How Belkins funnelled about 40 appointments for a SCaaS company in 4 months

Problems

Located in the US, the PowerBuy app is available worldwide. So the company needed an agency to capture top-quality leads at scale from all over the world.

1. Educating clients. Although social selling is nothing new for the US, Asian markets are a decade ahead. The numbers speak for themselves: China sold ten times more on social media platforms like WeChat and sub-apps ($186B) than the US ($19B). While Facebook is trying to catch up with its new Checkout feature on Instagram, B2C companies can already keep exploring other social shopping apps and need to learn more about opening opportunities.
2. Finding a strong acquisition partner. Willing to expand globally, PowerBuy realized that their in-house sales resources are limited, so it’s better to outsource the top of the sales funnel activities to a third-party agency. PowerBuy had previously hired a lead generation agency to do a cold outreach for them, but their partnership didn’t work out. They just wanted to get more potential customers via Belkins.
3. Complicated targeting. PowerBuy’s ICP suggested that the target audience is hosted on Shopify and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

What we did

1) Found a broad range of lead sources. Belkins found a lot of leads on Shopify and AWS to get the best target for PowerBuy. Shopify and AWS are no strangers to social shopping, enabling product discovery and shopping on TikTok, Twitter, and other social platforms. That’s why the Belkins team believes that they can reach out to PowerBuy’s target audience through these sites.

1. Hand-curated lead research. Initially, the Belkins team had difficulty in finding companies hosted on Shopify and AWS. The lead researchers had to check each company’s website whether they have an online shop or not.
2. The right tools. The Belkins team found a highly effective sales tool that identified technology each company uses.
3. The ICP framework. Fitting each lead against PowerBuy’s Ideal Customer Profile allows Belkins to select only the best-fitting targets.

2) Adjusted our sales approach. Even though PowerBuy was a great product/market fit and Belkins knew an ICP and BPs, sales approaches had to be revised and corrected along the way until the best one was found. In addition to the right sales stack and lead research, the team has to polish its cold outreach tactics, from subject lines to locations for sales meetings.

1. Added cuteness to create working templates. Belkins team didn’t hit the sweet spot right away. Only after we adjusted our email templates did we get a great result. PowerBuy was gracious enough to allow us to be playful in email copy. We had the sweetest subject line ever: “{{FirstName}} + me + coffee = new customers.” This cuteness and playfulness resulted in great open rates.
2. F2F approach was favored by Tyler Brewer, VP of Growth & Success at PowerBuy, and, at one point, he took off to another city almost 311 miles away to meet a prospective client. Given the pandemic and post-pandemic environment, it was an extreme step, but it proved his trust in our quality prospecting strategies.

Results

1. The right targets. The number of high-quality leads and appointments is Belkins’ key achievement on this project. The right sales approach and flexibility brought in 4,000 leads in three months. At that time we were not sure about the exact number of appointments, but we were confident that the number will be impressive because Belkins knows how to do its job well.
2. Higher open rate. Due to Belkins’ email deliverability solution Folderly, we know how not to get to spam and reduce bounces. However, we believe we secured a 65% email open rate for PowerBuy because we figured out engaging subject lines that prospects are curious to click on and click through.

1. Market growth. Belkins performance impressed PowerBuy and expanded their reach. Belkins team has been booked for the next three months to continue working out the global market and accelerate sales revenues.

   Basing our marketing approach on accurate lead research and flexible adjustments of other lead nurturing tactics, Belkins targets the right leads and delivers outstanding results.

2. Scheduled appointments. Belkins team determined the powerful marketing strategies and chose the most appropriate tactics for their implementation. As a result of the 4-month project, 38 highly-qualified appointments were scheduled and a lot of potential deals were delivered.

Key takeaways

• Create new email templates per campaign. Belkins team has no problem with coming up with new templates for each cold email outreach campaign. Templates are usually tailored to the client and its audience. PowerBuy allowed for playfulness, and the Belkins team was able to use cute email templates to engage the audience.
• Be prepared to test and adjust. It’s incorrect to think that experienced professionals run sales campaigns smoothly, without a hitch. Belkins performance was impressive because it follows a formula:

Things weren’t going as smoothly as we expected at first, but then we changed our research tactics a little bit and adjusted email templates. And the results were great. You can read about the results and the client's opinion on Clutch, the leading ratings and reviews platform.

• Do groundwork before lead generation. Clients can boost the effectiveness of outsourced campaigns if they figure out what makes the right target for them and what goes into lead research. We spent some time on their groundwork. In this case, the right target and easy/friendly templates were key to success.
• Harness the hottest e-commerce trends. Belkins knew online sales had been on the rise since the onset of the global pandemic. When the market is ripe, the only thing left to do is to develop ways to help people do what they want. In this case, customers want to use omnichannel transactions and make purchases on mobile devices. PowerBuy provides for all of those activities.

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