How Going the Extra Mile for Refinitiv Allowed us to Generate Appointments With Companies Having 5,000+ Employees
Summary:
Refinitiv offers innovative experiences to businesses and banks alike. However, to reach its target audience, the client required a strong ICP, focused targeting, and cold outreach. In order to achieve this goal, so they reached out to us.
Main takeaways
When in doubt, ask for help. Working with a reliable acquisition partner allows you to outline your priorities, get valuable research data, explore your target markets with scrutiny, and let your in-house sales team pick the most effective outbound strategy.
Problems
After starting to promote Refinitiv platform to the target audience, the client came across the following issues:
- Complicated lead research. Fintech has always been a rather complicated industry. When it came to finding prospects willing to engage in open banking and explore new digital opportunities, the client required directions and platforms to obtain valuable public data. Doing that research without assistance looked like a time-consuming task.
- Lack of experience with cold outreach. The client had a good online presence, creating Refinitiv accounts in Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. However, writing cold emails was something Refinitiv has never dealt with before. Therefore, the client needed an experienced team familiar with writing emails and building campaigns.
- Missing out on big corporations.
While having large companies as customers would greatly benefit Refinitiv, the client needed assistance with crafting a compelling message and finding the right titles. In order not to miss an opportunity to enrich the lead database, Refinitiv needed to find and explore new ways of connecting with the right professionals at the right moment.
What we did
1. Going the extra mile
Knowing the key pain points the client was dealing with, we started addressing them step by step. First things first, we needed to introduce Refinitiv to big companies. However, the issue with innovative digital products/services is that they’re hard to explain in a single sentence. Our goal was to connect with people who would understand the multitude of peculiarities and special features of the Refinitiv's product and then communicate them to a decision-making group. To accomplish this, we had to take the following steps.
- Research the client’s product.
Exploring the client’s product or service's purpose and specifics is a natural stage of any project we’re working on. Our sales team reached out to the experts of Refinitiv and requested all marketing materials available in order to understand what they were going to sell and how they were going to do it. We researched the entire range, from presentations to previous sales pitches in order to learn more about the brand voice and how potential buyers perceive it. - Granular research.
After exploring the product, we started our lead research. Since there weren’t many businesses that checked all the boxes, we used a granular approach, digging into multiple databases and gleaning the most relevant companies. We kept in touch with the client, regularly addressing the base and doing double qualification with both our and client’s SDRs.
2. Picking up the speed
- Asking for referrals.
To make sure that our project is dynamic, we used referral templates for more precision and asked potential decision-makers directly whether they were qualified to discuss the product of Refinitiv. In case we were reaching out to the wrong person, we asked for directions. - Template crafting.
After building a solid list of leads, we worked on developing a captivating message. The purpose of our email campaign was to both introduce the client’s prospects to the concept of open banking (in case they haven’t explored it before) and outline its benefits. We also made sure to provide facts and numbers, explaining why PISPs are no longer a novelty, but a solid way of making safe transactions. - Building an outbound channel.
After making templates, we launched our campaigns and started nurturing prospects so that they booked a call with the SDRs of Refinitiv. After receiving a positive response from a prospect, we booked a time slot and handed the prospect over to the client’s sales representative together with all the templates and materials we used.
Result
- Research the client’s product.
- In total, we booked over 50 appointments for Refinitiv, bringing new opportunities from the world and expanding the client’s network. Among the prospects we delivered, there were large businesses eager to explore open banking with the client’s assistance.
- The client received some detailed insights about their target markets, needs, and the perception of Refinitiv. Such feedback would be unattainable without building a genuine and comfortable relationship with prospective clients.
Key takeaways
- Know the product, know the buyer.
If you know your product, you know how to present it. Take some time to look at your products and services from different angles. Know that one industry prioritizes the benefits that aren’t relevant to another industry. - Be ready to explain things.
The more novelty your service offers, the more complicated your lead research and targeting will be. Your audience is yet to learn about the new benefits and opportunities, and you have to guide them through their buyer’s journey. - Team up with experts.
In case you’re new to cold outreach and building outbound channels, find a partner who will help you conduct market research, test different outbound strategies, enrich your sales with increased value, and provide your company with a great reputation in the industry.
1) The Calm
The first two months didn’t deliver tangible results.
End of October
Nevertheless, we expected this outcome.
Why is it normal?
- The US web development and SEO market is a highly competitive industry. US-based companies are the biggest players in the global market, so carving a place in the B2B niche in that region takes a lot more time and effort than anywhere else. It’s worth noting that in spite of receiving a few results, the client’s Sender Score remained unchanged. It’s important because most of the target US recipients tend to get email fatigue and send generic-looking messages straight to spam without reading them.
- The more campaigns, the longer it takes for them to take effect. You have to monitor each email sequence and calculate pauses between sending emails. Given that we have created new inboxes on the client’s domain, we needed to send and increase the number of emails before sending a full blast of emails.
2) The Surge
The calm of the trial period gradually evolved into a surge of activity from the target recipients.
Start of December
Middle of December
End of December
Our testing allowed us to pick out the best performing campaigns (the ones with the highest Open Rate, CTR, and other qualifiers) for each industry and develop them so they would appeal to the client’s target audience;
In general, we were able to deliver from 2 to 3 appointments per week, which is a good result for the client’s industry; Ultimately, we delivered three customers to the client, allowing the client to increase monthly revenue. It was an impressive result for any B2B software development vendor who sells to customers in the United States and a 200% return on the client’s investments.
Takeaways
- Referral marketing is a good way to generate new prospective customers. However, if you want to explore a new direction for your business, you should actively employ outbound tactics.
- Always do in-depth research of the market you want to sell to. You should know your potential competitors, the business risk, and whether the new audience is different from an existing one.
- Don’t worry if you don’t see tangible results after the first two months of your outreach campaign. It takes time and testing before outreach campaigns start delivering responses and engaging prospects.
- Choose quality over quantity. It’s better to convert 3 or 4 leads into loyal customers that are ready for long-term cooperation than to engage 2,000 of irrelevant leads that would leak through a sales funnel.
