This is part 5 of the series: 6 Easy Steps to Double B2B Conversions
One of the challenges in internet marketing is ensuring you are gathering accurate prospect information from your various marketing initiatives. How many times have you tried to reach out to someone through email or phone just to find out that the information was fake? Tired of it? Here are two ways to minimize the number of “fake” prospects you are getting.
1-Send valuable content through email
Many businesses redirect the user directly to a content piece after a successful form submission. For example, user fills and submits a form to gain access to a white paper. Seems correct to you? It works but it does not help to gather accurate data. Instead, send the white paper using email after the successful form submission. Warn the user on the form that the content piece will be sent to them by email. This won’t guarantee that the visitor will give you a valid email address but it does increase the chances.
When sending documents in email it is also a good idea to send a link to where the document lives on your website instead of an attachment. First it makes the email smaller to download and second you will be able to know who accessed the document and when. Marketing automation solutions really excel at tying this type of information back to prospects and/or leads so that it can be reused in future marketing campaigns
2- Validate data
It is a good idea to validate data on the form before a user can submit the information. This will help gather consistent information on your prospects and prevent prospects from posting forms filled with garbage. At a minimum you should be validating email formats and phone number formats to ensure you can at least contact the prospect. The other fields can be validated as you wish but the more validation you have the better the data will be. However, you can overdo it so be careful. Implement strict validation only on the fields you really need or it will make filling and submitting your form a lot more complicated for your prospect.
3- Use a Privacy Statement
Including a Privacy Statement below forms requesting personal information from the visitor is a good practice. This will help reassure your visitor that their personal information will not be abused or sold. Reassured visitors are more likely to input their real contact information if they know you won’t spam them or sell their info to others.
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Tags: b2b, lead nurturing, marketing automation, marketing automation solution, online conversion
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