In 2023, Citron Hygiene approached Innovation Visual with a clear objective: to significantly enhance their lead generation results by improving their website's conversion rate. Despite a strong online presence, they struggled to engage visitors effectively and convert them into actionable leads. We suggested implementing a conversational marketing strategy, facilitated by the HubSpot chatflows tool as part of their existing toolset within Marketing Hub. This would help to proactively engage visitors and address their queries and interests, ultimately boosting lead generation.
Previously, the company had experimented with chatbots and experienced some success, which reinforced our belief in the tool's potential. Their approach involved placing a chatbot on each of their main services page. However, this strategy yielded inconsistent results, with one chatbot clearly outperforming the others. Recognising the need for a better solution, they turned to Innovation Visual to evaluate the situation and recommend a more effective approach.
The team at Innovation Visual began by evaluating web traffic, quickly noticing the disparities in traffic between the different service pages that the chatbots were targeting. Unsurprisingly, the chatbot that was outperforming the rest was also the one on the page with the highest volume of monthly visitors within this page category (Figure 1).
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Figure 1: Pages targeted by former chatbots sorted by volume of sessions (2023 Data)
Citron Hygiene being a fairly niche business, the volume of traffic reaching these pages was insufficient if we were to keep the chatbot on selected pages only. This led the team to the hypothesis that there was a significant opportunity to enhance lead generation by shifting from a page-based to a lifecycle-driven conversational marketing approach. This new strategy involved creating different iterations of chatbots tailored to correspond with various stages of the customer journey, thereby guiding visitors more effectively to the next stage and ultimately increasing conversions.
Furthermore, our recommendation was that, by deploying chatbots across as many pages as possible, Citron Hygiene could cast a wider net that would help them capitalise more effectively on overall website traffic, not just service pages but also their location pages, blogs, and other resource pages.
To implement this, we developed a comprehensive framework to guide the strategy and roll out chatbots in different phases as shown in Figure 2. The vision for the framework involved creating a chatbot per lifecycle stage and tailoring the conversational logic to assist in converting unknown traffic to sales opportunities and beyond.
Figure 2: Proposed Conversational Marketing Framework
The order of these options is based on the understanding that a new visitor is likely in an early discovery phase. Therefore, we prioritise a low-commitment call to action, such as accessing an exclusive content piece, over requesting a quote. This approach allows us to collect basic contact information, which can be used to further nurture the lead.
By also offering the option to request a quote, we cater to visitors who have a more immediate intent and are ready to engage with the sales team. This dual-option strategy personalises the visitor experience, increasing the likelihood of conversion by meeting each visitor where they are in their customer journey.
Figure 3: Catch All Chatbot Conversation Hook and Greet
As presented in Figure 3, taking the content offer will result in the visitor receiving the content piece via email. This action is executed by a workflow once the interaction with the chatbot has concluded. On the other hand, requesting a quote will pass the visitor's enquiry along to the sales team for immediate follow-up. In this case, a different workflow syncs all the contact information to an external sales database via a Zapier integration.
The remaining chatbots, described below, are designed on similar principles to engage returning visitors identified as contacts in the HubSpot CRM database through tracking cookies, with the goal of guiding them to the next phase of their journey. As opposed to the “Catch All” bot, the following options are able to leverage data from the HubSpot contact record.
This bot targets any contact in the lead lifecycle stage. It welcomes the visitor back to the website and encourages them to request a quote. If they are not ready, the bot offers another piece of content in exchange for additional information, which is used for data enrichment of the contact. Progressive form fields are used to capture this information in a logical way.
This bot targets contacts in the opportunity lifecycle stage, assisting them with additional questions or allowing them to book a follow-up call with their designated sales representative. Interactions with this bot also trigger an internal email to be sent to the contact owner to alert them about the visitor’s recent visit or enquiry.
Designed for existing customers, this bot provides support for queries while also opening up the possibility for the cross-selling of other products in accordance to Citron Hygiene’s priority hierarchy.
As we laid out the logic for each chatbot, we also enabled different tracking mechanisms to enrich performance reporting to drive post-interaction automation.
Following the implementation of the first chatbot in May 2023, the improvement became apparent almost immediately. The number of conversations started that month increased by 60% in comparison to the previous month. The new "Catch-All" bot performed exceptionally well, competing head-to-head with the best performing bot, which remained active at the client’s request.
Figure 4: Volume of Conversations Started by Chatbots in 2023 by Month
By June 2023, the total number of leads generated through the chatbot had increased by 200% compared to May. Moreover, the average number of chatbot-generated enquiries in the following months rose by 20% compared to the pre-implementation period that same year. This growth was driven primarily by the success of the "Catch-All" bot.
Figure 5: Volume of Leads Generated by Chatbots in 2023 by Month
The growth is even more noticeable when comparing year on year data on chatbot performance, which shows an overall 155% growth in 2023 compared to the previous year.
Figure 6: Volume of Leads Generated by Chatbots in 2023 Compared with Previous Year
The implementation of a lifecycle-stage focused chatbot has more than doubled leads compared to a page-specific conversational approach. It has allowed Citron Hygiene to:
By implementing HubSpot chatflows on our website, we have significantly accelerated our digital lead generation program. This has not only increased the number of leads coming through our website but has also improved the lead qualification process by streamlining the qualifying questions. As a result, our sales reps are better informed about the customers' needs at the point of handover, creating a much more effective customer journey.
Tom Hailstone, Global Digital Marketing Manager, Citron Hygiene
If you would like to discuss how conversational marketing strategies can enhance your lead generation efforts, contact Innovation Visual today.
