Tag Archive for: Event Lead Capture

Lead Liaison

Lead Liaison Debuts Standalone Event Lead Capture and Management Solution

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Dallas, TX – This week, Lead Liaison announces a new event lead management solution powered by their event lead capture app, GoCapture!™. Previously, GoCapture!™ was only available as an add-on to the company’s robust marketing automation platform, Lead Management Automation (LMA)™. Now, the solution stands on its own, providing businesses with everything needed to manage leads before, during, and after any trade show or other marketing event. It also seamlessly integrates with their free CRM, called OneFocus™, and marketing automation platform, or any third-party CRM or automation supplier.

TOMRA Sorting Solutions was one of the first to make use of this standalone solution. “After reviewing multiple lead capture companies, TOMRA began working with Lead Liaison and tested GoCapture!™ at a number of U.S. and European trade shows,” says Kathleen Chance, Sales and Marketing Support Manager for TOMRA. “Lead Liaison has been amazing to work with. During these tests, Lead Liaison was available to assist and we were able to make a number of adjustments on the fly based on live feedback from our sales team on the trade show floor.”

GoCapture!™ allows users to customize forms, quickly capture pre-qualified leads onsite, and then immediately segment, tag, follow up, and nurture those leads without missing a beat. What makes Lead Liaison’s solution particularly unique, is that they do not restrict usage across all users, mobile devices, back office users and events. No other lead capture app in the market does this.

The sales and marketing solution provider wanted to offer this as a standalone solution because the company had the chance to offer a very unique business model. Today, there is nothing in the market that has the flexible license structure and unlimited usage options that Lead Liaison offers. Even companies that offer similar solutions have very restrictive business models when it comes to number of users, devices, and events.

“It was a natural extension to what we do. We saw a gap in the market and a overall need. No event lead capture solution has a native integration with marketing automation and CRM. Before our solution, companies would hack together forms and solutions from their marketing automation provider. Nothing was purpose-built for marketing events.” says Ryan Schefke, Customer Success Manager. “We wanted to be the first to market with this unique solution. Having a single platform to manage your event creates efficiency gains as one system manages all aspects of your workflow from point-of-capture to customer – with no limits.”

Information can be collected by scanning a badge, scanning a business card for transcription, auto-populating from a list, or having the lead fill out a form at a kiosk. The app works on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets.

Lead Liaison’s event lead management solution also hosts a powerful “back office,” through which the leads can be imported, synced, segmented, tagged with appropriate event information, enriched with social data, and placed into a nurture campaign.

To learn more about event lead management as a business strategy, visit https://www.leadliaison.com/event-lead-management-strategy/.

About Lead Liaison
Lead Liaison provides cloud-based sales and marketing automation solutions that helps businesses accelerate revenue by attracting, converting, closing and retaining more prospects. Filling a void in the small pool of marketing automation providers that focus on marketing-centric functionality, Lead Liaison gives equal focus to sales providing sophisticated visitor tracking and additional website engagement tools to boost sales effectiveness. Lead Liaison blends ease-of-use, a flexible business model, deep external integration, marketing across social, web, mobile, email and offline channels and powerful functionality, all specifically tailored for mid-sized businesses, into a single platform, called Revenue Generation Software®. Lead Liaison is headquartered in Allen, Texas, near Dallas. For more information, visit http://www.leadliaison.com or call 1-800-89-LEADS (895-3237).

Ryan Schefke

How to Prepare for a Marketing Event

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There are various types of marketing events to attend; traditional marketing events like trade shows, corporate events, social gatherings, and more. Regardless of the event, a marketer must go through some checkpoints before the event. In this article we’ll cover how to prepare for a marketing event to make your event as successful as possible.

Prepare your Booth

We’re assuming your next event will require you to showcase your brand a bit. Companies typically do this with a booth. If you don’t have a booth contact your local print shop and inquire about trade show or event displays. Lead Liaison uses a three (3) panel display with plenty of images. As a tip, keep your text to a minimum. Yes – you do want people stopping by your booth to engage in conversation with you, but you don’t want them blindly staring at your display struggling to read the text. You’d rather tell them what you do and converse with them, right? Try to think of adding only broad headings and key bullet points (no more than three per panel) to your display. If you don’t already have a graphics artist on your team, hit up a site like upwork.com and hire someone. For us, we used the graphics person at the print shop so we got a bonus. We got a graphics artist to help us out without having to shell out more money.

