Expat-Focused Financial Planning Firm Expands in Niche SG Market

June 29, 2018/in /by admin

CASE STUDY

Expat-Focused Financial Planning Firm Expands in Niche SG Market

THE CLIENT

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

TARGET INDUSTRIES
Consumers

TARGET PROSPECTS
UK Expatriates

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.

HIGHLIGHTS

RESULTS WITHIN EIGHT WEEKS

• Completed a highly successful campaign for an SG financial advisory group targeting a niche market
• Enhanced quality of sales conversations by enabling the Client’s in-house team to concentrate on bottom-of-funnel engagement
• Accelerated the Client’s conversion cycle through a combination of personalized emails and targeted calls

THE CALLBOX SOLUTION

The 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:

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.

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Callbox Aced Appointment Setting for Accounting Expert

July 28, 2017/0 Comments/in /by admin

CASE STUDY

Callbox Aced Appointment Setting for Accounting Expert

THE CLIENT

ABOUT
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.

TARGET DECISION MAKERS
• Owners
• Managing Directors

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.

HIGHLIGHTS

RESULTS WITHIN TWELVE WEEKS

• Validated and updated contact details via Customer Profiling campaign.
• Filtered active contacts and identified the most appointment-ready key-decision makers and those who were interested to discuss, via the Pipeline Lead Nurture Tool
• Reached and spoke with prospects at their most convenient time via Callbox’s SMART Calling system

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 AND RETURN ON INVESTMENTS

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.

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

July 3, 2017/0 Comments/in /by admin

CASE STUDY

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

THE CLIENT

ABOUT
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.

TARGET DECISION MAKERS
• Home Owners

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.

HIGHLIGHTS

RESULTS WITHIN TWELVE WEEKS

• Carried out a successful targeted B2C campaign in a heavily-regulated industry
• Hit campaign targets consistently throughout the entire nine-month duration
• Outperformed B2C benchmarks in terms of reach and response rates

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 dministration services.

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Bridging the Offshoring Gap: Genuine Interest and the Need for Education

July 1, 2016/in /by admin

CASE STUDY

Bridging the Offshoring Gap: Genuine
Interest and the Need for Education

THE CLIENT

ABOUT

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 series of summit. They work on a platform that was built from different media channels like online media, periodicals and guides to deliver the latest information and relevant topics to finance professionals.

CAMPAIGN TYPE
Appointment Setting

TARGET LOCATION
Hong Kong, Singapore

TARGET INDUSTRY
Corporate services, Trust Companies, Private Bank and Wealth Management

TARGET PROSPECT
C-Levels, Business Development Managers, Directors, Marketing Directors, General Managers

THE CHALLENGE

Basically, the Client’s job is to bridge a connection between Chinese financial consultants and companies planning to bring their businesses offshore via financial conferences. These businesses could either be companies from neighboring countries in Asia like Singapore that would want to be educated on how to bring investments to Hong Kong, or Hong Kong-based companies that would like to expand their businesses to other regions.

The Client prides itself in being recognized as the leading media company in Hong Kong that is able to get every financial summit they launch jampacked with attendees. The leads generated from such impressive attendance numbers, however, are a different story. Since its inception in 2010, the Client’s events have had subpar lead turnout at only 10-20% warm follow-ups and those interested to discuss further out of the total number of attendees. Others were just curious to hear what the meeting was all about and didn’t really have the need for offshoring.

At that point, the Client realized that they needed a more targeted audience who have the need for education on offshoring and equally interested to engage further with their services. There was added pressure to expedite the project since a series of summits were already on the approving stage and were ready to take off anytime once scheduled were finalized.

The challenge was, the Client didn’t have the proper tools and processes to use to address their need – to profile their target attendees and gauge the need to be educated, and uncover the genuine interest for offshoring opportunities.

THE CALLBOX SOLUTION

Callbox designed a multi-channel marketing campaign with the help of the Callbox Pipeline Lead Nurture Tool that fully addressed the Client’s needs. The following activities were simultaneously ran throughout the campaign duration – exerted with best effort by both Callbox and the Client.

Callbox’s filtered database together with the Client’s existing one were profiled by the team. Aside from updating the contact details like name, business address, phone numbers and emails, the lists were well-managed by scrubbing off DNs and revalidating bounced emails off from both lists.

Appointment-Setting

The appointment setting campaign was rigidly rolled out as it was the main component of the whole multi-channel marketing campaign. A number of probing questions were included in the call script and required to be fully answered by prospects in order for the agent to be able to uncover important information that will qualify the call as a lead. The said questions were to gauge the prospect of the following:

If the business has plans of expanding to other regions
If the company is interested in investing in or acquiring another line of business
If the organization has in depth knowledge of the business rules and processes of the region which they target to set up the business in

Also, to enhance customer experience, the agent walked the prospects through the Client’s website to assist them with any concern like queries about the services, browsing through the summit schedules or signing up for the upcoming events.

