List-Free B2B E-Mail Acquisition
Can you acquire new prospects without an e-mail list?
Can you acquire new prospects without an e-mail list?
Modem Media’s Account Director Susan Macy Hayes was asked by a leading telecommunications firm to recommend email lists for the business-to-business (B2B) launch of a new wireless product. She replied, “Can we think about this for a week and get back to you?”
Hayes and her team returned a week later with a decidedly different approach. Even she calls it off the wall. They decided to forgo the expense of buying lists altogether. Instead, they created an innovative, multistep product launch/acquisition campaign that generated (drumroll!) over 100,000 qualified leads.
As Creative Director Alex Hendler put it, “We basically created a carrot to draw prospects through the process.” That process included product education and lead generation.
The Creative and Marketing Challenge
This particular product’s benefit was difficult to articulate. The product enables document sharing, as well as remote calendar and email access, through a wireless phone. Customers first need an application on their company server and on the phone itself to enable connectivity with a network.
This requirement certainly removes the product from the impulse-purchase realm. The agency was faced with explaining the benefits and complexity of a network setup to potential new customers. The campaign’s objective was to identify leads to pass on to the sales force, which in turn had its own challenges in making the enterprise-wide sale.
The Acquisition Solution
The team decided at the outset that traditional online advertising banners wouldn’t suffice to communicate the complex benefit. After projection, Media Director Kamin Macomber decided at $150 CPM, buying lists of businesses with large mobile workforces would yield poor return on investment (ROI). “We knew we needed to try nontraditional ways to collect leads from this target,” she said.
Modem Media instead recommended the following architecture:
The Results
Modem Media generated over 100,000 leads, plus more instantaneous benefits: many requests for immediate contact from a sales rep. Additionally, 4 percent requested the company contact them about other wireless products and services, an extra database bonus that contributes to program ROI as it converts to sales over time. This valuable, permission-based prospect database is now used on an ongoing basis for remarketing, seasonal offers, and product launches.
The Modem Media team feels the key to the program’s success can be attributed to three key factors:
As Hayes says, the media buy wasn’t inexpensive, but it was definitely more cost-effective than buying lists, hence worth the extra time and research.
Thanks, Modem Media, for sharing this case study with ClickZ readers. We’re always looking for more. Send your success stories to Karen.
Meet Karen at ClickZ E-Mail Strategies in New York City on May 19 and 20.