Lost Leads- How To Get Them Back In The Sales Funnel?

 14 Feb, 2020

Lost Leads- How To Get Them Back In The Sales Funnel?

Do unto others as you would have others do to you – a commandment according to biblical reference. If you could closely look into the depth of its meaning, you will be able to understand many things that will add to the productivity of your work in general. 

Coming to our title, ‘How to carry out Lead Recovery and make it successful’, the fact that I mentioned above holds good directly. When you think from a businessman’s point of view, you might think in technical terms. 

If you put on the cap of a user, you will be able to create a positive impact in recovering lost leads as you will understand what exactly held you hanging in the mid-air before finishing the purchase deal. This perspective tilt definitely will, ladies and gentlemen, help you to recover your lost leads.

1. Synopsis – The troubled eCommerce businessman, Mr. Anuj. 

Mr. Anuj was working in an MNC for 10 years and wanted to have a venture of his own. After settling his family and securing a financial backup, he started the journey towards his dreams. He has his business plan all set and had his website set as well. He did not opt for having a shop to sell organic vegetables and fruits. He had his packing agents set pan India and had direct contact with the farmers. The initial days of his business had so many promotional activities and he got carried away with those. Slowly, he started to observe the growth graph and it troubled him. He wasn’t able to understand why his potential customers turned out as lost leads. This troubled Mr. Anuj very much that he started to think seriously about setting up a shop to proceed with the business. 

2. Recovering lost leads – Setting up a new shop vs hiring a growth hacker

Mr. Anuj was in a dilemma now. He was not able to understand the issue exactly and thus was not sure if he had to go ahead with setting up a shop or to persist on with just the online business. His wife Ms. Anju then gave a suggestion that made him think twice. 

The cost of setting up the shop was pretty much and given the whole situation and even though Mr. Anuj was ready to take the risk to make the initial investment, Ms. Anju suggested to first do a trial and error with hiring a growth hacker since Mr. Anuj didn’t have any clue regarding the lost leads. She reminded Anuj that when it comes to business, anything until it succeeds is a risk. Also, ‘no pain without gain’ after all. 

So, Mr. Anuj contacted one of the best digital marketing firms to hire a growth hacker. It is now Ms. Eliza comes on board to help out Mr. Anuj & Ms. Anju. 

3. All focus on recovering lost leads

Ms. Eliza has a discussion with Mr. Anuj to gain a perspective about the business first. And then, she focuses on her domain. She asked for the details of the website hosting and asked if there was someone who is maintaining the website. 

Mr. Anuj told her that no one was maintaining the website and that he didn’t do much on the maintenance aspect. Ms. Eliza got the website credentials from Mr. Anuj and told that she will get back after analyzing the website thoroughly. 

Being a growth hacker, she was fully focused on 

  • Recovering lost leads; and 
  • Checking for the other flaws that contributed to lost leads. 

4. Lead Recovery – An analytic report

Ms. Eliza first checks for the website design aspect like,

  1. The aesthetics of the website
  2. The color theme and the layout
  3. The call to action button.

She checks the above basics first. Then she understands that the website was actually doing well from those perspectives, still, there was an issue which was not letting Mr. Anuj’s business progress. Ms. Eliza then checked the other areas which needed a run through regularly. It was then she figured out that the lead recovery demanded more things to be done. She now works on the other parameters that might contribute to the lost leads

The main loophole that she identified in the process was, ‘there was no follow up’. This literally lost leads just like that. When she did the analysis completely and prepared a report, she mentions that the way to recovering lost leads had to start from connecting, responding and reconnecting to connect the dots and bring back life to Mr. Anuj’s business. And for that, she comes up with her strategy to solve this issue. 

5. Ms. Eliza’s Lead Recovery Strategy

Ms. Eliza meets Mr. Anuj with a detailed report of the issues that significantly contributed to the lost leads. And then she goes on to explain the reason why he was not able to progress in his business – lack of follow up mainly. Then she starts to explain the reasons one by one. The following are the bullet points are her strategic solution to the lead recovery issue and she made a note of them in her report in the following way. 

5.1. Create a simple check out procedure

After shopping on the website, customers will definitely expect a smooth check out process. 

Things to avoid here:

1.Filling forms for the survey and similar things
2. To have limited payment options.

If at the time of checking out, there are many formalities to take care such as filling out forms or lack of payment options, customers are not going to wait and fill out patiently and think of their alternative payment options. 

This trend is all about getting things done instantly. In this scenario, it is wise to keep things simple. This is a place where the majority of lost leads happen. From the selection of the product and add to cart and opting for the payment options, everything needs to be very simple and easy. 

Having a sophisticated design of the website in these areas will definitely not help. Also, the payment gateway is very crucial. Today’s scenario has many options and therefore, make sure your lost leads don’t happen at this juncture due to the non-availability of payment options.

5.2. Pose questions about cart status from time to time

Well, there are times when we might abandon the online purchase due to reasons of many kinds. Maybe we might have got an important call and would have had to follow up on some urgent work and would have completely forgotten about the cart or maybe due to lack of money at that point in time and so on. 

