Pages

HK-Based Industrial Supplier Widens Market Lead with Callbox Help [CASE STUDY]

HK-Based Industrial Supplier Widens Market Lead with Callbox’s Help

/in /by

The Client

The Client manufactures and distributes industrial supplies such as decorative stainless steel sheets and other ornamental products used in interior fit-out projects. The company’s headquarters is located in Hong Kong, and it carries out the bulk of its manufacturing operations in Guangzhou, China.

The Challenge

Since 1988, the Client has been providing custom decorative building materials throughout Southeast Asia and Australia. Its products include colored stainless steel, decorative glass films, elevator decoration modules, and stainless steel fabrication. The company primarily sells to architects, designers, contractors, property developers, construction suppliers, and other industrial vendors in the region.

The Client says it relies on two key advantages to attract customers and set its products apart from competitors:

1. First is its broad sales and service network across the region, which enables prompt supply and delivery.

2. Second, the Client focuses on design customizability, so that products are tailor-made according to each customer’s specifications.

Before the campaign, the Client’s sales development model placed much of the prospecting and lead qualification burden on sales reps.

Sales was responsible for finding potential customers and booking introductory appointments with prospects, without much in the way of prior screening. Under this setup, the Client estimated that reps were spending less than a third of their time actually talking to prospects, which dragged down both sales productivity and the quality of the customer’s buying experience.

Accordingly, the company has been planning to reassign lead generation and appointment setting responsibilities to its marketing team, but this department is mostly staffed by creatives who are already on tight schedules churning out product materials and sales collaterals.

It was clear that the Client needed to outsource prospecting and lead qualification. But since the company was selling highly-customized products across different geographic markets, the Client wanted to partner with an agency that had both industry knowledge and regional experience.

The Callbox Solution

After a thorough selection process, the Client chose Callbox as its outsourcing partner. Callbox had an extensive project portfolio of APAC campaigns carried out on behalf of manufacturers and industrial suppliers, including campaigns that covered the Client’s target countries.

Callbox and the Client worked out a three-month appointment setting campaign with the main goal of handing off qualified leads and appointments to the Client’s sales teams based in Australia, the Philippines, and Singapore.

Appointment Setting

  1. Callbox compiled the campaign contact list based on the location, SIC codes, job titles, and annual revenues specified by the Client.
  2. The call script introduced the Client’s decorative steel sheet products, and included probing questions that determined fit and need.
  3. Contacts who agreed to a face-to-face or a phone meeting were handed off as qualified appointments. The Callbox team also identified and updated key decision makers and other prospect information.

Email Marketing

  1. The Callbox team prepared cold email templates that served as initial touch points before reaching out to prospects via phone.
  2. The campaign also used targeted send-outs to distribute other marketing materials to contacts who wanted to know more about the Client’s products.
  3. Email automation schemes were created using the Lead Nurture tool, Callbox Pipeline’s built-in drag-and-drop marketing automation platform.

Results

The campaign ran for a total of three months (or 66 business days), with the first two months focusing on prospects in Australia, the Philippines and Singapore. During the third month, the campaign widened the target areas to include Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.

Because Callbox follows a multi-touch, multi-channel appointment setting strategy, the first couple of weeks in this campaign are spent introducing the Client and warming up promising contacts through emails. Most appointments are generated after this initial phase, as shown in the monthly breakdown below (although the early outreach stage is repeated during the third month for the prospects in the additional target areas):

  • Month 1: 14 qualified appointments
  • Month 2: 22 qualified appointments
  • Month 3: 12 qualified appointments

With the Client’s reps spending more time talking to qualified prospects, the company believes it can increase its lead-to-opportunity rate to 75% and its opportunity-to-close rate to 50%. Using these benchmarks, the Client expects to potentially convert 18 of the Callbox-generated appointments into new customers this year.

Vibration Test Leader Handles Tough Competition with Callbox Help [CASE STUDY]

Vibration Test Leader Handles Tough Competition with Callbox Help

/in /by

The Client

The vibration and shock testing industry will not be as strong and reliable as it is now without this one company’s 50-year existence that continuously provides advanced vibration and shock system technologies to the market.

This leading vibration test equipment provider is composed of a team of engineers with vast exposure and professional experience who pride themselves in having been recognized as a major force in the industry and currently, globally servicing 30 countries with a broad range of vibration solutions and equipment.

