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Alex Therrien

Apr 11
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Improving Sales Through Call Tracking and Analytics

By Tracking No Comments

Improving Sales Through Call Tracking and Analytics

Beyond the basic caller ID information a call center gets from an inbound call, there are a number of new types of data that can be aggregated and associated with each caller's inquiry into your CRM.

For example web browsing activities, tags and current position in your sales pipe, all a game changer for training a sales team and getting a sales rep. prepared for a high ticket call.

sms tracking

“Call tracking software allows you to track, monitor, and augment your call campaigns to get better ROI on them.”

Best Call Tracking Softwares 2022garethjames.net
what is dni?

Dynamic phone number insertion

Dynamic phone number insertion (DNI) is a process that our agency use to measure the impact of digital efforts of inbound phone calls. When a new lead visits your website, the DNI script displays a ported phone number that ads a unique call ID aggregating specific search engine, web page, keyword and metadata of your referral sources.

Analyze after tracking

By tracking call tracking the variables in a CRM, we can then gain a real-time insight to determine which campaigns are generating leads, opportunities and revenue from phone calls. Your marketing director can then decide to focus additional resources on these campaigns and/or discontinue other campaigns that do not bring qualified callers.

This, you have guessed it, frees your call center from unwanted inquiries and allows your team to concentrate their effort on bigger ROI opportunities.

ads tracking

Tracking leads through CallRail

Here is a case study from a tiny house & sheds company in Vermont using a software called CallRail that our agency uses for that purpose. It provides the following insights: Calls By Source, we like to filter them for this example by First-Time Interactions Count.

You can see that there is a number of referral sources (Google My Business, Google Organic, Google Ads, Birdeye, Direct, etc) that generates first-time interactions and a Raw Leads vs Qualified Leads Ratio. We then calculate the cost per lead and gross sales per sources as a first level analysis for actionables.

What Is Call Tracking and Why Is It Important?

Call tracking allows you to see and track inbound calls — be it for sales, marketing, or customer support.

And when it comes to call tracking importance, call tracking allows you to get more data and dive deeper into what’s really happening. For example, this can allow you to do attribution modeling for digital marketing and PPC campaigns.

dni definition

Anticipate the reason for a call

Know what your leads are interested in before they tell you.
Attached to every inbound call is all the behavioral data associated with that prospect. This means your team will know every page they browsed on your website, what campaign drove them, how many times they have called before…

Make sealing the deal easier

Everything you need to close the sale. By providing each visitor to your website with their own phone number, you will be able to track all their activity before and after they make their first phone call. You will know all their interactions with your website, including campaign attribution, pageviews, and feedback form submission.

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Apr 06
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How To Recapture More Abandoned Cart With SMS

By Engaging No Comments

How To Recapture More Abandoned Carts With SMS

One well known retargeting mechanism in e-commerce is called cart abandonment. As you probably know this was done first via email campaigns.

This same mechanism is much more efficient using SMS retargeting. SMS can also contain dynamic product fields and links. These are sent to smartphones which can be browsed or called (for high ticket sales) with one tap.

add to cart mobile

“The purchase rate of campaigns using three or more channels is 287% higher than single-channel campaigns.”

Cart Abandonment SMSomnisend.com
sample sms marketing

SMS over email

Ecommerce has been expanding it's consumer reach and it's market share due to mobile users. Therefore all major ecommerce platform has prioritized mobile user over desktop users for the user interface / user experience. SMS should come naturally as the first communication channel choice getting ahead of email.

The typical retargeting flows mainly email cart abandonment can be skipped. SMS retargeting is added easily to the already existing email flows or can be implemented by itself as it provides faster and better KPI results compared to email.

SMS provides higher conversion rates

Astonishing 98% Open Rate of SMS compared to 20% for email. Click Rate for SMS is 29% compared to 2.5% for email. Email response rates are 6%, while SMS response rates are 45% percent. Furthermore, it takes the average person 90 minutes to respond to an email. 95% of all text messages read within 90 seconds (most read within 5 seconds).

SMS offers an immediate way to use remarketing and retargeting tactics, simply because your clients are likely to see text messages more quickly than your emails. A game changer for cart abandonment as data have shown: click through rates for Cart Abandonment SMS in excess of those for email (36% vs 3.2%) as well as higher conversion rates.

Wishlist SMS retargeting

Here are examples for the outbuilding construction industry specifically for products that requires a website product configurator and are sold with preset options. Also, for those of you who do not use online checkout systems, but do have the "online save configuration" functionality SMS works great. Your sales team can just follow-up up on calls with those web sessions at hand and be more relevant. Here is an example of Wishlist SMS retargeting copy we've had an enormous amount of success for.

Sample copy

First the email copy : Hi friend!

Thank you for saving your wishlist! We ship pre-cut tiny houses and sheds kits all over the world. We also ship fully assembled projects within a 200 miles radius of the great state of Vermont, USA!

Our current ends on . We have a LOWEST PRICE GUARANTEE on all our tiny houses and sheds. We ship FREE to a business with a forklift on site ready to unload our PCK (see footnotes for more details).

Our experienced team is ready to take your call and discuss your project in-depth:

MONDAY – FRIDAY
9AM – 5PM EST

SATURDAY & SUNDAY
9AM – 4PM EST

EVENT
ENDS |

OPEN 8AM – 8PM
DISPLAY YARD OPEN EVERY DAY
DURING DAYLIGHT HOURS

Why include SMS in cart abandonment & email marketing strategy

Without a doubt, an abandoned cart SMS reminder is a tool to consider adding to your marketing toolbox. And here is why:

SMS has a very high reach as a marketing channel. More and more people are opting into SMS, with 75% of customers say they wouldn’t mind receiving an SMS from a brand.
SMS marketing is more affordable than Facebook or Google retargeting.

SMS is quick to consume and gets more engagement than an email. Ninety-seven percent of text messages are read in the first four minutes of receipt, and retailers see a 400% lift in click rates from SMS compared to email.

It’s easy to be personal with SMS. This channel is perfect for personalized, time-sensitive messages—like cart abandonment reminders.

