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Ongoing ABM Campaign Lifts Potential ARR by $785K for FinTech SaaS Firm (Featured Image)

Ongoing ABM Campaign Lifts Potential ARR by $785K for FinTech SaaS Firm

The Client

The Client develops and maintains a cloud-based platform that facilitates supply chain financing transactions. The company primarily targets enterprise-level businesses in a number of industries throughout Southeast Asia.

The Challenge

The Client is a fast-growing Singapore-based FinTech company with more than six years of experience partnering with enterprise businesses in Southeast Asia. The company operates a cloud-based platform that helps large enterprises improve cash flows and tap into a pool of working capital through a full menu of supply chain financing options:

  • Reverse factoring
  • Invoice financing
  • Inventory financing
  • Payable extension
  • Payable discounting
  • Supplier payments

Last year, the company started implementing an ABM program to help them better identify high-priority accounts in their target markets. With half a decade’s worth of customer data under their belt, the Client was able to reliably determine some key qualities about their most promising target accounts:

  • Accounts with the highest lifetime values (LTVs) tended to come from manufacturing, retail, and wholesale trade industries.
  • Top accounts also were more likely to have been processing invoices manually or through a legacy system prior to switching over to the Client’s platform.
  • Nearly all won deals involved reaching out to three different decision-maker segments: managers in charge of procurement and invoicing, stakeholders concerned about company’s cost management and financial performance, and technical managers who want a secure and reliable platform.

The Client’s ABM program also specifies the need to outsource their top-of-funnel activities, including prospect research and initial outreach.

By the company’s own estimate, a third-party agency will greatly augment the company’s understaffed internal team, which currently generates an average of nine discovery meetings per month. Plus, the Client also thinks outsourcing will free up a big chunk of sales and marketing agents’ schedules, giving them more time to follow up and work on promising deals.

But first, the Client had to find a marketing company with the right expertise and resources to help them:

  • Scale up the search for accounts that closely resemble their top customers
  • Connect with all three decision-maker groups that impact buying decisions
  • Generate the right number of sales appointments to support their target pipeline growth

The Callbox Solution

After reviewing proposals from several marketing providers, the Client signed up for Callbox’s account-based appointment setting service. The Client noted that the program met all their requirements, and that Callbox already had an extensive track record of success with FinTech companies in the APAC region.

From the outset, the Client made it very clear they wanted a long-term partnership. That’s why a pilot three-month campaign was first carried out to learn the best ways to move things forward. After the test campaign, Callbox and the Client went ahead with full implementation, which is still ongoing today.

Callbox’s account-based appointment setting campaigns consist of three main activities. Some of the key highlights include:

Account Research and Selection

Key firmographic qualities include: workforce of at least 500 employees; annual revenues of $50 million or more; engaged in manufacturing, retail, or wholesale trade in Singapore and Malaysia.

As for technographics, the Client’s top-tier accounts were companies that rely on either manual processes or on-premise software to handle procurement, invoicing, and cash flow management.

The Callbox team then prepared the target account list using a combination of Callbox’s in-house database and external data sources.

Account and Prospect Profiling

  1. There were three decision-maker groups targeted in the campaign: end users (managers in charge of procurement and invoicing), economic buyers (CFOs, controllers, etc.), technical buyers (IT managers, IT directors, CTOs, CIOs, etc.).
  2. The Client specified additional prospect characteristics to help the Callbox team pinpoint the right decision makers from each target account.
  3. All contact details and information were screened by a database QA team and submitted to the Client for review before being used in the campaign.

Multi-touch, Multi-channel Outreach

The Callbox team followed a unique lead nurture path and personalized messaging strategy for each of the three decision-maker groups.

The lead nurture paths combined phone, email, and LinkedIn touches which were scheduled and executed using a dynamic outreach cadence.

Callbox’s own CRM platform, Pipeline, helped orchestrate the different outreach activities and kept the Client up-to-date on the campaign’s progress.

Results

At time of writing, the campaign has now completed 10 months of appointment setting activities and is gearing up for the eleventh month. Throughout that time, the whole effort has consistently hit key objectives.

