Category: Marketing Automation

Email design has lagged behind website design for years. Largely, this is because email clients have not optimized as quickly to the changing digital design landscape (especially the rise of responsive design). 
However, in the past five years, email clients have begun to support capabilities initially reserved for the web. Most notably was the announcement in 2016 that Gmail would now support embedded CSS and media queries — two tools that enable responsive design. 
Email designers finally have the opportunity to apply to email what web developers have learned over the past two decades about modern design. Here’s what email designers can learn from web developers. 
Ensure responsive design, especially on mobile
In 2019, more emails were opened on mobile devices than on desktop. Email designers today must prioritize how emails render on mobile devices without sacrificing readability on desktop or tablets. 
This is where responsive design comes in. Responsive design means that your design will adapt to the screen size and resolution of the device it’s read on.
We recommend following the example of website developers and creating three different wireframes for each email (or each email template): one for mobile, one for desktop, and one for tablets. 
Then, use media queries to tell the layout how to render based on factors like screen size, or use the fluid method for email clients that don’t support media queries.
Let’s look at the difference. A non-responsive email may render in mobile with small text that’s hard to read: 

Responsive email design, on the other hand, appears optimized for mobile reading: 

Keep design simple to improve readability
Website developers know that when it comes to mobile readability, simple design is best. Smaller screens make it impossible to comfortably navigate multiple columns or creative fonts and designs. 
Here are the best ways to keep the design simple: 
Use a single-column layout
Single column layouts render most clearly on smaller screens like mobile devices. Additionally, they allow designers to create a single flow of information that guides readers toward taking a desired action (like clicking a button). 
This single flow of information is also a better user experience than having to scroll side-to-side or zoom in on a small smartphone screen to access all the content. 
Reduce visual clutter
Visual clutter is any design element that can be removed and not change the impact of the message. 
For example, dividers to separate sections instead of white space could be considered visual clutter. Similarly, font styles like bold, italics, and different headings could be considered clutter if they are not absolutely necessary to convey the message. 
Aim to create as clean a design as possible, and you will likely enhance the user experience. 
Have only one CTA button
Having mastered the art of conversion-focused design, developers know that it’s crucial to not ask readers to choose from multiple actions to take. Instead, designers should have only one call-to-action so it’s clear what readers should do next.
Additionally, make your CTA a larger, contrasting button rather than hyperlinked text. A button is easier to tap with a finger on a mobile device or tablet than hyperlinked text. 
For example, this single-column email from Planoly is visually minimal and leads directly into a single CTA button:

Borrow advanced responsive design strategies from the web
Creating a single-column design for mobile is the minimum email designers must do to create responsive emails. However, designers who want to make the user experience even better on all devices can take advantage of these slightly more advanced strategies: 
Use progressive disclosure for text-heavy emails
When emails are written like mini-essays, readers experience a seemingly endless scroll of text on a mobile device, even though on desktop, the email doesn’t seem long.
To solve this problem, email designers can borrow the “progressive disclosure” strategy from web developers. This is when certain elements of the email (such as sections of text) appear hidden under interactive elements (such as headings) and are revealed only when the reader taps. 
Progressive disclosure allows readers to experience the email as organized and minimal and skip to the section they want to read. 
Overlay text on images with live text + background images
Previously, any time an email designer wanted to show text overlaid on an image, they had to create a standalone graphic of the image and the overlaid text, and then insert that graphic into the email template. 
This works okay unless the email client fails to render your graphic correctly — and then suddenly, your message is missing a crucial headline. Additionally, it requires designers to create different graphics for each device wireframe, which is extra time spent. 
Instead, designers can borrow a strategy from website developers: Use live text and a background image to create your text overlays. This allows you to have the overlaid text image automatically adjust for each device — without risking a failure to render. 
For example, The Royal Children’s Hospital used live text over a background image to create this dynamic email: 

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Wrap up
Email clients are finally catching up to website platforms in terms of design capabilities. Email designers should look to web developers for how to take advantage of these new capabilities and create more responsive, beautiful, and conversion-friendly emails.
The post What Email Designers Can Learn From Web Developers appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

Get a head start with this B2B email marketing guide where we share tips, best practices, and examples of effective B2B email campaigns from the top brands.

Manual data entry might be one of the most tedious and inefficient tasks in the corporate world. Not only does it put you to sleep, it also wastes precious time and resources, slashing your productivity to bits.
Fortunately, there’s technology that can automate these mind-numbing tasks, eliminating human error and letting you focus on the work that actually matters — workflow automation.

By leveraging self-operating processes that run manual tasks, workflow automation can help your business save time and money, diminish errors, and boost productivity.
How does workflow automation work?
Workflow automation typically relies on a series of if/then statements to trigger another task. It then branches off depending on the action that was taken by a lead, employee, or another stakeholder.
Let’s walk through an example workflow for turning a form submission into a deal opportunity.

A website visitor submits a form.
The action automatically enrolls the visitor in a drip campaign. It creates a new deal and sets the status to “New.”
The first email of the drip campaign is sent to the lead, requesting to schedule a meeting.
The lead clicks through to the meeting scheduler and creates an appointment.
A thank you email is sent to the lead, confirming the date and time.
The CRM creates a new task and assigns it to a sales rep.
The sales rep then reaches out personally, ending the automated workflow.

Here’s what a workflow can look like from start to finish.
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Almost every department in your business can benefit from workflow automation. Whether it’s marketing, human resources, or finance, the technology can help you work smarter, not harder.
Below, we’ll cover some of the most popular workflow automation examples.
Workflow automation can be used in virtually any team and in any business scenario. While it’s mostly related to marketing and sales, it can also be used in customer service, operations, human resources, and finance.
Marketing Workflow Automation

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Some of the most repetitive tasks in marketing, such as sending emails and posting social media updates, can be automated with workflow automation. With marketing automation software, you can schedule your entire social media calendar and set up workflows that nurture certain types of prospects with email offers.
Automated workflows in marketing include:

Subscribing a user to a drip campaign when they download a resource from your website
Welcoming a user to your company after they purchase a product
Reminding a user to check out after they’ve added various items to their cart
Scheduling social media posts across multiple platforms
Distributing marketing tasks across team members

Additional Reading

Beginner’s Guide to Marketing Automation
Marketing Automation Benefits
B2C Marketing Automation
Email Marketing Workflows

Sales Workflow Automation

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Sales workflow automation streamlines tedious lead and prospect management tasks, so that reps can focus on selling, not entering data. Aside from taking leads automatically through the pipeline based on their actions, an automated sales workflow can enroll prospects in drip campaigns and update deal stages as the deal moves forward.
Automated tasks in sales include:

Placing each lead at a different stage of the pipeline when they take a certain action
Moving a lead out of the pipeline if they’ve stopped responding to emails
Sending an introduction email from a sales rep to a lead after they download an ebook
Updating the deal stage once the lead has scheduled an appointment or meeting
Creating tasks for sales reps once a lead has scheduled a meeting

Additional Reading

Beginner’s Guide to Sales Automation
Sales Automation Stats
Sales Force Automation
CRM Automation

Customer Service Workflow Automation

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Workflow automation is incredibly useful in customer service. Aside from launching surveys, workflow automation can take care of tickets, cases, and common questions by sending a series of emails or creating tasks.
Automated tasks in customer service include:

Creating a new ticket in the system when someone reaches out through social media or email
Onboarding customers with a series of helpful emails
Sending NPS® surveys and enrolling them into different email campaigns depending on their rating
Assigning tickets a priority label depending on the tone of the message or email
Resolving and archiving tickets once a resolution has been reached