Once your display is ready, consider how to prepare for a marketing event that focuses on your audience. You can run a drawing where you have your booth visitors drop a business card into a fish bowl. You can offer some candy (in another fish bowl or tray), or you can give away some company swag. Here are some other ideas if you want to take a more creative route:

  • Talk to a handful of local companies in the area and have them sponsor services to run an auction. Hotels, restaurants, nail salons, etc. should all be happy for you to promote their services while visitors bid on each service. It’s a good interactive idea.
  • Do something off the wall such as a wheel for people to spin to win a prize of some sort. Most people will like playing the game and see that as a nice break to the monotony of the event.
  • Have a raffle for your services. For example, if you’re a software company give away a subscription to your software for a period of time. If you’re a professional services company offer a complementary version of your services (free consultation, free training, etc.).

Lead Capture

One of the most important things to consider when thinking about how to prepare for a marketing event is how you will capture your leads. Marketers must think through how they’ll capture leads at the marketing event. There are varying levels of lead capture. You could do what many companies do and only collect business cards from each person. If you did that, it would take a while to get the leads into the system, you risk human error losing cards or entering in information, you rely on the sales person to enter in the data, and even after all of that’s done – you’ve got to merge all the leads together, get them into your system, and properly distribute them.

An alternative method is to contact your trade show organizer to see what system they suggest. Most event organizers will contract a company for their lead retrieval system. The lead retrieval system will likely be a handheld barcode scanner or a mobile app. Choosing a system from the lead retrieval company will still limit you though. For example, the forms that are provided are limited. They are designed to only capture certain information, such as name, email, phone, etc. Even if you’re using their barcode scanner, only select information gets pulled in. If your company prefers to capture key information from your booth visitor, too bad – you’ve got to cram that information into the notes section, making lead capture even more cluttered when it’s time to get that data into your system. Moreover, you’ve got to get the captured leads into your system. Lead retrieval companies will put your leads into a central repository for you to download, or give you all of your leads while you’re at the show. Once you obtain them, they still have to be curated, uploaded into your company’s CRM, and distributed. This is just the capture part, and doesn’t include any follow up with attendees.

The last, and best option, is to use a professional-level event lead capture system. These systems have a backend and frontend to help you manage the end-to-end process for your event leads. On the backend, marketers can build and provision forms with custom fields and information relevant to the company. Marketers can also electronically roll out forms to different sales people and fellow marketers who might be attending the event. The forms can be pushed out to each user’s Android, iOS, or Windows device as the application should be cross platform (HTML5). The mobile event lead capture application will provide multiple lead capture methods. We’ve listed a handful of lead capture methods present in leading event capture apps:

  1. Barcode / QR code scanning
  2. Manual entry
  3. List pre-fill
  4. Business card scan

Leading event lead capture solutions will also work offline as most events could be in the basement of a hotel or in a crowded area where internet or cellular connectivity is limited or not available at all. The device should work seamlessly, whether offline or online, and hold the leads on the device or automatically pass them to the backend once the device connects. This leads us to the backend aspect of these systems. The backend should be sophisticated enough to help the marketer qualify, communicate, distribute, and nurture leads automatically. Here’s a short summary of each of these areas of the workflow on the backend:

  1. Qualify: Leading systems will use scoring or grading as a way to qualify leads. Scoring is a way to measure engagement or interests. For example, if the prospect chose a specific value on the form then give them more points. Similarly with grading, if the prospect has a title that contains “Chief” then consider automatically giving them an A+ for their grade. Scoring and grading will help your sales reps separate out where to focus first, as they should look for the highest graded and scored leads from the event.
  2. Communicate: Responding to the lead right away is important. Text the visitor back after an hour or so thanking them for their time and visit. Alternatively, send them an email, postcard, or handwritten letter shortly after meeting them.
  3. Distribute: Make sure you route the lead to the route sales people as soon as it is submitted. Use various rules such as geography, demographics, or any information you collect on your form to determine where to send the lead. Getting the lead in the hands of your sales rep as soon as you can is critical for success.
  4. Nurture: Build stronger relationships with your leads by running them through multi-step nurture processes that intelligently sends out touch points across traditional and digital marketing channels.

