Transcription
Today we're going to talk about one of those metrics that can really make or break your ROI in lead gen. And no, it's not conversion rates. It's not your cost per lead. Although both of those metrics really do matter. But this metric that we're going to be talking about, it's contact rates.
Here's how I think about it. If your contact rates are low, then your conversion rates and your CPLs don't really matter because nobody's getting on the phone and actually selling anything to the lead. Low contact rates lead to unhappy lead buyers and unhappy clients and poor retention rates that ultimately negatively impacts your business. I'm not here to be all doom and gloom. That's just the reality of the situation. And that's why we're going to be talking today all about how to improve your contact rates so you can keep your clients or your lead buyers happy. And so this way you can make more money whether you are selling leads as a lead seller or you're an agency.
First, since there's so many terms thrown around in the marketing space, let's just make sure we're on the same page. What do I mean by contact rates? Well, simply talking about what happens after the lead clicks submit. Does the lead pick up the phone? And when they pick up the phone, do they actually want to hear from the person who's calling them? And like all things in marketing, you can assign a formula to figure out contact rates. And I'm sure some people really love to make this complicated because that's lead gen for you, but I like to keep things simple. So, the way that I think about contact rates and the formula that I use is super simple. Contact rates equals the number of contactable leads divided by the attempts times 100.
So think about it this way. If you were to call 100 of your leads and 20 of those people answer, you're running at about a 20% contact rate. And in some industries, that's actually pretty standard. But obviously, no matter what industry you're in, you want that number to be as high as possible because more contacts equals more opportunities to drive more revenue. And who doesn't like more revenue? So we obviously want that contact rate number to be up as high as possible. It will never be 100%, but the higher we can get it, the better. So, that's why we're about to dive into the three things that you can do to start increasing your contact rates. And before I dive into it, it's worth noting that none of what I'm sharing with you today is theory. Everything that I'm showing with you today is based on what's working for the top lead generators and performance marketers over at leadcapture.io.
When it comes to contact rates, there's actually a ton that you can do. But to keep this video short, I'm just focusing on the top three things that I see working right now outside of the generic advice like follow up as soon as possible. Follow up fast, be on top of your lead. Of course, you have to do that stuff. So, let's just dive into some of the things that I see working the best.
Being number one, verify that the lead actually gave you a real phone number. If the phone number isn't real, then the lead usually isn't any good. I can't really think of many circumstances where you would want a lead with a bad phone number. So that's why at the very least it's usually a pretty good idea to be using some form of phone verification to increase contact rates. Now phone verification itself doesn't guarantee that the lead is actually going to answer, but it does filter out your spam, your low intent leads and all the garbage that ultimately drains your resources and the time and morale of whoever is following up.
Now when it comes to verification, there are two ways to verify your leads. You can do it either after submission or at the point of capture right in the phone field. I personally recommend doing it right in the phone field. So that way it is a seamless process and you can get all of this clean verified leads into your backend CRM or lead distribution tool, whatever tool you're using. Inside lead capture, we offer what we call OTP phone verification. Here's what that looks like. So first the lead goes through your funnel and they answer a bunch of questions. Then they hit the phone field and they enter their phone number. Now, instead of letting them go through, we simply send them a four-digit PIN code. Once they receive the PIN code to their phone, they actually type it in, indicating that they're actually holding their phone. And then boom, you just received a phone verified lead. And now this means less disconnected numbers, less fake submissions. And if you're sending SMS follow-up, this reduces risk on the SMS side, especially when it comes to TCPA compliance.
And with email, it's the same story. If you're sending follow-up email, like most people are these days, the last thing that you want to be doing is emailing invalid or disposable email addresses, that could increase bounce rates and impact deliverability. So, that's where real-time email verification comes into play. And check this out. In lead capture, it works pretty much the same way as the phone verification, except it happens in real time right inside the field. So, as the prospect begins to enter their email address, we're doing real-time lookups and making sure that there is actually a reachable address before the prospect is allowed to click submit. I just want to reinforce that verifying the contact details again does not necessarily mean that the prospect is going to pick up the phone or respond to your email, but it does increase the likelihood that you are contacting somebody who actually has real contact details, have more intent because they went through the process of verifying their contact details. If I'm submitting something like a roofing quote and I verify my phone number, there's a pretty good chance I actually want to hear from you.
Moving on to tip number two. Get your leads to your buyers fast. I really tried to emphasize fast. Hopefully you get the point. So, in sales, everyone talks about speed to lead. I think I even talked a little bit about it at the beginning of the video and said that's generic advice that everybody will give you. And I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that advice you should be following up fast. But I think we have to dig a little bit deeper here because I noticed in lead gen, the top lead generators and performance marketers think about this a little bit differently. They are also obsessing over how many seconds, and I mean seconds, it takes for a lead to go from the lead form or from their funnel to their lead buyer or their prospector into their back-end system. So, we're not quite talking about the point of follow-up. We're talking about getting the lead from point A to point B so somebody can follow up because if that point is broken, and if the lead isn't getting to fast enough into the backend system where all the follow-up is happening, then that's actually impacting your ability to follow up fast. And ideally, this transfer from the lead posting from your funnel into your systems needs to happen in seconds, not minutes. In fact, maybe even microseconds depending upon your industry, your business, and then the volume of leads that you're dealing with. And tying this to contact rates, if your system slows down or if it's taking too long for your leads to post into your systems where the follow-up happens, there's a pretty good chance that that is going to impact contact rates and you're going to see contact rates drop.
So, here's the big question about this, though. How do you actually control this? Because now we're getting into something pretty technical. Well, this is where your infrastructure must be on point and everything must be seamless. Your lead form to your CRM to your distribution tool, everything must be lightning fast. And typically, it helps to use as little tools as possible. For example, if you can get your lead to go from your lead form straight into your CRM or lead distribution tool instead of having some sort of middleware like a Zapier or Make in the middle, that does sometimes make a difference, especially when you reach huge volumes.
Number three, make it crystal clear who's going to be following up with that lead. People answer calls from names that they already recognize, so you can increase your chances of having higher contact rates by making it really obvious who the lead should expect to hear from before they actually hear from them. And there's two easy places to do this. First, within your compliance text, and yes, people actually read that. So, inside lead capture, you can insert the name of the company, or if you're an insurance or mortgage, the name of the agent or loan officer, who's going to be following up with the actual lead. The second big place to do this, and this is where I see the top performers really separating themselves, is going the extra mile and showing who's going to be following up with the lead right on the thank you page. And this is really where the magic happens. Here's the perfect thank you page framework for you to use. First, the moment that your lead clicks submit, the best practice here is to redirect the lead to a different page. And a page should have a headline that repeats the offer and then names the person or company who's going to be following up. For example, tell them who's going to actually be calling them. And then have a line below it that tells them when the follow-up is actually going to happen. For example, you're going to receive a phone call within the next 5 minutes. And then number three, one of my favorites, have a big CTA encouraging the lead to call right in. This is a great way to increase your inbound call rates. So you can essentially go from having a cold lead go through your funnel and submit to hitting the thank you page where you can build more trust, reconfirm the offer, and then actually have them call in to your lead buyer or your client.
That wraps up this video. That's how you can lift your contact rates quickly and reliably. Just as a quick summary, verify your phone numbers and your email addresses. Deliver leads instantly to your back-end tools and whoever is going to be following up. And then tell your leads exactly who's going to be following up with them. And if you got any value from this video, please hit like and subscribe. I'll see you next time.