You invested in a fabulous B2B mailing list, spending some time whittling down the data that was available to you so that the prospects on the list really were hot prospects; brand-new customers in the making. You made sure that your customer database was up-to-date too. Heck you even had it professionally cleaned and augmented so there was no chance of mailing a prospect that was one of your customers.

Then, envelopes stuffed, website boasting a glittering array of substantiated superlatives you launched your campaign.

Ta dah!  Time to let the world know about your new service.

What happened next?  Well, you went back to work and forgot all about it.

Excuse me? You did what?

Well, work got in the way of handling the responses to your mailshot in a timely and customer focused manner. It’s fair to say that you didn’t brief your team neither so they were unprepared when the responses came flooding or trickling in. All they knew was that their workload was increasing because they were fielding higher levels of phone calls than normal plus alarmingly high numbers of completed contact forms from your website.

Okay, we are being a little dramatic in order to prove a point but the situation described is sadly oh so typical. Let’s look at it again but this time with the prospecting journey of a business at an exhibition. How many businesses spend a small fortune exhibiting at a B2B exhibition; rocking up on the day with the most amazing glitziest stand imaginable, all manner of promotional giveaways not to mention enough staff to fill an auditorium? A fair old few. They give it their very best shot at the exhibition, collect dozens of business cards and complete no end of hot prospect forms. What happens when they go back to work a few days later? Those forms and those business cards are stuck under a table or plonked in a filing cabinet until they are recycled.

Let’s face it, we are now in an era characterised by austerity and prudence. Businesses are still buying products and services from other businesses but we have to work that bit harder and smarter if we are to convert them. If you’re planning on launching a new service, are revamping your existing products or services and want to reach out to existing clients and cold prospects please invest in marketing (and please talk to us about your b2b list won’t you and for that matter cleaning your database?).

But don’t overlook the most important action of all.

Follow-up and don’t spare the horses.

Let’s say that you buy a B2B mailing list of 5000 very carefully selected prospects that you mailshot.

Your initial response – businesses interested in finding out more about your services – is 2.5% (125 potential clients)

This is where things start to go awry….

1. Some of the prospects contact you through your website. Because your team were not primed of the campaign beforehand they do not attach any significance to these contact forms, dealing with each prospect in a transactional manner. Moreover, the special offer that you highlighted in your direct mailshot is not picked up on by your team because they know nothing about it.

2. Some of the prospects pick up the phone. Depending on the information gathered by the team member handling the call, each enquirer is then allocated to a member of your sales team. This is where the trail falls down with prospects at the mercy of the different follow up processes of each sales person.

3. You had not thoroughly briefed each member of your sales team on this campaign and the winning approach they each must follow to the letter. You let each sales person ‘get on with it’. And so some of your sales team gather lots of information including identifying the decision-making unit, the decision-making process, whether an existing competitor is standing in the way of a sale etc – important information to load onto your CRM system so you can build prospect profiles. They know that information is power because it enables a truly tailored approach. The more hungry members of your sales team or the inexperienced ones are not willing to play this longer game and so release these  prospects when in fact the potential sales were far from lost.  And so from 125 prospects you end up with a handful of clients when you were hopeful of much more.

Now, whilst this may appear an extreme example, it is happening every day in thousands of businesses in the B2B sector. Whilst there is a willingness to part with money to start a campaign and get a personalised list of sales leads, the willingness to ensure that the campaign succeeds is often lacking simply because members of a sales team are allowed to “make it up as they go along” and there is a lack of processes, underpinned by a thorough campaign briefing.

Don’t let this happen!

Brief your team. Establish the communication and information gathering process at each stage of the prospect’s journey – from awareness to interest, evaluation and action.

Then analyse in each case why you lost the business and why you gained the business.

Did you lose because

1. Of the skills of your salesperson?
2. Insufficient information was gathered about the decision-making unit and the decision-making process?
3. The prospect turned out to be unsuitable – they had very little need, rejected the price, were being very well serviced by a competitor etc?
4. You assumed it was easy to enter their world and so ignored the barriers to a sale?

