In today’s business environment, depending on manual lead tracking can help, but not a smart move. It can certainly bring in leads, but not manage them effectively.
For instance, you may have noticed how high-ticket leads sometimes slip through the cracks. More often, you might have to deal with the uncertainty in the sales funnel, and a lot more. To handle all this, your sales team might focus more on solving this chaos, rather than closing deals, right?
After researching and testing dozens of lead tracking tools for several weeks, I realized that automation is not just relevant for the operations team, but necessary for tracking leads too.
In this detailed guide, I have covered everything you need to know about these tools and their effectiveness. As you go further, I hope you find it helpful.
Why automate lead tracking?
While I was testing several tools in real-time business scenarios, here are some of the benefits that I discovered:
- As you automate the lead tracking process properly, all your leads will automatically get captured. Without any manual entry or follow-ups, it will make your tasks easier.
- You will be able to send instant messages, emails, and assignments, and SMS to all your leads. This will slowly reduce your average response time.
- All the lead information will appear on one dashboard. This will include details about who opened your email, visited your website, or clicked on your ad. And this will help you target better.
- All your leads get auto-scores based on their engagement and behaviour. This will help your team to focus more on closing deals.
- Your leads are assigned to the sales team using auto-routing rules. This is done based on the product interest, region, and campaign source. It will help you save time and reduce the confusion in the system.
- Based on the action of your leads, you can send personalized sequences in the form of call, SMS, or email reminders without putting any manual effort.
- Automating lead tracking processes reduces the chance of inconsistent follow-ups and messages. It ensures everything is streamlined in a better way.
- Your marketing team no longer has to work on warm leads. They can automatically pass them to the sales team.
- It reduces your hiring costs. Once you automate your repetitive tasks and workflows, you won’t feel the need to hire more people in your team.
How to find the best tool for automating lead tracking?
1. Ability to map lead sources - Your lead tracking tool should have the ability to track your leads from touchpoints like email, web, ads, and calls.
2. Must integrate with CRM tools - A good lead tracking tool should be able to connect well with HubSpot, Zoho, and Salesforce. Also, it should be able to sync smoothly with tools like Gmail, Google Ads, etc.
3. Must have automation features - Your lead tracking platform must have features like drag-and-drop builders with custom actions, triggers, etc. This will help your sales and marketing teams work together.
4. Must have AI-based lead scoring features - You must look for AI-based features like smart lead scoring, predictive suggestions, and behaviour analysis. This will help you drive conversions better.
5. Check data security and privacy features - A good lead tracking tool must comply with data privacy laws and must offer features with high security and permission-based lead tracking.
6. Scalable in nature - Your lead tracking tool should have features that can be used to scale shortly.
Best 8 tools for automating lead tracking
Best for sales teams that depend on on-field operations
1. Leadsquared (iOS, Android)
I used Leadsquared to automate the entire lead management system. And it worked beautifully. It helped me to capture leads from calls, chats, web, ads, and email.
Without any data leakage, it integrated well across different channels and brought response time under 3 minutes (average). This helped my sales team to engage with the prospects at the right time.
With its real-time dashboards and smooth performance, it has built-in dialer functionality for maintaining call logs and generating reports. Apart from this, I saw that it is well optimized for mobile use (for both Android and iOS).
Later, after using it for a few weeks, I found that it has some amazing features for a sales team (especially those having field work). They were geo-tracking, offline access to dashboards with check-in and out functionality.
Pros:
- Offer the feature of ‘Smart Views’ for the sales team. This can help them view only the most potential leads based on their tasks, actions, and lead stages.
- Provides a one-stop platform for sales and marketing teams to share, automate, and track leads.
- Offer industry-specific, customizable sales workflows. It comes with visual pipeline control and conditional logic.
- Its App Marketplace integrates well with 100+ platforms like Razorpay, Zoom, Facebook Lead Ads, and WhatsApp.
- It has built-in modules for chatbot and WhatsApp workflows.
Cons:
- Onboarding setup can confuse beginners. It may require a technical team.
- For customizing UI, very limited options are available.
- Even though it offers deep and flexible customization features for lead stages, workflows, and automations, you may often feel the need for backend admin support or experienced technicians.
