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Marketing Touchpoints : Examples, KPIs, and Best Practices
11 mars 2024, par ErinThe customer journey is rarely straightforward. Rather, each stage comprises numerous points of contact with your brand, known as marketing touchpoints. And each touchpoint is equally important to the customer experience.
This article will explore marketing touchpoints in detail, including how to analyse them with attribution models and which KPIs to track. It will also share tips on incorporating these touchpoints into your marketing strategy.
What are marketing touchpoints?
Marketing touchpoints are the interactions that take place between brands and customers throughout the latter’s journey, either online or in person.
By understanding how customers interact with your brand before, during and after a purchase, you can identify the channels that contribute to starting, driving and closing buyer journeys. Not only that, but you’ll also learn how to optimise the customer experience. This can also help you:
- Promote customer loyalty through increased customer satisfaction
- Improve your brand reputation and foster a more positive perception of your brand, supported by social proof
- Build brand awareness among prospective customers
- Reconnect with current customers to drive repeat business
According to a 2023 survey, social media and video-sharing platforms are the leading digital touchpoints among US consumers.
With the customer journey divided into three stages — awareness, consideration, and decision — we can group these interactions into three touchpoint segments, depending on whether they occur before, during or after a purchase.
Touchpoints before a purchase
Touchpoints before a purchase are those initial interactions between potential customers and brands that occur during the awareness stage — before they’ve made a purchase decision.
Here are some key touchpoints at the pre-purchase stage:
- Customer reviews, forums, and testimonials
- Social media posts
- Online ads
- Company events and product demos
- Other digital touchpoints, like video content, blog posts, or infographics
- Peer referral
In PwC’s 2024 Global Consumer Insights Pulse Survey, 54% of consumers listed search engines as their primary source of pre-purchase information, followed by Amazon (35%) and retailer websites (33%).
Here are the survey’s findings in Western Europe, specifically:
Social channels are another major pre-purchase touchpoint; 25% of social media users aged 18 to 44 have made a purchase through a social media app over the past three months.
Touchpoints during a purchase
Touchpoints during a purchase occur when the prospective customer has made their purchase decision. It’s the beginning of a (hopefully) lasting relationship with them.
It’s important to involve both marketing and sales teams here — and to keep track of conversion metrics.
Here are the main touchpoints at this stage:
- Company website pages
- Product pages and catalogues
- Communication between customers and sales reps
- Product packaging and labelling
- Point-of-sale (POS) — the final touchpoint the prospective customer will reach before making the final purchasing decision
Touchpoints after a purchase
You can use touchpoints after a purchase to maintain a positive relationship and keep current customers engaged. Examples of touchpoints that contribute to a good post-purchase experience for the customer include the following:
- Thank-you emails
- Email newsletters
- Customer satisfaction surveys
- Cross-selling emails
- Renewal options
- Customer loyalty programs
Email marketing remains significant across all touchpoint segments, with 44% of CMOs agreeing that it’s essential to their marketing strategy — and it also plays a particularly important role in the post-purchase experience. For 61.1% of marketing teams, email open rates are higher than 20%.
Sixty-nine percent of consumers say they’ve stopped doing business with a brand following a bad experience, so the importance of customer service touchpoints shouldn’t be overlooked. Live chat, chatbots, self-service resources, and customer service teams are integral to the post-purchase experience.
Attribution models: Assigning value to marketing touchpoints
Determining the most effective touchpoints — those that directly contribute to conversions — is a process known as marketing attribution. The goal here is to identify the specific channels and points of contact with prospective customers that result in revenue for the company.
You can use these insights to understand — and maximise — marketing return on investment (ROI). Otherwise, you risk allocating your budget to the wrong channels.
It’s possible to group attribution models into two categories — single-touch and multi-touch — depending on whether you assign value to one or more contributing touchpoints.
Single-touch attribution models, where you’re giving credit for the conversion to a single touchpoint, include the following:
- First-touch attribution: This assigns credit for the conversion to the first interaction a customer had with a brand; however, it fails to consider lower-funnel touchpoints.
- Last-click attribution: This focuses only on bottom-of-funnel marketing and credits the last interaction the customer had with a brand before completing a purchase.
- Last non-direct: Credits the touchpoint immediately preceding a direct touchpoint with all the credit.
Multi-touch attribution models are more complex and distribute the credit for conversion across multiple relevant touchpoints throughout the customer journey:
- Linear attribution: The simplest multi-touch attribution model assigns equal values to all contributing touchpoints.
- Position-based or U-shaped attribution: This assigns the greatest value to the first and last touchpoint — with 40% of the conversion credit each — and then divides the remaining 20% across all the other touchpoints.
- Time-decay attribution: This model assigns the most credit to the customer’s most recent interactions with a brand, assuming that the touchpoints that occur later in the journey have a bigger impact on the conversion.
Consider the following when choosing the most appropriate attribution model for your business:
- The length of your typical sales cycle
- Your marketing goals: increasing awareness, lead generation, driving revenue, etc.
- How many stages and touchpoints make up your sales funnel
Sometimes, it even makes sense to measure marketing performance using more than one attribution model.
With the sheer volume of data that’s constantly generated across numerous online touchpoints, from your website to social media channels, it’s practically impossible to collect and analyse it manually.
You’ll need an advanced web analytics platform to identify key touchpoints and assign value to them.
Matomo’s Marketing Attribution feature can accurately measure the performance of different touchpoints to ensure that you’re allocating resources to the right channels. This is done in a compliant manner, without the need of data sampling or requiring cookie consent screens (excluding in Germany and the UK), ensuring both accuracy and privacy compliance.
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Customer journey KPIs for measuring marketing campaign performance
Measuring the impact of different touchpoints on marketing campaign performance can help you understand how customer interactions drive conversions — and how to optimise your future efforts.