Additional Reading

Beginner’s Guide to Customer Service Automation
Customer Relationship Automation
Customer Service Software Tools
AI Chatbots Tools

Operations Workflow Automation

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Operations is the lifeblood of any organization, and it, too, can be automated to reduce instances of manual data entry.
Automated tasks in operations include:

Deleting duplicates once they have been detected or merging two properties if they’re the same
Managing team permissions for new team members
Establishing priorities for different businesses processes
Automatically compiling reports at the end of every quarter
Creating tasks in third-party tools such as Asana, Slack, or Zoom

Additional Reading

Guide to Business Process Automation
Ultimate Guide to Operations Hub

Human Resources Workflow Automation
Instead of having to manually enter all your new hires’ personal information — like addresses, social security numbers, and other employee information into payroll, expense, and insurance systems — HR automation software can do it for you in minutes.
Automated tasks in human resources include:

Removing candidates from the database if they’ve been inactive for a period of time
Sending emails to candidates that haven’t made it to the final round
Filtering candidates with certain keywords in their job history
Sending W2s to current employees
Collecting employees’ feedback after they’ve been at the company for a period of time

Finance Workflow Automation
By allowing you to build forms, design workflows, and track processes, finance process automation software can streamline all of your travel requests, reimbursements, and budget approvals.
Automated tasks in finance include:

Taking an expense approval process from start to finish
Managing vendor and contract approvals
Assigning priorities to ACH and wire requests
Managing travel expense requests depending on location and activity
Approving budgets based on a predetermined set of parameters

Now that you know everything about using automated workflows, let’s take a look at the top tools you can use.
Best Workflow Automation Software in 2021
1. HubSpot: Best All-in-One Workflow Automation Software

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HubSpot’s marketing, sales, service, and operations software operates on a single platform, making it one of the best choices for all-in-one workflow automation. Everything is linked together, allowing you to align all of your teams’ processes and reducing friction from task to task.
You can easily hand leads from marketing to sales, connect a service ticket with an existing contact record, and clean up customer data — all in one user-friendly platform.
Best for: HubSpot is highly recommended for growing businesses that have yet to try workflow automation and for enterprise businesses with established processes. You can begin with a Starter subscription, then upgrade as you require more functionalities. Especially recommended for marketing, sales, service, and operations departments.
Pricing for Marketing Hub: Free; $50/month (Starter); $890/month (Professional); $3,200/month (Enterprise)
Pricing for Sales Hub: Free; $50/month (Starter); $500/month (Professional); $1,200/month (Enterprise)
Pricing for Service Hub: Free; $50/month (Starter); $400/month (Professional); $1,200/month (Enterprise)
Pricing for Operations Hub: Free; $50/month (Starter); $800/month (Professional)
2. Nintex: Best Enterprise Workflow Automation Software
With over 3 million workflow applications operating on their platform right now, Nintex helps more than 8,000 enterprise customers manage, automate, and optimize their business processes, with no coding experience required.
By offering a multitude of workflow automation tools — like process mapping, advanced workflows, and process intelligence — your business is able to map out each of your processes, execute them, and monitor their performance.
Best for: Nintex is highly recommended for enterprise businesses with established processes. It’s a robust software that pairs a user-friendly workflow design tool with powerful integrations that will connect every single one of your apps. Especially recommended for IT, law, HR, and finance departments.
Pricing: $910/month (Standard); $1,400/month (Enterprise)
3. Kissflow: Best Beginner-Friendly Workflow Automation Software

Trusted by over 10,000 companies, including Domino’s, Michelin, and Pepsi, Kissflow offers an all-in-one workflow automation software that lets your business create workflows that automate tasks in your human resources, sales, finance, administration, marketing, and purchase departments.
With over 50 pre-installed business process management apps — such as expensing and sales orders, conditions and triggers, and reporting dashboards for your workflows — Kissflow can streamline almost all your business processes.
Best for: Kissflow is highly recommended for small companies that are just now starting to try workflow automation. The tool’s simplicity and user friendliness will make it easier to begin automating processes. Especially recommended for procurement, HR, and finance departments.
Pricing: $200/month (Basic); $495/month (Advanced); $1,900/month (Fully Loaded)
4. Integrify: Best Everyday Administration Workflow Automation Software

Integrify is a workflow automation software that lets you build workflows in a drag-and-drop builder and run parallel or sequential flows. By being able to collaborate on tasks and requests, test your processes, and set up reminders, you can easily streamline your business processes and automate manual tasks.
Integrify also offers workflow examples and a user knowledge base, a rest-based open API that allows you to integrate with external databases, and the ability to import and export data from Excel and even PDFs.
Best for: Integrify is highly recommended for small-to-medium businesses that are looking to automate everyday tasks. Its drag-and-drop “Process Builder” makes it simple and easy to take a process from start to completion. Especially recommended for administration departments.
Pricing: Pricing available upon request
5. Zapier: Best Workflow Automation Software for Connecting Apps

With the ability to connect to and share data with over 1,000 web apps, like Facebook, QuickBooks, and Google Drive, Zapier can automate almost any type of business process. All you have to do is build a workflow in their editor, pick the apps you want to include in your workflow, and design it.
For example, if you want to be able to save all your attachments in Dropbox, you can design a workflow that automatically copies any attachment from your Gmail inbox to Dropbox and then sends you a Slack message about the download.
Best for: Zapier is highly recommended for freelancers and small-to-medium businesses that use a wide variety of tools that aren’t talking with each other. For instance, if you’re using MailChimp to send emails and Typeform to collect leads, you could connect those two tools using Zapier. Especially recommended for marketing and service departments.
Pricing: Free; $19.99/month (Starter); $49/month (Professional)
6. Flokzu: Best Project Management Workflow Automation Software

Without writing any code, Flokzu allows you to create tasks, deadlines, business rules, and notifications. Their software also sends pending tasks to each of your project’s assignees’ inboxes, and as each stage of a workflow is complete, it’ll automatically assign each new task to a user or role.
Additionally, Flozku offers a reporting dashboard that displays your business processes’
performance and metrics, like the amount of currently delayed tasks there are, tasks assigned to each user and role, tasks completed, and the time each task took, which will give you the necessary data to refine and optimize your future workflows.
Best for: Flokzu is highly recommended for individual teams that want to optimize their time management and task workflow. A key feature of this tool is that users will receive pending tasks in their inbox, making it an excellent project management tool. Recommended for any team.
Pricing: Free; $19.99/month (Starter); $49/month (Professional)
Workflow Automation Will Help You Grow Better
Workflow automation is critical for businesses that want to scale and grow without letting anything fall through the cracks. By letting technology complete manual tasks, you can effectively grow your business without any growing pains.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in January 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

 

 

Loyalty programs are great tools for eCommerce development. They allow you to maximize the value of individual transactions, increase CLV, and positively impact consumer retention. Those that provide a consistent experience across multiple channels work best. How do you create an effective multi-channel loyalty program? Keep reading to discover the answer!

 

Loyalty programs are popular in many industries. Properly implemented, they bring a plethora of benefits:

 

Loyalty Program integration with an eCommerce platform can increase average order volume by 319% (Incentive Solutions).
With a loyalty program, the frequency of visits generated by returning customers increases by 35% (Thanx).
Customers engaged in an eCommerce loyalty program spend 12-18% more each year (Accenture, 2017).
Members of the best-performing loyalty programs are 77% more likely to choose the brand with which they are associated over competitors (Bond).

