Enriched data and strategic targeting deliver high quality appointments for CtrlPrint’s sales team.
A Swedish company with offices in Stockholm and London, CtrlPrint was founded in 2001 and is now Europe’s leading collaborative service used for the production of designed corporate and financial reports created with Adobe InDesign and Adobe InCopy. CtrlPrint’s customer base includes over 650 companies, government authorities and organisations.
Based on InDesign, the CtrlPrint solution connects all stakeholders involved in designing financial reports and allows them to collaborate easily and securely whilst maintaining control. Users can edit texts and tables in a design-ready document - when they need to and always in the latest version.
Campaign objective and project background
CtrlPrint wanted to increase their market share in the UK and decided to engage a specialist agency to generate qualified online demos for their senior sales team. The priority was to target senior decision makers in specific organisations including FTSE 100, FTSE 250, AIM Trading Clients and Investment Trusts.
The Head of Direct Sales who was responsible for the selection process at CtrlPrint had previously worked at a telemarketing agency and was therefore an educated buyer with a clear view of the criteria and standards that needed to be met. A number of telemarketing agencies were evaluated in terms of their skills and experience, systems and processes and the client asked to be introduced to the Account Manager who would manage the campaign. At the end of the process The Telemarketing Company (TTMC) was appointed based on their overall fit, the quality of their credentials including IS0 27001 Information Security Management, and the skills and experience of the team.
Project execution
Pre-engagement discussions had allowed Ctrl-Print to provide insight and share techniques and key resources that would benefit the campaign. A full briefing session reinforced that knowledge and deepened TTMC’s understanding of the USPs and benefits of the proposition and the different stakeholders within each business who would benefit from the solution. One of the main benefits of CtrlPrint is its ability to support collaboration, so a critical success factor for the campaign was connecting with the right people within each organisation, primarily Company Secretaries, Heads of Investor Relations and Communications Managers. In addition, TTMC needed to understand the potential alignment of prospective CtrlPrint clients with design agencies employed to create a polished version of their reports. Clients might already be connected to an agency using competitive tools or already familiar with or using CtrlPrint. This type of intelligence would help TTMC to strategically target prospects most likely to convert and position relevant benefits accordingly.
Another success factor was the timing of calls so that businesses would be receptive to the offer; these needed to be aligned to the financial year end when annual reports were published. Too early and prospects would not yet be in buying mode, too late and there would be no pressing requirement.
CtrlPrint provided data to support calling across the different segments ranging from base data with minimal information to more complete datasets. The quality and completeness of the datasets was key in terms of targeting so a critical part of the brief was to enrich and complete each database as stage one to provide a solid foundation for calling in stage two.
Enriching existing data required TTMC to validate decision makers already in the list and confirm their contact information. Where there were gaps, they would identify and enhance the list with qualified decision makers, including their job titles, direct dial numbers and email addresses. An additional priority was to append financial year-end data and research and append records with details of design agencies used. The client was able to support TTMC with this exercise, providing market insight and highlighting sources of information so the team became increasingly intelligent in their approach. In some instances, TTMC was tasked to build new lists to support CtrlPrint’s targeting of priority accounts or create email lists to support CtrlPrint’s digital marketing efforts and the team was very flexible in handling this type of ad-hoc request.
With complete datasets in place, calling began and, particularly in the early stages, TTMC worked very closely with the client using shared call recordings and feedback to refine and improve the approach. Initially, the focus on qualification and data capture made calls less engaging but, with coaching from the client and as the team built confidence in presenting the proposition, calls were refined and delivery became very natural. A lead contact had been assigned by CtrlPrint to spearhead the campaign which enabled a very tight feedback loop to be established. Collaboration was reinforced by real-time reporting and analytics through TTMC’s online client portal, call recordings to provide transparency and support coaching, weekly reviews and daily contact between the calling team and project lead to ensure continuous incremental improvements in the approach.
Results
Using complete, up-to-date datasets with the correct profile of decision maker, enhanced with high quality insight and intelligence gleaned in stage one created a solid foundation for successful lead generation. Calls have been targeted at the right prospects and delivered at the right time and the overall approach has really benefited from the close partnership between client and agency.
Continuous refinement has ensured that the engagement has delivered high quality results and CtrlPrint’s sales team is now working through a solid pipeline of 21 appointments. Two appointments where a web demo was delivered have already converted to sale. The client has also benefited from high quality, enriched data as a valuable output of calling which will support future marketing activities across all channels.
As a result of the success of the initial campaign and the trust that has developed between the teams, TTMC has now been engaged to call existing CtrlPrint customers to highlight new ESEF (European Single Electronic Format) regulations and discuss how CtrlPrint can support these requirements.