Let’s face it, manually chasing leads is exhausting, time-consuming, and frankly, not the best use of your brainpower. If you’re running an online business, you’re probably on the hunt for ways to make life easier and that’s where lead generation automation steps in.
By automating your lead generation process, you can capture potential customers from multiple channels without lifting a finger every time.
In this article, we’ll cover how to:
Let’s dive in.
Automated lead generation is the process of automatically collecting leads from various marketing channels without manually sourcing them.
Instead of putting your sales team in charge of finding high-quality leads, you can automate processes that generate leads for you.
Good lead generation strategies can result in a steady stream of new leads. Once you’ve set up a few tools for lead generation automation, it’s easy to create new lead generation campaigns in just a few clicks.
Instead of spending more time talking about it, let’s jump right into the practical steps that will help you streamline and automate your lead generation process.
Before automating anything, you need to understand who you’re targeting. Talk to your customers, learn about their challenges, and build a buyer persona.
You can even use ChatGPT to create your persona by prompting it: “Create a buyer persona for a [business] located in [city, state, country].”
Then it will give a detailed persona that you can further use.
Now that you know your audience, create content they actually want. Think blog posts, eBooks, or webinars, whatever resonates with them.
The goal is to offer real value and answer their questions.
Turmeric, for example, promotes its recipe book as a lead magnet in a pop-up, giving visitors something valuable in exchange for their contact details.
This is where automation begins. Start collecting those leads using:
Pro tip: Want to gather more detailed customer info without scaring people off? Break your form into multiple steps. It feels less overwhelming and keeps users more engaged till the end.
Once you have emails, don’t let them sit idle. Set up automated emails with tools like Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign.
Send welcome messages, content, and behavior-based emails to keep leads engaged.
Revival’s welcome email thanks new subscribers, introduces key products, and includes a discount code, encouraging immediate purchases and building goodwill.
By using lead scoring tools, you can prioritize leads based on factors like:
This helps you segment leads into categories like hot, warm, and cold, so your sales team can spend time and energy on those who are more likely to convert.
Use automation to move leads toward conversion via demos, trials, or calls. Continue to nurture relationships after the sale to foster loyalty.
Now that you have a better understanding of the options available for lead generation software, it’s time to explore your options for building a winning automated lead generation system.
Email marketing continues to be one of the most profitable marketing channels. You need to continuously build your email list and target that list with the right messages.
Let’s look at two lead generation tools that help you boost your lead generation efforts through email marketing.
OptiMonk is a professional popup builder that enables digital marketers to create high-converting popup campaigns in minutes.
It offers numerous use cases for online businesses to better monetize their website traffic, with advanced features like A/B testing and personalization to maximize conversion rates.
More than 30,000 websites use OptiMonk to collect email subscribers and phone numbers, display personalized offers, and boost revenues.
Building beautiful lead capture forms has never been easier. OptiMonk allows you to easily drag and drop new elements to your lead capture popup, side message, sticky bar, or embedded form.
All the new elements you add are automatically optimized for mobile, but you can also hide elements on mobile or edit elements separately for mobile and desktop.
Some of the customization options in OptiMonk’s drag and drop builder include:
Multi-step opt-in forms help you collect more detailed information, resulting in qualified leads that are easier to market to, rather than just email addresses with no context.
Start by grabbing your website visitors’ attention with a teaser, then reveal a multi-step pop-up that asks for contact info in the second step. This makes your forms more engaging and less intrusive.
You can also use custom form fields to gather extra details like birthdate, gender, or location, whatever’s most useful for your marketing.
You can also collect valuable zero-party data about customer needs and preferences.
Tools like quiz funnels make it easy to capture this info while keeping the experience interactive and personalized.
Using OptiMonk’s many targeting and triggering features, you can personalize your messages for each visitor segment based on their behavior. This will help you display the right message to the right visitor at just the right time.
The advanced targeting rules allow you to use all sorts of customer data, including country, URL, cart value, and more.
You can combine several targeting rules to create very specific customer segments, which means you can make sure the messages you’re displaying are relevant to each customer.
OptiMonk has a freemium pricing model. Pricing for paid plans starts at $29/month. Plans vary based on page views.
Some users may find advanced features like targeting and triggers a bit complex initially.
ConvertKit is a lead generation and email marketing platform that allows you to send automated email campaigns.
ConvertKit integrates with a wide array of marketing tools and platforms ranging from payment gateways to course platforms to CRMs.
ConverKit has a freemium pricing model. Pricing for the paid plans starts at $15/month for 300 email subscribers.
Limited features for larger, more complex marketing campaigns compared to other platforms.
As your business grows, juggling multiple lead gen tools becomes inefficient.
That’s why many mid-sized and enterprise companies turn to all-in-one platforms that handle everything from lead capture and segmentation to email campaigns and CRM.
Let’s explore three top options.
HubSpot is an all-in-one CMS and marketing software. HubSpot allows you to create websites, landing pages, email marketing campaigns, and social ads. The wide array of tools and features helps generate more leads, sell more, and build stronger customer relationships.
HubSpot has a freemium pricing model. Pricing varies based on features and the number of marketing contacts in your database.
As your business grows, it can become expensive, especially for larger teams and advanced features.
MailChimp is an all-in-one email marketing software that also has lead generation automation features.