 

Our customers are also using this solution, combining it skillfully with marketing automation. To quote from our case studies:

 

Bioderma brand streamlines the customer communication process with automation in their loyalty program. They achieve over 470% higher open rate (OR) of emails sent with the automation rules and nearly 800% higher click-through rate (CTR) during the sign-up and gratification cycle for loyal customers. (Download the whole thing for free>>)
Beauty supply store Pigment improves its sales process. Through automation, it achieves a 400% higher OR for automated emails and a 240% higher CTR for its loyalty program. (Download the whole thing for free>>)

 

How can you leverage best practices and create your own high performing, multi-channel loyalty program for eCommerce?

 

What is a multi-channel loyalty program?

 

An eCommerce loyalty program is closely tied to purchases and micro conversions. Therefore, just like the buying journey of eCommerce customers, the loyalty program experience is multi-channel. What makes loyalty programs multi-channel is that they integrate data from different sources to include a variety of actions when rewarding with points.

 

The multi-channel nature of loyalty programs also manifests itself in other aspects of building the customer-brand relationship. Tracked behaviors are used to supplement consumer profiles with multi-faceted data from various sources. In the long run, this translates into strengthening recommendation and prediction mechanisms. What’s more, a good multi-channel loyalty program should be accessible for customers across channels. Whether they use their account on the website or the mobile app, they should see their progress and rewards in the same way. In addition, the applied mechanisms should allow seamless jumping between different channels (scanning the QR code in the stationary store with the mobile app, providing the loyalty card number when logging in at the online store and so on).

 

What communication channels are available for eCommerce loyalty programs?

 

As a quick reminder, it’s worth mentioning the most popular marketing channels that eCommerce uses, especially those that can be combined with loyalty program information. These include:

 

Website – a showcase of the store and a place of intense interaction between the brand and shoppers. You can place there a lot of widgets and dynamic elements that will use the information about the thresholds and rewards in the loyalty program.
Email Marketing – one of the most effective weapons in a marketer’s arsenal. Although it is one of the oldest channels, it still boasts one of the highest ROI in digital marketing.
Social Media – one of the most effective channels for distribution of marketing content, and recently also for sales.
Mobile Marketing – communication in the mobile channel is fast and effective. SMS messages enjoy a high open rate, which increases along with the level of message personalization.
Mobile application – many stores take advantage of the technology and offer their own mobile applications to customers. This is a great marketing move. An engaging app allows you to grab the customer’s attention.Because the space is not shared with other stores (as it is on Facebook, for example), you can engage in a dialogue with the customer without unnecessary distractions.
Offline – eCommerce stores are often an extension or offshoot of online stationary stores. In many industries, hybrid shopping models (showrooming and ROPO) are among the most popular and frequently used by buyers.

 

Why is multichannel important for a loyalty program?

 

Today, more and more businesses are striving to fully integrate and make the Customer Experience consistent across all channels. Consumers easily adapt to new technological solutions and over time stop noticing that something works differently than it used to. As a result, they also expect solutions to evolve to follow that experience. This is why we can observe a boom for mobile payments and a phenomenal pace of voice search development.

 

The speed of software that captures actions across multiple channels is also not insignificant. While it used to be the norm to collect coupons cut out of a package and wait a few weeks for a reward, now it is rather unthinkable. Accustomed to unlimited access to goods and services, as a consumer group we expect instant gratification in most aspects of consumer life.

 

How to build a multi-channel loyalty program for eCommerce?

 

There are many ways to create a loyalty program. They can be simple programs that count the dollars spent and award points at the appropriate time. There are also advanced programs that follow their recipients through all the channels, award them with extra points on their birthdays, add special bonuses for purchases at selected points and at the same time encourage thoughtful gamification. How to build such a program?

 

Multi-channel loyalty program step by step

 

Creating a multi-channel loyalty program should be done in stages. The more insight you have at the beginning of the journey, the easier and more precise it will be to create a working program later that will help you meet your goals.

 

1. Selecting a goal and positioning it in the marketing strategy

 

Every marketing activity of a company should be set in a broader context. In this case, the context will be a comprehensive marketing strategy. A loyalty program as a tool to achieve marketing goals will perfectly complement and combine various online and offline activities.

 

The first decision is to choose the goal that the loyalty program aims to achieve. This can be an increase in customer loyalty measured in repeat purchases, an increase in CLV, an increase in purchase frequency, or even brand popularity (measured by social listening tools). Making this decision helps to adjust the program to the group of recipients, to choose the right tools and mechanisms.

 

2. Resource analysis

 

Before you plan to create content and promotional materials, do a proper audit of existing resources. Check what blog content, ebooks, reports, videos and gated content you already have. Write down the points of micro conversions and full conversions. Look at the structure of the purchase funnel you are working on.

 

3. Competitive market analysis

 

Many companies have loyalty programs, and that includes your competitors. It’s worth checking out how they approach this topic. Select a few of your most important business competitors. You can also add non-direct competitors, such as those offering substitute goods, to the list.

 

Examine the channels in which these companies use the loyalty program, what they base it on, and what mechanisms they use to engage those enrolled in the program.

 

Note also who these companies are targeting with their programs. This can be an important guideline for future activities.

 

4. Target group analysis

 

Once you know what your competitors are doing, turn an eye to your audience. Consider different segmentations – by interest, by buyer persona, by spending level, CLV and so forth.

 

Then decide which segments you want to target with your program. Select those that show the highest propensity to help you achieve loyalty program goals . Analyze their preferences, needs and habits, including those of their preferred marketing channels. Based on this, you’ll learn how to distribute the program’s focus points, what average amounts you can expect for each purchase, and what will drive these individuals to purchase more often or more regularly.

 

5. Marketing channel analysis

 

Once you know your loyalty program’s primary target audience, you can take a close look at the channels they use and how they use them. Finding the touch points in each channel and identifying the types of interactions can be extremely helpful in designing additional, non-transactional reward mechanisms. What’s more, it will also allow you to direct your audience to use the channels that generate the best conversions.

 

6. Framework design (main mechanism, rewards, thresholds, points)

 

Creating the program itself is not a big challenge. Even without coding skills, you can design it within minutes – especially with good initial drafting. To create a new Loyalty Program in the SALESmanago system go to the tab

Loyalty Program → +Create a new Loyalty Program

 

Then: 

Enter basic data and select the program type to determine how points will expire.
Configure points by selecting the ranges of spent amounts and the number of points awarded for each range.
Set program tiers.
Determine the method of adding contacts to the Loyalty Program.
Save the created loyalty program.

 

7. Channel integration

 

When the framework is ready, start building it successively with activities in different channels. First, choose the ones that are most heavily used by your target audience and gradually build a more extensive map of activities. Focus on two areas:

 

what benefits your audience can have in a given channel through a loyalty program;
how you can get loyalty program participants to interact in a given channel.

 

The answers to these questions will be an indication of what functionality plug-in mechanisms tied to the loyalty program should be applied (and where).

 

8. Final touches (Additional rewards, opportunity to earn extra points, additional actions)

 

Finally, consider which other behaviors lead to the desired goal and how they can be reinforced. For example, extra points on birthdays can encourage people to provide declarative data and complete profiles. Doubling points for making purchases within a certain time frame can help with win-back campaigns, and so on.

 

How do you build a consistent loyalty program experience across channels?

 

How do you intertwine loyalty program’s core framework with all the omnichannel machinery your eCommerce business has at its disposal? The easiest way to do this is by setting up a workflow process. This way of managing automations gives you the most control over the consistency of your program participants’ experience. It also allows you to efficiently monitor most of the touch points between consumers and your brand.

 

 

Using CDP data from the very beginning is also an important aspect. Focusing on the most beneficial segments as early as at the loyalty program design stage will allow you to set appropriate goals and implementation methods.  An analysis of behavior within these groups will indicate the channels and activities with the highest conversion and purchase power.

