ConvergeHub Blog for 2017

Tips to Persuade Your Fence Sitting Prospects to Get Off the Fence

There are also customers, who you may have come across often; people who ask many questions and do get engaged with your product, but then at the end fails to buy. Such ‘on the fence customers’ are most of the times quite difficult to convert, especially if you are running a business with a low return on your investments. Nevertheless, if you are still persistent, there are certain ways you can reduce the level of friction in engagement with these prospects and can convert them to customers by following a few strategies.

When any potential customer enters your website, four major things can happen:

The customer leave, never to return
The customer buys quickly whatever that you are selling
The customer calls you up and asks question about buying

And lastly

The customer just ‘SITS ON THE FENCE’ and do not take any action because the person is not sold

There are also customers, who you may have come across often; people who ask many questions and do get engaged with your product, but then at the end fails to buy.

Such ‘on the fence customers‘ are most of the times quite difficult to convert, especially if you are running a business with a low return on your investments. Therefore, it is recommended that you should avoid spending your resources to convert these customers. Because most of the time you will lose money and time acquiring these businesses.

Nevertheless, if you are still persistent, there are certain ways you can reduce the level of friction in engagement with these prospects and can convert them to customers by following a few strategies.

So, in today’s post, we will discuss how you can motivate your website visitors who fall in this category and make them get off the fence.

Let the Prospects Be Your User Even Before They Buy

Let us discuss a much talked about global problem ‘software piracy’ to let you understand what we mean when we say that you need to let your prospects become your user even before they buy. For example, no other company has faced this problem of software piracy more than Microsoft Corporation– the maker of Windows OS and MS Office suit. In developing countries, where law enforcement is weak, it is extremely easy to acquire a pirated version of Microsoft products. But, what did Microsoft do about it? The answer is- Nothing. This is because Microsoft did understand early that a user of pirated Microsoft products is not, in reality, a lost sale. So in spite of talking tough in public forums, Microsoft secretly allowed these users from the developing countries continue to use the pirated versions, in the hope that when these users buy software, they will eventually prefer Microsoft.

So let your customer use your products or services free of cost for a limited period and at the same time persuade the user to buy. It has been found that in most cases these customers eventually hops off the fence and buy your product or service after a certain period.

Reduce Bounce Rate by Deploying Voice Calls and Discounts

It is very easy to locate a customer on the fence at a brick and mortar store. Once spotted, such a customer is usually converted with the help of a quick sales pitch by the sales representatives on the shop floor. However, unfortunately, this is not possible on a digital platform, where you can only realize a lost sale once the customer has left your website. Nevertheless, you can still grab these hesitant buyers by a few ways and make them interested in listening to your sales pitch. One easy way to do this is to place a ‘Call Back’ button prominently on your website so that these hesitant prospects can leave their details before they leave, which human representatives can, later on, follow up and increase the possibility of the sale.

Another way to reduce pre-sales friction is to identify website visitors who are attempting to exit at the payment gateway and lure them with exclusive limited-time discounts, to grab their attention and hasten the sale.

Humanize Your Products and Services

Sometimes just by reducing friction in reaching out or merely letting users get access to your services and products may not be sufficient to convert leads who are sitting on the fence. In these cases, the main reason why many such prospects do not get converted is their lack of inherent trust in your businesses. According to our experience in such a situation, the trick is to provide your customer with all the details about your business, which will not only humanize your service but also make your prospects feel relatable with your product line.

The Key Takeaway

It can be said over here that not all these strategies may apply to all kind of businesses. As ultimately, you need to understand your customers better to know why some converts while others remain hanging on the fence.

But we are sure; this market research will help you to devise specific strategies what will work on your customer as it has worked for us all along.

If you find this article helpful, do share with us about your experience in the comment box below.

ConvergeHub for use with Zapier- Available Now

We know, you and your team use a wide spectrum of applications and tools in combination with ConvergeHub CRM to order, address and anticipate your customer’s needs. Now, Zapier makes this endeavor effortless, by connecting more than 750+ applications to ConvergeHub. As the landscape of business apps grows, depend on Zapier to be the tool that keeps it all together. Zapier handles the big tasks of making your apps communicate with each other to create workflow automation a cool functionality, like Multi-Step Zaps and Searching. Use your zaps now, to automatically handle the hard work of pushing your forms, documents, files, contacts, and tickets.

Whether you are the one who carefully plans every task in a Getting-Things-Done list or scribbles down your reminders to yourself on the back of several old and fading envelopes- your goal is always the same. You have things that need to be done and for that, you are trying to get yourself organized enough to do it on time.

However, to keep up with your ever-growing tasks, what you ideally need is a Task Management System that works for you, so that you can do more with less frustration, miss fewer deadlines, and enjoy a greater overall satisfaction, with an application that you can rely upon.

We know, you and your team use a wide spectrum of applications and tools in combination with ConvergeHub CRM to order, address and anticipate your customer’s needs.

Now, Zapier makes this endeavor effortless, by connecting more than 750+ applications to ConvergeHub.

As the landscape of business apps grows, depend on Zapier to be the tool that keeps it all together.

Zapier handles the big tasks of making your apps communicate with each other to create workflow automation a cool functionality, like Multi-Step Zaps and Searching.

Use your zaps now, to automatically handle the hard work of pushing your forms, documents, files, contacts, and tickets.

The simple truth is that automation wins back hours in the day.

Hence, for every administrative task that you automate, you and your team can now spend your hours on works that require a human touch.

Learn More Ways to Increase Your Productivity with Zapier

Automate all your mundane and repetitive tasks with workflows, so that you can save your work hours focusing on growing your business.
Integrate your CRM with other products that you never knew were available to you.
Zapier directly connects 750+ Apps into ConvergeHub CRM
Accomplish all that you need within your ConvergeHub CRM, without any development or programming cost- with just a quick Zap!