Coordinate your Team

Gather your sales and marketing team members together and do a recap of your upcoming event. If each person is using a lead capture app like Lead Liaison’s GoCapture!™, make sure each user is in the system and their device is authenticated to receive the event form. Your team might also benefit from having one or two devices around the booth and putting the GoCapture!™ app into Kiosk Mode to more easily manage lead collection. Whatever your approach, make sure you have a documented process for capturing the leads and make sure your reps are fully trained on this process.

Distribute your Leads

The final, and possibly most crucial step, in thinking through how to prepare for a marketing event is to nail down how you will distribute your leads. As noted above, it’s critical to have a sound lead distribution plan following your marketing event. Make sure your reps are not taking their business cards back home with them or losing them in transport. To avoid this, leverage the OCR or business card transcription services offered by your event lead capture service. With Lead Liaison, we provide a transcription portal as a component of the backend lead capture system. Businesses can manage the portal themselves by transcribing their own cards. Alternatively, Lead Liaison’s transcription team could transcribe the card for a nominal fee. Either way, get those cards out of the hands of your reps and into the system in digital format for prompt lead distribution.

Lead Liaison provides the perfect solution for event lead capture, called GoCapture!™. Get a free demo of this solution today to see how you could make your next marketing even a smash hit.

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Lead Liaison

The Importance of Event Follow-Up: Part 1

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Your organization just attended a big marketing event. There was a lot of planning that went into your organzation’s participation at this event. You spent lots of marketing dollars trying to make an impact, and hopefully creating a lot of leads. And it worked! Your onsite representatives collected tons of leads! You probably already know that your event follow-up is important, but did you know just how important it really is? And, how rare it is?!

Why is the timing of your event follow-up important?

According to recent research from Certain published on MarketingProfs, “some 73.5% of respondents say their firm takes four days or longer to follow up with event leads. Just 2% of respondents say their firm follows up with event leads on the same day.” Most respondants to this research said that the reason they do not follow up quickly is because of how long it takes to prepare the outreach and that they do not have the tools to speed up the process.

Prompt event follow-up is critical. It allows your organization to stand out from the competition because it shows that you care enough to make that follow-up a priority.

Event lead capture methods, like our app GoCapture!™, are an important part of any marketing automation platform. This functionality allows companies to streamline thier event follow-up in a way that is personal, instantaneous, and repeatable. Our app allows onsite representatives to collect lead information quickly (without losing any valuable information), by scanning a badge, a business card, by manual entry, or even syncing with a registration list. Then, once that information is captured, it can be automatically uploaded to our database, segmented, and placed into a nuture campaign.

That nurture campaign can contain releveant event follow-up information in the form of email, text message, postcard, or even a handwritten letter (our personal favorite!). Whatever the method of outreach, the message should be well thought-out.

What kind of message to you send in your event follow-up?

First and foremost, your event follow-up should identify the specific show by name, within the first paragraph or even in the subject line. This immediately validates your outreach, which should encourage recipients to read further. And, don’t forget to include the information from the onsite representative that the prospect came into contact with. That will help create a personal connection with your outreach.

The conversations that onsite representatives have with leads can be breif, or very surface level. Your event follow-up messaging should offer a range of options for further engagement – also known as your call-to-actions (CTAs). You really want to appeal to a range of prospects at various stages of the selling cycle. You could offer a free download of a high-performing white paper, offer a free demonstration, or simply encourage your prospect to sign up for your company newsletter. These clickthrough options will help sales prioritze which leads should be called first and will also allow for further segmentation.

If you are interested in a better way to manage your event lead capture and your event follow-up, let us help you! Check out our event lead capture app, GoCapture!™ and our marketing automation platform, Lead Management Automation (LMA)™. If you like what you see, don’t hesitate to ask for a free, personalized demonstration.

