Need more sales? Think that to get more sales you need to get more new leads? You could actually raise sales by re-engaging the leads you already have. All those leads who weren’t ready to buy, or went off the grid? What it takes is reigniting a relationship with those leads, providing them value, and solving their pain points. Jared Kimball, a demand generation specialist, joins David Bonney and Carey Ballard to talk about the concept of how to re-engage leads.
Make sure to tune in in two weeks as they dive deeper into what you need to re-engage leads and the strategy behind doing so.
Mentioned in this episode:
Typical vs Perfect Customer Lifecycle
Scott Martineau: Hey, everybody. It's Scott Martineau. I just wanna introduce what we're gonna be doing in the next few episodes. We've had many listeners who have been asking for, "Hey, give us some more tactical advice. Help us know how can we do better at finding leads, closing our sales, creating better relationships with our customers, using automation." So what we're gonna do is we're gonna focus on that over the next few episodes and we would love to have your feedback. Our goal is to help you be successful. We want this content to be valuable for you. So please e-mail us at [email protected] and let us know if you like these. Let us know if you've got more and if you've got specific topics you want us to cover. Again, that is [email protected]. We look forward to hearing your feedback.
Last week you heard David Bonney talk about the small business success method. In this episode we're gonna talk about specific tactics that you can use to reengage your leads that didn't buy right away. So listen in. I hope you enjoy it [music playing].
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David Bonney: Hello. Welcome to the Small Business Success podcast. My name is David Bonney.
Carey Ballard: And I'm Carey Ballard here today with Jared Kimball. We're here to talk a little bit about reengagement strategy. So we brought our senior demand gen specialist to come shed some light on it.
Jared Kimball: Yeah. Well, thanks, guys, for letting me join you. You're probably confused on what is a senior demand gen strategist. It's kind of a weird, complicated title.
Carey Ballard: Did you make that up yourself or did somebody give it to you?
Jared Kimball: No. Somebody gave it to me [laughs]. Basically I help design strategies around how we can generate lead generation and lead demand inside here at Infusionsoft basically.
Carey Ballard: Kind of important stuff for us.
Jared Kimball: It is. It is.
David Bonney: Yeah. And it's really – when we talk about the tactical level and in our ability to really dive into the weeds and how do we actually –
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start driving results for small business, how do we start growing your lead flow, how do we start growing your sales. It's that type of expertise that's really gonna be – this is gonna be some really exciting stuff that we're gonna get into. For this one, for this particular episode what we really wanna frame up is an area of your perfect customer life cycle that's gonna help you grow your sales. And that's the reengagement area that you were referencing, Carey, and what reengagement means just simply is when you're collecting leads and driving them to an offer and they don't convert you don't want them to fall into the trashcan. You don't want them to fall into the trashcan. You don't want them to fall into no man's land where you're potentially just sending out broadcast to them or even worse you're not doing anything to them systematically and the reengagement will take those leads that don't convert and systematically drive them into a secondary conversion funnel because sometimes people just aren't ready to buy when you're ready to sale or they just wanna collect information.
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And they're gonna go through that process and as long as you can stay in front of them and give them the right type of education and offer you'll increase your close rate.
Carey Ballard: And this is a huge problem for small businesses. This is probably one of the biggest problems that we see on a daily basis because, well, there's lots of reasons, right? They're too busy, don't know what to do with them, don't know where they go. There's a slew of problems that lead to this, but tell me a little bit about the engagement? Why reengagement?
David Bonney: So just generally we know that there's a certain number of touch points that we have to give our prospects. We've got to make sure that we stay in touch with them. I think the stat – Jared, isn't there a stat around we've got 81 percent of people close after 7 contacts?
Jared Kimball: Yep. That's about it. That's about exactly right. Reengaging people is a great way to just take whatever you might be missing out on and figuring out a way to get them into a place where they become a customer quicker and it's a great opportunity for you as a business owner to see what –
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you have sitting on the sidelines that's not making profit. You're trying to generate all this extra cash to help sustain the business and a reengagement campaign is a quick way to get that going.
David Bonney: Yeah. And just imagine a world where you're collecting leads and let's say you're converting those leads at a ten percent clip and you execute and you insert a reengagement campaign and let's say you only convert three percent of the unconverted leads. Well, if you look at your sales you've gone from 10 percent up to 13 percent. Like you've really started – immediately start to increase your sales conversion off of something that you're just not doing anything with. And the most interesting thing for me about reengagement is in terms of execution it's actually the lowest hanging fruit. It's the easiest thing to get started in your business because you can start with your existing list and you can reengage them and drive them to an offer and based on that then that gives you a tested proven type of approach that you can then just insert systematically for all the leads that continue to come in and don't convert.
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Carey Ballard: Because what people tend to do, and this is what I hear a lot of, is people say, "I'm not getting enough sales. I've got ten percent sales and then I need more." So what do they do? They back it up all the way to the beginning to say, "I need to go get more leads," which is a ton of heavy lifting. It's a high expense rate. It's not proven. When what they really should be doing is dialing into the thing that they already have and squeezing more out of it. Do you see – Jared, do you see that in the work that we do here at Infusionsoft?
