Free lead generation is the baby of b2b marketing and sales. Freebie seekers find the thing they want and are happy to hand over their contact information in order to get it. Lead generation software helps you drive free leads to your website through social media, e-mail marketing, online advertising, and even search engines. Understanding the best lead generation software for your business is a very meticulous job which requires research and time.
Lead generation software for web allows you to create landing pages, forms and emails – all within one tool. These solutions can be a cost-effective strategy for increasing site visitors and return visits. Lead generation tools should be able to help capture both contact information and email addresses at minimal effort on your part. A lead generation service must also be mobile-friendly, as consumers are more likely to sign up on a mobile device.
Business has always been about people. We may have started with physical stores but eventually made a shift to digital storefronts. However, just because we’re in the Information Age doesn’t mean we can ignore the fact that not everything is possible or feasible over the internet. Even in this day and age, businesses still need to use their time, effort and human capital to who are officially informed of their services by actual people.
Email marketing is one of the most affordable and popular marketing solutions. These tools are mainly used for nurturing leads in a certain niche, building lists etc. So, if you are running an online business that needs qualified leads to generate sales, these tools will be useful for you.
What is Lead Generation Software?
A lead is any person who shows interest in either your service, company, or product. Lead generation software helps you automatically generate leads from multiple channels and direct the leads towards your marketing or sales team for conversion.
Leads typically get generated when a customer visits your website and communicates via the personal data provided.
A good lead generation platform helps you with lead scoring, conversion rate optimization, lead nurturing, customer engagement, and more.
Drift
Drift helps you deliver helpful and personal service to customers by conversing with them.
This tool runs off the cornerstones of “Conversational Marketing” and “Conversational Sales.”
Drift allows you to talk with your website visitors instead of just asking them to fill out forms and wait for follow-ups.
Key Features:
- Integration with other sales and marketing platforms that personalize each person’s experience based on their history with your business
- Chatbot to qualify and guide your leads
- Eliminate back and forth communication with leads and connect with them in real-time on your website
Pricing: Drift has a free version to get started. To get pricing, you will need to speak with a sales agent.
Intercom
Need a modern messaging service to fully engage site visitors? Intercom could be the answer.
A messenger app connects you with your customers to give them higher satisfaction and loyalty to your business.
Bots, live chat, and other communication-based apps within Intercom are available to help your leads and customers whenever they need.
Key Features:
- Self-service chat and help features to free up your time without sacrificing customer service
- Connects with 300+ other tools so you can talk with confidence
- Collects information from customers so you can follow up later
Pricing: Intercom starts at $67/month for their Starter plan for small businesses. Otherwise, pricing is based on the number of employees on your plan and the number of site visitors.
CallPage
CallPage generates more phone call-based leads for your business.
Using a button on your website, potential leads will enter their phone number. Then, within 28 seconds, they will receive an automatic callback, no matter where they’re located. Of course, you can set business hours, so you’ll only receive calls then.
With lead qualification and sales, speed is key with communication. CallPage helps you bridge that gap.
Key Features:
- Targeting rules, so the callback button only appears when leads are the hottest
- Fully customizable popups
- Call analytics dashboard to give you insight into your calls
Pricing: CallPage’s Basic plan is free, covering 15 leads a month. From there, it’s $159/month for their Professional plan and $379/month for their Premium package.
Google Ads
Google Ads puts ads in front of people when they search for related terms.
That way, your ads are relevant and will increase people’s chances to visit your website or call your business.
One great feature is that setting up campaigns is free. You only pay for advertising when people click your ad.
Key Features:
- Customizable copy based on your advertising and marketing goals
- Reach a broad audience of relevant potential leads
- Select where your ad appears, so you only reach your target audience
Pricing: Google Ads lets you set up your own budget and remains a flexible option in terms of pricing.
