Tag Archives: how to capture leads on a website

New Mobile Feature for Waftio

New Mobile Feature for Waftio

Early next year, Google will roll out an update to build upon the overall mobile-first use of the Internet by daily web users. Since over half of Google’s searches come from mobile devices, the focus on improving the mobile search is unsurprising. One of the things the upcoming change focuses on is reducing intrusive interstitials (especially pop-ups) that hamper the mobile experience and frustrate users by blocking access to content unless users take action. The following examples of pop-ups violate Google’s new mobile search rules:

  • Interstitials that make content inaccessible immediately after visitors come to the page from the search results
  • Pop-ups users have to dismiss before continuing on the site
  • Pop-ups that mimic the above-the-fold part of the page but the original content is inlined under the fold

Websites that don’t meet Google’s new standards will be penalized. If the content you have worked so hard to produce is visually obstructed by a pop-up (in a way that violates Google’s criteria), the site’s mobile rankings may go down.

In response to this new update, we’ve made a few changes to our Waftio app.

To be helpful to all users of Waftio, we’ve altered the way pop-ups can be used so you have more control.

What does this mean for your website?

We’ve added a feature to Waftio that puts you in control of your site’s mobile user experience with Waftio. Our new update includes the option to disable pop-ups only on mobile devices. This way your site won’t hinder mobile visitors view of your content. Hence, your visitors will have a more pleasant time navigating the site.

This is an optional item to turn on in the Waftio settings area.  We keep you in control and give you the power to continue to grow leads with your website!

Best Practices for Lead Generation Using Sweepstakes

Best Practices for Lead Generation Using Sweepstakes

People like free stuff.  They do!

Whether it’s as simple as movie tickets to the latest blockbuster or as grand as an all-expense paid trip to the Caribbean. It’s for this reason why sweepstakes have always been a go-to method for marketers when it comes to generating buzz.

There’s nothing quite like a giveaway to get people engaged, make them click on like, write a comment, share a post, follow a page, subscribe to a newsletter, and sometimes even create their own content.

But it isn’t only a buzz that sweepstakes can generate. Contests generate leads as well, which isn’t a surprise considering the lengths people are willing to go to just nab an interesting prize.

Of course, the big question is whether you’ll get relevant leads that end in conversions — and not just casual passersby hoping to win (and with no intention of coming back again).

To make sure you get high-quality leads here are some best practices for lead generation using sweepstakes:

Give Away a Gift Certificate for your Products or Services

A cash prize will get lots of signups via your opt-in form. You can bet that most of them will unsubscribe once the contest is over. People are always interested in money even if they’re not interested in your business. By giving away a gift certificate for your products or services, those who’ll join are interested in what your business can offer.

Keep your Prizes Reasonable

If it’s too good to be true, then people will think your contest is a scam designed to harvest personal information for malicious purposes. Even if you can afford to give away a huge freebie, make your prizes tempting yet still believable. Like a $50 voucher to be used for your products or services.

Save the grand prizes for special occasions, like your business’s milestone anniversary.

Make Participants Work for it a Bit

Most sweepstakes just ask for a name and email address. Aside from being no fun at all, this can turn away great leads. They may think they don’t stand a chance to win (and can’t be bothered to join at all).

To get genuinely interested participants, make people exert a bit of effort before they can join. Ask them to fill out a survey or give a creative answer to a question. You’ll be able to filter out the non-relevant leads, and also get information from relevant leads. Just make sure your prize is worth the extra effort.

Allow Social Sharing for More Chances of Winning

People will be willing to share your sweepstakes with their networks if you give them referral incentives. Such as additional entries for every signup they get through their referral link.

Without this option, participants might not tell others about your contest in an attempt to keep the competition pool small. Fewer joiners mean higher chances of winning, after all. But with the assurance of added entries per share, they’ll have a reason to spread the word.

When it comes to sweepstakes for lead generation, everyone’s a winner — your business included. As long as you know how to do it right.  Plan your contests well and you may come out with the top prize of high-quality leads.

