protection reform, he or she has the right to file a complaint to the Data Inspectorate.
   
   
9. Damages – An individual who has been harmed by the processing of personal data other than in accordance with the GDPR may, under certain conditions, be entitled to damages by the company responsible.
   
   
10. Right to access – An individual has the right to know how, and what their personal data are used for by requesting a registry extract.
    
    
11. Bonus: Legal basis for data handling – There must be a legal basis and justification for why someone’s personal data are processed.

You also have an obligation to be clear and transparent when you formulate texts for consent and privacy agreements, and you are not allowed to hide information behind hard to understand legal terms that most people don’t understand.

GDPR creates a reason for you to find out and keep track of where your personal information is stored.

Handling customers that want to be “forgotten” in an easy way is just positive – if it can be solved easily, the customers will be satisfied, and your dissatisfied colleagues who are unaware of the internal processes will be no more.

What is a personal data according to GDPR?

According to GDPR, a personal data is every type of information that could be used to identify a living human being, and it’s also the combination of different data, that after closer analysis, could identify an individual.

The truth is that the difference between your e-mail address and your social security number is as thinner than paper.

Just like your social security number is unique, so is your email address.

And since it’s only you that own your e-mail… it’s considered a personal data.

With a high focus on privacy protection in GDPR, it’s really important that your company knows what is considered personal data, and what isn’t.

Here are a few examples of information that counts as personal data:

• E-mail
• IP number
• Social security number
• Phone number
• Home address
• Customer number
• Pictures

Sensitive information:

• Political opinion
• Sexual orientation
• Religious  belief
• Health
• Ethnicity
• Credit information
• Payment information

If you have many different types of data that on their own can’t identify anyone specifically, but combined with analysis will identify individuals, that too is considered personal data.

Data that is considered personal data with analysis:

• Hair color
• Eye color
• Zip code
• Annual income
• Purchase history

As you might understand already, there is almost no personal information that won’t count as a personal data.

GDPR Checklist: This is what your company must think about when handling personal data

• Document what personal data you collect today and motivate why you do.
• Find a way to abide bythe new regulations (the right to be forgotten for example)
• Clean up your database and delete old information that is no longer in use or isn’t active or valid.

Would you be able to do your marketing or sales activities without any personal data?

Probably not.

Almost all companies have a database that contain contact information to customers, prospects, leads or newsletter subscribers.

And if that database contain names, email addresses or phone numbers, that also means that this information at some point has been processed.

How your company processes personal data is an important part of the new data protection regulation, and here we try to explain what applies 👇

Processing of personal data according to GDPR

Processing of personal data is, according to GDPR, almost everything you do with it, except to send out communication.

As soon as you store an IP-address or send an e-mail to your e-mail system, a processing of personal data has occurred.

If you have contact information in a CRM, email system, an excel spreadsheet or other types of lists or databases, they have at some time been processed.

Companies will be required to have someone responsible for overseeing the processing of personal data to make sure it is handled properly.

Today this person is called “personuppgiftsansvarig” (person responsible for personal data), but when GDPR enters into force, this new role will change name to “dataskyddsombud” (person responsible for data protection).

Processing of personal data is not about how you send out communication, but where you store personal data, how they are handled, analyzed or used within the organization.

Here are a few examples of what counts as a personal data according to GDPR: 👇

• To send an email to one or more of your systems (for example; Mailchimp, Pipedrive, APSIS, Carma, Salesforce, etc.)
• To automatically analyze and add additional data, based on the information you already have(also called “populate”)
• To divide different personal data into groups or segments to restrict or allow certain communications
• To extract an excel spreadsheet to manually add name, phone number or the like
• Analysis or combination of personal data

And for your company to be allowed to process personal data there must be a legal basis (remember: consent is one of the legal bases) that allow processing.

Legal basis in GDPR

In Article 6 of the new Data Protection Regulation there are exactly six bases that makes the processing of personal data legal, but to simplify, it’s really just three things your company needs to think about to be able to collect new leads and email addresses in accordance with the new Data Protection Regulation. 

Personal data processing is only legal if one or these following conditions are met:

1. Consent – The registered individual has given consent to that his or her personal data can be processed one or multiple purposes.
2. Contracts – The processing is necessary to fulfill an agreement that the registered takes part of or to be able to fulfill certain agreed upon terms, before the registered accepts such an agreement.l
3. Legitimate interest – Personal data may be processed in certain other situations that the law dictates. If the processing is necessary and if the person responsible for handling personal data deems the processing not to violate the personal integrity, then it’s allowed. It is in other words a judgement call for the person processing the personal data, and if the processing in any way can lead to a violation of the registered individuals personal integrity, it can lead to heavy fines or other consequences for the company in question.

As you can see, consent is one of the legal pillars – and whether you need active consent or not is entirely dependant on the situation and the design of your offer.

As an example…

If you are working with webb analysis, marketing automation, and collect visitor insights on your web page, you must inform your visitors about what happens in the background, and refer them to your privacy policy.

Tip: Do your company have a privacy policy? You can use a prewritten policy template written by Axel Tandberg via the GDPR-service Triggerbee Consent. Use the policy template as a foundation and adapt it to fit your processes, or use the text as is.

Here is an example of how SVT Play inform about their placement of cookies on your computer and the storing your IP-address. They then refer you to their privacy agreements where they explain in detail how they process the personal data collected.

Even though an IP address counts as a personal data in GDPR, the hard part is to find out who actually sat behind the computer – Therefore no separate consent is needed to track a visitor as long as they don’t collect other personal data at the same time.

As you can see, the button only says “Jag förstår” (I understand), which implies that you don’t give away enough data to have your privacy violated.

If you don’t want your IP address to be tracked you have the option to just not use the service, or to shut down cookie tracking in your web browser.

As said, depending on what data are collected, it’s a bit different what you need to document after GDPR enters into force.

1. Data minimization – Don’t collect more data than you will use.
2. Purpose limitation – You are not allowed to use the data for anything else than what you explicitly say you are going to use it for.
3. Storage minimization – Don’t store any data longer than what’s necessary to fulfill the end goal.
4. Data Protection Officer – Appoint a “dataskyddsombud” (Data Protection Officer) responsible for processing and collection of personal data, to ensure that it follows the rules and regulations (in PUL this position is called “personuppgiftsombud” (data representative))

Consent is probably the one thing that have created the most buzz on the web and resulted in a lot of doomsday articles that predict the death of digital marketing…

This is of course as far from the truth you could possibly get.

But then we are posed with the question…

What is “consent” according to GDPR?

