Visitor tracking by IP - LeadsExplorer: Discover and identify business website visitors for prospecting

Visitor tracking methods overview: using IP-address

1. Enhanced Web analytics

These solutions are based on Web Analytic solution and are enhanced with IP-address look-up, revealing the ISP, which can contain be the Company name.

There are 2 methods for Web analytics to capture visitor data:

Log File Analysis of the Web server
Java script line in web pages, communicating with the analytic application server

Advantage:

Visitors come freely on website, thus interested parties

Will reveal the company name of all visitors, if available
Hosted solution, thus only a browser required

Disadvantages:

High number of duplicate "Unique Visitors"
No filtering and cleansing of the visit data into a permanent format:

No creation of a record identity for every company or every visitor in a data base.

For reports, the information is retrieved form the visit data (SQL queries)

Not capable of differentiating ISP's from Companies
There is no unified method or one single data base, which allows to match IP addresses to companies
Companies can use ISP's for their Internet presence:

As such their Company names are hidden by the ISP name
No investigation on Company possible, as Companies are not defined as an identity in Web analytics solutions

Reports and listings are generated using SQL queries on the visit data

Giving data such as most visiting or "top" visiting companies, but not by company entity, as these are not defined.

In case Log File Analysis: not really real-time and these solutions require data base integration with the solution provider

2. Solutions using PC software:

These solutions use one of the previous methods, most likely Web Analytics based upon Log File Analysis, but do all processing and data handling on the PC of the user.

Advantage:

Visitors come freely on website, thus interested parties

Complete data base to be stored locally on PC - if this is an advantage?

Off-line inquiries about visits possible

Disadvantage:

Deployment, installation and maintenance of the PC software
Data base of visits needs to be local on PC, which easily becomes a burden
Every user needs the visiting data on his PC
Regular updates of the IP data base(s) on the PC's are required, which is not evident with multiple PC's
Synchronization issues with the website data capture and the processing on the PC

3. Solutions using integration with Third party CRM

All of the above solutions can have an API (Application Programming Interface) or direct integration with one or more widespread or popular CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solutions.

Advantage:

Fully featured CRM and SFA (Sales Force Automation)
Many functionalities within CRM

Disadvantage:

Switching between the two applications during use
Synchronization and timing differences between both solutions

Data bases need to be synchronized continuously

In most cases the integration is only one way, thus no information from the CRM to the Visitor Discover and Identification application.

Actions in the CRM, are not visible in the Visitor Discover and Identification application

The integration doesn't provide the detailed information in the CRM, concerning actual pages visited or aggregated pages visited by the visitors of one company.

Thus switching required between two applications, with different lookups and retrievals

Required to learn to use 2 solutions
Required to pay for 2 solutions
CRM can have too many functions and features, not immediately required for Lead generation and acquisition.

4. Integrated Tracking and CRM solution: LEADSExplorer

One single solution combining Visitor Tracking and CRM.
Data capture method: Java script line in Web pages or header page.

Advantage:

Visitors come freely on website, thus interested parties
One user interface
No synchronization or timing differences
Hosted (web services):

only browser required
simple and easy deployment

CRM with specific and appropriate features for Lead Generation and Sales.
Visual analysis of the interaction of the commercial sales and marketing efforts towards the company and the impact on the visits.
100% integration between visitor discovery, identification application and CRM

Disadvantage:

CRM with less functions and features (but much lower learning curve and thus higher adoption rate)

Trails and indications:
Although visitors surf the Internet incognito, they do leave all kinds of trails and indications behind:

The origin:

The previous page visited
The search engine keywords

Browser language, indicating the language used at work.
IP of the internet access point, which can be the Internet Service Provider or the company itself

This allows for revealing the ISP of Company name
IP-Geo-location: Positioning of the Internet Access Point

Location by time during the day of visit: employees normally work during office hours, thus this is an indication of geographical location in the world.
Time spend on pages, number of page views of the same page, total visit time
Visit paths : the sequence of the pages visited
Returning visitors: by using cookies or other technologies it is possible to recognize returning visitors.

Additionally LEADSExplorer allows investigating on the IP address of the Visitor for more clues and information, in order to have better prospecting.

This complete set of features allows discovering and identifying the visitor.
Instead of addressing the entire population of potential customers, you can limit the contacting efforts (emails, cold calling) to the visiting companies, as they are already interested.
Hence more efficient Lead Acquisition, reducing your operating costs.

Return to: Overview of Visitor tracking methods

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