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Apr 04
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Interact Easily Through Live Chat And SMS

By Engaging No Comments

Interact Easily Through Live Chat and SMS

Live chat has gotten very expensive in the last couple of years, namely INTERCOM as the leader. There are cheaper alternatives with all the common functionalities and more!

We have been using CRISP (France) for a few clients and we are very pleased with the integration capabilities and the price is very competitive. We use Live chat to intercept incoming replies to our SMS campaigns. Our SMS text copies have call to actions (CTA) with a high response rate (reply or inbound call).

“75% of people prefer live chat over any other channel.”

Live Chat Statistics 2022techjury.net
live chat integrations

Gather information

Often we use the leads attention to provide us more information about what they are looking for. We often use reverse psychology technique such as "I know that you are looking for X" and very often the lead will reply by saying "actually no, I am looking for..." stating the product they are interested in. This saves a lot of time for the sales dept. handling these Live Chat Sessions.

Bridging SMS & live chat

Live chat is of course notoriously compatible with mobile users. It's also easy to bridge for incoming two-way SMS live communication. This allows us to track and aggregate like never before; web session for future SMS communication flows and decisions, call scripts or notes, email nurturing content decisions with dynamic offers to name just a few.

A live chat software such as CRISP allows you to grab the right data for your sales team specifically information on a lead's recent (or first visit) web sessions. For example if a user has visited a page providing information on "financing" and a specific product page... you guessed it. These can be easily pushed to the CRM for your sales reps. and be pulled during a call with the client.

Our process...

Our agency mainly use chat systems as a way for our client's sales team to interact by SMS with leads and clients. The sales team does this without having to use their personal smartphone from a computer. We simply use an API to bridge all inbound and outbound SMS received and sent from your existing live chat system.

Your sales team receives all replies on one screen, which makes things a lot more efficient. We can also push an history of the SMS text messaging campaign to the live chat. We also use specialized cross-channel SMS to Live Chat copywriting strategies that makes it more obvious for your sales team to get the intention of the lead early on in the first interaction.

92% of consumers prefer live chat

Once considered an add-on that made communication easier for the consumer and business, live chat is now a staple for most corporations. This arguably a consequence of long waiting queue of labor intensive call centers and slow email response times.

Companies figured out this often send shoppers to another merchant for this reason alone: accessibility. Pre-sale accessibility as proven to be a decisive factor for clients, as pre-sale quality increases the client grows more confident about the after sales service accessibility.

Phone, email, and web support still rank as important when it comes to instilling trust. But the presence of live chat exceeds them all — even if shoppers don’t use it. Compared to other methods of communication, 92 percent of consumers prefer communicating via live chat. Roughly 80 percent prefer communicating via social networks.

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Mar 31
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How to Create a Powerful SMS Pop-up Strategy

By Engaging No Comments

How to Create a Powerful SMS Pop-up Strategy

To store, collect (or aggregate) your website visitors information (metadata) it is now mandatory to get explicit consent to be compliant. When you get that consent, we can together collect the consenting data to your files about a specific client that would normally otherwise be unavailable in your systems for sales and sales development.

pop up example

“Some states have laws that regulate cookie usage as it relates to their residents, like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).”

US Cookie Lawtermly.io
pop-up form

Cookie consent popups do not hinder sales

The way to increase significantly the number of leads giving their voluntary consent is by using a Cookie Consent Popup on your website. This is also now mandatory even if you just have Google Analytics installed. Although most outbuilding construction companies might think of this as a hinderance to the sale, studies have shown time and time again that this is not the case and it's actually now required by law to do so in some States.

More on exit popups

These only appear when a user is about to leave the website, that is when the mouse cursor leaves the page view port of the browser. We use those to invite leads that would otherwise leave, to seize our last chance to add them on an SMS promotional list.

For outbuilding construction companies, we typically ask them one more question about their intent or their geo location. This allows us to trigger regional or national product offers flow for example.

Popups as workflow triggers

Here is a case study of an exit pop that was used for triggering fully assembled building product offers for local/regional leads in the north east. If the IP location was outside of the 200 miles radius logistics allowance for fully assembled building delivery, we did trigger the national SMS series flow which features ONLY building sold as kits. These can be shipped worldwide.

SMS calls-to-action

The SMS contained prices, some key information about the building or kit, a common “purpose of usage” oriented copy, the current sales discount short calculation, the end date of the sale and time, and sometimes a call to action.

A call to action can be “give us a call, tap to call, or reply for more information”, which would then connect the SMS lead to the live chat system for a two-way communication.

“In addition, some federal laws, like the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), regulate how businesses use cookies in specific circumstances.”

US Cookie Lawtermly.io

What are SMS popups?

An SMS popup is a type of subscription popup on a website that aims to capture phone numbers from site visitors to use in SMS marketing campaigns.

Most SMS popups also aim to collect leads’ email addresses, but they request the information in exchange for a discount or a lead magnet. A lead magnet is some form of value that’s enticing enough for a website visitor to give a phone number or name and email.

In the DIY community, templates for trims or plans are working well. Videos do not work well anymore. A subscription with a sneak peek preview that gives an idea what to expect will work if the traffic audiences are compatible with the offer and promises for that list.

SMS subscription popup

Consumers tend to pay more attention to text messages, while other marketing mediums such as email or YouTube subscriptions are much easier to ignore. This makes SMS marketing even more valuable for marketers.

Popup SMS campaigns on your website can quickly draw attention and snap those leads’ phone numbers to start texting your potential customers.

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Mar 28
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Smart Content Marketing: Proven to Increase Your ROI

By Engaging No Comments

Smart Content Marketing: Proven to Increase Your ROI

Thinking of marketing content as a relationship with leads and sales as a form of help with clients helps creating content that hits home. Always avoiding guessing during the process but relying on your existing relationship models, we help you setup ways and systems to offer the opportunity to your various client persona to tell you weather they find your content useful or not.

content-marketing-creative

“70% of brand marketers and CMOs are investing company resources into content marketing strategies.”

Content Marketing Statistics 2022clearvoice.com
upsell process graphic

Converting leads by content

Having various types of content for different product nurturing processes and different "suggested purpose usage" for example for outbuilding construction kits, allows us to move a lead from an awareness state to an evaluative state, to the conversion type of content depending on the feedback on the content. The way a lead interacts with the content and the systems allows us to tag and deliver the proper message that moves the lead forward in the funnel.

