One of the hottest topics for marketing automation users, whether you’re just starting out or you’re a seasoned professional, is perfecting a lead nurturing strategy. Using lead nurturing stops leaks in the sales funnel and gives your marketing ROI a major boost.

Join Pardot COO Adam Blitzer along with Pardot partners Arketi Group, A.D.A.M. , and DataSync for a complimentary webinar as they examine how to build the business case for automating lead nurturing. In addition, the panelists will discuss how sales and marketing teams can effectively collaborate to identify and implement strategic lead nurturing programs that generate real results.

The webinar will take place next Wednesday, June 30, at 2 p.m. Eastern.

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If you logged in to your Pardot account today, you probably noticed it got a little face lift! The new Pardot dashboard includes enhanced reporting and analytics options, allowing you to click through the graph and view different data points. You can also filter by date range using the box in the upper right corner of the reporting graph.

Our series on landing pages has covered a range of best practices that will help you build the most effective landing page possible. But landing pages are irrelevant to many non-sales-ready prospects–those leads who simply aren’t yet ready to take the plunge. So what should you do with these leads?

The introductory post in this series used a department store metaphor to compare the store’s entrance displays and signage to the landing pages of a website. Calls to action should normally be aimed at qualified leads who are ready to buy (“persuadable browsers”). Of course, you don’t want to write off those browsers who are actively comparison shopping but aren’t yet ready to buy. This is where lead nurturing comes in. Imagine again that you’re browsing at your favorite store but don’t find exactly what you’re looking for. Would you be willing to sign up for their email newsletter if it meant that you got sneak peeks at new merchandise and advance notification of special sales and promotions? Chances are, you would. But would you fill out the same form if it also asked for your home address, telephone number, and age? Probably not.

This is precisely the strategy you should take with non-sales-ready prospects who are otherwise qualified leads. Build a “friendly advisor” sort of relationship with them while still maintaining a respectful distance. Gathering prospect data bit by bit, or progressive profiling, is so effective precisely because it is a respectful and non-intrusive way to collect information. Progressive profiling decreases form abandonment and minimizes invalid responses, and it is the first step toward effective lead nurturing. Lead nurturing is essential to converting non-sales-ready leads into prospects who are ready to buy. Offer to keep in touch with periodic updates and relevant information if they provide their email address. Capture additional contact information in exchange for a free demo. Collect even more data on their browsing habits to figure out what it is they’re looking for so that you can present the solution. Pardot helps you build and customize forms for your landing pages so that you can collect information in this way. Not only does progressive profiling help you get the data you need, but it’s also one of the most effective ways to stay top of mind with these prospects so that when they are ready to buy, you’re at the top of their list.

Read more about how to set up a drip program that will effectively nurture “comparison shopper” leads.

So far in this series, we have covered best practices for designing and building landing pages. Above all else, landing pages should offer a quick, clean path to conversion for your leads. Creating a great landing page involves clarifying your concept, getting the design elements right, and locking up quality content behind effective forms to capture as much prospect data as possible. But achieving these fundamentals is just the beginning of your task. Testing and refining your landing page to maximize the conversion rate is the key to mastering these best practices.

What should I test?

First, identify and isolate landing page variables that are easy to change up, such as:

How do I test?

There are two basic types of tests you can run: Multivariate and A/B.

1. A/B testing compares two versions of a single variable (Do more visitors sign up for a free demo or a white paper?) and tracks visitor response rates to each option so that you can see which is the more effective of the two.
2. Multivariate testing compares a variety of variables in different combinations (Do visitors respond better to a short form next to an image of the white paper on offer? A screenshot next to a long form that earns them a free demo? Which of these options fares better once the headline has been worded differently?). You could think of multivariate testing as conducting multiple A/B tests in various combinations.

Which type of test is best?

Each type has pros and cons. A/B testing is relatively straightforward to conduct, and it generates a clear winner–but you can only test one element at a time. Multivariate testing yields more complex findings that, while certainly more precise and accurate, still contain far more grey area than the cut-and-dried A/B test results. One recent informal survey found that 80% of conversion experts prefer A/B over multivariate testing. Why? Multivariate testing is more complicated and takes a lot longer, as there are endless combinations of variables you can test. But spend too much time testing and you’ll get diminishing returns. Your best bet is to choose the most important variables, come up with some different possible combinations, and finally narrow it down to the best two versions of the landing page for testing.

What should I do with the results?

