MQL vs. SQL: What’s the Difference?

Jumping to the last page of a book isn’t as impactful as when you have a chance to read the character exposition, plot buildup, and the epic final battle. The same is true for converting your leads.

If you skip to the conversion without the buildup, your leads may not respond to your sales pitch as you hoped.

In contrast, you’ll see incredible results when you can build the tension and present your products in the best light.

How do you know it’s time for the final reveal? Knowing that starts with understanding the difference between MQL vs. SQL.

Discover what these terms mean and how to seamlessly move your leads from the first chapter to the last.

Why Does Understanding MQL vs. SQL Matter?

Marketing and sales qualified leads are tags marketers give to leads to indicate a lead’s readiness for conversion, ensuring you make the most out of your marketing investment.

Converting a lead costs money, especially if you’re using account-based marketing. You have investments in personalization, educational materials, and even sales calls. It also costs valuable time.

If you move too soon on a new lead and try to convert it, you may earn a no when that same lead, with proper nurturing, may have otherwise said yes.

The SQL vs. MQL tags help marketers understand when a lead moves from looking for products to being ready to check out, so you can invest your time and energy where it will be most impactful while personalizing your marketing strategies for each stage.

Here’s a deeper look at the MQL vs. SQL meaning.

Image from HubSpot

Decoding the Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

The marketing qualified lead (MQL) has shown demonstrable interest in your business. On average, 25% of new leads in the IT and management service industry become marketing-qualified leads.

However, even though an MQL has the potential to convert, they aren’t quite at that point yet.

Instead, that lead is qualified for the marketing team to begin nurturing. Nurturing includes educating, generating demand, and warming the lead up for conversion.

MQL Indicators

Here are several ways to identify when a lead becomes a marketing-qualified lead and is ready for nurturing:

  • Fits your target audience profile: The lead has the finances, buying power, and needs, making them a good match for your products.
  • Shown interest in your products: The lead has demonstrated interest in your products by visiting your site multiple times, subscribing to your newsletter, following you on social media, attending a webinar, and asking about the products.
  • Engaged with marketing content: The lead continues actively engaging with marketing content, like opening emails, downloading eBooks, and liking blog posts.

While these signs show they may be seriously considering your products, none of these signs indicate they have reached the point of purchase. Rather, these are signs a MQL has moved to the SQL stage.

How to Respond to an MQL

What should you do when you have an MQL?

When a lead becomes an MQL, you aim to move them from a marketing-qualified lead to a sales-qualified lead. To do that, you will want the lead to acknowledge a definite need and readiness to buy.

Use educational content on your socials, blog, and email to create a demand for the product and help them acknowledge the need. You will also build trust so that once the lead recognizes their need, they will trust your company enough to buy from you.

Your call-to-action will also reflect this stage in the buyer’s journey. Since the lead isn’t ready to buy, you avoid high-commitment CTAs like “buy now.” Instead, promote small commitments, like joining a webinar or scheduling a free trial.

Decoding the Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)

Your marketing-qualified lead finally acknowledges their need, they have the funds to buy, and they are ready to act immediately. They have now advanced from marketing-qualified leads to sales-qualified leads.

Sales-qualified leads are the ones who are ready to move to the checkout line and close the purchase. However, the leads don’t always take those last few steps alone. That’s where your strong sales team comes into play.

Once a lead shows signs of readiness, the lead moves to the sales team, and the sales team begins reaching out to close the deal.

SQL Indicators

Here are several signs a lead has moved from an MQL to an SQL:

  • Shows interest in buying: The lead has downloaded a demo, signed up for a free trial, or directly told a sales representative they want to make a purchase.
  • Has a need, authority, and budget: The lead has a known need, authority to buy, and the budget to buy.
  • Matches the timing: The lead is ready to buy at that moment and is not planning for a distant event or future purchase.

How to Respond to a SQL

Once you see these indicators, your sales team can begin pushing sales content. This might include an email campaign offering specific products versus educating them on your services. It might also include a direct sales call, which can be especially effective for account-based marketing where you want to take a personable approach.

Your goal is to close quickly once a lead becomes an SQL. The longer you let this stage go, the greater the chance of the lead losing interest or finding a different provider.

How to Tell When a MQL Turns into a SQL

You don’t need a crystal ball to track when a marketing-qualified lead is sales-ready.

It’s a simple numbers game. At least, with the help of AI, tracking leads becomes simple. Most marketers use a system called lead scoring.

This is how lead scoring plays out:

Each action a lead takes has a point value. The point value can be negative or positive. For example, reading emails and downloading whitepapers have positive values. However, ignoring emails or unsubscribing is a negative value.

AI automatically tracks a lead’s behavior, adding and subtracting points. Once the lead hits a designated benchmark, it passes from MQL to SQL.

Some items, like downloading a free trial, might automatically meet the score benchmark and move a lead immediately to the SQL team.

With this automated system in place, the marketing and sales team can receive notifications when a new lead is ready, quickly picking up the lead’s journey with the next natural step toward conversion.

What Is the MQL vs. SQL Optimal Conversion Rate

Your MQL to SQL conversion rate depends on several factors, including the quality of leads, alignment between marketing and sales teams, and the effectiveness of lead nurturing efforts.

Generally, a healthy MQL to SQL conversion rate can range from 10% to 30%, with the average falling at 13%. This number can vary significantly based on industry, target audience, and business model.

Marketing and sales teams should work together to define MQLs’ and SQLs’ criteria to align their goals. This collaboration ensures that you appropriately qualify leads, and you hand off the lead between teams at the right stage of the buyer’s journey.

Convert More of Your MQLs to SQLs

Do you want to turn your lead conversion process into a well-oiled machine?

Hushly’s all-in-one conversion cloud has the tools you need to generate leads, score the leads, and move them seamlessly from MQL to SQL.

With our system running in the background, you can focus on converting those leads into loyal customers.

Schedule a demo to see our conversion powerhouse in action.

Why Email Marketing Is Important (+6 Ways to Use Email)

Is email marketing still relevant?

After all, there are so many ways to reach clients in 2024. You have social media, text messages, instant messages, and chatbots.

What does email marketing bring to the table that the other channels don’t already cover?

Email marketing offers several options, one of the biggest being a platform for long-form, personalized content. So, how can you best leverage that long-form content channel to reach, convert, and retain customers?

Learn why email marketing is important and how to run your email campaigns into 2024.

Why Email Marketing Is Important in 2024

Why is email marketing important and does it work?

Here are four reasons, backed by data, that show email marketing is still alive and thriving in 2024.

Ability to Directly Communicate with Your Audience

There are over four billion people who use email daily. When you reach your audience through email, you can contact them directly through a platform they are actively engaging with.

Other marketing channels, like SEO and social media, are at the mercy of an algorithm. While there are ways to increase the odds of your marketing content appearing in front of your audience, ultimately, you can’t guarantee it.

However, in email marketing, you not only know who sees your content, but you can also track who opens that content and interacts with the content.

Chance to Earn a High Return on Investment (ROI)

The average email marketing ROI is $36 for every $1 spent, one of the highest content marketing ROIs.

