In conversation, TinderBox CMO Mitch Frazier bills his firm as an “online-first company.” In practice, the sales automation provider has shown that it’s also a flexible company.
That flexibility was recently on display when Frazier and his team developed a multichannel direct marketing pilot program—a blend of personalized online experience, sales follow-up, and, wait for it, good old-fashioned direct mail—that helped convert more than 40% of existing prospects within the pilot campaign into customers.
“We found some really unique marketing opportunities amid the interaction between offline and online,” Frazier says.
At the core of that multichannel campaign is showcasing the company’s capabilities. The key was finding the right tool to do that. As it turned out, that tool was already in-house in the form of WalkMe’s user-experience technology platform, which Tinderbox uses to onboard new customers to ensure retention.
The platform guides prospects through TinderBox features and functionality. When Frazier joined the company in January, he says he was struck by WalkMe’s capabilities. TinderBox uses WalkMe to showcase and promote new features in its application, to highlight product messages, and to gather real-time customer feedback via surveys. That positive impression helped spark a brainstorming session on ways to drive existing prospects back to sales proposals that TinderBox sales professionals had previously created—using the firm’s own software.
“We looked at a lot of different options,” Frazier recalls. “At one point we said, ‘Hey, we have the technology here with WalkMe to create a really unique experience on the marketing side.” What TinderBox needed was a compelling method of nudging prospects back into its online sales experience. So, the marketing team developed a branded cardboard box emblazoned with the company’s logo—a large orange flame. Prospects open up the box to find a welcome postcard, messaging that focuses on the company’s value proposition, and a call-to-action in the form of a personalized URL (pURL).
When prospects click to the pURL, they’re greeted by a unique online experience with a message along the lines of: Welcome back! It’s been a while since we’ve seen you. We’d love to continue the conversation that we had and, in fact, I’ll be back in touch with you soon. The message is signed by a sales representative who receives a text-message alert the moment the prospect is back into the sales proposal. Moreover, the sales rep can see where each prospect has spent time in TinderBox’s system, which helps prepare for more personal follow-up.
Sparking results
In the first two quarters of this pilot program’s operation, Frazier reports that roughly 40% of the prospects who were selected closed on new deals.
He acknowledges that, on first blush, the use of direct mail to drive online interaction at an online-first company “is a bit of a head-scratcher.” Yet, he also asserts that the results have been “powerful.” He says that his sales colleagues have noted that prospects are struck by the customized aspect of the program. “They’ve said things like, ‘Wow, these guys took the time to create something very special for me. They took the time to actually give me something beyond just a sales pitch,’” Frazier relays. “I think that differentiated experience is clearly a strength in this campaign.”
Frazier and his team worked closely with their sales colleagues to identify suitable prospects for the pilot program. The selection process sparked a bit of “healthy competition” among sales reps who wanted to see their own prospects complete the purchase.
Frazier also credits WalkMe for its own creativity and for being there when he arrived at TinderBox. “It was great to find a piece of software within our tech stack and apply a different use case,” he says. “I get excited that this came at really no net cost beyond the campaign cost.”
Rafi Sweary, president of WalkMe, notes that one of the keys to the effort was the “collaboration between the marketing ingenuity of the Tinderbox team and the WalkMe customer success team.” Together, Sweary adds, those teams “were able to…invent a new and effective use case for marketing.”
