Woohoo! Someone filled out a form for your whitepaper or webinar!
You’ve given them what they asked for, but now what? This one conversion probably doesn’t make them a customer. Should you rush to have a sales person call them to schedule a demo? What do you really know about this person, and should you spend your time trying to turn them into a new customer?
In my last article, Rethinking The Lowly Thank You Page, I talked about things you need to do to create a better conversion experience with your audience. But, as you can imagine, there is much more to it if you really want to excel and drive your sales performance higher.
Don’t Stop Converting At The Thank You Page!
Unless you run a consumer e-commerce site, your sales process is usually measured in weeks and months rather than a visit or two. Turning visitors into prospects takes a lot of resources and money, so don’t waste it by only giving them the minimum possible.
If you are the brand in your industry that gives everything to help their visitors, you’ll have a much greater chance of winning the customer because you’ve established a much better reputation and solidified your brand in the customer’s mind.
Knowing Your Visitor
As a marketer, I want to know everything I can about who is converting on my websites. Since I am typically frugal in the questions I ask on forms, I want to find ways of learning more about who is visiting my website. There are a number of tools great marketers should have on their belts.
Use the visitor’s IP address to discover their geographical location and possibly even the company they work for. Capture what pages they’ve read and the referring page. This will give you an idea of their true interest and what drove them to your website. If you captured an accurate name, look up their profile in social media to gain additional insights as well. All of this helps you craft more appropriate responses after the initial conversion.
The Email Response
Make sure you always send an email autoresponse to every person that fills out any kind of form. Sure, most of us know this, but I still find it amazing how many websites never send me anything, so I’m including this as a reminder.
The autoresponse should sound as authentic as possible and have an actual name and email of a real person at the company that can help them if they need more information. The email response should go out as soon as possible and synchronize with your marketing automation and CRM tools.
Be sure to include a link to whatever it is they filled out a form for and any instructions they might need. Be sure it sounds personal and not automated. We can all sniff those out a mile away. Finally, go the extra step and include relevant extra material so that they feel like they are getting the better end of the deal.
Social Engagement
When a person converts, send the lead to whoever manages social media so they can research the person in social channels. This can give valuable insight about the person, their interests and behaviors. You may even choose to reach out to them to thank them and offer other possible resources to them through these channels to increase engagement.
Start Email Nurturing
One of the greatest tools you have at your disposal with someone who has converted is your own content. But if they don’t know it is there, it is of no value. Since you now know a little bit about this visitor, start providing relevant information to them. Ahead of time, create a series of emails that deliver real value and information for visitors. You can send the first one the next day, then each week on the same day and time after that. Don’t make it longer than maybe 3-6 emails so that you don’t overwhelm them.
For example, if you’re a software company and someone downloads a whitepaper, you may now know their industry. Send them related case studies, blog entries or additional whitepapers that you know will help them out. Make sure it is relevant because if it isn’t, they are just one click away from opting out of ever getting anything from you again.
Greater Personalization
If a person converts once on the website, there is a pretty good chance they’ll be back in the near future, especially if you are a services-oriented company. In the B2B space, a visitor will typically convert 2-3 times before requesting any kind of demo and those conversions rarely happen during the same session.
If you have the flexibility and budget, leverage personalization tools to try and become even more relevant to your converting visitor. Once a visitor converts, you now have a more accurate profile about their interests. You can tailor your website content and calls to action to be more focused on their needs. This can be difficult to accomplish since it means creating a large amount of content. But if you have the ability, it will positively impact the returning visitor if it is tailored to their needs.
Unique Remarketing For Converting Visitors
I imagine you’ve noticed that if you visit a company’s website, all of a sudden you see their ads everywhere. This is called remarketing, and it is an extremely powerful tool.
Most companies leveraging remarketing campaigns have a general set of banners that they display to everyone. But take the extra step to create unique banners for visitors who have made it to your thank you pages. It will take extra work, but your goal is to move people further through the conversion funnel, and creating ads specific to visitors that have converted on specific content will move them closer faster than a generic ad that they may have previously viewed.
Bringing It All Together
One of the keys in all of this activity is to remember that it has to be coherent and it has to be measurable. If the communications you send out are random and don’t tie together to the visitor’s interest, you are going to confuse them and lead them away from rather than closer to your goal.
Additionally, if you aren’t measuring the effectiveness of each activity, you won’t know whether it is having a positive or negative impact on your marketing funnel. When possible, always test how engaged your customers are with all of your actions, and you’ll always improve your conversion rates and the time it takes to close a sale.
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