On a per-channel basis, the campaign recorded mostly better-than-expected results including:

  • Phone: 37% decision maker reach rate
  • Email: 29% open rate, 5% CTR, 8% reply rate
  • LinkedIn: 42% InMail reply rates, 92 new connections

The campaign also performed very well in terms of account-based KPIs:

  • Accounts touched: 4,978
  • Average touches per account: 5.1
  • Average contacts per account: 3.3

Overall, the entire campaign has booked a total of 181 discovery meetings (sales-qualified leads) for the Client so far. That works out to around 18 qualified appointments each month, which is twice what the Client’s in-house team could produce by themselves.

According to the Client, their reps can convert 20% of discovery meetings into proposals and turn 70% of proposals into new customers. With an average annual subscription revenue of $31,000 per customer, the Client can potentially close $785,000 in new annual recurring revenue from the appointments generated in this campaign.

B2C FinTech Startup All Set to Grow Active Users for Flagship App

B2C FinTech Startup All Set to Grow Active Users for Flagship App

The Client

The Client is a pre Series A FinTech startup based in Singapore that provides a P2p remittance platform developed primarily for migrant workers in Singapore and Hong Kong. Its flagship app processes an average of $1 million in users’ money transfers to their home countries in Southeast Asia each month. The startup has so far raised $2.2 million in funding after three seed rounds.

The Challenge

With more FinTech startups joining Southeast Asia’s growing P2P remittance market, players in this space are turning to more proactive customer acquisition strategies to sustain their growth momentum.

Having secured $2.2 million in seed funding and handling more than $1 million in monthly remittance transactions, the Client seeks to expand the number of active users of its flagship app. Currently, the company’s online P2P money transfer platform caters mainly to migrant workers sending money to Southeast Asian countries such as the Philippines and Indonesia.

The company maintains an in-house database of prospects collected through its list-building initiatives and opt-in campaigns. But as the list steadily grew, the company’s sales team has only been able to convert only a small percentage of the prospects into sales opportunities.

The problem came down mainly to reps not being able to promptly follow up on enough leads, leaving a huge number of potential customers practically uncontacted. Plus, many of the prospects that got contacted turned out to be a poor fit with the company’s target customer profile.

It was clear the Client needed more manpower to handle the tasks of initially contacting and screening prospects. Accordingly, the company decided to outsource much of these activities to a third-party provider and let their reps focus on the final steps in the conversion process.

The Callbox Solution

The Client chose Callbox because of the latter’s experience in B2C financial services and its track record of implementing integrated phone and email outreach campaigns which closely matched the company’s specific requirements.

A plan was drawn up for a one-month campaign that would run each January or February to coincide with the company’s seasonal sales activity. As of writing, the project has completed two full months and is currently in its third. Each campaign involves three key steps:

Step 1: Profiling the Client’s in-house list

  • Callbox’s data research team checked and verified each record in the Client’s prospect list.
  • The list was thoroughly scrubbed, then duplicate and incomplete records were appropriately processed.
  • The first month’s list was exported into Callbox Pipeline, while the second month’s campaign exclusively used data in the Client’s own CRM.

Step 2: Pre-qualifying each contact

  • The team followed an outreach cadence that initiated contact with email touches and then engaged warm prospects through live phone conversations.
  • These interactions achieved the two-fold objective of deepening awareness of the Client’s offer and qualifying potential leads for the company’s reps.
  • The Client also gave Callbox access to its proprietary creditworthiness calculator to help the team identify which prospects qualified for their cash advance promo.

Step 3: Following up and nurturing leads

  • The campaign’s outreach cadence also included a sequence of additional email and phone touches to follow up and keep leads engaged.
  • Appointments were confirmed via phone call to ensure leads show up for their meeting with the Client’s reps.
  • The added touches also provided the Callbox team with more opportunities to gather crucial marketing intelligence about the prospects.

Results

The project has now wrapped up a total of two campaign months, with the first campaign completed in January of 2017 and the second in February last year. Based on the KPIs specified by the Client at the outset, the project has so far produced very good results: 201 booked appointments and 67 completed leads.

The Callbox team was also able to profile 2,147 records from the Client’s in-house list and maintained response rates of 31% for phone calls and 17% for emails throughout the two campaigns.

The Client continues to partner with Callbox, and the project is about to launch its third full campaign month.

Expat-Focused Financial Planning Firm Expands in Niche SG Market [CASE STUDY]

Expat-Focused Financial Planning Firm Expands in Niche SG Market

The Client

The Client is a Singapore-based financial advisory firm that specializes in tax, investment, pension, and estate planning for British expatriates living in SG.