Clearly, this is not a one-time effort. You should continuously reevaluate the crucial touchpoints that drive the most engagement at different stages of the customer journey.
Web analytics platforms can provide valuable insights into ever-changing consumer behaviours and trends and help you make informed decisions.
At the moment, Google is the most popular solution in the web analytics industry, with a combined market share of more than 70%.
However, if privacy, data accuracy, and GDPR compliance are a priority for you, Matomo is an alternative worth considering.
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Get the web insights you need, without compromising data accuracy.
KPIs to track before a purchase
During the pre-purchase stage, focus on the KPIs that measure the effectiveness of marketing activities across various online touchpoints — landing pages, email campaigns, social channels and ad placement on SERPs, for instance.
KPIs to track during the consideration stage include the following:
- Cost-per-click (CPC): The CPC, the total cost of paid online advertising divided by the number of clicks those ads get, indicates whether you’re getting a good ROI. In the UK, the average CPC for search advertising is $1.22. Globally, it averages $0.62.
- Engagement rate: The engagement rate, which is the total number of interactions divided by the number of followers, is useful for measuring the performance of social media touchpoints. Customer engagement also applies to other channels, like tracking average time on-page, form conversions, bounce rates, and other website interactions.
- Click-through rate (CTR): The CTR — or the number of clicks your ads receive compared to the number of times they’re shown — helps you measure the performance of CTAs, email newsletters and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
KPIs to track during a purchase
As a potential customer moves further down the sales funnel and reaches the decision stage, where they’re ready to make the choice to purchase, you should be tracking the following:
- Conversion rate: This is the percentage of leads that convert into customers by completing the desired action relative to the total number of website visitors. It shows you whether you’re targeting the right people and providing a frictionless checkout experience.
- Sales revenue: This refers to the quantity of products sold multiplied by the product’s price. It helps you track the company’s ability to generate profit.
- Cost per conversion: This KPI is the total cost of online advertising in relation to the number of conversions. It measures the effectiveness of different marketing channels and the costs of converting prospective customers into buyers. It also forecasts future ad spend.
KPIs to track after purchase
At the post-purchase stage, your priority should be gathering feedback:
Customer feedback surveys are great for collecting insights into customers’ post-purchase experience, opinions about your brand, products and services, and needs and expectations.
In addition to measuring customer satisfaction, these insights can help you identify points of friction, forecast future growth and revenue and spot customers at risk of churning.
Focus on the following customer satisfaction and retention metrics:
- Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): This metric, which is gathered through customer satisfaction surveys, helps you gauge satisfaction levels. After all, 77% of consumers consider great customer service an important driver of brand loyalty.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS): Based on single-question customer surveys, NPS indicates how likely a customer is to recommend your business.
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): The CLV is the profit you can expect to generate from one customer throughout their relationship with your company.
- Customer Health Score (CHS): This score can assess how “healthy” the customer’s relationship with your brand is and identify at-risk customers.
Marketing touchpoints: Tips and best practices
Customer experience is more important today than ever.
Salesforce’s 2022 State of the Connected Consumer report indicated that, for 88% of customers, the experience the brand provides is just as important as the product itself.
Here’s how you can build your customer touchpoint strategy and use effective touchpoints to improve customer satisfaction, build a loyal customer base, deliver better digital experiences and drive growth:
Understand the customer’s end-to-end experience
The typical customer’s journey follows a non-linear path of individual experiences that shape their awareness and brand preference.
Seventy-three percent of customers expect brands to understand their needs. So, personalising each interaction and delivering targeted content at different touchpoint segments — supported by customer segmentation and tools like Matomo — should be a priority.
Try to put yourself in the prospective customer’s shoes and understand their motivation and needs, focusing on their end-to-end experience rather than individual interactions.
Create a customer journey map
Once you understand how prospective customers interact with your brand, it becomes easier to map their journey from the pre-purchase stage to the actual purchase and beyond.
By creating these visual “roadmaps,” you make sure that you’re delivering the right content on the right channels at the right times and to the right audience — the key to successful marketing.
Identify best-performing digital touchpoints
You can use insights from marketing attribution to pinpoint areas that are performing well.
By analysing the data provided by Matomo’s Marketing Attribution feature, you can determine which digital touchpoints are driving the most conversions or engagement, allowing you to focus your resources on optimising these channels for even greater success.
This targeted approach helps maximise the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and ensures a higher return on investment.
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Discover key marketing touchpoints with Matomo
The customer’s journey rarely follows a direct route. If you hope to reach more customers and improve their experience, you’ll need to identify and manage individual marketing touchpoints every step of the way.
While this process looks different for every business, it’s important to remember that your customers’ experience begins long before they interact with your brand for the first time — and carries on long after they complete the purchase.
In order to find these touchpoints and measure their effectiveness across multiple marketing channels, you’ll have to rely on accurate data — and a powerful web analytics tool like Matomo can provide those valuable marketing insights.
Try Matomo free for 21-days. No credit card required.
Try Matomo for Free
21 day free trial. No credit card required.
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What is last click attribution ? A beginner’s guide
10 mars 2024, par ErinImagine you just finished a successful marketing campaign. You reached new highs in campaign revenue. Your conversion was higher than ever. And you did it without dramatically increasing your marketing budget.
So, you start planning your next campaign with a bigger budget.
But what do you do? Where do you invest the extra money?
You used several marketing tactics and channels in the last campaign. To solve this problem, you need to track marketing attribution — where you give conversion credit to a channel (or channels) that acted as a touchpoint along the buyer’s journey.
One of the most popular attribution models is last click attribution.
In this article, we’ll break down what last click attribution is, its advantages and disadvantages, and examples of how you can use it to gain insights into the marketing strategies driving your growth.
What is last click attribution?
Last click, or last interaction, is a marketing attribution model that seeks to give all credit for a conversion to the final touchpoint in the buyer’s journey. It assumes the customer’s last interaction with your brand (before the sale) was the most influential marketing channel for the conversion decision.