A consent according to GDPR is an active and voluntary act from an individual who, after being informed of the consequences, agrees to having his or her personal data processed in order to receive marketing communication, or in other ways have their personal data processed.

If you leave consent, this works like a kind of “contract” between you and the company you submit your personal data to that limit or allow different types of communication or personal data processing.

According to “Datainspektionen” (Data Inspectorate) a consent must be the following:

• Individual
• Voluntary
• Uniqe

When GDPR replaces PUL the law will say that all companies must document all consent given, so it’s important to know what constitutes as a valid consent and an invalid consent.

It’s also important that you can differentiate a consent according to GDPR and a consent according to “Marknadsföringslagen” (Marketing Act).

Both laws requires their own consent, but for different reasons:

1. “Marknadsföringslagen” (Marketing Act) states that you need a consent to communicate with prospects and leads.
2. GDPR states that you need a consent to process the personal data you collect.

But does this mean you have to collect two separate consent?

No, it doesn’t. Depending on the situation/context you almost always just need one consent.

If you formulate your offer clearly enough can you automatically kill two birds with one stone and suffice with one consent for both parts.

Here below we have illustrated a few examples of valid consent according to GDPR, and we have thoroughly described how and why it is valid or not.

Don’t forget to document all consents! You can do this easily with Triggerbee Consent and get complete control over what contacts has given their consent to receive communication.

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Consented communication through e-commerce 

If you as a customer fill out your information to finalize a purchase is it implicit that you first and foremost give the e-commerce owner permission to:

• Process your information for the purpose of finalizing the purchase and deliver the product to you.
• Send communication related to your purchase or the delivery of the product.

It is on the other hand not implicit that you give the e-commerce owner permission to send newsletters or other communication to you.

If you’re using a ticked checkbox with the text “Jag vill även få nyhetsbrevet” (I also want to receive the newsletter), this is an invalid consent form.

Giving consent must always be active, voluntary and individual. That is not the case when there is a ticked checkbox.

By ticking the checkbox you are giving an active consent to the e-commerce owner to send newsletters to you.

Many wonder what applies if they want to collect email addresses by giving away coupons and what applies for continued communication after someone have submitted their email address.

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Example 2

If you have a pop-up that offers a voucher for 20% off your first purchase to new customers.

To receive the voucher you must submit your name and email address.

Since the text only focuses on giving a voucher, there is nothing giving permission to send further communication.

If this was your e-commerce shop and your pop-up, you would only be allowed to give the voucher and nothing more.

For you to be allowed to send communication it must have a checkbox that explain what the terms are.

Instead of just saying “”Få 20% rabatt på ditt första köp”” (Get 20% off your first purchase) it says:

“Prenumerera på nyhetsbrevet och få 20% rabatt på ditt första köp” (Subscribe to the newsletter and get 20% off your first purchase).

And if you tick the checkbox that says “Jag samtycker till att motta digital kommunikation i enlighet med integritetspolicyn” (I consent to receive digital communication in accordance with the privacy policy) you have given permission to the e-commerce owner to send you newsletters and other digital communication.

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Samtycke för kommunikation inom B2B

Let’s say you give away an ebook about email marketing.

If a visitor submit their information, then you have permission to process their information in order to send the ebook, but you don’t have permission to send newsletters or other communication.

If you want to be able to send any other communication you must have added an agreement text that refer to the privacy policy together with a checkbox that give you consent to send other digital communication.

You could change the heading to say “Prenumerera på vårt nyhetsbrev och få e-boken om Epostmarknadsföring” (Subscribe to our newsletter and get the ebook about email marketing), but that wouldn’t be perceived like an equally strong offer.

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Consent for communication intended for publicists

Many publicits and online newspapers use “Paywalls” or “locked content” to limit what articles different users are allowed to read.

Some want to send you to a payment form, andom some just want the visitor to pay with their email address.

But if it looks like in the example above, that you only need to submit your email to unlock the article, you are not allowed to send any digital communication to the person submitting the email address.

To get consent to communicate with the individuals that unlocks the article, an agreement text must be added that refers to the privacy policy and which describes the terms.

You could just as well change the content to be more descriptive, so no consent would be needed if it’s only the newsletter you want to send out.

When do I need a checkbox for consent?

A rule of thumb is if you offer one thing, but want to send out communication for something else, you need a checkbox together with a text that refers to your “integritetspolicy” (privacy policy).

If you need a checkbox or not depends entirely on the situation and how the offer is formulated.

On a checkout page for example, a newsletter isn’t really relevant to complete the order and to deliver the product, and you then need an active consent to have permission to send newsletters or other digital communication.

The purpose and copy is important in this context, and the whole packaging actually determines if you need a checkbox or not.

Since you also need to document every consent, this is something you need to look over how it’s done.GDPR Checklist – What does your company need to think about when it comes to consent:

1. Document – Document all consent you collect! You can do this with a service like Triggerbee Consent
2. Vouluntary – Make sure the consent happens voluntarily. That means no ticked checkboxes!
3. The right to be forgotten – Make sure you can remove all data from the individuals in your database.
4. “Personuppgiftsansvarig” (Data Controller) – Appoint a “personuppgiftsansvarig” (Data controller) that is responsible for the data collection process and processing of the personal data follows the rules and regulations.

Triggerbee Consent is a solution that makes it easy for all companies to collect email addresses just like before and at the same time get total and complete documentation over how, when and what agreement they consented to!

EPR – ePrivacy Regulation

Something that has complicated and confused many are the second part of the new “dataskyddsförodningen” (data protection regulation) called EPR.

EPR stands for e-Privacy Regulation and unlike GDPR, EPR regulates how companies are allowed to communicate with customers and subscribers.

Talks about EPR began as late as January 10, 2017, and the goal was that is should be finalized May 25, just like GDPR, but since it had to adapt to the new “dataskyddsförordningen” (Data Protection Regulation) the EU-parliament has yet to had the time.

This leads us to the big question…

How are we allowed to communicate in the future?

EPR will primarily affect the privacy of how we communicate and that is not only regarding email or text messages…

It will entail social media and set higher demands on those managing any type of electronic communication – for example Skype, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat and similar services.

You will find the swedish translation of EPR on EU’s own website, but keep in mind that most of it could change. It’s all just a proposal and we can’t make any assumptions.

Here are the most important points that your company must take in consideration before EPR:

Content of the communication – Information like time stamps or geolocation in email, chat conversations, snapchat pictures and the like must be anonymized or be removed if the user hasn’t given consent or if it’s not related to payment.

Simpler rules for cookies – All processing of cookies will be controlled from the browser settings in Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, etc.. If this will affect the usual cookie warnings that can be seen on most websites (for example “this site use cookies”) is still something we will be asking ourselves.

