Lake B2B Enabled a Lead-Gen Service Provider Triple Their Sales within the First Month of Campaign Deployment

AUDIENCE TARGETING CRITERIA

KNOW THE KEY TARGETS

Insurance agents are professionals of the insurance industry who sell a company’s insurance products to customers for a commission. These professionals’ help customers select the right insurance product based on their unique needs. There can be two types of insurance agents –

• Captive agents who represent a single insurance company
• Independent agents who may represent two or more insurers

On the other hand, insurance brokers are professionals work closely with their clients to help them search for the best insurance policy. Now, most people confuse between insurance agents and brokers. The key difference between the two professionals lies in their representation – while insurance agents represent their respective insurers, an insurance broker’s primary duty is towards the client so they represent the customer. The US is home to nearly 1.2 million insurance agents and brokers!

A Chief Marketing Officer or CMO of the insurance company holds roles similar to those of any other CMO across industries – planning, creating, and execution of relevant multi-channel campaigns to reach target audiences for higher sales and better ROIs.

Sales managers, on the other hand, are responsible for guiding and leading teams of sales reps. This could include activities such as setting goals and sales quotas, analyzing data, assigning sales training, and more.

TARGET TITLES AND ACCOUNTS SOUGHT BY THE CLIENT

MEET THE CLIENT

The client company is a specialist in offering online lead generation services (exclusively referral services) to its clients. Ever since their inception back in 2006, they have helped countless companies double or even triple their sales in a single financial year. The specialty areas of the client company include generating insurance and mortgage leads for their clients. Their team ensures that every lead generated is highly qualified as per the exact target criteria given by their clients and are delivered in real-time so that their clients can establish contact at a time when the leads are actively seeking for their products or services.

The client’s reach extends beyond the US, with regional offices set up across Canada, UK, Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia.

THE CHALLENGE IN AUDIENCE TARGETING

The client suddenly started facing issues with their specialty services. They wanted to reach out to insurance agents, brokers, sales managers, and CMOs of insurance and mortgage companies across the US, still a highly niche target group.

And while they understood the value of a premium leads database that included contact details of MQLs in real-time, the database they were using didn’t seem to do the trick. Even well-timed, highly personalized messages were not engaging contacts. The client’s emails were bouncing back at an alarming rate. Despite developing thought-provoking, high-quality content that should have resonated with the target groups, reach and engagement rates on LinkedIn barely touched the 1% mark. As a natural consequence, marketing ROIs were “unnaturally low” while only resources such as time and money were being wasted chasing the wrong leads. Even referral participation and conversion rates were unsatisfactory.

This was what the client considered to be “an unusual case of marketing misfortune.” And misfortune it was, given that the average lead generation rate following two months of pilot campaign deployment hovered between 2 to 3%. The high email bounce-backs were a clear indication that the client’s existing database was rife with inaccuracies, blank fields, and duplicities, thereby needing thorough cleansing.

Moreover, the fact that even seemingly hyper-personalized messages were not attracting and engaging potential customers meant that the contacts may not be genuinely interested in the client’s products and services. The client did not possess any intent-based information of their leads; hence many must not have been actively looking for similar services, hence the low interest.

The client was certain that they needed help getting the word out about their quality lead-gen (referral marketing) services. Plus, they wanted to target only those accounts that showed strong buying signals and deliver them content and pitches that aligned with their position in the marketing funnel.

THE SOLUTION

The growth-driven data experts of Lake B2B immediately got to work. The client’s existing database was thoroughly purged and any salvageable information was retrieved. All inaccuracies, duplicities, and missing information fields were restored to health. All genuine contacts from the current database were also recovered, with their details updated.

Then came the main task of collating a new leads database that facilitated running of multi-channel campaigns with hyper-personalized marketing messages. For this, only those leads that showed strong buying signals by visiting competitor websites frequently, entering relevant keywords on search engines, etc. were included.

Lake B2B’s data experts delivered a total of 48,051 contacts along with three touch-point email campaigns using Lake B2B’s domain. Over 110 data intelligence fields were covered in the client’s new database, including –

• Contact Name
• Company/Organization Name
• Company Employee Strength
• Company Revenue
• Company Website URL
• Job Title
• Email Address
• Phone Number
• Fax Number
• Industry
• Country
• State
• County
• SIC Code
• LinkedIn Link

On the basis of the new database, pilot campaigns were launched. Since each lead’s intent-based information was used, the client was able to deliver content and marketing pitches based on their position in the marketing funnel. Those in the awareness stage were offered infographics, blogs, etc. Case studies, whitepapers, and industry reports were reserved for those in the consideration or evaluation stage of the sales funnel, while customer testimonials, more blogs, and success stories were used to help reinforce the decision-making process for those in the final or decision-making stage.

Email invites to relevant events were also sent to help the leads understand the importance of referral marketing, how to develop solid referral marketing campaigns, and guest speakers (mainly previous clients) were invited to speak about their experience of working with Leadsfactory for successful referral marketing services. Even LinkedIn InMails were sent to relevant audiences and meaningful conversations were started across LinkedIn groups to create a buzz for the upcoming events.

THE RESULT