Which Triggers and Actions do Zapier support?

You must have been using several apps along with ConvergeHub, which now Zapier will help you to connect with a single click of your mouse. Finding the best tools that help your team do better work has never been easier. Use Zapier Triggers and Actions to hone your sales process, work more efficiently, find customers, and close deals.

Supported Triggers

New Contact – Triggers when you add a new contact.
New Event – Triggers when you add a new event.
New Lead – Triggers when you add a new lead.
New Target – Triggers when you add a new target.
New Account – Triggers when you add a new account.

Supported Actions

Create Target – Creates a new target.
Create Lead – Creates a new lead.
Create Contact – Creates a new contact.
Create Event – Creates a new event.
Create Account – Creates a new account.

How to Get Started with ConvergeHub on Zapier?

To get started with ConvergeHub on Zapier, first, you will need to click to connect your account to use with your Zap.
Next, you will be asked to enter your ConvergeHub username and password.
Enter the credentials along with your ConvergeHub API Key

Click “Continue” and if your login details were correct, your account will now be successfully connected.

8 Most Popular Zaps to Get You Started

How CRM software for retail is unbeatable for retailers

As this year unfolds, using CRM software for your retail business should find the top priority in your business strategies that you must adopt in 2017. This is because according to eMarketer there is a big possibility that retail sales are expected to outgrow the $27 trillion benchmark by 2020. So, to stay ahead of the competition, whether you have a kiosk in a shopping mall, setting up your retail distribution network or own a brick-and-mortar store, CRM software is the need of the hour for the growth of your retail businesses.

The CRM software for retail is gaining more and more importance. As this year unfolds, using CRM software for your retail business should find the top priority in your business strategies that you must adopt in 2017.

This is because according to eMarketer, there is a big possibility that retail sales are expected to outgrow the $27 trillion benchmark by 2020.
So, to stay ahead of the competition, whether you have a kiosk in a shopping mall, setting up your retail distribution network or own a brick-and-mortar store, CRM software is the need of the hour for the growth of your retail businesses.

Here are 4 solid reasons as to why you should do so:

#1. Align Marketing and Sales in A Better Way

A CRM is one of the best tools for the marketers to automate processes while executing and nurturing campaigns. CRM is also is capable of performing predictive analysis and manages contents based on individual customer’s needs.
Apart from this, CRMs even provides sales team access to pricing literatures, automated and scored leads, personalization of data and dashboard, and a close integration with email and mobile devices to reach the sales goals.
It has been noticed more than once that when both sales and marketing uses the same data in real time from a CRM, it encourages synergy and promotes communication and accountability. Using a CRM both sales and marketing people can collectively manage leads and campaigns, which helps in consolidating sales and marketing funnels, to better serve sales efforts and outreach.
As and when required CRM can also help in managing projects, workflows, digital assets and simplify approval process across the team, other departments, and agencies from a unified platform.

#2. Provide Unparallel Customer Service

According to a research done by NewVoiceMedia, it is estimated that $41 billion is lost every year by US companies due to poor customer service. Just one bad experience in customer service can eliminate brand loyalty.
So, in addition to using CRM as your transactional database, it can also be used to form a genuine relationship with your customers and maintain this relationship through the customer’s life-cycle.
CRM can be used as an interactive service hub that provide information that your customer service team needs for quick resolution of your customer issues. Further, as CRM offers real time dashboard, you can use its single view facility to prioritize the order of case resolution, depending on the severity of the support tickets. You can even setup notifications, which activates on priority issues that need faster resolution, resulting in a steady growth of happy customers.

#3. Mobilize Back Office and Supply Chain Operations

As retailers introduce new practices that help in speeding up delivery of goods to the consumers, mobilizing back office and supply chain operations is essential for upholding reliability of the brands. In this circumstance, a robust logistic system is needed for ensuring consistent and accurate communications with the customers to their channel of choice.
Additionally, CRM also helps in raising the bar on the customer experience, whereby it prepares the store sales associate to answer questions about the ordered merchandise and offer complementary offerings by tracking the customer’s transaction history that may entice the customer to make additional purchases that were not planned.

#4. Make Use of Loyalty Programs

Loyalty programs are one of the most powerful tools for retailers, which often remain underused. In a study done by Colloquy it has been indicated that only 42% of loyalty program activities are participated by the customers. This happens because, retailers in most occasions do not use necessary software that can help them to implement and manage customer loyalty programs as per their needs.
CRM is a software that not only empowers you to enroll and manage your loyalty program’s member profiles, but it also helps in defining reward tires, set redemption guidelines, analyses customer behaviors and more. Using CRM retailers can also allow customers to view their current reward status, redeem rewards, refer friends, and view transaction history.
CRM for SMB retailers helps to keep customers happy and make them coming back for more.
So, as it is always cheaper to keep an existing customer than to gain a new one, using CRM’s loyalty, rewards and social listening features now retailers will have more opportunity to retain customers than ever before. By forming, a close relationship with the customer retailers now can use predictive analysis to up-sell or cross-sell the right products at the right time delivering a highly personalized experience right from presales to the post-buyer journey in retail businesses.

If you find this article helpful, feel free to leave behind your comments in the box below, so that we can enrich our experience with your suggestions.

Happy selling!

Outbound Communication with CRM takes your business ahead

In the modern times, contact center systems have more to offer than before in terms of customer support. While multimodal approach is taken for granted in today’s world, but unfortunately, it was never the right custom to be followed in a contact centre, where agents are always challenged to meet customer’s communication expectations and needs.

Outbound Communication with CRM takes your business ahead and its visible in the modern times. Here contact center systems have more to offer than before in terms of customer support.

While multimodal approach is taken for granted in today’s world, but unfortunately, it was never the right custom to be followed in a contact centre, where agents are always challenged to meet customer’s communication expectations and needs.

