If you want to promote and grow your business, having good capture software is a must. Lead capture tools enable you to find prospects, win their trust, and convert them into leads.
Lead capture software typically uses pop-ups, forms, live chat, or landing pages to gather email addresses and other data from site users. Certain lead capture systems also allow you to collect leads using interactive marketing content, such as quizzes.
The problem is that there are a lot of options on the market. It takes time to choose the best one, and there is no assurance that your lead-capturing process will be successful.
In this post, we’re explaining what lead capture software is, how it benefits your business, and what features to look for in your lead capture app to ensure you’re making the right choice.
Lead Capture Vs Lead Generation
Lead capture is a crucial step in the process of generating leads. It includes collecting lead information from all possible sources including social media, email, and website landing pages. The information in these leads might include name, contact information, source of the lead, preferred method of contact, previous interactions with your business, etc. Once the company has this information, the visitor is considered a lead.
The company can use this to provide the lead with timely information about its brand, products, services, or industry across various channels. If you gather enough data and analyze it, you will be able to learn more about what kind of people visit your website and their issues, making it easier for you to communicate with potential customers. By gathering lead information, your organization may begin forging connections with the people who have already shown an interest in it but might not otherwise visit your website again.
Offering something of value to your visitors (i.e. a lead magnet) will help you persuade them to give you their contact information. This could be an e-book, how-to manual, free demo, etc. As a business, you should always provide your audience with interesting and helpful content. The higher the perceived value of what you are offering your website visitors, the more information they will be willing to provide you with.
The main objective of lead capture apps is to streamline the lead generation process, increase conversions, and improve the overall sales process.
Lead capture is the first stage in the sales pipeline. The following steps include nurturing, lead scoring, analytics, and a number of other processes that the sales team takes in order to convert leads into sales. As a result, although lead capture software can be bought as a stand-alone solution, you will usually find it as a small part of a larger lead management suite or marketing software suite.
Lead generation, on the other hand, is the process of attracting customers and it focuses on the actions you do to drive traffic to your website and social media accounts, and convert site visitors into leads.
Lead generation refers to all the actions a company takes to produce leads. These can include traditional marketing channels like networking and print advertising as well as online marketing channels including social media marketing, email marketing, paid advertising, and referral marketing.
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Benefits of Lead Capture Software to Your Business
Lead capture systems have several business benefits to offer for your company. Here are some of the most important ones:
Increased efficiency: By automating the lead-capture process, you can save time and cut down on errors, helping your business become more efficient.
Collecting accurate lead data. You can use contact forms, sign-up forms for websites and mobile apps, chatbots, social media, and in-person interactions to capture leads. However, since some of the data you’ve obtained can change over time, you must continually update it. A lead capture app is a great way to ensure that your contacts’ phone numbers, addresses, job descriptions, shopping patterns, and other pertinent information are accurate and up-to-date.
Qualifying and scoring leads. According to the most recent lead data, 96% of website visitors aren’t ready to make a purchase. To help your salespeople focus their efforts more efficiently, you must qualify and score each lead. With the aid of lead capture software, you can find warm, qualified leads. In addition, you’ll have knowledge about their weaker equivalents so that you may avoid pressuring them into buying and running the danger of being invasive.
Identifying effective marketing tactics. A lead capture app will help you track lead sources to see which marketing methods are effective and which may require modification. With such knowledge, your marketers may improve their efforts to meet the expectations and needs of your target audience. They can also share relevant information with your sales reps to help them close deals faster.
Increased conversion rates: By creating offers and campaigns that are specifically targeted at certain lead groups, lead capture software aids organizations in increasing conversion rates.
Key Features and Considerations When Purchasing a Lead Capture App
With so many lead capture tools out there, how can you focus your search and find the best solution for your business? Whether you’re using a lead capture app for the first time or looking to upgrade, these are some features to look for in your lead capture software.
- Form builder
In order to get the attention of your website’s visitors, your pop-up lead capture form needs to stand out. With the Justuno Custom Form Builder, you can easily create custom HTML forms for customer information capture without having to know how to code.
In addition to lead capture, JustUno is a complete solution that helps clients boost their conversion rates through a number of solutions such as intelligent product recommendations, gamification, tap-to-text opt-ins, push notifications, dynamic banners, etc
- A/B and multivariate testing
Optimizing your onsite form conversion rate is part of an effective lead generation strategy that emphasizes continuous improvement. One way to increase conversions is by testing your pop-up forms’ copy, targeting, and timing.
