2010 prospecting survey: general outl ook · 2010 prospecting survey: direct marketing what dm ta...

General OutlOOk In this ROI-centric climate, marketing wisdom has it that it’s cheaper to retain or reactivate a current customer than to acquire a new one. But those leads have to keep coming, and Chief Marketer fielded its first survey on prospecting and lead generation at the end of 2009, getting answers from almost 1,000 marketers about their strategies and tactics for turning up sales prospects this year.

2010 ProsPecting survey:

Other

We will focus primarily on building brand image and awareness with our whole market

We will focus primarily on retaining and reactivating customers we already have

We will focus primarily on acquiring new customers

8.8%

17.2%

25.5%

48.6%

What Is Your Company's Customer Marketing Aim in 2010?

0

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

>$5M $5M-$49.9M $50M<

37.5%

31.1%

21.4%

10.0%

28.1%

39.0%

24.0%

8.9%

47.8%

22.4% 18.7%

11.2%

(by revenue)

refilling the tank Almost half the more than 1,000 poll respondents (48.6%) said their main customer aim in 2010 will be to generate new leads, although one quarter of the response said they will concentrate on retaining the ones they’ve got. Those numbers showed significant variation by annual revenue, with businesses in the $5 million - $49.9 million annual revenue sector showing markedly higher interest in prospecting than those at either end of the spectrum, where the care and nurture of existing customers will be a premium.

Customer retention and reaCtivation are less Costly, but marketers may redouble efforts to reaCh new potential buyers.

2010 ProsPecting survey: General OutlOOk

what is your company’s view on customer value? (by industry segment)

Manufacturers Serviceproviders

Retail/catalog

Publishers Banking/finance

Communica-tions/utilities

Associations/non-profits

0

20%

40%

60%

80%

100% We concentrate more on customers' lifetime value

We attempt to make a profit on them from the first transaction

58.6

%

41.4

%

56.1%

43.9

%

72.1%

27.9

%

73.5

%

26.5

%

75.9

%

24.1%

84.0

%

16.0

%

76.0

%

24.0

%

what is your company’s view on customer value?

We concentrate moreon customers’ lifetimevalue

We attempt to make a profit on them from the first transaction

66%

34%

view of a Lifetime Along with the cost-efficiency of retention, studying the lifetime value of a customer has become something of a mar-keting mantra. And in fact our survey showed that marketers—both in the ag-

gregate and broken out by in-dustry segment—do in fact aim to recruit long-term customers rather than going for the short-term win. But the degree of variation within sectors is inter-esting, with manufacturers and retailers much more interested in driving incremental sales from the first contact.


do you track customers’ lifetime value by channel?

Yes

No

Do not know52.7%

10.4%

36.8%

0

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

What prospecting offers did you use in 2009? what will you use in 2010?

Discounts Extraservices

Freeshipping

Gift withpurchase

Info. content(e.g. white

papers, webinars)

Contests or sweep-

stakes

Entertain-ment

content(e.g. ringtones)

Other

92.2

%

89.0

%

84.8

%

93.7

%

81.7

% 93

.0%

80.7

%

88.1%

75.6

%

94.9

%

74.1%

91.5

%

65.5

%

92.9

%

88.2

%

86.8

%

20102009

Where spenders come From To really implement a lifetime-value (LTV) prospecting strategy, you’d expect that market-ers would need to know which chan-nels produce their best-spending customers. But more than half the respondents to our survey said they don’t map LTV metrics to the me-dium the prospects came through. Among business segments, retail-ers/catalogers, media publishers and banking/finance providers beat the average at tracking their most productive LTV channels.

Hot: everything but Discounts Discounts led all offers in hard-times 2009, but only by a skosh. And projections for 2010 have to be taken with an asterisk: it’s extremely unlikely there’ll be enough budget around to increase all offers. But it’s interesting that discounts are the only offer catego-ry respondents expect to decline in 2010, suggest-ing a hope that margins will no longer have to be sacrificed to draw new business.

Discounts were the big tools

in 2009, but will Decline

this year— marketers hope.


Not sure yet

No

Yes

47.1%

32.4%

20.6%

Will you need to offer higher-value incentives to new customers in 2010?