Image from Omnisend

There is no need to track likes and shares or perform complex formulas. Email marketing provides the highest ROIs and is one of the most straightforward channels to track. Some key performance indicators (KPIs) to track include:

  • Open rates
  • Click-through rates
  • Conversion rates

Opportunity to Tap into a Personalization Powerhouse

Gone are the days of generic email blasts. Personalizing your messages is the top way email marketers increase engagement. According to 99% of marketers, personalization builds customer relationships, and 90% of customers agree that personalized marketing content is appealing.

Email marketing allows you to segment your audience based on demographics, interests, and past behavior. This enables you to tailor your messages to individual needs and preferences, boosting engagement and conversion.

No other platform allows you to perform this level of hyper-personalization.

Ideal Channel to Build Trust and Credibility

About 80% of businesses say email marketing increases customer retention. In addition, 59% of customers say email impacts their purchase decisions, with the average shopper spending 138% more after seeing an email offer.

While many channels, like SEO, work well to attract those initial leads to your business, you can’t beat email marketing for nurturing those leads and encouraging loyalty and conversion.

6 Ways to Use Email Marketing Effectively

How can email marketing fuel your overall inbound strategy? Learn six ways to use email marketing to successfully build on your marketing growth goals.

1. Lead Generation and Qualification

Lead generation is not as easy as capturing leads’ email addresses.

For instance, a cybersecurity company may publish an eBook to connect with cybersecurity clients. However, not everyone downloading the eBook is a client. Some may be IT researchers, other marketers doing content research, or even college students finding statistics for a paper.

Which ones are actual, viable leads?

Email marketing takes that list you create and can filter out the irrelevant leads so you can put the most relevant leads into a lead nurturing campaign. You can measure each new contact’s response to your emails through email marketing, helping you identify their intent.

Hushly’s advanced platforms take this step further by filtering leads out at the lead capture stage by analyzing items like email addresses and website activity to help determine which contacts are most likely a lead.

2. Welcoming Emails

Once you connect with a new lead, automate a welcome email to begin the conversation immediately. Welcome emails are a series of automated emails to new subscribers to introduce them to your brand, products, and services.

Those crucial welcome emails also set expectations. They help subscribers understand what to expect going forward and encourage them to connect through other channels like social media.

Hushly’s automated platform lets you immediately set up your welcome sequence to build relationships with new leads.

3. New Lead Nurturing

Not all leads are ready to purchase immediately. Some need time to understand their needs and your products. Lead nurturing emails break down complex ideas into digestible lessons and actionable tips. They also offer less daunting call-to-actions than asking the lead to purchase.

For instance, your conversion goal might be to convince the new lead to join a webinar.

Educating and nurturing your leads through newsletters, shared content, and email updates helps generate demand. Automated lead nurturing sequences also help you further qualify leads by seeing what emails they respond best to. It helps you to identify what the lead is most interested in so you can begin segmenting those leads further and move toward hyper-personalized campaigns.

4. Personalized Email Campaigns

Nurturing the new leads moves leads from strangers to customers. It’s like a relationship where couples take time to date. Very few couples jump from exchanging phone numbers directly to walking down the aisle. There’s a period of getting to know each other, building trust, and asking crucial questions to gauge your compatibility.

B2B email marketing relies on this trust-building stage and requires a hyper-personalized approach.

Lead nurturing operates much the same way. Your customers want to know you and see whether your products and services match their needs. Your goal is to show that you do. Through email marketing, you can segment your audience by those needs to improve your personalized approach, discussing your benefits to specific audiences rather than offering general solutions.

Hushly’s powerful conversion cloud helps you segment leads into those groups and automate your personalized lead nurturing campaign.

5. Retargeting Campaigns

Not all relationships work out. But sometimes that can be due to misunderstandings. If you go after every lead that begins to walk away, you could add thousands in sales to your company.

But how do you run after those leads?

Retargeting campaigns identify leads losing interest and recapture leads right as they drift.

Here are a few ways that might look:

  • Retargeting website popups recapture a lead’s interest when they’re about to leave your website.
  • Cart reminders for leads who left products in their shopping carts remind them of your products.
  • Automated email sequences aim to bring back the lead’s attention and keep you in their minds.
  • Exclusive offers give leads more incentive to try out your products.

6. Client Retention Campaigns

With all the focus on new leads, you should also remember those loyal customers. Retaining customers takes less time and is more cost-efficient than gaining a new customer. If you are a subscription-based company, customer loyalty has an even more significant impact on your bottom line.

Here are a few ways to encourage long-term customer loyalty through email marketing:

  • Send personalized emails to existing customers to thank them for their loyalty.
  • Provide exclusive offers, discounts, or loyalty rewards to encourage repeat purchases.
  • Share valuable content such as tips, guides, or case studies related to their previous purchases to keep them engaged.

Give Your Email Marketing a Refresh

It’s time to modernize your email marketing using AI, automation, and hyper-personalization. When you do, you’ll enjoy the power of a modern email marketing campaign that effectively targets your ideal clients, leading to a more efficient conversion path.

Hushly can help you see greater returns from your email campaigns using our all-in-one conversion cloud. It has all you need to generate, nurture, and convert leads.

Request a demo to see the power of Hushly in action.

6 Benefits of Workflow Automation for Technology Companies

Inspector Gadget was a famous childhood cartoon about a detective who could immediately produce any tool he needed. These tools allowed him to accomplish dozens of tasks, no matter the situation.

While you may not have a hat that produces helicopter wings or gloves with screwdrivers, AI is your tools set, ready to jump in when you need it. If you establish a workflow, you won’t need to manually start the tools as they’ll run automatically, saving you the time and energy that those menial tasks would have otherwise used.

Learn six benefits of workflow automation for technology companies that want to prepare their companies for growth.

1. Build a Positive Customer Experience

Over half of customers would switch brands over just one negative experience. To say customer experience is essential is an understatement. That’s why business leaders are finding new ways to ensure customers receive the experience they want and need.

AI has played an instrumental role in transforming the customer experience. An estimated 72% of business leaders will prioritize AI in the customer experience over the next year.

Image from Zendesk

Here are a few benefits of using AI workflow automation in the customer experience.

Consistency

Workflows move automatically, creating consistent results for customers and your business. Marketing workflow management establishes the rules for creating that consistency.

You also help improve consistency by creating clear guidelines when each team enters the marketing automation. For instance, sales know precisely when it’s their turn to step in with a lead to convert them, so there’s no communication gap.

Personalized Marketing Campaigns

For technology companies, engaging customers through personalized campaigns is essential as most technology companies use account-based marketing to reach their B2B clients.

Workflow automation creates a personalized marketing automation workflow without you having to interfere manually. By automating lead nurturing, segmentation, and content delivery, you can deliver targeted messages that resonate with each audience, ultimately improving the customer experience.

Proactive Customer Support

You probably don’t have the staff required to support customers constantly. However, automated workflows take that load from your team’s shoulder.

Customer support automated workflows streamline issue resolution processes. You can use AI chat support or automated email responses to customer questions.

Technology companies can also provide proactive support through automated ticketing, routing, and responses. These strategies improve customer satisfaction and free up support teams to focus on more complex issues.

Data-Driven Customer Insights

Automation tools gather valuable data throughout the customer journey. You can use this data to discover actionable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and pain points.

By leveraging these insights, you can refine your strategies for each customer, create tailored experiences, and build lasting customer relationships.