5 Tips to make your Opt-in Form Stand Out

5 Tips to make your Opt-in Form Stand Out

To make sales, you need a customer base. A great way to build your customer base is by adding an opt-in form to your website. After all, an email campaign is more effective when your audience has already expressed interest in your business, instead of a group of strangers who don’t have an idea about your business before hearing from you.

If you want to be successful, you can’t just add an opt-in form and wait for the subscriptions to pour in. Online marketing is so competitive that everything about your website, including the opt-in form, needs to stand out. Gone are the days when you had to stick to a standard form that couldn’t be customized. Now, you can make your opt-in form exactly the way you want.

Though there’s no clear formula, the following guidelines can help you decide the direction you want your opt-in form to take:

  • Make an offer visitors can’t refuse.

    A strong call to action marked by a sense of urgency will get people to move faster. Let’s say you’re a reseller of designer labels, and you have a sale going on. You can use that sale to entice readers to subscribe. “Up to 50% off on luxury brands this summer only! Shop online now!” is more enticing than “Subscribe to our newsletter for sales announcements.”

  • Pique visitors’ interest with a bit of drama.

    Clickbait titles can be annoying, but they’re irresistible. You can apply the same principle to your opt-in form by creating a bit of a teaser. For example, you’re a financial advisor offering your services. Skip the boring text and go with something like “If money doesn’t grow on trees, where does it grow? Find out!” Most people know money grows when you invest it, but the way the question is presented like riddle makes it hard for folks not to be curious.

  • Give visitors a glimpse of what they can expect when they subscribe.

    It’s hard to convince people to sign up if they don’t see the value of subscribing, so why not offer a small taste? If you’re running a fitness site and you want people to subscribe to get access to your exercise programs and meal plans, add a tip to your opt-in form. “Half an hour of brisk walking can burn 150 calories” is a short yet useful tip. You can have the tips change each time the page is refreshed for added variety.

  • Make it entertaining for your visitors.

    Filling out an opt-in form takes time and effort, however minimal. That’s why many people don’t bother. But make it feel less like a chore and more fun. Let’s say you have a bakery and you want to market your cakes and pastries. A picture quiz like “Which dessert speaks to you?” is quick and light. After clicking, visitors can be redirected to a discount coupon they receive when they subscribe.

  • Highlight what visitors would be missing.

    Don’t just put a nondescript “No, thanks” button for people who want to opt out. Put something there that can make them think twice. If you’re running a travel agency, your opt-out button can say “I like to miss out on flight and tour discounts” or “I don’t like to save money on travel.”

Regardless of your niche, these 5 tips will help you design an opt-in form that stands out. To get the best results with the strongest impact, partner your copy with interesting visuals.

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Best Practices for a Lead Capture Popup

Best Practices for a Lead Capture Popup

In the constantly improving field of conversion optimization, exit-intent popups are now a big thing. Exit-intent technology leads to more email subscriptions by engaging a visitor just as they are about to leave your site. The popup is your attempt to reach out and create a relationship – so to speak.

The technology is able to react when it detects that the visitor is about to navigate away from the browser page, and initiates to them a popup box. This tool gives you a chance to communicate why the visitor should consider subscribing, offer them something of value in exchange for signing up, and takes advantage of the 10-15% of lost visitors that can be saved and ushered back into the sales funnel.

Let’s learn how to best use exit-intent technologies to capture more leads.

Develop and Bolster Your Email List

You don’t always have to use an exit-intent popup to make a sale; data from Optimonk shows that sites have success in capturing emails for a subscriber’s list, not necessarily a direct sale. In fact, you can recover between 3 to 5% of traffic that you would have lost by installing a popup request to join your email list. Further, boost these numbers by up to nearly 10% by offering an incentive such as a white paper or ebook in exchange for the sign-up.

Use Cart Abandonment to Your Advantage

However, exit intent is a great strategy for e-commerce site sales. It turns out that exit-intent popup technology successfully recaptures about 10% of the business that would otherwise be lost. It can go as high as 15% with certain considerations. For one; remove the email requirement and simply offer an immediate discount if they purchase now instead of abandoning the cart. This can simply involve free shipping – it often works wonders!