Lead Liaison

Connecting the Dots – Lead Nurturing After Event Lead Capture Is Important

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Did you know that 73 percent of B2B leads aren’t ready to make a purchase? They’re still gathering information, and while they will eventually pull the trigger, it probably won’t happen at the exact time of event lead capture. That is why it is so important that you have a lead collection system that integrates with your lead-nurturing platform. GoCapture!™ pairs with Lead Liaison’s marketing automation platform, allowing people to track leads through the entire lifecycle. If you use this system, you can collect the leads when you are at an event and then push them through the lead-nurturing process via marketing automation instantly!

Nursing Leads with Marketing Automation

When you gather leads with GoCapture!™, you can choose how to nurture them. The system begins the process by qualifying the lead based on your predefined qualification standards. It then begins nurturing them in the way that you determine. You can have the system send emails, postcards, handwritten letters, or SMS messages. Don’t feel as if you must pick just one, either. Omni-channel marketing is a proven method for success. 

Breaking Down Lead Statistics

When you use a fully-integrated system such as GoCapture!™, you have the advantage of tracking the lead through its entire lifecycle, starting with where it came from. This is vital if you want to put the right amount of marketing dollars into various events. You will be able to tell how much it costs to turn leads into customers at your various events. You can then use that information to determine future budgets.

For instance, you might find out that you convert lots of leads from trade shows, so it would make sense to put more money into that type of marketing campaign. However, you might find out that your lead conversions for conferences are weak, so you either need to spend less on conferences or change your marketing strategy for those specific events.

Lead generation is only powerful if you nurture those leads and turn them into customers. GoCapture!™ makes that as easy as installing the app. Then, it gets to work for you, capturing and nurturing leads to improve your bottom line.

Want to learn more about GoCapture!™? Click here to speak with an expert today!

Lead Liaison

Challenges With Event Lead Capture

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New technology means there are more lead capture options out there than ever before, but they come with some challenges. It’s important to identify the challenges and come up with solutions to those challenges. Let’s look at some common challenges and solutions.

Transcription Problems

Scanning business cards is growing in popularity, but what happens when you collect all of those cards? They have to be transcribed and entered into your lead generation system, but unfortunately, most services either don’t offer transcription or they charge a high price. GoCapture!™ is unique in the sense that it doesn’t just offer transcription. It does it for less than half the price of the leading competitor. This makes it easy to overcome this challenge.

Lost Leads

According to trade show insiders, as much as 80 percent of the leads collected at trade shows are never followed up. That isn’t because the exhibitors don’t want to follow up. It’s because the leads get lost in the shuffle. GoCapture!™ solves this problem by adding all of the leads into a centralized database, meaning that you can have hundreds of people collecting them, and they all go to the a singular, safe place.

No Internet Signal

Have you ever tried to make a phone call at a trade show? It isn’t easy due to the location. Most trade shows are buried deep inside of buildings, and the signals are weak. Unfortunately, lots of exhibitors need Internet signals to collect leads. That isn’t the case with GoCapture!™ though. The application works offline without any problems. By having a solution that works both digitally and offline, you can work in any situation.

 

GoCapture!™ makes it easy to overcome the various lead capture problems that sales and marketing teams face at events. If you want to get quality leads without running into trouble, this is the way to go.

Want to learn more about GoCapture!™? Click here to speak with an expert today!

Lead Liaison

Marketing Events & Event Lead Capture

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If you’re waiting for leads to come to you, you are making a huge mistake. There are tons of events out there that are ripe with leads. Check out the events, and then learn how to prepare for them. With the right amount of preparation, and a good event lead capture plan, you can become a lead generation machine.

Types of Marketing Events

It’s impossible to list all the marketing events out there, but they really fall into two categories. First, there are in-person events, and second, there are web-based events.

As it relates to in-person events, you really can’t beat a trade show when it comes to collecting hot leads. These theme-based shows are filled with exhibitors who try to attract potential buyers, as well as buyers who are actively looking for a solution. Decision makers often attend these shows, so you will be able to collect information about people who have the authority to make a purchase. That makes it all the more exciting and rewarding.

As far as web-based events go, webinars get the most attention. While decision makers often attend these, it also isn’t unusual to see some lower-level employees at these online events. Because of that, you will get a variety of leads when you host webinars.

Regardless of which type of event you host, you have to prepare for it. That means you have to decide how you are going to collect leads.

Preparing for Events

Lead generation has changed a lot over the years. You used to post a sign-up form at events, and that was how you collected leads. Maybe your leads would hear from you, and maybe they wouldn’t. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to contact them. The process was just so scattered that leads would get lost.