Example of last click attribution
Let’s say a woman named Jill stumbles across a fitness equipment website through an Instagram ad. She explores the website, looking at a few fitness bands and equipment, but she doesn’t buy anything.
A few days later, Jill was doing a workout but wished she had equipment to use.
So, she Googles the name of the company she checked out earlier to take a look at the fitness bands it offers. She’s not sure which one to get, but she signs up for a 10% discount by entering her email.
A few days later, she sees an ad on Facebook and visits the site but exits before purchasing.
The next day, Jill gets an email from the store stating that her discount code is expiring. She clicks on the link, plugs in the discount code, and buys a fitness band for $49.99.
Under the last click attribution model, the fitness company would attribute full credit for the sale to their email campaign while ignoring all other touchpoints (the Instagram ad, Jill’s organic Google search, and the Facebook ad).
3 advantages of last click attribution
Last click attribution is one of the most popular methods to credit a conversion. Here are the primary advantages of using it to measure your marketing efforts:
1. Easiest attribution method for beginners
If something’s too complicated, many people simply won’t touch it.
So, when you start diving into attribution, you might want to keep it simple. Fortunately, last click attribution is a wonderful method for beginner marketers to try out. And when you first begin tracking your marketing efforts, it’s one of the easiest methods to grasp.
2. It can have more impact on revenue
Attribution and conversions go hand in hand. But conversions aren’t just about making a sale or generating more revenue. We often need to track the conversions that take place before a sale.
This could include gaining a new follower on Instagram or capturing an email subscriber with a new lead magnet.
If you’re trying to attribute why someone converted into a follower or lead, you may want to ditch last click for something else.
But when you’re looking strictly at revenue-generating conversions, last click can be one of the most impactful methods for giving credit to a conversion.
3. It helps you understand bottom-of-funnel conversions
If SEO is your focus, chances are pretty good that you aren’t looking for a direct sale right out of the gate. You likely want to build your authority, inform and educate your audience, and then maybe turn them into a lead.
However, when your primary focus isn’t generating traffic or leads but turning your leads into customers, then you’re focused on the bottom of your sales funnel.
Last click can be helpful to use in bottom-of-funnel (BoFu) conversions since it often means following a paid ad or sales email that allows you to convert your warm audience member.
If you’re strictly after revenue, you may not need to pay as much attention to the person who reads your latest blog post. After they read the article, they may have seen a social media post. And then, maybe they saw your email with a discount to buy now — which converted them into a paying customer.
3 challenges of last click attribution
Last click attribution is a simple way to start analysing the channels that impact your conversions. But it’s not perfect.
Here are a few challenges of last click attribution you should keep in mind:
1. It ignores all other touchpoints
Last click attribution is a single-touch attribution model. This type of model declares that a single channel gets 100% of the credit for a sale.
But this can overlook impactful contributions from other channels.
Multi-touch attribution seeks to give credit to multiple channels for each conversion. This is a more holistic approach.
2. It fragments the customer journey
Most customers need a few touchpoints before they’ll make a purchase.
Maybe it’s reading a blog post via Google, checking out a social media post on Instagram, and receiving a nurture email.
If you look only at the last touchpoint before a sale, then you ignore the impact of the other channels. This leads to a fragmented customer journey.
Imagine this: You tell your marketing leaders that Facebook ads are responsible for your success because they were the last touch for 65% of conversions. So, you pour your entire budget into Facebook ads.
What happens?
Your sales drop by 60% in one month. This happens because you ignored the traffic you were generating from SEO blog posts that led to that conversion — the nurturing that took place in email marketing.
3. Say goodbye to brand awareness marketing
Without a brand, you can’t have a sustainable business.
Some marketing activities, like brand awareness campaigns, are meant to fuel brand awareness to build a business that lasts for years.
But if you’re going to use last click attribution to measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, then you’re going to diminish the impact of brand awareness.
Your brand, as a whole, has the ability to generate multiples of your current revenue by simply reaching more people and creating unique brand experiences with new audiences.
Last click attribution can’t easily measure brand awareness activities, which means their importance is often ignored.
Last click attribution vs. other attribution models
Last click attribution is just one type of attribution model. Here are five other common marketing attribution models you might want to consider:
First interaction
We’ve already touched on last click interaction as a marketing attribution model. But one of the most common models does the opposite.
First interaction, or first touch, gives full credit to the first channel that brought a lead in.
First interaction is best used for top-of-funnel (ToFU) conversions, like user acquisition.
Last non-direct interaction
A similar model to last click attribution is one called last non-direct interaction. But one major difference is that it excludes all direct traffic from the calculation. Instead, it assigns full conversion credit to the channel that precedes it.
For instance, let’s say you see someone comes to your website via a Facebook ad but doesn’t purchase. Then one week later, they go directly to your website through a bookmark they saved and they complete a purchase. Instead of giving attribution to the direct traffic touchpoint (entering your site through a saved bookmark), you attribute the conversion to the previous channel.
In this case, the Facebook ad gets the credit.
Last non-direct attribution is best used for BoFu conversions.
Linear
Another common attribution model is called linear attribution. Here, you split the credit for a conversion equally across every single touchpoint.
This means if someone clicks on your blog post in Google, TikTok post, email, and a Facebook ad, then the credit for the conversion is equally split between each of these channels.
This model is helpful for looking at both BoFu and ToFu activities.
Time decay
Time decay is an attribution model that more accurately credits conversions across different touchpoints. This means the closer a channel is to a conversion, the more weight is given to it.
The time decay model assumes that the closer a channel is to a conversion, the greater that channel’s impact is on a sale.
Position based
Position-based, also called U-shaped attribution, is an interesting model that gives multiple channels credit for a conversion.
But it doesn’t give equal credit to channels or weighted credit to the channels closest to the conversion.