Pricing - It does not offer a free plan for sales automation. The paid plan starts at $60/user/month (Sales Pro plan).
Best for teams that often use analytical stacks and high-level CRM systems
2. Ruler Analytics (Web, Mobile - iOS and Android)
I used this tool for closed-loop lead tracking and multi-channel attribution. And I found that it works smoothly. I was able to easily capture all my conversions (in the form of phone calls, form fills, and live chat).
Not just this, I could easily map this information to my marketing teams. This was super helpful to reduce the attribution guesswork over time.
When it comes to its performance, it mapped visitors’ journey in a detailed manner with the help of customizable attribution models (like last touch, first touch and multi-touch). So overall, I was pretty impressed with it.
It even integrates seamlessly with tools like Salesforce, Google Ads, HubSpot, etc., and ensures that all your touchpoints fit well with your BI and CRM dashboards. This helped to get better insights.
Pros:
- Offer a dynamic number insertion feature for call tracking. This will ensure that your campaign-level attribution is accurate.
- Provides granular journey reports to show users’ behaviour across pages, sessions, and actions.
- Offer multi-touch attribution support with its six models. This will help you predict your channel ROI.
- Provides 24/7 customer support.
Cons:
- To use advanced features for journey tracking, setup can be a little complex.
- Even though it has great reporting features, it is often limited to the latest 90 days only. To check the long-term historical trends, you may need the support of external BI tools.
- For deep custom integrations, it does not offer APIs yet.
Pricing - It does not offer a free plan. The paid plan starts from $199/month (based on 5000 monthly visits).
Best for businesses that mostly require advanced AI for automating lead routing and scoring.
3. Salesforce (Web Browsers, Mobile - iOS and Android)
This tool helped me to automate lead capture, scoring, and routing with great efficiency. It offers powerful AI agents (Agentforce) that natively integrate directly into your lead workflows.
With its Web-to-Lead forms, I was able to capture over 500 leads each day from my website. Not just this, I was even able to seamlessly log in to this tool with accurate lead scoring, generated based on demographics and engagement behaviour of leads.
When looking at its overall performance, I was happy with it. It worked smoothly across all the stages of lead generation. This saved me ample time and manual effort.
I really liked how it offered me a centralized dashboard with customizable pipelines and real-time reporting. I also appreciate its AI-based lead scoring and grading system. It helped me to improve my conversion rates.
Pros:
- Offer the flexibility to customize workflows. It can easily be used in different sales models.
- Easily connects with third-party attribution and data enrichment tools.
- Provide custom dashboards for better analytics and ROI estimation.
- Has built-in practices to cater to BANT (Budget-Authority-Need-Timing) related lead qualification. This can improve your lead grading processes.
Cons:
- Initially, the setup can be a bit complex. You may feel the need for trained technicians.
- Advanced features may overwhelm first-time users and small teams.
- To integrate this tool with third-party apps, you may require APIs.
Pricing - It offers a 30-day free trial for all its paid plans, except its Agentforce 1 Sales plan. The paid plan starts at $25/user/month (can be billed monthly or annually).
Best for sales teams that require detailed lead routing and integration with CRM tools
4. CallTrackingMetrics (Web Browser, Android, iOS, macOS, and visionOS)
This tool gave me detailed insights into the type of ads that brought real conversions through offline actions like texts, chats, form submissions, and calls. For this, features like call attribution and dynamic number insertion worked well.
Its AI-based conversion intelligence system helped me to transcribe calls, highlight main phrases, and even automate lead scoring with real-time insights.
Besides that, I found that its advanced lead-routing engine smoothly supports IVR menus, geo-routing, custom workflows, and weighted queues. This way, it ensured that everything works smoothly at a faster rate.
I liked its built-in softphone and agent app. It helped my sales team with call recordings, with proper conversational context, notes, and instant SMS follow-ups.
Pros:
- Provides the flexibility to connect web forms for offline conversions. For this, it offers a feature of FormReactor that adds form-tracking to calls.
- To increase sales outreach, it offers a feature of LeadReactor. It automatically detects voicemails and sends pre-recorded messages.