Spam protection – Email and SMS spam will remain illegal, and depending on national laws, all individuals will either have automatic protection from spam, or there might be a “do not contact me”-list available.

Summary

GDPR and EPR are constructed to protect the integrity of individuals and to support the business climate within the European market 💪 (this also includes England, Norway, Luxemburg and Island).

GDPR and EPR is positive for all of us. It will contribute to a safer Europe, and in the long run also weed out companies that work in illegal ways.

If your company collects email addresses and serve other businesses, then you must have the processes under control and do your homework – that is something we all must do.

Down below is all the reference material and sources used in creating this articles, and if you have come this far we would like to just say thank you for sticking with us.

You are more than welcome to contact us if you would like to know more about how your company can GDPR-certify your digital marketing and how you can work with simple tools to collect and process personal data in the future.

We have developed Triggerbee Consent so that our customers can collect consent when they collect email addresses, and you can get assistance with it by either contacting us or exploring how it would benefit your company on your own.

If you want to see the awesome examples of lead generation campaigns in one place, then you’ll LOVE this post.

We have personally reviewed and tested over 61 strategies, and today we want to share them with you.

The best part? 

They work GREAT both in B2B and B2C.

Most of these are insanely actionable and only take 5 minutes to implement.

So, if you’re looking for ideas for your next lead generation campaign, you’ve come to the right place.

Let’s kick this thing off:

1. Display a conversion form after visitors have watched your product video

Video is one of the most engaging types of content on the web, but the question is… Can you generate leads from video?

As a marketer, you want to take advantage of every opportunity you can get.

If a visitor is interested enough to watch a full product video or demo, they are probably very interested in whatever you’re selling.

And one of the best opportunities is when someone has finished watching your video.

How to optimize: Combine this strategy with a contest. We’ve seen Click-through rates as high as 88% and conversion rates as high as 16% – that’s pretty good if you ask me. 

2. Use Out-of-stock-products to your advantage

Ever visited a store only to find out that the item you’re looking to buy is out of stock?

Annoying right?

Well, if you’re an eCommerce store owner, here’s a neat hack for you to use if you want to turn your out of stock products into lead generating opportunities.

How?

It’s simple. Just add a form below your “Out of stock”-text that says something like:

“Enter your email to get a notification when this product is back in stock”.

How to optimize: If you know when your item is back in stock, add a timer that counts down to the expected date of arrival for your product.

3. Use Countdowns for Scarcity

There’s a lot of ways to use scarcity in your marketing, and using a countdown is one of the most effective.

First off, it sends a pretty clear message. A ticking clock only means one thing: Time is running out.

And whether it’s for an expiring offer, limited stock or filled seats… a countdown is very universal, and it instantly tickles the brain with mixed emotions.

How to optimize: Don’t use it too often, don’t reset it and REMOVE your offer when the countdown expires. Seriously, every tactic loses its effect if overused, and some of the people who acted on your offer might feel cheated when they find out someone else got the same offer even after the time ran out.

4. Write a “Buyers guide”

Sitting yourself down to write a “Buyers Guide” can feel like you’re back in the early 2000’s, but people who are evaluating solutions or services are very likely to download it – which means more qualified leads for you.

Here’s the reality:

Over 70% of consumers tend to seal the deal with the first company that provides them with reliable, relevant information about the product or service they’re searching for.

By offering an excellent Buyers Guide, your chances increase of being that first company that provides them with the information they need.

Just don’t forget to have them fill out a form with their contact information before they can read it.

How to optimize: Read the next idea.

5. Rebrand your “Buyers Guide”

If a Buyers Guide doesn’t fit your brand, rebrand it and make a detailed list of “things you need to know before…” instead.

Instead of calling it “The Buyers Guide to Choosing a Marketing Automation System”, you can call it…

• “10 Things You Need to Know Before Purchasing any Marketing Automation System”
• “10 Things You Need to Know Before You Hire a Carpet Cleaner”
• “10 Things You Need to Know Before Changing CMS”
• “10 Things You Need to Know Before Choosing Your Next Antivirus”
• “10 Things You Need to Know Before Starting an eCommerce Store”

These names/headlines are straightforward and focus on what the consumer needs to know before they buy anything.

You could also focus on the negative aspects of your competitors (without dropping names, of course), and then make sure that your company doesn’t fall into any of the categories.

Like this:

• “The Top 8 Mistakes Digital Agencies Make After Signing New Clients”
• “10 Sneaky Tricks Car Dealers Use to Earn a Bigger Commission (and how to spot them!)”
• “7 Common Mistakes When Buying Life Insurance (and how to avoid them)”
• “How to Avoid Getting Ripped Off When Hiring Contractors”

And so on, and so on… A Buyers Guide doesn’t have to be boring. It is what you make it! 🙂

How to optimize: Create a “viral loop” to spread your guide by asking your visitors to enter two email addresses. Their own email address, and their colleague’s email address. 
If you have your guide in a blog post on your website, add a Content Lock where they have to enter their email address to unlock the guide, and then have a large button at the end of the post where they can send the guide to their boss, or perhaps even a friend.

6. Change your Headline

Probably the oldest trick in the book – but still one of the most effective.  

Here’s the situation:

The first thing your visitors ask themselves is “Okay, so what do these guys do?”

…and then they’ll give you around 5 seconds to answer that question. Not always the easiest thing to do.

The fastest way to answer that question is to have a headline that tells them exactly what you do. Big and bold, right on the front page.

You’d be amazed at how much a new headline can change things. Whether it’s the headline for your offer, promotion or your full website, your headline alone has the power to:

• Attract a different, more qualified audience
• Increase conversions by 2x, 5x, 10x
• Chase away tire-kickers
• Strengthen your positioning in the market

How to optimize: If you don’t want to change your headline directly on your front page, try setting up a full-screen popup that appears when the visitor decides to leave. Write your new headline in it and add a button that sends them to a landing page where they can sign up do whatever you want them to do.

If your popup gets more clicks than the main buttons on your front page, it’s worth exploring further.

Bonus: Use thesaurus.com to search and find synonyms to make your headline sound more exciting.

7. Use the “Birdhouse”-technique to generate leads from social media

I was blown away when I first saw this. A few months ago, one of my colleagues asked me:

“Have you tried this LinkedIn ‘thingy’ where you write a short post about your Ebook and ask the readers to write their Email address in the comments field? There’s this one guy with over 10.000 comments.”

After I first saw it, similar posts seemed to pop up everywhere. On Facebook, on LinkedIn, on Instagram – you name it.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Create an eBook (or whitepaper)

2.  Write a short post on your preferred social media network and tell people why you wrote it, why you’re giving it away and what it’s about.

