Car dealerships, insurance services, and franchise opportunities are three examples of operations that use lead-generation Web sites to benefit their businesses. The real estate industry is another example where lead-generation sites are highly effective. Coldwell Banker, of a real estate services company. The primary objective of this Web site is to qualify leads from people looking to buy or sell a home. Potential customers have the opportunity to make contact with an agent from many points throughout the Web site.

The idea behind a lead-generation Web site is to capture qualified sales leads  by getting the target market to make contact with you. With a lead-generation Web site, you shorten the sales cycle by giving your customer the power to  educate themselves. Before you ever speak to a potential customer, you already have several questions answered through requests on your Web site.

The more efficient and better marketed your lead-generation Web site is, the easier it becomes to close the sale and the less it costs to generate leads. Wouldn’t it be nice to have to do less cold calling and prepare less print material?

Fairly early on in the second generation, e-mail was one of the areas that marketers focused on. It was a great way to get in front of your target market on a regular basis to get traffic to your Web site, to increase brand recognition, and to promote your products or services.

Mail list programs were introduced that enable marketers to build their databases. Permission marketing became very important. Mail list software was integrated with your Web site to reduce or eliminate the need for manual administration activities. Personalization in the subject line, salutation, and body of the e-mail became a standard feature. The mail list database was developed so segmentation was easily achieved, allowing you to send strategic communication to select portions of your database.

We saw legislation introduced related to privacy issues, spam, pornography, and commercial e-mails. As people got sick and tired of receiving spam, we saw wide adoption of spam filters on both the individual recipient and the ISP levels. With that came the need for all marketers to run all outgoing marketing messages through spam checkers.

Information marketers are real winners with the enhancements to this technology. We are seeing all kinds of multiple-week courses being delivered through autoresponders. My six-week Secrets of Search Engine Success is delivered through autoresponder technology. When someone purchases this course, the first lesson is received immediately and then a subsequent lesson arrives each week for the duration of the course.

Things like Golf Tip of the Week for golf courses or Featured Destination  of the Week for travel agencies or Flaxseed Recipe of the Month for an organic foods merchant are all examples of the types of ways these autoresponders can use this technology to stay in front of the eyes and minds of their target customers. You can incorporate viral marketing messages to encourage recipients to tell others about the information they are receiving or provide a copy to their friends. Whenever you use viral marketing, make sure you provide the recipient easy  access to the opportunity to subscribe to receive the same information.

The second generation of autoresponders saw them being used for different purposes like sending price lists and e-brochures, but still using very simple technology. A request was sent to a specific e-mail address and the predefined response was immediately returned with the requested information. Over the last few years, we have seen major changes in the technology being used. The enhanced features have provided many opportunities for marketers and merchants alike.

Today’s autoresponders are more sophisticated and are getting better every day; new features and bells and whistles are being added all the time. Autoresponders enable you to provide an immediate response to prospects and customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year without the need for human interaction.
In terms of mail list administration, autoresponders have changed dramatically. These programs gather the e-mail addresses of people requesting information and store them in a database. The program adds new names to the database and monitors and eliminates e-mail addresses that no longer work.

All successful viral campaigns are personalized. The recipient’s first name is incorporated throughout the e-mail—in the subject line, in the salutation, and throughout the body. The sender’s name is also incorporated into the message as well, to reinforce the recommendation from a trusted source. The more innovative and interesting, the higher the uptake. On April Fool’s Day Workopolis offered all MSN.ca Web site visitors the opportunity to send a fake press release to their friends. There were a number of templates provided to choose from—things like announcements of the sender’s new job as CEO, TV news anchor, or supermodel. The viral campaign was a resounding success, far exceeding Workopolis’s expectations.