Hence, while most of the contact centers are still telephony-centric, still there are many who are changing to IP-based solutions for betterment of their businesses.

In telephony-centric call center solutions, the key characteristic of this is the reactive mode of service, in which agents only take in customer inquiries as they come in. In this inbound communication system, agents are only evaluated how effectively they are capable of managing the calls, as their sole objective is to make it easy for the customers to call in and get help.

So legacy telephony-centric systems do not have any ability to tie up agents to engage with their customers in other ways and leverage communication modes by automating certain other forms of communication gateways.

Most often, given these constrains, decision makers of contact centers who still use legacy systems have difficulty seeing how other modes of telephony service provide new value to their existing businesses– especially when it comes to establishing outbound communications.

Legacy telephony system’s flavors are impersonal and generic and are so not very engaging for the customers. However, when cloud-based telephony service is opted by a CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) and it is integrated within a CRM, agents can enable personalized communication those that can be highly relevant and timely for the customers.

To recognize this new value in cloud-telephony, here are three ways as to how modern VoIP-based communication open up new horizons for contact centers all across the globe.

Finding different modes of meaningful customer engagements

If legacy telephony system is about inbound inquiries, cloud telephony is about considering proactive customer service, where various channels can be used to communicate with the customers. Apart from just solving customer problems, outbound communication can be also used for providing alerts, special announcements, notifications, status updates, and others.

When tied to a CRM, all these outbound messages can be very customer specific, where it helps in bringing new value. It expands the scope of customer service, helps in understanding the customer journey, and is so a highly effective application that eventually makes your customers remain happy and satisfied with your products or services.

Streamline Your Business

Outbound calls are not meant to exist in a vacuum. Implementing cloud telephony for CCaaS helps you to start thinking more broadly about several other business processes that spans across your organization. For an example, think of a situation where a customer’s annual renewal is coming due. In this case, with outbound IP-telephony and a CRM platform to facilitate the process, you can easily trigger an outbound notification to the customer well in advance. In addition, customers can choose in which mode(s) they want want to receive their updates. Be it voice, text or email, building on that customers can now be prompted to update their preferred payment methods or make any changes in their business relationship with your organization. You can also send you customers personalized update on new offers and promotions that can be of their interest, or ask them to provide feedback on how efficiently you are meeting their needs.

Once you connect the dots using a cloud-telephony based CRM, the possibilities are endless for triggering and sending notifications which otherwise would not have been possible with legacy telecommunication systems.

Automate Contact Center Operations

In the past some forms of outbound communications were best done by live agents, for then it was the only way to do so. But in the present times, this is not an efficient model when we have to consider the value of the agent’s time and also the effort that is involved in making the call and move on quickly when the agent faces an answering machine.

With growth in technology, today this entire process is automated and managed along with higher degree of accuracy, especially with advances in speech recognition features in CCaaS.

So breaking away from the legacy model of customer service and making use of CRM and cloud-telephony not only helps you provide proactive customer support but it is also a big step in freeing up your agents to interact more efficiently when dealing with all their inbound customer support calls. This is why we see Outbound Communication with CRM takes your business ahead

Takeaway

Apart from these using CCaaS within CRM platform can also help in initiating calls to all your CRM leads with a single click of the mouse, check and record duration of your conversations, dynamically create new contacts and add other necessary information of the customer while on call and gather several call-log information for generating call-detail-analysis as per your need.

Killer Tactics to Launch Your Own Referral Marketing Campaign

The newest trend on the marketing scene is referral marketing. Referral marketing is a strategic development in the marketing genre, which promises the growth of loyal customers, explosive visibility of your products and services, leading to fast paced astounding profits. Simply put, referral marketing which is also commonly known as word-of-mouth marketing, is nothing but the concept of people purchasing products based on someone else’s influence or opinions.

Simply put, referral marketing which is also commonly known as word-of-mouth marketing, is nothing but the concept of people purchasing products based on someone else’s influence or opinions.

Referral marketing empowers the customers to spread your good word and in return, you reward them directly or indirectly for their services.

Customer referral program ideas are a powerful marketing tool since people mostly trust the opinions of other people they respect and know, whether they are friends, family members, social media influencers or popular silver screen stars.

As consumers, we always want to share our stories, the products we buy, and the brands we choose. So the results of customer referral marketingare enhanced further, when our buying experience and the products or services that we are purchasing are found exceptionally good.

What Is The Main Difference Between Referral Marketing Vs Affiliate Marketing?

Although at a superficial level, both referral and affiliate marketing seems to be the same, where you generate business through individuals who do not work or know you directly.However, in reality, they are rather different ways of acquiring new customers.

The main difference over here is that, while in a referral program,your referrals know each other as a member of their family or as friends; in affiliate marketing program new customers do not know each other personally.

So in other words, we can say, while the motivations of referral marketers are altruistic the needs of affiliate marketers are essentially financial.

How Do You Use And Implement Referral Marketing?

So, when most businesses are dipping tentative toes in this water, and many like what they are feeling, here are some killer tips that can help you to launch your own referral marketing campaign to harness the effectiveness of this marketing skill.

Rousing Invitations

To implement a referral program the best way is to start is to generate an email campaign, with the help of referral marketing tools like an automated CRM software that will send direct invitations to a list of participants who are likely to promote your campaign by referring your business to others.

Typically, your online referral marketing invitations will go for:

Business Partners
Employees
Past customers
Current customers
Prospects

Make sure that your custom invitations should be exciting and tempting while adhering to the established quality of your brand. Learn how you can create beautiful lead capturing email templates, which should make your referral program work without bogging down your potential invitees with too much unsought after information.

Pay Attention to Your Analytics

It can always be that you are probably getting referrals but you simply do not even know about it. Google Analytics has a section on referrals that can aid you in pinpointing other external sites that are linking and referring people to your website. Once you are well versed in analyzing Google Analytics this referral-report can be further broken down to not just visitors, but also customers who have promoted your products. Providing you with a deep insight and understanding of which websites are most qualified for the promotion of your brand.

