ConvergeHub Blog for 2017

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!

Desperate Moves Ruin Sales show how a CRM Can Help

Once you are reading this article, we can very sure you must have seen sales scripts before. These are the Scripts which educates and show us exactly what to say to get a prospect’s business, in the shortest span of time.

Business Worries, learn How CRM can help in sales? Moves Ruin Sales show how a CRM Can Help, With ConvergeHub we are trying to prove the same. As you are reading this article, we can assume that you have seen sales scripts before. Sales scripts are wordage, which educates and show us exactly what to say to get a prospect’s business, in the shortest span of time.

But often what you should not say is also just as important, as to what you should.

There are hundreds of words, phrases and expression that sales people unconsciously use that are not only ineffective, but can also turn off the customer, right at the onset of the call.

Although, different industries have their own set of rules as to what is acceptable and what is not.

But still then, saying any of these 8 following phrases is most likely to hurt you when it comes to sales:

1. “Do you have 90 seconds?”

By saying these words in the beginning of a conversation, you might be trying to illustrate that you won’t take much of your customer’s time. Still, whenever you say this, always remember, you are starting your conversation with a lie. So, never try to makefalse promises right at the beginning of your call that you are going to break.

2. “I am going to be absolutely honest with you.”

Many sales people are in the habit of saying this clichéd line, because they often believe it to be an effective selling technique. But from the customer’s point of view, you words may not be too comforting, as the customer may think –‘if you are going to be honest now, does it signify that you have not been honest before.”

3. “I really need this deal.”

This is one of the wildest statements that sales people most often make while trying to close their deals. Never talk to your customer about your personal plights. It just makes you look pathetically desperate. Ask yourself, why should your customer care about what you are offering, when sales is all about solving your customer’s problems and not your own.

4. “Usually I don’t do this for anyone, but let me see….”

Although far too many salespeople think that it is one of the most effective way to close their deals- but it is not. The problem with statements like this is that most of the people can see right through these words. So it hardly works out.

5. “Harry, let’s take a look at this one. Does this sound good Harry?”

Nothing can be more infuriating than to listen to an unknown salesperson who keeps repeating your name over and over in an attempt to build a misguided rapport. It is always good if you took the time to remember your customer’s name, but better stay cautious before you repeat it too often. So know when and where to stop.

6. “I am just touching base.”

Just retire immediately if you have been using this phrase while making your sales calls. This phrase often obscures the real purpose of your call. So don’t say you are ‘just touching base’ as it makes you sound that you are making the call because it’s merely an obligation.

7. “My competitor’s products are awful…”

Badmouthing your competitor is one of the sure shot ways to turn off your customer. Of course, you must remain extra-vigilant while praising your competitors. But praising your competitor in a subtle manner, before pointing out the value difference between your and their products is always the best way to go, if you want to win over your prospect with a smile.

8. “Would you like some time to think over it…”

Telling this to a customer is practically saying in other words ‘Why don’t you get back, whenever you feel like’. So, using this sentence in a sales call often makes the sales person give the prospect a way to quickly end the conversation, by giving the would be customer time to think about buying your product or services on their own.

In a shocking study shared by Herb Greenberg,the Founder and CEO of Caliper Corp, who wrote in his book “How to Hire and Develop Your Next Top Performer” along with Harold Weinstein and Patrick Sweeney, comparing results from thousands of assessments, that:

“55 percent of the people earning their living in sales should be doing something else.”

Here are some of the few other bad habits that in reality repel instead of selling to your potential customers:

Begging For a Meeting

While eagerness has been always healthy- desperation is not.

Pushing a prospect to meet is rather awkward, especially when the prospect has already expressed no interest in the sale.

Rather, it is better to ask your prospects“Do you not see enough value in for you to schedule with me another call?” However, if their answer is still negative, thank your prospects for their time and move forward with other promising opportunities in your call list.

Reaching The Solution Too Fast

In an ideal sales scenario, the potential buyers discover how your product or service is the best solution for solving their issues. So try to learn about your potential customer’s pain points and resist the urge to blurt out ‘we can solve that for you’, too early on the call.

Giving Ultimatums

Threats are no way to nurture business relationships. Although many sales reps weave words like ‘I’ll keep on calling you unless you are ready with an answer’ or ‘I will lose my job, if I don’t get this deal’, but these words often put the potential buyers in a really uncomfortable zone.

Always remember, a sales speech which accompanies the voice of frustration and fear is never the best way to make a customer feel good about your company.

Speaking With a Shaky Voice

If you are feeling nervous or chocked-up, your voice just won’t hide. So never let desperation creep into your vocal cord. Always take a deep breath and picture the confidence that you want to share with your prospect before picking up your phone.

Not Taking the Hint

It is true every time, that some sales processes simply don’t go anywhere.