Instead, it gives the most credit to the first and last interactions.
In other words, it emphasises the conversion of someone to a lead and, eventually, a customer.
It gives the first and last interaction 40% of the credit for a conversion and then splits the remaining 20% across the other touchpoints in the customer journey.
If you’re ever unsure about which attribution model to use, with Matomo, you can compare them to determine the one that best aligns with your goals and accurately reflects conversion paths.
In the above screenshot from Matomo, you can see how last-click compares to first-click and linear models to understand their respective impacts on conversions.
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Use Matomo to track last click attribution
If you want to improve your marketing, you need to start tracking your efforts. Without marketing attribution, you will never be certain which marketing activities are pushing your business forward.
Last click attribution is one of the most popular ways to get started with attribution since it, very simply, gives full credit to the last interaction for a conversion.
If you want to start tracking last click attribution (or any other previously mentioned attribution model), sign up for Matomo’s 21-day free trial today. No credit card required.
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CRO Testing : The 6-Steps for Maximising Conversion Rates
10 mars 2024, par ErinIt’s a nightmare every marketing manager faces. Traffic is soaring after you’ve launched new digital marketing campaigns, but conversions have barely moved.
Sound familiar?
The good news is you’re not alone — loads of marketing managers struggle to get potential customers to purchase. The better news is that you can test dozens of strategies to turn around your site’s fortunes.
Conversion rate optimisation testing (CRO testing for short) is the name for this kind of experimentation — and it can send conversion rates and revenue soaring.
In this article, we’ll explain CRO testing and how you can start doing it today using Matomo.
What is CRO Testing?
CRO testing is optimising your site’s conversion funnel using a series of experiments designed to improve conversion rates.
A CRO test can take several forms, but it usually involves changing one or more elements of your landing page. It looks something like this:
- You hypothesise what you expect to happen.
- You then run an A/B test using a dedicated CRO platform or tool.
- This tool will divide your site’s traffic, sending one segment to one variation and the other segment to another.
- The CRO tool will measure conversions, track statistical significance, and declare one variation the winner.
A CRO tool isn’t the only software you can use to gather data when running tests. There are several other valuable data sources, including:
- A web analytics platform: to identify issues with your website
- User surveys: to find out what your target audience thinks about your site
- Heatmaps: to learn where users focus their attention
- Session recordings: to discover how visitors browse your site
Use as many of these features, tools, and methods as you can when brainstorming hypotheses and measuring results. After all, your CRO test is only as good as your data.
On that note, we need to mention the importance of data accuracy when researching issues with your website and running CRO tests. If you trust a platform like Google Analytics that uses data sampling (where only a subset of data is analysed), then there’s a risk you make business decisions based on inaccurate reports.
In practice, that could see you overestimate the effectiveness of a landing page, potentially wasting thousands in ad spend on poorly converting pages.
That’s why over a million websites rely on Matomo as their web analytics solution—it doesn’t sample data, providing 100% accurate website traffic insights you can trust to make informed decisions.
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Types of CRO Testing
There are three core types of CRO tests:
A/B testing
A/B testing, or split testing, is when you test two versions of the same page against each other. Usually, the two pages have only one difference, such as a new headline or a different CTA.
In the test above, for example, we test what happens if we remove one of the affiliate links from a page. We hypothesise that conversions won’t change because these links aren’t effective.
A/B/n testing
A/B/n testing is when you test multiple variations of the same element on the same page.
Rather than just testing one headline against another, for example, you test multiple different headlines at once.
In the test above in Matomo, we’re testing a website’s original header against a wider and smaller version. It turns out the wider header converts significantly better.
Multivariate testing
In a multivariate CRO test, you test multiple different elements at the same time. That could mean testing combining a different headline, CTA button, and image.
Multivariate testing can save time because you test multiple elements at once and find the best combination of elements. But you’ll usually need a lot of traffic to find a statistically significant result.
Why is CRO testing important?
Who doesn’t want more conversions, right? Improving your conversion rate is the core benefit of running a CRO test, but there are a couple of other reasons you should do it, too:
Improve conversion rates
How well does your website convert visitors? The average conversion rate of a typical website is 2.35%, but better-performing websites have significantly higher conversion rates. The top 25% of websites across all industries convert at a rate of 5.31% or higher.
CRO testing is the best way to improve your site’s conversion rate by tweaking elements of your website and implementing the best results. And because it’s based on data, not your intuition, you’re likely to identify changes that move the needle.
Optimise the user experience
CRO tests are also a great way to improve your site’s user experience. The process of CRO testing forces you to understand how users navigate your website using heatmaps and session recordings and fix the issues they face.
You could simplify your form fields to make them easier to fill in, for example, or make your pages easier to navigate. In both cases, your actions will also increase conversion rates.
Decrease acquisition costs
Improving your conversion rate using CRO testing will usually mean a decrease in customer acquisition costs and other conversion metrics.
After all, if the cost of your PPC ads stays the same but you convert more traffic, then each new customer will cost less to acquire.
How to do CRO testing in 6 steps
Ready to get your hands dirty? Follow these six steps to set up your first CRO test:
Have a clear goal
Don’t jump straight into testing. You need to be clear about what you want to achieve; otherwise, you risk wasting time on irrelevant experiments.
If you’re unsure what to focus on, look back through your web analytics data and other tools like heatmaps, form analytics, and session recordings to get a feel for some of your site’s biggest conversion roadblocks.
Maybe there’s a page with a much lower conversion rate, for example — or a form that most users fail to complete.
If it’s the former, then your goal could be to increase the conversion rate of this specific landing page by 25%, bringing it in line with your site’s average.
Make sure your new conversion goal is set up properly in your website analytics platform, too. This will ensure you’re tracking conversions accurately.
Set a hypothesis
Now you’ve got a goal, it’s time to create a hypothesis. Based on your available research, a hypothesis is an assumption you make about your conversion rate optimisation test.