3. In the bottom of your post, add an engaging call to action: “To get your hands on a copy, write your email address in the comments field and I’ll send you a link!”

It’s that easy.

How to optimize: If your post gets a lot of traction, you will be spending days copying and pasting emails into your list. Instead, create a landing page and link to it in the bottom of your post and automate your list building.

8. Write Content Upgrades for your blog posts

If blogging is a big part of your marketing strategy, it might be worth looking into content upgrades.

It’s a great way to increase the value for your readers and at the same time incentivize them to give away their email address.

What’s a content upgrade?

It’s a short, quick-to-make resource complementing your blog post with some additional information.

As an example, If you’re writing about wellness; a content upgrade might be a list of 10 office-friendly exercises that take 20 seconds or less to do.

If you’re writing about management, a content upgrade might be a short checklist of your top 5 tools for team management.

We managed to get a conversion rate of over 39,8% with a content upgrade in the beginning of 2018.

How to optimize: Get Hotjar, install their script and analyze the average scroll depth on your blog posts. If your content upgrade link is placed below where most readers drop off, move it above that line.

9. Re-brand recorded webinars as “Trainings”

Shopify is a fantastic business, and one could argue they have perfected the art of lead generation.

Not only do they have one of the world’s largest blogs for anyone interested in eCommerce, they also have a bunch of free tools useful for anyone looking to open up shop.

They have tools for downloading free stock photos, business name generators, and even a free dropshipping app. With all these tools stacked up they have created a lean, mean lead machine.

But… They also use something they call “Trainings” that run 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Their secret? Recorded webinars.

Recorded webinars can be very efficient for generating leads on a daily basis.

Not only do they have an extremely high perceived value, but you only need to record it once (okay, maybe twice) to have your own personal video sales letter.

10. Discount Codes

Swedish company iDeal of Sweden is selling thousands of phone cases each day across the world.

And we’re more than proud to say they use Triggerbee to capture their leads. They do it using a tried and tested technique:

Discount codes.

By offering their new visitors 15% off on their first purchase, they have managed to push their conversion rate up to an impressive 9%. Not bad, right?

How to optimize: Add a personal countdown timer (see the next tip)!

11. Use Personal Countdowns

There are standard, “boring” countdowns, and then there are personal countdowns…

While regular timers count down to a fixed point of time, personal countdowns are session based and reset for every unique visitor.

These are great for visitors you want to act fast since personal countdowns usually last only for about 2 – 3 minutes.

How to optimize: Combine this with the Scroll-box hack [ADD LINK]!

12. Create a Free Tool

A free tool can be one of your best investments when it comes to lead generation. It might take a little development before you get it right, but when you do… You’ll never let it go.

A free tool is not only valuable; it’s evergreen. In other words, if you build the righttool and solve a problem that exists (e.g. “Where can I find more leads?”), you will see excellent results in no time.

Here are a few examples of online tools:

Business name generator
Shopify sells an eCommerce platform, and since they know most of their audience consists of new business owners, they also know that choosing a name for your business can be quite hard. As a bonus, you can even register the domain name with your business name.
You can check it out here.

Headline Analyzer
Coschedule is the “mission control for your entire marketing strategy”. Many of their customers invest heavily in content marketing, and every legitimate blogger knows that writing headlines is one of the most important parts of writing a piece of content. That’s why Coschedule themselves invested in a free headline analyzer. 
You can check it out here, I use it myself from time to time.

13. Get yourself a Lead Discovery tool

Almost every deal start and end on a website these days.

And even if you have only 10, 50 or 200 visitors a month, business opportunities are hiding in your existing daily traffic (and you’re probably missing more than a few).

With a tool like Triggerbee, you can see every individual visitor, identify visiting companies, and send your most interesting ones straight into your CRM or email marketing service for further nurturing.

How to optimize: Integrate your email marketing service and your CRM to send engaged visitors to your sales team. Or, create a conversion widget and use one of the tactics in this post!

14. Use Social Proof to get more signups

Nobody wants to eat at an empty restaurant. But, almost anyone would wait an hour or two to get a table at the hip restaurant with a celebrity chef.

The same applies when it comes to online marketing. You’ve probably seen it before:

• “Join 39,502 of your peers”
• “10 000+ happy customers”
• “15 of your friends like this”

Use it at or around your most important forms to increase your credibility and trustworthiness.

How to optimize: Use the right kind of social proof for the relevant purpose. For example, boasting about your company’s followers on LinkedIn might not be appropriate when trying to get users to download a buyer’s guide.

15. Use a chat to convert visitors and engage customers

Live chats on your website are perfect for generating new leads.

They are super helpful for current customers, and if you or your support agent is AFK (away from keyboard), any interested visitor won’t have a problem asking a question and then leaving their contact info to get a delayed response.

How to optimize: Use page-specific greetings in your live chat to increase the response rate.

16. Get 80% more conversions by hacking scroll-depth

Only about 20% of your visitors reach the bottom of your website. It’s not your fault though — it’s like this for almost everyone.

If you have a call to action or form anywhere near the bottom of your page, that means 80% of your visitors will never see it!

So, how can you solve this?

First, get yourself a tool that measures how people are scrolling on your website. There’s a lot of them out there, but a few good ones are Crazyegg and Hotjar.

Install your tool and let at least 500 – 1000 people visit your website before you make any decisions.

Second, check out your shiny new scroll map and see where the average scroll depth is. As an example, let’s say that you find out that your visitors drop off at around 55% down. Then move your CTA or form to 5% – 10% above that (in other words, 45% – 50%).

Bonus: If you have a tool for collecting email addresses, make sure you can display your popup or callout based on scroll depth (If not — switch tools immediately). Create a new scroll box, and set it up so that it appears 5% – 10% above the average scroll depth.

17. Use the “Babysteps”-method to generate and qualify leads

Would you ask someone to marry you on the first date? Probably not. Instead, you go on several dates and get to know the person before you pop the big question.

The same applies to lead generation. While it’s true that offers with a high value should require your visitors to fill in more information, you don’t need to ask for it all at once.

What if I told you that you could get it one piece at a time? Would you do it?

Here’s the reality: 

Big forms are scary, and that’s a fact. A form with 14 fields feels like filling out a Russian visa application for someone who just wants to access your free trial or download your massive eBook.

And to be honest… it’s a real conversion killer.

Instead, remove every field except the email field (especially the phone field).

Then, go inside your email capturing tool and see if you can target only visitors who have already converted.