The Challenge

The Client offers several lines of financial planning services to expats currently working and residing in Singapore. The firm’s client portfolio primarily consists of UK expatriates, which has seen a steady year-over-year growth since its inception. The Client has also received a number of industry awards and recognition as one of Singapore’s leading and most trusted financial advisory groups.

In 2016, the firm underwent administrative and operational streamlining. One area impacted by the changes was customer acquisition. The new business development strategy assigned prospecting and nurturing responsibilities into a single in-house team, which sometimes resulted in the same individual doing the tasks of researching prospects, screening contacts, booking introductory meetings, and following up on opportunities.

The client wants its business development team to concentrate on bottom-of-funnel activities, so that they can devote more time and effort to crucial points in the conversion funnel. The firm plans to delegate most activities in its current prospecting process to a reputable third-party provider.

The Callbox Solution

he Client chose Callbox after evaluating a number of options, citing Callbox’s extensive project portfolio of Singapore campaigns along with its flexibility to seamlessly integrate into the Client’s ongoing business development workflow.

Callbox then closely collaborated with the Client to develop a campaign plan that combines personalized email touches with targeted phone calls to:

  • Identify UK expatriates who fit the Client’s ideal customer profile
  • Qualify contacts based on interest
  • Collect and verify prospect data

Some key campaign activities include:

Database Profiling

  1. The Client provided its own contact list to be used in the campaign, which was then thoroughly profiled by the Callbox team.
  2. The Client’s list was cross-matched with records in Callbox’s in-house database as well as validated using external data sources.
  3. Before being deployed, the list underwent a final round of data scrubbing where inaccurate, duplicate, and missing records were fixed. The updated list was handed over to the Client at the end of the campaign..

Email Marketing

  1. The Client also provided its own outreach email template, which was then reviewed by the Callbox team.
  2. Callbox prepared the rest of the templates for the campaign, including copies for follow-ups, targeted send-outs, and triggered responses.
  3. The Callbox team also designed and tested the various landing pages used in the campaign, as well as optimized each email component.

Appointment Setting

  1. The Callbox team came up with a call script designed to achieve all three campaign objectives.
  2. Agents qualified every prospect with probing questions that identified their suitability and willingness to schedule an initial phone appointment with one of the Client’s financial advisors.
  3. The Client kept track of the campaign’s results in real-time through Pipeline, Callbox’s proprietary CRM and lead management tool.

Results

Callbox carried out the campaign until all records in the Client’s list were contacted and followed up. It took the team two months to complete the project. Most of the campaign’s initial stages were spent on email outreach. Some key results of the campaign’s email marketing activities include:

  • 98.3% delivery rate
  • 33.8% open rate
  • 13.0% click-through rate

The campaign’s 46 qualified appointments began trickling in near the end of the first month (17 appointments) and increased in the second month (29 appointments), as warm contacts during the email outreach phase started converting into qualified prospects.

While the Client hasn’t specified how much of the 46 phone appointments it expects to close as new customers, the Client says the quality of conversations with the Callbox-supplied opportunities has prompted an upward adjustment to its pipeline growth forecast.

Callbox Aced Appointment Setting for Accounting Expert [CASE STUDY]

Callbox Aced Appointment Setting for Accounting Expert

The Client

The Client bears unmatched experience in providing redefined Accounting, Bookkeeping and Self-Managed Super Funds (SMSF) to its partner clients, addressing specific pain points of modern accounting practice.

The Challenge

The accounting expert serves as an integral extension of its clients, ensuring all tasks are accurately completed. However recently, competition became fierce as competitors started to offer equally interesting services and even used enticing branding images which made the Client indistinguishable from its industry peers.

The Client decided on offering a FREE-TRIAL to target customers. Well aware that this required expertise in pursuing prospects and getting them to agree to meet with the Client’s consultants to discuss signing up for the free trial, the Client searched for an appointment setting company that best fit their needs and chose Callbox.

The Callbox Solution

Appointment Setting

Callbox ran a Customer Profiling campaign along with Appointment Setting to update the Client’s database and to build a new set of qualified prospects.

