Multi-touch, Multi-media, Multi-cycle Marketing, Multiplies Results

Intuitively, most marketers would agree that a series of touches, consisting of quality outbound calls, emails, voicemail messages and direct mail 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, through our sales lead management programs for clients including Ingenix, D&B, CenterBeam and Microsoft, we have been tracking the number, frequency and type of touches necessary to adequately cover its clients’ markets. Based on this data, we have determined that unless you are touching contacts within your target market with at least 9 individual touches including a minimum of two email messages you are 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 9 individual touches, will yield only 40%-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.

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 41 different touches over a period of 15 months. 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 are ready.

Size Matters
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 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 comprised over 20% of all the leads PointClear generated for clients in 2007. Somewhat surprising, though, is that the most frequent responders to voicemails or emails are senior level decision makers. In fact, nearly 2½ 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 100 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 (and rightfully so), there is still not enough focus on building highly qualified databases and measuring ROI or ROMI 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 change the more things stay the same.