Reaching out to your prospects multiple times, using a variety of media (calls, emails, etc.), across more than one sales cycle really does make a difference in your outbound lead generation results.

Many database marketers expect to increase results up to 8X when following up a direct mail or email campaign with a telephone call. They view it, rightly, as a simple way to increase a campaign’s ROI.

But stopping after a single touch is stopping too soon. You’re leaving anywhere from half to substantially more business on the table for your competitors to grab if you aren’t reaching out multiple times—in different ways, using various types of media, and across several sales cycles.

A series of touches, consisting of quality outbound calls, voicemail messages and email over a period of time is the most effective way to reach and convert your market to revenue. The number of touches, combination of touch types and number of cycles necessary to optimize contact against any given market might surprise you.

For years, my teams have been tracking the number, frequency and type of touches necessary to adequately cover clients’ markets. Based on this data, we’ve determined that unless you are reaching out to contacts within your target market with at least 10 to 12 individual touches including a minimum of three email messages you’re not generating the results you could.

But you shouldn’t stop there. Our data also shows that the initial contact cycle; the first time you touch the market with those 10 to 12 individual touches, will yield only 40% to 50% of the total opportunities. The other opportunities existing within the market can only be identified by continuing to touch the same prospects, with the same multi-media, multi-touch strategy on a regular basis.

Recognizing the point of diminishing return

You should expect lead rates from the second and subsequent touch cycles to generate anywhere from 120% to 210% of the initial lead rate. Our data across all market segments shows that lead rates decline after the fifth contact cycle.

At that point, a prospect has received an average of 40 to 48 different touches over a period of three to 65 months (it depends on the market and offer – email me if you want to discuss your specific situation). The most effective way to cover prospects after the fifth touch cycle is via periodic email and/or direct mail – leaving the door open for the prospect to make contact with you when they’re ready.

Qualified leads take longer to generate in larger companies

As would be expected, reaching senior-level decision makers within very large companies requires more individual attempts (quality outbound calls, voicemails, emails and direct mail). Our benchmarked data shows that it takes about 1.6 times the touches to generate a lead in a large company as compared to a mid-market or smaller company.

Be prepared to respond

As basic as it seems, you need to be prepared to field responses from your multi-media, multi-touch, multi-cycle campaigns quickly, as failing to appropriately handle inbound calls and/or email responses substantially reduces the rate of conversion to a qualified sales opportunity.

Contacts responding to a voicemail or email comprise over 50% of all the leads generated for PX clients. Somewhat surprising, though, is that the most frequent responders to voicemails or emails are senior level decision makers. In fact, nearly 2.5 times more leads are generated from a multi-media, multi-touch, multi-cycle approach against senior-level decision makers in large companies as compared to lower level line of business decision makers in larger companies or all levels of decision making at mid-market companies.

Reaching your market

The overriding indicator of the appropriate number of touches and the blend of media (calls, voicemail, email, direct mail) is company size and the level of the decision maker. Other factors such as a cold versus a warm market segment, brand awareness and industry or solution maturity do not impact attempt types or cycles.

“One and done” does not work

Using the “one and done” approach, common in database marketing campaigns, historically generates just one out of a potential three opportunities that are possible with multi-media, multi-touch strategy, multiple cycle campaigns against the same market.

Summary

While there is a lot of attention on marketing automation, scoring algorithms and electronic marketing today, there’s still not enough focus on building highly qualified databases and measuring ROI based on the cumulative impact of multi-media, multi-touch and multi-cycle campaigns. Almost 30 years ago, direct marketers knew that the success of any given campaign broke down as follows: 60% list, 20% creative and 20% offer. The more things have changed the more things stay the same.