Use your testing results to make continuous improvements to your landing pages. Always be thinking different elements to test, better ways of wording things, and new items to introduce. Remember that this is an ongoing process, not just a one-time series of tests. Prospects’ needs and tastes aren’t fixed; testing can help you identify and keep up with new trends and directions. Constant testing and refining are part and parcel of achieving a high conversion rate for your landing pages.

The last episode of this series detailed some best practices for form creation. Today we’ll talk about what happens when a prospect submits that form in exchange for some of your content. What sort of content should you offer? Which content should you lock up, and what should be made public and freely available? Here are some pointers on sharing content with prospects.

Get smart with forms. As we learned in our previous installment, it pays to get smart with forms. Make sure prospects see plenty of value before asking them to fill out a form or you risk losing them entirely. Once they’re confronted with a form, it should be designed as a clean and straightforward path to conversion. For example, setting up forms to only accept valid email addresses will help you separate quality prospects from less serious visitors to your site.

Offer appropriate content. Content should be relevant and informational; leave the sales pitch to your sales reps. Examples of good types of content to offer would be articles, white papers, case studies, testimonial videos, and product demos. Think of your task in terms of educating prospects until they become ready to buy.

Set the right expectations. Transparency is always the best policy. Make sure prospects know exactly what they’re getting in exchange for a submitted form. Spell out your intentions with a concise, straightforward statement: “Please complete the form below to have this white paper emailed to you.” If they don’t know what they’re getting, they’ll be far less likely to complete the form.

Leverage the power of email. Rather than sending the requested document as an attachment, send an email with a link to the white paper or other content on your site. This way, you can track link click-throughs in order to assess a prospect’s level of interest.

Don’t lock up all of your content. Even though the conventional purpose of locked-down content is to elicit contact information from prospects who want to get at it, consider making some of your more substantial content freely available to any of your website’s visitors. Despite being otherwise qualified leads, some people are wary of filling out forms right away, so don’t completely alienate them by keeping all of your content locked up behind forms. Give them a taste of quality content–a free demo that doesn’t require registration to view, for example–and if their interest is piqued, they just might be persuaded to fill out a form requesting more information.

You might have all the fundamentals squared away–smart forms, quality content, appealing design–but you’ve just tackled the first part of the task. Your completed landing page is only a first draft. The next stage of the process involves ongoing testing and improvements to your landing page to maximize conversion rates. Check out our next installment for tips on testing and refining your landing page.

In our last installment, we highlighted some things to keep in mind when determining the design elements of landing pages. Once you’ve styled your content, you’ll probably need to build an appropriate form for your landing page. Here’s some tips for building effective forms and discouraging drop-off and form abandonment.

• Don’t waste your visitor’s time. Don’t you hate having to fill out the same medical history forms in triplicate every single time you go to a doctor’s appointment, thinking Can’t they just record this information once and store it for future reference? Don’t put your website’s visitors through this same hassle. Never ask visitors for the same piece of information more than once, and once you’ve collected that information, make sure you store it in their profile so you never have to ask them to repeat themselves. Pardot’s progressive profiling tools (read more below) make this process easy.

• Make the most of structured data fields. Standardize the data you collect and streamline the visitor experience by using structured data fields for your forms, instead of blank boxes that require visitors to craft their own answers. Structured data fields include things like drop-down lists and menus, checkboxes, and radio buttons. There are two major benefits to designing your forms this way:
  1)  Standardized data is cleaner and more useful to you. You can focus on collecting the exact information you need, and you won’t have to sift through prospect responses to find the relevant data.
  2)  Filling out this kind of form is much easier and less daunting for your site’s visitors. Less daunting forms generally yield higher conversion rates.

• Use progressive profiling to minimize the required fields. Progressive profiling involves using conditional fields to gradually ask for prospect information; upon subsequent visits, new form fields are displayed based on the data you’ve already collected in previous visits. Pardot’s “smart forms” make this easy by automatically requesting additional profile information to fill in the gaps until the prospect’s profile is complete.  Asking for a smaller number of data points in each interaction will yield less drop-off in the short term and higher overall conversion rates in the long term. Try to limit each of your forms to four fields or less for maximum success.

• Configure forms to display instant error messages. Forms with instant error validation are a great safeguard against form abandonment. Waiting until a prospect submits the form to inform them of errors will only frustrate them and encourage drop-off. When you display the message as soon as the invalid entry is made, it greatly improves the chances that the prospect will correct the information, submit the completed form, and successfully convert.