Ping content workflow

Our agency likes to work with a 1 or 2 clients at a time, that way we can focus on producing a Smart Content Marketing Lifecyle that supports the various communication channels. It then becomes possible to offer custom nurturing packages directly to the leads with our Ping Content Master flows.

This flow provides several options for the lead that can then click on an email or SMS link that will trigger a flow for the chosen topic of interests. If the lead stops interacting with the content, this can also be detected and a touchpoint can be done to improve the accuracy of the Smart Content.

Smart Content Lifecycle system

Here are some ideas of content made for an outbuilding construction company in the Vermont. Often a once in a lifetime decision, selling tiny houses and post and beam storage buildings requires a lot of nurturing.

To achieve this we use our Smart Content Lifecyle System; for each stages of a client or lead lifecycle there is content that either help or better avoided to promote movement in your sales pipeline.

Smart Content Lifecycle stages

AWARENESS
LEAD 6.0.1 TINY HOUSE VIDEOS
LEAD 6.0.1 STORAGE VIDEOS
LEAD 6.0.1 LIVESTOCK VIDEOS
AL LUMNAH INFLUENCER 8.0

EVALUATION
SPECS SHEET 8.1 – SPLIT TEST 1.0
FAQ 9.0 – Beta 1.1
99 QUESTIONS

CONVERSION
BUDGETING
CARPENTER SERIES

Why is content marketing important?

Content marketing provides unparalleled opportunities for generating new leads and connecting with existing customers.

Content marketing is a viable and cost-effective way to acquire new customers and build stronger connections with existing customers by creating and distributing valuable relevant content to attract attention and drive traffic to your website.

But if you want your content marketing efforts to be effective, it’s necessary to create relevant and valuable content for your target audience through which you can promote your brand, products, or services.

Benefits of content marketing

Content marketing is important because it provides:

  • Opportunity to grow your customer/client base
  • Ways to strengthen loyalty with existing customers/clientele
  • Chances to make use of search engine optimization which can help boost your exposure and conversions
  • Avenues of creative exploration to develop your brand image and voice

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Mar 24
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How to Use Online Survey to Improve Content Marketing

By Engaging No Comments

How to Use Online Survey to Improve Content Marketing

Often outbuilding construction companies will run out of gas trying to create new content for their email lists. It's a good rule of thumb to avoid guessing as much as possible when creating marketing content.

Surveying members of your qualified lists indirectly on what content "they need" to "move forward in your funnel" or "make a purchasing decision" indirectly will lead to: improved engagement, successful goals for example with the content's call to action or historical digital marketing KPI improvements for your company.

Plan out the release of your content

Content marketing creation is expensive when doing business with a traditional marketing company. Our agency has a different approach. QUALITY is important but QUANTITY plays a determining part in your ability to keep your lists alive. Therefore a calendar with a trickle strategy on the content to avoid running out of gas should be planned before investing time.

Investigate how you can use influencers

Your leads watches all sort of DIY video content on a daily basis. It doesn’t have to be too elaborated, the idea is to stay in touch with their followers. If you can’t find a way to do this yourself, consider looking at our blog article on top DIY influencer marketing strategies for outbuilding construction companies.

You can also ask your best leads and clients what they are following online and think of a partnership or an affiliate program that make sense for you and them.

sample sms marketing

Re-engage inactive leads

In the case of a lead that stops interacting with your content, consider stopping all communications as soon as possible. Before doing so, we recommend trying one more time to re-engage the "stalled lead" with a message copy such as "tell us what we did wrong... we did a mistake!". Make sure a priori to only allow consenting leads into your lists and avoid having dead leads in the first place.

Email Footer Surveys

The unsubscribe SPAM-ACT/GDRP link should always be at the bottom of each email. We also like to add a “Is this content relevant to you? – YES | NO” question in the footer for content improvement.

Having a “Report any ERROR, OMISSION or SUGGESTIONS for our content | HERE” will save your team’s resource and sometimes prevent “damages” as a system that allows leads and clients to report issues with the content.

Sometimes this can slip through the cracks or just isn’t relevant to the targeted segments the email is being forwarded to with an automation that needs troubleshooting.

Some examples...

Here is a few screenshots of what this looks like and the forms + thank you pages for reporting. We also have a follow-up on the content not being relevant to a lead “report”. This message is sent whenever a lead reports an email “as not relevant to them.”

What you can do from content surveys

In creating content marketing you strive to accomplish several goals at the same time. This information is valuable and will help you create future content. While giving “your audience” interactive content, you’ve uncovered improved your content marketing and not only your product or service. That’s exactly what you can accomplish with a content marketing survey for leads that are higher up in the funnel (not yet ready to buy).

Preparing for future content

In other words, when you send out a content marketing survey to your customers or followers, you’re giving them an engaging piece of content to interact with. At the same time, you’re gathering info that can help you pick and choose subjects and formats for future publications. That will help you put together new material or adjust your content marketing strategy.

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Mar 21
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How to Attract Customers Through Local Phone Numbers

By Tracking No Comments

How to Attract Customers Through Local Phone Numbers

In a recent survey, outbuilding construction companies consumers have demonstrated that they are likely to trust a company not by it market size but by it's proximity to their location. Knowing that they can reach a local phone number for assistance or after market support is a demonstrated marketing asset for pre-sales.

“Better target your marketing efforts geographically.”

Dynamic Number Insertioncallrail.com

Use telephone number pools

You do not need a phone number in every big cities in the United States, there are now solutions that can be added to your company's website that will look for the visitor's location and change the phone number they see on screen into a phone number with their area code connected them directly to your call center out of State.

These solutions also offer telephone number pools and tracking that allows to create a joinder between your callers and their website sessions for valuable information on their buying intents.

Set trigger rules based on visitor location

Toll-free number can be intimidating. Not knowing where the call will be forwarded to is a deterrent for some crowds. What we usually do with our clients for dynamic phone number insertions and call tracking, is adding a number of trigger rules.

Here's what it looks like: we use dedicated rules for targeted market regions area codes. These will replace all selected phone numbers on the website by a phone number from a created phone number pool on CallRail for example. Then everything that falls outside of these dedicated rules will show a toll-free number or a phone number with your business address area code.

