Lead Capture Software Buyers Guide
Last updated: May 29, 2023
In a broad sense, lead capture denotes to a process of obtaining, reading and saving a lead’s information in order to later use it to target attempts at converting them into paying customers. Almost all successful teams feature lead capturing pages on their website. Few examples being, the sign-up button, download demo, access free-trial, special discounts, and newsletters, etc. These pages capture lead data such as their name, email and more detail depending on the complexity of the web-form and quality of lead capturing software. Web forms often successfully gain information like company size, industry, the title of the lead, postal address and other information. There are advanced lead capturing software available that capture lead's IP address too so no lead goes missing in the face of anonymity. Capturing leads with the potential of making a purchase makes for the first step in the sales funnel.
What is a Lead Capture software?
Companies use lead capture software to identify and approach new sales opportunities. Sales teams save and categorize new customers using the gathered data from several sources including leads directs, data from sales reps, marketing agents and customer support staff. The market is highly competitive which means businesses must keep discovering new opportunities to maintain their position. These software are often used alongside Lead Generation software for lead scoring, lead mining and lead intelligence and capabilities like sales management and intelligence to ensure maximum lead conversions. However, the foremost and determining step is lead capture.
Infusionsoft lead dashboard
How does it work?
Lead capturing software is crucial for salespeople to identify and categorize promising/qualified leads and those that require further nurturing and for marketing teams to know if campaigns are successful. The software provides them with tools to collect and analyze leads from various marketing campaigns. It enables users to gather leads by creating attractive lead capture pages. A lead capture page is a specialized type of landing page that is specifically used to capture information about leads. There are different types of lead capture pages, aside from which exist several lead capture mechanisms. Some of the popular and effective lead capture mechanisms include; web forms, incoming emails, incoming calls, and social media interactions.
Infusionsoft lead capture page
What are your business requirements?
There are different categories lead capture software are divided in, some are stand-alone, single-function tools, while others are offered with comprehensive lead management capabilities or as part of a CRM platform. Some offer free services, some are paid, they vary in functions, offerings, ease of use, quality of results, the type of industry they cater to or different sizes of business. Among all these overwhelming variables, it is better to identify your business requirements with respect to the size of business size and amount/nature of leads you intend to capture, and scalability.
Small Business: For small businesses, standalone lead capture software are likely to suffice as they provide an organized database which helps users have a 360 view of lead activity. However, scalability can be an issue with stand-alone tools, so it is recommended for growing businesses to not get into long contracts.
Midsize Business: Lead management suites fit the requirements of medium-sized business because it offers additional tools including lead nurturing, lead scoring and segmentation capabilities. This way, not only do the businesses gain enough flexibility to grow but also have integration opportunities with other solutions such as sales, marketing or CRM services.
Enterprise size Business: Having a separate standalone lead capture software is unsuitable and an unnecessary expense when it comes to large organizations as they aren't likely to fulfill the complex needs enterprise scale marketing teams have. It is best to have a strong lead capture functionality integrated with lead management or marketing solution, that will offer advanced tools and ability to deal with a large number of fresh leads on a regular basis.
Prominent Features of Lead Capture Software
Leads Database
For creating storing leads information gathered from many marketing and sale mechanisms in a centrally controlled database. It facilitates data transfer with sales and marketing solutions. It also categorizes leads with a custom set of tags and classification.
Lead Capture Forms
Features to create and strategically place buttons on the website encouraging visitors to enter their contact details to gain gated access, special discounts, or newsletter.
Social Integration
Supports integration with social platforms to add lead capture pages to attract more leads.
Lead Analytics and Reporting
Advanced analytics tools to create and analyze lead activity reports for marketing/sales teams to review performance on marketing campaigns and specify the types of leads that are most responsive to a certain campaign.
Lead Management Integrations
Supports integration with lead generation/management tools to streamline sales pipelines more effectively.
Consumption Metrics
Engagement metrics such as time on the lead page and sessions are often an indicator of how the content, emails or messaging is performing. It offers reliable insight on where to prioritize and optimize marketing efforts.
Key Advantages of Having A Lead Capture Software
Useful for businesses who benefit from page campaigns - Companies that benefit from pop-ups and paid traffic ads and pages are highly likely to benefit greatly from a lead capturing page strategically placed on their website and other channels to maximize lead captures. Businesses gain a competitive edge over rivals with effective use of this software by attracting a large percentage of leads with minimal effort.
Never Lose a Visitor - Without a lead capture software, there are so many visitors and potential leads that are turned away and lost for good. No such opportunity should go amiss. Always have an edge over your competitors by never losing any potential lead to them with your strong lead capturing tools as most buyers do not make a purchase on their first visit. The software will help you keep a buyer close.
Closing sales cycles - With a lead capture software, businesses can skip out on most of the time wasted on chasing leads. An average marketing agent spends approximately 8.4 hours of weekly working hours in chasing leads. All that time can be spent on more important tasks with a software dedicated to optimizing and automating lead capturing. It will not only effectively chase and gather leads while only leaving the sales closing part for you too.
