There’s a new tool in your marketing tool box. A tool that can identify your website visitors, that until now, often remained anonymous. IP Lead Tracking is typically a subscription service that uses analytics code and databases to deliver timely and user-friendly reports.

It is reported that although 90% of B2B sales begin with a web search, only 2-3% of website visitors complete a contact or registration form. While website analytics software report traffic or visitors, page views, bounce rate and other useful statistics, actual sales leads from registrations are a fraction (2-3%) of website visitors. What if you could identify all those anonymous website visitors?  A marketing no-brainer, right?

Enter IP Tracking Software

Think of a Caller ID for your website.  Someone “calls in” when they visit your website. IP Tracking software identifies the IP (internet protocol) address of the visitor, and reports all contact or registration form completions. Typically, the software reports other contacts that share the same IP address, with the ability of the subscriber to select titles, geographies and other criteria. The report includes contact email addresses, and telephone numbers, along with important behavioral information about your leads: keyword search information, pages visited, time duration by page or form. IP Lead Tracking offers benefits to both sales and marketing teams, and the following displays the top 3 benefits for each.

IP Lead Tracking Benefits to Sales

  • Identifies new prospects that were previously anonymous
  • Reduces time and effort for client research and cold calling
  • Improves relationships with current customers by identifying cross-selling and up-selling opportunities

IP Lead Tracking Benefits to Marketing

  • Provides new and incremental measurement tools
  • Reports both organic and paid search
  • Provides additional facts to build an accurate customer profile
  • Improves your Marketing Return on Investment (MROI)

Finally, lead tracking is the perfect step in the right direction with respect to aligning marketing and sales.

Who Offers IP Lead Tracking?

Although many companies offer this service as part of much larger marketing automation or inbound marketing platform, a number of IP or Lead Tracking services have launched as a result of strong demand, including the following.

Leadformix

Leadformix is an easy to use lead reporting tool. Leadformix is able to identify the IP address of your website visitors.  If these visits are from a company location, then Leadformix will provide contact information such as company name and address, a possible contact person and telephone number.  It also provides pages of interest for each visitor so you can have some idea to what that visitor is interested in before you make that sales call. Leadformix lets you customize reports and have them scheduled to be e-mailed right to you inbox on a daily basis.  It allows you to be timely in reaching an interested prospect.

LeadLander

LeadLander delivers a comprehensive amount of functionality and information, and is leveraged by some of the largest companies in the world in conjunction with their existing marketing automation efforts. Yet it’s designed with simplicity in mind so that even the most non-technical sales, marketing, or management staff can use, understand, and act upon the information it provides.

LeadLander was built with one objective:  to help you analyze and respond to the companies that are researching information on your website. LeadLander enhances your ability to identify leads and measure inbound and outbound marketing campaign effectiveness. Powerful and relevant analytics provide you with superior intelligence to fortify your sales and marketing teams with information that they can use to close more deals faster. And with push-based notification alerts, your sales team can be immediately alerted to important leads and prospects that are actively researching your online marketing collateral.

MegaLeads

MegaLeads.com offers a subscription for unlimited access to the world’s largest online database of business contacts at a convenient price. MegaLeads offers extensive B2B mailing lists, business leads, and email lists, searchable by company, city, state and many other criteria.

In addition, MegaLeads offers Mega Tracker, using reverse IP technology to identify website visitors, with real-time email alerts, and one click reference to LinkedIn.

Other IP Lead Tracking Software

Some other IP or lead tracking providers include Leads Explorer, LeadForensics, WOW Analytics, and Lead Liaison; each with different features, fees, and customer databases.  While these services specialize in IP or lead tracking, note that most marketing automation software providers offer similar services including Salesforce.com, Marketo, and HubSpot.

What Reports do IP Lead Tracking Services Offer?

In general, a good IP Tracking service will offer the following reports:

  • Lead Information: Company Name, Contact Information, Pages Visited, Time Spent on Each Page
  • Alerts: Get notifications based on request or in daily emails.  Set up alerts based on specific criteria (Pages visited, specific title)
  • Lead Scoring: How qualified was this lead in your company’s goals?
  • Integration with CRM: Does the software work with Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, or SugarCRM?
  • Advanced Web Analytics: Search Queries, Traffic Sources, Conversion Management

Leadformix Sample Report

 

The New Marketing Silver Bullet?

With the marketing mix evolving to greater emphasis on internet marketing, along with increased emphasis on results measurement, the appeal of IP Lead Tracking software is indisputable. Adding to this appeal, the software is available for reasonable monthly subscription fees ($100-$500/month), and implementation is as easy as adding simple analytics code to each website page.

Some caveats, IP Lead tracking only identifies a fraction of website visitors, typically larger companies or entities, and may not identify the individual that was browsing your website. In addition, low traffic websites may not get a lot of leads from IP tracking. In contrast, high traffic websites will get overwhelming amounts of information that will require effort to review and react to.

So I ask you, what if your competitors are using IP lead tracking, and you’re not?  I rest my case.

Related: Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing

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