They Came, They Saw, They Want You to Stop Spamming

Does it ever seem like businesses are desperate to collect your information?

Not long ago, the latest and greatest convenience for customers was the ability to fill out a form on a website and get an email response instead of having to call. Businesses then realized they should keep these email addresses for their marketing efforts, and somewhere along the way, it went from convenient to annoying for customers. They got sick of the constant barrage of emails from businesses they barely interacted with, and started valuing their privacy more, not giving out their email address so easily.

Many businesses idealize form leads over other communication types. It’s great when a salesperson can get a neatly wrapped parcel in their email inbox containing the customer’s information and the nature of their inquiry for future reference. However, many businesses are seeing the rate at which they receive form leads is on the decline.

Email is certainly not going away as a means of communication, but customers are increasingly reluctant to hand over their information. Some are even resorting to temporary email inboxes, whereby a web service will provide exactly what it sounds like: a temporary address which can both send and receive emails, without giving away personal information.

We talked about this in another post about when prospects don't respond after they submit a form; it seems odd, but apparently there's a disconnect in expectations!

Anyone who has worked in sales on the receiving end of form leads can tell you that many come in with the customer email address field full of gibberish or just clearly not real, like “asdf@asdf.com”. They do that because they are hoping the email requirement is a bluff.

In some cases, information they want is on the other side of submitting a form, but they don’t actually want to be contacted, expecting the information to appear immediately after submission, not later via a salesperson (for example: getting a discount code, or a trade-in value estimate on their vehicle).

The distrust is plainly evident in how customers submit form leads.

Meanwhile, phone calls and live chats are growing in popularity for many verticals. People find it less intrusive to use those to get information, without unwittingly subscribing to future emails.

Fortunately, these can be tracked as conversions as well. When a user clicks on your ad taking them to your website, then clicks on your phone number or engages with your chat widget, those actions are tagged as events behind the scenes. We include these in our conversion reports because they are legitimate sales opportunities, but it requires clarification if a client assumes the only leads included in the conversion totals are form submissions.

So What?

Businesses should not get too attached to form leads as the sole indicator of effective online advertising. A sale resulting from someone contacting via other means is no less valid than a sale resulting from a form lead.

This is why we caution against completely altering a marketing strategy to gain a few more form leads at the expense of other types of leads. That would be chasing a misleading indicator.

Sure, you might capture a few more emails. But how do your customers feel about that?

Embrace other contact methods!

We would love to discuss an advertising plan that will help you reach the right people, and we absolutely offer campaigns to increase form leads (such as lead generation on Meta Ads) as part of that mix. As your digital partner, we also want to see you succeed, which may involve being open minded to trends and adapting to how your customers want to communicate.

Want to explore some options? Reach out to us however you like - use our website form, call us, email directly, send a carrier pigeon, up to you.