• Block invalid email addresses to weed out unqualified leads. Pardot’s invalid email address blocker enables you to disallow invalid email addresses, including those associated with free email providers, so that you can weed out unqualified prospects and prevent bogus form submissions. By ensuring that you only receive valid business email addresses, you’ll maximize your chances of sending your sales team legitimate leads that aren’t a waste of their time.

Pardot’s drag-and-drop form builder helps you build professional-looking forms in a user-friendly interface. An intuitive wizard guides you through the process of building your form, from deciding on the fields you want to include to determining the styling of the form. Pardot allows for custom form fields to capture any data point desired, whether your aim is to sync it with your CRM or to use that data to score, grade, or assign prospects. You can also set up the form to produce a particular action (e.g., autoresponder, redirect, etc.) once it is filled out and submitted.

Even when a prospect does abandon the form before submitting it, Pardot allows you to collect and save any information they entered in the form fields. You can then store this information in that prospect’s profile and track it against future site visits. If the information is changed later, Pardot will also keep track of this. The data gleaned from visitor audits can give insight into where a prospect is in the sales cycle and can also provide clues as to why a form might have been abandoned (thereby allowing you to improve upon the form’s design).

The next step in developing an effective landing page is to determine what you’ll be giving prospects in exchange for their completed form. What sort of content should be shared only upon conversion? Which content should you make freely available to the public? The next installment in our series will address these questions in addition to providing best practices for sharing locked up content with prospects.

Once you have your concept nailed down, you can start thinking about the design elements of your landing page. Here are some things to take into consideration:

• Use effective visuals. Don’t bother using irrelevant lifestyle shots, such as the tired visual clichés of the generic businessman on a computer or the smiling call center worker fielding customer inquiries. The images you choose should serve a purpose other than just filling space on a page. They should complement or enhance your content (e.g., a cover shot of the white paper on offer), not distract visitors from your main message or call to action. If your visuals are not directly related to your landing page’s content, consider changing them or eliminating them altogether.
• Make it easy on the eyes. Choose easy-to-read fonts that look clean and professional, and NEVER USE ALL-CAPS or excessively underlined text. [See how terrible it looks??] Minimize your use of multiple or unusual font colors; for example, yellow text is hard to read, and neon colors hurt people’s eyes and can imply a manic sense of urgency that you might not have intended to convey. Abandon the outdated “Web 1.0″ design philosophy–blatant attention-grabbing elements such as animated cartoons, flashing graphics, and scrolling banners–in favor of a more modern streamlined look.
• Minimize the need for scrolling. Your landing page should offer a quick, clean path to conversion for your website’s visitors. Save the lengthy content and large visuals for your homepage. If you can’t say what you need to say within the confines of a standard webpage window, you risk losing visitors who don’t feel like scrolling down to see the page in its entirety. This may seem like a small step, but it can really make a difference in the way visitors view your landing page.
• Establish credibility and maintain privacy. Make it clear that your company can be trusted. Include a basic statement about what steps your company takes to protect prospect data and how you will never share or sell their information. Post any third-party seals, certifications, or awards that your company has earned. Use client feedback to bolster your credibility. Security badges like VeriSign or TRUSTe, along with ratings from consumer agencies like the Better Business Bureau, can also really put visitors’ minds at ease, thereby making them far more likely to convert.

Pardot’s intuitive drag-and-drop landing page builder lets you create landing pages that are consistent with your company website’s look and feel without requiring the use of code. The user-friendly WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”) interface is as simple to use as familiar word processing programs. It allows you to drag and drop elements into the header and footer of your landing page as well as the main content area, where you can easily format using HTML, rich text, built-in image hosting, and other formatting options to match your branding and maintain consistency with the rest of your website. You can utilize existing marketing assets by dragging the files into the builder. You can also further customize the look and feel of your landing pages by entering your own CSS.

Pardot’s customized templates allow you to create reusable templates with custom layouts that are best suited to your marketing team’s needs. These templates can help maintain consistency with your campaigns by letting you pull styling and HTML from an existing page when creating a new landing page. Pardot’s powerful templating language allows for dynamic content and lets you format forms and site search results in addition to landing pages.

After you’ve addressed these design elements to determine what look and feel you want your landing page to have, you can move on to building appropriate forms. The next installment in our landing pages series outlines some best practices for forms, as well as some tips for discouraging form abandonment.

