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Keeping In Touch with Your House List

Your technology services firm is sitting on a gold mine of information that properly accessed can grow your business. It's your customer or house lists. How to market those you already have on your house list?

Most businesses downright neglect house names, are you? These include unconverted leads, past customers, inquirers from past campaigns, compiled name from specialty lists, and names from sales prospecting.

By sending clearly written marketing communications on regular intervals you'll reconnect with buyers, identify new opportunity, and keep revenue growing. Unfortunately you may have thousands of names, many more than you can contact in one sitting.

Here's a way to select a targeted group from your house list to market in segments. This is useful for testing marketing campaigns, controlling costs, or managing back end follow up volume.

1. Big List Select. Of all the people in your CRM system, which ones in general need contacting or to receive your campaign. This depends on the purpose of your contact, the key is to throw a wide net here, then narrow your list down through the following steps.
2. Mark by Permission. Be sure to only contact those individuals to whom you have permission to contact in that medium. This will depend on the type of campaign you are running, postal mail is less restrictive and this is required for mediums with do-not-call (phone, fax, e-mail) requirements. Only choose those to which you are allowed to contact.
3. Mark by Target Select. Are you contacting just your local audience, or only to California, here you are narrowing your focus. Use geographic, demographic, or other criteria to select those most likely to respond to your campaign.
4. Omit any Specific Records. This time mark to omit any records who should NOT receive this campaign. This may include those who have already been contacted, those who are unqualified, people who have already bought, or any other criteria you have. This unmarked individuals will not be included in your final sample.
5. Choose from Random Sample. I use a separate tool to extract a random sample of however many pieces I'll be sending. These individuals will get my message (by e-mail, mail, fax, or phone) then are flagged with a note (to prevent sending a duplicate of the same marketing piece.)

In most systems this will take between 10 to 15 minutes once a week, some systems can do this based on filters (so you just select the right filter.) These simple steps help you narrow down your list, focusing on a single segment as you work through your overall list.

Did you know the average technology services firm only contacts 45 to 70% of their list each year? This is how you dominate your market by staying in front of buyers, automating these touch points for consistent follow up.

As a sales person narrow down your call lists saves you time, helps you focus. As a marketer smaller list selects let you trickle out campaigns as budget permits. You can start small and build up after campaigns test.

If you are using groups properly in your CRM system you'll be able to repeat your campaign with a new segment who has not previously received your message. Because CRM systems differ on how to do this, I'll give just an overview.

Mining your customer or prospect lists ...

After each mailing if you flag records as "sent", either through a history item or regrouping those who were sent the marketing campaign, then you can omit those individuals from your next segment. When you can step through a list like this, you can easily manage marketing costs while testing.

This means as a marketer you may send 150 of campaign A, and 250 of your control B each week. Recording response, adjusting for changes in response behavior. Once you reach statistically accurate numbers (perhaps over 10 weeks) you'll adjust your campaigns bringing in new tests.

It doesn't matter what medium these campaigns go over email, by mail, fax with permission, or carrier pigeon. As long as you are testing and repeating what works. I'll cover more on how to test elsewhere.

What if you are an individual sales person ...

Let's face it (even if your manager won't) you can only contact so many people in a day. Cold calling I can do 37 an hour with a qualification script and an auto dialer, for some products appointment setters can only reach 15 or so. This means if you want to extend your reach you either need more time, or to add something in another channel.

As an individual sales person this method helps you each week in appointment setting. Instead of just doing a handful of calls, with proper segmentation you can mail 50 letters, send 50 e-mails, and make 50 phone calls without touching the same person twice.

Your productivity significantly increases. You now have 150 unique contacts a DAY, rather than haphazardly working through your list. The good news is that all of this can be automated, and with the right market to message match you can bank on the results.

Never again worry about calling the same person twice AND cover more ground by delegating some of the follow up. Properly choosing the right names from your house list will extend your marketing reach while keeping costs under control.

Business school and well meaning managers have made this all too confusing, I want to clear it all up for you. If you like, use one of your consultation certificate for individual support. Because every CRM system is a little different you may not have the tools you need readily available, but there are in there.

Even if you don't have CRM, you can still use this method to sample your house lists without overlap. Back in the day it was done with index cards and a tickler file, you have no excuse for not using some kind of system. No technology required.

It doesn't matter what CRM system you use, the fundamentals of database marketing work to connect with prospective buyers. Use this method to cultivate relationships with buyer focused materials that set appointments, generate leads for specific products, or get customers returning to you.

And all this fits right on your desktop.

© 2009 JWH Consolidated LLC, All rights reserved.

Justin Hitt helps technology sales professionals be more time effective while turning business relationships into profits guaranteed. For your individual consultation for better business-to-business selling results, visit https://www.justinhitt.com/

By Justin Hitt at April 22, 2009 9:39 AM  Subscribe in a reader