Tips to check upon the hiccup situation:

1. Send a ‘Hey! Did you forget something?’ kind of messages over emails.
2. Pop up a friendly message through SMS text 

Inform them that the product that they have in their cart has priced down than what it was when they were about to purchase then. This is a proven way of recovering lost leads

5.3. Retargeting Strategy

Retargeting is a useful protocol that will remind you softly about what you were up for purchasing sometime back. This will fasten up the loose ends of lost leads. When you browse through and find out that the products that you were searching for appear again in another webpage, it will create a psychological reminder bell. That way, you get to go back and finish the purchase which contributes to the positive lead recovery process. 

So, it is essential that you retarget without overdoing it. This will contribute to the productive growth of the business and in this process lost leads turn into conversions.

5.4. Digital Marketing Campaigns

Digital Marketing Strategies is yet another reliable way of recovering lost leads. There are many faces to digital marketing like 

1.Facebook Ads 
2.PPC campaigns 
3.Instagram post-boost, etc. 

When someone is browsing and navigating from one social media platform to another, these digital marketing strategies are sure to target lost leads and make them into conversions. The power of visual advertisements popping up on social media platforms has proven return on investments. 

So, in order to have a successful business, recovering lost leads is very beneficial. Running digital marketing campaigns from time to time helps to get back onto the lost leads.

5.5. Nurture all the way till a sale and from thereon as well

It always feels good when some pamper us. This holds good in sales. Things to do when you identify a potential buyer or a potential lead

1. You need to make sure that they are listened to and their needs and requirements are noted down. 
2. You need to make sure your leads feel your customer care.
3.Pop-up message to make sure that they are having good UX

Most lost leads happen when proper attention isn’t given to the customers. The way they are treated matters a lot. So since the online sales are all computerized, you need to make sure your leads feel the care. Hence it is important that you make the whole process at ease for them. 

This will definitely have a positive aspect of the business. Even though they may not purchase, you still need to render maximum service. A pop-up message to make sure that they are having good UX and that their shopping is going on well so far. All these extra efforts will definitely help to recover lost leads.  

5.6. Customer Service on alert always

It is the work of the customer service team to make the customers feel that they are treated well. When there is any issue during the online purchase, customer service needs to stay alert all the time to look into the following:

1. To make sure that customers are taken care of during the whole purchase/shopping time 
2. To make sure that they are having a smooth check out process 

These tips will land in a sale. If there is a customer who needs help, and the customer services monitor them and find them, they shouldn’t even think of calling up immediately to resolve the issue that the customer is facing. These small gestures will definitely help to retain the potential customers and also, get back the lost leads

5.7. Surprise gifts for regular customers

It is a good thing to reward loyalty with royalty. Customers who have been consistent and have made sure that they have brought about some leads by word of mouth marketing will definitely make sure to stay loyal for the quality of the product and the service as well. So, when a customer comes back to purchase on your website try doing the following

1.A surprise gift on their purchase
2. Coupons having a discount for the next purchase
3.Promo Code on external eCommerce purchases if they spend a certain amount of money.

These steps will obviously leave a mark in their mind to make sure to come back and purchase again. A lost lead on returning back will not only fetch a sale when the complete purchase is done but also when the element of surprise gift comes into the picture, who knows, you might end up having more new customers on board and this is a very appealing way in recovering the lost leads. 

5.8. Social Media Lead Recovery

Today’s world is completely living in the digital world. From the business point of view, more than just the website, it is essential to make sure you have your presence on all the social media platforms as well. Lost leads from the websites may end up finishing the purchase process from ant of the social media platform. This is why social media lead recovery means a lot. Whether or not you find potential customers from your websites, you will definitely find customers from social media platforms due to the fact that people today are spending the majority of their time on social media platforms. Try the following tips:

1. Running Facebook Ads from time to time 
2.Run promoted posts and ads on all the other social media platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, etc

Being into business, especially at this point in time, you need to make sure you make the best use of all the digital elements available to you. In that case, focusing on social media Lead recovery protocols will definitely have a positive impact on your business that leads to more conversions

6. Mr. Anuj’s gratefulness

When once Ms. Eliza completely explained the important strategies of Lead Recovery, Mr. Anuj was really happy to have hired Ms. Eliza. He told her that he wasn’t aware of all the technical entities of digital marketing, especially about the Lead Recovery strategies and protocols. It was then Ms. Eliza told him that she became interested in these minute details initially becoming a specialist in growth hacking. 

Growth Hacking is a part of Digital Marketing that will find out and focus on exclusive areas that need special attention. It was when she heard about the issue from Mr. Anuj, she guessed that this area of Lead recovery needed to be looked into and she was right after all. 

Mr. Anuj was grateful that he approached the digital marketing option after this troubleshooting session. After a couple of months, Mr. Anuj started to see the fruits of going through this whole process.

7. Conclusion

In the above situation, we saw how Lead Recovery was essential in Mr. Anuj’s business. It holds good for any business as a matter of fact. These days, many new companies are doing the right thing by taking the help of the digital marketing team even at the starting stages of the business. This has become a mandatory process currently. 

Ever since the digital era and digital marketing became important fathoming parameters to judge the success of a business, special attention needs to be given to these areas for sure. Customers are out there on the digital platform. They browse through the products and even go up to the level of bringing them on the cart. At times, due to so many unforeseen reasons, they might not complete the sales process. In that case, they become lost leads. 

It is then the above-discussed strategies need to be implemented in order to recover the lost leads. Recovering lost leads not only helps in making a sale but also contributes to the overall business development. So, by following the above discussed Lead Recovery strategies, you can make it successful. 

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