We love to share industry insights from our valued partners. This partner highlight is from Hatch, an AI-powered customer communication platform for sales and service teams.
Solutions like Modernize can help you get more leads, but if you want to translate those leads into revenue, you need to know how to close them and keep them coming back. And that’s what we’re covering in this guide.
Here are 10 tips to help you maximize set, close, and retention rates so you can get the highest ROI on your Modernize leads and other marketing investments.
1. Reach out to your leads immediately
Today’s consumer vets multiple contractors at once; they want instant gratification: and they have high expectations for customer service. So when a new lead comes into your business, you need to be reaching out to them in five minutes or less. After that, your chances of reaching them decrease 8x.
How do you do this?
- Revisit roles: It’s best to have a dedicated inbound lead owner who can schedule appointments with sales reps.
- Review the numbers: Share the data behind why speed to lead is important, and hold your team accountable with weekly KPI reporting. Aim to reduce your speed to lead by 15% each week.
- Automate it. This saves time and ensures that every lead is contacted. And now your reps only have to spend time engaging with the people who are responding.
Hatch integrates directly with Modernize so that you can instantly reach out to your new leads—before your competitors and while you’re still top of mind.
See it in action here:
2. Use multiple channels
The case for multi-channel communication is clear:
- 89% of consumers expect to be able to interact with a business through multiple channels
- Companies that use three or more channels see 250% higher engagement rates.
We recommend reaching out to your Modernize leads (and any leads, for that matter) via text, email, and ringless voicemail. This gives your contacts flexibility on the best channel for them at any given moment and creates a great first impression—that you do your due diligence and that you want to do business with them.
3. Lead with text
While a multichannel approach is important, not all channels are created equal. Text is the most important. In fact, 69% of consumers would prefer an unfamiliar company to reach them via text rather than call; and 80% of people ignore calls from numbers they’re not familiar with (even local numbers). Plus, 90% of texts are opened and read within 3 minutes.
Many customers will eventually want to talk on the phone, but text is the first way to establish the connection. It’s fast, it’s easy, and they can engage with you while they’re multitasking or at work.
4. Keep it short and conversational
Consumers want to do business with real people. And the reason why text gets such high responses is because it’s short and digestible. So when you reach out, be human and be conversational. Here’s how to do that.
- Provide context on why you’re reaching out. You got their information from a form they filled out. They did business with you in the past, etc.
- Don’t use fancy jargon. Talk like you’d talk to an acquaintance or friend.
- Keep it short. 160 characters is an ideal length, but with some required compliance verbiage, this isn’t always easy. Aim for no more than 220 characters in this case.
- End with a question to invite a response back.
Use these messaging best practices for more tips.
5. Reach out multiple times
Consumers today are more distracted than ever. The good news about this is that a lack of response does not mean lack of interest. It takes an average of eight touches to get a new lead to respond, and anywhere from 5-12 additional touches to close a deal.
But this does not mean reaching out 12 times in one day. It means staggering your outreach over several days, and saying something different each time you reach out. Hatch’s automation, for example, is built for these multi-channel, multi-touch sequences, as opposed to one-off sends. Below is an example of an 11-day, 10-touch sequence, with intermittent pauses:
Use these templates to put together multi-touch outreach campaigns for lead outreach and estimate follow-up:
6. Stay proactive across the entire journey
Reaching out promptly and with personalized messaging is not just for that initial lead outreach. It’s essential across the entire customer journey for companies who want leads to become appointments, appointments to become sales, and sales to become recurring revenue.
In fact:
- Companies using full-funnel marketing strategies experience an average 10% or greater increase in revenue year-over-year.
- Companies that excel in lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost.
So in addition to lead outreach, make sure you’re proactively reaching out to:
- Confirm the estimate appointment has been booked
- Remind them the estimate appointment is coming up
- Make sure the estimate appointment went well
- Follow up on the estimate
- Confirm the project start date
- Provide project and installation updates
- Follow up post-project
- Ask for reviews and referrals
7. Rehash aged leads
Just because a lead didn’t become an appointment or sale within your typical sales cycle does not mean they’re a lost cause. And Hatch customers are always pleasantly surprised to see how many opportunities they generate just by following up with aged leads. This includes:
- Leads who never booked an appointment
- Leads who canceled their appointment
- Leads who got quoted but never signed
We call these “Nurture” campaigns in Hatch, and they are a great way to ensure you’re making the most of your lead sources and CRM.
8. Reach out to past customers
Turning your Modernize leads into customers is one thing; turning them into loyal, repeat customers is another. Another popular campaign type in Hatch is that of reaching out to previous customers—to see if they have any new projects coming up, to let them know about special promotions, or keep them engaged with educational resources. By keeping your customers informed and engaged, you optimize the customer experience, increase their lifetime value, and can even promote referrals.
9. Use automation
Personalized communication, using multiple channels, followed up on over multiple days, and across the entire customer journey—this is the type of communication that drives appointments, sales, reviews, and loyalty. It is the key to increasing ROI and growing revenue.
But it is not humanly possible to keep up with manually. Automation is necessary if you want to conduct prompt, personalized communication at scale.
Business that integrate their CRM and lead sources with a communication platform are able to create and convert more opportunities, while also:
- Saving time and money to increase ROI
- Gaining visibility to measure and improve performance
- Standardizing processes for training and scaling
In fact, businesses using automated customer communication can:
To learn more about automating outreach to your Modernize leads through Hatch, head here.
10. Lean into generative AI
Predictive and prescriptive AI are useful for analyzing data and giving your reps copilots, but generative AI can actually interface with your customers through natural and engaging conversation. Hatch AI bots, for example, take on the repetitive conversations and do the heavy lifting, so that your human reps are freed up to focus on the bottom funnel and strategic conversations. Our data shows these bots are increasing efficiency, improving the customer experience, alleviating agent stress, and reducing overhead costs.
Learn more about Hatch AI here.
Use these tips to improve ROI on your Modernize leads
Like we said at the beginning—generating high quality leads through sources like Modernize is only the first part of the equation. The second part is having an effective, yet also scalable way of turning them into appointments and sales. Use these tips and templates, and you’ll be on your way to higher response rates, revenue, and ROI with your leads from Modernize and beyond.
To recap, here they are:
- Reach out to your leads immediately
- Use multiple channels
- Lead with text
- Keep it short and conversational
- Reach out multiple times
- Stay proactive across the entire journey
- Rehash aged leads
- Reach out to past customers
- Use automation
- Lean into generative AI