  1. An initial email copy which contained news releases about the Client’s FREE TRIAL offer were sent to target customers.
  2. Active emails from prospects who responded, clicked links and visited the Client’s company website were saved for follow-up calls.
  3. Responses also gave the Callbox team the opportunity to filter the most available prospects to touch base with via the CTA link (scheduling option) in the email copies.
  4. Bounces were filtered and saved for follow-up calls for the agents to update as they speak with the prospect.

Customer Profiling

Aside from targeting to gain a new set of clients, the Appointment Setting program aimed to exhibit a differentiated service by giving their customers a first-hand experience of the service.

  1. With the help of the Pipeline Lead Nurture Tool, the team was able to profile the contacts in the database: information like contact name, address, contact numbers and email address were updated.
  2. Initial email copies with replies were set for follow-up call – appointments were set for prospects who agreed not only to the FREE TRIAL but also for those who were merely interested to discuss about the Client’s services.
  3. To ensure that appointments were not missed, the Callbox team sent calendar invites to prospects to remind them of their appointment schedule.
  4. And with Callbox’s SMART Calling system, a hefty number of prospects was reached by the Callbox team to speak with the Client’s specialists and agreed to a FREE TRIAL.

Results

The first four weeks were the busiest days of the campaign period as the Callbox team was juggling between getting together a fitting list of contacts to profile and setting appointments with those contacts at the same time, but successfully delivered 11 solid appointments.

Between the 5th and 8th weeks, with the Callbox team effectively done with the initial calls, follow-up calls came out more productive as most of the prospects the team spoke with were already knowledgeable of the free trial and have learned of the service’s benefits from other prospects via testimonial videos linked through the follow-up emails. This phase of the campaign generated 13 more appointments for the accounting expert.

The last 4 weeks (9th to 12th) had the Callbox team equally busy but more delighted as follow-ups that were nurtured during the start of the campaign eventually converted into appointments and impressed the Client with 15 appointments at the closing.

Callbox Lends B2C Expertise to Debt Management Firm in AU wide Campaign [CASE STUDY]

Callbox Lends B2C Expertise to Debt Management Firm in AU-wide Campaign

The Client

The Client is a long-established, family-run business providing a variety of financial solutions tailored for individuals and households throughout Australia. Its main lines of services include same-day small loans, car loans, and business loans. In addition, the Client is a mortgage broker offering home loans and is also a Registered Debt Agreement Administrator helping
customers with debt relief and bankruptcy avoidance.

The Challenge

The Client is among the country’s many credit repair and debt relief companies offering Part IX Debt administration, which are services that help customers handle debt and avoid personal bankruptcy. The Client is looking to expand its share of this growing sector with its unique value proposition centered around having “the fairest fee structure in the market” as well as its reputation as an established industry player.

While there are ample opportunities to increase its customer base for debt agreement solutions, the Client also faces a number of hurdles when it comes to marketing and promoting these services.

Regulations related to the aggressive marketing of debt agreements and cases of misrepresentation by other debt relief providers have made finding potential customers even more challenging.

Accordingly, the Client decided to focus its debt agreement marketing initiatives only on individuals who have already expressed some level of interest in its other loan services and have communicated with the Client in the recent past. This ensured that the target prospects are not entirely cold while, at the same time, providing the Client with the needed information to refine the outreach effort.

Based on these initial requirements, the Client was able to come up with a list of potential customers to target with its debt agreement offer. The plan called for the Client’s in-house consultants to contact qualified prospects and find out how its solutions fit with their current financial situation.

To maximize their consultants’ productivity, the Client opted to hire the services of a third-party provider for carrying out the initial touch points and qualifying activities. The Client chose Callbox because of the latter’s experience in planning and executing Australia-wide lead generation campaigns as well as its roster of clients in the heavily-regulated financial services sector.

The Callbox Solution

The Callbox team put together a phone-based lead generation program designed for a B2C campaign. Due to the nature of the project (i.e., aimed at consumers), it was determined that the best approach would be to engage prospects solely through live conversations without integrating other channels into the mix.

The main goal of the campaign revolved around identifying prospects willing to find out more about how the Client could help them in their current financial situation. Some key activities of the lead generation campaign include:

1. The client provided the Callbox team with records tobe contacted. The list only included individuals who have interacted with the Client in the past such as through a loan application. As is standard practice in Callbox campaigns, the list was thoroughly profiled and validated before being used.