For example, Hushly uses first-party data to create customized content recommendations based on user behavior, so each website visitor has a unique experience.

2. Operate with Greater Efficiency

Efficiency and productivity directly reflect how well your team is operating. When productivity is high, you’re maximizing your resources and time.

Here are a few ways workflow automation helps you reach greater efficiency and productivity.

Streamlined Processes

Workflow automation significantly reduces manual interventions in repetitive tasks.

Do you send the same email to all new leads? There’s no need to add them to a list and manually send it. Just automate the welcome email.

Technology companies can streamline most of their operations by automating routine processes, allowing teams to focus on high-value activities.

Task Prioritization and Optimization

Automation tools enable technology companies to prioritize tasks based on importance and urgency.

By optimizing task sequences, teams can ensure they complete critical processes first, contributing to overall productivity.

This strategic prioritization also helps the team change with differing project requirements, so they always focus on the most critical tasks first.

3. Improve Company Collaboration

Collaboration and communication can make or break a team. If you have effective communication, you can increase your productivity by 25%. Here are a few ways workplace automation helps with better collaboration and communication.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Collaboration across diverse teams – from development and marketing to sales and customer support – is essential in any efficient business to perform larger strategies.

Workflow automation supports cross-functional cooperation by providing a centralized communication and project management platform. This enhanced collaboration breaks down silos and promotes a culture of transparency and shared goals.

Real-Time Visibility

Automation tools offer real-time visibility into project statuses and team activities. This transparency allows stakeholders to track progress, identify bottlenecks, and make data-driven decisions.

Real-time insights enable teams to respond promptly to challenges that might arise. This prompt response ensures that projects stay on course.

Customer-Focused Workflows

Automation allows companies to create customer-focused processes, from lead generation to post-sale support. Companies can enhance customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention by aligning workflows with customer needs.

4. Increase Your Company’s Scalability

Your scalability is your ability to grow or handle differing workloads. When you complete everything manually, you limit yourself to your abilities. However, adding workflow automation allows you to handle nearly endless tasks without adding time to your schedule.

Here are some specific examples of workflow automation’s benefits to your company’s scalability.

Adaptability to Growth

Technology companies often experience rapid growth and evolving business needs.

Workflow automation provides the scalability required to handle increased workloads seamlessly.

You can quickly adapt and scale automated processes to accommodate growing demands, ensuring that you maintain operational efficiency even during expansion.

Resource Optimization

As technology companies scale, optimizing resources becomes crucial to ensure you have enough resources to handle every growth stage.

Workflow automation enables efficient resource use by automating resource-intensive tasks. This optimization ensures that you direct valuable human resources toward the most strategic areas first.

Integration with Existing Systems

There’s no need to add yet another software to your already complicated system.

Workflow automation, like Hushly, seamlessly integrates with existing systems and tools. This flexibility allows technology companies to leverage automation without disrupting their current workflows.

Adaptability and an agile workflow are particularly beneficial as companies evolve and adopt new technologies, ensuring a smooth transition.

5. Build a Network for Accountability

Security and privacy are top priorities for tech companies that operate so extensively online. Workflow automation makes this overwhelming task just a little easier.

Data Governance and Compliance

Workflow automation allows you to stay on top of all the latest data governance policies.

By automating data management processes, you can reduce non-compliance risk and safeguard sensitive information.

You also reduce the risk of errors since you’ll have minimal human intervention.

Security Protocols

Automation workflow tools often come equipped with advanced security features. These features include encryption, access controls, and audit trails to protect sensitive data.

Implementing automated security protocols ensures that technology companies can maintain data confidentiality and integrity.

6. Reduce Costs While Maximizing Your ROI

Let’s talk about the financial return. After all, no strategy is worth adopting unless it positively impacts your profits. Here are a few ways to save more while boosting your earnings through workflow automation.

Operational Cost Optimization

Automation reduces the need for manual labor in repetitive tasks. This leads to operational cost savings since you have an employee who works for free doing functions that most people don’t enjoy.

Resource Allocation Optimization

By automating resource-intensive tasks, technology companies can optimize resource allocation.

Whether human or computing resources, automation ensures you use these assets strategically, minimizing waste.

Faster ROI on Technology Investments

Implementing workflow automation speeds up the time between closing a sale and receiving payment. That, in turn, means you’ll have a healthy cash flow and a higher return on investment (ROI).

The improved efficiency, productivity, and streamlined processes contribute to faster returns, making technology initiatives the best financial choice.

Boost Your Workplace Efficiency Through Workflow Automation

Efficiency is just the tip of the iceberg for workplace automation benefits. It offers a complete system supporting you in every stage of marketing and conversion. You’ll soon be running like a well-oiled machine through workplace automation, allowing you to move faster and smoother through the conversion process.

Hushly is your all-in-one conversion cloud with every tool you need to build this workflow automation machine. It’s fully customizable to your business and customers, allowing you to gain every benefit.

Schedule a demo to see the power of Hushly’s workflow automation for yourself.

Marketing Qualified Lead vs. Sales Qualified Lead Conversions in the Tech Industry

Converting a stranger to a lead is a massive win for any marketer. However, it’s just the first step in the journey to the ultimate conversion: a sale. That lead will cross several more barriers before you can count it as a profitable success. One barrier is moving from a marketing-qualified lead to a sales-qualified lead.

What is a sales-qualified lead, and how is it different from a marketing-qualified lead?

We will dive into this crucial conversion step and how you can increase your sales-qualified leads.

MQL vs. SQL

There are two primary types of leads: marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) and sales-qualified leads (SQLs). Here’s a quick look at SQL vs. MQL definitions as well as what makes each unique.

Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)

MQLs are leads that have shown interest in your tech products or services but are not yet ready for direct sales engagement. Once you capture that lead’s information, they enter the first stage of a new lead.

These leads are typically in the early stages of the buyer’s journey. They express interest by downloading a whitepaper, subscribing to a newsletter, or attending a webinar.

MQLs are prospects that need further nurturing and education before transitioning to the sales stage.

Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)

SQLs represent leads that have been thoroughly vetted and are ready for direct interaction with the sales team.

These leads have progressed beyond the initial stages of interest and engagement. For example, they have consistently opened nurturing emails, downloaded several whitepapers, and even signed up for your product demo.

Three characteristics that turn a marketing-qualified lead into a sales-qualified lead are:

  • Need: They have expressed a need for your products or services.
  • Budget: They have the finances to follow through with purchasing those products.
  • Timeline: They plan to purchase immediately.

They are now ready for your tech sales team.

SQL vs. MQL: Why Are MQLs and SQLs Distinct?

Not all leads are the same. A lead is anyone who fills out a contact form. However, you will gather information from people ranging from a key decision-maker in a large tech corporation to your neighbor Sam, who wants to learn more about what you do in your job.

You’ll have an initial qualification round that weeds out your neighbor Sam and similar disinterested visitors. The leads you have left match your buyer persona, which outlines the businesses that could use your tech products and who their key decision-makers are. They have expressed interest in your products or services. These are your marketing-qualified leads.

Even though those marketing-qualified leads match your buyer persona and are interested in buying, it doesn’t mean they have the budget or are ready to buy at that time.

In fact, 79% of marketing-qualified leads don’t convert to sales.