The Exit-Intent Redirect Popup

Another use for popups that’s been successful is the redirection option. When the exit-intent tech thinks your visitor may be leaving the site, the popup appears to direct the traffic to another page on your website. It provides you with another shot at conversion if your landing page failed to do it. This may not sound like much, but listen to the data: content redirection popups can recapture up to a 1/4 of leaving visitors! The average is around 10%, which is still quite good – given that you were on the verge of losing them anyway.

Optimize for Simplicity and Speed

The popup can’t take too long to show up – this is crucial. If it takes longer than 200 milliseconds, then you might lose them. This requires preloading the popup since the real-time implementation of the code takes longer than 200 milliseconds. Keep it simple and to the point to further minimize loading times. Plus – you don’t want to overload your visitors with cool but unnecessary graphics. Focus on the content, and keep it concise but informative.

Run Tests Based on Analytics

This pertains to your copy. Not testing your copy means that you’re missing out on opportunities to increase the rate of conversion. There’ve been tests run on exit-intent copy that merely altered a single tagline, which get a 47% increase in conversions!

Don’t wait any longer – sign-up for a free trial of Waftio today to begin taking advantage of exit-intent tech today!Save

Marketing Agency Uses for Waftio Lead Capture

Marketing Agency Uses for Waftio Lead Capture

We all know our website should be more than just an online brochure or showroom for our business. Its main function, as far as the visitor is concerned, is to educate them about your product and/or service. But as business owners, we know the truth. Your website is there to convert visitors into leads and leads into sales. Of course, you don’t want to be that obvious. A hard sell doesn’t go down well, especially when people are in the very early stages of the sales cycle.

How do you Convert Visitors into Leads?

To convert an anonymous visitor into a lead you must interact with them in some way. You need some information from them and some way to stay in touch. You carefully place calls-to-action throughout your site and hope someone is ready to contact you. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they aren’t ready to ask you a question and certainly aren’t ready to part with their contact information. Once that visitor leaves your site there is no guarantee they will return. Therefore, you must offer them something of value in return for them filling out a contact form. This is where Waftio Lead Capture can help.

What is Waftio Lead Capture and How Can it Help?

  • Encourages visitors to stay longer on your site
  • Boosts visitor engagement
  • Interacts with visitors from any page on your site
  • Offers fun way to promote your business
  • Increases your customer lead database
  • Integrates with multiple CRM / Email services / GoToWebinar

How Does Waftio Work?

Before we go into detail about Waftio you need to understand how pop-ups work. There are two different types of pop-ups.

Pop-Up

A pop-up appears on top of your current browser. They can pop-up from any side, top, or bottom of the page. They can look like an image, a contact form, and can even shake or quiver.

Pop-ups used to be in a new browser window or tab but nowadays they are usually modal. This means they run as part of the page your visitor is on and cannot be blocked by pop-up blockers.

Pop-under

A pop-under appears under the page your visitor is reading. This makes them less noticeable and also easier to block with pop-up blockers. They are useful when asking the visitor to fill out a survey based on their experience on your site.

Generically they are both referred to as pop-ups.

Pop-up Triggers

There are three ways to activate a pop-up on a website.

Time

A time activated pop-up appears when a visitor has been on your site for a certain amount of time. This gives the visitor time to look around before seeing the offer/ad.

Behavior

A behavior activated pop-up appears when a certain condition is met. E.g. – clicked on a certain page, visited a certain number of pages, or scrolled down to a particular part of a page etc.

Exit

An exit activated pop-up appears when a visitor leaves your site. It allows you to extend a special offer or entice them back to your site.

What does Waftio Offer?

Waftio offers three applications that encourage the visitor to interact with your site.

Survey

Ask your visitor a question. Capture their response and contact information. This can give you information and also grow your email list.

Form

Sign-up visitors for your newsletter, event, webinar, etc. from a form on any or all pages.

Sweepstakes Contest

Contests and giveaways are a great way to collect information from visitors.

The type of pop-up you use and how you activate it will depend on your offers and goals.