- It naturally syncs well with tools like HubSpot, Google Ads, Salesforce, etc., with open webhooks or API.
- Comply with HIPAA, SOC 2, GDPR, and CCPA.
Cons:
- To set up SIP devices, it often requires technical expertise.
- Advanced features and customization can overwhelm small businesses.
- The quality of mobile calls can be affected if there is low bandwidth.
Pricing - It does not offer a free plan. The paid plan (Marketing Lite) starts at $79/month (billed monthly).
Best for teams that require automated lead workflows with AI recommendations and analytics
5. HubSpot (Browser-based desktop, iOS - 17+, Android - 10+)
This tool helped me to centralize all the touchpoints of all the leads. From emails, form fills, calls, to website visits, all were smoothly managed.
Its feature of the ‘Lead Status’ field was quite impressive. With the help of customizable workflows, I could easily track lead activities via different statuses. This reduced a large chunk of manual tasks and saved time.
HubSpot’s sales hub even allowed me to collect multiple lead records per contact and helped me track re-engagement activities through AI. With this, it even created stage-specific reports and gave me attribution insights.
As I used it further, I found another set of valuable features like predictive lead scoring, engagement notifications, and pipeline visualization. Call transcription requires a higher plan and integration or use of HubSpot's calling tools.
Pros:
- Streamlines lead routing system with AI-based suggestions and workflows.
- Syncs bi-directionally with tools like Outlook, Gmail, ZoomInfo, etc.
- Has built-in conversational tools like chatbots, live chat, and shared inboxes within the lead flow.
Cons:
- You cannot access advanced features in the starter plans. You need a subscription to its higher plans.
- To set up its ‘Lead Object’ feature, you may require technical support.
- As compared to specific automation platforms, access to workflow automation is HubSpot officially offers three paid Sales Hub tiers, limited to starter plans.
Pricing - For sales teams, it offers three paid Sales Hub tiers. Its Professional plan starts at $100/seat/month (billed annually).
Best for B2B marketing teams that often run outbound campaigns on multiple channels
6. Act-on (Web browsers - Windows, macOS, and Linux)
This tool helped me organize my lead campaigns across different channels. Its lead tracking and scoring engine focuses on capturing rich behavioural data, like content engagement, website visits, email opens, and form submissions.
It even helped me generate targeted lead scores for segment-based scoring models, using its unique blend of demographic and firmographic insights.
Not just this, I was able to gain insights into outbound outreach, webinar ROI, and funnel analytics.
With the help of this tool, my team could easily respond to real-time intent signals and even nurture my MQLs.
The way it customized forms and integrated with CRM platforms was amazing. I could easily nurture my leads without putting in manual efforts.
Pros:
- Provides the flexibility to deploy separate scoring for different product lines or segments.
- Integrates well with GotoWebinar, Zoom, and Webex. This will help you to keep track of engagement metrics easily.
- Offer an agency-level dashboard to manage several campaigns together.
- Natively integrates with marketing platforms like Dynamics, Salesforce, Google Analytics, WordPress, etc.
Cons:
- You might require expertise from your marketing operations team to design various score models, form workflows, and automations. Not suitable for a first-time user.
- Advanced analytics is only accessible through higher plans.
- It mainly focuses on web functionality, so it may not be suitable for mobile-based users.
- Does not have a separate mobile application for Android or iOS.
Pricing - It does not offer a free plan. The paid plan. ‘Professional plan’ starts at $900/month (billed monthly).
Best for businesses that focus on intent-based lead identification
7. Leadfeeder (Web browsers - Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge)
This tool helped me convert website traffic into B2B leads. It made the process smoother by simply identifying all the companies that are currently visiting my website (it even considered the ones that are remotely working or have dynamic IP addresses).
Then, I saw it doesn’t have a formal lead scoring algorithm—just filters to prioritize leads, with real-time alerts. This helped my sales team send timely follow-ups and thereby increase their conversion rates.
I admire its integration with CRM platforms like HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, and Microsoft Dynamics. Also, I liked how it quickly filtered out bots, ISPs, and irrelevant visits using its IP-to-company-database (this is updated daily).