Did you win because

1. You were lucky and talented! The right place at the right time?
2. Your salesperson was on the ball with emotional intelligence aplenty plus technical acumen?
3. The decision-makers were identified and communicated with at the earliest stages in the decision-making process?
4. There was no loyalty to an existing competitor?
5. Your whole offering including your price was right?

Analyse each sale; each loss in this detail. Augment the customer records on your CRM and you will build a body of information that when analysed and acted on will lead to a dramatic rise in subsequent conversions through tighter targeting and of course from paying more attention to the entire conversion process.

Our previous blog may have inspired you to rekindle your love affair with direct mail. And so you have made the first steps on your journey to direct mail success. You have bought or rented your B2B data list, established a project plan that will take your campaign from cradle to grave and your sales team are poised to pick up the phone once those precious mailshots have landed on business desks.

 However, it’s not just a matter of sitting down and firing off a really natty letter packed with superlatives, calls to action and all manner of bells and whistles.

You have to develop a compelling message grounded in the reality of what your prospects or customers are really looking for and what they really need. And it all starts with market research, steeping yourself in relevant knowledge.

You must find the truth and you do this through being an exceptional listener, an engaging facilitator and a prodigious note taker.

Longstanding Marketscan client Dee Blick is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and a bestselling marketing author. A devotee of B2B direct mail, Dee is also a dab hand at writing sales letters that sell; something she attributes to market research.

“When tasked with creating a mailshot for an audience I have not written to before and that I know very little about, I don’t guess their unmet needs.  I will pick up the telephone and speak to a good handful of my potential prospects, explaining that all I want to do is unravel their needs as opposed to sell to them. Once I have built this trust the floodgates will open and they will happily share the problems they are encountering not to mention what they do or don’t like about our proposed offering. However I also use B2B prospect lists for market research purposes. I will buy a small quantity of data – a couple of hundred prospects but instead of selling to this list, I will use it for market research. We may invite some of the businesses on the list  to an informal focus group, others we will telephone interview. Process completed we will send an initial mailshot to test the waters. The great thing about this approach is that it enables us to tweak or adapt our initial messages in favour of something much more compelling, real and concrete for when we bite the bullet and target the entire list. For example I am currently working on a brand-new campaign targeting commercial cleaning companies and am enlisting the help of Marketscan to provide me with a small list of commercial cleaning companies in the Greater London area. The first step will not be a full-blown sales mailshot but instead a “getting to know you” communication. We will use the initial feedback to this mailshot and to our telephone research to define the marketing message in the subsequent letter that will be charged with the task of actually selling.”

The message is clear – you have to know your audience and understand their unmet needs before you can successfully sell to them.

Please share your thoughts below.

Before you even think about picking up your pen, follow our 4 step process. You’ll save money and the Promised Land that’s emblazoned with sales symbols galore will be within your arm’s reach of desire.

1. Establish sound objectives for your direct mail campaign. For example, if you are entering a market with many competitors but you are new to this market your goal should be volume; to build awareness rapidly before moving to engaging on a one-to-one level as opposed to making a fast buck. With direct mail you can acquire an abundance of new customers at an acquisition cost that should not make your eyes water.   If on the other hand your aim is to continue selling your products or services in a mature market in which you are established and you have a healthy client base, then direct mail is the perfect tool to sell more to your existing customers. Information rich communications with genuine offers underpinned by great value will do the trick.

2. Be clear on how you will position your brand. This is definitely not highfalutin marketing theory! You have to be able to project the personality of your brand and your values within your mailshot to stand out and apart for the right reasons. Take a look at the insurance companies for inspiration. Distinct and engaging personalities have emerged in the shape of most notably Go Compare, Churchill, Direct Line and Compare the Market. You may offer products and services that are offered by many other businesses but that’s no excuse for firing off a generic bland message if you want your mailshot to deliver impact and maintain it.

