Champaign pops open 18% meeting rate for sales team

Zuora provides cloud-based software that enables companies to successfully launch, manage, and transform into a subscription-based business. Despite the company’s success, they needed a streamlined way to attract high-value targets. Zuora found a fix with Sendoso.

The demand generation team began utilizing direct mail as a creative way to reach decision-makers and influencers at top target accounts.

Initially, the team carried out each campaign in-house. It included recruiting employees from other parts of the organization for manual labor. They created assembly lines to organize, pack, and label hundreds of custom shipping packets. Zuora crews even transported the packets to FedEx.

Leaders found results were extremely difficult to track. They struggled with only having manual processes in place to measure sales follow-up and business impact. It also took employees away from their everyday tasks for a significant amount of time.

“It was extremely manual. I didn’t sleep for days,” recalled Senior Manager of Global Campaigns Emily Aradi.

Aradi needed a more efficient process to carry out campaigns.

On the recommendation of a colleague, Aradi chose to run a pilot campaign with Sendoso. Zuora saw enough success in the pilot to extend it for other direct mail programs.

Sendoso took the burden off workers who spent hours manually assembling direct mail gifting.

“If we’re spending all of our time assembling direct mail packages and tracking responses ourselves, we won’t have the capacity to optimize and scale the channel.” 

Aradi scaled the direct mail program and trained additional Zuora teams on Sendoso, including SDRs and account managers. She also pioneered a variety of physical and digital campaigns.

“We have a huge appreciation for all the things Sendoso does behind the scenes to make our lives easy. Now with Sendoso, we can focus more on overall strategy and coming up with meaningful and relevant offers that will delight and inspire our prospects.”

Zuora used the sending platform for their March Madness campaign. It garnered a 15% response rate. An Independence Day campaign saw a 22% response rate and a Whole Foods Thanksgiving gift card campaign generated a 20% response rate.

Armed with benchmarks to help forecast results and drive adoption, Aradi and her team were ready to launch a direct mail campaign with a high-impact gift item: champagne.

The goal was to secure sales meetings with target accounts where previous attempts were unsuccessful. 

Aradi’s team identified key company milestones relevant to Zuora. Those included companies that recently launched a subscription service, hired a new digital or innovation executive, or acquired another company that offers subscription services.

The team triggered a bottle of champagne to send each time a target reached any of those milestones.

The gift included a Zuora-branded box with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne. Aradi’s team added a personal touch by including a handwritten note of congratulations.

Zuora SDRs then used Sendoso’s Salesforce and Outreach.io integrations to follow up with personalized email sequences.

Sendoso tracking and analytics provided Zuora a line of sight into pipeline influenced.

“A critical element was the ability to serve real-time status tracking to maximize the impact of a timely follow-up and to ultimately increase the likelihood of a favorable outcome. In this case, meetings set.”

Leaders credited the champagne campaign’s success to several factors.

The flashy packaging caught the eye of recipients thanks to an intriguing “alcohol inside” sticker.  There was also a call to action. Recipients were also encouraged to share the champagne and personalized note with teammates to celebrate. 

The campaign also created multiple opportunities for SDRs to reach out to clients. First, to alert them about the champagne gift. Secondly, to confirm they received (and chilled) the bottle. 

“Giving the team multiple touchpoints is important. Direct mail gives our team a concrete reason to call and connect.”

Zuora received an incredible response to the campaign. It experienced a whopping 75% email open rate, 40% email response rate, and 18% meeting rate. 

Sendoso provided leaders with concrete analytics on the campaign. The sending platform allowed them to easily interpret the data and develop benchmarks for future campaigns. It has also provided a way for the Zuora team to launch and scale phase two of the champagne campaign with predictable results.

“We can now project that if we send a certain number of gifts, we’ll secure a certain number of meetings if we follow the formula and orchestration we’ve optimized,” explained Aradi. “I’ve got that down to a science, which is game-changing for setting expectations and getting buy-in from the most important stakeholders.”

The Zuora team found Sendoso’s analytics capabilities made it easy to plan for the future and to manage a budget. Beyond that, the team can now share expected outcomes in every Zuora direct mail campaign launch—whether it’s an eGift card or physical mailer.