Agency Type
Brand and Customer Experience
Target
Finance & Professional Services
The Process
New business efforts are all about being highly targeted with your data and messaging. Very often an Account-Based Marketing approach, rather than a mass outreach effort, means that your total quantity of outreach is reduced, but your level of meetings in both interest and opportunity increases.
Jim found himself in the position of working on behalf of an agency that has specialized within the Financial sector, one that has certainly been a challenge these last few months of the Covid with, seemingly, fewer agency shifts in that industry during the pandemic. With less movement happening and overall freeze happening, Jim needed to find not only a brand that was actively open to speak, but also who within that brand would be the right person to take interest in his client’s capabilities.
The first step of this focusing process was to take the larger finance list and run it through Bombora’s purchase intent software. He looked for Finance companies that had surging interest and searches along with the categories of “Brand Affinity and Financial Banking”. This reduced his overall list of prospects from hundreds to 30(ish) companies.
Once we had those main 30 companies, it was time to append marketing contacts from Winmo into those main companies and prioritize based on the job titles that we have had the most success in getting in contact with. During the pandemic, we have seen a lot of activity with Director and VP level, who both understand the need to pull on purse strings AND are also bogged down with the day to day execution of marketing plans.
With the now smaller list, Jim has the ability to do a deeper dive into those individuals and companies and make sure that any messaging can now be tailored to each one. The message that hit first was finding a company that was written about in Forbes, which he mentioned immediately and linked back to in his email. He then shares a similar past client to show expertise in their field, which is always on a marketer’s mind.
(edited for privacy’s sake, but the simplicity is in tact)
I’ve been reading about ABC and your recognition in Forbes. We’ve developed fresh insights, for clients like XXX, into some new challenges their small business clients and prospects are facing in today’s environment. We’d be glad to share our presentation where we dive into post-COVID changing beliefs, behaviors, and needs of the small to mid-sized business audience. (link was included)
Would you be free to connect on Thursday?
Those quick first sentences give his email a step above others in a few ways. First, he’s obviously not a bot sending mass mail, because he is linking to an article that would only make sense for this person. Second, everyone loves the extra recognition and little ego boost by acknowledging and recognizing their public accomplishments, in this case, the article in Forbes. He has also shown expertise without having to go into a 3-page long diatribe explaining all that they do. He uses the mention of past work to prove his expertise.
Lastly, Jim kept the messaging SIMPLE. This was short and sweet and allowed the prospect to breathe. That simplicity in email communication allows for a prospect to believe that an interaction and discussion may be simple as well.
This success for our agency partner was made possible by:
Jim O.
Business Development Director at Catapult