Improving Your Lead Capture

Good morning, folks, and I do hope things are looking up for you
wherever you may be. Fall has arrived in Tulsa: it's a brisk 60
degrees and sunny, and I do think leaves are beginning to change
color here and there. It's a pretty season and reminds us that
change is afoot.

How are you changing?

The one thing you can be sure of is change. It's all around us
and we inevitably change as a result. It's almost impossible not
to. Last week, I co-facilitated a round table discussion about
"What Keeps You Up At Night?" for SpiritBank. My table had people
from all walks of life ranging in age from late 50's/early 60's
to people in their late 30's/early 40's. Some were experienced
professionals and several were folks looking to start or grow a
new business started as a result of job transition.

Some were concerned with how to get a web site up and running
while others were more concerned about riding out the economy.
Other round tables discussed cash management, thinking out of the
box, marketing and sales. Across the board people were concerned
with handling and managing change, not just in the world around
them but also within the world inside their business.

Over the next few weeks, I would like to encourage you to
implement some changes in your marketing. Some of these changes
will challenge you technically while others will challenge your
mind. If you work with me, I believe you will see fruit from your
labors. You'll learn something, I assure you.

So let's get started, shall we? Let's start to implement some
changes.

The first thing I want you to consider is how you are capturing
leads from your web site. I had a client a few years ago who
spent $50K to get 250,000 unique visitors to their web site. I
cautioned them not to spend the money because their site was not
ready, but they did it anyway. They were very proud of the
results of their Google AdWords campaign. They did get 250,000
unique visitors.

But because they did not have a simple lead capture form in
place, they could not tell who these visitors were nor could
they contact them again in the future. That was $50K down the
drain.

What's your lead capture method? It amazes me how many sites do
not offer a newsletter subscription. All you need is a simple
form to capture the first name and email address of your
visitors. If you do not have this in place today, then your first
challenge is to add this to your web site.

Most HTML editors will provide a facility to create these simple
forms. The challenge then becomes how to manage a mailing list.
When someone subscribes to you through your web form, you must
send them a follow-up email asking them to confirm their
subscription. This is called double opt-in and it is part of the
Federal CAN-SPAM compliance act. While this can be done manually
it is best handled electronically using a third-party
autoresponder service. I recommend GetResponse for ease of use,
features and pricing:

http://www.getresponse.com/index/35884

Once you create an account, it is a simple matter to use their
wizard to generate the appropriate HTML code which you can copy
and paste into your web page.

Now adding the subscription button is only half the battle here.

You need to follow-up with your subscribers on a regular basis
with them. I am amazed by how many people who do have lead
capture mechanisms in place don't bother to stay in touch with
their subscribers. This defeats the purpose of capturing lead
information. You need to stay in touch at least on a weekly or
bi-weekly basis to maintain top-of-mind awareness.

Once again, you can email your list using Microsoft Outlook by
sending the email to yourself and then putting all of your
subscriber email addresses in the bcc: field. That will prevent
your subscribers from seeing the other subscriber email
addresses.

While this works, it is not practical. Promotional email should
arrive personalized. That is to say the subject line should start
with the subscriber's first name such as "Steven, An
Update from Steven Schneiderman." Doing so will increase your
email open rate. Additionally, the email should start with "Dear
Steven". And throughout the email, the text should be
personalized wherever it makes sense to do so. This helps build a
closer relationship with your subscribers.

Does this work? Absolutely. Over the years, I can't count the
number of times a subscriber has responded to an automated email
as if I had taken the time to write especially to them and them
alone. It also generates a steady stream of leads for me that
eventually turn into real business.

Once again, I recommend an autoresponder service be used for the
purpose of maintaining contact with your mailing list. Doing so
allows you to personalize emails on-the-fly and to manage
subscribe and unsubscribe requests in a completely automated,
hands-off fashion. The money you spend on an autoresponder
service will save you time and make you money in the long run, I
assure you.

There are some down sides to using an autoresponder service. If
you have an established list, you will need to import it into the
autoresponder service. Every legitimate autoresponder service
will insist on grooming your list and sending out a confirmation
email to your subscribers. This may seem like overkill since they
are already an active list; however, autoresponder services must
do this to maintain CAN SPAM compliance.

If you prefer to maintain your list on your own, but still want
a tool to help you deliver personalized emails in an automated
fashion there is another solution called GroupMail:

http://www.emailmarketingassistance.com/groupmail.htm

If you prefer to explore your autoresponder options, another
popular service is aWeber:

http://www.aweber.com/?26776

And if you do secure an aWeber account, I recommend you also get
this series of video tutorials that walk you through setting up
your account:

http://www.emailmarketingassistance.com/aweberunleashed.htm

For a corporate site that is selling products or services, it is
perfectly OK to have the lead capture form on the home page or in
a left or right column below the site navigation buttons. Just
make sure to offer a compelling reason to subscribe to your
newsletter. People will not subscribe out of the good graces of
their hearts unless your company, products or services are so
incredible that they just have to learn more. As a rule, you need
to offer them something of value -- a free report, a free
analysis, something that will encourage them to subscribe.

For a mini site focused on the immediate sale of a single
product, usually an ebook or digital software product, it is not
a good idea to add a subscribe form to your sales page. For one
thing, it encourages people to subscribe and abandon the site, so
in the long run while you may grow your list, you lose more sales.
For a mini site, you need to use a different tactic.

You need a squeeze page.

A squeeze page is a page that comes before the actual sales
letter or mini site. It's sole purpose is to build interest and
suspense through a very short, compelling pitch, and offers more
information if the visitor will subscribe. You might promise a
special report or other unadvertised bonus for subscribing. If
building a squeeze page seems challenging, I recommend this
product:

http://www.cooltoolawards.com/software/utilities/squeezepagegenerator.htm

After they subscribe through the squeeze page, they are
immediately sent to the sales page. Now even if they do not buy
from you on their first visit, they have qualified themselves as
being a good prospect because they have subscribed. And since you
have captured their contact information first, you may now plug
them into your autoresponder and start sending them a sequence of
pre-written communications on a scheduled basis. This will
improve your sales conversions, too.

Many people are moving away from using text only on their
squeeze pages. To be more compelling, they are using audio and
video messages. If you want to de-mystify the creation of a video
squeeze page then I recommend you look at this:

http://www.cooltoolawards.com/software/multimedia/premiumvideosqueezepages.htm

And the easiest way to create and implement a pre-recorded video
on your web site is to use this tool:

http://www.cooltoolawards.com/software/multimedia/videowebwizard.htm

You simply import the video, choose your settings for your
player and then cut and paste some code and upload a few files.
Very easy to use, even for a novice.

OK, I fear I have challenged you enough today. Please re-read
this email and make some notes. Challenge yourself to visit each
of the products I have suggested and choose one to implement to
make your lead capture better than it is today. I urge you to
look over your site carefully to see how your lead capture
process can be improved and streamlined.

And don't forget. I am available by the hour to answer your
questions and mentor you through the process of change. If your
budget can not presently accommodate my services on a full-time
basis, reserve one hour of my time and we'll review as much as we
can within an hour. We'll look at your site and divide and
conquer until we get it to where it needs to be. Email me at
info@schneiderman.net.

Until next time,

Steven