A heatmap of your poorly converting landing page may show that users aren’t focusing on your CTA button because it’s hidden below the fold.
You could hypothesise that by placing the CTA button directly under your headline above the fold, your conversion rate should increase.
Whatever your goal, you can use the following template to write a hypothesis:
If we [make this specific change], then [this specific outcome] will occur because [reason].
Design your test elements
Most marketing managers won’t be able to run CRO tests independently. A team of talented experts must create the assets you need for a successful experimentation. This includes designers, copywriters, and web developers.
Don’t just have them create one new element at a time. Accelerate the process by having your team create dozens of designs simultaneously. That way, you can run a new CRO test as soon as your current test has finished.
Create and launch the test
It’s time to launch your test. Use a CRO tool to automate building your test and tracking results.
With Matomo’s A/B Testing feature, it’s as easy as giving your test a name, writing a hypothesis and description, and uploading the URLs of your page variants.
Matomo handles everything else, giving you a detailed breakdown at the end of the test with the winning variant.
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Analyse the results
You can only review the results of your CRO test once it has reached statistical significance — which means the observed outcome isn’t the result of chance.
In the same way you wouldn’t say a die is unbiased after three rolls, you need thousands of visitors to see your landing pages and take action before deciding which is better.
Luckily, most CRO testing platforms, including Matomo, will highlight when a test reaches statistical significance. That means you only need to look at the result to see if your hypothesis is correct.
Implement and repeat
Was your test a success? Great, you can implement the results and test a new element.
Yep, that’s right. There’s no time to rest on your laurels. Continuous CRO testing is necessary to squeeze every conversion possible from your website. Just like fashion trends, website effectiveness changes over time. What works today might not work tomorrow, making ongoing CRO testing beneficial and necessary.
That’s why it’s a good idea to choose a CRO testing platform like Matomo with no data limits.
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CRO testing examples you can run today
There’s no shortage of CRO tests you can run. Here are some experiments to get started with:
Change your CTA design and copy
Calls to action (CTAs) are the best elements to optimise during your first CRO test. You can change many things about them; even the smallest optimisation can have a huge impact.
Just take a look at the image below to see how diverse your CTAs could be:
Changing your CTA’s copy is a great place to start, especially if you have generic instructions like “Apply Now.”
Try a more specific instruction like “Download your free trial” or “Buy now to get 30% off.” Or test benefit-led instructions like “Reduce your ad spend today” or “Take back control of your data.”
Changing the colour of your CTAs can also yield more conversions. Bright colours are always a good bet. Just make sure your button stands out from the rest of your page.
Move the CTA button placement
The placement of your CTA can be just as important as its copy or colour. If it’s down at the bottom of your page, there’s a good chance most of your visitors will miss it.
Try moving it above the fold to see if that makes a difference. Then, test multiple CTA buttons as opposed to just one.
Heatmaps and session recordings can identify whether this test is worthwhile. If users rarely focus on your CTA or just don’t scroll far enough to find it, then it’s a good bet you could see an uptick in conversions by moving it.
Try different headlines
Your website’s headlines are another great place to start CRO testing. These are usually the first (and sometimes only) things visitors read, so optimising them as much as possible makes sense.
There are entire books written about creating persuasive headlines, but start with one of the following tactics:
- Include a benefit
- “Achieve radiant skin—discover the secret!”
- Add numbers
- “3 foolproof methods for saving money on your next vacation”
- Using negative words instead of positive ones
- “Avoid these 7 mistakes to unlock your potential for personal growth”
- Shortening or lengthening your headline
- Shortened: “Crush your fitness goals: Expert tips for success”
- Lengthened: “Embark on your fitness journey: Learn from experts with proven tips to crush your wellness goals”
Add more trust signals
Adding trust signals to your website, such as brand logos, customer reviews, and security badges, can increase your conversion rate.
We use it at Matomo by adding the logos of well-known clients like the United Nations and Amnesty International underneath our CTAs.
It’s incredibly effective, too. Research by Edelman finds that trust is among the top three most important buying decision factors, above brand likeability.
Start CRO testing with Matomo
CRO testing is a data-backed method to improve your site’s conversion rate, making it more user-friendly and decreasing customer acquisition costs. Even a small improvement will be worth the cost of the tools and your time.
Fortunately, there’s no need to allocate hundreds of dollars monthly for multiple specialised testing tools. With Matomo, you get a comprehensive platform offering web analytics, user behaviour insights, and CRO testing – all conveniently bundled into one solution. Matomo’s pricing starts from just $19 per month, making it accessible to businesses of all sizes.
Plus, rest assured knowing that you are GDPR compliant and the data provided is 100% accurate, ethically empowering you to make informed decisions with confidence.
Take the first step on your CRO testing journey by trying Matomo free for 21 days; no credit card required.
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The Only 7 Lead Generation Tools You Need in 2024
7 mars 2024, par ErinIf you can’t get leads, you can’t get customers. To ensure you always have a steady stream of new customers (and revenue), you need to equip yourself with lead generation tools.
Lead gen software does the heavy lifting for you so you can focus on providing great products and great services. With it, you’ll be able to turn more strangers into customers and grow your business.
And you don’t need a ton of tools to get the job done, either. Consolidating your tech stack to a few select tools will help you get more done in less time (and with less confusion).
In this article, we’ll analyse the top seven lead generation tools to help you grow your business in 2024.
Let’s dive in.
What is a lead generation tool?
A lead generation tool is software you can use to turn strangers into customers. It helps you draw customers into your sales funnel by learning their contact details, like their email address or phone number.
Lead generation tools are great levers you can pull to drive high-quality leads. They remove the grunt work by automating the lead generation process.
Whether it’s through creating lead magnets, offering conversion rate analytics, helping you create high-quality forms or automating the lead follow-up process, lead generation tools can bring in new customers to grow your business.