Manufacturers Serviceproviders

Retail/catalog

Publishers Banking/finance

Communica-tions/utilities

Associations/non-profits

0

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

Not sure yetNoYes

12.5

%

40.9

% 46.6

%

20.0

%

42.0

%

38.0

%

14.0

%

46.5

%

39.5

%

7.3%

61.8

%

12.0

%

48.0

%

30.9

%

20.6

%

40.0

%

47.1%

32.4

%

21.1%

38.6

%

40.4

%

will you need to offer higher-value incentives tonew customers in 2010? (by industry segment)

split verdict on Bigger incentives Asked specifically if higher-value incen-tives will be required in 2010 to bring in fresh prospects, almost half the survey said no—but just short of one third hedged their bets and said the answer is still uncertain. Taken with the “yes” vote, that’s a large proportion of marketers who believe that finding new customers may get even more

costly this year. By segment, manufacturers, service provid-ers and retailers were almost evenly split between “no” and “not sure yet”.

Marketers express hope that discounts have leveled off, but Many are not certain the price offers are over.

DIRECT MARKETING As part of our Chief Marketer Prospecting 2010 Survey, we focused on channel-specific lead-gen strategies in direct marketing, e-mail and social media. While the line between direct and brand marketing grows more porous with every integrated campaign, we thought it was valuable to take a look at what tactics were being used most heavily in each strategy.


What’s the most important dm tool in your prospecting strategy?

Discount or price offers

Targeted prospect lists

Targeted creative copy

Offer timing

Don't do direct marketing

Other

53.2%

10.1% 6.5%

13.7%

5.9%

10.6%

What’s the most important dm tool in your prospecting strategy? by business type: b-to-c




Offer timing


Other

44.1%

21.1%

3.9%

11.2%

9.9%

9.9%

What’s the most important dm tool in your prospecting strategy? by business type: b-to-b




Offer timing


Other

60.5%

5.9% 6.7%

11.8%

4.0%

11.0%

targeted Lists still rule Indeed, only 10% of respondents said they do no direct marketing of any kind. Of the rest more than half said carefully targeted prospect lists of any kind were their best resource for reaching new potential cus-tomers, followed at a distance by targeted creative and then discount offers or price specials. The reliance on prospect lists is especially marked in B-to-B marketing, where three in five respondents named list targeting as their most valuable pros-pecting tool, compared to 44% of B-to-C marketers.

2010 ProsPecting survey: DIRECT MARKETING

what dm tactics does your company use to find new customers? (by revenue)

Social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, blogs)

OtherAffiliate marketing

TelemarketingUsers requesting information

(e.g. newsletters, alerts,

quotes, etc.)

Consumer databases

rented from third-party compilers

Response lists (e.g. magazine subscriptions,

catalog or e-commerce buyers)

>$5M

$5M-$49.9M

$50M<

0

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

22.1%

27.1%

42.8

%

21.0

% 30

.1%

36.6

%

22.3

%

27.8

% 36

.6%

51.9

%

37.6

%

42.1%

21.2

% 32

.3%

26.2

%

24.1%

21.8

%

21.4

%

60.5

% 73

.3%

71.7

%

What prospecting tactics will you pursue more aggressively than in 2009?

Prospect lists rented from third-party outsiders

New direct mail formats (e.g. postcards vs. letter packages)

New types of copy creative

New offers

Online engagement

Social media marketing

Other

0 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

17.8%

32.1%

39.4%

35.7%

53.6%

58.8%

10.7%

voluntary enrollment The response to this question seems to build on the previ-ous one about the relative importance of targeted prospect lists. When it comes to where they get those names, marketers appear to favor targeting the prospects who identify themselves, through requests for information, newsletter or alert sign-ups. That holds true for the small, mid-sized and large revenue categories- although it’s interesting to see how relatively reliant (almost 52%) the $5-million-and-under companies are on social media for finding hand-raisers.

online, social to Boom When it comes to what they’ll do more of in 2010 to uncover leads, survey respon-dents are undoubtedly thinking social and online. More than half expressed interest in deploying Web strategies to draw pros-pects, and almost three out of five said they intend to pursue social marketing. Whether that will be by building a Facebook page, an on-site community or simply posting video to YouTube, our survey didn’t inquire.

Marketers prefer to build their lists froM hand-raisers who’ve opted to receive coMMunications.

2010 ProsPecting survey: DIRECT MARKETING

What prospecting tactics will you pursue more aggressively than in 2009? (by revenue)

Prospect lists rented from third-party outsiders

New direct mail formats (e.g. postcards vs. letter packages)

New types of copy creative

New offers

Online engagement

Social media marketing

Other

0 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

>$5M

$5M-$49.9M

$50M<

16.1%

21.2%

20.6%

33.9%

30.3%

28.4%

41.4%

42.4%

32.6%

35.5%

34.8%

35.5%

52.4%

53.0%

61.0%

60.1%

56.8%

60.3%

12.3%

8.3%

9.9%

What % of your acquisition names did not come from traditional list brokers in 2009?

