Telemarketing Partnership Boosts International Trade

We provide telemarketing services to a government department that is responsible for promoting, supporting international trade and investment.

They offer exporting businesses support through digital clinics, 1-2-1 support, trade advisor guidance, funding and regional & sector led events. The support can help businesses that wish to start exporting as well as those looking to grow their export sales. Working on behalf of two regional teams across the UK, we assist in identifying and engaging businesses with the support available.

WHAT THEY NEEDED

To hit its head office’s high targets, our client needs to encourage businesses across the region to sign up to the export support on offer. When connecting with businesses, they need to understand their export potential – for example, where businesses currently export to, what they export and where they see the potential for export growth.

Telemarketing was identified as a key method of engagement. Not only would it complement existing activity by advising businesses of the support available to them, it would also secure qualified appointments for the internal team. Due to the extent of support available, several teams are involved in engaging with businesses, helping develop a tailored export strategy depending on their current needs and potential. It was key to understand the qualification criteria for each area of support and determine the size of each opportunity so that appointments could be passed on to the most relevant team. For example, larger opportunities would be dealt with within the strategic partnerships team, while other leads may be passed on to specific trade advisors with sector-specific experience.

WHAT WE DID

We used open data on active exporters to populate a database with more than 50,000 fields of information and created a targeted list of priority businesses for direct marketing. We helped our client test a wide range of datasets – including companies with prior engagement with the team, data provided by head office and those that had contact with embassy staff internationally.

We also integrated closely with digital channels to follow up on leads generated through social media advertising and paid search campaigns. And supplemented these data sources with an additional data purchasing exercise. We modelled companies using multiple data points – including growth rates, SIC codes, size, and e-commerce activity to source a highly targeted dataset focussed on companies with a high propensity to export.

Due to the range of market segments, we targeted, it was important to adopt the correct positioning for each. For example, the messaging required when speaking to a manufacturing company exporting products was very different to an IT services provider or an e-commerce company looking at overseas channels. We, therefore, began by understanding the personas of decision makers, their main barriers to exporting and their pain points.

Using these insights, we developed targeted messaging which would reflect any issues, relating this back to the support they would receive. We found that some businesses, were doubtful as to whether exporting was relevant, or even achievable for them. A key element of the call was therefore working through the options available to them, alleviating concerns, and reassuring decision-makers that exporting wouldn’t necessarily entail high level investment initially.

Similarly, for those businesses that were already exporting, we had to engage with decision-makers to understand the nature of their current exports, existing export markets and any planned future export markets. Our client’s targets changed across the campaign, from targets based on the number of new exporters to targets based on export revenue generated. We had to be flexible in our campaign and data strategy to support our client and ensure we were working towards a shared objective.

On top of this, we enhanced the data throughout calling, mapping in decision-maker details and email addresses and building in additional information for future segmentation. This included sourcing employee and turnover details, current export markets and future export plans, as well as further qualitative information on the company’s barriers to exporting.

WHAT WE ACHIEVED

Across the two regions, we generated more than 800 qualified leads in total. We worked closely with stakeholders including both the regional and head office teams, providing customised reports for both. The reports gave the management the information it required to inform future segmentation and targeting strategy. The support tended to be longer-term in nature, with trade advisors typically supporting businesses across a prolonged period, in some cases up to a decade before achieving an export win. However, with our help our client achieved more than £1.5 million in export wins within the first year alone in one of the regions.