 

What mechanisms can be leveraged in each channel

 

Loyalty program information can be successfully used in various aspects of digital marketing.

 

Website

 

There are a number of ways that you can leverage the information about your customer’s level of engagement with your loyalty program on the website. In the Personal Shopping Inbox, the website visitor can quickly gain access to information linked to their loyalty program account. It makes it easier, for example, to motivate customers to shop regularly by informing them of the loyalty points they have accumulated to reach the next treshold.

 

Depending on the threshold or number of points, you can also conditionally display a specific:

 

personalized banner,
pop up.

 

They may show, for example, rewards from a selected threshold.

 

Another option is to send a Web Push notification where you can, for example, include the number of points a person has accumulated along with information about which threshold they have reached.

 

E-mail Marketing 

 

You can include various information related to your loyalty program in the body of the email. The most obvious would be to include the number of points and the threshold reached by the contact.Such a gamification effort can help encourage recipients to make a purchase and progress to a higher threshold in the program.

 

But that’s not all – the email itself can be targeted to specific contact segments. A segment may also be a threshold in the loyalty program. Having separate campaigns to engage and motivate these contacts to activities that will allow them to earn additional points is worthwhile.

 

Of course, you can also add or subtract points in the program for relevant email marketing activities. Reward opening messages and clicking links, especially those that bring the contact closer to conversion.

 

Social Media 

 

Social media are also a great field to leverage information from your loyalty program. Depending on the number of points accumulated on a contact’s card, you can display different content to your audience – tailored to their level of engagement and threshold in the program.

 

Mobile Marketing

 

When it comes to mobile marketing, it is mainly based on text messaging. In text messages, you can apply the same mechanisms as in emails. These will be:

 

information about accumulated points and achieved thresholds,
sending messages to selected segments,
adding and subtracting points for specific segments.

 

Mobile application

 

In the mobile application you can display the same content related to the loyalty program as on the website. Only Web Push notifications will change to mobile notifications.

 

Offline

 

The offline channel is often an important part of a loyalty program. Participants often shop both in a stationary store and online. In physical stores, you can place a tablet with a personalized offer for them. After filling in the contact’s data, the tablet will show the number of accumulated points and the threshold reached by this person. Additionally, based on offline purchases, you can add points in the loyalty program and migrate them between the thresholds.

 

Multichannel loyalty program – some final thoughts

 

Loyalty program uses mechanisms of gamification to loyalise and activate customers. To be effective, it should seamlessly transition between channels and follow the people it targets. The use of CDP data and workflow mechanisms allows you to precisely target the segments with the highest propensity to buy. Such a combination ensures efficient implementation of the established marketing and sales objectives.

 

Have you already got a loyalty program? Ask your account manager how you can take even better care of the multi-channel experience of your customers.

Imagine how many online shops are competing with your business. Even if you don’t include eCommerce giants like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy, you’ve still got a lot of digital competition out there. So what can you do to make sure people shop with you? We’re seeing an increasing number of people ditch the global brands,…
The post 5 Crucial Transactional Emails Every Online Store Should Optimize appeared first on Benchmark Email.

Last Updated on August 17, 2021 by Rakesh Gupta Currently, the Winter’22 release is available under the pre-release program. On the and 27th of August, Sandboxes will be upgraded, as a result, your organization will get the look and feel of the Winter’22 release. In this release, you will find lots of new features, as well as, new enhancements related to
The post Salesforce Winter’22 Release Quick Summary appeared first on Automation Champion.

Last Updated on August 17, 2021 by Rakesh Gupta Automation has changed the face of Cloud IT and the industries that rely on it. Not only can data be viewed anywhere, processes can be done instantly with nothing more than a click of a button, if that. While this is
The post How COVID-19 Showed Us Why Accounting Automation is Critical appeared first on Automation Champion.

The ninth. Index your website more often by optimizing it Your website will benefit overall as you improve the content you have published, as opposed to just the articles you have updated. This is because Google tracks the most recent updates to your entire site. As a result, Google can use this to determine when to crawl your site. Consider a simple, three-page website, for example, for a local law firm, versus one that is a news site like The Huffington Post. Become more frequent with HuffPo’s hourly updates through Google. Google recognizes that there is no new content on the site every time it crawls it, so the law firm site will get updated every few weeks (or less). By updating old content, you can get Google to crawl your site more frequently without needing to publish more often. The more Google crawls your site, the more likely your most recent information will show up in search results after publishing, which gives you an advantage in your search engine results rankings. The 10th. Keyword optimization is important When you published your original post, you may have failed to do enough keyword research, or you may have used the wrong technique. It’s possible to discover your old content is actually performing better than you anticipated in search results. Take proactive steps to improve the keyword focus of your pieces instead of just leaving it as it is and hoping for the best. P.S. My goal is to help provide the best information I can. I do not participate in spam an always look to improve. If this was any help please feel free to join our newsletter for all up to date content. Join here
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The word “guerrilla,” in its written form, seems very intense. It conjures images of rebellion and conflict. Put it next to the word “marketing,” and it makes a lot of people ask, “Huh?”
But guerrilla marketing isn’t some sort of combative form of communication. In fact, it’s actually a very unconventional form of marketing in that it raises brand awareness among large audiences without interrupting them.

The term itself was created in the early 1980s by the late business writer Jay Conrad Levinson, who wrote several books about guerrilla tactics in a number of professional areas. Of course, at that time, marketing in general looked very different, and while guerrilla marketing is still used today, the ever-growing digital landscape is changing what it looks like.
Roots of Warfare
When we hear the term “guerrilla marketing,” it’s hard not to think of guerrilla warfare — which makes sense, since that’s where this style of marketing got its name. In the warfare context, guerrilla tactics depend largely on the element of surprise. Think: “Ambushes, sabotage, raids,” according to Creative Guerrilla Marketing.
But how does that translate into the work we do every day? In marketing, guerrilla techniques mostly play on the element of surprise. It sets out to create highly unconventional campaigns that catch people unexpectedly in the course of their day-to-day routines.
Budget-Friendly
What marketers really enjoy about guerrilla marketing is its fairly low-cost nature. The real investment here is a creative, intellectual one — its implementation, however, doesn’t have to be expensive. Michael Brenner summarizes it nicely in his article on “guerrilla content,” where he frames this style of marketing in the same context as repurposing your existing content, like taking certain segments of a report, and expanding each one into a blog post. It’s an investment of time, but not money, per se.
In a way, guerrilla marketing works by repurposing your audience’s current environment. Evaluate it and figure out which segments of it can be repurposed to include your brand.
Types of Guerrilla Marketing
As niche as it might seem, there are actually a few sub-categories of guerrilla marketing, as outlined by the firm ALT TERRAIN:

Outdoor Guerrilla Marketing. Adds something to preexisting urban environments, like putting something removable onto a statue, or putting temporary artwork on sidewalks and streets.
Indoor Guerilla Marketing. Similar to outdoor guerrilla marketing, only it takes place in indoor locations like train stations, shops, and university campus buildings.
Event Ambush Guerilla Marketing. Leveraging the audience of an in-progress event — like a concert or a sporting game — to promote a product or service in a noticeable way, usually without permission from the event sponsors.
Experiential Guerilla Marketing. All of the above, but executed in a way that requires the public to interact with the brand.