Whatever you use, Waftio is easy to operate and integrates well with many popular marketing platforms currently being utilized. It can be a key tool in helping your site move from just an information source online, to a lead generation tool that yields real business results!

The Value of a CTA in Your Blog Post

The Value of a CTA in Your Blog Post

Blogging is one of the best strategies you can use to communicate and interact with your online audience. Content management systems like WordPress make it easy to create a blog. As you use the blog to market your products and services, it’s crucial to include a CTA (call to action) within each post.

Without a CTA to motivate your readers into taking the action you want them to take, your readers won’t take any action at all. It’s simply information on the web.  You need to guide your readers to take the action you desire!

Here’s what a CTA can do for your blog:

Increase Web Traffic

Websites that get lots of traffic rank higher in the major search engines. This, in turn, makes the site more readily available (higher in search results) to those doing searches. The key is to include a link to the website product/service page in your CTA. It will help channel traffic from your blog to the site, increasing the success of your online marketing campaigns and your popularity.

Example of a form embedded in a blog post:

The Value of a CTA in Your Blog Post

Get the Reader to Read More Content

One of the best ways to convert traffic is with quality content that makes the reader stay on your website. Adding a call to action of related articles to your blog posts will invite readers to read your other posts. All you have to do is link to the related topics using keywords. For instance, the keyword “online marketing” can be linked to other articles on social media marketing, website marketing or email marketing within the blog post.

A simple and clear way to do this is with a titled area “Related Content” and then have a bulleted list with keyword titles linking to other articles on your blog or website.

Increase Chances of the Post Being Shared on Social Media

There are over 2 billion active social media users in the world today. Use social media to market your products and services. Because posting links to your blog posts on social media isn’t enough, you’ll need go a step further. Include social sharing buttons on your posts as your CTA at the end of all blog posts. Readers will be able to share the posts easily by just clicking on these buttons.

Add More Readers to your Email List

Email marketing is a powerful strategy to generate sales. Use a CTA to get your website readers to subscribe to your email newsletter. One of the best ways to tempt people to subscribe is by giving discounts or access to premium content in exchange for them signing up. For example, if your blog post focuses on photography, you could offer a free eBook with tips about photography to readers who provide their email address.

Finally, the CTA should be action-oriented, brief, clear, and easy to locate. Readers should be able to see it from a distance, but it shouldn’t be so large that it diverts attention from the main content. More importantly, it should be in an easy-to-find spot on the blog.   Try different ones including sidebar CTA’s, in-page CTA’s, and pop-up CTA’s.

 

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5 Tricks to Get the Best Opt-in Forms

5 Tricks to Get the Best Opt-in Forms

One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a marketer is assuming that if a lead has clicked on your call-to-action, they are as good as converted. The lead still has to fill out your form, which means they can still change their mind and leave your page.

If you find the number of views of your landing page is substantially larger than your lead captures, there could be a problem with your form.

Here are some of the common reasons why your opt-in form is failing to capture leads:

1. You’re asking for too much information

The shorter your form, the more willing people will be to complete it. If the form looks like a test, most will skip it. You should limit the form to 2  to 3 fields. People don’t have patience, and the last thing they’re going to do is take the time to answer lots of questions.

2. You’re asking for information that’s too personal

Most people are uncomfortable giving personal information via the internet. Obviously, you have to ask for a name and email address. Most people realize they have to provide this information.

However, you shouldn’t ask for other information, like phone numbers and company names. This makes people uncomfortable – especially since there are a lot of websites that the sell information they collect.

3. Your leads don’t feel secure

Almost everybody will have second thoughts before they fill out a form on a website. Do they really want to provide you with information that you can use to spam them?

Demonstrate the safety and security of your site to help alleviate these fears by including the following:

  • Social Proof – Add social proof to your landing page. Add the number of shares or likes the landing page has gotten, the number of downloads you’ve gotten (if you’re offering free downloadable content in exchange for filling out the form) or even customer testimonials.
  • Privacy Policy – Provide a link to your privacy policy to reassure leads you won’t sell their personal information. A good place to put the link is under the field asking for their email address.
  • Authority Endorsement – Any endorsements from an authoritative source, guarantees or third-party security certifications should be displayed on the form.