Many prospects delete your emails and neglect your calls, without responding even for a single time.

So sending a dozen of emails or leaving ten different voicemail messages, especially if the potential customer has never responded to your first message, often comes off as a sign of desperation, which affects the future buying decision of the prospect in an unhelpful, negative way.

According to Sales Pipeline Management, any comprehensive sales process has steps which are required to be followed for how often and when one should ideally reach out to a potential customer, before deciding that they are no longer a fit as a prospect in the sales funnel.

Use CRM to take your sales to the next level. CRM is one modern day business tool, that not only keeps your sales process in mind, but it is also capable of incorporating these steps into your selling system, so that your sales team is capable of reaching out at strategic points of the sales process, helping reps to know when and how to knock on their prospects in time.

Do you know about any other bad habits that make sales reps look desperate?

If you do- share with us your story below.

Not an existing ConvergeHub User?

Be one of the many thousands of businesses using ConvergeHub to manage their entire operations. Easy and effective – the best part is you get started with it in minutes.

Learn about ConvergeHub CRM through the following ways:

Thank You!

P.S. Twitter is a great place to reach us.

https://twitter.com/convergehub

Looking forward to see you also there.

Learn how you can build trust and acceptance on the first meet with your potential client. With these three lessons in sales you can turn the prospect into a client.

How to measure Sales and Marketing KPIs in CRM

Customer Relationship Management’s KPIs or Key Performance Indicators are meant for evaluating the success of specific activities that an organization is engaged in, for the growth of its businesses.

How to measure Sales and Marketing KPIs in CRM that increase productivity. Customer Relationship Management’s KPIs or Key Performance Indicators are meant for evaluating the success of specific activities that an organization is engaged in, for the growth of its businesses.

KPIs in CRM are also elsewhere defined as tools which can be used by an organization to track the progress in its job and to rate the success in the accomplishment of its mission and plans.

The Key Performance Indicators in a company’s CRM consist of a number of predetermined measurable goals, which are deemed vital for its success.

However, to build an effective KPI which is also known as ‘Performance Metrics’, the organization’s goals must not be ambiguous, rather they must be realistic which can be expressed in measurable terms.

Even though there are several performance metrics which are vital in an organization, but still CRM KPIs are considered most important, as these metrics are data, which provide an early warning sign when businesses go off-track.

To begin with, over here in this article we are going to primarily deal with CRM KPIs that measures Marketing and Sales activities in SMBs (Small and Medium Businesses), which can be found mainly in these three areas of operation:

Leads
Sales Opportunities
Account Activities

LEADS

Although, the most important KPI in the Leads section of the CRM platform is to measure the number of leads that has been generated over a period of time, but then again, to get a better vision of the performance index we need to focus on from where these leads were compiled.

The most common and tried subheads which can be used to segregate the origins of accumulated Leads are:

Website generated Leads
Social Media generated Leads
Sales Team generated Leads
Referral generated Leads and
Leads that have been generated from other miscellaneous sources

In order to measure the KPIs from these multiple databases first and foremost, we must set a monthly target against which the measurements are periodically checked for assessing the up and down trends.

Measuring ratio over time for every quarter or checking for Year on Year results are also often performed by organizations with the aid of these data- when one is looking for viewing the business trends.

It is important to say over here, all the CRM users in the organization should make use and fill in the ‘Source’ field while registering any Lead in the CRM to obtain these crucial KPIs, as and when it is required by the organization.

SALES OPPORTUNITIES

Sales Opportunities much like Leads is also measured as an integer, but using a CRM we can also track measurements such as:

Value of an opportunity against a number
Value and number of opportunities at each stage of the sales process (For example: the initial stage, the demonstration stage and the closing stage)
Estimated closing dates
Average value of sales
Average open days for an opportunity and
The number of opportunities received from existing and new clients

As modern CRM systems are highly customizable, hence users can easily configure their CRM to reproduce the exact report that they need.

Also, for most sales opportunities as the biggest question that arises in our mind when sales calls do not close easily is- ‘What is happening next?’, one must make sure that one can see this easily in their CRM reports, which can also be considered as an important part of CRM KPIs.

Other than the above stated KPIs, organizations can also measure several other parameters using CRM such as:

Moving Annual Total or the Average monthly value of total opportunities in the pipeline
Track the sales closing ratio and work on the Win/Loss reason
Use CRM to stay in touch with lost opportunities, schedule follow-up call after 3 to 6 months (since no one knows if the lead is completely dead).

ACCOUNT ACTIVITIES

For the Accounts team, CRM can help the team members to measure KPIs based on the number of new business face-to-face meetings per month done by each team members in the group.

CRM can also aid in tracing the number of sales calls made per day/week against the targets and even measure the aggregated time of the real calls made against calls that went unanswered by the customers.