Jared Kimball: Yeah. You can see that anywhere in any business basically. You're gonna have people who are gonna come in and they're gonna start out in a place where granted they somehow, at one point in time they trusted you enough to give you their e-mail address and they're like whatever it is, they signed up for a newsletter, they signed up to subscribe to your mailing list, or maybe you gave them some sort of incentive, some sort of lead magnet, some sort of piece of content that they're like, "Yeah. This is really useful." And you try to maybe, as business owner –
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try to say, "Okay. I've got their attention. I've got their e-mail inbox. I'm right there with them, but how do I actually get them to become a customer?" And what ends up happening is typically there are people who are hot right at the beginning. They're just ready to go. They're really interested in what you're offering and they're ready to just make that purchase, but then something just happens to the rest of the people who just aren't ready yet. And it's a great way to get them engaged again and there's lots of creative things that you can do to make that happen.
Carey Ballard: So when I didn't buy that pair of shoes that I really wanted and they started retargeting me again, is that what happened there?
Jared Kimball: That's exactly it.
Carey Ballard: It worked. I got the shoes [laughs].
Jared Kimball: That's good.
David Bonney: So within the demand function that you fulfill in here and you look at the leads that we're bringing in, what's the difference as far as you see it in terms of, "We're gonna collect leads and in high level we're gonna drive a message, get those hot leads to convert."
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And then if they don't convert we probably don't wanna do the same thing, right? So is there a difference in terms of the message that you now put them into in terms of the reengagement strategy?
Jared Kimball: Yeah. Messaging can change. It just depends on lots of factors like bidding on the type of business that you're running, for example, what it is that you're selling, what type of products you're selling, or if you're offering services. And then if – one of the things you wanna focus on is if they didn't take the initial thing that I sold or I tried to sell then how can I change the messaging to educate them so that when they are ready to buy I'm the front of the line. I'm not having to deal with competitors trying to steal this lead that I worked hard and maybe spent money on and try to get inside my e-mail database. But now how do I take that potential customer and build a relationship with them and give them value and try to actually make it to where with whenever they're ready to buy and they're like, "Oh, man."
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"This pain is so, so painful for me right now that I've just got to get rid of it and you have the solution. I'm not gonna look at anyone else. Just I wanna buy from you." That's when the messaging will switch is it's all about just trying to figure out how you can touch them and how you can really connect with them is how much you're offering.
Carey Ballard: Very interesting. And as the person who's responsible for content here at Infusionsoft it feels like to me like it's a huge content play too. You're using materials, education, sometimes humor, sometimes something interesting just to keep them coming back to you coming back to you as the source of information. Is that really what you're talking about?
Jared Kimball: Yeah. Totally, but I don't wanna scare people by saying you have to create tons and tons of content. You don't have to go out and write a gazillion e-books or record complicated podcasts or make extremely hard videos or however – whatever your perceptions are of that content. Literally you can just be real and just write e-mails. That is a great way to get started. And then as you figure out how writing e-mails works –
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and how you can communicate your offerings and what you're doing then you can upgrade to other pieces of content potentially. If you're ready to create an e-book then go for it. If you're ready to record a video then go for it. And there's lots of business owners in different places and it's just a matter of finding the content that works for you and just sticking with that content and becoming a master by that type of content. Don't get distracted by all the different types of content.
Carey Ballard: And there's a lot of content already out there. You can also – one of the things that I advocate for quite a bit with our businesses is you don't have to be the single source of the creation. Go be a curating source. You have a vision of what they need, so go find it for them and give it to them. It doesn't have to be – I don't have to write everything, but if I find a great article about something that I know my audience wants to hear about I can share it. It still is valuable and they're still coming to me for the source of that information.
David Bonney: Yeah. And backing up to what you referenced before, Jared, with the my level of pain. We talk a lot here within the things –
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that we're teaching that 80 percent of people buy based on pain or avoidance of something, 20 percent by in pursuit of something or wanting to gain something. I love how you just touched on when people are first going out and trying to educate themselves, which that's the world we live in now with the access of information that we have. We're gonna go educate ourselves before we go buy something to make sure that we get the best price, the best product, all that stuff. We all do it. And when we go start that education process the vast majority of times we're not at our most painful point. It's painful enough to go spend some time and go educate ourselves, but it's not at the most painful point, but that pain will grow.
Jared Kimball: Yeah. Like a great analogy would be like a car. Like buying a car, everyone's pretty much bought a car. With that you can have an older car and you're fine with it. It's paying off. It's running all right, but then something breaks down. Oh, man. You got to fork over $300.00 to get it fixed. All right. Cool. It's good. You're still working. You're still going.
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But then something else happens and wow, it's $1,000.00 now. "I got to fix this thing. Oh, man. This thing's just like a money pit." And then what enters your mind is like, "Maybe I should get a new car." That's what ends up happening is how can you as a small business owner be in front of that potential customer whenever they start thinking about getting whatever it is that you sell that will help them solve that problem. So that's a big part of it.