We know — without context, the whole idea of guerrilla marketing can be a little confusing, so let’s see how it’s been executed by a few other brands.
Guerrilla Marketing Examples to Inspire Your Brand
1. Bounty’s Giant Popsicle
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By installing life-sized “messes” throughout the streets of New York — a giant, knocked-over coffee cup and a gigantic melting popsicle — Bounty found a unique way to advertise its product and the solution it provides, with minimal words.
You might ask, “Wouldn’t a concise billboard ad accomplish the same thing?” Well, not really. Culturally, we’re starting to opt for every possible way to eradicate ads from our lives. That’s why we love things like DVR and ad-free options on streaming services like Hulu and YouTube. This campaign, unlike an ad, isn’t as easy to ignore. After all, if you stumbled upon a melting popsicle the size of your mattress on your way to work, would you stop and look? We would.
The big takeaway: Identify the biggest problem that your product or service solves. Then, find an unconventional way to broadcast that to the public — preferably without words.
2. Deadpool’s Tinder Profile

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Some Tinder users were surprised to see none other than comic anti-hero and legend Deadpool showing up on their Tinder. With “cheeky” pics and witty profile copy, Deadpool broke the fourth wall and met potential movie-goers ahead of the movie’s Valentine’s Day release.
If the Tinder user “swiped right” and matched with the character, they received a link to purchase tickets.
While Tinder isn’t the best way to generate buzz — it’s limited in its reach to a small subset of users, and you’re technically not allowed to use the platform for promotion — screenshots of this gag quickly made it to social media, garnering a ton of attention.
The big takeaway: Promotions that use “interruptive” techniques aren’t frustrating if they create unexpected delight.
3. Childish Gambino’s Ice Cream Pop-Up

 

 

 

 

 

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Have you ever seen how powerful of a motivator free food can be? Make it a sweet treat, and you have yourself a winning combination.
Childish Gambino likely had this in mind for his “Summertime Starts Here” pop-up events where free ice cream was given away. As people queued up in the heat for some delicious ice cream, Gambino’s two singles played on a loud speaker.
It was a great way to expose listeners to his EP, Summer Pack.
The big takeaway: Sometimes you have to draw an audience in with incentives to earn attention.
4. The GRAMMYs Singing Posters

Okay, this one might not be entirely fair, since it wasn’t pulled off “in real life.” But how cool would it be if it was? To promote the nominees for its Album Of The Year category, the GRAMMYS music awards show created a video to show what would happen if posters for the nominated artists just began singing.
It might sound impossible to actually carry out something like that. But imagine — what if you could create musical posters for your brand? Again, it’s different than a billboard ad because, when we walk by a wall of paper advertisements in, say, New York City, we don’t expect them to start moving. Now, we’ll admit that this idea isn’t exactly a budget-friendly one, as it might require some technical work to bring to fruition. But even if you could include a single moving or digital image among a sea of still ones — in a place where it would come as a surprise, like a brick wall — it would catch people off guard and, therefore, get their attention.
The big takeaway: Think about the things that your audience might just pass by every day — and make those things do something that’s both unexpected and interactive.
5. Frontline’s Interactive Floor Ad
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When I first saw this photo, I’ll admit that I fell for it. “Someone, get that dog away from those flies!” I frantically thought. Then, I realized that the dog wasn’t real, and neither were the flies. The former was a photo, and the latter were actually humans.
That’s because Frontline, the makers of flea and tick prevention products for dogs, were able to fill the entire floor of this large, public space with this image. The brand knew that many people walk across that space every day, and that a good number of people would also see it from the building’s upper levels, creating the dog-and-insect illusion. It’s hard to miss — and to not look twice.
Again, this campaign is different than traditional marketing because it’s not just plastering a single message somewhere that’s likely to be ignored. It creates a form of accidental human interaction that reminds the viewer what the product does.
The big takeaway: Figure out how humans might involuntarily interact with your marketing messages. While your product or service may not address the issue of, say, insect removal, there are ways to make people part of the campaign.
6. Public Breakup on Burger King’s Instagram
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Breaking up is hard to do in person, let alone when it’s publicly played out online. That’s what happened — allegedly — when one Instagram user left a comment on one of Burger King’s Instagram posts sharing a tale of his “girl” procuring food from Burger King. There was just one problem. This guy does have a girlfriend, but she was nowhere near a Burger King. So, who was he referring to? The drama ensued, via Instagram comments:
After the comments began to make headlines, many speculated that the entire exchange may have been staged by Burger King. And if it was, we can’t help but salute them — what a way to get your brand into the zeitgeist.
Burger King has roughly one million followers on Instagram. And while we’re not sure how many followers the former had before this famous breakup, it makes sense to assume that this at least drew more attention to its social media presence, at least on this particular platform. People may have already been observing the brand on Instagram, but before now, were they actively discussing it?
The big takeaway: Guerrilla marketing has gone digital. Think about where your audience already exists digitally — then, give ’em a show. While we can’t condone lying, we can applaud creativity, so don’t be afraid to use the comments to get people talking.
7. UNICEF’s Dirty Water Vending Machines

I’m as guilty as anyone of wasting money on bottled water. I have no excuse. I have a reusable one. My workplace offers filtered water from a machine, not a traditional cooler, and yet, it remains a bad habit.
That’s why this guerrilla marketing campaign from relief organization UNICEF resonated with me. It posed the question, “What if those bottles of water you waste money on were filled with dirty water?” It was a way of reminding the privileged masses that in too many parts of the world, entire populations have no access to clean drinking water.
So instead of frivolously spending that money on bottled water, UNICEF suggested putting it toward efforts to bring clean drinking water to these areas. It did so by creating makeshift vending machines that sold bottled dirty water, with each button labeled as a disease caused by a lack of clean drinking water.
The big takeaway: Guerrilla marketing works in the not-for-profit sector, too. And while scary, saddening images are often an impactful way of communicating your mission, there’s a way to convey it by creating something less in-your-face and interactive for the public.
8. GoldToe’s Giant Briefs
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Are you an underwear company looking for an unconventional way to market your product? Why, just try placing an enormous pair of briefs on an iconic charging bull statue.
Really, we can’t make this stuff up.
It’s so simple, in theory, that it sounds like fiction. But when the GoldToe brand needed a way to tease and promote the launch of its new undergarments, that’s exactly what it did — casually placed these new items of clothing on statues throughout New York. And while we can’t be sure that it’s the route GoldToe took, we sincerely hope that those bull-sized briefs were made with leftover manufacturing fabric, helping to make this campaign even budget-friendlier.
The big takeaway: Don’t overthink it. Sometimes what looks like your silliest idea might be the best one.
9. Fiji Water’s #FijiGirl

How is this real? #FijiGirl #GoldenGlobes pic.twitter.com/Fko3XMmupa — Daniel Howat (@howatdk)
January 7, 2019

Strategic product placement is one guerilla marketing tactic to gain attention in subtle ways. One such example includes Fiji Water’s presence at the 2019 Golden Globes where models wore blue and carried trays of water for thirsty attendees.
It didn’t end there, though. One model — Kelleth Cuthbert — positioned herself in the background during photoshoots, effectively photo-bombing high-profile celebrities.
When the photos started appearing on social media, people began noticing Cuthbert as a common denominator, dubbing her #FijiGirl. Ultimately, she became one of the highlights of the evening, winning over fans and drawing attention to Fiji Water’s brand.
The big takeaway: Your brand doesn’t need to be the focus of an event for it to stand out.
10. Greene King’s Candid Videos

When pub and brewing company Greene King feared that small, neighborhood establishments — notably, the pub — would start to be overtaken by large corporate retail, it launched a campaign to communicate just how important these local businesses really are. Even better, the content was almost entirely created by those who understand this predicament best: Pub owners, bartenders, and patrons.
These individuals were given cameras to capture video of the most meaningful moments and gatherings they’ve experienced inside these local pubs — from weddings, to funeral receptions, to birthdays. These videos were shared on Greene King’s YouTube profile and posed the question, “Without these neighborhood meeting places, where would we share these moments?”
The big takeaway: It’s okay to get a little sentimental with guerilla marketing. Think about the emotions invoked by what you offer. Then, invite your audience to create content around what your brand means to them.
11. BBC’s Dracula Billboard