Offer Compelling Incentives

Always remember, even your most loyal customer will participate in your referral program if and only if the rewards are worthwhile.

In an ideal referral-marketing program, participants are subtly compelled to participate with your brand. For an example, many organizations instead of offering cash per referral offer percentage off on the participant’s next purchase or provide a gift to anyone from the participant’s friends and family members who join the campaign.

There are three major factors, which you must consider over here while offering incentives.

1. Value: If the participants of your referral marketing campaign are adults, do not try to motivate them by offering cheap gifts. Always see that your rewards must have some value to your customers.

2. Relevance: If you are not providing discount on your products or services for participation in your referral program, always offer something that is relevant to your brand. Additionally make sure that you scale your referral gift to the value of the product or service that you offer.

3. Time Window: Never make the participants wait for weeks or months before they can use their participation rewards. In the same note if your offer is for a discounted vacation it should have enough time-window for the participants to make their plans and so the reward should not expire within the next 30 days.

Personalization

Referral marketing is in reality one of the more personal way to attract customers. Appreciate your participants individually for their efforts. You can use your customer’s names in all your referral-marketing materials. According to study published in the Global Perspective on Contemporary Marketing Education, this little gesture have shown significant impact for enhancing referral marketing campaigns in all verticals of the industry.

Takeaway:

People often trust what other customers say about your products or services more than what you say. So remember Reviews Are Referrals Too.

Encourage your customers to leave reviews after their purchase. Although these reviews may not drive traffic into your website, but they definitely help to convert people and make them your customers who are still sitting on the fence.

Conclusion

Referral marketing is a powerful and important component for every business. We at ConvergeHub have also configured a referral program, whereby our CRM users can refer Leads or any other sharable files and documents from the Library to anyone, who upon acceptance of the offer will be able to use ConvergeHub CRM (Limited Edition) free, as a greeting for the referred visitor on our CRM site.

If you have liked this article and our ideas have been helpful for you, write in the box below. We are always open to educating ourselves with new thoughts.

Learn Lead Generation In 30 Days With 5 Pro Tips

Let us forget about our product or service that we want to sell for a second. You can always pack it with a colorful little bow, and offer it at the best competitive pricing in the market- But most of times, none of this matters. Since, even with the best products and services, your offer will go unnoticed and your business is doomed to fail- if no one knows about it. The idea behind internet marketing is simple- Those with the most Leads wins. So, if you have the capacity of generating more leads, but have an average product- following these tips you still win.

Learn Lead Generation In 30 Days With 5 Pro Tips from ConvergeHub. Let us forget about our product or service that we want to sell for a second.

You can always pack it with a colorful little bow, and offer it at the best competitive pricing in the market- But most of times, none of this matters.

Since, even with the best products and services, your offer will go unnoticed and your business is doomed to fail- if no one knows about it.

The idea behind internet marketing is simple- Those with the most Leads wins.

So, if you have the capacity of generating more leads, but have an average product- you still win.

According to a survey on B2B Technology Marketing Community by LinkedIn, it has been found that:

61% Of B2B Marketers Identified Generating High-Quality Leads As Their Biggest Lead Generation Challenge.

All good lead management marketers are aware of the fact that high quality leads are like seeds from where prospective customers grow. For without proper lead generation ideas, it can be like trying to reap a bountiful harvest from an infertile and barren field.

Because in inbound marketing strategy, leads means more revenue, and more often than not, revenue signifies profit, lets unpack 5 smart lead generation techniques for your business right now.

SEO

In human history, very few inventions had an omnipresent impact as the Internet. And, while the fledging internet of the early 1990s was only used just for a bit of research and for emails, the Internet as we all know today, has grown into a widespread entity that plays a ubiquitous role in almost every aspect of our lives.

Apart from entertainment, relationships, education and communications, internet is virtually the modern lifeline also for other activities like businesses.

So, it is no wonder most organizations in the modern times for lead generation focus primarily on internet marketing strategy for capturing leads online.

Hence, if you are not focusing on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and using SEO as lead generation techniques, you are definitely missing on a major business opportunity.

SEO techniques that are used like utilizing keywords, proper utilization of alt tags, title tags and meta description of your web pages are all aimed to make your business’s online and website presence more accessible to your global customers on search engines and the web.

SEO optimization not only enhances the quality of your website, but it also helps your business page rank better in search engines, such as Google and Bing.

SEO in a broader sense also encompasses optimization of several technical details of your website, which includes optimization of contact forms, landing pages and others.

So, when optimized effectively, your business web-space can be seen organically on the internet, by people looking for what your business provides, in a very short span of time.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Perhaps the best social media lead generation platforms for lead generation for sales in the recent times, are LinkedIn and Facebook.

As the least “social” among all other social media channels, LinkedIn was designed exclusively for businesses and working professionals to unite in one space, making it an ideal marketing and sales platform.

Now, we are not telling you to go out and make cold calls for social media sales lead generation from your social media contacts. What we suggest is that you should consider sharing great contents with relevant key words that highlights your business details with all your LinkedIn and Facebook followers and we are sure you might start to see leads and prospects coming in naturally.

In both these platforms, you can also adopt social media advertising techniques, which are paid advertising features that makes it even easier to get quality contents in front of your online business prospects.

CONTENT MARKETING

Although most of the content marketing methods are more common than other lead generation techniques in this list, given the fact that 86% of B2C and 91% of B2B marketers use content marketing for lead generation, still it’s full potential is not optimally utilized in many organizations.

This is because, creating good content which are optimized with targeted keywords is not as easy as it looks.

Good lead generation content which are personalized to the needs of a specific audience and are also visually appealing (like landing page contents, email newsletters, blog posts and whitepapers) are best known for growing your blog readership and website traffic, which in turn helps in generating leads through content marketing.