Track all inbound calls

Remember that your system should track all inbound calls and in doing this, your website must have a JavaScript code snippet added (can be done through Google Tag Manager). This will replace your current phone number seamlessly as it appears on the website with a dynamic number insertion (DNI). This is necessary to track sessions from the website and associate those with a caller and a PPC campaign if you are running some ads.

Increase ROI through regional phone numbers

Optimizing inbound call lead generation can only be done by understanding the source of the calls and the sales outcome. Regional phone numbers combined with a solid marketing plan such as a seasonal out of state roving plan show some results. Have a look at this case study and see for yourself the ROI of such campaigns.

What is Local Swap™?

CallRail’s Local Swap™ is an enhancement to our dynamic number insertion (DNI) technology, which automatically replaces the phone number on your site based on the caller’s geographic location. We’ll match the area code displayed on your website with the caller’s location via IP lookup.

Local Swap™ is a valuable tool for businesses that service multiple locations and want their customers to feel confident choosing a business available in their area. After callers are assigned an area code on their first visit, they’ll continue to see the same area code, even if they change locations, maintaining a consistent online presence for businesses.

Benefits of Local Swap™

Here are some other benefits of using Local Swap:

Improved customer experience – foster trust initially and eliminate confusion

Increased conversion rates – a customer is more likely to call your business directly if they have confidence they’ll reach the appropriate location, and a staggering 86 percent of customers say personalization impacts their purchase decisions

Maximize campaign efforts – callers will see a local number that is specific to the advertising channel that led them to the site, helping you attribute leads to the proper marketing source

Localized presence – whether you want your business to appear more “local,” or want to appear to have a nationwide presence, you can accomplish both based on the pool you’ve set up

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Mar 14
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How to Easily Upsell Using SMS Marketing?

By Engaging No Comments

How to Easily Upsell Using SMS Marketing?

Let’s say you have an outbuilding construction model where leads often makes a smaller purchase before considering your flagship product. Did you know that it’s possible to retarget dynamically those with the most likely product a lead will consider after that first low ticket purchase?

mobile-shopping

“80% of marketing automation users see improved lead generation, and 77% see more conversions.”

Marketing Automation Statistics 2022invespcro.com
upsell process graphic

Upsell with Boom-o-Rang SMS/AI

For example outbuilding construction companies often sell outbuilding construction DIY plans. A common dynamic retargeting strategy we've always had success with a tiny house & sheds company from Vermont is offering the DIY Pre-cut Kit that goes with the plans. There are also other the usual ecommerce strategies such as upselling in the collection or a variant of the first purchase.

Depending on the first purchase, the time delay for triggering those automated touchpoints or internal reminders for your team to make contact would follow the current sales model but also other path should be tested if there is enough volume. You can do all that with Boom-o-Rang SMS/AI.

51% trust SMS over emails

In the case of low to high ticket dynamic upselling SMS works best because it is closer to the preferred high ticket closing channel: in-person call. It is the highest response rate channel just similar to outbound call.

A trusted medium, over half surveyed consumers (51%) say they trust texts over emails when it comes to receiving important messages. Post and Beam outbuilding construction such as tiny houses, barns, garages and storage units certainly falls into that category.

Upsell on both email & SMS

Let's have a look at this PLANS to PRE-CUT KIT flow from a tiny house & sheds company from Vermont. We would typically do this on both email and SMS/AI channels for a higher success rate. After speaking with a leading POC sales manager at the Vermont company, our agency discovered that a sales rep. would typically (when they had time) reach by phone to PLANS buyers. That was about 30 days after the plans purchase and for a low pressure casual conversation.

AI makes it easier to upsell high-ticket products

PLANS are the one that comes with their pre-cut kits, but some clients will take the option of only buying the plans without the kits and give it a try by sourcing their own lumber. This is not easy to do, so the sales team reaches out and ask casually "what are the client's intentions for the build" without asking directly if they plan to build themselves or hire their own assembler.

The client is only stimulated to do the first step in providing that information. If they do let it slip, the sales rep. get them progressively interested about a pre-cut kit or related challenges they might have sourcing the lumber. This is a tedious process without AI. The client is not warmed up and the conversion rate is low, which doesn't justify running this outbound retargeting sales campaign all year round.

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Mar 10
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How API Improves Your Outbuilding Construction Company

By Reporting No Comments

How API Improves Your Company

If you've had experience connecting two different tools such as a CRM and a Live Chat software you've surely heard of API. Maybe you are using Zapier. Zapier is great for many applications but can be costly for high volume when you exceed your monthly quota.

If you are running logs on spreadsheets (which you should be doing to improve your marketing team's understanding of your inbound leads and their various sources) you will surely exceed your quota. When dealing with high volume API Zapier isn't scalable. Having your own self-hosted API system is simple, scalable and you own it.

“2020 Study: 83% find API Integration ‘Critical’ to Business Strategy”

API Integration Reportglobenewswire.com

Collect all data

The first step to understand the raw data of your client lifecycle is being able to aggregate all human and system interactions. Lead source, call history, text messages, but also their interactions with your website, email engagement, open rate, click rate, reply rate, live chat and history.

Track website sessions

Your client's website sessions is one of the most important tool after the inbound call transcriptions for insights on a client's intentions to buy or not. For example a lead clicking on an email link and visiting a low ticket product page is higher up in the funnel compared to a lead visiting your product financing information website page (or downloading your price list) and making an inbound call to your call center.

This is established following your existing marketing models. It might differ if you do not advertise prices online or if you do not currently have an email list. Either way, this metadata information aggregate on your backend client lifecycle is only available to your digital marketing consultants if API integration are setup between your website, call center and email auto-responder. This is the first step to finally optimize later on.

Setup logs for data aggregation

You surely have specialized software that are not available with Zapier. Maybe you don't have an API programmer for setting it up. Your dedicated Lion Sales Funnel account executive should inform you early on the importance of setting up inexpensive spreadsheet logs that aggregates all trackable system touchpoints. This is done after setting up API Integrations for your most urgent systems. It will give your marketing director or your consultant a clear picture on the available unused data available from your current systems. This is all yours.