0-4%

5%-24%

25%-49%

50%-74%

75%-99%

100%

32.5%

11.7%

5.4% 8.7%

17.2%

24.5%

Large and small Look to Web and social Once again, businesses with small to mid-level revenue in 2009 showed themselves just as interested in Web engagement and social media as the big guys, with more than half of respondents in all three sales tiers saying they will pursue leads in those channels more actively than they did last year. By contrast, only about one fifth of each segment said they would get more aggressive about marketing to outside lists, and a slightly higher response said they will experiment with new mail types.

outside the Broker Box As we saw, respondents said targeted prospect lists were their most important lead-gen tool. But third-party list brokers may not find comfort in that response, since one third of respondents also said that almost their entire 2009 acquisi-tion list came from sources other than traditional brokers, and fully half said at least 50% of their names came from outside the list-rental infrastructure. In general, distribu-tion was concentrated at both ends of the spectrum: About one third of all respondents said virtually all their prospect names (96%-100%) came from traditional list brokers.

E-MAIL E-mail as a means of acquiring new customers has lately taken a back seat to its use as a way to reactivate and re-market to past customers or trigger cur-rent ones. But the Chief Marketer 2010 Prospecting Survey found a lot of interest in deploying e-mail as a means of unearthing motivated new customers and turning lookers into buyers.


do you use e-mail as an acquisition tool?

We currently use e-mail

We have not used e-mail, but plan to do so in the coming year

We have tried it, but are not currently prospecting with e-mail

We don't use e-mail and have no plans to do so in the coming year

65.5% 11.2%

13.4%

10.0%

Lots of Acquisition Attention A surprisingly high two thirds of respondents said they do indeed currently use e-mail as a prospecting tool, and another 11% overall said they will begin to do so this year. Those proportions are a bit different for B-to-C and B-to-B marketers. About 70% of B-to-B compa-nies said they use e-mail to prospect today, while only 61% of B-to-C respondents do. But almost 16% of those b-to-C marketers said they intend to start prospecting via e-mail this year—compared to about 7% of their B-to-B counterparts.

Two Thirds of respondenTs use e-mail To find new cusTomers, buT companies under $5m are less likely (60%) To do so Than Those above (73%).

2010 ProsPecting survey: E-MAIL

if you prospect using e-mail, where do you get the names you mail to?

Third-partyopt-in lists

Purchasedlists

Acquired directlyfrom prospects

(e.g. throughnewsletter registration)

Collected viaautomated

e-mailharvesters

Other0

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

23.5% 21.4%

9.0%

23.6%

73.0%

What’s stopping you? Asked why they don’t use e-mail to generate leads, respondents pointed to three obstacles in almost the same proportions: “Not enough mailable names,” “Customers don’t want to be e-mailed” and ‘Fear

of being labeled a spammer” were each cited by about a third of those who said they don’t prospect via e-mail. Those fears vary a bit by revenue, but basi-cally, some marketers are avoiding e-mail prospecting for fear of how recipients and/or e-mail service providers will react, not for cost/ ROI concerns.

if you don’t prospect with e-mail, why not?

Afraid of being labeled

a spammer

Not enoughmailablenames

Customersdon’t want

to be e-mailed

Too expensive/not enough

ROI

Don’t knowhow to get

started

Other

(by revenue)

0

10%

20%

30%

40%

50% >$5M

$5M-$49.9M

$50M<

33.3

%

41.2

%

20.5

%

32.8

%

35.3

%

30.8

%

32.8

%

26.5

%

41.0

%

15.2

%

8.8%

15.4

%

15.7

%

26.5

%

7.7%

21.5

%

17.6

%

35.9

%

Direct opt-in As with the direct-marketing response, asked where they get the names for e-mail prospecting, the largest group of respondents (73%) said they came directly from the prospects themselves, via newsletter registrations and other sign-ups. That result held true for all industry segments. Among the other options, banking/ finance marketers were the most likely to prospect using third-party lists. And while media publishers were most prone to using newsletter and other direct opt-ins (85%), manufacturers did not lag too far behind (80%).

SOCIAL MEDIA Perhaps the biggest change in lead-generation since the invention of the internet itself, social networks have come into their own as a channel for distributing offers, marketing messages and word-of-mouth buzz. As we’ll see, they’re equally available to both large and small players, making for a more level playing field. And the fact that they can be tightly integrated with other media such as e-mail prospecting holds out the chance of synergy at a time when marketers are try-ing to make any investments work extra hard.


how is your company using social media to draw new customers?