The Challenge

The Client is driven by a goal to provide affordable and timely professional service thus giving them all the rights to confidently claim success for 50 long years.

However, the need to innovate and expand grew as competitors aggressed with new and different products and services that quickly mushroomed in the market. The Client, in order to not just keep up but to get ahead of the competition, carefully studied the competition and came up with strategic steps designed to address their concern:

  1. First, conduct a market survey to profile accurate contact information of the target prospect who would be the best recipient of the offer letter via email.
  2. Second, introduce and promote specific products like Conditioning Monitoring Systems and Test & Measurement/Engineering Services.

With no amount of fickleness, the Client decided to outsource their marketing efforts but was quite skeptical on who would be the right lead generation provider who could design the best solution. There were three providers on the list but the Client chose Callbox.

The Callbox Solution

Callbox tailored a Multi-Channel Marketing solution according to the Client’s requirements which started with:

Customer Profiling

With the use of the Pipeline Lead Nurture Tool, the Callbox team sent test mail to all contacts in order to test activeness. Inactive contacts were immediately replaced, scrubbing off DNE and DNCs and revalidating bounced emails, while active ones were promptly called to be profiled by updating the contact details: contact name, business address, phone numbers and emails. This list management activity was done all throughout the campaign period.

Once the target prospect is profiled and agreed to opt-in for information, the agent sends out an initial copy of the Client’s brochure which contains CTAs like query box, website link and downloadable forms and product-specific brochures.

Callbox targets a one-call-resolution at every call made, so after the target confirms receipt of the information on his email, the agent proposes an appointment for him and the Client’s consultant, otherwise the call will be disposed as a follow-up for a couple of days (or at the prospect’s preferred schedule to be followed-up).

Appointment Setting

The appointment setting part contained two (2) sets of probing questions needed to be answered by prospects in order for the Client to uncover important information that will further profile the target business as to which product or service would address their needs:

  1. Conditioning Monitoring Systems (strictly for Construction, Oil & Gas, Facility Management, Civil Engineering industries.
    • Do you have a monitoring system?
    • Are you facing problems in building maintenance?
    • If yes, what kind of problems?
    • Do you have a maintenance engineer? In-house or outsourced? If outsourced, who? Contact name if possible.
  2. Test & Measurement / Engineering Services (for all the other indus-tries, such as: aerospace, automotive, chemical, medical – pharmaceutical, marine, plastic & polymer, consumer electronics, defence, communication, energy, healthcare, manufacturing)
    • Do you have in-house R&D?
    • Do you have in-house Quality Assurance Specialists? Do they do tests?
    • What kind of tests?

Results

The campaign returned the following results:

  • 273 were Completely Profiled
  • 47 Appointments were set and received tailored proposals
  • 10 Leads were completed and currently in discussion with the Client’s consultants

The profiled contacts, appointments sets and leads completed apparently showed that the Client made the right decision to conceive and implement a much aggressive marketing strategy that resolved their business challenges and achieved the following successes: accurately profiled contact information of the target prospect who were the best recipients of the offer letters and specific products like Conditioning Monitoring Systems and Test & Measurement / Engineering Services were fully and clearly introduced and promoted to target prospects.

Now, the vibration test equipment leader isn’t only fully equipped to innovate and expand its products and services but is more than ready to overcome any challenge that may come its way.

The profiled contacts, appointments sets and leads completed apparently showed that the Client made the right decision to conceive and implement a much aggressive marketing strategy that resolved their business challenges and achieved the following successes: accurately profiled contact information of the target prospect who were the best recipients of the offer letters and specific products like Conditioning Monitoring Systems and Test & Measurement / Engineering Services were fully and clearly introduced and promoted to target prospects.

Now, the vibration test equipment leader isn’t only fully equipped to innovate and expand its products and services but is more than ready to overcome any challenge that may come its way.

Exceeding Targets and Expectations for Document Presentation Solutions [CASE STUDY]

Exceeding Targets and Expectations for Document Presentation Solutions

/in /by

The Client

The Client is a global print materials manufacturer leader and has been providing their customers with a complete range of systems and accessories for office and individual print presentation needs for more than 30 years.