The first step in designing an effective landing page is to conceptualize what it is that you want to appear on that page. As we discussed in our previous post, landing pages are to your company website what entrances are to your typical mall department store. They are the face you present to visitors, so obviously they should look good. But looks aren’t everything. The real challenge is to pull visitors in and get them to answer your call to action (which ultimately means buying something). Coming up with concise and persuasive content that culminates in a clear call to action is the key. Here are some tips to get you started:

Once you’ve conceptually linked your new landing page to the appropriate campaign, optimized your content for relevant keywords, and formulated a clear call to action, you can begin to think about the look and feel of your landing page. For some tips on design elements, check out the next installment in our “Landing Pages Best Practices” series.

A landing page is any page of a website to which a visitor is directed after clicking on an ad or a link in an email. A site can have multiple landing pages, each of which serves as a point of entry for prospects. While landing pages are the face of your company’s website and should be designed with this in mind, their primary purpose is to convert visitors into leads so that your sales team can more easily turn promising leads into customers. Of all of the improvements you could make to your website, optimizing your landing pages to boost conversion rates will yield the greatest return. A recent MarketingSherpa study found that improving a landing page can increase its conversion rate by an average of 40%. It’s hard to overstate the value of an effective landing page.

Imagine your website as a department store in the mall. There are multiple entrances, each of which ushers in scores of browsers and buyers. Because these entrances represent a visitor’s first impression of your store, it’s important that they look impressive and showcase the best of what you have to offer. But ultimately, you want to configure your entrances to convert as many browsers as possible into committed buyers (and, by extension, to convert first-time buyers into repeat shoppers and finally loyal customers). The best way to do this is to offer multiple incentives that entice browsers to buy something: promotional displays, sale banners, store credit card signup kiosks, stylish mannequins decked out in your featured clothing items. All the better if you can anticipate what they came in looking for so that you can feature a sale table of this item (e.g., cashmere sweaters just before Christmas) that greets them as soon as they enter the store.

Out of many browsers, only a few will end up buying anything. A good number of browsers are just passing through your store briefly and have no real intention to buy. Some have even wandered in by mistake and will leave just as quickly as they entered. Other browsers are not in your target demographic (e.g., young children shopping with their parents). Some browsers will be interested in your offerings but won’t be ready to buy yet; many of these will come back at a later date to revisit these offerings, possibly to buy something. A few folks who come into your store will be on a mission to buy something specific; assuming you have what they’re looking for, appealing to them in order to persuade them to make the purchase is like preaching to the choir. The group you want to focus most of your attention on is the persuadable browser. These folks are like qualified leads in that they have a pretty good idea of what they’re looking for and perhaps have even shopped around with competitors. All you have to do is convince them to make their purchase in your store.

Does all of this sound familiar? The department store shopper scenario follows more or less the same trajectory as a typical sales funnel: Your website’s visitors convert first to prospects, then qualified leads, and finally to customers. Landing pages are like a department store’s all-important entrances. They need to look good, and they need to convert as many visitors as possible. Offerings need to be as relevant as possible, and the call to action should be clear: “Give this lovely cashmere sweater as a gift this Christmas!” “It’s summertime and you really need these sunglasses!” “Get 20% off today’s purchase when you apply for our store credit card!”

But how do you convert casual browsers to committed buyers? Get off to a good start by getting the fundamentals right. Just as carrying superior products and regularly featuring new offerings is a necessity for any good department store, maintaining a frequently updated website with quality content is imperative for B2B businesses. Friendly customer service can be a major differentiator for any company, regardless of industry or setting. But these things alone aren’t always enough to garner optimal conversion rates.

But don’t underestimate the power of landing pages and the crucial role they play in maximizing conversion. Department stores put lots of time and energy into improving their entryway displays and signage, so it makes sense to think about landing pages in the same way. Focus on enticing your “persuadable browsers” (those qualified leads that are also ready to buy) to answer your call to action. How can you make the most of your website’s vital points of entry–your landing pages–to convince prospects to do business with you, not your competitor? Our next installments will give you some helpful tips and best practices on creating effective landing pages that seal the deal.

Landing pages comprise the most important element of your company’s website. Landing pages guide incoming traffic to your site to take a desired action, such as providing contact information or signing up for an email list. They also provide considerable insight into prospect behavior and intentions. Because landing pages are so important to successfully converting visitors into prospects (and prospects into customers), it’s important to optimize their design and content to yield the highest conversion rate possible. This series will outline best practices for landing page optimization by addressing the following questions:

Stay tuned for Part 2, where we will discuss the importance of a good landing page and the functions it serves.