Great communication doesn’t just mean what you share with your leads; it’s also about what they’re telling you – even if they aren’t aware of it. Your prospects share volumes of information with you just by interacting with your brand’s website and social media channels, but without the right technology to listen, you could be missing these essential signals. To be a better listener and learn more about what your leads are communicating to you, follow these steps.
Get the Details Right
If you’ve ever had your neighbor’s mail accidentally delivered to your mailbox, what was your next move? You probably walked right over and handed the mail to its rightful recipient without seeing anything more than the name on it. Getting a name or other contact information wrong shows leads that you don’t yet know enough about them to earn their business.
In the case of email, social media, and other digital communications, it’s even more important to get every detail correct. Misspell an email address, and you won’t have a friendly neighbor who will hand-deliver the message to its intended prospect. It just bounces, and that’s not good news for a couple of reasons. For one thing, you fail to reach the intended lead; for another, email service providers lose trust in IPs that have high bounce rates, which could potentially reduce your ability to reach other leads on your mailing list.
Just-Right Personalization
People love a customized user experience, but they also want to feel free to roam at will through your site and its content. Your marketing automation platform excels at providing customizable options for everything from email and landing pages to direct mail and telemarketing. Add in data enhancement opportunities that fill in the blanks on prospect records, and you have an incredibly powerful world-building toolset for your leads.
It’s just as important to know when to keep some information in-house. While leads like knowing you’re there when they need you, they want to see you as a partner in the buying journey, not the tour guide who’s always five steps ahead. Smart marketers know when to deploy personalized communications to help leads feel at ease. Using preference pages and split A/B testing will tell you more about the amount of personalization your prospects find most comfortable.
Showcase Your Listening Skills
You have an outstanding product or service to offer. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be so eager to share it with your audience. One of the mistakes many businesses make is focusing so much on telling leads why they should be customers that they miss hearing more about the problems leads need them to solve. Aim for social media and lead nurturing content that informs more than it sells, and pay close attention to what leads read most.
Understanding why your buyers became buyers is essential to finding more like them, but only if you’re paying attention to the signals they send along the way. Data enhancement services that tell you more about your customers can reveal the characteristics they have in common and improve your lead scoring dramatically.
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