MailChimp
Pricing: Free, paid plans start at $9.99/month
Rating: 4.5/5 stars on GetApp (Based on 2295 reviews)
MailChimp is one of the most popular and easiest-to-use email marketing platforms out today. One of its best features is its intuitive, easy-to-use drag-and-drop email builder. MailChimp also offers email automation. The platform can be used for free to store up to 2,000 email contacts and send out 12,000 emails/month. After that, paid plans start at $14/month.
ActiveCampaign
Pricing: Paid plans start at $9/month
Rating: 4.5/5 stars on GetApp (Based on 76 reviews)
ActiveCampaign is another popular email marketing platform. While ActiveCampaign’s email builder isn’t as polished as MailChimp, ActiveCampaign has a more powerful email automation editor.
They also offer additional tools in their marketing suite, including landing page templates, segmenting, Facebook custom audiences, contact scoring, SMS marketing, and more.
SendinBlue
Pricing: Free, paid plans start at $25/month
Rating: 4.5/5 stars on GetApp (Based on 119 reviews)
SendinBlue is one of the more affordable options for email marketing with their paid plans starting at only $25/month. This plan allows you to send up to 10,000 emails a month. All of SendinBlue’s plans allow for unlimited email contact storage.
OutreachPlus
Pricing: Free for one user, one email address, and up to 100 contacts and 100 emails; paid plans start at $19 per month.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars from G2
Tired of sending cold emails that don’t convert? OutreachPlus is an email integration tool that helps you create, personalize, and schedule follow-up emails.
This makes it easier to build relationships through cold emailing. It also detects changes in replies, such as if your contact responds from a different email address, forwards your message, or has an autoresponder.
HotJar
Best For: Surveys, feedback, and behavioral Insights.
Integrations: Yes
Hotjar is a visitor behavior analysis tool, and it is also great to get new leads through surveys, feedback, and on-site polls. This single lead generation tool provides an entire arsenal of features to map customers’ journeys, collect feedback, generate leads, understand customers’ behavior..
Why Choose Hotjar for Lead Generation?
- It supports heatmaps and session recordings to study visitor behavior.
- See what your visitors are clicking on and map their website journey.
- Strategically place the surveys and feedback widgets on the website to collect customer feedback and visitor information.
- Multi-device support. It works on desktop, mobile, and tablet versions of your website.
- Allows integration with your CRM tools to build the prospect list for the sales team.
Pros:
- Among the best behavioral & lead generation tools in the market.
- Affordable pricing structure.
- Supports tools like heatmaps and screen recording to find the best lead generation opportunities.
Cons:
- Works only for websites and not mobile apps.
- Sometimes, it can slightly impact your web page speed.
Pricing: Starts at $99/month
Sumo
Best For: Smart Bars, list builder popups, and welcome mats.
Integrations: Yes
Sumo is a simple yet effective lead generation tool for your website. The makers of Sumo vouch that the tool can be set up in less than a minute and offer different apps, such as List Builder, Welcome Mat, Share, and Smart Bar for lead generation.
Here’s Why Sumo Is an Easy-to-Use Tool to Generate Lead:
- Add list-builder popups, Smart Bars, share button panels, and welcome mats to your website.
- Prompt visitors to take action, such as fill forms or subscribe to newsletters to generate new leads.
- Improve customer engagement and experience.
- Easily integrate with platforms like Zapier and Mailchimp to manage the leads.
Pros
- Offers multiple targeting & lead generation tools in one place.
- The user interface is quite intuitive and easy to use.
- Great dashboard to get a bird’s eye view of all the tools in action.
Cons
- Only works with Shopify and WordPress.
- It would be good if more pricing tiers were available.
Price: Free basic plan. Paid plan starts at $50/month
WPForms
Best For: Survey forms
Integrations: Yes
WPforms is one of the best lead generation tools and customer feedback software that uses survey forms. It’s a WordPress plugin that allows you to design and add forms to your website in minutes without writing a single line of code.
What Makes WPForms so Effective?
- Create lead generation forms and surveys in minutes using the drag-&-drop WordPress form builder.
- It is ideal for business owners, bloggers, designers, developers, and photographers.
- Easily embed your forms in blog posts, pages, sidebar widgets, and footers to collect valuable feedback and generate new leads.