BRAND AMBASSADORS

A road less travelled, influencer marketing or generating leads by creating brand ambassadors is another effective way of promoting your products and services. Brand ambassadors are most often top influencers in the social media platforms who shares social media contents of your brand with their followers, promoting your brand online and offline.

Brand ambassadors who are influencers in marketing can be your greatest supporters and bring in the interesting referrals that you are looking for.

To keep promoting your business influencer, consider providing incentives in the form of customer loyalty programs or other promotions, that can help in growing your influencer marketing ROI, while keeping your brand ambassadors share their joy with your product and services.

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (CRM)

Right leads, when they are properly cultivated and guided along the sales process helps in sprouting retainable and committed customers that define an organization’s success.

But sales lead management is nevertheless not an easy task. So, it’s only by utilizing the potential of a CRM that helps in tracking sales leads you can organize your list of prospects based on a number of criteria.

CRM application which helps in providing 360°customer view, enhancing coordination among marketing, sales, customer service makes contact management simple.

Most of the CRMs are often equipped with marketing automation features, which pulls leads by utilizing CRM lead generation programs and organizes them into the CRM dashboard.

In addition to organizing key contacts, CRM lead management also provides you a better picture of your business’s sales funnel.

Segmenting leads based on where they should be in your sales funnel, CRM helps in distributing unique marketing contents with the help of auto-generated email campaigns to the sales prospects. Eliminating countless manhours CRM quickly provides your sales reps with more time to generate sales growth and nurture leads and turn them into high-quality customers.

Let us know if you have liked this read and have any new ideas in the comment box. We would always love to listen to your suggestions.

Predictive dialer CRM with Cherry Picker Feature from best CRM

Predictive dialers are great tools, the next step in the evolution of contact/call center tools. But not all predictive dialers are created equal just like not all of your contacts have the same priority for your company.

Predictive dialer crm with Cherry Picker Feature from best CRM for SMB is revolutionising the industry. Predictive dialers are great tools, the next step in the evolution of contact/call center tools.

But not all predictive dialers are created equal just like not all of your contacts have the same priority for your company.

Smart prioritization means combining the best of machine and human intelligence to improve the waiting experience of your contacts.

One of such tools is what we call the CherryPicker: a call extractor with human intuition.

If all agents are attending calls, a call extractor or queue can help agents prioritize which calls to take next based on different criteria and aided by statistics by showing calls in queue and answer priority clients with just one click.

Imagine you have a busy call center, where hundreds or thousands of calls are answered every day, but you are waiting for the call of those few clients who are crucial to you.

Having a CherryPicker feature will ensure every single one of those very important calls are given the priority they deserve, and you won’t have to wait for a return call or follow up.

It ensures you get the right calls whenever they happen instead of being based on your call center’s availability.

If this is not enough, here are the main reasons why your predictive dialer should have a CherryPicker feature:

1) Contact Value prioritization

Clients from important accounts to the company can be flagged and taken from the call extractor by agents, no matter who called first.

In such cases, the agent can take a look at the caller profile to assess its priority quickly.

2) Answering callers further in the sales funnel

Giving precedence to callers in a more advanced stage of the sales funnel or leads from accounts with high revenue potential.

We don’t want to keep them waiting, and that’s why agents can pick these calls out of the queue and answer them based on their prioritization.

3) Contacts with previous issues or open cases can get attention quickly

Smart predictive dialers recognize numbers from callers following specific rules (a hot lead, a client with an open case, etc.) and route this calls in the same way they were routed the last time, after getting to this pool and while using the CherryPicker, agents can quickly check if the contacts in the queue have had recent issues or open cases (for support, complaints, etc.).

In such situations, the agent can use their discretion to extract a waiting call and attend it immediately. Providing quick services in this cases can save a relationship.

4) Improve caller satisfaction

By improving the waiting experience of high priority clients, the overall caller satisfaction of your contact center improves since high-value customers have an added weight when it comes to service measuring.

A smart call extractor feature (like iNexus’ CherryPicker) is definitely one of the features you should look for when considering a predictive dialer for your contact center.

Close More Deals By increasing Your Sales Outreach

I’m sure you’ve heard of sales automation or of integrated applications of customizable sales tools that can be used to streamline the sales cycle. But it’s not as easy as it sounds, success in sales automation requires strategy. You must differentiate yourself from the thousands of other sales automators.

Increase Your Sales Outreach with ConvergeHub. I’m sure you’ve heard of sales automation or of integrated applications of customizable sales tools that can be used to streamline the sales cycle.

But it’s not as easy as it sounds, success in sales automation requires strategy. You must differentiate yourself from the thousands of other sales automators.

How?

By hyper-personalizing your outreach

You’ve sent automated templated emails and made calls in hopes to engage with a potential client and book a demo, right?

But have you tried engaging on social media, sending video messages, physical postcards or even gifts/swag in the same flow?

If you’re only using email and phone then you’re not being efficient. Extend your campaign cycles and diversify your outreach so that you aren’t a pest. Show that you care in your outreach and show that you have a passion for what you do.

Never underestimate the impact of the personal touch and here’s why:

1. Email

The mode of communication that we just won’t give up on – regardless of the less than ideal results.

Email is easy, it works (sometimes), it’s cheap, you can use customizable tokens, and there are even companies that will let you put your messages on blast. Spam blast – and that is exactly where your email is likely to end up.

When crafting your emails make sure that each and every word has meaning and every single touch provides value.

Tip: Offer leads an option to schedule with you instead of forcing them to click on a calendar link.

2. Phone

All sales teams pick up the phone to make dials in some capacity and going into a call cold has a drastic impact in the chance you’ll convert that lead.

When including phone calls in your campaign there are two things you want to make sure of.

(1) Have you done all you can to warm up this lead?

