IgnitePOST Converts Cold Leads

Background

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IgnitePOST helps brands create magic moments for their customers. Our real pen and ink handwritten notes cut through the digital noise to surprise and delight customers wherever they are in their shopping journeys.

Our intelligent software integrates with existing systems for easy set up and our robotics work at massive scale using ballpoint pens to give warmth to each note. This software-hardware combination generates perfectly timed and crafted moments that drive customers to action as our above industry average conversion rates show. 

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Challenge

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Our challenge was to use our own handwritten notes as prospecting outreach to potential customers. We wanted to use our own product as a marketing tool for a couple reasons:

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• It helps us test our tools and use our product as our customers would. Through this process, we find ways to improve, innovate, find issues or bugs, and build new features.  
• We believe in our product! We know handwritten letters have better open rates than email. According to Statista, almost 320 billion marketing emails were sent daily in 2021. As a result, inboxes are flooded, making it increasingly difficult to get the attention of prospects & customers. Regular direct mail has also become ineffective, with 20% of direct mail being thrown away without being opened. However, handwritten notes have a high chance of reaching the recipient due to its personal and unique touch. We know our customers have been successful in their use of IgnitePOST, so why wouldn’t we do the same?

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Approach

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We wanted to create an experiment to test the best messaging to send prospective insurance companies. Insurance companies have such varying needs and different use cases for wanting to reach out to people using handwritten letters, so we wanted to test out the content of our handwritten notes to see what resonated most with them. Prior to starting this campaign, through research and after communicating with prospective and existing clients, we narrowed down a few key reasons that insurance companies might want to use our product:

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• Staying top of mind with their existing clients (aka client retention). A good excuse to reach out with a handwritten note is a special occasion like a birthday or client anniversary. IgnitePOST can also be used for reminders to renew policies. These points were used to craft a message around staying top of mind. 

• Saying welcome and thank you to new clients as well as referral requests. Insurance companies want to have a positive first impression with their clients to help with both retention and enabling engagement. They also hope to create a relationship that can drive new referrals as well. The second message we created focused on welcoming new clients as well as highlighting IgnitePOST as a potential tool for requesting referrals from clients. 
• Cross Selling Insurance companies want to drive multi-line insurance policies (i.e. home, auto, life insurance, etc). This drives both revenue and client retention, so this is where we focused on our third message to insurance companies.

• Prospect winback People shop around for new insurance policies pretty often, so insurance companies want to stay top of mind with prospects even if they previously chose to go with another company. Our fourth message was geared towards highlighting how IgnitePOST can be used for prospect winback.  

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We created a campaign that consisted of a handwritten letter sent in the mail followed by an email sequence that began a week after the letter was sent because we wanted there to be enough time for the letter to reach the recipient before following up. We sent a second letter in the mail once the email sequence had concluded.

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Our first cohort consisted of a campaign that was split into 4 different groups. Each group received a different version of our message (both the message in the letters and the messages in the email sequence). We were sure to use email validation tools to make sure the emails we were using were accurate and wouldn’t result in bounce-backs. Once the campaign concluded, we’d decide on which version worked best and use that version going forward. 

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Results

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We tracked the success of the campaign through a few different methods:

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• In each version of the letter and email sequence, we provided a unique trackable phone number so we’d be able to attribute calls to a specific version of the campaign.
• Each version of the campaign also had a specific QR code associated with it. These QR codes were printed on the front of the letters we sent in the mail, and we directed the recipient to scan it in order to connect with us. We could then track how many scans each QR code was getting. 
• We also tracked the open, click through, and response rates for each of the emails in the campaign. 
• The last metric we were tracking was the number of meetings scheduled with the recipients of the campaign. This was the most important metric as it indicated a high level of interest from the potential customers.

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The week after we sent the last letter in the campaign, we reviewed our metrics. The first version of our campaign (the one aimed at staying top of mind with existing clients and client retention) was the clear winning version of the campaign.  

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It performed best in email click through rate (totalling 59% over the course of the campaign) as well as meetings booked (4% conversion rate). It was the second best performing campaign for email open rate at an average of 31% (the version with the best email open rate at 34% was just the third best in email click through rate and ranked fourth in meetings booked).   

Once we had the data and knew that the first version of the campaign performed the best, we created a second cohort of that campaign with a much larger group of recipients. 

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By the end of the second campaign, we had new IgnitePOST customers and a significant return on investment of 422%.    

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Conclusion

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Prospecting campaigns can have varying results depending on how good your data is. It’s important to experiment to see what works best. In this case, the first version of the campaign worked best after testing the messaging with our recipients. The insurance companies we reached out to seemed to have more interest in using IgnitePOST for staying top of mind with their existing clients rather than for things like referral requests, win-back campaigns, or cross-selling opportunities. 

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We achieved our main goal of crafting the message that resonated most with our potential clients. From here, we can continue to workshop and improve the messaging in our winning campaign. We can test things like who the letter is being written from, the image we print on the front of the letter, the locations of the contacts we’re reaching out to, etc. 

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​​If you’re interested in having IgnitePOST execute a similar strategy for your business, reach out to us today! We’d be happy to work with you to craft, execute, and measure a similar strategy for your business!