Supplier of Software to Financial

Institutions Builds Leads With

3-D Mail Package and Telemarketing

Goal

Generate quality leads among Credit Unions for a new core processing system. The goal was for seven Credit Unions to make an inquiry or schedule a demonstration.

Target Audience

This business has access to a list of all Credit Unions in the country. From it, they created a list of 295 prospect Credit Unions that had the highest likelihood of needing their product. Size of the Credit Union and the number of members were determining factors in selecting the list. Public information as well as information obtained by their sales force in the normal course of business was used to create the final list of prospects.

In addition to the 295 Credit Unions, the company targeted 5 Credit Unions that were on their house list but were not customers yet. This product has an average 18 month sales cycle so the 3-D mailer was used to create activity on accounts that had been dormant for a certain period of time.

Campaign Architecture

3-D Mail Package. The first contact with the Credit Unions was a "Tube Mailing" that consisted of a brochure, offer sheet, letter and a screw driver inserted into a 6" white tube. All items were personalized with the Credit Union's name or the contact's name except the screw driver. All items carried the "tool" theme which described their product as a tool or a blueprint for success. The offer sheet was a gift to the recipient for a one hour webinar demonstrating the product. The gift was $100 for lunch or a donation to the Children's Miracle Network. The call to action was a toll free number and a landing page to sign up for the demo.

Telemarketing. A professional telemarketing company was chosen to call all 300 of the recipients to do the following:
• Ask if they remember the tube mailer.
• Collect more information from the recipient about their needs including what core processing system they were currently using.
• Determine if the Credit Union was shopping for another system.

The telemarketing firm had been used before by the software developer and had product knowledge.

Other Media

This software developer benefits from word of mouth among Credit Unions in this relatively small vendor pool.

Results

Nine Credit Unions (3.0%) requested immediate information about the core processing system software and eleven more (3.6%) asked to be contacted at a later date. Here is a breakdown of the nine responses for immediate information.
• 2 were from their house list (40% response)
• 7 were from the prospect list (2.4% response)
This response is 129% of goal.

The telemarketing company reported the highest "recall" rate of any previous direct mail campaign for all their customers. The 6" tubes with the screw drivers were memorable.

As of this writing, the software developer has potential for doing as much as $4.5 million in new business.

Conclusion

Using great care in selecting the prospect list was important and adding Credit Unions who had already been contacted was smart. The mailer had a long shelf life with one inquiry coming in 6 months after the mailing.

The company was so happy with the results of the campaign that they repeated it to a new list 6 months after the first mailing.