The Death of
the Lead-Form
Why is this 20 year-old model under threat?
If your company is among the thousands of online e-commerce players who are still relying on a web-based, prospect lead-form, this article is for you. For nearly two decades, marketers have been playing "keep-away" with information contained on their websites that they believe you want.
These marketers employ "tricks" to lure the customer into believing that if they offer up their personal contact information, the website will magically unlock its secrets.
The truth is, few websites hidden behind lead-forms satisfy consumer wants/needs. What is the goal of this agent? To learn the very things you were willing to tell the company had they let you into their website... What you want.
So why is this 20 year-old model under threat?
It has a single point of failure - the mobile phone. According to reports, robo-calls accounted for 50% of all calls in recent years. Our mobile phone numbers are instant access to us any time, any where. Android, iOS, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and a host of robo-call stopping apps are answering this need. Most experts believe that "answered" calls from unknown numbers will significantly decline in coming years.
Smart marketers understand that websites and multi-channel digital ad campaigns are a proxy for consumer aspiration and intent. New technologies like Foresyte collect, measure and transfer customer intent in real-time to the call platform and to the agent, giving new-found supremacy to the inbound call. Agents can now "skate to where the puck is going" opposed to forcing the customer to start over.
In short, the phone assisted transaction will ALWAYS be about trust. Companies relying on outbound connections to their prospects are swimming in a murkey swamp of robo-saturated dis-trust. This is why the outbound lead-form call is dead.
Future prediction:
Customer prospects will far-favor a self-directed, friction-less and contiguous shopping journey over a disjointed, start-stop-start-again pathway of yesteryear. Intent-rich, digital-to-voice inbound calls will replace the outbound 'invite-back' call which will become increasingly difficult to connect.
STOP PLAYING KEEP-AWAY
Foresyte replaces friction-heavy lead forms with real-time intent signals. Welcome your visitors in and close with trust.