With having multiple methods of engagement, comes the benefit of getting your name, or even better, your face in front of a lead before a potential call.
By sending out the postcard alone, there’s a 77% chance they will recognize your brand.

(2) Are you asking the right questions?

Understanding your lead and their potential needs is the first step to identifying their pain and how you can help.

How can you understand your prospects? Research.

In the past, I would use Google to find a leads personal and company LinkedIn profile so that I could gain a better understanding of their role and responsibilities as well as what type of goods or services they provide, who they’ve worked with, and what the company size is.

Now, I find it easiest to use a sales tool that already pulls important information for me and summarizes it on my dashboard.

3. Social Selling

Social selling is everywhere and it’s not just limited to Twitter but that’s where I’ll focus as it’s one of the best channels for meeting new prospects.

Here’s the low-down: Tweet daily about your industry, follow industry thought leaders, be an industry thought leader, use hashtags (in your own tweets and in searching for conversations), engage with other users and have real conversations.

4. Video Messaging

Did you know that adding video to email has been documented to increase click-throughs by 100 to 200% and conversions by 50%?

These aren’t your average marketing promo videos though — these are personal video messages. Meaning, you filmed yourself using a webcam, introduced yourself, smiled, and kept it short and sweet.

5. Physical Postcards

Check your inbox! How many emails do you see? How many will you delete? It’s no wonder MailChimp’s Email benchmarks have the average email open rate of 20% or less…

BUT 98% of Americans check their mail daily according to the USPS – The Mail Moment.

They’ll also tell you the 69% of people feel that direct mail is more personal.

If those stats aren’t enough for you, consider the impression direct mail leaves, the enhanced delivery, the trust you’re building, and even how much you enjoy getting direct mail yourself – especially if it’s pretty.

6. Gifts and Swag

Like direct mail, people love a present. When done right, gifting potential clients is an excellent way to build rapport.

If you know Marc is a Cubs fan, send him over a hat. If you know Susan is a huge coffee drinker, send her a branded mug.
By sending gifts or branded gear to your potentials, you’re closing up that package with a pretty bow on top.

If you’re sitting there now saying to yourself: “This is great and all but no application has seamlessly put these together” or “that’s great but that hassle of dealing with six applications isn’t worth it,” you would’ve been right a year ago; however, Cliently has taken the stage to do just that (and a bit more).

Comment below and let me know what your greatest obstacles are when it comes to sales automation.

7 Reasons Why Your B2B Demand Generation Sucks

Leads. It’s a loaded term, evoking at once both triumph and horror. The term also triggers many important questions: Why are the quality of leads so highly varied?

7 Reasons Why Your b2b Demand Generation Sucks while generating the Leads. It’s a loaded term, evoking at once both triumph and horror.

The term also triggers many important questions:

Why are the quality of leads so highly varied?

Why do almost all lead lists suck?

And why do so many marketing and sales efforts struggle, causing these two groups to distrust one another?

There is both bad and good news about the answers to these questions.

The bad news:

The reasons lead lists are almost always diffuse and ineffective stem from fundamental mathematical realities and complexities of the list-creation process.

The good news:

Using data science, we can navigate the mathematical minefield that surrounds the task of generating high quality lead lists.

To Read More Download the Full White Paper

Learn More on Customer Experience Management And how you can convert the first time visitor into a lead.

How to Choose the Right Time Tracking Software

The challenge to determine which time tracking software is right for your business.There are different ways your company could track their time using paper,excel, or a legacy system. ClickTime is the trusted timesheet management software of choice for thousands of customers worldwide.

How to Choose the Right Employee Time Tracking Software, Know the secrets with ConvergeHub. There are dozens of different ways your company could track their time.

Whether you are currently using paper, Excel, or a legacy system, there are major benefits in moving to an online Employee time tracking system.

The challenge is to determine which time tracking software is right for your business.

Why Are You Employee Time Tracking?

Before choosing a Employee time tracking platform, it’s critical to first understand why your business needs to track time.

You may have a particular reason in mind (i.e., measure employee productivity), but your colleagues in other departments may have other, equally important needs from the system.

To ensure you select the right time tracking software, first connect with your internal stakeholders and map out the various requirements for each department.

There should be a good deal of overlap, but typically, HR will have different requirements than Finance, Operations will have different requirements than IT, and office management will have different requirements than the executive team.

How Many Employees Will Need to Track Their Time?

The larger your organization, the more customizable your time tracking platform will need to be.

This is in terms of reporting (department to department; division to division, etc.), entering time (custom fields and rules), and managerial controls to ensure only select employees can access and edit billing and compensation rules.

Smaller teams can typically get by with less complex time tracking software but still may require a mobile app, high levels of data security, and easy-to-use reporting features. We’ve created a visual guide to help you.

Click Time Time Tracker Feature

What Are Your Operational Goals?

When used correctly, time tracking software increases employee efficiency, reduces administrative costs, and increases profitability. Granted, even with the best time tracking technology, these benefits will not be realized without understanding the operational goals that drive improved performance.

Time tracking can help you analyze, manage, and improve:

Project and program budgets
Employee utilization
Employee capacity
Employee billability
Client over-servicing

Modern time tracking platforms include powerful reports that allow you dive into business operations and gain new visibility into the work your team is performing.

With real-time data on the billable vs. non-billable hours, percent of budget used, and who is available to take on additional work, time tracking can provide exceptional ROI to businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Is Your Organization Subject to Certain Government Rules or Regulations?

Do you need to track and pay employees for overtime hours?
Are you offering employees paid vacation?
Do you require an audit trail of any timesheet changes or approvals?
Are you a nonprofit that needs to report on functional expenses and other financial requirements?

Knowing the answers to these questions will help you select the right time tracking software for your business.

Again, the better you understand why you need to track your time, the more likely it is you will select the most effective software for your organization.

Is Budget Forecasting Important to Your Team?