To determine the form configuration that is most effective for your website and audience, look for a lead capture solution that enables you to do A/B or multivariate testing.
- Personalization
With the use of strategies like quiz funnels to gather visitor preferences or multi-step forms that can help pre-qualify leads, the right lead capture app can help you gather data for more personalized marketing.
Some lead capture systems also allow you to customize your on-site messaging with customized pop-ups or landing pages. You can display customized pop-ups based on HTTP parameters, source, or even the current on-page content by using dynamic content. For instance, you can display a tailored campaign offering a discount on items in that product category if a customer visits an eCommerce site just to look at a certain product.
- Integrations
With the help of lead capture software, you may automate a variety of processes and save valuable time. However, you won’t get the same advantages if you spend your entire day manually moving data between the different platforms and systems you are using. You need to make sure that your new lead capture app integrates seamlessly with your existing technology such as your marketing platform and customer relationship management (CRM).
In order to nurture the leads you have captured into paying customers, you will likely need to use targeted email campaigns. However, if you have to manually add new leads to your email solution, you miss the chance to engage new leads when their interest is at its peak: just after they sign up. Ensure that your form solution integrates with the customer data platform, email marketing tools, and any other marketing technologies you employ to engage your audience. If your lead capture app is integrated with your email service provider, you won’t have to waste time uploading lists; instead, fresh leads will be added in real-time.
- Scalability and flexibility
Be sure that the lead capture tool you choose is flexible enough and can easily scale as your business grows.
If you don’t choose an app that can adapt to where your company may be in a year or five years, you might be forced to repeat your search. Look for lead capture software that has all the key features you require, fits into your long-term plan, and won’t significantly increase in price as your usage changes.
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- Cost-effectiveness
While paying less is always preferable, a low price often means fewer features and/or reduced effectiveness.
While it is important to make sure that your new lead generation software fits within your budget, it is also vital to remember that with the right features and capabilities, some solutions will pay for themselves. For instance, a powerful conversion rate optimization solution will cost more than its simpler alternatives, but the improved return on investment will likely make the extra cost worthwhile.
- Excellent customer support services
Finally, don’t forget to check whether the lead capture app provider offers good customer service and support.
Regardless of how many features the lead capture software has, it will make little difference if you are not able to use it. If you want to get the most out of your investment, look for apps that offer training sessions, onboarding services, continuing support, and professionals who can provide you with the direction you need to thrive.
- Cloud-based vs. on-premise lead capture software
The majority of lead capture software these days is hosted on the cloud. This indicates that, unlike with on-premise solutions, your company won’t need to host the platform on its own hardware and won’t need to pay salaries to in-house IT personnel to manage that infrastructure.
A cloud-based platform is usually a better option for small firms because of its cheaper initial and ongoing costs. When researching software options, be sure to ask vendors about their deployment choices, training programs, and customer support services to select a solution that best suits your requirements.
- Company size
Lead capture software is available as a standalone product, a component of a larger lead management package, or as one application integrated into a powerful CRM or marketing platform. Which option you decide to invest in will depend on the needs of your business and the size of your company.
If your company is small, you can invest in standalone lead collection software. However, you need to consider how long you anticipate using the stand-alone system based on your business growth plans since as you expand, you’ll want your leads database to integrate with additional sales tools. Larger companies will very likely want lead-capturing capability as part of broader lead management software or sales and marketing software.
Final Thoughts
If you are looking to boost conversions and improve sales, automating your lead capture process is crucial. Investing in an effective lead capture app can be the turning point for your company as you will gain the ability to gather more leads, obtain better insights, create targeted promotions, and convert more prospects into customers.
However, with so many options available, choosing the right lead capture app can be a challenging and time-consuming task. For this reason, you must put adequate time and effort into learning about, evaluating, and understanding your options.
Start by determining your company’s needs and expectations. Knowing your current lead capture capabilities can help you determine whether the software’s key features will address your issues and help you achieve your broader lead generation goals. Also, be sure that the lead management software you ultimately select can expand with your company because you want to invest in the greatest lead generation tool possible that can support you in the long term.