If your sales team chased every marketing-qualified lead, you would waste a considerable number of resources. Then, you may not have the resources you need to convert the actual serious buyers.

However, by separating leads into groups, you can customize your marketing strategies for the point they are in the sales funnel. That way, you can stretch your budget further by pouring your sales efforts on those who show signs of purchase readiness.

How to Adjust Your Marketing Strategies Between MQLs and SQLs

What strategies belong with which lead group? Use this guide to help you fit the most effective strategy to each stage of the buyer’s journey.

Nurturing MQLs

You captured a couple hundred new leads and pulled out the ones matching your buyer persona. You now have a list of marketing-qualified leads. Through these strategies, you aim to identify the ones ready to buy and encourage those not prepared to warm up to your products.

Here are some of the most effective lead nurturing strategies to accomplish those goals:

  • Content Personalization: Tailor content to address the specific pain points and interests of MQLs. Provide valuable resources such as in-depth guides, webinars, and case studies to nurture their understanding of your product or service.
  • Lead Scoring: Implement lead scoring to identify MQLs based on their interactions with your content. Assign scores for actions like opening emails, downloading resources, and attending events. This helps prioritize leads for targeted nurturing efforts.
  • Automated Email Campaigns: Set up automated email campaigns that deliver relevant content to MQLs over time. This ensures a consistent and personalized engagement, gradually moving them through the buyer’s journey.

Converting SQLs

You performed lead scoring, and a few dozen leads were officially moved from MQLs to SQLs. Your goal is to now quickly close before those leads lose interest. Here are some strategies to help with that process:

  • Personalized Sales Outreach: Since SQLs have demonstrated a higher interest and intent, personalized sales outreach has become crucial. Craft tailored messages that address their specific needs and showcase your value proposition.
  • Timely Follow-Ups: Act promptly when dealing with SQLs. Given their readiness to engage with the sales team, timely follow-ups are essential. Automated reminders and customer relationship management (CRM) tools can help ensure that no potential opportunity slips through the cracks.
  • Customized Demos and Presentations: Provide SQLs with customized demos and presentations that align with their specific requirements. Demonstrating how your product or service directly addresses their pain points increases the likelihood of a conversion.

The average B2B tech conversion rate is about 1.7%.

Image from Ruler Analytics

3 Ways to Boost Your MQL to SQL Conversion Rate

Are your marketing-qualified leads not converting to sales-qualified leads? Here are a few ways to adjust your strategies to increase your conversion rate:

1. Clearly Define MQLs and SQLS

Clearly define what constitutes an MQL and an SQL within your organization. Align the sales and marketing teams with these definitions to ensure a unified approach.

Open regular communication channels between the sales and marketing teams to share insights and feedback. This collaboration enhances the lead qualification process because you’re on the same page about what works and what doesn’t.

2. Use Data-Driven Lead Scoring

Moving leads from MQL to SQL is a numbers game.

Leverage data analytics to fine-tune your lead-scoring model. Analyze historical data to identify patterns and behaviors indicating a higher conversion likelihood.

Here are some indicators that a lead might be ready to move forward:

  • Downloading content
  • Visiting your website
  • Contacting customer service
  • Past purchases
  • Scheduling a demo
  • Frequently opening emails
  • Expressing direct interest in buying

Some actions do have higher scores than others. For instance, someone who schedules a demo might instantly become a sales-qualified lead. In contrast, another lead may need to download several whitepapers before they receive a high enough score for the sales team to reach out.

Continuously refine and optimize your lead scoring criteria based on the performance of past conversions. This approach ensures that your model remains relevant and practical.

3. Create a Content Map for Each Stage

Map your content to each stage of the buyer’s journey. Create content assets that align with the awareness, consideration, and decision stages to nurture leads through the funnel.

Use personalized content recommendations and targeted campaigns to guide MQLs through their journey, gradually building trust and understanding.

Hushly provides customized content recommendations on websites to help develop a content map that transforms MQLs into SQLs

Bonus Tip: Maximize Your Tech MQL to SQL Conversions

Understanding the distinctions between MQLs and SQLs is pivotal for successful conversions in the tech industry.

Organizations can create a seamless and effective lead conversion process by tailoring strategies to nurture MQLs and using personalized approaches to convert SQLs.

Hushly’s AI-powered conversion tools help every step of the way, including lead generation, scoring, and conversion. It’s your all-in-one conversion cloud for every stage your leads are at.

Are you interested in streamlining your conversion process?

Schedule a demo today to see how easy conversions can be.

How to Optimize Your Mobile App Conversion Rate

It’s possible that over half of the people reading this article are accessing it on a smartphone.

Mobile phone usage is exploding. You use your mobile devices for everything from checking emails to watching your favorite sports team. You even keep your favorite brands’ apps on your phone.

While smartphones are convenient for consumers, they can add a hurdle for businesses that try to optimize and track their mobile app conversion rate.

Let’s look at ways to optimize for mobile apps and track that impactful conversion rate so you know how successful your mobile efforts are.

Understanding Mobile App Conversion Optimization

Roughly 85% of the world’s population owns a smartphone. Due to the increase in smartphone ownership, one prediction is that by 2025, 72% of online browsing will occur on mobile devices.

Image from Exploding Topics

Mobile app conversion optimization adjusts user experiences on mobile devices to maximize conversions. This might be simple adjustments like changing a menu to a dropdown menu. It also includes visual changes, like adjusting images so they don’t dominate a screen and make viewing more pleasant.

Often, marketers see mobile devices as a secondary channel for reaching customers. Designing websites and customer experiences always starts with desktop designs. Then, marketers adjust those designs almost as an afterthought for mobile devices.

But that thinking will soon become obsolete as mobile devices become increasingly more popular. It’s also not feasible in many cases, as designers can’t directly convert all experiences to mobile devices. Some images and media don’t translate well and require a special design just for mobile experiences.

You should focus on your mobile app conversion rate to stay ahead of this growing trend.

Your mobile app might appear in two ways.

  1. The mobile version of your website that appears in a user’s mobile browser app.
  2. A downloadable app allowing customers to access your site.

5 Ways to Optimize Mobile App Conversions

How can you adjust your mobile experiences to bring in more conversions while also allowing you to track user behavior and conversion rate?

Start by implementing these five tips:

1. Prioritize the User Experience

Build a user-centric experience that’s easy for customers to navigate and increases mobile user engagement. A user-centric approach is intuitive, visually appealing, and engaging.

On average, 88% of shoppers don’t return to websites if they have a poor user experience. In addition, 38% will stop interacting with a poorly designed mobile app.

Even more startling is that 85% of consumers say a mobile website should be equal to or better than a desktop website. So, the expectations are high.

Are you ready to meet them?

Here are some examples of a quality mobile app:

  • Attractive design
  • Accessible and easy-to-read menus
  • Fast page load speeds
  • Images and media formatted for mobile devices

You’re more likely to convert customers with a positive first impression.

2. Personalize User Journeys

Data analytics help you create personalized mobile user journeys.

Hushly’s advanced algorithms can analyze user behavior on your website and mobile app, allowing you to tailor experiences based on individual preferences and interactions.

A personalized user journey offers suggestions for further reading and where to navigate next based on a user’s action. These recommendations make navigation convenient since the user doesn’t have to search through options menus, which can feel more challenging on a mobile device.

