Make Lead-Gen Easier for You AND Your Prospect with “Easy Reply”

In an earlier article, I told you about the potential of Landing Pages to do wonders for your generation of leads. If you recall, it’s basically just a page on the Internet (tied to or maybe not even associated with your regular company website). You use the landing page for many reasons, but one of the best and most effective is as a lead generation site. You’ve gotten them there. But what now?

Now you ask them to do a little something for you – which will ultimately benefit them: Complete the Reply Element!

Typically associated with what you might have thought about as Direct Mail, a reply element ‘of old’ is a paper form the lead would complete and tuck neatly into a paper envelop with prepaid postage, addressed to you or your company. Today, all of that can be accomplished right on your Landing Page and a simple email form. BUT…you have to make sure you do it right, or you risk alienating your very valuable lead.

Here are my Six Tips for Effective Easy Reply Elements:

1.) Fewer Steps – You can hear them groan, can’t you? They’ve opened the link to the Reply Element and they’re faced with lines and lines of information. Make this easy for the prospect by limiting the number of steps required (even if the same amount of information is cleverly hidden in the reduced steps). You want them enthused, not beat up about having to complete your endless form.

2.) Headline Your Offer – The Reply Element form should mirror some aspects of the Landing Page message, namely so they’ll continue to associate the offer with the reason they’re filling out this information for you. Use a headline or sub-headline, making sure to maintain the connection and keep them interested.

3.) Short Sales Pitch – This isn’t an infomercial, but you’ll do yourself a favor to pepper the form (margins, perhaps?) with references to the product and the pain point. Subconsciously, the mind reads this, even though it has nothing to do with the information you’re asking them to provide. The ‘sale’ is always in the back of their mind.

4.) Use Visuals – Pictures are great, but don’t go crazy. Can you ghost or watermark an image behind the form? Do you need to associate your product to keep the prospect engaged? Balloons and bounce houses on a Reply Element for a kiddie party planner maintains the tie and provides a little visual stimulation for the prospect.

5.) Easy to Fill Out – Make it easy, and they will come. Okay, not exactly, but you get my point. A cumbersome and sloppy form can frustrate somebody – and if they just want the free thing you’re giving away, they might find that it isn’t worth their effort. An easy-to-complete experience is what everybody wants.

6.) Clean Design – Location, location, location. Whether it’s the watermark in the background, the way the prospect information is ‘tabbed’ through on the page, whether or not you’ve blocked off sections for the prospect to complete based on their previous answers, simplicity in design goes a long way in keeping your prospect hooked. Requiring your prospect to navigate a lengthy and cluttered Reply Element is counter-productive to generating new leads.

Listen, this is probably one of the easiest things in the world to put together – because we’ve all been there. We’ve all been asked to do something to get something. And the easier it’s been made for us, the more likely we are to fill in every box, dot every ‘I’, and cross every ‘t’ to receive our prize. Think of your prospects when designing your own Reply Elements.

Give Opportunity Knocks a call today. We’ve got Success Coaches standing by to help you take stock of the important requirements to build truly effective and beneficial Reply Elements, and fill that sales funnel with potential.