Your leads website sessions contains a great deal information that can be used for triggering and for all sorts communication personalization that will make your client more comfortable for the final sale. Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI) for connecting your website to your call center is one of the most important cross-channel data aggregation that will revolutionize the way your company handles inbound calls.

What are the benefits of API integration?

API integration brings with it several business capabilities. These include the following:

Automation
API integration makes it possible for applications to trade information directly and automatically, making it an essential component in automating business processes and other actions.

API Integration Benefits – ServiceNow
Scalability
Rather than forcing developers to start from scratch every time a new application needs to be developed and merged with existing networks, API integration empowers organizations with the ability to quickly connect disparate systems and software. This allows them to scale easily to meet their changing needs.

live chat integrations

Additional Benefits

Visibility
API integration creates a standardized, universal method for data exchange between applications. As such, it also gives businesses a clear, end-to-end view of all traffic within relevant systems and processes. Organizations can track data, monitor it for anomalies, and analyze important datasets to uncover valuable insights.

Accuracy
Relying on humans to transfer data between unconnected systems can be a dangerous prospect; human error can easily disrupt vital datasets, rendering them useless. API integration removes the human element, ensuring that even large amounts of complex data may be transferred without fear of inaccuracy.

How API Improves Your Company

If you've had experience connecting two different tools such as a CRM and a Live Chat software you've surely heard of API. Maybe you are using Zapier. Zapier is great for many applications but can be costly for high volume when you exceed your monthly quota.

If you are running logs on spreadsheets (which you should be doing to improve your marketing team's understanding of your inbound leads and their various sources) you will surely exceed your quota. When dealing with high volume API Zapier isn't scalable. Having your own self-hosted API system is simple, scalable and you own it.

Collect all data

The first step to understand the raw data of your client lifecycle is being able to aggregate all human and system interactions. Lead source, call history, text messages, but also their interactions with your website, email engagement, open rate, click rate, reply rate, live chat and history.

Track website sessions

Your client's website sessions is one of the most important tool after the inbound call transcriptions for insights on a client's intentions to buy or not. For example a lead clicking on an email link and visiting a low ticket product page is higher up in the funnel compared to a lead visiting your product financing information website page (or downloading your price list) and making an inbound call to your call center.

This is established following your existing marketing models. It might differ if you do not advertise prices online or if you do not currently have an email list. Either way, this metadata information aggregate on your backend client lifecycle is only available to your digital marketing consultants if API integration are setup between your website, call center and email auto-responder. This is the first step to finally optimize later on.

Setup logs for data aggregation

You surely have specialized software that are not available with Zapier. Maybe you don't have an API programmer for setting it up. Your dedicated Lion Sales Funnel account executive should inform you early on the importance of setting up inexpensive spreadsheet logs that aggregates all trackable system touchpoints. This is done after setting up API Integrations for your most urgent systems. It will give your marketing director or your consultant a clear picture on the available unused data available from your current systems. This is all yours.

Your leads website sessions contains a great deal information that can be used for triggering and for all sorts communication personalization that will make your client more comfortable for the final sale. Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI) for connecting your website to your call center is one of the most important cross-channel data aggregation that will revolutionize the way your company handles inbound calls.

What are the benefits of API integration?

API integration brings with it several business capabilities. These include the following:

Automation
API integration makes it possible for applications to trade information directly and automatically, making it an essential component in automating business processes and other actions.

API Integration Benefits – ServiceNow
Scalability
Rather than forcing developers to start from scratch every time a new application needs to be developed and merged with existing networks, API integration empowers organizations with the ability to quickly connect disparate systems and software. This allows them to scale easily to meet their changing needs.

Additional Benefits

Visibility
API integration creates a standardized, universal method for data exchange between applications. As such, it also gives businesses a clear, end-to-end view of all traffic within relevant systems and processes. Organizations can track data, monitor it for anomalies, and analyze important datasets to uncover valuable insights.

Accuracy
Relying on humans to transfer data between unconnected systems can be a dangerous prospect; human error can easily disrupt vital datasets, rendering them useless. API integration removes the human element, ensuring that even large amounts of complex data may be transferred without fear of inaccuracy.

live chat integrations

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Mar 03
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Benefits of Conversion Tracking to Your Business

By Tracking No Comments

Benefits of Conversion Tracking to Your Business

Many of our clients came to us first because of conversion tracking issues. Having multiple sources of leads and third-party CRM, offline campaigns and phone conversions makes conversion tracking challenging. Most digital marketing agencies will not go beyond providing support for PPC Ads conversion tracking setup for a typical ecommerce website. But high ticket sales often don't use online checkout but phone conversion, so how to go about tracking those so-called offline conversion?

“You can't hit a target you cannot see, and you cannot see a target you do not have.”

Zig Ziglar

Phone conversion can now be tracked

There is a number of variables involved and a need to log all lead's activities from all channels, including offline channels on an inexpensive spreadsheet log system. Phone channel conversion use to be considered as "offline" and were not possible to track. Smartphones have allowed leads to browse and click so a tracking code can be carried from a web session to a phone call. You've probably heard of Zapier? Zapier API for high level aggregation is not cost effective.

In-house API is more scalable

An in-house API system will be much more scalable. You will need this to catch all you can before getting to a formula that gives you the best possible compromise in conversion tracking. Nothing is ever perfect but you need all the data you can get. Remember that due to multiple user devices often used by leads and clients, it's not always possible to have the complete lifecycle of a lead. Therefore we fallback to existing models or models from which we have historical data worth considering for a change of strategy.

ads tracking

Cross-channel tracking is possible

In a best case scenario for conversion tracking and metadata aggregation of a client's lifecycle, the lead will only use one device. A smartphone or computer. Unfortunately it's often not as straightforward and the information chain will be broken due to the multiple devices being used blocking the tracking.

Cross-device (or cross-channel) tracking is only possible when a lead is logged in on multiple device or with a custom API integration that looks at common unique identifier over multiple systems. A common example for high ticket sales is a call center tracking software with website integration through Dynamic Number Insertion. This allows to aggregate web sessions with phone call ID's.

PPC tracking troubleshooting

Tracking is mostly being troubleshooted for conversion tracking on PPC ads campaign. Google ads and Facebook Ads have their own code snippet for tracking. There are instances where these are not performing well by either not tracking sessions or more common storing duplicated conversions. Browser extensions such as Adblock Plus will compromise the tracking of a website.