If you can, great! If not… well, consider finding a tool that can.

After that, make sure you have an automated email sequence ready to bring your leads back to your website for further nurturing.

Create a popup or callout to appear only for people who previously signed up in your form, and ask for your next piece of information.

How to optimize: Add a download as an incentive for your lead to fill in their next piece of information.

18. Remove all Anti-Social-Proof

You already know social proof can help you grow your email subscribers by a lot.

But anti-social proof? Not so much.

Anti-social proof is an empty restaurant. It’s empty store shelves. A contest with only 5 participants. A TV-show that nobody has ever heard of. An empty comment field on a blog post. 15 Likes next to your “Follow us on social media”-buttons.

Anything that demonstrates your website or company isn’t popular counts as anti-social proof — and this can be a real downer for anyone looking to sign up.

“Well, this doesn’t seem very popular, I’ll just go sort some spreadsheets instead…”

Here’s what you do:

• Only show a share-button if you have over 300+ shares.
• Only show company logos that people recognize (if you run a local business, show the most popular brand logos in your area)
• If you just have a few hundred email subscribers, don’t bother mentioning it before you have at least 1000.
• Saying you have 10.000 happy users is better than saying you have 50 happy clients (unless those clients are very well known)

19. Use Exit-Intent popups only on essential pages

If you have a few critical pages that any visitor can access without having to purchase anything or sign up, it could be a good idea to put an Exit-Intent popup on those pages.

For example, if you run an eCommerce store, your shopping cart probably has a pretty high abandonment rate.

I mean, it’s the last step before someone needs to enter their payment details — and it’s a scary step.

Many websites display their discount code immediately when a new visitor enters their store, meaning it’s the first thing they sign up for — and payment the last.

Here’s the problem with that:

If they are like any other visitor they’ll browse around for 15 minutes, put a few items in their shopping cart and if they can’t see any indication of that discount code they were promised… they’ll visit your shopping cart only to abandon it.

Maybe you gave them a code to copy immediately after they signed up? Well, what if afterwards, they copied a link to send to their friend?

Bye bye discount code.

Sure, you could probably send them an abandoned cart email — but wouldn’t it be better if you could display your discount code in just the right moment?

The chances of them using your discount code is way higher if you give it to them just before the moment of purchase.

The same goes for B2B. If you put your Exit-Intent popups on key pages — for example, your Case Studies, Contact us, or Book a Meeting, the chance of someone converting is significantly higher.

How to optimize: Add a countdown to increase the sense of urgency.

20. Write an eBook

Okay, here’s the truth: Most people probably won’t read your eBook cover to cover.

But, it’s still one of the most effective lead generation techniques to use because you literally don’t need anything other than:

1) a headline

2) a topic to write about

3) a few hours to spare

How to optimize: Increase conversions by offering a sneak-peek and let visitors read a page or two from your eBook directly on your website. Make sure the preview ends with a cliffhanger, and you got yourself a lead machine.

21. Create Popups for Visitors from Social Media

Over 70% of your visitors expect at least some degree of personalization, and there are a number of ways you can tailor content to them.

Whether you’re looking to generate B2B or B2C leads, tailoring your conversion forms to the visitor’s source can increase conversions by a lot.

Let’s say you’ve written a blog post. You’ve shared it on Facebook and LinkedIn, and the traffic is pouring in.

Instead of having just a general content upgrade or a regular newsletter form, separate the traffic from those sources with a UTM-parameter.

UTM parameters will help you differentiate your visitors and keep track of who comes from where.

When posting on Facebook, just add this little snippet after your link:

?utm_campaign=facebook 

When posting on LinkedIn, add this:

?utm_campaign=linkedin 

If you’re posting it anywhere else, just switch out the word “facebook” or “linkedin” in the above examples to whatever you want.

Your full links should look like this (don’t forget the slash “ / “ before the question mark “ ? “):

• http://www.mywebsite.com/blogpost/?utm_campaign=facebook
• http://www.mywebsite.com/blogpost/?utm_campaign=linkedin

Then go into your conversion form creator, and create a new form that appears only for visitors coming to your website from those separate sources.

It could say…

“Only for Facebook fans: Download the free 7-step checklist for a healthier life”

Or…

“Only for LinkedIn followers: Download the eBook 7 steps to a better workplace”

How to optimize: Make it part of your Babysteps-funnel, and make the tone in your copy sound very personal.

22. Add a Secondary CTA

If you only have one CTA (call-to-action) at the top of your page, you’re probably missing out on a lot of action.

Unless your website has a great visual hierarchy (a clear path for the eye), the average visitor is relatively unobservant.

Most probably won’t look where you want them to, and that’s a fact. Especially when considering that the average time on a website is around 15 seconds.

To fix this, add a secondary CTA in the bottom of your page to make sure that anyone who just scrolls through your website also sees your primary action.

23. Pre-fill Your Forms

Over 70% of your visitors expect you to recognize them when they return to your website.

And there’s no bigger conversion killer than letting your visitors manually fill in your forms each time they want to download or register for something.

Pre-filling forms for already converted visitors is one of the best ways of saying “Welcome back”.

So, the next time you’re promoting your new eBook, webinar or white paper to your email database, try adding a pre-fill on your forms to make it easier for your leads to get their hands on it. This automatically adds any information you already have about them in your forms.

How to optimize: Pre-fill your checkout form for repeat customers if you run an eCommerce store. See Amazon’s 1-click checkout process as an example.

 24. Send out an “Oops”-email to instantly increase your open-rates with 10%

Conversions aren’t always about making new visitors take action — sometimes it’s about getting prospects to take the final step.

If you’re nurturing leads with an email sequence, it can sometimes feel a bit too much “auto” — like you’re using a robot to deliver pitches.

Often, this leads to lower and lower open rates, which in turn leads to lower and lower click and conversion rates.

So, how can you instantly double your email open rates?

Send out an “Oops”-email. An Oops-email is a two-part email, where the first contains all the content along with a button that doesn’t work.

Yes, that’s right. Add a button or a link, but use an address that leads to a 404-page.

Then, shortly after, send out an email that states:

“Oops, looks like I forgot to add the correct link in the previous email. Sorry, here’s the right link: http://domain.com”

That’s it. But, don’t use it too often. People are smart, and it won’t be long before someone calls you out, but it’s a great tactic to use if you have something exceptionally important to say.

How to optimize: If you’re sending out an offer, don’t forget to mention that it’s available in limited quantity 😉

25. Use Scroll Boxes

If a popup appears precisely 0.2 seconds after you’ve just landed on a website, what do you do?  

You will probably react as Liam Neeson did in Taken.

