Lead generation is an important part of any business. And the more modern, efficient and advanced technology you use for generating leads and driving sales, the better. There are a lot of lead generation platforms out there and there is no way you can take them all into account. With so many options to choose from, it can be difficult to find the most suitable solution for your business. That’s why we’ve created this list of the best lead generation tools in order to help you get a better understanding of those solutions out there.
Businesses are shifting their focus to generating leads. These days, it’s about quality rather than quantity that matters in the business. That is why lead generation tools are essential for every business owner, especially startup owners and freelancers.
If your business involves marketing or sales, then you’re doing lead generation. If you’re doing lead generation, you need some help. Lead generation vendors are a great way of getting the help that you need. If you’re looking for a list of tools to manage lead generation vendors and processes, in a very non-threatening manner– this is the guide for you!
Lead generation is a slowly evolving process, but one in which you needn’t fear getting lost in the crowd. There are hundreds of tools available to help you generate leads online, but many of them don’t produce results. This article takes a look at the best tools for managing lead generation vendors, which can help you handle client-facing activities more efficiently.
What is lead generation software?
Lead generation software helps businesses automate lead generation activities such as contact management, lead segmentation, form customization, surveys, social media marketing, lead assignment, and post-sale follow-up.
Lead generation tools allow users to create web forms that capture leads data from sources including company websites and social media. Visitors to these pages might be required to complete a contact form to access restricted or gated information, such as pricing. These tools can also integrate with other applications such as CRM and customer service software.
SharpSpring
Pricing: Paid plans start at $400/month
Rating: 4/5 stars on GetApp (Based on 398 reviews)
SharpSpring is a bit of a lesser-known all-in-one solution, but it still has many of the same features as the top players. The platform features lead management, lead scoring, email marketing, landing pages, chatbots, pipeline management, and email automation. Pricing starts at $399/month for 1,500 contacts.
Constant Contact
Pricing: Tiered pricing starting at $20 per month for email marketing (other tools priced separately)
Rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars based on 1799 reviews on Capterra
Constant Contact is an email marketing and automation tool that makes it easier to create and send branded emails, manage your website, and even use social media to attract leads to your site. Features include website builders, email segmenting, SEO tools, and deep analytics tools, so you have more of that sweet, sweet data.
Constant Contact is best for small businesses, so make sure it fits your needs before diving in.
IFTTT
Pricing: Free to create up to 3 applets or turn on unlimited applets, paid plans at $3.40
Rating: 4.5/5 stars on GetApp (Based on 27 reviews)
IFTTT stands for “If This Then That.” The platform can be used to complete a specified action when another specific action happens. For example, if someone posts in a particular Craigslist category, you can automatically receive an email in your inbox with that posting. This can be helpful for companies that browse Craigslist for leads, such as web design companies.
Zapier
Pricing: Free, paid plans start at $20/month
Rating: 4.5/5 stars on GetApp (Based on 158 reviews)
Zapier works much like IFTTT does; if a specific action occurs, then another is automatically completed. One big difference is you can generally create more elaborate actions using Zapier. For example, when you receive an email, the email could automatically be added to Dropbox, then an alert can be created in Slack.
Acquire
Best For: Email and SMS marketing, Live chat, and call
Suited For: Small to big businesses
Integrations: Yes
With Acquire, you get an all-in-one customer engagement and lead generation tool for your business. It offers an integrated omnichannel approach to help you build a satisfying conversational experience for your customers irrespective of the channel they use to interact with you.
What Makes Acquire a One-Stop Solution for All Your Lead Generation Needs?
- Acquire makes it possible to connect your customers via multiple platforms.
- Engage your visitors via SMS, call, live chat, and emails to collect valuable information and find new prospects.
- Keep things neat and clean by unifying all communications channels into a single dashboard.
- Integrate with Zendesk, Shopify, Zapier, and other tools to export captured leads and manage them accordingly.
Pros
- The real-time visitor tracking feature is great for generating high-quality leads.
- The advanced targeting makes it possible to engage visitors at the right moment.
Cons
- Expensive than other similar tools.
- The team management dashboard needs better control for data distribution.
Price: Contact for a price quote
Mailchimp
Best For: Email and social marketing, lead forms
Suited For: Small to big businesses
Integrations: Yes
Mailchimp is another all-in-one marketing and lead management tool that offers email marketing, survey forms, social ads, and AB testing capabilities to build your marketing campaign.
How to Generate New Leads Using Mailchimp:
- Use the drag-and-drop builder and pre-built templates to design engaging emails.
- Publish posts on social media and create ad campaigns in Mailchimp to retarget visitors to your website.
- Assist your visitors from filling the signup forms to buying the product using automatic follow-up emails.
- Use behavioral targeting to auto-send messages according to visitors’ actions, like a welcome message or a related product recommendation for a recent buyer.
- Create and add customizable forms to your website’s sidebar and footer to collect contact information.
- Show popup forms based on conditions and customer interactions on your website to generate new leads.
- Merge your contacts from all channels into the in-built Mailchimp CRM.
- Compare industry benchmarks to study open rate, click rates, subscription rates, and other metrics to analyze your campaigns’ success.
- Lets you A/B test to see what is working for your audiences, such as different subject lines, images, layouts, and more.
- Easily integrates with LiveChat, Zapier, and other tools.