Instead, you support continuous scrolling and reading.

3. Incorporate Progressive Profiling

There’s a reason acronyms like LOL and BTW were born. Users invented acronyms to make texting more convenient since mobile keypads are not the most user-friendly for long messages.

Users often find traditional forms with dozens of fields daunting. Those forms are incredibly daunting when you need to fill them out using a tiny smartphone keypad.

Hushly’s progressive profiling allows you to collect user information gradually. As users engage with your app, it collects relevant data, reducing friction and enhancing the overall conversion process.

The form you’ll see on a desktop is still on the page. Hushly uses our innovative mobile optimization software to remove it for mobile viewing only so visitors can enjoy limitless reading without running away at the first sign of a fill-in form.

4. Build Unified User Profiles

Hushly integrates user profiles seamlessly across your website and mobile app. This unified approach provides a comprehensive view of user interactions so you can understand the entire customer journey, no matter where it starts and ends.

The average customer has about 5.5 touchpoints, but some have found customers to have over 20 touchpoints. These can occur online, through the mobile app, and in person. With that high number, you can almost guarantee most users interacted with your brand on a mobile device and another channel.

Hushly’s cross-platform analytics bridge the gap between your website and mobile app. Gain insights into how users transition between platforms, identifying critical touchpoints in the conversion journey. This comprehensive understanding allows for targeting your optimization strategies.

Analyzing these profiles allows for more targeted marketing strategies and improved conversion rates.

5. Use Multi-Channel Marketing Campaigns

Leverage Hushly’s insights to launch multi-channel marketing campaigns and track your website to mobile app conversion rate. A multi-channel campaign takes users across several channels like social media, ads, and your website. It even crosses devices.

Target users with personalized content based on their interactions across all platforms. This synchronized approach enhances the overall user experience and increases mobile conversion rates.

How to Measure Your Mobile App Conversion Rate

You went by the book and created a seamless mobile experience. But was it successful?

Use these tips to track your mobile app conversion rate.

Track Conversion Rate Analytics

Mobile app conversion tracking can be slightly tricky. Because smartphones don’t have an IP address, understanding user behavior isn’t as simple as understanding your desktop visitors.

Use Hushly’s conversion rate analytics to track your mobile app’s performance. Because mobile experiences are often more social than desktop experiences, your performance might appear more as likes, shares, and comments than a direct conversion.

Through Hushly, you can measure the impact of dynamic content recommendations, progressive profiling, and unified user profiles on conversion rates. This data-driven approach allows for continuous refinement and optimization.

Analyze the User Journey

What will you do with that data now that you gathered it?

 The next step is data analytics.

Hushly’s analytics tools enable in-depth analysis of user mobile journeys.

Identify critical touchpoints and potential areas for improvement. Do most visitors leave on the same mobile page? Is there a slow load speed?

By understanding user behavior, you can implement targeted changes to boost conversion rates and overall user satisfaction.

Implement the Findings

Once you have a comprehensive overview of your mobile app performance, you’re ready to improve your mobile experiences.

Use the insights to adjust your strategies and mobile experiences. For instance, if you notice many visitors leave on the same page, you might add a widget for further reading recommendations to encourage them to stay, or you may adjust the page formatting so it’s more appealing.

A/B testing can also help you find solutions to common issues, like pages with minimal conversions. With A/B testing, you run tests with two similar designs to discover which design performs better. It removes the guesswork out of design and marketing as your audience tells you directly what works best by their response.

When you take the time to test and adjust your strategies, you’ll see a consistent flow of quality traffic from mobile devices and mobile conversions.

It’s Time to Reinvent Your Mobile App Conversion Strategy with Hushly

Optimizing your mobile app conversion rate requires a strategic combination of user-centric design, innovative features, and cross-platform insights. These three elements create a positive experience while providing valuable information on what performs well.

Hushly’s advanced mobile and desktop capabilities will improve the customer experience, directly impacting your conversion rate. We offer innovative tools that track and customize the mobile experience so you can start capturing that smartphone traffic just waiting to find your site.

It’s time to prioritize mobile experiences and start seeing the rewards from those unique opportunities.

Book a demo to see how we support the mobile experience.

How to Humanize AI: A Guide to Combining the Best of Both Worlds

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the power to scan and organize thousands of files. It can identify patterns and detect errors from piles of information. Yet, despite its unparalleled strengths, it still lacks human skills like understanding people’s emotions.

There’s no better human than humans, and AI can’t replace that unique spark you have.

However, it can support that spark to turn it into a fire. That’s why the most powerful partnership is when humans and AI work together.

We’ll dive into how to humanize AI so you can benefit from AI’s power without compromising your personal touch.

What Is the Hesitation with AI?

AI sometimes receives a slightly negative reputation. You probably have heard people ask, “Will AI replace humans?” That’s just one of several concerns.

 Some common fears surrounding AI include:

  • AI will replace essential jobs.
  • AI will take away the human touch.
  • AI will grow smarter than humans.
  • AI invades people’s privacy.

Google’s head engineer, Ray Kurzweil, predicts AI will reach human-level intelligence by 2029. But we’re not there yet.

Some people are hesitant about AI because it’s still a relatively new technology, so people don’t fully understand it, its capability, and its potential downfalls.

Why AI Is Not Something to Fear

Artificial intelligence, while intelligent, does not contain many other human emotions. For example, it doesn’t feel ambitious. If AI isn’t ambitious, it will only act how others program it. Therefore, you don’t need to fear a Terminator reenactment in the next few years.

Will businesses begin replacing personnel with AI? Yes, in some cases they are. However, AI also opens new jobs or transforms people’s job descriptions. AI now performs those menial tasks no one wants to perform or struggles to find the time, like data entry when connecting with a new lead. That opens your schedule up for the tasks that are a priority, like personally nurturing that lead.

The advancement of AI has also brought changes in laws, especially privacy laws. We’re already moving away from many tactics used to mine data, like cookies. This opens the door to a more transparent future.

For instance, businesses now focus more time and effort on first-party data. This is information businesses directly gain from customers. That way, companies can understand and interact with their customers directly rather than purchasing and selling other people’s data on the market.

What’s most important to remember about the advancement in AI is AI’s use will depend on what people want. AI’s use will only go as far as customers are comfortable. Without customers, businesses would cease to operate, so keeping them happy is essential.

How Do Humans Help AI?

If AI is so great, why does it need humans at all?

Humans’ most significant strength is our capacity to feel emotion and gain personal experiences. AI can understand behaviors, but humans can understand emotions that may have triggered those behaviors.

Together, you can harness the power of analytics with the power of emotions, both cornerstones of marketing and conversion.

After all, you need to understand your audience before using personalized content to trigger an emotional purchase response.

5 Ways to Humanize AI in Your Business

Here are five tips to get you started with personalizing your AI experiences and content.

1. Remain Transparent

When you use AI, it’s important to remain transparent about how you use AI.

Society understands AI is part of most businesses. Globally, around 35% of businesses use AI in some way. When you add companies exploring AI adoption, that percentage jumps up to 77% of businesses using or considering AI.

Image from Exploding Topics

What people don’t trust is AI that functions where they can’t see it. These instances are what triggered fears of AI invading privacy.