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When I think of Count Dracula, I conjure the penultimate villain synonymous with everything that goes bump in the night. The BBC wanted to capitalize on this feeling to promote their show, Dracula.
By day, their billboard was designed to be minimalistic with red text on a white background with a few bloody stakes. However, like its subject, the billboard changed completely every time night fell.
The stakes were actually strategically placed — to cast a shadow of Dracula himself.
The installation ended up being featured in Adweek and had some viral success for its creativity and skillful implementation.
The big takeaway: Think outside the box for your advertising materials. In this case, light and shadow were enough to convey the message and capture attention.
Guerrillas in the Wild
Starting to make a little more sense?
Hopefully, you’ll be inspired by these examples, especially if you’re promoting a smaller brand. Don’t be afraid to crowdsource the content for these campaigns, for example — after all, it’s creative approaches to your work that help maintain guerrilla marketing’s budget-friendly, inbound nature. Remember: Catch people where they are, and insert your brand there. Don’t interrupt, but invite them to participate.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Let’s set the stage: I’m about to dig into the best darn pile of spaghetti and meatballs I’ve ever seen. Just as I twist my fork in the pasta, spear a mouth-watering meatball, and go in for my first savory bite…the phone rings. “May I speak to Lindsay Kow-low-witch?” asks the telemarketer on the other end. “This is an important message regarding your oven preferences.”
This frustrating interruption is why we’re here to discuss inbound lead generation — a solution that can save your business or organization from being that annoying, disruptive cold caller that is ruined by spaghetti night.

Let’s start with defining a lead, and then we’ll cover what online lead generation is, why you need lead generation, how you qualify someone as a lead, how to label lead types — such as sales qualified leads, how you generate leads, and why inbound lead generation is much more effective than simply buying leads.

What is a lead?
A lead is any person who indicates interest in a company’s product or service in some way, shape, or form.
Leads typically hear from a business or organization after opening communication (by submitting personal information for an offer, trial, or subscription) … instead of getting a random cold call from someone who purchased their contact information.
Let’s say you take an online survey to learn more about how to take care of your car. A day or so later, you receive an email from the auto company that created the survey about how they could help you take care of your car. This process would be far less intrusive than if they’d just called you out of the blue with no knowledge of whether you even care about car maintenance, right? This is what it’s like to be a lead.
And from a business perspective, the information the auto company collects about you from your survey responses helps them personalize that opening communication to address your existing problems — and not waste time calling leads who aren’t at all interested in auto services.
Leads are part of the broader lifecycle that consumers follow when they transition from visitor to customer. Not all leads are created equal (nor are they qualified the same). There are different types of leads based on how they are qualified and what lifecycle stage they’re in.

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
Marketing qualified leads are contacts who’ve engaged with your marketing team’s efforts but aren’t ready to receive a sales call. An example of an MQL is a contact who fills out a landing page form for an offer (like in our lead generation process scenario below).

Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)
Sales qualified leads are contacts who’ve taken actions that expressly indicate their interest in becoming a paying customer. An example of an SQL is a contact who fills out a form to ask a question about your product or service.
Product Qualified Lead (PQL)
Product qualified leads are contacts who’ve used your product and taken actions that indicate interest in becoming a paying customer. PQLs typically exist for companies who offer a product trial or a free or limited version of their product (like HubSpot!) with options to upgrade, which is where your sales team comes in. An example of a PQL is a customer who uses your free version but engages or asks about features that are only available upon payment.
Service Qualified Lead
Service qualified leads are contacts or customers who’ve indicated to your service team that they’re interested in becoming a paying customer. An example of an service qualified lead is a customer who tells their customer service representative that they’d like to upgrade their product subscription; at this time, the customer service representative would up-level this customer to the appropriate sales team or representative.

 
These lead generators are just a few examples of lead generation strategies you can use to attract potential customers and guide them towards your offers. (We talk about more strategies later.)
Whenever someone outside the marketing world asks me what I do, I can’t simply say, “I create content for lead generation.” It’d be totally lost on them, and I’d get some really confused looks.
So instead, I say, “I work on finding unique ways to attract people to my business. I want to provide them with enough goodies to get them naturally interested in my company so they eventually warm up to the brand enough to want to hear from us!”
That usually resonates better, and that’s exactly what lead generation is: It’s a way of warming up potential customers to your business and getting them on the path to eventually making a purchase.
Why do you need lead generation?
When a stranger initiates a relationship with you by showing an organic interest in your business, the transition from stranger to customer is much more natural.
Lead generation falls within the second stage of the inbound marketing methodology. It occurs after you’ve attracted an audience and are ready to convert those visitors into leads for your sales team (namely sales-qualified leads).
As you can see in the diagram below, generating leads is a fundamental point in an individual’s journey to becoming a delighted customer.

Lead Generation Process
Now that we understand how lead generation fits into the inbound marketing methodology, let’s walk through the steps of the lead generation process.

First, a visitor discovers your business through one of your marketing channels, such as your website, blog, or social media page.
That visitor then clicks on your call-to-action (CTA) — an image, button, or message that encourages website visitors to take some sort of action.
That CTA takes your visitor to a landing page, which is a web page that is designed to capture lead information in exchange for an offer. Note: An offer is the content or something of value that’s being “offered” on the landing page, like an ebook, a course, or a template. The offer must have enough perceived value to a visitor for them to provide their personal information in exchange for access to it.)
Once on the landing page, your visitor fills out a form in exchange for the offer. (Forms are typically hosted on landing pages, although they can technically be embedded anywhere on your site.) Voila! You have a new lead. That is, as long as you’re following lead-capture form best practices.

See how everything fits together?
To sum it up: Visitor clicks a CTA that takes them to a landing page where they fill out a form to get an offer, at which point they become a lead.
By the way, you should check out our free lead generation tool. It helps you create lead capture forms directly on your website. Plus, it’s really easy to set up.
Lead Generation Marketing
Once you put all of these elements together, you can use your various promotional channels to drive traffic to your landing page to start generating leads.
But what channels should you use to promote your landing page? Let’s talk about the front-end of lead generation — lead gen marketing.

If you’re a visual learner, this chart shows the flow from promotional marketing channels to a generated lead.

There are even more channels you can use to get visitors to become leads. Let’s go into depth on these and talk about a few others.
Content
Content is a great way to guide users to a landing page. Typically, you create content to provide visitors with useful, free information. You can include CTAs anywhere in your content — inline, bottom-of-post, in the hero, or even on the side panel. The more delighted a visitor is with your content, the more likely they are to click your call-to-action and move onto your landing page.
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HubSpot Ebook Templates

Email
Email is a great place to reach the people who already know your brand and product or service. It’s much easier to ask them to take an action since they’ve previously subscribed to your list. Emails tend to be a bit cluttered, so use CTAs that have compelling copy and an eye-catching design to grab your subscriber’s attention.
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The Beginner’s Guide to Email Marketing

Ads and Retargeting
The sole purpose of an ad is to get people to take an action. Otherwise, why spend the money? If you want people to convert, be sure that your landing page and offer match exactly what is promised in the ad, and that the action you want users to take is crystal clear.
Blog
The great thing about using your blog posts to promote an offer is that you can tailor the entire piece to the end goal. So, if your offer is an instructional video on setting up Google Search Console, then you can write a blog post about how to select your marketing metrics … which would make your CTA highly relevant and easy to click.
For a quick video overview on the HubSpot Blog’s expert lead generation tips, check out our video guide.