4. You’re not positioning the form above the fold

When a lead arrives on your landing page, make sure your form is in full view. A lead should not have to scroll down the page in search of the form; there’s a chance that they may get distracted and simply forget why they’re there. Always position your form above the fold (meaning the visible area on a web page) so your leads don’t have to search to find it.

5. You’re not testing your forms

Use variations of your forms and do A/B testing to determine which variation is more effective at capturing leads.

Don’t underestimate the importance of your opt-in forms when it comes to capturing leads. Be sure to avoid some of these more common mistakes to make sure your forms are efficient.

The Importance of Cleaning Your Email List

The Importance of Cleaning Your Email List

Maintaining a clean email list is often overlooked but important.  After you’ve setup your email marketing with a list of addresses and a smooth unsubscribe and opt-out process, make sure you’re maintaining your email marketing. One of the most important steps to keep your email marketing strong is keeping your email list clean. You don’t need to waste your resources or injure your email reputation by sending to addresses that aren’t giving you an ROI!

Let’s take a closer look at the importance of cleaning your email list.

Managing Bounces

Even the best email lists will lose some quality over time, no matter how much you monitor them. Bad addresses can end up on your list because users close their email accounts, or they switch jobs. Sometimes email accounts are abandoned or fill up so they can’t accept messages.

Emails sent to these addresses register as “bounces.” Bounces have a negative impact on your sender reputation. The more bounces you get, the more likely your emails will be filtered out as spam. Spammers don’t usually clean their email lists, which is why email service providers monitor bounces as part of determining what spam is. This is one of the most important reasons to keep your email list clean. You don’t want your emails to be marked as spam!

The best practice for determining which addresses are bad is to set a threshold for the number of bounces each email address registers. You shouldn’t remove an address after just one bounce. The user might have been away on vacation, and his email filled up, or maybe his server was experiencing technical difficulties. A good threshold number for bounces is three to five.  Beyond that many bounces to one address, it’s best to clean your list of that address to maintain a good email reputation.

Inactive Users

There isn’t any extra cost for sending emails to users who don’t open them, but there is a good reason to clean the inactive users on your list. Many email service providers also monitor email activity. If emails aren’t opened over a long period of time, future emails might end up in the spam folder.

It takes a judgment call to determine who your “inactive users” might be. Because there isn’t any way of knowing what email providers consider “low activity.”

A good way to test the waters is to email the inactive email accounts and ask them if they’re interested in getting emails from you. If the user remains inactive, hang on to their address and put it on a secondary list. Email this list occasionally.
Remind your subscribers that the best way to make sure your emails land in their inboxes is to add your email address to their contacts.

Quality Counts

Maintaining a clean email list is important for keeping a good sender reputation with email providers. It takes a bit of an effort to keep an email list clean, but it’s a good way to boost the ROI of your email marketing.

How about yours?  When was the last time you cleaned your email list?

Lead Generation Strategy

Lead Generation Strategy

What are the goals of your lead generation strategy? The answer to this question is a good place to start, but is that enough? It’s true that no two businesses are alike, and no cookie-cutter marketing solution can be applied to all businesses.However, when it comes to lead generation, there are a few strategies that can work quite broadly across many industries.

These timeless strategies can work for virtually any business, organization, person, or idea as long as it involves an online presence. Read on to find out the strategies you can use to maximize the results of your lead generation efforts.

How many leads do you need to fill the pipeline?

You’re probably saying, “as many as possible!” However, as logical as that seems it’s not really workable. Come up with a realistic number. An exact number could be challenging to determine especially if you don’t have past sales metrics for your products and services. Along the way, you’ll get a better idea of what metrics are important to track, as you calculate your desired number.  Break it down to a monthly basis.  Is it 50?  If you have 50 a 8% closure rate, is that enough good leads in a month?