- Responsive mobile-friendly view.
- Integrate with mail services, such as Mailchimp to build your contact list and start mail campaigns to send interactive survey forms via mail.
- The only limitation is, it works with WordPress websites.
Pros
- In-depth documentation and help center.
- Pro plans add more unique features like conversational forms, web forms, and conditional logic to find the best leads.
Cons
- Works only for WordPress sites.
- Needs an onboarding process to help you get started. The new users may find it hard to use.
Price: Starts at $79/year
Typeform
Best For: Survey forms and quizzes.
Integrations: Yes
What makes the lead generation tools so effective in generating leads and nurturing them is their ability to ask personalized questions in the surveys to understand your prospects so you can take follow-up accordingly. Typeform does precisely that for you.
How Does Typeform Help in Generating Leads?
- Use Typeform to create forms, surveys, and engaging quizzes for your website visitors.
- Create surveys and forms in minutes using pre-built templates, custom layouts, and themes.
- You can also use conditional logic to give a truly personalized experience to your respondents. It redirects the users to correct follow-up questions depending on their previous answers.
- Add the survey to your website, share it with a link through social platforms, and send it to your contact list via email.
- Offers integration with Slack, Mailchimp, etc., so you can export the data to your CRM tool and nurture your collected leads
- VideoAsk feature to collect verbal and visual feedback from people.
- Offers AI-based conversational chatbot widget for recommending products, generating leads for software, and more.
Pros
- Well-designed onboarding process and training tips to get you started.
- The VideoAsk feature is good for both general feedback and basic usability testing.
- This sales lead generator comes with beautifully designed templates for web forms & quizzes.
Cons
- Lacks more flexibility to design forms as compared to other similar tools.
- The analytical dashboard can be improved further with more options and filters.
Price: Starts at $35/month
What Features Do You Need in Lead Generation Tools?
Different lead generating platforms may come with various key features and specialties. However, the best lead generating software comes with some standard features.
Consider all these features before choosing a lead generation tool:
1. Ease-of-use.
An ideal tool should be easy to use for even beginners and new businesses, not just experienced tech experts. The software should not be entirely code-centric. It should be easy enough to give every employee in the company the comfort of working with it.
2. Third-Party Integrations.
Another key aspect of a good lead generating software is its capability to integrate with other business apps seamlessly.
Integration is essential to streamline marketing, online sales, and lead generation data and get things done using a single source. Sales teams use these integrations to get information that helps them close the sale and boost their lead generation efforts.
3. Reporting and Analytics.
This holds for every automated tool, including a lead generating software. Every lead generating software must be able to analyze and optimize all data gathered.
Besides streamlining customers from multiple channels, you will also get an insight into your company’s performance and plan future actions.
4. CRM System.
Your lead generating software should come with a built-in CRM system to keep track of all of the customer data. For example, a lead generating tool like HubSpot gives you all of the tools required to provide your customers with a personalized experience.
From scheduling meetings and emails to sales automation, a good lead generating software should help both sales and marketing teams to be able to do it all.
5. Scalability.
The ultimate goal of a business is to maximize its customer outreach, revenue, and ROI. Your lead gen tool should be flexible enough to adapt to the present situation, i.e., with the growing industry.
6. Exit Intent Technology.
Your tool should be able to detect the mouse movements of your customers and offer lead gen upon exit intent.
Exit-intent technology is based on behavioral technology that monitors the movement of your mouse on the website. It works in a way that whenever a customer is about to exit the site without purchasing, the site automatically displays exciting offers.
Conclusion
Choosing the right lead generation software for your business is critical to your success. But with all the different lead generation software available it’s hard to know which one has the best features for your company. Lead generation software helps you grow your business fast and efficiently, so choosing the right one will make a difference on how fast you succeed.
Everyone knows the importance of generating client contacts. But lead generation can either be done by a business owner or an agency and sometimes, neither of them have time to do it! Luckily, there are plenty of free options online when it comes to lead generation.