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Social Media
Social media platforms make it easy to guide your followers to take action, from the swipe up option on Instagram stories to Facebook bio links to bitly URLs on Twitter. You can also promote your offerings on your social posts and include a call-to-action in your caption. Learn more about social media campaigns in this post.
Product Trials
You can break down a lot of barriers to a sale by offering trials of your product or service. Once a prospect is using your product, you can entice them with additional offers or resources to encourage them to buy. Another good practice is to include your branding in your free versions so you can capture other potential customers, too.
Referral Marketing
Referral, or word-of-mouth, marketing is useful for lead generation in a different way. That is, it gets your brand in front of more people, which, in turn, increases your chances of generating more leads.
Whatever channel you use to generate leads, you’ll want to guide users to your landing page. As long as you’ve built a landing page that converts, the rest will handle itself.
Why not just buy leads?
Marketers and salespeople alike want to fill their sales funnel — and they want to fill it quickly. Enter: The temptation to buy leads.
Buying leads, as opposed to organically generating them, is much easier and takes far less time and effort, despite being more expensive. But, you might be paying for advertising anyway … so, why not just buy leads?
First and foremost, any leads you’ve purchased don’t actually know you. Typically, they’ve “opted in” at some other site when signing up for something, and didn’t actually opt into receiving anything from your company.
The messages you send them are therefore unwanted messages, and sending unwanted messages is intrusive. (Remember that disruptive call I got when I was trying to eat my spaghetti? That’s how people feel when they receive emails and other messages from people they didn’t ask to hear from.)
If the prospect has never been to your website and indicated an interest in your products or services, then you’re interrupting them … plain and simple.
If they never opted in to receive messages specifically from you, then there’s a high chance they could flag your messages as spam, which is quite dangerous for you. Not only does this train to filter out emails from you, but it also indicates to their email provider which emails to filter out.
Once enough people flag your messages as spam, you go on a “blacklist,” which is then shared with other email providers. Once you get on the blacklist, it’s really, really hard to get back off of it. In addition, your email deliverability and IP reputation will likely be harmed.
It’s always, always, always better to generate leads organically rather than buy them. Read this blog post to learn how to grow an opt-in email list instead of buying one.

How to Qualify a Lead
As we covered in the first section, a lead is a person who has indicated interest in your company’s product or service. Now, let’s talk about the ways in which someone can actually show that interest.
Essentially, a sales lead is generated through information collection. That information collection could come as the result of a job seeker showing interest in a position by completing an application, a shopper sharing contact information in exchange for a coupon, or a person filling out a form to download an educational piece of content.
Gauging a Lead’s Level of Interest
Below are just a few of the many ways in which you could qualify someone as a lead. Each of these examples shows that the amount of collected information used to qualify a lead, as well as their level of interest, can vary.
Let’s assess each scenario:

Job Application: An individual that fills out an application form is willing to share a lot of personal information because he/she wants to be considered for a position. Filling out that application shows their true interest in the job, therefore qualifying the person as a lead for the company’s recruiting team — not marketing or sales teams.

Coupon: Unlike the job application, you probably know very little about someone who has stumbled upon one of your online coupons. But if they find the coupon valuable enough, they may be willing to provide their name and email address in exchange for it. Although it’s not a lot of information, it’s enough for a business to know that someone has interest in their company.

Content: While the download of a coupon shows an individual has a direct interest in your product or service, content (like an educational ebook or webinar) does not. Therefore, to truly understand the nature of the person’s interest in your business, you’ll probably need to collect more information to determine whether the person is interested in your product or service and whether they’re a good fit.

These three general examples highlight how lead generation differs from company to company, and from person to person. You’ll need to collect enough information to gauge whether someone has a true, valid interest in your product or service — how much information is enough information will vary depending on your business.
Let’s look at Episerver, for example. They use web content reports for lead generation, collecting six pieces of information from prospective leads.

Episerver provides a great example for what to ask for in a lead gen form:

Full Name: The most fundamental information needed to personalize your communication with each lead.

Email: This serves as a unique identifier and is how you will contact your lead.

Company: This will give you the ability to research your lead’s industry and company and how the lead might benefit from your product or service (mainly for B2B).

Role: Understanding an individual’s role will help you understand how to communicate with them. Every brand stakeholder will have a different take and perspective on your offering (mainly for B2B).

Country: Location information can help you segment your contact by region and time zone, and help you qualify the lead depending on your service.

State: The more detailed information you can obtain without sacrificing conversions, the better. Knowing your leads state can help you further qualify them.

If you’d like to learn more intermediate-level tips on information collection and what you should ask for on your lead gen forms, read our post about it here.
Lead Scoring
Lead scoring is a way to qualify leads quantitatively. Using this technique, leads are assigned a numerical value (or score) to determine where they fall on the scale from “interested” to “ready for a sale”. The criteria for these actions is completely up to you, but it must be uniform across your marketing and sales department so that everyone is working on the same scale.
 

 
A lead’s score can be based on actions they’ve taken, information they’ve provided, their level of engagement with your brand, or other criteria that your sales team determines. For instance, you may score someone higher if they regularly engage with you on social media or if their demographic information matches your target audience.
Borrowing from the examples above, you might give a lead a higher score if they used one of your coupons — an action that would signify this person is interested in your product.
The higher a lead’s score, the closer they are to becoming a sales-qualified lead (SQL), which is only a step away from becoming a customer. The score and criteria is something you may need to tweak along the way until you find the formula that works, but once you do, you’ll transform your lead generation into customer generation.

Lead Generation Strategies
Online lead generation encompasses a wide range of tactics, campaigns, and strategies depending on the platform on which you wish to capture leads. We talked about lead capture best practices once you have a visitor on your site … but how can you get them there in the first place?
Let’s dive into lead generation strategies for a few popular platforms.
Facebook Lead Generation
Facebook has been a method for lead generation since its inception. Originally, companies could use outbound links in their posts and information in their bios to attract strangers to their websites. However, when Facebook Ads was launched in 2007, and its algorithm began to favor accounts that used paid advertising, there was a major shift in how businesses used the platform to capture leads. Facebook created Lead Ads for this purpose. Facebook also has a feature that lets you put a simple call-to-action button at the top of your Facebook Page, helping you send Facebook followers directly to your website.
Get some lead generation tips for Facebook.
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Twitter Lead Generation
Twitter has Twitter Lead Gen Cards, which let you generate leads directly within a tweet without having to leave the site. A user’s name, email address, and Twitter username are automatically pulled into the card, and all they have to do is click “Submit” to become a lead. (Hint for HubSpot users: You can connect Twitter Lead Gen Cards to your HubSpot Forms. Learn how to do that here).
Learn some lead generation tips for Twitter.
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LinkedIn Lead Generation
LinkedIn has been increasing its stake in the advertising space since its early days. When it comes to lead generation, LinkedIn created Lead Gen Forms, which auto-populate with a users profile data when they click a CTA, making it easy to capture information.
Get tips from our experience using LinkedIn ads.
PPC Lead Generation
When we say pay-per-click (PPC), we’re referring to ads on search engine result pages (SERPs). Google gets 3.5 billion searches a day, making it prime real estate for any ad campaign, especially lead gen. The effectiveness of your PPC campaign relies heavily on a seamless user flow, as well as your budget, target keywords, and a few other factors.
Learn more about how to setup successful PPC ads.
B2B Lead Generation
B2B is a particular business model that requires a particular approach to lead generation.SmartInsights found that referrals are the top source for capturing business leads. Not to mention, effectiveness varies by channel.
Learn the B2B lead generation techniques for every channel.