0

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70% Do not use social media

OtherDirectly selling products within social communities

Driving users to our Web site to transact sales

Building customer relationships that may lead to transactions

Building our brand's social presence

>$5M $5M-$49.9M $50M<

50.2

%

54.1%

33.0

%

15.7

%

5.2%

26.9

%

53.4

%

44.4

%

33.8

%

11.3

%

6.0%

31.6

%

60.4

%

45.8

%

36.8

%

10.4

%

4.2%

26.4

%

(by revenue)

Branding Before sales Overall, respondents are pretty equally interested in using social connectivity to define their brand image (51.7%) and in creating customer relations that may lead to sales conversions at a later date (50.3%). Only about a third said they use social media as a tactic to drive traffic to their Web site, and only 13.5% said they market products directly in social media, whether through e-commerce or clickthrough ads or apps. Those relative proportions hold for all revenue segments. But it’s interesting to note that a higher proportion of small companies (54%) are using social media in the hope of turning friends or followers into future shoppers.

28% don’t use social media at all.

those who do stress branding and crm over web traffic and conversions.

2010 ProsPecting survey: SOCIAL MEDIA

do you make your prospecting e-mail shareable to social networks?

We currently let e-mail recipients share to their social pages

We have not done this, but plan to do so in the coming year

We have tried it, but are not currently letting e-mail recipients share to their social pages

We have no plans to do this

31.7%

21.9%

3.1%

43.3%






37.7%

24.0%

3.4%

34.9%

by business type: b-to-c






27.9%

19.2%

3.1%

49.9%

by business type: b-to-b

e-mail/ social convergence Think of it as “forward-to-a-friend” without the fear of alienating one’s address book: the ability to post some or all of an e-mail campaign to a social page, so that recipients can share your message with their social grids. It’s prospecting of a sort, and more than half the response said they are either doing it now or planning to in 2010. Sorting B-to-C marketers from B-to-B sharpens the distinction. Where almost two thirds of consumer-centric marketers say they will make e-mail shareable in 2010, a more moderate 47% of their enterprise-facing counterparts say the same.

Those results are almost the mirror image of respondents’ use of viral campaigns or word of mouth to unearth new customers in 2010; there, relatively few companies are doing it (22.4% overall), and uncertainty about how to get started is the most-often cited roadblock to launching an initiative in that channel (28.6%).

Shareable e-mail will Spread in 2010, but b-to-b takeup will lag the average.

2010 ProsPecting survey: SOCIAL MEDIA

Putting Fans to Work While viral or word of mouth (WOM) campaigns don’t have to involve social media, they most often do these days. The fact that 50% of overall respondents said they either are currently running a buzz campaign or plan to launch one this year, compared

to 43% who say they have no such plans, probably indicates that such campaigns have reached a tipping point—especially among small com-pan9ies, who show outsized interest in launching viral campaigns this year.

viral inhibitors Unlike e-mail prospecting, where obstacles were located mostly out-side the company, the biggest gating factor for viral/ WOM campaigns is simply lack of knowledge about how to begin, said 29% of survey respondents. The next big hurdle: “No budget for ‘alter-native’ prospecting tactics”, cited by about 22% of the aggregate response. That’s about the same proportion who cited a lack of clearly defined met-rics for viral cam-paigns as a reason to find other ways to prospect.

will you prospect via viral/wom in 2010? (by revenue)

0

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

We have no plans to do this in the coming year

We have tried it but arenot currently planning such a campaign this year

We have not tried it, butplan to do so in 2010

We are currently runninga viral or WOM campaign

>$5M $5M-$49.9M $50M<

22.7

%

5.0

%

31.4

%

40.9

%

17.6

%

6.1%

26.0

%

50.4

%

23.2

%

8.5% 22

.5%

45.8

%

if you’re not using viral/wom to prospect, why not?

Unsure howto get started

No budget for“alternative” orexperimentalprospecting

tactics

Viral/WOM channel not

appropriate forour products/

services

Prefer to marketin channels with

more definedperformance

metrics

Other0

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

(by revenue)

>$5M

$5M-$49.9M

$50M<

33.2

%

23.3

%

30.9

%

16.6

%

24.4

%

18.5

%

16.3

% 20

.0%

17.2

%

11.6

%

10.0

%

11.3

%

22.1%

22.2

%

22.2

%

2010 prospecting survey: general outl ook · 2010 prospecting survey: direct marketing what dm ta...

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