Time tracking data is one of the few ways to truly understand how long it takes to complete a particular task.

This information, when paired with real-time reporting on employee costs, allows you to forecast future budgets and project with great accuracy.

Project managers and team leaders can better understand how long a job will take, how much it will cost, and how many current (or future or temporary) employees are needed to complete the work.

Do You Have to Archive or Import Existing Time Tracking Data?

This last question is a tactical one, but it’s still relevant to selecting time tracking software. You may have years of time and cost data in Excel or a legacy system. If so, you’ll want to find a time tracking platform that can easily import this data and include it in future reports, dashboard, and visual summaries.

Getting Your Employees to Track Time

Of course, once you select a employee time tracking system, you’ll still need to work with your team to make sure they are actually tracking their time.

This can be challenging for some businesses, particularly those who have never done so before or have a culture that on its surface does not appear ready to embrace time tracking.

There some good news! We’ve created a brief guide to help you get your employees to track their time. Who knows? They might even enjoy it!

3 Facebook Ads Techniques Changing Advertising Forever

I’m not surprised that a lot of advertisers struggle with Facebook Ads. While reading this article, you will find that spending a fortune in Facebook Ads is useless, without the valuable information you will learn today. It has recently released some game-changer tools that only a few Facebook marketers still know. If you want to get out of the ground and start using the facebook techniques that work today, you’ve got those.

3 Facebook Ads Techniques Changing Advertising Forever let’s learn how it’s working. I’m not surprised that a lot of advertisers struggle with Facebook Ads.

While reading this article, you will find that spending a fortune in Facebook Ads is useless, without the valuable information you will learn today.

Facebook recently released some game-changer tools that only a few Facebook marketers still know.

Consequently, advertising costs for the most common Facebook Ads to cold traffic that drive to web landing pages are increasing daily.

For this reason, if you want to get out of the ground and start using the techniques that work today, you’ve got those.

1. Facebook Lead Ads

Facebook developed a new type of ad specifically designed for lead generation: I’m talking about Facebook Lead Ads.

This tool is characterized by an easy-to-fill subscribing method, optimized for mobile traffic. By using Facebook Lead Ads, you don’t even need a website landing page to collect leads.

When people click on your Ad, they instantly visualize a subscription form in which their data are automatically filled by Facebook. To subscribe to your list, people are just required to click on the “submit” button.

The problem with Lead Ads, is that Facebook stores users’ data on a CSV file. If you don’t have a tool that syncs Facebook Lead Ads to your email marketing software, you are not able to send an automatic welcome email, or make a call when someone submits his or her data, compromising the quality of leads.

Leadsbridge created Facebook Lead Ads Sync to solve this problem.

This platform connects your Lead Ads campaigns to more than 50 CRM / Autoresponder tools, by importing your leads instantly and by sending welcome emails to your subscribers.

Thanks to this tool, you can follow up your prospects with an email marketing campaign without having to manage CSV files.

To learn more about Facebook Lead Ads,

2. CRM Retargeting

Professional advertisers know that retargeting a Custom Audience on Facebook is one of the best solutions both for lead generation and for selling products and services.

A good retargeting strategy allows you, for example, to reach back visitors of specific pages of your site while they’re surfing the social network.

There are many ways to run a retargeting campaign, but a CRM retargeting strategy is commonly defined as the activity of uploading an email database of your clients or prospects on Facebook.

To create a custom audience from a database, you can upload on Facebook a list of emails stored on a CSV file.

Every email or phone that matches a personal profile of a Facebook user, becomes a part of your custom audience.

Leadsbridge created a specific tool that enhances the Facebook Custom Audiences, by syncing Facebook with your Email Database without any complex manual work.

The traditional way of using a CRM consists of splitting prospects and clients up into separate lists.

New marketing automation systems, however, can give you significant information about lead and customer behaviors, such as:

which prospects completed an email sequence;
what level of engagement your prospects have with your emails (tracking email opens and clicks);
which customers bought high-ticket products or multiple products.

By tracking the behavior of your prospects, your CRM can create several list segments. These list segments are defined with a tag, a list, a smart list, (what it’s called depends on the system you’re using).

Leadsbridge rolled out a tool that automatically syncs these CRM segments and Facebook ad accounts, creating custom audiences that are always up-to-date.

With Custom Audience Sync, you can run automatic, evergreen retargeting campaigns to promote your products and services, depending on how people step forward on your funnel.

3.Facebook Pixel

The Facebook Pixel is a code that you can install on your site, in order to create several custom audiences by tracking website visitors.

The images below will show you how to create such custom audiences, directly into your Facebook Ads Manager. First of all, create a new custom audience based on website traffic.

Then, decide if you want to target all the visitors to your website, those who visited certain pages within a defined amount of time or a custom combination of all these conditions.

This is a very simple way to create a custom audience for your ads, but it works, because when you send an ad to people who already know your brand, you can increase both numbers of leads and sales.

If you create a more specific custom audience of those who visited a particular page, you can get even better results because your message can be more aligned to their profile.

The Facebook Pixel has evolved in the last year, and now you can also track conversions, micro conversions, and the behavior of your website visitors. Many advertisers still don’t use this solution properly because it’s quite complicated in comparison to the old tracking system.

The new version of Facebook Pixel, in fact, allows you to create custom audiences based on actions called “standard events,” such as adding something into the cart, using the internal search engine on your site, and many more.

The Facebook Pixel is a fantastic tool, but using it means that you need a developer, due to the changes you should make to your website.

That’s why Leadsbridge created the Facebook Pixel Enhancer, a tool that pushes Standard and Enhanced (custom) Facebook Events without coding.

Closing The Loop

In this article, I showed you three techniques that will help you bring your Facebook ads to levels never seen before.

Once you start using them, I’m sure you will never be back to the old type of Facebook Ads campaigns.

