Reducing un-followed leads with video, tripling the success rate of inside sales cold calls

HENNGE is developing various digital marketing measures with the aim of acquiring new inbound leads. In addition, in order to acquire more leads, they are also simultaneously implementing outbound measures such as cold calling. For the leads they gathered, sales representatives would quickly arrange appointments for initial visits, but after the initial visit, leads that were deemed to have a low probability of becoming projects were rarely followed up on. Due to the nature of the product, the percentage of leads that became projects was around 10%, and in fact, 90% of the leads were left unused and accumulated as “dead leads”. The company, which was aware of the issues and possibilities in this situation, turned its attention to a new approach method that combined video content and MA tools.

Measure 1: Utilizing existing content

In this situation, the company’s attention was drawn to the seminars it held several times a month. Hiroaki Mizutani of the company’s Cloud Sales & Marketing Division says, “The idea came from the simple concept that if we recorded the seminars and made the minimum necessary processing as video content, wouldn’t it be much easier to mass-produce content than to create white papers and web content? In fact, once we had decided on this policy, we were able to quickly put together a large quantity of content with a small amount of resources.” Because the seminars themselves were well-planned and well-developed for customers, they were able to produce a large quantity of high-quality content by making effective use of them, and at the same time, they were also able to solve the problem of human resources.

Measure 2: Automate distribution and accumulate insights

Once they had built up a library of recorded seminar content, HENGE needed to get it to the right audience. When considering a platform for distributing videos, the company’s main requirement was that it should be able to link with the MA tool “Marketo”. The company had also introduced Salesforce.com for CRM, so they also placed importance on being able to link with that. “If you just want to distribute videos, then a free video distribution platform will do, but by tracking who has watched how many videos and storing that data in a database, you can use it to your advantage in various activities. We looked for a platform that would make this possible and also allow us to develop it quickly.” If too many resources are taken up by sales activities, it will have an impact on the closing rate for high-quality deals. Therefore, a new dedicated inside sales team was set up to re-approach the 90% of leads that had been abandoned, and the MA tool “Marketo” was introduced as a system that would enable them to approach customers at the time they needed. In addition, by using videos, they are not only tracking each lead’s web browsing history, but also the viewing history of the video content they have mass-produced this time, such as “who has watched how much? they are able to determine when, to whom, and with what kind of conversation to approach each lead. The company places particular importance on the length of time spent watching the videos. Based on the hypothesis that leads who spend a certain amount of time watching the videos are highly interested in the service and have a strong desire to purchase, they prioritize making calls to leads who have watched more than 50% of the videos they have provided.