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Telemark Sees $40k in sales from $400 Campaign

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Telemark Sees $40,000+ from <$400 Webinar / Email Investment

Key Points Covered

Email is seeing a resurgence as a marketing tactic in a down economy.  Why? Proven, trackable results, excellent ROI, low initial cost and rapid turn around as compared to alternatives. 

Here are the key success factors noted in this case: 

• This high quality Opt-in/ full contact list of 18,000 contacts generated an 8% signup rate.  More common ranges are 1-2%.  Explains how list was developed.
• Approach/Message: “In a down economy more than ever, Educate, don’t sell”.  Customers and prospects appreciate you more in the long term.  Specifically for us – educate the channel on product specifics and how to identify customer prospects.  Avoid marketing ‘messaging’.
• Length: Keep it Short and Sweet – 30 minute Webinar with time for questions.
• Use Multi-channel marketing, leaning heavily on Email, to promote high value, educational assets (like a webinar) for excellent results.

Summary – Quick Facts:

 Program Cost:

• $120 (webinar hosting) + $200 (est) Email
• 20 hours creating content (estimate $1,500)

Results:

• +40% increase in website traffic during promotional period
• At least $39,000 in identified revenues over the first 90 days.  Additional orders still coming in

Vendors Used:

• Goldmine w/Tapi link (for FAX sending)
• Citrix GoToMeeting/ GoToWebinar 

Telemark Company Background

Telemark is the leading provider of Custom Printed ATM Receipts, POS Rolls and retail receipt rolls.  Our industry is rapidly changing, as most of our customers are moving to software/paperless operation systems.  For a printing company that sells through distribution, this can be quite troubling! 

The Marketing Challenge

We need to get solid marketing data, in the form of Webinar Training Sessions, to our Distributors ASAP.  We also needed a program that we could complete on a limited budget and is repeatable, so we can continue to educate our channel partners and resellers over time.

The Successful Campaign

We chose to put together a free educational Webinar to offer our channel prospects all the pertinent information, as it relates to identifying potential users, specific industries, buying signals, competitive information, and creation of new points of contact, within the end-users hierarchy.

Our goal was to educate our distributors, with a highly valuable, 30 minute webinar.  Our goal was not to “RAH, RAH” our company or to push our ‘marketing message’.  Instead we presented real life cases, where traditional business forms have evolved, and eventually disappeared.  We wanted to get our distributors in a “Pro-Active” mindset instead of a reactive mindset.

List Composition
We used an internal e-mail list that was filtered, by type of distributor, size, sales, and current products purchased, to select those distributors that potentially could offer the highest response rates, as well as understanding this new emerging technology.
Our target contacts are Printing Brokers.  We have approx 18,000 total contacts in our email list.  We have about 2,700 current customer companies.  Some of our contacts have been flagged as “DO NOT EMAIL,” per their request.  The total contact list includes Sales, CSR, Accounting, and Management Contacts for each location.  Some of our customers have 30+ locations, and other have 1 single location, so our list includes large corporations down to small LLC’s. 

How did you Grow your List?
We grew our list organically over the past 3 years through our various field programs, including Tradeshows, Web-site Requests, Referrals, Association Lists, or Company sales rosters.  Our sales team contacted each person via phone or e-mail to verify interest in our product offering and to verify that they are brokers, not end users.  We do, on occasion, receive requests from people to be removed from mailings.  If that occurs, we personally contact them, to discuss the motive of the e-mail, as well as the contact history they had with us. 

Target Audience
We chose distributors based on past orders placed, by product, types of industries served, size, and current sales volume.  This allowed us to focus on people that we felt would benefit from our 30-minute Webinar. 

Biggest Challenges / Resistance

The biggest challenge was the development of the Webinar training tool.  Finding pertinent marketing data, in a relatively non-standardized industry, was a real challenge.  We were confident that our internal CRM system would allow us to reach distributors, fairly easily. 

Results

We averaged 8% response rate to the e-mail marketing campaign for this Educational Offering.  Of the 8% of respondents that signed up for a specific time to view the webinar (these were only offered in groups of 10 people or less) approximately 60% actually attended at the scheduled time.  Of those that did not make the scheduled meeting, we were able to re-present to about 1/2 of those that did not show.  Of the original 8% that signed up for the webinar, the actual number of attendees was diluted to 6%, who actually participated in the training.  Our Web Traffic also took a 40% jump over the 30 day period, from sending the original invitation to attend our Webinar. 

Costs Associated with Campaign

As far as ROI goes, our expense outlay was extremely inexpensive.  We spent $40.00 for 3 months for the webinar service.  Creation of the Webinar was logged close to 20 hours of Management time.  This included the research and development of the presentation.  

Measurable Results
All responses were logged into our SFA system.  We had one individual focused on scheduling, and reminder notifications of scheduled webinars.  Many of the responses and scheduling were performed via e-mail only. We sell to Distributors, who sell to end-users, so our selling cycle is often delayed by up to 45 days.  We also average about 27 days from quoting a project to actually receiving a purchase order for the product.

Based on new orders placed, within the company were up by 10 new orders per month, at an average order size of $1300.00 for a total of $39,000 directly attributed to this campaign so far. This has remained true for 3 months, since launching the training sessions.  Website traffic was up 40% during the period we were actively promoting the event. 

Product / Vendors used

For our SFA system we use Goldmine Corporate Edition 7.0.  Four years ago, we were operating in a 100% manual environment, with regards to handling daily functions, such as Incoming Call, Outgoing Calls, Quoting, Quote Follow-Ups, E-mailing or Faxing to/from customers, as well as sending and following up on samples.  We essentially did not have a traditional “Pipeline” to forecast sales from day-to-day or month-to-month. 

We successfully completed a full transition to the CRM in under 30 days, and now treat it as a living, breathing organism.  Our level of reliance on Goldmine is almost mind-blowing.  We also extract information such as Customer numbers, year-to-date sales, previous year-to-date sales, and credit status, which shows on the home page of every customer.  

We used Citrix GoToWebinar / GoToMeeting for webinar hosting tool. 

In addition, we now also use Tapi Link for Goldmine Version 3.5.1.650, to accept and send all fax communications from directly within Goldmine. 

Telemark Company Information

Telemark is the leading provider of Custom Printed ATM Receipts, POS Rolls, Parking Tickets, Note/Scratch Pads, Mobile Printer Rolls, and Kiosk Rolls. We sell 100% through re-sellers.   TDG brings over 34 years of manufacturing experience to the printing markets. We are the largest after-market manufacturer of custom banking related rolls in the United States. Honesty, Quality, and Service have been and always will be our motto!

Brandon Kent
Vice President, Sales and Marketing
TDG – Telemark Corporation
www.Telemarkcorp.com 

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