3. Contemplate how you will demonstrate that you’re a prodigious giver of value. You may have heard of the PIMS Forum (Profit Impact of Marketing Strategies). 3000 companies in Europe and the US take part. The aim is to find out the effect that marketing strategies have on profits. One finding is that companies perceived by customers as giving value for money tend to be “infinitely more profitable than companies that don’t focus on giving value.” (Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing 5th edition by Drayton Bird). Within the exquisite little bundle that will comprise your direct mailshot, you’re going to have to communicate how you deliver value. Don’t overcomplicate. If you have built your brand on placing the customer at the centre of your universe it’s worth documenting on a step-by-step basis precisely how you have done this and then deciding which of these elements will make it into your mailshot.

4. Make a list of what you must do to get started before you actually do get started! For example:

• Do you need to buy or rent a list of cold prospects for one time or multiple use?
• Do you need to have your customer or prospect CRM database cleaned or profiled externally?
• Have you researched your target audience sufficiently to understand the needs that will propel them to respond to your mail shot?
• Do you have the resources in-house to manage your direct mail campaign from concept to mail out or will you need to use the enclosing and despatch services of a fulfilment house?
• Are your team members poised for action? For example have your account handlers or sales people diarised in the time to pick up the phone and follow-up after the mailshots have landed?

If any of this advice has resonated with you, please post your comments below.

1. You can gather together all of the juicy leads  from the people that visited your exhibition stand and expressed a genuine interest in your products or services. You probably completed an enquiry form for each prospect and stapled their business card to it.
2. You can compile a list of the exhibitors and visitors that wanted to find out more about your offering when you visited the exhibition or trade fair that you knew would be a magnet for your ideal clients.
3. You can follow-up diligently on all of the referrals passed to you from your networking colleagues. Okay, some are definitely in the Champions’ League whilst others are only unfit for relegation but you won’t know until you’ve tried.
4. You can extend your power on LinkedIn beyond simply accepting the ubiquitous invitations to link up and actually compose a list of folk that you have a sneaking suspicion could be in the running for engaging your services or buying your products.
5. You can add some purposeful call to action tweets amongst your usual fare of sharing useful tips and general chitchat.
6. You can buy or rent a high-quality, squeaky clean B2B mailing list which comprises the profile of businesses that you know need what you offer. (Please talk to us won’t you if this is on your marketing agenda. Our B2B lists are incredibly accurate and legally compliant)
7. You can get back in touch with lapsed clients to update them on your latest shiniest offering – the one that will make them sufficiently curious to want to find out more.
8. You can contact all of those prospects that were interested enough to contact you. They may have completed the neat little form on your website expressing an interest or, telephoned, perhaps sent an e-mail but for one reason or another they did not convert into paying clients.
9. You can contact your existing clients because how many are aware of the breadth of your services or products? If you were to present them with the dazzling array of your full offering, would it surprise them? “Heck I didn’t know that you offered this too.”
10. You can establish mutually beneficial relationships with potential influencers, introducers, strategic partners. Call them what you like but they are simply business people that can introduce you to their clients.

What really matters above all is not that you take a scattergun approach to your marketing but that you spend time actively planning how you are going to fill your sales funnel. Identify the key groups that you would like to start with; choose three if you are unsure. Then, identify their deep underlying needs and wrap this up in an introduction that reflects your relationship with the group. Add in a clear call to action – consider a genuine special offer to oil the wheels and don’t spare the horses on some professional design and good quality copy editing. The days when you could simply fire off a random well-meaning message to thousands of potential customers are behind us. Relevant, compelling and charming rules!

I hear from companies daily that they have lots of internal business data they can use, although when digging further they admit they don’t know how much of it is up-to-date and relevant.

Using the 80/20 rule that 80% of business comes from 20% of customers, many companies don’t actually know what business sectors their best customers are in!

Marketscan has developed a package called DataPro™ which identifies the profile of your best customers and then goes on to give you a market penetration report, showing the size of your untapped markets.

This helps cut down on wasted ‘phone calls, mailing costs or sending emails to recipients who have no interest in your product or service. It also saves your sales team time fielding unwanted calls, leaving them to concentrate on the profitable business areas.