Apart from that, its UI made it easier to segment hot leads, visualize campaign attribution, and even build targeted lead lists without any heavy technical support.
Pros:
- The free plan has no time limit (but comes with limited features).
- The engine is well-optimized to handle remote and dynamic IP traffic.
- Even with a single login, this tool supports different websites, and each is tracked separately.
Cons:
- It mainly focuses on company identification, not really on individual behaviour.
- Does not have a mobile application yet; only accessible through web browsers.
- Often requires manual lookup or additional setup for lead enrichment.
- Advanced CRM syncing features are only available in higher plans.
- Does not have a drag-and-drop scoring builder for beginners; scoring is mostly based on filters.
Pricing - It offers a free plan with limited features. The paid plan starts at $141/month (paid monthly).
Best for teams wanting to improve their sales pipeline with website engagement intelligence
8. Whois Visiting (Web browsers - Windows, macOS, Linux, and mobile platforms)
This tool made it easier to not only identify companies that are visiting my website, but also to keep track of session lengths, business details, page views, and lead source.
With this, I was able to send real-time alerts to my sales team and even filter visits using its custom engagement features. This helped me to convert casual visitors into leads. Also, it connects well with tools like HubSpot, Mailchimp, Pipedrive, Salesforce, and a lot more.
Initially, it was easy and simple to deploy. It just took me a few minutes to get started with a simple lead tracking code (using its 14-day free trial).
I liked its engagement bar that simply gave me an insight into top leads and even offered scheduled reporting with many PDF export tools for better analysis.
Pros:
- Offer powerful features like white-labeling and multi-site support to handle many domains with a single login.
- Has a built-in email finder and social profile links. This will help to quickly reach out to your leads without the need for switching tabs.
- Depending on the type of your sales requirement, you can simply pick the plans.
Cons:
- Does not focus on identifying individual visitors; only companies.
- This tool can only be accessed through a web or mobile browser; it does not have a separate mobile app.
- Does not have a public API. It often restricts custom data exports.
- ISP traffic or Dynamic IPs may reduce accuracy.
Pricing - It offers a 14-day free trial (this plan offers full access to all its features and requires no credit card details). The paid plan starts at $69/month.
Feature comparison
Steps to automate lead tracking
Step 1 - Pick your lead sources
First, you need to identify and note down all the main sources of lead. These sources can be in the form of website forms, phone calls, ads, social media (organic), email, and even some third-party platforms.
Step 2 - Choose the right CRM or lead tracking platform.
You can look for platforms like HubSpot, Salesforce, and Leadsquared that can automate your lead flow as well as suit your sales process and team size.
Step 3 - Connect all the touchpoints
You need to connect email platforms (like Gmail and Mailchimp), web forms, ad tools (like Google Ads and Meta), and landing pages to your CRM or lead tracking tool using built-in integrations.
Step 4 - Set up an automated lead capture system
At this point, you need to simply automate rules to log and capture all new leads automatically. This should be done from every channel and then assign labels, tags, and even campaigns immediately after the form has been submitted.
Step 5 - Configure the lead scoring feature
Prioritize hot leads using a rule or AI-based lead scoring, depending on users’ call response, email opens, link clicks, and their time spent on your site.
Step 6 - Design follow-up related workflow
Create automated sequences to follow up with your leads. These sequences can be in the form of calls, SMS, or email reminders. You can try tools like HubSpot Workflows, Act-on for better use.
Step 7 - Automate the process of assigning leads
Set up automation rules depending on the specific region, product interest, and lead scores of each lead. This can save a large chunk of your time.
Step 8 - Track real-time lead activity
To make better decisions, it is important to understand what your lead wants. To know this, you must be aware of their activities they perform. For this, CRM dashboards can be of great help. They can help you track their emails, call logs, website visits, and file downloads systematically.
Step 9 - Monitor and optimize your campaign consistently
Use reporting dashboards and built-in analytics tools to keep an eye on KPIs like sales velocity, conversion rate, and lead response time. This will help you get quality leads.
Step 10 - Check if your tool complies with data privacy laws
Ensure your lead tracking tool complies smoothly with laws like CAN-SPAM, TCPA, and CCPA.
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