People are less likely to balk away from AI interactions when you’re open and honest about AI. Even though there’s a general distrust around AI data collection, 83% of people say they would be willing to give personal information for personalized experiences.

What’s the difference?

When AI runs silently in the background, users become wary about what AI is doing and are less likely to respond positively. However, when you tell customers what AI is doing and how you use any information you collect, they trust AI more because it isn’t a faceless entity but has a purpose and is more human.

That way, you can use your data to improve customer experiences.

2. Personalize Interactions

Nearly everyone has experienced the frustration of emailing a company only to receive a canned response. There was no thought put into the response. It was the same response half the other customers received.

That is what happens when you let AI operate on its own.

To personalize your AI interactions, start by analyzing customer interactions. When AI can analyze individual questions and user behaviors, it can offer a personalized response for each customer. AI text humanizer through natural language processing can also adjust the language to sound more natural.

These responses will feel similar to talking with a human customer service agent.

3. Adjust the Tone

Generative AI has the potential to save you hours in content creation. It helps you create regular blog posts, social media posts, and even downloads for lead generation.

AI has a few tell-tale signs readers can identify that reveal AI-created content. Here are a few of the most common signs:

  • Passive voice
  • Longer sentences
  • Complicated jargon
  • Fluff

If you use AI to generate marketing content, consider having a human writer or editor look through that content. An AI humanizer can also help review the content. The writer can shorten sentences, turn them into active voice, and remove fluff to humanize AI text.

A human author can also infuse personality into the content and personal stories to humanize AI writing. Those small tidbits make the content more engaging.

4. Personalize Recommendations

When you spend hours creating marketing content, you want to give that content the best chance of appearing in front of the right audience. AI boosts that potential.

For example, through first-party data collection and analytics, Hushly’s personalization feature recommends further reading to website or landing page visitors. AI can detect patterns in the visitors’ behaviors to know what they might be most interested in reading about.

Because it’s first-party data, the person’s privacy remains intact as the company did not take the data from outside sources or share it with anyone outside the company.

5. Keep Humans in the Process

You must keep humans in AI experiences and marketing content. Remember that just because AI can perform a task doesn’t mean it should.

Sometimes, the best person for the job is a person.

Choosing AI tools that can include human intervention as much or little as you need is vital to keeping that human touch.

For example, having an AI chatbot can save you hours since a person doesn’t have to be available 24/7 to answer messages. However, you should also have a means for customers who still haven’t received the response they needed to contact a person.

The Human and AI Partnership You Need

Humanizing AI is more than making technology more relatable. It’s about helping AI and humans mutually achieve their maximum potential.

Together, you can strengthen each other’s weaknesses to maximize productivity.

The benefits will show through increased conversions and a higher customer satisfaction rate.

If you’re ready to join with AI to see these benefits yourself, we have the tools you need that work seamlessly with your human team.

Request a demo to learn more about our AI-powered conversion cloud tools.

Why Your Tech Company Needs AI Conversion Rate Optimization

Being an intuitive marketer means knowing when to work harder and when to work smarter. Conversion rate optimization is one area where working smarter yields greater rewards.

We all have human limitations. When we work within our limited capabilities, we also restrict our business’s growth.

AI conversion rate optimization pushes conversion rates beyond your human limitations, allowing you to accomplish more with what you already have. You not only don’t need to work harder, but you free up more time for high-value tasks while increasing your conversion rates.

Explore what AI conversion rate optimization is and why it’s the crucial piece you’re missing from your innovative marketing strategy.

What Is Conversion Rate Optimization?

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process and strategy for creating digital content built for conversion. Conversion is when your traffic takes a desired action.

You calculate your conversion rate by dividing your total conversions by total traffic. You express the number as a percentage.

For example, if 100 visitors landed on your page and 10 out of the 100 signed up for your webinar, your landing page has a 10% conversion rate.

Tech companies use CRO to evaluate how successful their online strategies are.

What Is AI for Conversion Rate Optimization, and How Can It Benefit You?

Conversion rate optimization relies heavily on understanding how your audience will respond to your marketing.

Will they fill in a form? Does the content entice the reader? Does the CTA button stand out enough?

You must answer these questions to optimize your content for conversions.

But, there seems to be a missing piece of the puzzle since only 22% of companies are satisfied with their rates. Is there a way to increase your conversion rates?

Conversion rate optimization AI adds that extra level of understanding to your strategies. Instead of learning through trial and error or observation, AI uses machine learning and automation to dive into the minds of your audience.

It gleans crucial information you need to craft strategies around customers and their needs. It then helps you carry out those CRO strategies. Tech businesses that use account-based marketing will benefit most from AI as it provides the invaluable insights ABM needs for you to be successful as your hyper-personalization strategies.

Here are just a few snapshots of how AI fuels CRO:

  • Personalize at Scale: Use AI to analyze large datasets, allowing you to create highly personalized user experiences.
  • Use Predictive Analytics for Decision-Making: AI will enable you to analyze behaviors to predict future outcomes and behaviors, helping you make more informed decisions.
  • Incorporate Dynamic Content Delivery: Deliver the content your users want to see by using AI to adjust content delivery based on user interactions.
  • Analyze Behaviors: Analyze user behaviors to understand how users interact with content so you can optimize user journeys.
  • Automate Testing: AI algorithms quickly analyze test variations to determine the most effective elements for conversion.
  • Implement Real-Time Engagement: Engage with users in real time using human-like chatbots and in-content assistance.
  • Improve Lead Scoring: Improve the accuracy of your lead scoring by incorporating dozens of new data points AI could uncover and analyze.

How to Use AI for CRO in Tech Marketing

While all those benefits of AI CRO sound inviting, they don’t occur overnight. They require a careful step-by-step process to set up your AI to work for you.

How do you optimize conversion rate using AI?

Start with these five steps:

Step 1: Identify Key Conversion Metrics

What does a conversion mean to you?

Before optimizing for conversions, you need to define what conversions you want to accomplish. Then, establish key performance indicators for measuring conversion rates.

For example, if you aim to increase the number of people who sign up for your product demo, you might use the number of sign-ups as your performance metric.

Once you choose a metric, establish a benchmark. This is your conversion goal. You might base it on past performance, competitors’ accomplishments, or industry standards.

Use this benchmark to define whether you have successful conversion rate optimization. It will guide you on where to use your CRO AI tool to help you hit your marketing goals.

Step 2: Integrate Data

AI thrives when there’s plenty of data to work with. The more data you feed AI, the more accurate it will be.

For your CRO AI tools to be most effective, you must also identify data sources to collect information that your AI tool can use.

For example, Hushly’s customization option uses data from user behavior. When users download content or view blog posts, AI analyzes that data to suggest similar content.

The data isn’t just for AI. Your entire marketing team can tap into those insights to aid in further conversion rate optimization.

Step 3: Personalize Your Strategies

One of AI’s greatest strengths is its ability to endlessly customize options.

For example, a graphic designer can create one image and then ask AI to adjust the colors to limitless possibilities, allowing the graphic designer to develop countless photos with the click of a button.

CRO can also customize content experiences with a simple click.

Each person is unique, and offering a unique experience ensures visitors see what will resonate most with them, increasing their chances of converting. To use this feature, go into your AI tool’s settings to establish filters and customization rules so you can target your audience.

