Contact your leads within 5 minutes or you are wasting your time (and money)

Marketing technology continues to revolutionize the efficiency with which marketers and entrepreneurs generate sales online. It’s a good thing, too, given how COVID-19 has basically taken in-person sales off the table for the foreseeable future.

Recent studies have shown that the key to getting effective results online is in responding to a lead within 5 minutes or less and persistently following up throughout the sales process. It’s also shocking how few companies are actually doing this.

That is why, now more than ever, it is important to find the right marketing tools to connect your sales team to your leads ASAP and to develop effective nurturing processes. We’ve compiled this list of innovative marketing tools to help you do just that:

Drift

How it helps: reducing lead response times on your website with chat

Drift is best known for being the company that coined the phrase “conversational marketing”. They are also one of the few companies to really speak to the critical need to connect with a sales lead within five minutes of lead creation.

Drift is a powerful pre-sales marketing tool for your website, boasting a wealth of features and integration possibilities that help you connect with your leads quicker. The flip side is that it can be a bit much to navigate and get started.

As arguably the best-in-class website chat technology, Drift carries a premium price tag. One thing to consider with Drift is whether this dynamic platform is overkill for what you need on your website, considering a number of more affordable alternatives on the market.

EyeLevel.ai

How it helps: reducing lead response times in your paid media, email marketing, and on your website with chat

EyeLevel.ai positions itself as the Drift of paid media, offering an online sales-focused chat solution for LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads, and the digital exchanges. They also offer a website chat and email marketing integration in case you prefer to use a single chat vendor.

The EyeLevel.ai platform is exclusively focused on reducing lead response times and may not support some of the scheduling and email capabilities that Drift does. However, because of that focus, they offer unique sales alerting capabilities to draw the attention of your sales reps to hot leads and built-in integrations with popular marketing and sales tools to enable a seamless handoff.

EyeLevel.ai is unique in that they offer complimentary creative and technical support throughout onboarding, with pricing options for ongoing account support. If you’re primarily interested in enabling your sales team to close more sales from your online marketing efforts, EyeLevel.ai makes a ton of sense as a single chat solution.

CallPage

How it helps: reducing lead response times on your website with phone calls

CallPage is a chat-like solution for your website in that your leads engage with CallPage through a widget in the lower right corner of your website. Instead of click-to-chat, the CallPage widget enables your potential customers to quickly connect with your sales team over the phone.

Like EyeLevel.ai and Drift, CallPage espouses the many benefits of responding quickly to your leads. They take the interesting approach of exclusively promoting phone as the medium of communication. If you are a company that prefers to engage with your leads over the phone, this could be the tool for you.

The danger of choosing CallPage is that there is mounting evidence that people prefer chat as the primary means of communication with a brand, particularly early in the sales process. With an EyeLevel.ai or Drift solution, you could still offer the option to connect on the phone from chat. Exclusively promoting communications over the phone may actively discourage some leads from ever engaging with your sales team.

Plann3r

How it helps: scheduling meetings with leads

Plann3r is an awesome scheduling tool that differentiates itself from its competitors through personalization. Their platform makes it easy to customize the look and feel of your calendar page.

Plann3r integrates with many of the customer relationship management (CRM) and email tools on the market today. Their platform also offers automation capabilities to help keep your calendars and contacts in sync with your CRM.

With subscriptions starting at $3/month, Plann3r is a very powerful and affordable scheduling solution that will help you book more meetings with your leads.

Loom

How it helps: re-engaging with leads with video-based content

Loom helps you create and integrate video messages into your website and outbound sales and marketing campaigns. Common use cases include responding to customer inquiries, sharing product demos, personalizing follow-ups, and onboarding new clients.

Loom claims that recording a video is 6x faster than typing an email and a much more engaging way to respond to your prospective customers. While video may not make sense for every scenario, there are many instances where it can help put a human face on your company. Loom can be a very powerful addition to your lead nurturing campaigns.

PipeDrive

How it helps: tracking and communicating with leads in a timely manner

PipeDrive is a CRM that automatically advises and alerts you on the next actions you need to take at every stage of a deal. It also boasts a powerful, easy-to-implement lead scoring system to help your sales team focus on the hottest leads.

PipeDrive works well in tandem with the marketing tools on this list to help with nurturing, managing, and tracking leads as you convert them into sales.

Conclusion

Due to unceasing innovation in the marketing technology space, a number of sales-enabling solutions have recently been brought to the market. We highlighted some of the most effective solutions that can help you weather the tough economic times ahead of us. Here are some closing questions to consider when choosing the best marketing tools for your business:

  • What use cases do you absolutely need to support through your online marketing efforts and which are “nice to have”?
  • What channels are most important to your overall strategy?
  • What prevents your company from quickly adopting new tools?
  • What will create the best experience for your potential customers?
  • What new processes will your sales team adopt?

Only you can answer these questions for your business, but maybe you don’t have to just yet. The tools in our list all offer free trials. It may be worth taking the time to test them out before making an informed decision.