The top 7 lead generation tools in 2024
To land more leads, you need to ensure you’re leveraging the right software. With so many to choose from, here’s just a handful of the best ones available:
1. Matomo: Best conversion optimisation tool
Matomo is an open-source website analytics tool dedicated to protecting user privacy and data. Trusted on over 1 million websites, the platform offers in-depth insights into your web traffic, including conversion data.
Why Matomo? Matomo is trusted by over 1 million websites, including the United Nations and the European Commission, making it the leading choice for privacy-focused web analytics.
It comes equipped with a suite of conversion optimisation features to help you generate more leads. You can easily analyse your target audience’s behaviour while also respecting users’ privacy.
Standout features: In-depth visitor tracking, From Analytics, Session Recordings, A/B Testing, Heatmaps Marketing Attribution, roll-up reporting (pulling data from multiple sites), Google Analytics importing. and more.
Integrations: Cloudflare, WooCommerce, Squarespace, Shopify, Drupal, Magento, Vue, SharePoint, WordPress, Wix, Webflow, GoDaddy, Jimdo, Joomla, Kajabi. and more.
Pricing: Starts free for Matomo On-Premise and increases to $23/month for Matomo Cloud (which includes a free 21-day trial with no credit card required).
Pros
- 100% accurate data with no data sampling
- Leading web analytics tool for respecting visitor privacy
- Compliant with the strictest privacy laws, like the GDPR
- No need for cookie consent banner (except in the UK and Germany)
- Wide range of advanced features to optimise your website and increase conversions
- Cloud hosting and on-premise options for flexibility
Cons
- Matomo On-Premise requires technical expertise (but for the less technical, the Cloud option works instantly)
- On-Premise plugins are an additional cost
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2. HubSpot: Best all-in-one CRM for organising leads
HubSpot is a customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing software with over 194,000 customers worldwide. This user-friendly platform is dedicated to helping businesses of all sizes manage leads and customers.
Why HubSpot? HubSpot Marketing integrates seamlessly with the HubSpot CRM to help with everything from lead capture to conversion. The platform also features a free version — a great starting place for lead generation and management.
Standout features: A robust set of no-code lead gen tools, like ads, forms, customisable landing pages, lead capture templates for potential customers, email campaigns, analytics dashboards and a free CRM to track leads.
Integrations: Google Ads, WordPress, Jotform, Facebook Ads, Magento, Shopify, Weebly, WordPress, Zapier and Drupal.
Pricing: Starts free for anyone and increases to $800/month for a professional plan.
Pros
- User-friendly interface
- All-in-one lead management solution
- Easy integration with HubSpot CRM
- Simple analytics for beginners
- Includes landing page tools
- Offers email marketing tools to nurture leads
Cons
- Free version has limited functionality
- Expensive jump to paid plans
3. Leadfeeder: Best for finding warm B2B leads
Leadfeeder is a business-to-business (B2B) marketing tool that shows B2B brands which companies are visiting their websites and gives them contact information to reach out to the right decision-makers.
Why Leadfeeder? Leadfeeder simplifies outreach for B2B organisations because it shows you what businesses are interacting with your website. Rather than trying to reach out to completely cold leads, the tool highlights brands that are already checking out your content and offerings.
Standout features: Many account-based marketing (ABM) tools enable you to discover B2B accounts with insights into when you should contact them after they visit your site, as well as their job titles. The platform also includes a range of features that notify you and your sales team when qualified B2B leads come to your site so that you can move to capture them quickly.
Integrations: Zoho, Google Chat, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Google Looker Studio, ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Microsoft Dynamics and Slack.
Pricing: Starts at $139/month (includes a 14-day free trial).
Pros
- Easily find prospective customers
- Track website visitors and potential customers freely
- Simple filtering capabilities
Cons
- Few integrations available
- Can be difficult to contact customer support
4. OptinMonster: Best all-in-one lead generation form tool
Founded in 2013, OptinMonster has over 1.2 million users worldwide. It offers a wide range of lead gen tools led by robust form tools that turn your target audience into leads.
Why OptinMonster? The platform is one of the most reputable lead generation platforms available. With nearly 100 lead capture templates, it’s highly customisable to almost any business looking to begin capturing leads with different forms.
Standout features: 95 customisable form templates, drag-and-drop builders, onsite retargeting, segmentation, A/B testing and exit-intent popups that present forms when a user is about to leave the site.
Integrations: Constant Contact, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, Salesforce Pardot, Campaign Monitor, HubSpot, Jilt, Keap and Mailchimp.
Pricing: Starts at $16/month (no free trial offered).
Pros
- Easy drag-and-drop form-builder
- Wide range of form templates
- Customisable forms for any business
- Simple A/B testing to help optimise form performance
Cons
- No free trial available
- Growth features, like onsite retargeting, are only available on higher-tiered plans
5. Intercom: Best live chat tool for capturing leads
Intercom is one of the top live chat tools for helping businesses maintain solid communication with their customers. Founded in 2011, this live chat platform serves over 25,000 users around the world with a simple, sophisticated experience and seamless lead generation features.
Why Intercom? Intercom is a live chat tool first. But many people don’t know it’s also a simple lead capture tool. When people think of lead generation, they think of static or popup forms. But Intercom allows you to capture forms directly within a live chat conversation.
Standout features: Lead generation via live chat that allows you to naturally capture potential customers’ information to turn them into a lead. The tool also comes equipped with chatbots that can automate the communication and lead gen process on autopilot.
Integrations: Pipedrive, Typeform, Google Analytics, Zapier, Calendly, Salesforce, Stripe, Campaign Monitor, Clearbit Reveal and HubSpot.
Pricing: Starts at $39/month (with a 21-day free trial).