There are workaround solutions using URL parameters being passed through but these are never 100% failsafe. In that case we have to fallback to traditional MODELS to get a starting point or fill up gaps. These traditional marketing principles have become more important than ever.

We create data centric custom systems

Understanding the general client lifecycle of an account with existing client models is the most important aspect in understanding the success (or failure) of a campaign. Our agency only handles 1 or 2 account at a time and only in the outbuilding construction industry. We understand well the outbuilding construction models and will use your current models to develop data centric custom systems following your goals and challenges.

We don’t reinvent the wheel, we just optimize better by setting up the right tracking to collect new data.

High ticket purchases closes better on the phone. Most post & beam construction companies with website product configurators have to get on a call with clients at some point. Retargeting by SMS the configuration or just eluding and creating a point of contact other than email increases website KPI.

add to cart mobile

Advantages of tracking conversion

Conversion tracking helps you better understand how your customers engage with your business and take desirable actions, whether signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase.

A conversion is a customer action aligned with the goals of your marketing or advertising campaigns.
Conversion tracking is the monitoring of conversions to assess the success of your campaigns.

Tracking conversions can maximize your ROI, inform your budget, identify improvement areas and distinguish clicks from conversions.

What is conversion tracking?

Conversion tracking is the monitoring of conversions, or of consumer actions that move your company closer to fulfilling a preset goal. These actions can include a customer buying an item, adding something to their cart, opening your emails, clicking on links, landing pages, and more. The metrics tracked indicate how well your company’s marketing efforts, whether email marketing or social media advertising, are achieving the desired outcome with your target audience.

interacting with clients on a call

Understanding conversion tracking

Conversion tracking works by putting numbers to your marketing campaigns’ results. Through conversion tracking, you’ll learn how many people in your audience are contacting your company, subscribing to your mailing list or buying your products. Conversion tracking is most commonly used in advertising and email marketing campaigns, though you can apply it to any campaign involving clickable links that direct your audience toward a desired end goal.

Benefits of Conversion Tracking to Your Business

Many of our clients came to us first because of conversion tracking issues. Having multiple sources of leads and third-party CRM, offline campaigns and phone conversions makes conversion tracking challenging. Most digital marketing agencies will not go beyond providing support for PPC Ads conversion tracking setup for a typical ecommerce website. But high ticket sales often don't use online checkout but phone conversion, so how to go about tracking those so-called offline conversion?

Phone conversion can now be tracked

There is a number of variables involved and a need to log all lead's activities from all channels, including offline channels on an inexpensive spreadsheet log system. Phone channel conversion use to be considered as "offline" and were not possible to track. Smartphones have allowed leads to browse and click so a tracking code can be carried from a web session to a phone call. You've probably heard of Zapier? Zapier API for high level aggregation is not cost effective.

In-house API is more scalable

An in-house API system will be much more scalable. You will need this to catch all you can before getting to a formula that gives you the best possible compromise in conversion tracking. Nothing is ever perfect but you need all the data you can get. Remember that due to multiple user devices often used by leads and clients, it's not always possible to have the complete lifecycle of a lead. Therefore we fallback to existing models or models from which we have historical data worth considering for a change of strategy.

Cross-channel tracking is possible

In a best case scenario for conversion tracking and metadata aggregation of a client's lifecycle, the lead will only use one device. A smartphone or computer. Unfortunately it's often not as straightforward and the information chain will be broken due to the multiple devices being used blocking the tracking.

Cross-device (or cross-channel) tracking is only possible when a lead is logged in on multiple device or with a custom API integration that looks at common unique identifier over multiple systems. A common example for high ticket sales is a call center tracking software with website integration through Dynamic Number Insertion. This allows to aggregate web sessions with phone call ID's.

ads tracking

PPC tracking troubleshooting

Tracking is mostly being troubleshooted for conversion tracking on PPC ads campaign. Google ads and Facebook Ads have their own code snippet for tracking. There are instances where these are not performing well by either not tracking sessions or more common storing duplicated conversions. Browser extensions such as Adblock Plus will compromise the tracking of a website.

There are workaround solutions using URL parameters being passed through but these are never 100% failsafe. In that case we have to fallback to traditional MODELS to get a starting point or fill up gaps. These traditional marketing principles have become more important than ever.

We create data centric custom systems

Understanding the general client lifecycle of an account with existing client models is the most important aspect in understanding the success (or failure) of a campaign. Our agency only handles 1 or 2 account at a time and only in the outbuilding construction industry. We understand well the outbuilding construction models and will use your current models to develop data centric custom systems following your goals and challenges.

We don’t reinvent the wheel, we just optimize better by setting up the right tracking to collect new data.

High ticket purchases closes better on the phone. Most post & beam construction companies with website product configurators have to get on a call with clients at some point. Retargeting by SMS the configuration or just eluding and creating a point of contact other than email increases website KPI.

Advantages of tracking conversion

Conversion tracking helps you better understand how your customers engage with your business and take desirable actions, whether signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase.

A conversion is a customer action aligned with the goals of your marketing or advertising campaigns.
Conversion tracking is the monitoring of conversions to assess the success of your campaigns.

Tracking conversions can maximize your ROI, inform your budget, identify improvement areas and distinguish clicks from conversions.

add to cart mobile

What is conversion tracking?

Conversion tracking is the monitoring of conversions, or of consumer actions that move your company closer to fulfilling a preset goal. These actions can include a customer buying an item, adding something to their cart, opening your emails, clicking on links, landing pages, and more. The metrics tracked indicate how well your company’s marketing efforts, whether email marketing or social media advertising, are achieving the desired outcome with your target audience.

interacting with clients on a call

Understanding conversion tracking

Conversion tracking works by putting numbers to your marketing campaigns’ results. Through conversion tracking, you’ll learn how many people in your audience are contacting your company, subscribing to your mailing list or buying your products. Conversion tracking is most commonly used in advertising and email marketing campaigns, though you can apply it to any campaign involving clickable links that direct your audience toward a desired end goal.