The Challenge

The Client’s history narrates back to 1939 when they started as a niche printing enterprise in Georgia, USA. The business grew and progressed through a carousel of business activities around the globe for the succeeding years: asset acquisitions, manufacturing and development of new products and opening of new sites for offices and warehouses. In 2005, merger deals, sites expansion and newly manufactured printing products and solutions happened one after another, year after year. The rapid business growth apparently demanded for more tasks to be done, as well as utilization of advanced technology that would expedite operational processes in order to cater to bigger demands of the now extensive customer base. The print materials manufacturer leader came to realize that the new range of printing products and solutions now have advanced features and benefits that required holistic messaging to position to target customers, and that this new messaging would best be delivered with some marketing help from an expert lead generation provider. They were clear on the two things they needed assistance with: the management of their huge database and the setting of appointments for them.

The Callbox Solution

Database Profiling

Callbox provides holistic campaign management to its clients and that includes providing them the most accurate and well-managed database. Regardless of who owns the contact list, Callbox obliges itself to cleanse and profile the list before, during and until the campaign ends.
  • Data Cleansing – all contacts on the database are called to confirm every piece of business information
  • Deduplication – missing details are retrieved and necessary changes are applied to eliminate goneaways, duplicate entries, and contacts that fall outside the target criteria.
  • Data Verification – contact names and contact numbers are validated, as well as email addresses, postal codes, and other pertinent contact details.

Appointment Setting

Callbox’s Multi-Channel Lead Generation services did not only make it possible for the Client to manage their huge database but at the same time get their message to the right prospect at the proper time. The appointment setting campaign criteria included the following:
  • Prospect to answer only two (2) simple qualifying questions
  • Prospect should agree to receive sample products from the Client
  • Schedule a phone appointment with their global sales representatives.

Results

The Callbox team delivered an average of 5 appointments per day for two campaign periods, exceeding the Client’s target of 2 to 3 per day, and even closed deals with two large businesses. Even before the campaign, the Client expressed confidence and trust in Callbox as they employed 6 appointment setters for the initial campaign period and added 4 more upon renewal. For the Callbox team, they just did what they had to do to assist the Client: manage the database and set appointments, but for the Client, outstanding:
I didn’t get the chance while we were on the phone but I wanted to take a moment to make it clear that you and your team do an OUTSTANDING job for us and I am very happy and excited about their performance. Their sales exceed all other agents combined. Please encourage them to keep up the good work and remain motivated. I hope to visit you guys in the future.
I just wanted to touch base with you guys this morning. I want you to know that you did an excellent!! job on yesterday. (closed deal company) keep it going. KEEP PUSHING!
Management was very happy to see the way you guys stepped up production yesterday and they want it to continue as well as increase.
Excellent job on (closed deal company). Let’s keep the numbers coming!
The campaign has been running for more than three years now.
Callbox Delivers a Grand Slam for Global Printing Giant [CASE STUDY]

Callbox Delivers a Grand Slam for Global Printing Giant

/in /by

The Client

The Client is a world-renowned manufacturer of coding, printing, and laser marking products, fluids, and accessories for the product identification industry. Their company has over 325,000 units installed worldwide, serving 135 countries, and is widely considered as the leading expert in continuous inkjet (CIJ), laser marking, thermal inkjet (TIJ), thermal-transfer overprinting (TTO), case coding and labeling, and wide array printing.

Customer Profiling Campaign

Location: APAC No. of Records: 10,000

The Challenge

The Client wanted to cleanse their Asia Pacific list containing more than 10,000 contacts, most of which are obsolete and inaccurate. The campaign was to zero-in on the manufacturing industry, using Customer Profiling for basic information such as name, job title, company, address, phone, and email. This also includes segmenting the list according to each contact’s location in the Asia Pacific region. On top of the customary Customer Profiling task, the Client also instructed the Callbox team to gather additional information during their conversation with the prospects such as:
  • The number of people or machines where a product goes to a process of labeling marking or printing
  • How they code or mark on their product (e.g. expiry date, manufacturing date, batch number, barcodes)