Capture the attention of your target audience

Understand what your audience wants and view your content from their perspective. Keep in mind, some of your visitors will never return to your website if you fail to capture their attention. Although asking for an email address is essential, many people are not willing to give it away. Sign up buttons no longer work effectively, they’re too common and easily overlooked. In this case, you’ll need to use other ways to capture their information.

One of the best ways to know what your audience wants is to ask them. A survey works well for this. Your salespeople may provide valuable insights as they communicate with your customers on a daily basis. Once you know, you’re better equipped to generate content that captures their attention, and eventually more leads.

Maximize the rate of opt-ins

Getting the lead to a page on your site isn’t enough. You have to develop an effective opt-in strategy. Capturing attention is only part of the battle. You’ve probably noticed the gap between traffic generation and lead generation. Some one-time visitors will ignore any attempts to get information from them.

Your landing page and offerings should be compelling enough to seal this gap. Using lead magnets like subscriptions, webinars, eBooks, bonus tips, free trials, email opt-ins, and training videos can effectively capture the interest of your audience. Your focus should be getting their permission to market to them.

Optimize your landing pages

These are used for single marketing campaigns. Landing pages essentially capture leads and tempt potential clients. They’re important stepping-stones before going further into your sales program. Don’t overwhelm your visitors with promotions or information about your business, but focus on one specific goal. Confirm the promise made by your landing page click source, and deliver the same.

Don’t focus on one method of lead generation, as it may limit the effectiveness of your overall marketing program. Multi-faceted approaches tend to create more buzz in the market, save time, and improve your results.

That’s a wrap on some time-tested tactics to grow leads on your website.  What’s the next step you need to take now to improve your website lead capture?  Needing a tool to make it easy?  You’re on the right website!

Capturing Leads and Potential Customers with Webinars

Capturing Leads and Potential Customers with Webinars

A marketer’s primary goal is to find and attract leads. But not just any lead. The best kind of lead is a potential customer who’s in your target audience, heavily interested in your product, and could potentially be not just a customer, but a repeat user of your product/service.

So how do you capture these? One essential weapon in the digital marketer’s toolbox is the webinar. A webinar can be an extremely successful tool in capturing great leads that turn into valuable customers. Here are some of the secrets to the different ways you can go about capturing those valuable leads with a live webinar.

1. Pick an Inviting, Relevant Topic

There are probably a number of subjects you could present during a webinar. But the secret to attracting the leads you want is to consider your target audience carefully and choose the topic that would be most interesting to them. If you haven’t already, develop an audience persona for the type of customer you’re hoping to attract. What are their fears and worries? What problems do they have that you can help solve? Use your frequently asked questions from current customers as webinar topics.

2. Promote Your Webinar to Your Target Audience

Of course, the best content in the world isn’t going to do much without promotion. Make sure to notify your email list about the webinar, share it on social media, use Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn advertising to spread your message. Make your registration form easy to fill and shareable. Use images and intriguing headlines in your advertising. Consider doing radio or podcast interviews to reach new audiences who may be interested in your product.
Consider other fun ways to attract more leads, including giveaways or contests.

3. Pick the Right Platform

No one is going to be impressed with a webinar that is glitchy, or a lead form that doesn’t work. Chose your webinar software carefully and do a trial run before the live presentation. GotoWebinar is one of the major players in the webinar industry. Consider additional apps or software can customize your lead forms like Waftio.

4. Give Away Your Secrets

The secret to a great webinar is to give your audience something really valuable that they can use immediately, or continue to think about for the next few weeks. If you genuinely help your audience solve a problem, or improve their lives, you have them hooked. Why wouldn’t they want to consider becoming your customer?

5. Follow-Up Promptly

You’ve captured your lead, and you’ve wowed them with your secrets. Now make sure you follow-up with everyone who attended your webinar. Make sure what you’re offering is clear and it’s easy for them to take the next step, whether that’s to download a paper, purchase an e-book, or sign up for a class. Make your email content as valuable as your webinar, and you’ll have more sign-ups.

Waftio has custom forms that have proven to be effective. Waftio even integrates with GoToWebinar for an eye-catching form with the convenience of GoToWebinar automation. Sign up for a FREE 7-day trial!