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Feb 28
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Effortless Way To Turn Bad Reviews To Five-Stars

By Engaging No Comments

Effortless Way To Turn Bad Reviews To Five-Stars

Social proof is important. Looking at reviews before making a purchasing decision has become part of the high ticket sale diaspora. BBB, TrustPilot, Google Reviews are daunting review platforms for established companies but certainly gives an edge to an organization when compared to competitors that are not reviewed anywhere.

Allowing your company to "intercept" negative reviews before they make any damages is possible even on a third-party review platform. A review management software allows you to do just that! Let's have a look at a case study and the impact on Google Review.

review analysis

“79% of online users report trusting online reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends or family.”

Reputation Statistics 2022statuslabs.com

Customers read reviews prior to buying

Outbuilding construction companies keep away from online review platforms for several reasons. There are clients that are impossible to satisfy. A percentage of clients will show discontent for various reasons before or after the last payment. Many companies will consider giving up on the all the benefits of online reviews altogether because it can take ages to reverse the damage done with a top negative comment on Google Review, TrustPilot or BBB.

Review interception is not a new thing and has certainly added more visibility to outbuilding construction companies that needed it online. 93% of customers read online reviews before buying a product according to recent surveys. Reviews cannot be considered as insignificant anymore.

Negative reviews can be intercepted

Our client are looking for ways to optimize and keep control on their reviews. A negative feedback blocking process is possible to achieve. This can be done by adding a user interface integration that will show your clients an environment to create a review that will go through you first. That way your team can handle the complaints or bad review and choose to allow a review to go live or not.

What is online reputation management?

Online reputation management is the act of proactively creating and managing customer perception about your brand online. It determines how people perceive your business when they find you online. It primarily includes your online reviews and the comments that people leave about your business on social media.

“To read past customer experiences directly from the source, social proof is the level of credibility that the public provides to a service or product. The more people that use, or enjoy a product, the more likely others are to follow.”

Reputation Statistics 2022statuslabs.com

What is the value of business reputation management?

Business reputation management is how a brand is viewed and perceived by its customers, stakeholders, and the market as a whole. It is the most valuable asset that a business can have. When customers think of doing business with you, they want to be assured that not only will the product satisfy their needs, the experience of doing business with your company will be great as well.

Online reputation management
The stronger your brand’s reputation, the greater is the willingness to pay for your product or service and that results in greater profits for your business. Your brand’s reputation is therefore critical for your success. This is why your brand’s reputation has actual value.

Effortless Way To Turn Bad Reviews To Five-Stars

Social proof is important. Looking at reviews before making a purchasing decision has become part of the high ticket sale diaspora. BBB, TrustPilot, Google Reviews are daunting review platforms for established companies but certainly gives an edge to an organization when compared to competitors that are not reviewed anywhere.

Allowing your company to "intercept" negative reviews before they make any damages is possible even on a third-party review platform. A review management software allows you to do just that! Let's have a look at a case study and the impact on Google Review.

review analysis

Customers read reviews prior to buying

Outbuilding construction companies keep away from online review platforms for several reasons. There are clients that are impossible to satisfy. A percentage of clients will show discontent for various reasons before or after the last payment. Many companies will consider giving up on the all the benefits of online reviews altogether because it can take ages to reverse the damage done with a top negative comment on Google Review, TrustPilot or BBB.

Review interception is not a new thing and has certainly added more visibility to outbuilding construction companies that needed it online. 93% of customers read online reviews before buying a product according to recent surveys. Reviews cannot be considered as insignificant anymore.

Negative reviews can be intercepted

Our client are looking for ways to optimize and keep control on their reviews. A negative feedback blocking process is possible to achieve. This can be done by adding a user interface integration that will show your clients an environment to create a review that will go through you first. That way your team can handle the complaints or bad review and choose to allow a review to go live or not.

What is online reputation management?

Online reputation management is the act of proactively creating and managing customer perception about your brand online. It determines how people perceive your business when they find you online. It primarily includes your online reviews and the comments that people leave about your business on social media.

What is the value of business reputation management?

Business reputation management is how a brand is viewed and perceived by its customers, stakeholders, and the market as a whole. It is the most valuable asset that a business can have. When customers think of doing business with you, they want to be assured that not only will the product satisfy their needs, the experience of doing business with your company will be great as well.

Online reputation management
The stronger your brand’s reputation, the greater is the willingness to pay for your product or service and that results in greater profits for your business. Your brand’s reputation is therefore critical for your success. This is why your brand’s reputation has actual value.

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Feb 24
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How to Track Your High Ticket Leads

By Reporting No Comments

How to Track Your High Ticket Leads

Your CRM contains the information gathered by your sales team during an inbound or outbound call as well as email communications (hopefully). These information entries are made manually by your team and as such can be limited in details and difficult to decipher.

System entries in more advanced systems often starts before the sales call. This serves well to understand the purpose of the call, helps for lead nurturing to prepare the client for that call. Having a CRM organized that way helps by avoiding duplicated touchpoints and information that does not help to the sale and sales development.

“Did you know that calls and website visits can be aggregated under the history of one lead in a multi-channel source log with your own API integrator?”

Top Landing Page Statistics 2022cience.com

High-ticket vs. low-ticket

Our agency understands that high ticket sales outbuilding construction companies are typically not as advanced as low ticket retail e-commerce companies in digital marketing. This is particularly apparent when it comes to collecting the client's browsing information across multiple devices, which is not always an easy task. This is however getting easier as your sales mostly comes increasingly from inbound calls dialed from a smartphone to your sales representatives call center.

High-ticket tracking

This is quickly changing and we are pleased to witness high ticket call lead generation campaigns being tracked, analysed and greatly optimized simply with dynamic telephone number insertion on websites. This is easy to implement and allows companies to discover new ways of generating qualified callers and optimize based on results. This might sound complicated but it really isn't.

Lead generation for high-ticket sales

As a comparison, trade shows has often been the biggest source of qualified leads for many specialized outbuilding construction companies. At those events, leads are collected manually and retargeted later on. Your 1 or 2 representatives will write down as much information as they can on a prospective client and this of course will have it's limitations. In essence, the current technology allows us to do the same thing, but doesn't limit itself to trade shows, geographic location or volume.

