Tom Church, Marketing Director for Babel Interactive Ltd. talks data cards.

Good lead generation is essentially a two-fold strategy, including elements of the most basic of all marketing models: that of the marketing push effect, and also that of the marketing pull effect. The former, of course, depends on putting the product in front of the customer, whereas the latter ensures the customer comes to you.

Take our data card lead generation program as a case in point:

Firstly we set up a micro site in conjunction with our client to cater for any inherent demand in the market place, using Google advertising and planned optimization techniques in order to get the site before the interested consumer. From day one we had over 100 visitors to the site using this form of marketing. The site was designed so that any lead that resulted from it was almost certain to result in a data cards sale, cutting out ‘the chaff’ that can often result from lead generation campaigns. This first step therefore fulfilled the pull requirement of our data cards lead generation campaign, and you can see our data card site for more information.

The second step, in order to facilitate our required push effect, was to use several small scale tactical email broadcasts which would lead straight back to the data card micro site and the correct tariff landing page and data card on which they had expressed an interest. From start to finish, prospects were never more than 3 clicks away from completing an order of a data card – or data cards, for we found off the back of the email campaigns that multiple cards were purchased. It is this form of ‘persuasive architecture’ that ensures two things: firstly, it is extremely easy for someone to purchase a data card from our site, and secondly, only extremely serious users will go through the site to its conclusion. We have kept it as a ‘buying funnel’ for data cards only, which means those searching for information on data cards may very well be disappointed.

So what success rates have we received selling data cards through such a fashion? We had 10 sales in the first two days of activity which has continued to increase as the site has become more optimised. The client is exceptionally happy with these data card sales results: and with a conversion rate of 98% of those who applied via the site they are currently ordering more data cards.

And what of the future? We are less than two weeks into it so far, so to all intents and purposes the optimisation of our data cards site hasn’t started yet although we are appearing in position 2 and 3 on MSN UK under the term 'vodafone data card', if you would like to test it click here to go to MSN. We are also talking, with no small excitement, about the possibility of launching a viral campaign in order to further the push element of the data card marketing strategy.

Oh – and you can buy a data card (or lots of data cards) by visiting the site:
www.data-card.co.uk