Carey Ballard: Right. So they take the first step to maybe start investigating the car. They get distracted. They don't have to – for some reason they don't drive for a while, it's not in their head. You wanna be back in front of them the minute that they decide that this is the time to buy.
David Bonney: Yeah. Top of mind established as the authority with good content based on why you do what you do and what really separates you from the competition, which might sound difficult, but it's really not. You're in business for a reason. You're in business because what you do other people aren't doing. So other people wanna give you money for that or your business never would have gotten off the ground.
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And sometimes we can draw this stuff out and it just starts to visually look great. When we look at the fact that we're collecting leads and driving them towards a sale we have that one arrow. And then we've got a decent amount of businesses that are running their marketing calendar, they're doing monthly promotions or newsletters or whatever that is to be able to drive that second level, and then this reengagement. When you can have all three of those converting funnels working it's just math. It is just sheer math that you're gonna be able to increase your sales. The funny thing is we've talked about this before. Even if your business increases its monthly revenues by 15 to 20 percent, who wouldn't take that?
Carey Ballard: Right. That's money in the bank today.
David Bonney: Right? Who would that be useful to? Absolutely. And that's kind of a conservative estimate.
Carey Ballard: And this is one of those programs you're gonna hear David talk about this a lot, but closest to the cash is really an important thing when it comes to what do you need to focus on today. Because there's a million pain points for small businesses who've got a very long life cycle for their customers sometimes –
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or at least there's a full life cycle. This one, the reason we're talking about reengagement today and the reason we're kicking off this program with this topic is it's one of the most prevalent when it comes to being closest to the cash for small businesses. Can you talk a little bit more about what that actually looks like?
David Bonney: Yeah. So closest to the cash in terms of how we talk from a methodology perspective and Jared, giving us some more of the domain expertise would be great. What we wanna do is especially when you're engaging in your sales and marketing activities this is all about momentum. If you can start to invest some time, energy, and money and then see results that's going to parlay into the next one and the next one. It's kind of the rule of one to three to nine. That momentum building process is huge and we see so often how businesses will start engaging in trying to develop their sales and marketing automation strategies and they'll start at the top of the funnel.
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They'll start at an area that's a lot more difficult in terms of the amount of content, in terms of the amount of integrations that you have to do with the website or whatever it is. And when you've got this list sitting there that's already closest to the cash where you can invest minimal time and energy and no money, you've already got them.
Carey Ballard: Right. You have a list so they know who you are and you know who they are.
David Bonney: And they're already your most qualified prospects. We talk about it all the time. How many companies do we have a subscription with and it always feels like they're giving the best deals to the new customers and we're already their customers and we can't get those good rates. How frustrating is that? So you already have this list of people that are with you, they believe in you, they know who you are, they're your hottest leads in comparison to brand new people that are cold now coming off of a marketing campaign. And when we can stay closest to the cash and get started there that's the momentum starting process that then parlays into the next and into the next, into the next to really make sure that you can start to realize your perfect customer life cycle developing right in front of your eyes.
Jared Kimball: Yep. Totally can. I'd say also too –
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if the further you get away from the cash the more expensive it gets and the more risky it gets as a business whereas if you've got this group of people who are just sitting there and they've already given you some sort of element of trust and you've got basically this untapped reservoir that you can get into and potentially come in and scoop up water and you can take a drink and it'll help sustain you or your team. So it's a great, great resource for any small business to definitely leverage.
Carey Ballard: So this series is gonna be about setting out the why, the what, and the how. And we've talked a lot today about the philosophy and why it matters and the next episode we're gonna talk a little bit more about the how so we can dig into the meat of what does it actually take to do reengagement campaign. And we've also talked a lot about what do we call typical and more optimal or perfect customer life cycles. We'll include graphics to that or information about that in the notes of this podcast. So if you wanna educate yourself on what does it actually look like for businesses so they can reference that. So that will be available as well.
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David Bonney: Yeah. And a little bit more specifically we'll want Jared to really dive into – we know there's a lot of different small businesses that are listening to this podcast right now. And when we look at reengagement not all businesses are created equal. And we wanna start to go into now that next layer down what are the different ways that you can reengage your list based on your business model, based on how you sell, and then after that we'll start to get into some of the more nitty-gritty executable areas. But we'll wanna make sure that we give you guys actual executable things that are relevant to you are business no matter who you are so you can go get results.
Carey Ballard: I love it. All right. Perfect. Well, then that will wrap this episode of the Small Business Success podcast. Don't forget to subscribe, to rate us, and to send it to all your friends and –
David Bonney: All three.
Carey Ballard: All three. Do all three of those.
David Bonney: All three of those, please.
Carey Ballard: And tune in for the next episode where we dig in a little bit more to reengagement campaigns. Thanks so much for listening. Don't forget to rate, share, and subscribe and for more information about the Small Business Success method and other great content go to learn.infusionsoft.com.
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David Bonney: We're out. Just start jamming.
Carey Ballard: La, la, la, la, la.
David Bonney: La, la, la, la. All right.
[End of Audio]
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