Invest in What Works: Reallocate Your Budget to the Marketing Channels that Perform

Almost daily, I hear frustrated reports from my peers of promising opportunities in the pipeline dissolving right before they cross the finish line. With ads, marketing, and social no longer cutting through the noise, this question, “what does it take to get noticed?” keeps marketing and sales leaders up at night.

Our prospects are now receiving 121 emails, 60 phone calls, and countless DMs while sitting in back-to-back meetings. The data doesn’t lie: taking communication offline with a gifting strategy is a critical differentiator and your answer for how to create much-needed pattern interruptions.

Even if your revenue organization isn’t cutting costs at the moment, now is the time to reexamine the performance of your communication channels and make sure that your budgets are being spent on what works.

My goal in this post is to share ways your team can scale a hyper-personalized direct mail strategy that helps you reach your customer acquisition, expansion, and top-line revenue goals. Myself and the Sendoso team want to inspire revenue leaders everywhere to create their own out-of-the-box, multichannel strategies that result in more funnel conversions, response rates, and closed deals.

Marketing budget tip #1

Focus on customers first and channels second

Doubling down on digital channels has been the overwhelming go-to strategy in the wake of the pandemic. But now, even the biggest digital-only giants need new ways to attract attention. YouTube’s advertising revenue failing to meet market expectations[1] in the first quarter of 2022 is a prime example of the struggle to compete with other channels in an increasingly hybrid environment.

“Customer journeys have recalibrated post-lockdown. CMOs need to listen carefully to their customers and pay attention to the channels they are using.” -Ewan McIntyre, chief of research and vice president analyst in the Gartner for Marketing Leaders practice.[2]

Revenue leaders are re-examining how they get in front of customers, searching for unique ways to connect with them and keep their teams engaged. At Sendoso, we’ve witnessed the power of strategic gifting to target online and offline channels, resulting in predictable revenue growth.

Marketing budget tip #2

Use a multi-channel approach to cut through the noise

A total marketing and sales overhaul isn’t the answer. It’s not the channels that need to evolve–it’s how we use them. Marketers are re-thinking traditional digital efforts—especially after the iOS 14.5 update that enabled iPhone users to opt out of having apps track their activity.

With 80% of iPhone users choosing to turn off tracking, targeted ads have become less efficient, skyrocketing the cost of customer acquisition.[3] With ballooning prices and less trust in platforms like Facebook, marketers should be using offline channels that integrate with their existing tech stack to regain lost attention.

Marketing budget tip #3

Take a metrics-driven approach to the business needs

“It’s imperative that 2022’s budget optimism must turn to budget optimization. And while the best time to plan for fiscal uncertainty was yesterday, the next best time is today. Start by building scenario plans, looking at potential downstream implications of fiscal and geopolitical upheaval” – Gartner [4]

The recent shift from digital-first marketing efforts to more hybrid strategies has marketers dedicating almost half of their total budgets to offline channels. Why the rebound of traditional direct-mail efforts like intelligent gifting? [4]

According to Gartner, meeting customers where they are “requires tools and competencies to understand increasingly complex and changeable customer journeys. It requires the capability to deploy the right message through the right channel (be it online or offline) at the right time. And it requires an agile marketing function, able to flex plans when journeys inevitably change.” [4]

Marketing is looking at things like cost per acquisition and cost per lead. Sales is looking at things like sales cycle rate and average conversion rate. As a combined revenue team, they can integrate their metrics to develop strategies that lead to a common revenue goal.

3 Salesforce dashboards to monitor your sending strategy

“As a metrics-driven marketer, I look to Salesforce to guide a lot of the decisions that I make. I look for opportunities and conversion rates that need to be optimized. If opportunities aren’t converting even when you have the right persona, account, or company, that’s the time to fill in the gap and approach that connection with a physical or virtual gift” ⁠—Sid Mistry, VP of marketing at Instrumental [5]

1. Identify pipeline gaps with the “Pipe Gen” dashboard

This Salesforce dashboard helps you pay closer attention to growth metrics and overall revenue progress. The Pipe Gen dashboard lets you know where you are on your journey to hit your revenue target by quickly spotting underperforming pipelines at the beginning of the sales cycle.[5]

Pro gifting tip: Learn more about how eGifts can be used as door-openers that finally get your reps in front of difficult-to-reach prospects. They can also use them for demos and meetings.

2. Make the best use of your resources with Activities, Meetings, and Pipeline (AMP) dashboard

Meetings (face-to-face or via Zoom) are foundational to a strong pipeline. The AMP dashboard allows you to measure how many overall interactions it takes to close a deal. It reveals the data to show how your reps spend their time by giving you stats like daily calls, emails, video meetings, text messages, or LinkedIn messages. [5]

“Justifying the value of Sendoso for SDR or BDR teams comes from understanding the conversion of meetings set to meetings booked. We saw a direct impact on how much pipeline  we were able to generate at the top of the funnel.” ⁠—Sid Mistry, VP of marketing at Instrumental

3. Measure your gift confirmation rates with Send Tracker

Timing is everything when it comes to effective gifting. Send Tracker allows your reps to time their outreach to the minute for maximum response rates. Visibility gives your team confidence that packages arrive in the right hands at the right time. With Address Confirmation, reps can request that prospects confirm or change their address to wherever they’re currently working, which is critical within our new hybrid working model.