These days, you’ve got the tools you need to do a little more preparation. It doesn’t matter if you are going to an in-person event or hosting a webinar. The preparation process is KEY.

It starts with configuring an effective and efficient lead capture form. Forget about a piece of paper and a pen. Create a form using your marketing automation platform to make it easier. Then, you must deploy the form to the device that you want to use and choose your lead capture method or methods. This is where it gets exciting. New technology allows you to load leads from event attendee lists, scan QR codes, scan bar codes, or have the lead manually fill the information into your form.

Most people prepare up to this point, but that’s where they stop. However, that’s a mistake. Your leads then need to go into your business process automation system. They should be distributed and then be moved through the process with follow-ups and lead qualification techniques. You need to plan for all of that before you even collect the leads!

If you can properly prepare for events, you will be a step ahead of many of your competitors. Then, you can collect leads and communicate with them with ease. Using a tool like Lead Liaison’s mobile event lead capture app, GoCapture!™, can help you simplify your event lead capture process, so you can get busy selling!

Want to learn more about GoCapture!™? Click here to speak with an expert today!

Lead Liaison

Lead Liaison Leaks a Glimpse of First-Ever, Fully Integrated Lead Capture App

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Lead Liaison LogoAllen, TX – Lead Liaison, an innovative marketing and sales solution provider, is elevating the scope of B2B mobile software with a first ever, fully integrated lead capture app, conveniently named GoCapture!™. Although it is not available for public consumption yet, the Lead Liaison has released a few specifics that have the technology world buzzing.

The app is intended to be used at events such as trade shows, seminars and conferences, and even in door-to-door sales, to capture hot leads or take surveys onsite. This new technology allows Lead Liaison to span the full life cycle of an event, from onsite lead capture and data collection to nurturing with marketing automation, and beyond. This application pairs with Lead Liaison’s Marketing Automation platform, Lead Management Automation (LMA)™ and their CRM, OneFocus™, allowing exhibitors to instantly capture, qualify, distribute, and nurture leads with a single system. It will be initially available for iOS and Android operating systems with support for Windows in a subsequent release.

Information is limited, but according to Lead Liaison’s engineers, GoCapture!™ will provide the ability to quickly capture leads using several methods. The first method is through a mobile form submission. Trade show attendees will be able to walk up to a company’s booth and manually fill in the form on a smartphone or tablet. Exhibitors can also directly fill in the form.

The second method for onsite lead capture is through a business card transcription portal. Employees working an event can simply take a photo of the lead’s business card. From there, OneCapture!™ offers the option to transcribe the business card using a self-service portal at a later time. Alternatively, Lead Liaison also offers a paid transcription service.

The third method for lead capture is by optical character recognition (OCR). OCR provides the ability to scan the business card, capturing the information automatically.

“The methods and flexibility in which we allow someone to capture a lead has grown. It is tailored around an event or a show,” explains Lead Liaison Solutions Specialist, Chris Kipgen. “What sets us apart is the fact that we own all of these pieces, from the CRM to the automation, which can deliver different kinds of touch points, digital and offline. The fact that we are not integrating with systems we do not own really makes this experience stand out from our competitors. It’s seamless.”

GoCapture!™ is scheduled for release in the fall, according to Lead Liaison. However, they are starting testing with early adopters over the next few weeks. To sign up for alerts about this mobile technology, visit this webpage.

About Lead Liaison
Lead Liaison provides cloud-based sales and marketing automation solutions that helps businesses accelerate revenue by attracting, converting, closing and retaining more prospects. Filling a void in the small pool of marketing automation providers that focus on marketing-centric functionality, Lead Liaison gives equal focus to sales providing sophisticated visitor tracking and additional website engagement tools to boost sales effectiveness. Lead Liaison blends ease-of-use, a flexible business model, deep external integration, marketing across social, web, mobile, email and offline channels and powerful functionality, all specifically tailored for mid-sized businesses, into a single platform, called Revenue Generation Software®. Lead Liaison is headquartered in Allen, Texas, near Dallas. For more information, visit http://www.leadliaison.com or call 1-800-89-LEADS (895-3237).