The Worst Assumption You Can Make

How many of your salespeople still ask the prospect, "how did you hear about us?" and assume the response is accurate? Not necessarily bad to ask, but if someone finds your website, spends a few minutes researching your software and then contacts your sales team, what do you think the chances are of them remembering the last site they used before they found yours? Not good. That's the bad news. Some software marketers have realized this. But many don't.

The good news is two-fold. As I stated in an earlier post, if you have designed your site with clear calls to action then it is likely that most of your leads will complete online forms where you can automatically track the referring campaign, thereby making this a bit of a moot point.

But I do talk with some vendors who still receive a lot of calls or emails from prospects. How then can they track? Customized phone numbers and email addresses!

800 numbers that vary by campaign have been used for a long time by other industries, and since you can use tagged URLs and cookies for your online campaigns, the technology to make phone numbers (and email addresses) dynamic is readily available. Additional 800 numbers are typically $5/Month and most companies have access to plenty of additional email address at no cost.

Do you know any software companies doing this? I'd love to hear from you.