Pros
- Live chat lead gen capture
- Chatbot lead generation automation
- Wide range of integrations and apps
- User-friendly interface
Cons
- Fairly expensive for small businesses
- Customer support isn’t the fastest
6. Callingly: Best for making inbound calls with leads
Callingly is a sophisticated call software that lets you get the most out of every inbound call you get from leads. Founded in 2019, this software company gives valuable insights into your inbound call leads, pulling information from various integrations and forms.
Why Callingly? Callingly is a robust call software that gathers lead information through forms, lead magnets, landing pages and forms. The software also has intelligent routing, which sends a call to the most relevant salesperson.
Standout features: Advanced lead routing ensures inbound leads are directed to the most appropriate sales rep based on their unique needs and geographic location. The tool is also equipped with call tracking, analytics, lead source tracking and more to help personalise the experience for quick capture and conversion of leads.
Integrations: ClickFunnels, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Drip, Aircall, HubSpot, Jotform, OptinMonster, Unbounce and Zapier.
Pricing: Starts at $49/month (with a 14-day free trial).
Pros
- Instantly see robust caller information based on previous interactions
- Intelligent routing places leads with the right sales reps
- Call recordings to capture data and transfer it into your CRM
- Voicemail and caller ID capabilities
- Reporting and analytics for performance tracking
Cons
- Doesn’t include lead segmentation
- Limited customisations
- No email integration
7. Notion: Best for creating informational lead magnets
Notion is one of the most popular collaboration tools on the Internet. Founded in 2013, the platform has over 35 million users worldwide. While it’s known primarily for its advanced note-taking capabilities, Notion is also a simple tool you can use to create informational lead magnets.
Why Notion? Notion is a simple yet powerful tool you can use to create almost anything. If you want to generate more leads, then creating a free info product with Notion is a simple and effective way to do that. It enables you to create ebooks, digital courses and video courses without having to rely on expensive software.
Standout features: Documentation tools, note-taking, collaborative documents and duplication capabilities. It’s simple to create a high-value informational product, like an ebook or course with multiple chapters.
Integrations: Audienceful, Miro, Momentum, Slack, ChatGPT, Clockify, Desktop.com, SureTriggers, Trello and Google Drive.
Pricing: Starts at $8/month (no free trial available).
Pros
- Easy to create a digital product or lead magnet
- Leads have access with a simple link
- Lead magnet can be updated in real time
- AI writing assistant
- Drag-and-drop functionality
- User-friendly interface
- Low-cost pricing plans
Cons
- No free trial available (though there is a free version)
- Search function could use some improvement
- Performance isn’t the fastest
Use Matomo to generate more leads
If you want more leads, then you need to start tracking your website’s forms.
With Matomo, you get access to features like Form Analytics, A/B Testing, Heatmaps, and Session Recordings to help with conversion rate optimisation.
Recently, Concrete CMS leveraged Matomo’s funnel analysis feature to improve its lead capture. The CMS was then able to identify bottlenecks in user onboarding. Matomo’s insights showed that users were getting stuck at the address input stage of the form.
By tweaking their form, Concrete CMS tripled their leads in just a few days.
If you want to improve your lead generation, then get started with Matomo’s 21-day free trial today. No credit card required.
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Multivariate Testing vs A/B Testing (Quick-Start Guide)
7 mars 2024, par ErinTraditional advertising (think Mad Men) was all about slogans, taglines and coming up with a one-liner that was meant to change the world.
But that type of advertising was extremely challenging to test, so it was hard to know if it worked. Most of the time, nobody knew if they were being effective with their advertising.
Enter modern marketing: the world of data-driven advertising.
Thanks to the internet and web analytics tools like Matomo, you can quickly test almost anything and improve your site.
The question is, should you do multivariate testing or A/B testing?
While both have their advantages, each has a specific use case.
In this guide, we’ll break down the differences between multivariate and A/B testing, offer some pros and cons of each and show you some examples so you can decide which one is best for you.
What is A/B testing?
A/B testing, or split testing, is testing an individual element in a medium against another version of the same element to see which produces better results.
A/B tests are conducted by creating two different versions of a digital landmark: a website, landing page, email, or advertisement.
The goal? Figure out which version performs better.
Let’s say, for example, you want to drive more sales on your core product page.
You test two call-to-action buttons: “Buy Now” and “Add to Cart.”
After running the test for two weeks, you see that “Buy Now” produced 1.2% conversions while “Add to Cart” produced 7.6%.
In this scenario, you’ve found your winner: version B, “Add to Cart.”
By conducting A/B tests regularly, you can optimise your site, increase engagement and convert more visitors into customers.
Keep in mind that A/B testing isn’t perfect; it doesn’t always produce a win.
According to Noah Kagan, founder of AppSumo, only 1 out of 8 A/B tests his company conducts produces significant change.
Advantages of A/B testing
A/B testing is great when you need to get an accurate result fast on a specific element of your marketing efforts.
Whether it’s a landing page or product page, you can get quick results without needing a lot of traffic.
A/B testing is one of the most widely accepted and used testing methods for marketers and business owners.
When you limit the number of tracked variables used in a test, you can quickly deliver reliable data, allowing you to iterate and pivot quickly if necessary.
This is a great way to test your marketing methods, especially if you’re a newer business or you don’t have substantial traffic yet.
Splitting up your traffic into a few segments (like with multivariate testing) will be very challenging to gain accurate results if you have lower daily traffic.
One final advantage of A/B testing is that it’s a relatively easy way to introduce testing and optimising to a team, decision-maker, or stakeholder since it’s easy to implement. You can quickly demonstrate the value with a simple change and tangible evidence.
Disadvantages of A/B testing
So, what are the downsides to A/B testing?
Although A/B testing can get you quick results on small changes, it has limitations.
A/B testing is all about measuring one element against another.
This means you’re immediately limited in how many elements you can test. If you have to test out different variables, then A/B testing isn’t your best option since you’ll have to run test after test to get your result.