Now it’s your turn. If you liked this post, or if you have questions about these topics, please leave me a comment below.

I will be happy to answer and help you to improve your Facebook ads results!

How to Drive High Converting Traffic to Your Landing Page

In online marketing, few topics get more attention than SEO and website traffic. And few, if any, marketing activities have more time, effort and many thrown in their direction.And here’s a hard, brutal truth: much of it is wasted!

How to Drive High Converting Traffic to Your Landing Page Let’s learn how it is changing the online marketing, few topics that get more attention than SEO and website traffic.

And few, if any, marketing activities have more time, effort and many thrown in their direction.

And here’s a hard, brutal truth: much of it is wasted!

Like an Avalanche Falling Downhill

That’s right, a lot of online marketers, e-commerce store owners and business managers invest heavily in traffic but have few sales to show for it.

The conversion process requires that you build momentum – think of a snowball rolling downhill and “picking up steam”.

SEO/SEM and traffic in general is just the beginning of the process; it’s far from a complete solution.

You can have all the traffic in the world, but if none of it leads to sales, if you get lots of clicks but few if any conversions, so what?!

You and I aren’t ultimately in business to have people visit our website, we are ultimately in business to make sales. Please don’t make the mistake that so many in online marketing make: don’t obsess over and pour money into a website traffic “money pit” and ignore doing what it takes to convert site visitors into buyers.

In this article, I make the assumption you have ample traffic. Wouldn’t it be great if you could convert more of that traffic into paying customers? You can. Today, let’s talk about how you can do that, how you can turn your website, landing pages, etc, into conversion juggernauts!

Boost Conversions, Don’t Destroy Them

Boost Conversion

Let’s backtrack just a moment and do something vitally important. We need a deep understanding of what boosts conversions and what destroys them, so let’s put ourselves in our website visitors’ shoes. Through marketing, our goal is to support and lay the groundwork for sales.

If you are a B2B marketer, you typically won’t make the sale directly through your website. What you will usually do instead is “nurture” the marketing and sales process.

You will persuade the reader to enter your marketing funnel and accept your content offerings such as webinars and white papers.

You’ll encourage them to join your email list and check out your blog on a regular basis.

Your goal is to nurture them as leads until they “raise their hand” and ask to speak to a member of your sales team.

And even though you aren’t directly asking for money during the marketing process, you still have to convert them. You have to persuade them to give up their contact information in return for your marketing content.

You have to convince them to read and respond to your content. This can be a challenge.

In a B2C online marketing situation, such as an online store, the conversion process can be even more challenging.

Think about it – you are asking your reader to open up his wallet and give you money. Even if he’s anxious for a solution to a nagging problem, and he’s confident you have the solution he so desperately wants, he’s often hesitant to give you money for it.

In both of these situations – B2B and B2C, you must convince him that your solution is worth paying for.

You must answer the “pre-conversion” question he’s asking himself regarding your product or content – “What’s In It For Me?”.

You convince him by focusing on him in your copywriting, empathetically talking about his problem and how you can help him solve it, making a compelling argument, offering proof and giving him hope that you CAN solve it and asking him to take a clear, specific action.

In these, and so many other areas, websites fail and therefore, even if they have a mad rush of traffic, have a pitiful conversion rate.

In order to help you learn from the mistakes of others, let’s look at some specific mistakes website and landing page owners make that cost them conversions. A LOT of conversions!

Avoid These Conversion Mistakes!

Conversion Mistakes

1. Use Headlines to Grab the Visitor’s Attention

If visitors get to your homepage or landing page from an outside source like Google, and considering that the online environment is filled with distractions anyway, chances are they are far from focused when they arrive.

They see several different elements including design, navigation links, images and content.

You need to do something to rivet their initial attention. And that something is to create a powerful headline or title.

Your headline needs to grab their attention and help build conversion momentum.

Other than this, its main job is simple – get them to read the first sentence of your content.

What makes for a compelling, riveting headline?

A tried and true formula is to create a headline with a powerful combination of curiosity, implied benefits and that hints at instant gratification – in other words, if they read the content that follows, they will benefit somehow.

2. Strengthen Your Content and Copy!

I stress this a lot on this blog, but it’s so critically important to your online marketing success, I’m going to say it again. Your reader doesn’t care about you, your company or your product.

Consider this quote from David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR:

“No one cares about your product except you”

It’s shocking but true. People aren’t impressed by marketers who ignore them and their needs in order to babble on and on about how great they and their wonderful product are.

They are impressed when they sense an online marketer “gets” them, when a company website or landing page has copy that empathetically focuses on them and helping them solve a problem.

Another common copywriting mistake that can kill conversions is to use copy that is difficult to read.

Your readers don’t want to work hard to finish your message. Chances are if your copy is full of long, complex sentences and words and huge paragraphs, it will fail to convert.

3. Improve Page Load Times

People are not patient when they are searching the web for a solution to a problem.

They want answers yesterday! If your pages take a long time to load, your conversion plummet.

This problem doesn’t just affect small companies; it affects online giants too.

According to Amazon, a page load time increase of only one second could cause the company to lose $1.6 billion in sales each year!

So what’s perhaps the simplest way to help solve the load time problem? Cut down on the number of images on your pages.

Although relevant images are important and can boost your conversion rate, too many images can cause your page load time to resemble a slow-moving turtle.

The Importance of Testing!

Importance of A/B Testing

It would take many pages – far too many for a short blog article – to list all of the possible factors that can kill your conversion rate.

But here’s an important point to remember – TEST!

That’s right, split test every part of your online marketing to see what’s helping your conversion rate and what’s not.

And if something’s hurting your conversion rate? Scrap it and try something new!

And remember that to enjoy maximum conversion rates, you need a landing page. End. Of. Story!

And you need your landing pages to be “dialed in”.

You want your copywriting, offer and design to all work together to help you enjoy a higher conversion rate.

Happy Marketing!