If you want to find out how we can help you save money and improve response rates then please call Simon Deakin on 01243 791708 for a free 10 minute consultation.

In the March/April issue of the Marketer Magazine, the official magazine of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, the world’s largest marketing body, the front cover headline  “Posting Profits: Why We’ve Seen a Revival of Direct Mail,” heralds the comeback of direct mail. Apparently, direct mail is celebrating a revival. What appeared to be a steady decline in 2009 has now been dramatically reversed and since 2010 we’ve been sending more mailshots than ever.

It’s not difficult to see why and to also understand the logic behind the initial migration from direct mail to email.

Rewind several years and marketers in the b2b sector were being encouraged to adopt e-mail marketing as an alternative to the more traditional paper-based communications that had for so long sat in our marketing communications toolkit. Fast forward to millions of unwanted e-mail marketing messages later and e-mail fatigue has set in. What does an impatient business person do now when confronted with a burgeoning mailbox? They reach for the delete button, summarily despatching those e-mails that bear the faintest whiff of the unknown.

But although direct mail has made a comeback in the business to business sector that does not mean it’s business as usual. Sending out hundreds of thousands of mailshots to an ill targeted database with an envelope bursting with environmentally unfriendly paper is not what the data doctor ordered.

It doesn’t work.

Savvy marketers are cottoning onto the fact that they can now measure the impact of their targeted direct mailshots beyond simply counting the direct responses. For example, if the purpose of your mailshot is to generate awareness of your brand and to promote specific messages, you can now monitor twitter, Facebook, blogs and LinkedIn for discussions and name dropping of your brand. You can also print your messages on environmentally responsible paper and can cut down on the number of enclosures, encouraging the recipient to find out more on your blog or your website.

You can even begin your story with a direct mailshot to arouse interest and follow it up with an infographic. The brilliant thing about direct mail is that it fits beautifully into a blended communication programme that encompasses online communications too. The addition of a QR code can drive the reader to (what must be high quality, relevant and targeted) information online. And you can bet your bottom dollar that provided you have matched the message with the recipient that in the days after your targeted mailshot there will be an increase in visitors to your website and a corresponding increase in completed contact forms. Many of your recipients will appreciate the initial communication by direct mail preferring nonetheless to respond via your website.

Eureka! The World’s largest marketing body has hailed direct mail as the comeback kid. In our experience, it never went away…

However in recent times, and like most industries, some very disreputable suppliers have crept in.  My inbox is being bombarded with offers for very cheap business data, as do many of my clients, some of who have been caught out and decided to purchase from these companies much to the detriment of their direct marketing campaign.

Lured by a flashy website and cheap pricing with a small sample of checked data it looks a great deal. But as one or two of my clients have found out recently the sample was the only decent bit of data available.  What’s more, having paid for the data, they can’t get hold of the supplier to complain about the quality of it. In both cases they have had to spend more money putting the matter straight.

These are not the only problems.  Recently on LinkedIn there have been a host of offers coming from web scraping companies offering to build a database from the web.  They claim to collect the data from Yellow Pages and the like and sell at a cheap price! Not only is this illegal the data is also unverified as it could come from any source regardless of age. They also don’t check telephone numbers against any of the telephone preference service registers leaving the user open to fines from the regulator.

So when buying business data I would advise taking a moment to check the following:

Does the supplier have a landline that connects to a live person?

• Are they members of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA)? Don’t just check to see if the DMA’s logo is on their website, qualify with the DMA themselves (www.dma.org.uk).
• Speak to someone within the company. Do they know what they are talking about, can they work with your brief?
• Check them out on LinkedIn and see what their references are like.
• If in doubt ask around – see if other people have used them

Most interesting.

It was not that long ago that leaflets were literally been consigned to the waste bin of history. Environmentally unsound, untargeted, associated with cheap as chips deals. And yet now brands as big and mighty as Virgin Media are using door drops. When combined with geo-demographic targeting, they are delivering responses on a shoestring budget.