Tips for Lead Generation Campaigns
In any given lead generation campaign, there can be a lot of moving parts. It can be difficult to tell which parts of your campaign are working and which need some fine-tuning. What exactly goes into a best-in-class lead generation engine? Here are a few tips when building lead gen campaigns.
Use the right lead generation tools.
As you saw in our data, the most successful marketing teams use a formal system to organize and store their leads. That’s where lead generation tools and lead generation software come into play.
How much do you know about the people visiting your website? Do you know their names or their email addresses? How about which pages they visited, how they’re navigating around, and what they do before and after filling out a lead conversion form?
If you don’t know the answers to these questions, chances are you’re having a hard time connecting with the people who are visiting your site. These are questions you should be able to answer — and you can with the right lead generation tools.
There are a few different tools and templates out there that’ll help you create different lead gen assets to use on your site:

CTA Templates: 50+ free, customizable call-to-action (CTA) templates in PowerPoint that you can use to create clickable CTA buttons to use on your blog, landing pages, and elsewhere on your site.

Lead Generation Software Tools: This free tool from HubSpot includes lead capture and contact insights features, which will scrape any pre-existing forms you have on your website and add those contacts to your existing contact database. It also lets you create pop-ups, hello bars, or slide-ins — called “lead flows” — that’ll help you turn website visitors into leads immediately.

Example of a slide-in lead flow.

Visitor Tracking: Hotjar has a heatmap tool — a virtual tool which creates a color-coded representation of how a user navigates your site — that helps you understand what users want, care about, and do on your site. It records visitors and tells you where they spend the most time on your site. You can use it to gather information on your lead generation forms, feedback forms and surveys, and more.

Form-Scraping Tool: A form scraping tool that collects submissions on your website’s existing forms helps you automatically consolidate all your leads into your contact database, regardless of which form visitors submitted on your website. HubSpot customers can create and embed forms using HubSpot, which automatically populate into your CMS. Non-HubSpot customers can use a form creation tool like Contact Form 7, JetPack, or Google Forms, and then use HubSpot’s free collected forms feature to automatically capture form submissions and input them to a contact database.

Create amazing offers for all different stages of the buying cycle.
Not all of your site visitors are ready to talk to your sales team or see a demo of your product. Someone at the beginning of the buyer’s journey might be interested in an informational piece like an ebook or a guide, whereas someone who’s more familiar with your company and near the bottom of the journey might be more interested in a free trial or demo.
Make sure you’re creating offers for each phase and offering CTAs for these offers throughout your site.
Yes, it takes time to create valuable content that teaches and nurtures your leads down the funnel, but if you don’t offer anything for visitors who aren’t ready to buy, then they may never come back to your website. From checklists to templates to free tools, here are 23 ideas for lead generation content to get you started.
If you want to take personalization a step further — which will help boost your conversion rate — try using smart CTAs. Smart CTAs detect where a person is in the buyer’s journey, whether they’re a new visitor, a lead, or a customer, and display CTAs accordingly. Personalized CTAs convert a whopping 202% better than basic calls-to-action.
Keep your messaging consistent and deliver on your promise.
The highest-converting lead gen campaigns are the ones that deliver on what they promise and create a seamless transition from ad copy and design to the deliverable itself. Make sure that you’re presenting a consistent message throughout the process and providing value to everyone that engages with your lead capture.
The aspects of your lead gen campaign should mirror everything else on your website, on your blog, and within the product that you will eventually try to sell. If not, you’ll have a difficult time getting your lead to the next lifecycle stage. Your campaign should be about more than just obtaining an email address — it should be about developing a new customer.
Link your CTA to a dedicated landing page.
This may seem obvious to you, but you’d be surprised how many marketers don’t create dedicated landing pages for their offers. CTAs are meant to send visitors to a landing page where they can receive a specific offer.
Don’t use CTAs to drive people to your homepage, for instance. Even if your CTA is about your brand or product (and perhaps not an offer like a download), you should still be sending them to a targeted landing page that’s relevant to what they are looking for and includes an opt-in form. If you have the opportunity to use a CTA, send them to a page that will convert them into a lead.
If you want to learn more about how to build and promote high-converting landing pages, then download our ebook on optimizing landing pages for conversions.
Get your sales team involved.
Remember when we talked about lead scoring? Well, it isn’t exactly doable without your sales team’s input. How will you know what qualifies a lead for sales without knowing if your defined SQLs are successfully sold? Your marketing and sales teams need to be aligned on the definitions and the process of moving a lead from MQL to SQL to opportunity before you even begin to capture leads.
Also, be open to evolving your relationship with sales and how you guide leads along your funnel. Your definitions will likely need to be refined over time; just make sure to keep everyone involved up-to-date.
Use social media strategically.
While marketers typically think of social media as best for top-of-the-funnel marketing, it can still be a helpful and low-cost source for lead generation as shared in the lead gen strategies above. The key is using social media strategically for lead generation.
Start by adding links directly to the landing pages of high-performing offers within your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media posts. Tell visitors that you’re sending them to a landing page. That way, you’re setting expectations. Here’s an example from one of our Twitter posts:
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You can also do a lead generation analysis of your blog to figure out which posts generate the most leads, and then make a point of regularly linking social media posts to them.
Another way to generate leads from social media is to run a contest. Contests are fun and engaging for your followers, and they can also teach you a ton about your audience. It’s a win-win. Read our step-by-step guide for growing your email list using social media contests, which covers everything from choosing a platform, to picking a winner, all the way to analyzing your results.
Remain flexible and constantly iterate.
Your lead generation strategy needs to be as dynamic as the people you’re targeting. Trends change, behaviors shift, opinions morph … so should your lead gen marketing. Use A/B split testing to see what CTAs perform best, which landing pages convert better, and which copy captures your target audience. Experiment with layout changes, design, UX, content, and advertising channels until you find what works.

Lead Generation Trends & Benchmarks
So … you’re getting web traffic and generating leads. But how are you doing compared to other companies in your industry? Read on to discover what other marketers are doing with lead generation in 2021, along with important stats to consider.
Lead generation is the top marketing priority.
HubSpot State of Marketing Report 2021 found that marketers report that their top marketing priorities for the next 12 months is generating more leads. Converting these leads to customers is another top priority, according to SmartInsights.

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Marketers are making use of digital automation tools for lead generation.
Digital lead generation spend is expected to reach 3.2 billion by the end of 2021. Forbes predicts that automation will play a large part in this increase, as automation will become a large part of lead generation strategies, specifically when it comes to streamlining the lead qualification and predictive scoring. If you’re looking to automate your processes, discover high-quality lead generation tools in this blog post.
Most B2B leads come from referrals.
B2B marketers say that 65% of their leads come from referrals, 38% from email, and 33% come from Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

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If you’re interested in getting in on this trend, it’s worth considering revamping your referral strategy and helping existing customers bring you new leads.
Content marketing helps drive leads.
Marketers also report that content marketing has helped themsuccessfully generate demand and leadsover the past 12 months. To get in on this trend, readthis helpful blog poston creating content for different stages of the buyer’s journey.
Grow Better with Lead Generation
There you have it, folks. Now that you know more about how to generate leads for your business, we recommend you try HubSpot’s free lead generation tool. Use it to add simple conversion assets to your site (or scrape your existing forms) to help you learn more about your site visitors and what content prompts them to convert.
The basics we’ve gone over in this blog post are just the beginning. Keep creating great offers, CTAs, landing pages, and forms — and promote them in multi-channel environments. Be in close touch with your sales team to make sure you’re handing off high-quality leads on a regular basis. Last but not least, never stop testing. The more you tweak and test every step of your inbound lead generation process, the more you’ll improve lead quality and increase revenue.