Customer acquisition is one of the most important aspects of building your brand. Your customers are your ticket to success, so you need to find creative ways to bring more customers in, but not just any customers — customers who will become brand evangelists.
You also want to survey your audience and find out what they want as you try to improve your content, service or products. Measuring the success of your efforts along the way can be an important part of your strategy.
However, acquiring customers can be costly if you don’t choose the right tools.
For bloggers, site owners and everyone in between, it’s important to have plenty of tools in your arsenal. Lead generation is one of the most important aspects of our business that allows us to scale in size, while also automating the process.
There are plenty of custom-created software that you can invest in, but there are also many helpful tools on the web that may serve your purposes as well. Many of which I will be covering in the list below.
Which Tools are Best for Capturing Website Leads?
Lead generation tools can be a bit confusing sometimes regarding which ones to use and how to implement the technology to maximize your impact on your target audience. Your leads generation tools should be easy to access and use, not too expensive, and they should allow you to focus on the market you want to reach.
We have scoured the web to find some of the best capture tools that will help you grow a mailing list and improve your email marketing campaigns.
Hello Bar
Hello Bar is one of the most effective, yet unobtrusive ways to grow a mailing list and grab the attention of your audience. You’ve likely already seen this tool already being used on various websites and blogs, and the way the tool works is quite simple.
Site owners can add Hello Bar to their site through the use of a WordPress plugin or placing a line of code on their site. In short, it’s a simple Javascript embed code, so it’s compatible with nearly every CMS. Once this is in place, a sticky, non-scrolling bar will appear at the top of any web page you like. The end result is an attractive, yet prominent place that can be used for promoting your latest content, collecting emails for your mailing list or even to simply bring awareness to your latest sales or promotions.
Another great feature of Hello Bar, is that it’s free for all site owners. Premium features, such as RSS feed integrations (for dynamic promotion of the latest blog posts), SSL compatibility and removal of Hello Bar’s branding are also available for anyone looking to pay a few dollars per month to upgrade.
MailOptin
MailOptin is a powerful WordPress plugin that allows site owners and bloggers to easily convert new and existing site visitors into email list subscribers and high-value leads. Through the use of their WordPress plugin and platform, users will have the ability to not only create custom forms and automate triggered emails for their lists, they also have the necessary tools and tracking in place to build a powerful relationship that nurtures and engages with them in the process — all within WordPress.
When it comes to the actual creation of lead generation forms for your site, MailOptin has a wide range of options to choose from. Some of the most popular and effective solutions are their lightbox popup, notification bar, slide in windows and also before/after post subscription forms. In summary, MailOptin offers all of the subscription form options and customizations necessary for turning your site content and traffic into a lead generation machine. Download the MailOptin WordPress plugin for free, and also upgrade your account to unlock all features.
GetResponse
GetResponse is another good tool for creating and growing your leads list. It allows you to create personalized emails, welcomes, and birthday messages through a convenient autoresponder and set up a series of emails for your contact lists.
You can set it up and forget about, it and it will keep working for you while you sleep. Customers will get notifications if they sign up for your newsletters and you can manage all of your contacts in one place.
Don’t forget to check out my GetResponse Popup Windows post on how 10 different sites are using the service to increase conversions on their own sites.
Gravity Forms
One of the greatest things about using WordPress to power a site, is that it’s easy to create a contact form of your own. However, there are plenty of tools out there to bring contact forms and engagement to a whole new level.
Gravity Forms is a tool that does exactly that. Not only can you completely customize the look, feel and options for your forms, you can also easily integrate with other platforms like Aweber, MailChimp, Paypal and more. In short, this is the perfect tool if you want to create customized forms on your site for building your mailing, or just for customization over simple contact forms.
WP Subscribe Pro
WP Subscribe Pro is a good tool to use to generate more leads for your mailing lists. With this tool, you can boost your traffic to subscribers and collect leads to promote your brand.
WP Subscribe Pro supports many other tools as well including Feedburner, MailChimp, and Aweber. It is a plug-in that you will be able to use within your blog and website to capture emails of interested visitors. It allows you to integrate your email campaign within your website and blog.
LeadFlows by Hubspot
LeadFlows by Hubspot allows you to use onboard analytics to figure out what is working best on your site and what needs to be changed. It helps, you build contacts, and it, allows you to plan your strategies with your email campaigns and organize your contacts. You can select the features you want to use and check the progress of your campaigns as you go.
It’s also free, so you don’t have to pay monthly premiums to keep it.
Lead Generation Card
There is a cool tool called the Twitter Lead Generation Card which allows you to let users express interest in what your brand offers.
You can let your users securely share their email addresses with businesses without leaving Twitter or having to fill out forms of any kind. This is a quick and easy way to build your leads while analyzing how it is working.
Scroll-Triggered Pop-up
This tool called “Scroll-Triggered Popup” is designed to help you get the attention of visitors who have engaged with your site. You can specify the events you wish to track such as the percentage of the scroll and verify that visitors are engaged with the content you are presenting on your page.
The purpose of this tool is to:
- Get more subscribers to your newsletter
- Make it easy to share your posts
- Fill out a contact form
- Display best offers
- Share related content
It’s very customizable and you can display any content or call-to-action within the plugin. Pop-ups can be obtrusive but this tool seems to be fairly unobtrusive and just allows visitors to add themselves to the list of email subscribers if they choose to do so. They can also exit out of the application if they don’t want to.
Best Tools for Growing Your Mailing List
These are just seven examples of leads capture tools. There are more available on the web for you to discover and try out, and plenty of examples and case studies to guide you along the way. Think about how you want to utilize your content and what types of groups you want to reach. All of these tools can help you in some way but some of them are more robust than others.
Hello Bar is a snazzy way to increase engagement without taking up a lot of website space. GetResponse is great because of the autoresponders and instant notifications capabilities. Gravity Forms is also another great tool for all site owners to consider since we all need contact forms.
Only you know how much you can afford to invest in your email lead generation and outreach, but these tools are a good sampling of price ranges that allow you to build your brand while building your mailing list over time.
Whatever tools you choose, it’s best to try out the features first and see what works and what doesn’t. With time you’ll learn which features are the most important to your business and which ones you can do without.
The goal is to utilize either free or premium tools that will help you reach your business goals and cut your customer acquisition costs down.