Founded in 2015 by industry veterans who knew that a safety-minded suite of cloud-based capabilities was what trucking companies and fleet operators needed, this vendor has since garnered 20,000 customers worldwide and attracted over $900M in VC funding. Their AI-based safety solution was recognized in the “Computer Vision” category of the Business Intelligence Group’s Artificial Intelligence Excellence Awards.
With the pandemic shining a huge spotlight on supply chain disruptions and the industry actively looking for a new generation of drivers to haul the nation’s goods, the company’s continued success would require efficiently scaling up its marketing and sales efforts.
The Challenge: Partnering with A Trusted Agency That Discovers Real Purchase Intent
Fleet managers, compliance officers and VPs of Operations are notoriously difficult to reach because no two days are ever the same. Rather than take silence as a default “no”, this vendor chose to institute a disciplined program of touches (split between emails, call attempts and voicemails) over a period of 60 days.
This dedicated approach to outbound communication would not be possible, however, with raw data. But when properly nurtured, it gives the vendor sales team the confidence of knowing that authentic interest has been expressed.
There is nothing more empowering to a sales rep than knowing that a prospect really does want to investigate a change in what they are currently doing – even when the prospect isn’t calling back right away.
InsideUp — Consistency and Repeatability in the Process of Lead Nurturing and Verification
InsideUp’s dedicated data team was able to research job titles likely to be involved in the decision-making process for GPS fleet management and the agency’s expertise in the GPS domain enabled it to apply predictive analytics to expand the list of companies with similar firmographics.
An emphasis was placed on finding commercial trucking companies that frequently used refrigerated trailers (or reefers) because of the software’s ability to remotely monitor temperature conditions inside the trailers during idle time in transit.
Using its content syndication platform, InsideUp was able to quickly position the vendor’s content, including case studies, eBooks, and videos, to create the need for contacts to investigate new technology that could substantially improve their company’s safety profile.
Email templates and landing pages were quickly constructed and social media was also employed to disseminate the information. Intent monitoring kept track of recipient interest and the highest scoring contacts were placed in a nurturing cadence that personalized the messages and sought engagement through live phone conversations.
Extensive notes were prepared, which helped the vendor’s sales team understand the current situation for each lead and what areas of fleet management were of particular value.
The quality and consistency of the sales qualified leads was a result of the analysis and review of actual call recordings with each contact. Because the entire process was supported by a proprietary software platform, the campaign could scale up with no degradation in quality.
The vendor began tracking Leads to Opportunities Conversion Rate (LOCR) using a rolling 90-day window because they understood that the LOCR will probably start lower in the first month and then climb as further connection attempts were made. This optimization of the lead flow was not possible with other agencies because the level of trust in the agency’s methods had not been previously established.
The Scoreboard Speaks
Over the last 8 months, this vendor experienced an average monthly connect rate of over 70% and a conversion rate from leads to opportunities of 12%. In retrospective, it was the agency’s expertise in the domain of GPS fleet management that enabled it to focus in on the most likely audience for the vendor’s message of fleet safety based on AI-powered algorithms that act in real time to support the driver’s judgement.
InsideUp was able to consistently provide a large number of sales qualified leads that enabled the vendor sales team to trust the process and maintain the discipline of phone attempts and outreach that resulted in a sales pipeline of over $15M and an outstanding return on marketing spend.