2. Campaign materials and collaterals, including call scripts, were produced in close consultation with the Client to ensure compliance.

3. Agents qualified every prospect with probing questions that identified their suitability and willingness to further engage with the Client’s debt counselors. Prospects having personal debt, net assets, and disposable income within a given range were tagged as qualified leads.

Results

The entire campaign ran for a total of nine months or 198 days (at 22 days/month) given that the Client renewed its contract with Callbox several times after the initial pilot phase. The following table shows a monthly breakdown of some key indicators throughout the campaign duration:

table

Additionally, the campaign was able to yield the following metrics in terms of activity, reach, and response:

• Reach rates of up to 55% with an average of 31%. By comparison, a reach rate of 15% is considered acceptable while 30% is quite good.
• Response rates of over 18% with an average of 11%, which is in line with phone prospecting benchmarks of 9% to 10% for this type of list.

All in all, the nine-month campaign produced a total of 505 qualified leads handed over for further engagement with the Client’s in-house consultants. By the Client’s own estimates, between 70% to 80% of the leads are expected to become customers within six months after the campaign. As such, the Client is looking to potentially generate around 354 to 404 new customers for its Part IX Debt Agreement administration services.

CS_FIN_Bridging-the-Offshoring-Gap-Genuine-Interest-and-the-Need-for-Education

Callbox ABM: Bridged the Gap Between Offshoring Expert and Target Clients

The Client

The Client is a leading media company in Hong Kong, providing news and finance information services to financial intermediaries and high net worth individuals. The services they provide include educating Chinese financial intermediaries on the effective use of tax planning and asset management through a series of summits. They work on a platform built from different media channels like online media, periodicals, and guides, to deliver the latest information and relevant topics to finance professionals.

The Challenge

The Client connects Chinese financial consultants to companies that plan to bring their business offshore via financial conferences. These businesses could either be companies from neighboring countries in Asia that would want to be educated on how to bring investments to Hong Kong, as well as Hong Kong-based companies that would like to expand in other regions.

The Client is recognized as a crowd drawer to every financial summit they launch, but the leads generated from the impressive event attendance convert very low number of follow-ups, as most of the attendees were either just curious to hear what the meeting was all about or didn’t really have a solid need for offshoring at all.

The Client thought they needed a more targeted audience who wanted to learn about offshoring, and interested to engage further. Add to that was the pressing time to expedite the project since a series of summits were already on the approving stage.

But, the Client didn’t have the right tools to carry out the tasks needed for the upcoming summits which are to profile their target attendees, gauge the need of the prospects, and uncover the genuine interest for offshoring opportunities.

The Callbox Solution

Callbox designed an ABM Lead Generation & Appointment Setting campaign which consisted of:

  • Account-Based Multi-Channel Lead Management which included Voice, Email, Chat, and Web.
  • Sales Enablement & Support that provided Team Training, Account Setup, and Back Office Sales Support.
  • Tools & Subscriptions to the Callbox Pipeline and HubSpot CRM.
  • Account Management with Strategy Building, Reporting, and Product Knowledge.

The Goals

  • The Callbox team was to do Database Profiling by scrubbing off invalids from the list to keep the contacts updated.
  • To call profiled contacts, and invite them to the Client’s upcoming series of summits.
  • Mainly, schedule face to face or online meetings with potential clients for the Client’s consultants.

The campaign involved two key steps:

 Account Research and Selection

  1. The Client specified target industries, locations, and relevant contacts.
  2. Callbox worked out the Client’s ideal customer profile (ICP) which served as a basis for identifying qualified accounts.
  3. Callbox then compiled a list of potential contacts to target, which was reviewed and approved by the Client.

Account and Prospect Profiling

  1. The Client provided target relevant contacts for the Callbox team to reach out which consisted of detailed demographic and firmographic segmentations.
  2. The buyer personas designated as the campaign’s primary targets were C-Levels, Business Development Managers, Directors, Marketing Directors, General Managers.
  3. The master contact list was segmented based on these personas, and was further grouped according to industry type.

Results

The six-month Appointment Setting campaign generated 132 Sales Qualified Leads and 146 Marketing-Qualified Leads.