You will find the X, and you will click it.

You probably won’t even have the chance to see what it says. And that’s exactly why scroll boxes work so well.

First, they only appear when the user has shown some engagement. They have shown that they’re interested enough to scroll down to read more, and second…

It won’t block the entire website.

Scroll boxes appear in one of the corners on your screen, so they’re a bit more subtle. It won’t interrupt your entire browsing experience, and it still lets your visitor read your content.

It’s the pleasant way of collecting emails.

How to optimize: Check your average scroll depth using Hotjar, and set your scroll box to appear 5% – 10% before that.

26. Make your 404-page a conversion machine

A 404 page is the page you end up on when you try visiting a web page that doesn’t exist.

And it’s the perfect place to ask for an email, but… you have to do it smartly — otherwise, your visitor will hit their “Back”-button faster than you can spell out the word “Wait!”.

Keep in mind that your visitor was looking for something. They were giving you the gift of their undivided attention, and then something went wrong.

In a moment of frustration like this, signing up for your newsletter is probably not the main thing she is looking to do.

Your visitor was trying to get somewhere, so you need to have a ridiculously good reason as to why someone should leave their email address right there and then.

Trying to engage visitors on a website is a little like trying to have a meaningful conversation with a brick wall.

It might look nice, but it has a limited capability of talking back.

Other than a search form and a few links, your 404-page could contain a small gift. A little easter egg — as an excuse.

Just like a bouquet of flowers can make up for (almost) any argument, an eBook found nowhere else, a checklist, case study or something of value can make up for them ending up on your 404 page.

So, instead of just having a headline that says: “Oops, something went wrong”.

You could say something like:

“We’re sorry, that page doesn’t exist. As a consolation, download a copy of our eBook/Whitepaper/Report for XX! 🙂”

How to optimize: Display a personal countdown for some added urgency to the offer.

1. Capture Abandoning Visitors With Exit Intent Popups

Exit-Intent technology has been around the block more than two times, but that doesn’t mean it won’t capture any leads.

Most internet users have between 5 and 15 tabs open at any given moment, and with the average time spent on a website being around 15 seconds…

You don’t have much time to make a great first impression. Unless…

Enter Exit-Intent! By using a full-screen popup that appears only when the cursor moves up towards the other tabs, you can stop almost anyone in their tracks and earn yourself a few more seconds of their attention.

How to optimize: Make sure you have a clear, short, compelling headline and message. An Exit Intent popup creates the perfect moment for you to give away a Buyers Guide, your best Case Study, or perhaps even a discount code.

28. Remove unnecessary form fields

Your conversion rate drops by an average of 25% for every field you add in your form.

Make sure you think through which information is essential to collect for your specific promotion and edit your form accordingly.

I mean, do you really need the address or phone number, or is it something that you can ask for at a later point?

How to optimize: Use an enrichment service like Clearbit to extract company information (revenue, employees, industry, etc.) from email addresses.

29. Make your Buttons say precisely what they will do

Clear communication is vital, both online and offline.

So, instead of having your buttons say “Book Now” or “Download”, try making them state exactly what they’ll do instead.

If you want your visitors to download an eBook, make your button state:

“Send to my inbox” (instead of download)

Or if you want people to complete a purchase in your eCommerce store, make your checkout button say:

“Pay and complete purchase” (instead of just “Complete”)

30. Use the AIDA-formula

It doesn’t matter if you’re generating B2B or B2C leads. Making people leave their email address is always a daunting task.

But, there’s a way of structuring your copy — your texts, your content — so that it draws the reader in and earns you a few seconds of much-needed attention… Meet AIDA.

AIDA is a simple copywriting formula have been used by marketers and copywriters all over the world to sell billions of dollars of products and services, across all industries.

Read on to learn how you can use it too.

AIDA is an acronym for:

• Attention
• Interest
• Desire
• Action

First, you need to capture your visitor’s attention.

Then, you need to tickle their mind to get them interested in your offer.

After that, you need to present some fact to make them WANT to read more (or purchase, or sign up, etc.)

Last, you need to ask for the action.

The whole purpose of this is to make your visitor read what you have to say, and poorly structured content won’t do that no matter how long you’ve spent writing it.

How to optimize: You don’t optimize AIDA, you just learn how to write better.

31. Run a Contest

Contests are the lifeblood of many lead generation programs worldwide.

For example…

Monster ran a contest in 2005 where the winner would get their student debt paid off, up to 100.000 SEK (around $10k). Over 250 000 Swedish students entered the contest.

Shopify started their famous Build a Business competition back in 2010 where they would give away $100.000 to whoever could build the most profitable business with the help of the Shopify platform, and the result they got was amazing:

• over 1,378 new store signups
• added monthly revenue of $400,000 for Shopify at the contest’s peak
• $3,543,191 total revenue made by store owners

Running a competition might give your visitors the push they need to give your service or product a try.

32. Retarget Website Visitors With Your Blog Posts

Retargeting helps you create the illusion that your company is “everywhere” — even if it’s just in their social media feeds.

Add a Facebook retargeting pixel to your website and retarget every visitor with one of your best blog posts.

If they click through, use an Exit-Intent popup to capture their email address.

How to optimize: Add a super-valuable content upgrade to your blog post to increase the chance of conversion.

33. Host Physical Seminars

Even though digital is all the hype right now, offline events still work. This is especially true if you’re local and inviting people from the same industry.

Run some Facebook and LinkedIn ads to a landing page where they can register for your seminar, send out a promotion to your email list and if you have invited a few partners — send out promotions through their lists as well.

How to optimize: Pre-fill the landing page form for faster registration, and don’t forget the “Invite a friend”-button on the Thank-You page.

34. Show your conversion form after 3 clicks

The visitors who stay the longest are also the ones who are most likely to convert for any of your offers.

Try setting your conversion form to appear after 3 – 4 clicks/pages instead of immediately.

35. Use Exit-Intent Widgets on pages with the highest Bounce Rate

Log into your analytics platform and find the pages with the highest bounce rate, then add an exit intent widget.

If one of your pages has an unusually high bounce rate, your visitors probably think that something is missing (unless it’s a viral blog post).

By adding an exit-intent widget you get a second chance, and if you’re lucky… an email address as well.

How to optimize: Give away an eBook related to the contents of your website.

36. Display conversion forms when a visitor clicks a button or link

The best conversions come from the heart and voluntarily. Instead of interrupting the browsing experience, just make someone click a link to open a popup instead of displaying it automatically.

How to optimize: Make sure you have a strong CTA and an excellent offer to incentivize the click.

 37. Create an industry report

Unique data is one of the most popular and valuable sources of information on the internet.