In Accounts Activities, CRM can also be used to compare the results of different team members, once every team member has got a common reason for making the calls and have use some common terminology that can be viewed and understood easily.

Take Away

Even email marketing campaigns finds an upper hand when CRM is used for automating the email marketing tools.

One can easily measure email marketing KPIs such as newsletter open and read rates, offers opened and its read rates, which helps in measuring marketing expenditures spent in dollars against businesses that have been generated by using a CRM that has email marketing tools integrated in the platform.

So if your goal is to keep track of all the touch points with your customer and use KPIs as measurement benchmarks, CRM is the best place you can find them all under one single roof.

If you are interested in knowing more, write back or comment below to let us know of your questions- so that we can help you to resolve your wants.

Skype Integration with ConvergeHub CRM

We all CRM users have often faced several cumbersome situations when we have to distract our mind from the CRM platform just to make a phone call from a different telecommunication system, wishing all the while if these two applications can be merged.

Skype Integration with ConvergeHub CRM has been one of the biggest USP for us. While working on CRM platform, users often face situations when they have to call the customer or lead, and so they have to login to a completely different telecommunication system just to make that phone call, wishing all the time that these two applications could be merged.

Saving time and money are two major concerns for all of us in every vertical of the industry, for improving workflow and productivity.

ConvergeHub as a SMB CRM development organization has all along invested heavily in building strategic partnership with several third party applications, which can help in saving the customer’s money and time.

As a latest example of this vision, ConvergeHub has recently integrated Skype with ConvergeHub CRM, for all its customers who were seeking an advanced combination of experiencing cloud telephony along with CRM functionality within the Customer Relationship Management platform.

According to a recent report, Skype has 74,000,000 users all across the globe, out of which 35% of SMB owners use Skype as their primary communication service. This undoubtedly makes Skype enter the league of some of the most used VoIP apps, perfect for people who want to have a reliable voice service for effectively managing customer phone calls.

So integrating Skype with ConvergeHub, whereby users can dial and log calls through Skype inside the CRM, is a smarter way for enhancing collaborations, enriching customer interactions and boosting workforce productivity.

Benefits of using Skype with ConvergeHub

1. Click-to-Dial facility

Save you time, you can now initiate calls to all your CRM leads with a single click of the mouse. So no more hassle of switching between devices or screens.

2. Advanced Call Control

Check the customer’s number and the duration of your conversation in your CRM screen after disconnecting your call.

3. Gather Customer Information

Gather all the relevant information regarding your leads in the sub-panel of the ConvergeHub CRM screen, which help in ensuring optimal customer interaction.

4. Speed Up Workflow

Plant now and harvest later. Dynamically create new contacts and add other necessary information of the customer while on call with prospective leads within ConvergeHub CRM.

5. Record Call Logs Automatically

Keep a track of all conversations with prospective customers and leads with automated call logging in ConvergeHub History tab.

Make use of this information for generating call-detail-analysis as per your need.

6. Quick and Hassle-free Installation

Installing Skype in ConvergeHub just takes a few munities. All you need is a Skype login credential to get started, with no tedious setup process to ruin the productive hours of your day.

Steps-By-Step Guide for Skype Integration with ConvergeHub

1. Click on the User Icon

2. Click on Admin Settings

Steps-By-Step Guide for Skype Integration with ConvergeHub 3. Expand “App Setup” section in the left panel.

4. Click on “App Store” option.

Skype Integration with ConvergeHub CRM Step 3/4 5. In the “App Store” page “Skype Call” App purchased by the user, is displayed in “My Apps”.

Skype Call” app purchased by the user, is displayed in “My Apps 6. Go to “Sales” Menu and click on “Leads”.

Skype Integration with ConvergeHub CRM 7. Enter the listing page of “Leads” module. Click on any Lead to view the details.

Skype Integration with ConvergeHub CRM Step 7 8. Click on the “Skype” icon beside the phone number to initiate the outbound call via Skype.

Skype Integration with ConvergeHub CRM Step 8 9. Popup will open up to launch Skype. Click on checkbox to ‘Remember’ the selection.

10. Click on ‘Launch Application’ to open Skype.

Skype Integration with ConvergeHub CRM Step 9 Calling to the specific Lead using Skype app.

11. Save Call Disposition “Status” and “Note”.

Call Disposition Status in Skype Call Through ConvergeHub CRM 12. The “Call Disposition Status” and “Note” will be logged in the “History” tab in the sub-panel of the Lead.

Convergehub CRM Call History Check We hope that you have liked this extremely useful and much sought-after integration.

So take a few minutes to test this now in your ConvergeHub account. We will be waiting to hear your say on how you are using these new additions in the comment box below.