Boost your lead conversions

by Sarah Aitken

OK so you’ve done all the hard work - SEO, PPC, Affiliate campaigns and everything else it takes to get someone to visit your site. Then you’ve wooed them with your enticing copy and professional look and feel. You’ve tweaked your funnel with many A/B tests and usability analyses. Finally would you believe it, they become one of the small minority who actually fill in your enquiry form going from prospect to visitor to qualified lead. That lead could have cost anything from $1 to $1000 or more… they are not cheap.

I know how hard leads are to get; it takes hours of work to fine tune your process and there is always more you can do. This is why it frustrates me so much to see firms, who have paid dearly for their leads, take ages to follow up on them, and when they do it’s so often poorly orchestrated.

Lachlan wrote an interesting post back in August – The dog ate my contact form. How often do you wonder whether the enquiry you’ve submitted actually reaches its destination, or whether it’s going into a void never to be read or attended to? It bugs me like nothing else on earth, and knowing this, I make every concerted effort to respond to Quirk site enquiries in minimal time. Our site says we will try and respond within 5 minutes. Forget 5 minutes – if I’m at my desk and not in a meeting, my aim is to respond to an enquiry within 30 seconds. Yes – you read that correctly – 30 seconds. And I’ll tell you one thing – it blows people away. They cannot get over our quick response times, and we are fast becoming known for them. If the enquiry is one that another QuirkStar needs to attend to, you will still get an immediate response* letting you know who will be dealing with your enquiry, and the assurance that they will be contacting you shortly. Now that’s what I call service.

Janine recently posted about her experience with shopping online for a new car. I had a similar one, in that I had already decided what car I wanted (had never test driven it either) but not on which dealership I should go through. I went online and submitted an enquiry to 5 different places, each stipulating exactly what I wanted, the specs, and when I could expect delivery. My ultimate decision with who to order through was based on who would respond to my enquiry first. Although it took longer than I would have liked, the first response came a day later. I have yet to hear from the other 4. And the first time I saw my car, or the Sales Exec with whom I had been corresponding, was the day he delivered it. The point is, a quick response definitely increases your chances of converting the lead.

But wait – Quirk isn’t stopping with a promise of speedy email responses to your enquiries. We’re living in a world where apps like MSN Messenger mean we can communicate with each other directly, and get answers immediately, and on that note we have introduced a new chat function to our Contact Us page (see below).

Live chat will not always be visible as we’re still in the testing phase, but when you see it, start up a conversation with me and I'll do my best to answer any questions you may have.

Put us to the test – I dare you!

* please allow for slight delays after hours, and over weekends.

2006/10/22 | permalink | comments (1) | trackbacks (0)

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Recent Comments

Kat on Engaging as a Company

I agree with you. There are some things that should ideally not be discussed by an employee in the public sphere.
Would a communications policy have stopped the said journo from speaking out? He/she must have known a huge risk was being taken? I suppose it's also an incredibly difficult thing to predict. The lack of control can be alarming.
I'm definitely interested in seeing a more specific list, so if you find it do share.
Thank you for your comments :). Here's hoping there's a good coffee shop close to you..
vincent on Engaging as a Company

I guess the mark of a well crafted brand starts at HR policy for new recruits - ensuring that they fit the brand's/corporate's persona. So in that sense yes you could argue that left to their own devices employees would, regardless of an online communications policy, communicate in a style the sponsor would approve of. Not sure if that's always the case but I'm inclined to agree with this generalization.
I think what is also important is that the individual writing within the bounds of a sponsor's site does so in a restricted locale. You can police your own domain if you're a corporate, you can't necessarily control the individuals mouth outside of it. For instance on twitter, personal blogs and forums. Owing to the nature of niche stardom you could argue that the employee comes to represent the brand, more so than that personifies the brand in organic conversation with consumers and would carry significant weight both within corporate sites and externally. Making some individuals very wary to write for their companies at all.
For instance in our not too distant past a prominent journo got the boot for publishing his gripes with his employers and their professional ability - he was promptly fired...He would no doubt have been policed on a company blog but owing to the fact that he chose to represent the company elsewhere he took his brand and the papers brand with him - dragging both through the mud as traipsed on towards epic-failuredom...
So to come back to a point, there is definitely a sense that the policies as listed above are quite ambiguous. Even you yourself suggest that requisite legalese is absent, and I have to assume that such legalese would include a fairly long list of do's and dont's. I have a list somewhere laying about which dictates in a very bland corporate fashion how to represent the brand in public - if I find it I will share it with you.
Perhaps its worthwhile to enforce points like "don't tell secrets" and my own favourite, "for the love of god don't gripe about the boss who you've publicly named online"...
That's my mental-riff for the day, I'm afraid I veered rather uncharitably off course but such is the nature of thought.
Now if only the company I worked for had some decent coffee!!
Kat on Engaging as a Company

Transparency is a key issue - as is allowing people to carve their own niche.
My thinking is that people engage with a personality - an individual personality - in conversation more than with a collective. It's just easier. A company personality surely reflects the people who work there as well as a crafted (constructed?) image that the stakeholders choose to present. While you want engagement it's not the same as speaking to an individual.
There are definite risks involved - but I would lean towards allowing people to carve a niche.
vincent on Engaging as a Company

Couldn't have said it better. Nice post, it is most certainly something corporates are going to struggle with. How much transparency is too much? Who should be allowed to represent a brand and to what extent should the individual be given the opportunity to carve their own niche rather than extol the virtues of the mother - brand?
Who knows. We shall soon see as this year pans out and we find out how the big media players tackle the rise of the cost effective digital media channel.
Kat on Engaging as a Company

It is a tough issue, and I can understand why you've never published. I would encourage you to do so though - you probably have a feeling for when your writing reflects your voice and when it doesn't - and the rewards are worth it.
Thanks for reading Wendy. :)

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Boost your lead conversions

by Sarah Aitken

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