Friday, August 29, 2008

Do you autorespond?

WebCubic provides lead capture forms - we refer to them as FormCreator forms. Whenever you create a "call to action" you link to one of these FormCreator forms to capture information from your website visitor.

Each of these FormCreator forms that you create has a basic set of information that is captured (name, email address, telephone number, and optionally a street address). Beyond this basic information, you can request additional information depending upon the specific call to action.

We're not going to say much more about these forms, but they are an essential element for capturing leads - all initiated by your call to action.

One capability that we believe is well underused is the autoresponder. Whenever a visitor submits a form (thereby giving you a lead) an email is sent to you, a message appears on the users screen (you compose the content), the lead is added to your prospect database (which you access through the administration control panel), and an email (autoresponder) is sent to the visitor.

We have determined that most of our clients only say something like "thank you for submitting this request" or "we will respond to your query soon". While this at least acknowledges your visitor's submittal, it does not communicate anything else. As a result, you are missing out on an opportunity to say something significant.

Here are some suggestions.
  1. In cases where your response can only be "we will respond soon", why not add a paragraph that says "in the meantime, do such-and-such at my website". In other words get them back to the website to go through other content.
  2. You can provide a URL to some other information - perhaps a PDF file - available on the Internet. For those of you with a custom website you can upload that PDF file into your custom directory and provide a link to it. One of our clients uses the autoresponder in conjunction with a call to action that says "learn 10 things that every buyer must know". The autoresponder includes a sentence that says "click here to download your report now". The consumer clicks as instructed and a PDF version of the report appears. They can save it or send it to the printer. In the meantime, the REALTOR has a new lead loaded in their prospect database.
This simple autoresponder has the ability to incorporate HTML code. You can create paragraph breaks, italics bold text, unordered lists, and a number of other HTML commands. The two things you cannot do is to use the break command or tables.

Improve the quality of your autoresponders to (1) look great and (2) begin a dialogue to a new relationship.

posted by Shig Nishio @ 8/29/2008 02:35:00 PM