CS_FIN_Callbox-Locked-Up-Leads-for-Global-Insurance-Broker-img

Callbox Locked Up Leads for Global Insurance Broker

The Client

The Client is the world’s largest privately held insurance brokerage firm, providing insurance, risk management, employee benefits and retirement services.

The Challenge

The Client has an in-house team in Hong Kong which acts as its core marketing support in APAC, and is responsible for engaging fortune companies in the region. It’s a strong resource for building a huge stack of global customers and the company’s annual growth. Despite its market strength, the Client continues to create innovative solutions to scale up the business. With a new project to launch in Asia, the Client decided to outsource to fill in the gaps in building intelligent marketing campaigns.

The Callbox Solution

Looking at the campaign objectives, Callbox planned out an Account-Based Marketing campaign which consisted of:

  • Account-Based Multi-Channel Lead Management via Voice, Email, Chat, Web, Webinar, and Social Media
  • Sales Enablement & Support which included Team Training, Account Setup, and Back Office Sales Support
  • Tools & Subscriptions utilization of Callbox Pipeline and HubSpot CRM
  • Account Management including Strategy Building, Reporting, and Product Knowledge

The Goals

  • The Callbox team was to build a well profiled database of the Client’s prospects in Singapore
  • To market the Client’s Corporate Risk and Employee Benefit insurance programs

The campaign involved two key steps:

Account Research and Selection

  1. The Client specified target industries, locations and relevant contacts
  2. Callbox worked out the Client’s ideal customer profile (ICP) which served as a basis for identifying qualified accounts
  3. Callbox then compiled a list of potential contacts to target, which was reviewed and approved by the Client

Account and Prospect Profiling

  1. The Client provided target decision makers for the Callbox team to reach, which consisted of detailed demographic and firmographic segmentations.
  2. The buyer personas designated as the campaign’s primary targets were  HR and Finance Managers.
  3. The master contact list was segmented based on these personas, and was further grouped according to industry type.

Results

Overall, the Account-Based Marketing Lead Generation and Appointment Setting campaign produced a total of 186 Sales Qualified Leads and 12,749 Profiled Contacts.

The campaign kicked off with only one agent in the first quarter. Based on the impressive performance that the Callbox team showed in the first three months, the Client added another seat in the second quarter, and renewed for another six months.

Callbox Revs Up Tax Consulting Firm's Sales Efforts [CASE STUDY]

Callbox Revs Up Tax Consulting Firm’s Sales Efforts

The Client

The Client is an independent property tax consulting firm specializing exclusively in providing taxpayers of commercial, industrial, multi-residential, and special purpose properties with full-range property assessment and tax management services.

They have a national reach with 19 offices that handle large sales territories across the United States including New York, California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Texas.

The Challenge

The Client needed a way to help all their Managing Consultants who head each regional office across the country in bulking up their sales pipeline.

The Callbox Solution

The Client approached Callbox to conduct an aggressive telemarketing campaign that would fill their calendars with qualified appointments on a daily basis. Starting with a test campaign for one location, Callbox now conducts the appointment setting campaign for 14 of the Client’s 19 locations including its head office in Arizona.

To meet the Client’s requirements, Callbox decided to assign a personal appointment setter to the Main Specialist for each location. Appointments are set based on a detailed script and strict qualifying criteria provided by the Client including:

  • Introduction of the Client to the prospect
  • Explanation of the coverage of the appointment being set on behalf of the consultant or specialist
  • Initial qualification of the prospect based on the amount currently paid in personal taxes
  • Delivery of proper rebuttals when necessary

Callbox appointment setters then e-mail the prospect companies copies of the Client’s marketing collateral and Statement of Qualifications.

Appointments are then delivered via Pipeline CRM, an online CRM tool developed by Callbox especially for clients with distributed offices and disparate territories. This enables consultants and specialists to access their up-to-date sales pipeline anytime, anywhere, maximizing their time to develop new business. Sales people can follow-up the appointments even when the Specialists are not available, making sure no leads fall through the cracks.

Results

Callbox experienced appointment setters coupled with the Callbox online appointment setting tool allowed the Client to concentrate on their core business-delivering exceptional property tax consulting services rather than cold-calling and managing each sales person.

The Client now enjoys:

  • Over 100 highly qualified appointments every month
  • Higher conversion rate as a result of improved lead quality
  • Coherent single-source feedback on the current pulse of the market in various territories