The Callbox Solution

Callbox standards dictate a thorough and meticulous process of delivering the output to its clients. For this particular campaign, the courses of action that took place were as follows:
  1. The Client sent their contact list of more than 10,000 records over to Callbox, along with their Suppression List (do-not-call list).
  2. Callbox then submitted these records to its Research Team for them to cross-reference the list with their own database of updated contacts. This was done to eliminate duplicate entries and supply missing elements with accurate information. Callbox made sure that the list has undergone through pre-cleanup prior to the actual calling campaign to avoid wasting resources.
  3. Since the Client’s own list contained dead records, Callbox obtained additional contacts from its own database in order to produce 10,000 profiled records for the Client as agreed to industry and business size.
  4. Callbox assigned 10 expert agents for the Customer Profiling campaign.
  5. Each batch of completed profiles was forwarded to Callbox’s Email Marketing Team for re-verification, as well as lead generation using a prescribed email template. This email blast was done constantly throughout the campaign on a weekly basis.
  6. All contacts which resulted in bounced emails were sent back to the calling team for reconfirmation.
  7. The Client required Callbox to provide weekly reports to ascertain the campaign’s positive development. Callbox collects all completed profiles in a single compilation and then submits them to the Client.
  8. The Client then uploads these newly cleansed records into their database. Invalid records were returned to Callbox for re-verification, until such time that all records are checked for accuracy.

Results

The Client was pleased with the efficiency and success by which the Customer Profiling process was carried out. Callbox delivered 10,000 clean and working records within the set period, with only minimal returned data for re-verification. As a result, the Client recommended Callbox to their Global Visibility Manager, which in turn partnered with Callbox for their succeeding campaigns.

Pilot List Build Campaign

Location: India and Korea No. of Records: 700

The Challenge

Fresh from the success of the previous campaign, the Client penned a deal with Callbox for another Customer Profiling engagement. This time, the campaign was focused on cleansing prospect contact lists from India and Korea. The goal was for one full-time agent to produce 700 profiled records, each for both target locations. The target industry was still manufacturing, and data profilers were still required to ask prospects regarding the number of production lines and the manner by which they code their products. Furthermore, at the request of the Client, callers were to determine whether prospects prefer to be contacted via their mobile phones or their landlines. This data is crucial for the Client in deciding whether they need to allot more focus on contacting prospects via mobile phones, in which case would entail more cost on their end.

The Callbox Solution

The flow was pretty much the same as the original campaign, except that the Client only required one calling agent for India and another one for Korea.
  1. The Client first sent its contact list for India, after which Callbox subjected it to its standard process of pre-cleanup by means of database cross-referencing and email blasting.
  2. Two weeks after the campaign started, the Client sent its contact list for Korea.
  3. Once both lists have undergone pre-cleanup, the calling campaign commenced, with two full-time agents calling for each target location.
  4. Reports were submitted on a weekly basis, and records were revalidated until deemed accurate.

Results

Callbox sailed through the campaign with flying colors, delivering 700 clean records for both target locations within a month, despite the uniqueness of the campaign and some initial hurdles. Additionally, Callbox was able to provide useful insight to the Client in terms of the divide between contacting prospects through mobile or landline. Callbox reports showed that prospects were more comfortable in providing their landline numbers over their mobile numbers. This outcome contradicted the findings of the Client’s internal calling team which supposedly revealed that prospects preferred being reached via mobile.

Customer Profiling Campaign

Location: India No. of Records: 3,000

The Challenge

For the Client’s third partnership with Callbox, the campaign was centered in India alone, and it came with specific parameters to be strictly observed. The goal was to produce 3,000 profiled records from a 3-seater, 2-month campaign. The Client provided its approved market verticals under the manufacturing industry, as follows: aero/auto, baked goods and cereals, beverage, building materials, cosmetics/personal care, dairy and eggs, extrusion/wire and cable, packaging materials, pharma and medical, and salty snacks. The campaign was a mix of customer profiling and lead generation, with a list of roughly 3,000 contacts provided by the Client. Callers were instructed to reach out to Production Managers, Maintenance Managers, and Purchasing/Procurement Managers. In case these positions are unavailable, they were to look for Operation Managers, Facilities Managers, and Finance Managers. Data profilers were still required to ask prospects regarding the number of production lines and the manner by which they code their products.

The Callbox Solution

The approach prescribed by the Client required Callbox to basically send out marketing material to the prospects. This objective was to be accomplished in conjunction with the usual Customer Profiling task that was done in the previous campaigns.
  1. The Client sent its 3,000-contact list for India, after which Callbox subjected it to its standard process of pre-cleanup by means of database cross-referencing and email blasting.
  2. Callbox assigned 3 expert agents for the calling campaign, each of them tasked to produce 1,000 profiled contacts.
  3. The Client subjected each call to their own quality assurance standards, so Callbox was required to provide recordings for every interaction they had with the prospects.
  4. Callbox, in strict observance of various Anti-Spamming laws, requires its agents to made sure that prospects have agreed to receive any form of literature from the Client before sending them out.
  5. Prospects who have responded positively to calls were subjected to normal lead generation protocol based on their level of interest.
Callbox delivered the goods as expected, with the last few weeks spent on formatting the data according to the Client’s preferences. They were also very pleased that a lot of calls resulted in legitimate leads for their business, even though lead generation was not the main priority of the campaign. The India campaign became much more smooth-sailing because of the prior experience in penetrating the location, as well as the improvement in the communication lines. Also, Callbox’s own updated database of records helped fill in the gaps for incomplete or inaccurate contacts.

