How to follow up on companies that visit your website

Here’s what we know at the point that an identifiable company visitor has been to your website:

1. Someone at that identifiable business has an interest in that company.
2. The website visitor spent time on various pages.

What we don’t know at this point:

1. Who the person was from that company that visited. No software will be able to tell you that (unless you already have details of that person from within a company – such as within Hubspot or similar).  If someone is a ‘cold’ visitor to your website, where there’s no prior relationship with that person, then they can’t be identified as an individual person.
2. What stage the buying process the website visitor was at. They could be just researching options for the future, or may be ready to buy.

Here’s what we start with:

1. We know the name of the company that visited the website.
2. We know what the person looked at page by page.
3. We don’t know who they were.
4. We don’t know what stage of the buying cycle they are at.

People are wary of LinkedIn connection requests because they can often lead to a sales pitch.

I recommend just a simple connection request without any tailored message.

If there’s more than one person at that business who could feasibly have visited your website then request more than one connection.

If people accept that connection request then you can utilise wording similar to that detailed below for LinkedIn InMail message …

This rarely works because people receive so much unsolicited email, but it’s worth experimenting with.

Keeping the email to them simple and respectful takes less of your time and less time for the recipient to read it.

Here’s an example of the type of email you could send …

Subject line: [Their first name] – following up on your visit

Text:

Hello [their first name],

I work for [your company name here] and we noticed that someone from [their company] came to our website on [date here], looking at [what they looked at], but no-one made contact.

I’ve included a screenshot of that visit here:

[copy/paste the view of their website visit, as you see if in your companies-tracking system]

To be honest, I have no way of knowing if it was you personally who came to our website (I took a guess!) but if it was, I’m here to help.

If it wasn’t, but you have a colleague that may have been looking at [what they were looking at on your website], then I’d really appreciate it if you could pass this onto them?

Finally, please be assured that you’re not on an email list – this is a one-off email and there will be no follow-ups because I dislike pushy emails as much as the next person!

[Your name as signoff]

 

The quickest route is sometimes to pick up the phone and call the company, asking to speak to the named person in the department that you think best matches the interest in your website pages (obviously, it’s advisable to first of all use LinkedIn to try and identify the name of the most relevant person rather than being asked to be put through to a department).

If you can get through the gatekeepers and into conversation with someone, there’s a possibility it’s the person who visited your website from that company, but most times it’s unlikely.  This requires a cautious approach and words to this effect can be useful:

Good Morning/Afternoon [Name of person], I’m [Name] from [Company] and, being a proactive company, we identified that someone from [their company name] visited our website yesterday. 

I took a guess that it may have been you but could equally have got it completely wrong!   Just for information, the visitor seemed to be mainly interested in [give details of the products/services they seemed interested in].

At this point there’s a natural pause for the person in the company to consider what you’ve said and what you offer.  If it wasn’t them, then they may be able to pass you onto someone else that it could have been, or supply you with an email address to send through an introductory email.

It’s not uncommon for people within companies to completely deny that anyone from that business would have been visiting your website.  This is sometimes defensive (they don’t want to admit it) and sometimes is just being unaware that someone else within the business would have been visiting your website.   The larger the company, the more likely that people don’t communicate well with each other.

If you can’t get through the gatekeeper, then they may still give you an email address that you can send an introductory email to.

Based on discussions I’ve had with my companies identification software customers, there are successes gained from picking up the phone.   I even have some subscribers who keep the software open all the time, identifying visiting companies and ringing them within minutes of them being on their websites.  The recipients of such calls (as long as the calls are non-pushy) are usually impressed that the potential supplier is being so proactive, which often leads to business being gained.

For anyone on the receiving end of your phone call they are likely to fall into one of the following groupings:

1. They’re the right person, or they know the right person, and they’re impressed at the proactivity, which furthers the conversation.
2. They’re the right person, or they know the right person, and they’re totally freaked out that you’ve tracked their company visiting your website, and they don’t like it.
3. They haven’t a clue what you’re talking about, are probably the wrong person, or are pretending that they don’t know anything about it.

Most people within companies are on the receiving end of endless sales pitches for products or services.  They are also accustomed to poor customer service.  You will never win over some of those people.  However, for many of them, to receive a proactive phone call, related to something that they, or someone they know within their business, has been interested in, and even if they didn’t like your website that much, they’re going to see that as standing out from the norm.

So what can you do when you’ve identified a larger business has been to your website and it’s feasibly numerous people that you should be speaking to?

This is tough but in reality you’re unlikely to get far from just a phone call and so have to consider some of the other methods here, perhaps utilising a phone call at a later stage when you’re closer to finding the best person to talk to.

But while I’m on the subject of phone calls …

 

If you don’t have the internal resources, or are uncomfortable with the idea of ringing up companies that have visited your website, then you can consider outsourcing those calls to external providers who make such calls as part of their day-to-day work.

The word ‘telesales’ often brings up negative thoughts but the more proactive ‘telesales’ operations are much more subtle and, if they worked from a script agreed with you, then can often gain better results than you would internally.

People who use outsourced resources to make calls see great success and it typically works like this:

1. The customer receives daily companies visited report and clicks through to look at the detail of each company visitor.
2. The customer tags/emails visited companies of interest so that trusted people outside the business (e.g. outsourced phone operations) can see them.
3. Those outsourced phone operations work from a script, trying to find a route into relevant people within the companies that visited the customer website. For each success they get, they pass the details back.

This takes the pain of making calls away from you and into the hands of those more comfortable with the work.

You would of course have to consider the best way to pay for such services.  I would always recommend setting a small budget to ‘test’ the outsourced resources (e.g. over a week, contacting say 50 companies in that time), so that you can assess what they achieve.

I’ve experienced outsourced telephone resources that are successful, and others that aren’t so strong, so if considering this method, the ‘test for a week’ is a worthwhile investment, even if you have to do it for a few weeks until you find the right match.

This is an option you’d use if you want to make a huge impact AND you have budget to do it.

A video card plays a personal message to the recipient of the video card that you send them by signed-for post.

They just open up the video card from you and it autoplays the personal message.

The great thing about video cards is that they are highly personalised and not many of your competitors will be using them to grab the attention of potential customers (including those where you know that business has been to your website).

The less-attractive thing about video cards is the cost – it wouldn’t be unusual to spend £80-100 per video card sent out (which you’d expect because you’re effectively sending a mini-video player through the post to them).

If the potential customer value to you is substantial (either via a one-off purchase or via customer lifetime value) then it’s worth experimenting with video cards after you’ve identified the most suitable people to contact at the company you’ve identified has been to your website.