Step 4: Continuously Optimize Your Strategies

Trends change regularly, and customer activity shifts along with that change.

While AI does allow you to automate your CRO tools, it does require regular audits.

You want to check its performance and the tasks you have it performing.

For instance, you may set up an email automation campaign, but is it still hitting your conversion benchmarks?

If your CRO tool isn’t performing how you’d like it to, it’s time to refresh the strategy.

You should also regularly perform tests to ensure your chosen strategies are the best. For example, you might test several email subject line variations before settling on the one you will use in your email automation campaign.

By simply testing your landing pages, you can increase your conversion rates by up to 12%.

Step 5: Map the User’s Journey

A customer journey map, or user journey map, outlines the process and steps someone goes through in a sales cycle.

In this case, it’s the steps a lead takes before converting.

Having a map benefits you and helps you make the best use of your AI tools.

A map should list each touchpoint, the user’s actions, feelings, and the outcomes. It should also outline the user’s demographics.

Looking at the map should tell you what motivated the user to take the next step, but it can also help you identify what might have discouraged them along the way and caused them to lose interest.

Use your map to create an automated flow since you understand the natural next steps of users. Also, use the map to decide what processes to include, what to skip, and what needs more attention.

For instance, if you add a one-on-one phone call too early in the sales process, it might not yield the results you wanted because the lead wasn’t ready to buy. Seeing where the phone call lands on the map helps you realize that you might need to push the phone call further down the buyer’s path and add a few more automated nurturing campaigns in between.

Image from Nielson Norman Group

Your All-in-One AI Conversion Rate Optimization Tool

AI conversion rate optimization tools can transform how you perform marketing if you know how to use their full potential.

Hushly makes AI conversion rate optimization a breeze. You don’t need to know complex coding or have insights into AI to understand how to create automated workflows, gather data, and endlessly customize your users’ experience.

We offer an all-in-one cloud built for anyone ready to see their conversion rate surpass their goals.

Schedule a demo to learn more about our conversion rate optimization tools.

How to Choose the Best Conversion Rate Optimization Tool for Your Business

You use screwdrivers to twist screws into their slots. They are very effective at their jobs. But you wouldn’t use a screwdriver to build large furniture pieces, staircases, and home extensions. There’s a point where manual screwdrivers aren’t effective, and you need to upgrade to a drill.

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) tools are the drills of the marketing world. They allow you to scale small-scale marketing strategies into large, profit-generating machines.

Yet, just as all drills aren’t the same, all CRO tools don’t offer the same features, reliability, and capabilities.

Use these eight criteria to find your business’s best conversion rate optimization tool.

What Can a Conversion Rate Optimization Tool Do for Your Business?

Conversion rate optimization tools help you keep up with your competition while staying relevant to your audience. They are the motor in your marketing vehicle, powering all your strategies.

A few common conversion rate optimization examples that are possible with the right tools include:

  • Hyper-targeted marketing campaigns
  • Understanding audience demographics, behaviors, and motivating factors
  • Automating the customer’s journey
  • Testing and automating the conversion process for maximum conversions

If you want to double your sales, then a conversion rate optimization tool is right for you. But how do you know which tool is the best fit?

8 Criteria to Look for in the Best Conversion Rate Optimization Tool

Use this conversion rate optimization guide to evaluate your CRO tools before settling on the best option for your business needs.

1. Comprehensive Analytics

How do you know your CRO tool is the best tool there is?

Data analytics allows you to monitor your lead behaviors, conversion rate, and the tool’s performance. You can track how conversion rates change over time to see your tool’s impact on your conversion rate.

If your conversions remain the same or go down, you know there’s a problem. Your CRO tool should help you pinpoint the issue.

For example, tracking the buyer’s journey might tell you that most of your leads unsubscribe from your newsletter after only one email and never reach conversion. That shows your emails aren’t resonating with your customers, and you must refresh them.

Ultimately, you need your technology to boost your CRO enough to pay for the tool. Use a return on investment (ROI) equation to calculate the profit increase since implementing the tool. Then, compare those increased profits to what the tool costs. If your earnings are still higher than the tool, it’s an investment worth making.

2. User-Friendly Interface

Choose a tool with an intuitive and user-friendly interface. The easier it is to navigate and use, the more efficiently you can implement and test CRO strategies.

You don’t want to lose hours training new employees on the tool or only tap into the surface of its capabilities due to an overly complicated interface.

Instead, anyone needs to be able to pick it up and use it.

For example, Hushly is easy enough for anyone to use, even those with no coding experience.

3. A/B Testing Capabilities

CRO tools must support A/B testing, allowing you to experiment with different variations of website elements. 77% of businesses use A/B testing for their websites to help them make the best CRO strategy decisions.

This includes testing:

  • Headlines
  • CTAs
  • Page layouts
  • Text
  • Email

The testing scenarios should be easy to set up and use so you can reassure yourself that your strategies are the most effective option before investing completely in the strategy. That way, you can use your conversion rate optimization tool online with confidence, knowing the strategies you use have proven results from extensive testing.

Image from Finances Online

4. Marketing Tool Integrations

There are over 8,000 marketing technology tools available. The average business uses over 75 marketing tools. That’s quite the notable number of tools you need to work together.

Football involves a team of 11 people. Baseball consists of a team of 26 players. That number is barely a third of the number of marketing tools the average business uses.

As with any team, you need every player to work together. Each player has a unique role in the team, and that role is required to benefit the team as a whole. If any player only worked on their own agenda, they would lose the game for everyone.

Your tools should also work together like a team. You should be able to connect them, integrate their processes, and share data across the tools.

The information you collect from email marketing should also be available for website optimization and your sales team.

When adding a CRO tool to your team, consider how well it will fit with your other tools. A high-quality CRO tool should seamlessly integrate with your other systems.

5. Personalization Features

The personalization market is worth $943 million as personalization becomes a cornerstone of modern marketing.

Personalization offers several benefits, including:

  • Allowing you to hyper-target your audience
  • Offering a unique journey to each lead to address specific pain points
  • Customizing offers and products to your client’s particular needs

75% of business leaders say their success depends on personalization efforts.

If the conversion rate optimization tool actually has the most cutting-edge technology, it would be able to support extensive personalization options.

For example, Hushly’s real-time optimization widgets allow you to create a unique website experience for each visitor. We pull data from visitor behaviors to offer content and navigation based on what they are most likely to respond to.

6. Reliable Support

With technology and its many benefits also come new problems that may be beyond your expertise.

Just look at cars to understand the change technology has brought to society. Classic cars are easy to maintain because they only have a handful of problems, so users can usually fix the issue when the car malfunctions.

A modern car has so many technological sensors and wires that you need a professional to identify the problem. However, the modern car also runs smoother and offers more comfort and a better user experience.

CRO technology can also improve your experience, but due to its complexities, you’ll need to ensure you have the help necessary to maintain it. A company that offers quality CRO tools also offers 24/7 support and training so you can learn all the intricacies required to use it to its full capacity.

7. Top Security Measures

Data breaches can financially ruin a company. It destroys customer trust and loses valuable information.

To keep your data secure, you need top security and privacy to protect the information you gather and store.

CROs that gather customer data should also be equipped with the tools to protect that data. Encryption and controlled access keep your valuable customer data safe.

