The use of lead generation tools are a key factor in any business’s success today. With alternatives to your solution being easily found due to the internet, it can be difficult to attract customers to your site and win them. Thankfully, there are tools out there to help you generate leads with the sole focus to drive sales.
Lead generation is more than just driving traffic to your site; it is also about gathering their personal information. Not in a creepy way, but in a way that makes it easier to follow up with them in order to start a conversation about your offering. By collecting their information, you are able to turn your casual traffic into loyal customers.
This all sounds fantastic, but you do need to have the right tools in place, the right strategy, and the right team. This is why we put together this post to help you decide what tool would best fit your lead generation efforts.
The Breakdown of Lead Generation Tools
Before we dive into the lead generation tools we think are best suited for the job, there are a few types of tools to be discussed when it comes to lead generation.
First, there are email marketing features that help you send out emails to your leads. These tools help you with templates, targeting, intent tracking, retargeting, and more. These are great tools for companies looking to ramp up their marketing campaigns.
Second, there are email address finders. These tools are self-explanatory from their category name. They are tools to help you discover key decision-makers’ email addresses so you can add them to your email marketing list.
Lastly, there are prospecting and outreach tools. These are tools to help you turn those contacts into leads and then sales. They are typically automated and help you turn contacts and website visitors into leads.
Now there are more tools than these, but these are the ones we find most important when you are searching for lead generation tools. You can also use CRM’s, sales tools, advertising tools, and more. Those tools are ones that most companies are already using, such as Google Analytics and Salesforce (or another CRM). But when a business is first looking to expand into using lead generation specific tools, these are ones we find extremely helpful.
Constant Contact
If you have a large list of emails or are looking for email marketing alternatives, Constant Contact has some great features that will level up your email marketing. With some of the highest regarded customer support, you will always have an answer when you are looking for it. They also offer online training and webinars to help your team achieve success. Constant Contact uses beautifully created and customizable templates so your email marketing stays consistent with your business branding. Then use their robust analytics to help track behaviour on your emails in real-time.
Sendinblue
Sendinblue is a complete marketing automation software that allows you to achieve your email marketing needs and your SMS and chat needs. With a drag and drop builder, you can create a beautiful email design with your own personal touch that your leads will love. With their highly engaging email builder, you can ensure that you are keeping your companies branding consistent and build automated workflows to help your team. With these automated workflows, you can also allow the system to decide when the best time is to send the emails to your list and increase your open rates.
Hunter
If you are on the hunt for emails and contact information, then Hunter can be a powerful tool for you and your team. Just type in the company’s domain that you would like to identify contract details for, and it will find the email address pattern. Hunter also includes a confidence rating so you can determine which emails are most likely to be accurate and active. Hunter also shows you where the email is sourced from and what those sources are to build your confidence in using the contact details provided. With over 100 million emails indexed, Hunter is a very powerful tool your business can leverage.
Voila Norbert
Viola Norbert promises to help you find and verify the email addresses you are searching for. You can search for bulk leads by using a CSV file or manually searching for the most interested ones. With up to a 98.5% success rate, you can be confident that the B2B email addresses you are searching for will be indexed within their system. And just to make your life that much easier, Voila Norbert offers a Chrome extension that allows you to search for leads when you need them, easily. After you have found the leads you need, you can then integrate with your favourite tool or CRM and send your leads where you need them to go.
Visitor Queue
A tool we built, Visitor Queue generates a unique tracking script for you to place on your website in order to track visitors to your site. We then filter out any ISPs or network providers and solely show you the anonymous companies that visited your site. With over 98% of your website visitors leaving your site without leaving a way for you to follow up, these visitors can be critical to your business’s success. This is why we not only provide you with the companies that visited your website, but also their visit details, company information, and contacts at that company. We also integrate with over 1,000 CRMs and MAPs to help you get your leads where you need them to go! Now you have the ability to see who was on your site, what they did, and a way to follow up.
Prospect.io
Prospect.io handles both prospecting and outreach by allowing you to find and verify your prospects’ emails, then reach out to them via email automation. Through their customizable email templates, you can create the email you want and send it to the leads you found and verified. With this all-in-one tool, your appointment setters and account executives can save time jumping from platform to platform and performing the tasks they need in one place. After you have followed up with your leads, you can track all your interaction data within the tool, then integrate it with your data centralization tool to store your data.
OutreachPlus
OutreachPlus is one of the many multi-purpose lead generation software tools on the market. But it stands out by letting you create, send, track and automate all of your emails. This tool helps you find the best prospects for your future outreach based on responses to your campaigns (past or current). Having this level of intelligence and automation built into the tool you are using allows your team to focus on what they need to achieve, sales. No more running around to different tools and using different strategies to find the best leads. You can now leverage the use of automation and AI.
How To Decide On The Best Lead Generation Tool
Unfortunately, these tools are not a one size fits all tool. Sometimes other tools like Enterprise League, the business platform for SMEs will benefit you more based on your current marketing strack. This is why it is important to look at the tools you are currently using and identify the gaps in information. By understanding where you can benefit, you can find a tool that fits in that space perfectly. In some cases, you may need one or two (or more) tools to fill the gap in the information you currently have. In other cases, you might just need a way to lookup email addresses and you are set.
All of these tools allow for a free trial of some sort, and it is important to utilize these as it will give you a real-world, hands-on experience. This will allow you to understand if the interface, data, and compatibility are right for your team and existing tools. Don’t be afraid to try multiple tools and contact their support for any questions you may have. If you have any hesitation during their short trial and it goes unanswered, it could cause headaches down the road. Express your concerns with the tools support team and see if there is a simple solution or a solution at all.
Author Bio
Nick Hollinger is the CEO and Co-founder of Visitor Queue. Currently working with ~5000 companies across the globe including Microsoft and Jones Lang Lasalle. In his spare time, he is also the Game Day Director for one of Canada’s most successful Junior Hockey Teams (the London Knights). Previously, he held Head of Marketing/Sales roles at SMB B2B organizations. A strong believer that hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard. He enjoys sharing his knowledge, experience, and opinion on Marketing, Sales, SaaS, and Entrepreneurship.
