Telemarketing proves to be a powerful channel for driving new business and delivers a clearer path to market for FlixForge
FlixForge is a SaaS platform that delivers fully integrated, scalable, carrier grade OTT video solutions, enabling broadcasters and content owners to build their own OTT (Over the Top) video streaming services. This means they can take a Live TV feed and / or catch up (Video on Demand) TV series and create a streaming service, which can be viewed on any digital device, in any language, anywhere in the world.
FlixForge’s overriding objective is to ensure their clients scale their OTT video service profitably, combining deep technical innovations to save cost, with an obsessive attention to detail, optimising the user journey for maximum engagement and monetisation.
Campaign objective and project background
Historically, FlixForge had grown organically through the personal and industry contacts of its founders. Referrals had led to some significant sales providing the brand with a solid bank of case studies, strong market credibility and a proven track record. The company was now at a stage where they wanted to accelerate growth and extend their reach to exploit untapped market potential.
Whilst they had no prior experience of the channel, they felt a strategic, data-led channel such as telemarketing could help address their new business goals and decided to engage a specialist agency to conduct an appointment-setting proof of concept. Having evaluated several agencies, they appointed The Telemarketing Agency (TTMC) based on their depth and breadth of experience delivering global, technology-sector campaigns.
Project execution
TTMC was tasked to source data to match the target audience profile which was smaller (tier 2/3/4) broadcasters and single TV stations with no online video presence. The rationale was that smaller organisations were less likely to have the technical skills or budget to launch an online video service and would therefore be more receptive to FlixForge’s offer. The strategy was to focus initially on English speaking territories including the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand to prove the approach and develop a pipeline of high-quality appointments for the in-house team.
With such broad territories spanning diverse time zones, the challenge was ensuring full coverage of each of the target geographies. The campaign was assigned to TTMC’s technology-sector specialists and agents chosen who were available to provide out of hours coverage calling through the night. A briefing took place to educate the team on the proposition, target audience, the competitive landscape and to familiarise them with the characteristics of the broadcast sector.
The client segmented the audience and presented the relevant benefits and common pain points for each customer persona to enable agents to tailor the proposition on each call. The data was segmented vertically within TTMC’s calling platform to highlight which segments were getting most traction as the campaign matured. A set of qualification criteria was agreed, and quality assurance set up to ensure appointments were with the right prospects, those with a true need for the solution. It was necessary to validate prospective businesses to ensure they had the licensing rights to host and stream the content, the minimum budget required and that they were looking to purchase within a twelve-month window.
Whilst TTMC had previous experience calling this target audience, the dynamic nature of the sector and the fragmentation of channels made it challenging initially to identify and reach prospects that were the right fit. With support and coaching from the client, however, facilitated by shared call recordings and a strong feedback loop, agents moved quickly up the learning curve and became adept at navigating complexity, dealing with jargon, and understanding industry terms. Strategically targeted calls increased the reach rate for decision-maker contacts and marketing literature helped nurture prospects through the pipeline.
As a result, the campaign started to gain momentum and generate a healthy pipeline of appointments, with a good spread of results across all territories. To provide additional value and support conversion, agents were also assigned to follow up with decision makers who had not made their appointment and to reschedule at a convenient time. This was difficult for the client to manage themselves given the diverse time zones.
As calling progressed, TTMC found that decision makers were open and willing to discuss their current system capabilities, and generally understood the premise of OTT streaming services. This openness helped agents drill down into needs, uncover pain points and capture valuable customer and market insight, including sector trends. As they called, agents updated records, identified new decision-maker contacts and validated existing records, creating a cleansed, profiled data foundation to support marketing across all channels.
Results
Telemarketing has proven to be a powerful vehicle for FlixForge’s new business needs, generating 2.5 qualified appointments per week, a 18% conversion from decision-maker call, with 25% of results coming from the first call.
The client is impressed with the quality of the pipeline generated and has high expectations that it will deliver ROI once appointments have progressed to fruition. They now also have a clearer view of the market opportunity and potential routes to market. Calling has identified barriers to success and several sweet spots such as special interest, ethnic and faith networks. It has also helped FlixForge better understand how channels are structured and given them insight into the decision-making structure across networks.
TTMC’s insight-driven approach combined with detailed data and reporting analytics have given FlixForge a clearer path to market. Once the current pipeline has fully matured, the goal is to identify priority sectors based on conversion to inform a fresh approach, integrating telemarketing within the full marketing mix.