Metadata aggregation process

Here is an example of a spreadsheet used for metadata aggregation. We use a spreadsheet like this before setting up an API connection with a client’s company CRM. If for some reason the data connection is not working as it should, we will have this log to troubleshoot ands still collect data. The process is fairly unlimited, as we do not have to worry about the number of fields added for 1 client.

Many bulk operations can be performed for matching duplicates and combining everything in one place for the various members of your team. This is really a cost effective way of collecting lead data. We can then setup reports that focus only on the data your sales or marketing director needs to see quickly to make a decision. This is the first milestone to a successful digital marketing campaign.

Prioritize tracking mechanisms

Tracking needs to be setup first otherwise the data isn’t reliable and incomplete. Companies that fail at this are also missing out on opportunities to optimize and remove resources from campaigns that do not produce ROI. This will expand your understand of your top client’s persona (in traditional marketing) and allow you developed the optimized campaigns using new means based on your existing models.

We are not trying to reinvent the wheel just make it more efficient. This is all done seamlesly and does not affect your brand’s image in a negative way, as it is all achieve with your client’s explicit conscent.

What is data aggregation?

Data aggregation is the process of gathering data and presenting it in a summarized format. The data may be gathered from multiple data sources with the intent of combining these data sources into a summary for data analysis. This is a crucial step, since the accuracy of insights from data analysis depends heavily on the amount and quality of data used.

It is important to gather high-quality accurate data and a large enough amount to create relevant results. Data aggregation is useful for everything from finance or business strategy decisions to product, pricing, operations, and marketing strategies.

What is an example of aggregate data?

Here is an example of aggregate data in business:

Companies often collect data on their online customers and website visitors. The aggregate data would include statistics on customer demographic and behavior metrics, such as average age or number of transactions.

This aggregated data can be used by the marketing team to personalize messaging, offers, and more in the user’s digital experience with the brand. It can also be used by the product team to learn which products are successful and which are not. And furthermore, the data can also be used by company executives and finance teams to help them choose how to allocate budget towards marketing or product development strategies.

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Feb 21
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Guide in Building Landing Pages For House Movers

By Engaging No Comments

Guide in Building Landing Pages For House Movers

LPO stands for Landing Page Optimization. A landing page is a funnel layer with a predefined goal. In high ticket sales the goal is The Sales Call. If your leads takes on a predictable path before placing a call or making an online purchase, you want to optimize that path removing all possible impediments and distractions.

“Build a strong testing strategy, implement it step by step, target precisely, and stay creative.”

What is a landing page for?

The purpose of the landing page is to achieve 1 goal and only one path. Think of a landing page as a website product page or contact page without menu navigations to your blog or other sections to your website. The only way to measure it's efficacy and optimize based on the results is to remove the multiple variables that creates difficult outcomes to evaluate.

Which landing page type works best?

We find that short landing pages for lead generation works better and long form for conversion. However our agency doesn't optimize landing page for online conversion since we only deal with outbuilding construction high ticket sales that often use product configurators. We generate phone list for SMS nurturing. We typically try get the both the email and phone number to maximize the touch point. These leads are being pre-qualified with sales questions in a form.

Optimize landing pages based on goals

Here is an example of a short landing page for generating a segmented list based on geographic regions. These segment are to be nurtured for example “following logistics requirements” for shipping products to those regions.

A landing page like this one requires volume and the campaign data (such as keyword and ads group) is submitted with the form by getting injected within hidden fields. This will aggregate and allow us to optimize the campaigns based on your campaign’s goals eg. generating qualified callers, retargeting current leads, upselling, expand to a new region or State, etc.

What is landing page optimization?

Landing page optimization can be defined as a process of improving the performance of various page elements and ensure that they get your business the highest possible conversions from visitors who arrive on these targeted pages. It is a subset of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and includes methods like A/B Testing to help lower your customer acquisition cost and maximize your ad spend value.

What is a landing page?

A landing page is a web page where visitors land and see your brand’s offerings. But, in terms of marketing, it’s typically a standalone page, which is different from other site pages including your homepage. It serves a singular and more focused purpose – to lead visitors to a specific product, service or offer, and encourage them to take the desired action.

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Feb 19
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Win Sales Objections Through SMS

By Engaging No Comments

Win Sales Objections Through SMS

Training sales for high ticket clients is challenging. Generally not an appealing career path, which of course does have an effect on the available manpower for the position, can be alleviated with proper client nurturing before the first call. Sales staff will prefer handling easy sales. Often this will translate into “less sales”.

Hot leads in high volume do not comes all year long, and sometimes on a 2-3 year cycle. With the solutions for seasonal dips addressed in our Roving Plans Sales blog article and nurturing will make a significative difference. Cooler leads can be warmed up with pre-handled objections with bespoke targeted (educational) nurturing sequences.

“To master handling objections, you need to prepare responses to common rebuttals from your leads to regain the upper-hand.”

Overcoming Objections in Salesblog.close.com

Main objections examples

In the outbuilding construction niche we find that the following below are typically the main objections. Some of these can be pre-handled, the others are harder or impossible to handle because of the complexity that it would require in pre-handling (ex. neighbor or spousal objections).

The later are often handled by sales representatives on a day to day basis. Long Lead Times: “see our latest reviews”, “hand-holding automated approach up to the delivery”, “our suppliers and compared lead time”, “best prices”, “no waste in pre-cut kits”, “highest quality”, “outstanding support”, “headaches free”, etc.

Highlight why your brand is better

When faced with a client on the fence due to long lead times, there is a number of pre-handling gambits that will help. If it’s a timeline incompatibility issue there isn’t anything anyone can do, especially if it’s a seasonal project. What we find works best however is having a general bird-eye recommendation approach from observations of the market; lines such as “everyone is experiencing the same current lead time issues”.

Your competitors also have similar lead times so it’s up to your company to make a difference at the post-sale/pre-delivery level nurturing process. Timely information sent on the different aspects of the different requirements for site preparation, alleviating anxiety for other common issues, information and content marketing on hiring online for clients that requires contracting an assembler for pre-cut kits for example. YouTube videos on different topics of concerns for a build. Preparing for delivery to avoid unwanted issues and secure a positive testimonial or online review, etc. all make a difference on the perceived long lead times.

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