You can collect emails on your website with your sign-up form popups, and you can also build landing pages on MailChimp. Then, you can send automated emails to these leads.
MailChimp has a freemium pricing model. Pricing plans vary based on the number of users in your database and the features you want to take advantage of.
ActiveCampaign is an all-in-one lead generation software and customer experience platform.
ActiveCampaign allows you to collect leads and also send out email campaigns. The marketing automation features allow you to personalize your campaigns based on triggers and customer segmentation.
Finally, you can nurture and strengthen your customer relationships via chat, email, or social media.
ActiveCampaign pricing starts at $29/month.
Landing pages play a crucial role in lead generation by capturing visitor info early in the funnel, often right after they click an ad. Focusing on optimizing these pages can significantly boost your lead volume.
Here are three tools to help you build high-converting landing pages.
Unbounce is a landing page builder designed to help you convert visitors into leads. Its drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to create mobile-friendly, AMP-supported pages without coding.
You can also run A/B tests, personalize content based on visitor behavior, and integrate with your favorite marketing tools to optimize every step of the lead gen process.
Unbounce’s pricing starts at $99/month.
The starting price might be too expensive for small businesses or startups.
Instapage is a lead generation solution that allows you to build custom landing pages for all your digital ad campaigns. Instapage allows you to create personalized landing pages consistent with your brand guidelines. Moreover, the landing pages are mobile-friendly and AMP optimized.
Instapage pricing starts at $299/month.
Starts at $299/month, which makes it more suitable for larger businesses.
Leadpages is a lead generation software that helps small businesses create webpages and landing pages to collect leads. Their drag-and-drop page builder allows you to create professional, conversion-focused pages.
Leadpages includes hundreds of templates categorized by industry, style, and page type. Moreover, Leadpages integrates with major email marketing, CRM, and marketing automation platforms.
Leadpage’s pricing starts at $99/month. Pricing varies based on the number of websites you need to support, additional integrations, enhanced features.
The page builder can feel limited compared to competitors like Instapage or Unbounce.
More than 90% of businesses use social media to target, attract, and connect with potential customers.
Let’s examine four lead capture tools that help you capture leads from your organic and paid social media traffic.
Expandi is a LinkedIn automation tool that helps you scale outreach by automating actions like connection requests, bulk messaging, and auto-responses.
It uses a country-based IP and delays actions to mimic human behavior, making it one of the safer LinkedIn automation tools
Expandi charges $99/month per account. Considering the features and functionalities it offers, the price is totally worth it.
Focused exclusively on LinkedIn, so it’s not suitable for other social media platforms.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a lead generation tool that allows you to identify, segment, and target the right companies and contacts you want to prospect.
The Advanced Search feature allows you to apply detailed search attributes to find the right contacts to target. The InMail feature enables you to send messages directly to them via the LinkedIn platform.
Pricing starts at $79.99/month per user.
The higher price makes it less affordable for small businesses or individuals.
Wiza is a LinkedIn prospecting tool that enhances Sales Navigator by providing up-to-date contact information. You gain access to over 500 million emails, which you can export as a single document with one click and utilize for cold outreach.
You can give Wiza a try with a Micro plan that costs $30/month.
The data scraping process can be hit or miss depending on the accuracy of LinkedIn profiles.
Facebook Lead Ads let you collect emails and customer info directly within the Facebook platform, making it easy to deliver offers and grow your list without users leaving the app.
Use Facebook for Business to set up your ads.
For pricing information on Facebook Lead Ads, log in to your Facebook for Business portal to learn more.
It may not work well for niche audiences or businesses outside of Facebook’s primary demographic.
Jotform Sign helps automate workflows by letting you create secure, e-signable documents that can be embedded on your website. With 600+ templates and an advanced designer, you can start collecting data fast and manage it in Jotform Tables.
You can also generate reports, set up approval flows, and get notified on signings. Jotform Sign is fully compliant with CCPA, GDPR, PCI, and HIPAA standards for secure, legal document handling.
Free plan available, paid plans start from $34/month.
The best tools depend on your goals. For popups or behavior-based triggers, look for tools with strong targeting features. If you need an all-in-one solution, choose platforms that combine CRM, email marketing, and lead capture. For personalized email outreach, select tools focused on email automation. If landing pages are your priority, pick tools that offer customizable, high-converting page builders.
To convert leads effectively:
Automation helps nurture leads and guides them toward conversion.
Yes, ChatGPT can be a powerful tool for lead generation! You can use it to create personalized email campaigns, craft engaging copy for landing pages, or even develop chatbot scripts that engage visitors on your website. By integrating ChatGPT with your existing lead generation tools, you can automate customer interactions and quickly move leads down your sales funnel.
Marketing automation is key to generating high-quality leads and scaling your online business efficiently. However, you don’t need to use every tool out there.
Start by identifying where your audience spends time, whether that’s your website, social media, or email, and choose a solution that fits your strategy.
If your goal is to grow your email list, OptiMonk is a smart place to start. It combines ease of use with powerful features like on-site personalization, targeting, and customizable popups, so marketing and sales teams can create high-converting campaigns in just minutes.
Plus, since it’s free to try, there’s no risk in seeing how it can boost your lead generation efforts.
We made switching a no-brainer with our free, white-glove onboarding service so you can get started in the blink of an eye.
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Product updates: January Release 2025
Social media automation tools