If you need specific information on how different combinations of elements interact with one another on a web page, then multivariate is your best option.
What is multivariate testing?
If you want to take your testing to the next level, you’ll want to try multivariate testing.
Multivariate testing relies on the same foundational mechanism of A/B testing, but instead of matching up two elements against one another, it compares a higher number of variables at once.
Multiple + variations = multivariate.
Multivariate testing looks at how combinations of elements and variables interact.
Like A/B testing, traffic to a page is split between different web page versions. Multivariate testing aims to measure each version’s effectiveness against the other versions.
Ultimately, it’s about finding the winning combination.
When to use multivariate testing
The quick answer on when to use multivariate testing is if you have enough traffic.
Just how much traffic, though?
While there’s no set number, you should aim to have 10,000 visitors per month or more, to ensure that each variant receives enough traffic to produce meaningful results within a reasonable time frame.
Once you meet the traffic requirement, let’s talk about use cases.
Let’s say you want to introduce a new email signup.
But you want to create it from scratch and aren’t sure what will make your audience take action.
So, you create a page with a signup form, a header, and an image.
To run a multivariate test, you create two lengths of signup forms, four headlines, and two images.
Next, you would create a test to split traffic between these sixteen combinations.
Advantages of multivariate testing
If you have enough traffic, multivariate testing can be an incredible way to speed up your A/B testing by testing dozens of combinations of your web page.
This is handy when creating a new landing page and you want to determine if specific parts of your design are winners — which you can then use in future campaigns.
Disadvantages of multivariate testing
The main disadvantage of multivariate testing is that you need a lot of traffic to get started.
If you try to do a multivariate analysis but you’re not getting much traffic, your results won’t be accurate (and it will take a long time to see accurate data).
Additionally, multivariate tests are more complicated. They’re best suited for advanced marketers since more moving parts are at play.
Key differences between multivariate and A/B testing
Now that we’ve covered what A/B and multivariate tests are, let’s look at some key differences to help clarify which is best for you.
1. Variation of combinations
The major difference between A/B and multivariate testing is the number of combinations involved.
With A/B testing, you only look at one element (no combinations). You simply take one part of your page (i.e., your headline copy) and make two versions.
With multivariate testing, you’re looking at combinations of different elements (i.e., headline copy, form length, images).
2. Number of pages to test
The next difference lies in how many pages you will test.
With an A/B test, you are splitting traffic on your website to two different pages: A and B.
However, with multivariate testing, you will likely have 4-16 different test pages.
This is because dozens of combinations can be created when you start testing a handful of elements at once.
For example, if you want to test two headlines, two form buttons and two images on a signup form, then you have several combinations:
- Headline A, Button A, Image A
- Headline A, Button A, Image B
- Headline A, Button B, Image A
- Headline A, Button B, Image B
- Headline B, Button A, Image A
- Headline B, Button A, Image B
- Headline B, Button B, Image A
- Headline B, Button B, Image B
In this scenario, you must create eight pages to send traffic to.
3. Traffic requirements
The next major difference between the two testing types is the traffic requirements.
With A/B testing, you don’t need much traffic at all.
Since you’re only testing two pages, you can split your traffic in half between the two types.
However, if you plan on implementing a multivariate test, you will likely be splitting your traffic at least four or more ways.
This means you need to have significantly more traffic coming in to get accurate data from your test. If you try to do this when your traffic is too low, you won’t have a large enough sample size.
4. Time requirements
Next up, just like traffic, there’s also a time requirement.
A/B testing only tests two versions of a page against each other (while testing a single element). This means you’ll get accurate results faster than a multivariate test — usually within days.
However, for a multivariate test, you might need to wait weeks. This is because you’re splitting your traffic by 4, 8, 12, or more web page variations. This could take months since you need a large enough sample size for accuracy.
5. Big vs. small changes
Another difference between A/B testing and multivariate testing is the magnitude of changes.
With an A/B test, you’re looking at one element of a page, which means changing that element to the winning version isn’t a major overhaul of your design.
But, with multivariate testing, you may find that the winning combination is drastically different than your control page, which could lead to a significant design change.
6. Accuracy of results
A/B tests are easier to decipher than multivariate testing since you only look at two versions of a single element on a page.
You have a clear winner if one headline yields a 5% conversion rate and another yields a 1.2% conversion rate.
But multivariate testing looks at so many combinations of a page that it can be a bit trickier to decipher what’s moving the needle.
Pros and cons: Multivariate vs. A/B testing
Before picking your testing method of choice, let’s look at some quick pros and cons.
A/B testing pros and cons
Here are the pros and cons of A/B testing:
Pros
- Get results quickly
- Results are easier to interpret
- Lower traffic requirement
- Easy to get started
Cons
- You need to be hyper-focused on the right testing element
- Requires performing test after test to optimise a web page
Multivariate testing pros and cons
Here are the pros and cons of multivariate testing:
Pros
- Handy when redesigning an entire web page
- You can test multiple variables at once
- Significant results (since traffic is higher)
- Gather multiple data insights at once
Cons
- Requires substantial traffic
- Harder to accurately decipher results
- Not as easy to get started (more advanced)
Use Matomo to start testing and improving your site
You need to optimise your website if you want to get more leads, land more conversions and grow your business.
A/B testing and multivariate testing are proven testing methods you can lean on to improve your website and create a better user experience.
You may prefer one testing method now over the other, and that’s okay.
The main thing is you’re starting to test. The best marketers and analysts in the world find what works through testing and double down on their winning tactics.
If you want to start improving your website with testing today, get started with Matomo for free.
With Matomo, you can conduct A/B tests and multivariate tests easily, accurately, and ethically. Unlike other web analytics tools, Matomo prioritises privacy, providing
100% accurate data without sampling, and eliminates the need for cookie consent
banners (except in the UK and Germany).Try Matomo free for 21-days. No credit card required.
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21 day free trial. No credit card required.