As an example, Social Media Examiner collects tens of thousands leads from their annual “Social Media Marketing Industry Report” every year, and so does Hubspot with their “State of Inbound”.

To get started, you can create a survey and ask your customers how they feel about a particular topic, then release it as a yearly report.

A great tool to use is Survey Anyplace because it improves your data collection by improving your surveys.

Most surveys today overlook the respondent’s experience, which is why they produce such low response rates. Their survey maker creates modern-looking surveys that engage respondents, are easy to answer, and use cutting-edge mobile features.

On top of that, you get higher response rates, better feedback and in the end… a better report.

How to optimize: Getting people to answer your surveys can be a challenge. Read this blog post on Survey Anyplace’s blog about how you can improve your response rate. 

38. Collect and share ideas from industry experts

Gathering tips and tricks from experts within your industry has always been valuable.

It partially lets you “borrow” authority from those experts since the information comes from you or your company.

And also, expert advice is almost always welcomed.

How to optimize: Make the download available only for a limited time window, or collect all expert advice in an eBook and make it your primary downloadable resource.

39. Use your support team to create content that converts

The team that knows most about your customers is undoubtedly your support or customer success team.

They are in constant contact with the problems of your business, and one could argue – the most critical team of them all.

Talk to them and find out what your customer’s most significant problems or questions are, then create eBooks, whitepapers or case studies based on what they want to know.

How to optimize: Use their exact words when trying to answer or clarify a question. Instead, learn how to give better answers. Your customer’s point of view is very different compared to your point of view, so learn how to read between the lines, but use their words to describe it for them.

40. Remove the word “Spam” from all forms

Being realistic and honest is not the same thing as making a customer feel comfortable.

If you say: “We promise not to send you any Spam” right before someone can submit a form with their email address, the chances are that’s all they’ll see.

Try rephrasing that sentence to say something more inviting, or remove it completely. An alternative is to use an icon of a padlock on your submit button, making it feel like a “secure checkout”.

41. Use a Content Lock or Paywall

Don’t want to use popups? No problem. Other alternatives are just as effective when used correctly.

A content lock is pretty much what it sounds. It locks part of your content, and the only way to make it disappear (or unlock the content) is to give up your email address.

Content locks are popular amongst newspapers and large business blogs since it feels a bit more subtle and sophisticated compared to interrupting the visitor with a popup.

How to optimize: The most effective way to use a content lock is by giving away – and locking – extra list points. For example, if you write a blog post about “The 7 most effective ways of losing weight” add three more bonus tips at the bottom and hide those last three tips with a content lock.

42. Make your About-page a conversion opportunity

Did you know that your About-page is one of the most frequently visited pages on your website?

If not, you do now.

About pages usually tell a story. A story about how your company got started, what sparked the idea, who’s on your team and what values upon which your business is built.

Humans love stories, and a carefully crafted About page could be just as engaging as a well-written biography. It’s also why it makes perfect sense to invite them to join your newsletter.

Try adding a form to make your visitor sign up for your newsletter, take the opportunity to give away your best case study or why not give away your best eBook?

How to optimize: Write a better story about your company, or outline the way you work together with a story about your company.

43. Answer Questions on Quora

This one might not be directly related to capturing leads, but it’s a tactic that leads up to the desired result.

Quora is a platform where you can answer questions about any topic remotely imaginable.

It’s also a great way to build up your authority, because the more questions you answer, the more people will see it.

How to optimize: Figure out a few keywords that relate to your business and sprinkle those keywords in your answers. Their search algorithm looks for exact or containing matches within your search phrase.

44. Send Slideshare traffic to a Landing Page

LinkedIn owns Slideshare, and if you use it right, you could get some incredible reach.

You can upload PDF’s, Powerpoint presentations or images to create a slide deck visible to the world.

One of the perks of using Slideshare is that any links or buttons you add in your PDF are also clickable in your slides.

If you ever host a webinar, upload your slides to Slideshare and send it to the attendees.

If you ever speak at an event, upload your slides to Slideshare and share it with your email list.

How to optimize: Make it part of your content strategy and create short versions of your best blog posts as slides, then upload it to Slideshare.

45. Write Speaker Notes from conferences

The speakers at large conferences are usually pretty well known in your industry, so why not “borrow” their knowledge and turn it into a lead magnet?

Try listening to as many speakers as possible, write detailed notes and share it as “Speaker Notes from Conference X” to your email database.

It will be irresistible for everyone who wanted to attend, but couldn’t.

How to optimize: Sometimes it’s possible to get access to the list of attendees as a sponsor of the event. If that’s an option, try sending out your speaker notes the day after for the best results (We managed to do this once, and we saw open rates of 81%, a 56% click-through rate and a conversion rate of around 60%)

46. Create “Industry Landscapes”

Research comes in many forms: Infographics, industry reports, industry states, lists, and last but not least…

Landscapes.

Every year, Scott Brinker over at chiefmartec.com finds every single company in the marketing technology space and adds their logo in a really, really large infographic.

When they released their infographic in 2017, they had over 5 000 companies, and it’s been shared over 7 900+ times on social media.

Now that’s some serious reach.

You don’t need to find every single company in your niche or industry; this would almost be impossible for some.

Instead, you could do a trend analysis and create a landscape where you compile the fastest growing companies within that trend, and at the same time get valuable insight about where your industry is heading.

47. Engage in a strategic partnership offer

What’s the best form of marketing? The kind that doesn’t come from you.

Here’s a fact:

Over 70% of consumers trust reviews from other people more than information coming from your company.

This is why testimonials and reviews are so powerful.

But, people still trust companies they like, and if you can get other companies to tell their customers about you, it’s a very trustworthy type of marketing.

We’re all biased towards thinking that “This company wouldn’t endorse that other company unless they’re just as great”, so when you get an endorsement from another company, it’s a very trustworthy way of getting your name out there.

If nothing else, a partnership lets you reach an audience you otherwise wouldn’t be able to reach.

How to optimize: If possible, bundle your products and sell them at a discount (or as a once in a lifetime offer).

48. Add a link to your email footer

Okay, so this tactic is what made Hotmail into the beast it once was, and you can adjust it to fit your marketing strategy.

Whether you have an event coming up, an important webinar or perhaps a new downloadable resource, add a link just before or right after your contact information.

How to optimize: This tip isn’t lead generation specific; try not to use images in email footers. Focus on delivering value.

49. Use Quizzes

Almost everyone love to test their knowledge and compare their results to others.

Most think of viral sites when they hear quizzes, but it turns out it works quite well for lead generation as well.

