Practicing what it preaches, LeadWatcher is in the middle of a two-drop direct mail campaign to the audience it views as its best prospects: sales managers and vice presidents of sales and marketing at small and mid-sized companies.
“As opposed to going after someone like Pfizer with a few hundred salespeople and a system already in place that is costing them a lot of money, we are targeting slightly smaller companies that have a manageable number of leads and a manageable sales force that are looking to run their operation more effectively,” said Alan Marks, vice president of sales and marketing at LeadWatcher, St. Louis.
The product, which goes by the same name as the company, is an ASP-based lead management tool that routes sales leads to the appropriate salespeople while organizing all leads in a central database that can be monitored by sales managers.
LeadWatcher sent the first mail piece in June to 5,000 people. The recipients were compiled from a subscription list to Selling Power, a magazine targeting sales managers and vice presidents of sales and marketing. Since then, visits to the company's Web site have spiked, the company received 20 to 30 calls asking for more information on the product and there have been about 10 sales.
Pricing is monthly, and based on the number of salespeople a company has.
“For companies with 61 salespeople and over, pricing starts at $14.95 [per salesperson per month],” Marks said. “For those with one to 10 salespeople [it] starts at $29.95.”
The campaign was not nationwide. The company chose to introduce the product to the states surrounding Missouri and build from there, Marks said, because this was the first campaign for the product and the company wanted to ensure that it could control the leads and responses.
The 8.5-by-6-inch self-mailer contains little technical information on the product. The call to action is to visit the Web site, where all of the background information, pricing, benefits and key features on the product are available.
Marks said the idea was to keep the mail piece simple and let people decide what they wanted to read and learn about the product on their own at the Web site.
“We don't want to force them to call us or get a code number in order to register for anything,” he said. “The goal was to make it as simple as possible and not create any roadblocks for people who were responding. The Web has shortened our attention spans, and if people can't get right to what they need to do, they are going to lose interest.”
After viewing the information, respondents can sign up for the product online. LeadWatcher asks for e-mail address; general company information such as address, phone number, etc.; names and e-mail addresses for each of the salespeople; and the sales regions covered by each salesperson by state and/or county.
A second mailing to 2,500 people from the first mailing is scheduled for the last two weeks of August. It will contain a special one-month-free offer for those who respond by a certain date.
“This is not a one-hit wonder,” Marks said. “Repetition is going to be important for us, and we are going to have to keep marketing to people and provide the right offers to them.”
The campaign cost about $2,500.