Campaign: USA

Towards the end of the campaign, the Client set up a Customer Profiling campaign that aimed to clean up around 500 test records from the US. Although this US campaign still revolved around the manufacturing industry, the Client was open to explore other verticals aside from the ones previously prescribed. The campaign was carried out simultaneously with the India campaign that was still in progress. Callbox allotted a few hours a day for its agents to call US contacts. The campaign successfully ended after 5 days, with Callbox delivering 500 profiled contacts as agreed.

Results

After three successful customer profiling campaigns, Callbox was able to clean the Client’s contact lists, making them more updated and targeted without any obsolete or duplicate entries. This resulted in a shortened sales cycle on the Client’s part, which is expected to make a direct impact on their bottom line. The campaigns also gave them significant money-saving insight into their communication strategy as they were able to establish their prospects’ inclination to being reached via landlines, discarding the need for a costlier alternative in mobile phones. Throughout the customer profiling run, Callbox was also able to generate several warm leads for the Client’s sales team. At the very least, the callers were able to establish an acquaintance with the prospects, especially those with new job titles and are unfamiliar with the Client’s company. The Client has retained Callbox’s services for their current campaigns which involve not only Customer Profiling but other services as well. They were very pleased with how Callbox was able to deliver time after time, and they definitely see Callbox as a partner in more projects down the road.
Callbox Telephone Survey Primes the Pump for Market Expansion [CASE STUDY]

Callbox Telephone Survey “Primes the Pump” for Market Expansion

/2 Comments/in /by

The Client

The Client is the Asia-Pacific unit of a Denmark-based pump manufacturing and mechanical engineering firm. The company produces and markets various types of pumps for buildings, industrial facilities, OEMs, water supply, and other uses. The Client currently operates in 55 countries with a total workforce of more than 19,000 employees and annual revenues of around $3.9 billion.

The Challenge

As part of the company’s planned expansion push into a number of Asia-Pacific markets, the Client commissioned a detailed market study designed to assess three key areas of risk and opportunity:

  • The target market size, growth drivers, revenue potential, and possible expansion hurdles
  • The Client’s competitive position in each of the target markets
  • Market characteristics and potential expansion strategies

The study’s data collection plan included conducting a phone survey of 1,500 respondents from 11 Asia-Pacific countries to be completed within a 25-day period. Given the limited size of its in-house market research team and the tight timetable involved, the Client decided to contract a third party to handle the phone survey.

The Client chose Callbox after a thorough screening process, citing Callbox’s track record developing and managing campaigns with very tight schedules, as well as Callbox’s experience reaching out to contacts in many of the Client’s target geographical areas.

The Callbox Solution

To gauge Callbox’s capabilities, the Client wanted to start the project with a pilot survey of 50 respondents. The initial results met the Client’s expectations, and the company gave the go-ahead for Callbox to carry out full-scale surveys in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, and seven other APAC countries.

The Client required Callbox to use the Confirmit CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing) system for this survey. Since Callbox had extensive experience with CATI systems, the team was able to go live with the calls after just two days of training.

Callbox polled the target contacts’ perception of the Client’s products to help the company better assess its market position. Customers of the Client’s direct competitors were also asked for their feedback about their current suppliers, which gave the Client’s market research team the data they needed to determine the company’s competitive position.

Results

Callbox wrapped up the campaign within the specified completion time, polling a total of 1,625 valid respondents.

This exceeded the project’s requirements by a significant margin, and the Client was quite satisfied with the results that the company also hired Callbox to carry out phone surveys for their EMEA market positioning study.

During the campaign’s first few days, Callbox relied on the Client’s contact list, but with reach rates only hovering around 20%, it was decided to use a list compiled by the Callbox team. The Callbox-supplied list helped the campaign lift reach rates to 60%.