by Scott on March 20, 2007
Our work thrives on contact and feedback from users so I have four ways for people to contact us. If you are considering adding contact methods, here is my anecdotal experience of what contact methods are most popular and two questions for you.
In order of most used contact method to least used contact method by LeadsOnRails demo and trial users:
- Contact/Feedback form built into the product
- Email
- Campfire chat room here
- Phone: (303-683-3522)
I think it’s no coincidence that the two asynchronous contact methods are the most popular choices. This could be for any number of reasons. Maybe there is not a need for immediate contact, or fear that any live contact will turn into a sales call, or that those top two contact methods are just simply the most convenient.
Do you find the same preference for online contact forms and email or do people contact you more directly? Am I missing any important contact methods?
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by Scott on March 19, 2007
We have several articles showing you how to use RSS and Digg and other tools to publicize your blog and to make it as easy as possible for people to find you – obviously and important part of your small business marketing plan.
Here’s another quick tip. Use FeedBurner (you are using FeedBurner, right?) and set up your blog to use SmartFeed. Described by the FeedBurner folks as an option that “translates your feed on-the-fly into a format (RSS or Atom) compatible with your visitors’ feed reader application”, this lets you have one feed link and is just another small step you can take to make it easier for people to subscribe. Something to help with ”#3-Be Heard” on the list of 7 Steps to Improved Small Business Marketing.
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by Scott on March 19, 2007
If you have not yet checked out AddThis.com, take a look. Addthis is self-described as “Simple and recognizable widgets to help your visitors save and promote your website or blog to the social bookmarking and feed reader services!”.
I would have just said that you can replace this:
with this:
When someone clicks the “Bookmark” button, they are brought to the above list of options. Keeps your blog nice and clean but still offer your readers their favorite social bookmarking options.
How to Add This
When you sign up for an account, AddThis will create the button code for you based on how you are using it (website, blog, etc.). Simply cut and paste and you’re good to go. If you are using Typo, I’ll post a shot howto on our Rails blog.
Measurement
AddThis also has button statistics built in so you can see how many times each bookmark or feed is collected.
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by Scott on March 19, 2007
I received a note from Barry Hess at Scrawlers reminding me that I signed up for a Scrawlers account, but had yet not logged in. (Scrawlers “embraces constraints” through stories of 100 words or less). I promptly signed in and posted my first three lines to Scrawlers that afternoon.
That email was a good example of the importance of occasional updates to your leads: your new and trial users who sometimes sign up, take a quick look, make a mental note to come back later, and then just forget to. The timing, content, and delivery of these emails visits, postcards, or calls are what I refer to as lead management.
Contact Managers vs. Lead Management Software
Barry’s was a simple email from his email client, I suspect. But what happens when he grows to hundreds and thousands of new users?
Maybe you are already there. That is where you start looking for small business lead management and contact management tools.
There are hundreds of tools available for online contact management and you could use one of those as your lead management software. But then you’d miss out on features that make for more effective lead management.
I’ve put together a quick list. The image at left is a preview of lead management software features.
Click here for a comparison of lead management software and contact management software.
Useful Reminders Work
The Scrawlers reminder prompted a new active user. After we at Synap Software send emails updates to trial users we always see login activity to accounts that had been inactive for a bit. Our reminder emails typically have useful information about a lead management feature or a small tutorial on lead management. This information both informs and reminds trial users why they initially had an interest in our lead management product. [Note: We do not monitor our users’ detailed use of the system, but do monitor login activity and user counts to help provide better service and understand aggregate usage patterns.]
Do you use trail-user management, lead management, or contact management software to keep your trial- and new-users informed and reminded of your product? We’d love to hear any experiences of how it’s worked out.
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