Pros
- Import your custom email templates and customize them using the inbuilt HTML/CSS editor.
- Campaign analytics is one of the best we have seen in the outreach tools.
- The free plan supports up to 2000 contacts which is a great way to get started.
Cons
- The inbuilt templates are very basic and often require heavy customization from your end.
- The mobile application offers limited functionality.
Price: Basic free plan. Paid plans start at $10/month
Sendinblue
Best For: Email marketing and SMS marketing
Suited For: Small to big businesses
Integrations: Yes
SMS Sendinblue is one of the best experience optimization and lead generation tools. It offers a plethora of features to optimize your website, maximize engagement, target visitors to collect leads, and streamline the sales process.
You can do it all with this single tool – email and SMS marketing, website live chat, marketing automation, designing landing pages, creating lead forms, and deploying Facebook ads.
How to Use SendinBlue to Generate New Leads:
- Create, design, and deploy your email and SMS marketing campaigns to find new prospects.
- You can install the live chat widget on your website for support and lead generation.
- Build interactive signup forms using the drag-&-drop editor to collect in-depth information from the website visitors.
- With Sendinblue Inbox, you can reply to your customers in real-time on email, SMS, and chat.
- Inbuilt CRM to manage your contacts in one place. You can store and update all the information about your contacts, including relevant documents.
- Use different lists to organize your contacts, such as the source of acquisition, step in the conversion funnel, or any other criteria.
- Create tasks, add deadlines to them, and assign them to different team members.
- Automate workflows with automatic lead scoring, transactional SMS and emails, and more to streamline your sales process.
Pros
- It has both email and SMS marketing built in the same tool, increasing the outreach options.
- The shared inbox keeps all the communication in one place, making it easy to act.
- Mailing list management is quite easy and organized.
Cons
- The interface for building transactional emails feels a little convoluted. It can be made more user-friendly.
- Needs more detailed documentation on CRM and marketing automation for new users.
Price: Free basic plan. Paid plans start at $25/month
Intercom
Best For: Live chat, chatbots, email marketing
Suited For: Small to big enterprises
Integrations: Yes
Intercom is one of the best conversational engagement software that will help you generate new leads and serve your website visitors simultaneously through live chat support and email marketing.
How to Use Intercom as an Online Lead Generation Tool?
- Supports live chat, custom chatbots, outbound mails, in-product messaging, push messages, and notifications to maximize engagement with the visitors.
- Use custom chatbots to trigger interactions automatically with the visitors via personalized greetings based on what they’re doing on your website and collect valuable information.
- Streamline workflows with advanced routing rules so the chatbots can chat, qualify leads, route, and schedule the meeting of new prospects with the right team.
- Integrate and manage all the conversation channels from one place.
- Reply to customers, start a live chat or call, and send outbound emails directly from the inbox.
- Integrate Intercom with tools like Salesforce, Marketo, Stripe, Shopify, and more to sync data and automate workflows.
Pros
- Automated multi-channel targeting for your campaigns to find targeted leads
- The centralized inbox lets you communicate with prospects via their preferred medium.
Cons
- Needs more categories to filter out the tickets
Price: Starts at $39/month
AeroLeads
AeroLeads is one of the top-ranked email finder tools on the internet to collect emails for email marketing. It is popular among many marketers for its ability to find genuine emails from LinkedIn or Xing. AeroLeads assists you on:
- how to find email addresses and business contacts from LinkedIn
- Get 15 data points (full name, job title, location, working company details, business contact numbers, etc.)
- Export data to Hubspot CRM, Zapier, Zoho CRM, FreshSales, Salesforce, etc.
Another best thing about Aeroleads that it teaches you to find the email for an email marketing campaign and other contact information in real-time. This avoids the chances of email addresses getting irrelevant.
Create amazing content, capture leads through this lead generation tool, and preserve them through rebound emails. Their services start from $49 per month.
Adoric
The tool works by creating a personalized path for every visitor. Unlike most lead generation tools out there, this doesn’t only help generate leads but also helps to convert them.
It’s feature rich and supports a variety of elements including design, communication, analytics, and tracking. You can use it to create multi-step messages to optimize your conversions. It also supports forms and can be connected to a variety of CRMs.
With this tool, you will be able to create personalized messages and compare different elements to find what works as it supports A/B testing, pop ups, geo location, goal tracking, etc.
Our software is perfect for all kinds of users and is very easy to use. Above all, you can sign up for a free account and see how it works.
Typical features of lead generation software
- Contact database: Create a central repository of leads data. Store and search contact information such as name, email, and telephone number.
- Lead capture: Automatically identify and store contact information for potential customers.
- Web forms: Create an online form that allows website visitors to contact your company.
- Lead qualification: Score lead quality and likelihood to buy based on certain behaviors.
- Lead segmentation: Divide leads into buckets based on predefined criteria and routing rules.
- Pipeline management: Track the effectiveness and volume of various sales channels.
Conclusion
A lead generation vendor has changed your business strategy. You used to use some word-of-mouth tactics for connecting with clients, but now you’re using more of a digital marketing plan. As you grow as a company, you need to make sure that you have the tools you need to achieve this goal.
One of the first major decisions you’ll make as an entrepreneur is how much money to invest in marketing versus how much money to invest in your product. The idea of jumping into an arms race with marketing dollars and ad spend can be tempting. It certainly is risky, but so is building a product that no one wants.