Not only do you have a chance of collecting some valuable information about your audience, but you’re also gamifying the process of collecting email addresses.

Use a service like Quizzr or QuizPop to create your quiz, and send the results to their email address. Easy as that.

How to optimize: Add a scoring system to be able to provide different results depending on the chosen options.

50. Create a PDF to present your stack of tools

Do you know anyone who doesn’t want some insight into how other companies manage their business?

Present the tools you use for marketing, sales or management (depending on your industry), and give it away as a content upgrade or whitepaper.

51. Create a Free Online Course

A lot of people make over 6-figures selling online courses alone. It’s the future of learning, and it’s one of the best ways to generate B2B leads.

How do you ask? Well, there are a few ways you can put your course together.

One way is to write everything from scratch, record some instructional videos and start handing out your free course. Note that this is very time consuming, and will probably take you a few months if it’s your first time.

Another way is to find a lot of old content, update and restructure it, and put it together as a text-based course. This is probably your best bet if you want to get it out there quickly.

How to optimize: As a final step of your course, host a webinar where you sell your students on your product or service.

 

52. Offer a free trial or demo account

Would you buy a car without test driving it first?

Would you buy a home without going to the open house first?

Probably not. Your free trial is your open house or test drive – and it’s how most users prefer to evaluate and buy products.

How to optimize: Don’t forget to have a clear plan of how you convert your free trials into paying customers, or else it’s no use.

53. Give Away Special Offers at Conferences

Conferences are a great place to meet new people, but you need to have a plan in place to get any value from it.

Whether you’re just an attendee or displaying with your company, you need to have something to give those you speak with.

No, business cards or funny stickers aren’t enough to drive sales.

You need to offer them something special, a deal only for them, just because they happened to be at the conference.

A free account, consultation or review, a few free hours of development, whatever you can give away, give it to them.

But, don’t forget to take their business card or contact information in exchange.

Even if conferences might not be your best forum for customer acquisition, free giveaways are a great way of getting people interested in speaking with you.

54. Add security seals

People still feel sceptical about leaving their contact or credit card information on the internet.

Payment services and SSL certificates all have security seals for you to display wherever you need to ensure your visitors that their information is safe with you.

Adding them to a checkout page or on a page with a form can dramatically increase your conversion rate.

How to optimize: Don’t add a security seal from a payment service if it’s just a conversion form. People might think they are initiating a checkout.

55. Use More Testimonials

Testimonials are one of the most persuasive types of social proof, and that’s precisely why you should use them frequently.

Insert testimonials around your conversion forms, in your checkout or anywhere your visitor can leave their information.

It acts as a constant reminder that they are in good company.

56. Use Behavioural and Interest Targeting

One of the worst things with retargeting ads is that you can continue seeing ads for products you purchased two months ago – like I recently experienced with my shoes.

I like my shoes, but I don’t feel that I need another pair anytime soon.

Behavioural and Interest targeting does the exact opposite — instead of displaying offers based on past behaviour, it lets you target communication to what your visitors are interested in as of right now.

That means that you can show a popup ONLY for returning visitors interested in Adidas shoes, or marketing consulting, or management consulting.

Triggerbee offers this feature for Conversion Widgets, and if you’re interested, you can go here to schedule a demo.

57. Segment your website visitors

It’s a common practice to segment your email list before sending out campaigns, but website traffic?

You can divide your website traffic into groups based on different criteria like:

• Number of page views
• Visits from campaigns
• Interest on your website

This is very helpful when trying to convert visitors into leads and customers because you can create different conversion paths for people who are more interested in X than Y, or the other way around.

Having insights like these makes enables you to market far more personal compared to sending your leads the same email sequence, no matter who they are.

You can do this with a tool like Triggerbee.

58. Take users on a journey

Instead of using the good ol’ product video to demonstrate your product, create an experience where your visitor can follow a story that connects the dots between the problem you’re solving, and how your users can solve it with your product or service.

59. Use non-responsive pages to collect emails

Your website needs to be responsive, that’s old news. But, if a part of your website is not…

Put up a specific landing page for mobile visitors with a form where you ask your visitors to give up their email address so you can send them a link to the desktop version.

The best-kept secret about lead generation is that you only need a good reason, nothing else.

If you have a good enough reason for anyone to leave their email address, most will. You don’t need flashy eBooks or large reports (although it helps).  

60. Switch places on your Yes/No button

This one is a little sneaky, but it’s effective. Just make sure you use different colours on your buttons (green for “Yes”, red for “No”) to not confuse anyone too much.

When something pops up, most people’s first instinct is to look for the “No”-button to the right (or the X in the corner) — but if you switch positions of your buttons, you might earn yourself a few more leads.

61. Host 30-day Challenges

We’re not talking about challenges like the ones for awareness, but rather 30-day challenges created for anyone to reach their desired result.

For example, a lot of personal trainers use challenges to get people to join their classes or online coaching programs. When it comes to workout, just getting started is half of the work.

But, it’s in no way limited to fitness. You could might aswell do a “Get 10 high-paying clients in 30 days”-challenge and get the same results.

62. Collect leads using Facebook Lead Forms

If you’ve never tried using Facebook to generate leads directly in their newsfeed, you are missing out on a great opportunity.

In 2015, Facebook rolled out their new advertising feature called “Lead Ads” which let you create a lead form, and promote it just like you do with any other ads.

It only takes 10 seconds or less for users to submit their information since Facebook already have their email address, name, street address, phone number and any other information you could make use of.

63. Last date to decide

If you’re hosting an upcoming event, seminar or webinar — there will be more than a few people visiting your landing page without the intention of making a decision right there and then.

And even if you have stated the last date for signing up, big and bold, most of those indecisive people probably won’t remember to sign up until it’s too late.

Instead of just letting it pass, why not offer to send them a notification the day before you close your registration?

It’s a great way to make them commit to a small “Yes” in the beginning, and it’s also an easy way to make them attend your event.

64. Use personal video email

There’s a new gold rush sweeping the internet, and you better hop on the mining train before it’s too late.

If you’re in sales or marketing and are looking to increase revenue, what this little technique can do for your bottom line will shock you…

Thousands of people just like yourself are making a fortune only by sending personal video greetings to their leads via email.

Why?

It’s as personal as it can get.

You can’t fake saying someone’s name in a video.

You can’t fake talking about your last meeting.

And there’s almost no way of building up a personal relationship with email, the way you can with personal video.

It’s not lead generation per-se, but it might count as deal generation.

Check out one of the tools below and start setting aside a few hours each day for answering emails – you’ll need it.

• Canned.me
• Bonjoro
• Wistia Soapbox

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!