8. Scalability

A scalable company can grow and change with minimal impact on your company’s operations and finances.

While you can begin with a conversion rate optimization tool free of charge, will that tool be able to support you long-term?

If you have to switch out your tools as you expand, you will need to account for the changes in budget, operations, and time it would take to migrate your data to the new tools while also training your employees on them.

Scalable CRO tools can grow with you, supporting your operations whether you’re working with 100 or 100,000 leads.

What CRO Tools Is Your Tech Company Missing?

Do you have a conversion rate optimization tool in your marketing technology arsenal that can handle your changing needs?

Hushly’s leading CRO platform offers all you need for conversion at your fingertips. You don’t need extensive training or experience to use the tool. It’s user-friendly but powerful enough to more than pay for itself through your increased conversion rate. It can also scale to any size without impacting your functionality.

Schedule a demo to learn more about our conversion rate optimization tools.

6 Top Conversion Rate Optimization Best Practices in 2024

“We doubled our website traffic this month.” Your marketing assistant proudly proclaims.

“That’s fantastic! And how are our sales looking?”

The assistant looks confused before replying that they remained the same.

In your rush as a marketer to generate the numbers, we must not forget to also include strategies for converting those numbers to customers. Otherwise, those numbers remain just that, numbers.

Today, we bring you conversion rate optimization best practices that will up your marketing game in 2024 so you see a more significant payoff from your marketing strategies.

How to Improve Conversion Rate Optimization

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) refers to the process of boosting the percentage of total leads completing your desired action.

When you hear “conversions,” your mind most likely jumps to your biggest win: sales.

Yes, converting leads into customers is a huge business success, but it’s far from the only conversion worth celebrating and noting.

Here are a few other conversion rate optimization examples.

Conversions can be the percentage of website visitors who fill in a form and become leads. It can also be the percentage of visitors on a landing page who signed up for your webinar.

Whenever you have an action you hope visitors will complete, measure the percentage of visitors who complete it to discover your conversion rate.

Here’s how that looks laid out as a formula:

Conversion rate % = (Total Number of Conversions/Total Number of Visitors) x 100

To increase your conversion rate optimization percentage, you need to convince more visitors to act through personalization, convincing marketing, and beneficial rewards.

What Is the Average Conversion Rate?

Conversion rates vary drastically by industry and business size. For instance, larger B2B businesses generally have higher conversion rates than B2C businesses. That’s because B2C businesses tend to throw wide nets to draw in thousands of leads, hoping one will convert.

B2B businesses are more likely to use account-based marketing due to their higher-value products. That means they are targeting leads from the start. This results in a higher quality lead count, which provides a higher percentage of converted leads.

You will also see conversion rate changes depending on the desired action. Convincing leads to joining a free webinar will have a higher conversion rate than convincing leads to sign up for your tech services because it’s a more significant commitment.

That’s why you need to dig into the data if you want to know how well your business is doing. Check out how similar companies perform to gain a better perspective of your conversion rate in your industry.

To give you a good start, the average conversion rate across all industries is 2.9%. However, B2B tech has an average 2.3% conversion rate.

Looking at just filling in forms rather than purchasing, you see a slight difference. The average form conversion rate across industries is 1.7%, while B2B tech’s form rate is 2.1%.

Image from Ruler Analytics

How Is Conversion Rate Optimization Changing in 2024?

What are the most prominent players in conversion rate optimization going into 2024?

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are leading the way in opening new doors for conversion rate optimization.

These two booming technologies allow you to:

  • Create content at scale for unlimited personalization.
  • Analyze larger datasets to understand customers better.
  • Adjust experiences in real time around the customer’s activities.
  • Automate more of the nurturing and conversion process.
  • Automate lead sorting and management for personalized experiences.

Because of these technologies, businesses have new opportunities to go about converting leads, opening doors to raising your average conversion rate.

6 Conversion Rate Optimization Best Practices to Follow This Year

Use these six CRO best practices to improve your conversion rate optimization this year.

1. Use Comprehensive Data Analysis

Understanding your audience is the cornerstone of an effective CRO. Analytic tools give you that much-needed understanding so you can hyper-target your marketing and outreach.

Data analytics allows you to change a landing page for each visitor. For example, instead of targeting everyone interested in your webinar, you can hyper-target Steve, the marketing manager of your top B2B lead, who is looking for a tech solution for securing their influx of data.

Do you see how that detailed understanding of who you’re reaching opens doors to better marketing that connects to your leads?

2. Modernize Your Web Design

It’s a new year, so it’s time for a web design refresh.

You don’t need to be a graphic designer to see the difference between a website someone built in the early 2000s and never touched since and a website designed within the last year or two.

Web design changes.

That includes visual elements like updated graphic capabilities and new fonts. It also provides backend items. Websites can now use multimedia in headers, incorporate AI chat in content, and even use widgets to offer real-time suggestions and content based on each visitor.

It also includes adding more mobile-optimized conversion experiences to support the 6.92 billion global smartphone users.

Offering a modernized web experience improves the user experience, encouraging them to stay longer on your site and feel more inclined to learn more about what you offer.

3. Personalize Your Approach

Personalization isn’t just a suggestion. It’s a requirement in 2024. Clients know AI allows for personalization and now expect it.

Consumers receive personalized movie suggestions, music suggestions, clothing suggestions, and more.

They now arrive on your site expecting a unique journey.

Use AI to offer that personalized experience so users don’t need to dig for the next piece of information but have it at their fingertips, leading them directly to the conversion action.

Since 80% of consumers are willing to exchange their information for relevant deals, personalization ensures visitors find those downloads that entice them to fill in your lead forms.

4. Automate Conversions

Shorter conversion cycles are preferable to drawn-out buyer cycles because shorter cycles mean your clients have less time to change their minds.

To speed up conversions so you lose fewer leads, automate the process. For instance, leads receive the first nurturing email when they fill in a form. Then the next. And the next – without you ever having to interfere with the process.

The lead nurturing runs in a smooth workflow you built with the help of AI and conversion rate optimization tools. The client’s response to each email decides what email they receive, ensuring the personalization that converted them continues until the ultimate sales conversion point.

5. Limit Distractions

Minimizing distractions is conversion rate 101.

Having too many options creates a kids-in-a-candy store scenario where your traffic wanders around your site aimlessly, exploring all their options.

Don’t give those options if you don’t want them to explore, but instead, you want them to sign a form or request a demo.

Build dedicated landing pages that remove those distractions on your home page, including the navigation menu. Display the main action prominently with a call-to-action button above the fold so your visitors see one, and only one clear option.

6. Continually Optimize Your Experiences

Once you created the ultimate optimization page, keep it a living page. What this means is to optimize and adjust it continually. AI provides some of that adjustment for you by offering customized landing page options that change with each customer.

When you’re ready to make changes to your landing and web pages, always test several options first. A/B testing takes the guesswork out of CRO so you can create strategies you know work.

Kick Your CRO Up a Notch

What was your average conversion rate last year?

Let’s see if you can beat that percentage this year by updating your strategies with AI-fueled content and workflows.

Hushly supports personalization and marketing workflow automation with your all-in-one conversion cloud.

With the latest technology, you have all the tools you need to take your CRO into the new conversion generation.

Schedule a demo to learn more about our tools for conversion rate optimization in digital marketing.