Reporting

Both the Callbox team and the Client regularly convened to discuss the successes and challenges encountered in the campaign. This was the venue where specific action plans were laid down to be understood by everyone in the team and carefully structured to address challenges and even avoid repetition of the course. Aside from the regular meetings, Callbox utilized the integrated features of the Callbox Pipeline, particularly its Lead Nurture Tool to send real time updates to the Client such as appointment schedules and confirmation emails.

RESULTS

The multi-channel marketing campaign concluded with stellar results.The Callbox team delivered 19 confirmed appointments which scored 30% turnout from the total number of attendees. These were prospects who were profiled and identified to have both the interest on offshoring and the need to be educated . In addition to the the appointments, 38 warm follow-ups were prospects for confirmation of attendance whether they or their representatives will attend and there were 48 who requested for more information – these were prospects who, with thorough probing, were identified to have the need for education and interested in offshoring opportunities but decisions were held pending due to some matters for further discussion.

The leading media company was perfectly happy with the campaign turnout. With Callbox’s multi-channel marketing campaign, the Client’s list of customers were properly profiled and filtered according to need and interest in the Client’s services. The summit that included the 19 confirmed attendees produced a number of leads that were converted into current customers and are successful investors in their chosen region.

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Callbox Locks Up the Leads for Giant Insurance Broker

January 22, 2015/0 Comments/in /by admin

CASE STUDY

Callbox Locks Up the Leads for Giant
Insurance Broker

THE CLIENT

ABOUT

The Client, based in Singapore, is the largest privately-managed insurance broker in the world with offices in Hong Kong, Beijing, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and South Korea.

THE CHALLENGE

The Client has an in-house team in Hong Kong which supports its marketing activities in Asia, seeking decision makers of S$20M companies. In order to increase the volume and value of sales, the Client needed to build an intelligent prospecting campaign focused on sales-ready prospects. Since it lacked commercially available data to support this activity, the Client partnered with Callbox to segment its market and create a database of targeted prospects. However, after speaking with a Callbox sales rep, the Client was impressed with the company’s telemarketing capability so it signed up for a three-month Appointment Setting and Database Profiling campaigns.

The objective of this campaign was two-fold:

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 CALLBOX SOLUTION

Callbox set up a telemarketing team for a two-phase campaign: Database Profiling and Appointment Setting. The Client personally selected and trained the agents assigned to the calling campaign and the target decision makers were identified: HR and Finance Managers. Callbox telephoned contacts in the Client’s database to identify companies in Singapore whose indemnity insurance was up for renewal.

Callbox then embarked on an outbound telemarketing campaign to arrange office meetings between qualified prospects and the Client’s outside sales reps. Appointments were qualified based on the Client’s criteria:

For Employee Benefit Insurance: prospects must have between 20 and 50 full-time employees.
For Corporate Risk Insurance: prospect companies must have a minimum annual revenue of S$20 million.

As the campaign progressed, the Client narrowed down the lead qualification criteria in order to capture larger prospects with near-term requirements. The target size for Corporate Benefit was changed from 50 to 100 full-time employees and for Corporate Risk Insurance, from S$20 million to S$50 million companies. The Client also required that proximity of renewal dates should not be longer than three months from the time of call. Prospects whose renewal dates were longer than three months were profiled and entered into the Client’s database for tracking and future follow-ups.

One challenge encountered during this campaign was frequent cancellation of meetings because the Client did not have enough sales reps to accommodate the growing number of new appointments. To remedy the situation, Callbox prepared weekly schedules of appointments for the Client to review and approve. The Client worked closely with Callbox to provide feedback and updates.

RESULTS

One month into the campaign, Callbox delivered a total of 19 qualified leads and 897 profiled records with one Callbox agent achieving a contact rate of 30%. Surprised with so many leads after just one month, the Client decided to hire two more agents but to restrict the lead qualification even further, going after only the most promising prospects. This generated a total of 26 highly qualified leads and 1,698 profiled records.

Pleased with these results, the Client renewed its contract and expanded its campaign to five seats for six months. By the end of the third month, Callbox was able to profile 12,749 records and deliver 186 highly qualified sales leads. The campaign is currently in progress and the Client plans to use Callbox’s services for other long-term projects.

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Callbox Revs Up Tax Consulting Firm’s Sales Efforts

January 22, 2015/0 Comments/in /by admin

CASE STUDY

Callbox Revs Up Tax Consulting Firm’s Sales Efforts

THE CLIENT

ABOUT
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 in November of 2005, 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 decision maker
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 PipelineCRM, 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.

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