That’s all well and good for the tried and tested business to consumer sector isn’t it. But what of the business to business sector? Is there a place in our marketing communications’ toolkit for using leaflets when we are targeting business decision-makers? Believe it or not there is. But there are ground rules to be adhered to if the desired outcome is to generate positive awareness and interest as opposed to a derisory snort and a perfectly executed aim at the waste bin.

Not only that; in the B2B sector we need to be a little more sophisticated than our B2C counterparts.

1. Ensure that your leaflet shouts quality. You can opt for hundreds of thousands of leaflets for a price so low it beggars belief but, the likelihood is that your leaflet will do more harm than good, causing untold damage to your brand. By contrast, using a good quality card and enlisting the talents of a designer and copywriter should turn your leaflet into a direct marketing piece worthy of even the most senior person’s attention and praise.

2. Use your leaflet to promote your basket of goodies online. Don’t try and tell the whole story in such a confined space. Signpost to your blog, your website, your free high-value White Paper and so on.

3. Enclose the leaflet in an envelope. Your leaflet does not have to be one of the rather tired looking addressed versions with the name and address lasered on one side, marketing copy on the other. And of course if you can make the whole package lumpy with perhaps the inclusion of a thoughtful and considerate gift all the better.

4. Make your leaflet a teaser. Alert the recipient to the fact that in the next few days they’re going to be receiving something more substantial in the post.

5. Don’t make your leaflet an unaddressed communication. Use targeted and accurate data to turn it into a truly personal communication. If your existing database needs cleaning and/or augmenting don’t stint on this important part of your campaign planning. If you are buying or renting prospect data and planning on making telephone follow-up calls make sure that the data complies with the requirements of the Telephone Preference Scheme and the Corporate Telephone Preference Scheme. A relevant and brilliant creative will not adequately compensate for poor quality, incomplete or illegal data.

One of the problems that Perrys had experienced with their previous direct mail programme was very low responses despite high quality enclosures – the unfortunate but inevitable consequence of a poor quality B2B list. The number of gone aways and incorrect addresses from each direct mail campaign had climbed to an unacceptable 25%.

Looking at each campaign objectively it was apparent that the medium of communication (direct mail) was perfect for brokering an introduction into what Perrys could offer their B2B audience. The message: “have an informal chat with us if you are looking for a proactive accountant that does more than count beans,” was perfect too. However no amount of relevant, charming and targeted marketing can make up for a list that comprises of a large element of inaccurate and incomplete data.

And so with their existing prospect list woefully out of date and on the recommendation of Dee Blick, Perrys enlisted the professional services of Marketscan in order to build a brand-new prospect list. As a team we spent many hours analysing and whittling down the data to arrive at a list that comprised of only the sectors that Perrys wanted to target, with the prospects located within a close radius of each Perrys’ branch. We also supplied the full name of the decision-maker for over 80% of the targeted prospects on the list. We ran the list against Perrys’ client list to ensure that clients were not being inadvertently mailed as prospects.

Armed with a new list of very carefully chosen prospects, the first mailshot went out in January of this year. It comprised a letter with a very nice calendar. The response was… fantastic. The number of gone aways was within the Marketscan 2% guarantee. We were told by Perrys that each branch was experiencing ‘exceptional levels of requests for meetings’ from businesses that had been targeted with the mailshot. To date 20 brand-new high-value clients have instructed Perrys as their new accountant as a direct consequence of receiving the calendar mailshot. The number is growing each week.

In a fast-moving era when it’s tempting to complicate our marketing in the belief that prospects only respond to the most sophisticated of approaches, this is a classic example of what happens when you are brilliant at the basics namely:

• You have a clean, targeted, up-to-date B2B list of prospects that closely matches the criteria of client you are looking for and that where relevant mirrors your current client base and reflects your areas of expertise.
• You send a professional, well written and charming letter that focuses on your core message; in this example ‘if you’re looking for a proactive, local and experienced accountant contact us for an informal meeting at no charge.’
• You add a nice touch for positive impact – in this case an attractive and colourful calendar.