While on a recent run (Ok, jog) around the neighborhood, I headed up the steepest climb, rocking out to Sticky Fingers (who doesn’t love the Stones?).  As I made my slow uphill progress, I heard another sound that I couldn’t quite place.  I removed my earphones and saw three neighborhood kids cheering me on from their vantage point in the backyard.  I smiled, waved and felt re-energized by this impromptu cheer.

Oddly enough, it also made me think about website visitors and leads – and how, in many cases, you don’t really know who your fans…your site visitors…really are.  It’s like leaving money on the table because these visitors are interested enough to come to your site, yet unless they contact you directly, you’ll never know who they are, what product they are interested in, etc.

For example, when you use Google Analytics, you can see useful aggregate data and trends but you cannot drill into visitor behavior (aka ‘your fans’) on a granular, individual level.  Additionally, when you send an email using one of the popular email service providers, you can see who has opened/clicked on an email but you can’t take the tracking past that initial click.

Marketing automation software can bridge this gap between aggregate anonymous traffic and identifying your supporters.  If someone completes a form on your website, they are no longer an anonymous visitor, and you can now track their current visit, future visits and also add them to future email campaigns (if they opted in).  Once the people in your database interact with an email you’ve sent, they are recognizable within the software so all past, present and future visits are fully trackable.

This type of visitor intelligence can quickly become addictive and you’ll be able to think of website visitors as leads…

•    See the company name of anonymous visitors (by way of their business class IP address) to give your outbound callers a great starting point for calling efforts
•    Gauge what topics or offers produce the greatest number of repeat visitors to your website so you can tailor web messaging, special offers, etc.
•    Store your lead’s site visits, email activity, pages viewed, etc. in one central location so you can create lists based on attributes OR behavior
•    Associate lead sources with specific visitors to send more relevant communications

As you can see, the possibilities of using this deeper tracking are really limitless.  By identifying and appreciating your fans (or leads) on an individual level, you’ll be able to build a relationship with your cheering squad to make climbing that big hill of lead generation a little easier.

>>Learn more about Net-Results website lead tracking.