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Paris-based bank Society Generale (SG) had an established online consumer business — except for one problem common to most e-commerce sites. Some 70% to 98% of the bank's potential customers left SG's Web site (www.socgen.com) before completing the purchase of a new product or service. Worse, many of these prospects were more than just casual visitors. They qualified themselves by starting to fill out an application for a personal loan, mortgage, credit card or personal account, but then dropped it and exited the site.

The “abandoned shopping cart syndrome” was aggravated by the fact that bank executives had no idea why these qualified leads disappeared. Was it because they tired of filling out the long forms required for products like mortgages? Did they shy away from revealing personal information on the applications? Did cost turn them off? Or did they merely have questions they needed an SG employee to answer?

In late 2002, SG conducted a three-month pilot study to uncover why it was losing these leads. In the process, the bank not only improved sales by 20% to 30%, but learned that French consumers are not as squeamish about online privacy as it originally thought.

Software and consulting company Kefta Inc., San Francisco, which ran the study, focused on those people who had begun — but had abandoned — an application. “We think it's easier to convert this low-hanging fruit to customers than to find non-customers,” says Kefta CEO Philippe Suchet. “They are people who already know your brand and services.”

To capture these folks, Kefta's software tracked visitors, noticing just as they were typing in a new Web site address or closing their browser, and at that moment sending them a pop-up.

“In France, the biggest worry was not to be too intrusive with our pop-ups,” said Gwenaëlle Evenot, SG's senior Web marketer, in an e-mail interview. “In fact, we observed that our visitors were not so resistant to that type of stimulation.”

The pop-ups asked for different sorts of interactions from the visitor. One said, “You may want more information. Type your questions here and we will send you answers by e-mail.” Another was a survey, offering multiple choices for the visitor to check, such as: “I am interested in [the product] but I need to think it over,” “I am uncomfortable buying online” or “I need more information.”

Other pop-ups were very specific to what the visitor was doing before heading for the virtual door, such as, “You are interested in a mortgage. Do you need a sales agent to call you?”

Indeed, the visitors were so responsive that 20% of them provided information about themselves in a pop-up, Suchet says.

“If you go into a shop and look around, it's because you have a real interest,” Suchet points out. “The same is true with a Web site. The fact that you depart doesn't mean you don't have an interest.”

Plus, if visitors already have invested time filling out an application, they are glad to receive the pop-up, Suchet adds.

Several creatives were tested for each pop-up. Kefta also tested which pop-ups prompted visitors to respond best for the type of product they were interested in. And the firm gauged when it was a good time to follow up.

SG discovered that the most frequent reason for abandonment was the length of the form they were required to fill out. People don't mind completing applications for simple products, such as basic savings accounts, SG found. But for complex services such as life insurance, SG instituted a short “reservation form” to engage the visitor until a sales staffer could contact them by e-mail or telephone. For these products, people would rather complete the transaction offline, the bank determined.

“People don't like pop-up ads, but if you deliver a pop-up that addresses their needs, they appreciate that,” Suchet maintains.

After prospects said they wanted to be contacted, SG reached out to them by telephone or e-mail one time, within 24 hours of the prospects' online experience, while their interest was still fresh.

Kefta's software and consulting package ran SG “less than $100,000” for the pilot, according to Suchet. But the increase in quality lead generation apparently was worth it. Recently, the bank signed on for another year with Kefta.