To see this in action, check out how Snapdocs is seeing an 84% confirmation rate from recipients!

Marketing budget tip #4

Pay attention to marketing channels that perform well and reinvest

Not to beat up the same horse, but 2022 is offering unique challenges to marketers across the globe. Whether you are faced with budget cuts or budget optimization, it’s time to hyperfocus on your marketing channels that are low performing–and reallocate that budget to the better performing channels.

Yes, the digital age of marketing is here to stay. But if your marketing budget is faced with justifying your new-to-market Youtube strategy, or an ABM campaign that has high ROI for your sales department, I think you know the answer on where to invest in terms of marketing priorities.

With a direct mail approach to ABM, a gifting strategy is a high-performing channel for marketers across the globe. It makes the most of the leads you have and revives cold leads that otherwise would have been lost. But don’t just take my word for it:

Success snapshot

RollWorks used gift sending to refresh their ABM strategy and increased response rates

RollWorks needed to create a truly differentiated ABM strategy. Katie Dunn, director of demand gen, knew sending personalized gifts to her target accounts was crucial but was overwhelmed by the time and effort it would take to send hundreds of physical items.

To drive net new pipeline without bogging down her team, Katie turned to Sendoso for both evergreen and micro-ABM campaigns.

• She targeted closed/lost opportunities with Sendoso-sent Aperol Spritz kits and Sendoso cocktail kits.
• For accounts that didn’t respond to sales sequences within two weeks, she sent DoorDash eGift cards scheduled to arrive on Sundays.

“Sendoso has made the experience of corporate gifting a must-have. Direct mail works, and it continues to work. And Sendoso takes it an extra mile.” —Katie Dunn, director of demand generation

Success snapshot

Samsara created an award-winning sending campaign to spark quality conversations and revive hundreds of cold accounts

Before bringing on Sendoso, Samsara had already tried its hand at direct mail campaigns but quickly learned that the process was time-consuming and difficult to track. Workers could not scale the campaigns due to logistical challenges, and tracking gift sends one by one wasn’t feasible.

“Our audience is often busy and can be hard to reach, but our direct mail campaigns with Sendoso help get our message through.” ⁠—Katie Downey, Senior Marketing Manager

One of the company’s best sending programs was the “Let’s Meat” campaign, which aimed to book demos with targeted accounts that had historically low responses. As a result, Samsara was able to create a low-cost, highly-personalized, yet scalable campaign with each recipient receiving branded beef-jerky with a fun message that said, “Open for a treat inside.”

• This campaign influenced multiple closed-won deals and drove a 250% increase in pipeline sourced from a direct mail campaign.
• This was their most successful direct mail campaign to date.

Make the most of your marketing budget with strategic gifting

As our prospect’s inboxes become more cluttered by the day, we need differentiated gifting strategies to stand out and open doors that build robust pipelines. In 2022, ads, marketing, and social media aren’t enough to cut through the noise. It’s time to reexamine the performance of your channels and reallocate budgets to increase top-line revenue.

A scalable, multichannel approach that mixes offline and online efforts will regain the attention we’re struggling to capture as the traditional channels lose steam. When executing these new strategies, we must continue to:

• Monitor key metrics like pipeline performance
• Sales KPIs
• Measurable gifting

This is the only way to ensure we’re investing our budgets wisely during a recession.

At Sendoso, we have no shortage of campaign success stories to inspire your team in creating their own out-of-the-box revenue growth strategy. What all of these creative gifting strategies have in common is that they’re scalable, measurable, and have a direct impact on top-line revenue.

For corporate gifting that cuts through the noise, Sendoso is a must-have in your marketing budget. If you need help reallocating funds from underperforming channels to ones that deliver ROI, no matter the economy, let us show you how!

The Send in an Expert Thought Leadership Series

Your go-to source for gifting strategies you can trust. From Board Advisors, CEOs, CMOs, and more, this thought leadership series will house time-tested strategies and insights that get you results. Learn new sales strategies, read our latest marketing findings, and use our actionable plans to kickstart your journey in integrating gifting within your company. After all, relationships matter: so let your marketing, sales, HR, and CX teams build them.

References

1. Elias, Jennifer. “YouTube’s huge miss shows digital media ad market is getting hit hard” Retrieved June 15, 2022 from: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/26/youtubes-huge-miss-shows-digital-media-ad-market-is-getting-hit-hard.html
2. Costello, Katie. “Gartner Survey Reveals Marketing Budgets Have Increased to 9.5% of Overall Company Revenue in 2022” Retrieved June 15, 2022 from: https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/gartner-survey-reveals-marketing-budgets-have-increased-to-9-5–
3. Nelson, Candace “Why Small Businesses Should Be on TikTok” Retrieved June 15, 2022 from: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-small-businesses-should-be-on-tiktok-11651247260
4. McIntyre, Ewan. “The State of Marketing Budget and Strategy 2022” Retrieved June 15, 2022 from: https://emtemp.gcom.cloud/ngw/globalassets/en/marketing/documents/marketing_budgets_2022_research.pdf
5. Meng, Felix. “7 Sales Dashboard Examples Every Leader Needs” Retrieved June 15, 2022 from: https://www.salesforce.com/blog/sales-management-dashboards/