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Driving Demand Remotely with Drip Marketing Campaigns

VolunteerLocal Marketing Funnel

April 8, 2020

Kaylee Williams, President of VolunteerLocal provided a detailed view of how her company executes on their marketing. VolunteerLocal sells remotely using phone and video conference technology to provide demonstrations to their potential customers. There are three key areas of their marketing funnel that Kaylee explored with the audience: demo requests, sales calls and closing the sale. The first key takeaway she shared was that the goal of each step in the marketing funnel is to get to the next step, not to close the sale. Kaylee took the audience through a series of problems she experienced and explained how she solved those issues.

Tracking Lead Channels

VolunteerLocal sells their product to several vertical markets including events groups, sporting events and nonprofit groups. They also use several different sources for generating inbound leads. These included Capterra, Software Advice, partner referrals, Google and Facebook. Kaylee explains that it is critical to show each potential lead content that is specific to their needs. In other words, do not show a nonprofit executive information about managing a sporting event.

Unique Landing Pages

For Kaylee, the solution was unique landing pages for each vertical market. We have included a link at the end of this post to Kaylee’s presentation and three of the landing pages VolunteerLocal currently uses. These unique landing pages include custom background image and rich content about the product explaining the benefits to that particular market need. These pages contain a single call to action — request a demo. Kaylee stressed the need to not send the prospect back to the main website. Another key takeaway is to not put a price on the landing page. The goal is to give a demo and engage with the customer.

The Leaky Funnel

The term leaky funnel refers to prospects not moving from one step to the next in the sales and marketing funnel. Along the way, Kaylee provided a detailed assessment on causes and solutions for the leaks. This is where drip marketing comes into the story. Using MixMax to send a sequence of emails, Kaylee implemented a series of 12 emails that automatically send out over a desired timeframe. Kaylee spoke of the incredible time it would take to perform this process manually. Automation was truly the key. Kaylee also noted a surprising discovery. VolunteerLocal found that over a 12-message sequence, they could see two high points in customer engagement. One covering the fourth through sixth message and another, surprisingly, after the ninth message. The drip sequence worked, so well that a new problem arose. Now she had too many demo requests.

During the remaining portion of the seminar, Kaylee spoke on the challenges her company faced and how they solved each. View the complete seminar video below and/or download the complete presentation and script examples for the email marketing campaigns.

 

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Mike Colwell

As executive director of entrepreneurial initiatives of the Greater Des Moines Partnership, Mike Colwell leads works with startups to build their business model, financial model, marketing strategies and capitalization plan. He is also co-manager of Plains Angels, a group of Iowa-based Midwest angel investors. Mike spends his days coaching, mentoring, consulting and asking tough questions to help entrepreneurs reach their full potential. Mike assists with business strategy, business planning, business plan execution, business model development and capital acquisition strategies.