YorkTest

Penetrating the U.S. market: How Belkins helped YorkTest scale an innovative product and close first deals

  • 5appointments booked per month
  • 95%customer satisfaction rate
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CategoryAppointment Setting
IndustryHealthcare & Pharmaceutical
HeadquartersYork, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Company size51-200 employees

About YorkTest

YorkTest is a leading health and wellness company with over 40 years of excellence and scientific expertise in providing home-to-laboratory tests and health and wellness consultancy services. Their food intolerance tests have helped thousands of people identify sensitivities, optimize their diets, and improve their well-being.

With a 92% customer satisfaction rate, YorkTest includes personalized nutritional aftercare with every full test.

Responsible team
iconAccount manager: 1
iconSDR: 1
iconLead researcher: 1
iconCopywriter: 1

Client’s challenge

U.S. market penetration. While they had an established database and strategy for reaching prospects in the United Kingdom, they needed a team with solid expertise to develop a scalable lead generation strategy for the U.S. market. However, their research capacity was limited for this.

Solutions

  • ICP identification and modification. We decided to target two different audiences — HR professionals and employee benefits managers. To cater to these audiences, we adjusted our value propositions accordingly. We also sought to build partnerships with brokers, showcasing the benefits of reselling the tests and earning profits. When targeting HRs, our focus was on educating them about the client’s product, illustrating how it could help them retain employees and attract new talents.

Once we figured out that HRs are not really open to testing any new benefits and didn’t respond to our emails, we changed the ICP a bit to HRs within innovative and progressive verticals such as software development and digital marketing.

  • Lead research. In the initial 3 months, we conducted tests targeting employee benefits brokers and HRs. However, since HRs were unresponsive during the early stages, we shifted our strategy to solely focus on brokers for the next 2 months. While they performed better initially, the overall ROI was low. To increase ROI, we collaborated with the client to expand the audience and develop a scalable strategy to engage HRs and employee benefits managers.
  • Implementation of 2 hybrid outreach campaigns for various target audiences. We designed two prospect engagement workflows, tailoring them to different target audiences. Each campaign comprised 3 parts — cold email outreach, LinkedIn outreach, and LinkedIn content creation and promotion.

Cold outreach campaign for HRs (US)

This is how our 4-step workflow looked:

  • Step 1: LinkedIn connections and audience warm-up

We sent connection invitations to members of employee benefits LinkedIn groups and filtered them accordingly. By establishing connections, we increased the chances of having them join the client’s LinkedIn network. Additionally, this step enhanced the effectiveness of the email outreach campaign. We allowed two weeks for prospects to accept the invitation and warmed up the audience with relevant content.

Boosting client’s LinkedIn network

  • Step 2. Email outreach

We crafted personalized templates, leveraging the fact that we were already connected with these individuals on LinkedIn. If prospects responded negatively, we allowed them one month to cool down before implementing an educational campaign with another email sequence.

  • Step 3. Educational campaign

Over 4 weeks, we produced 6 to 8 publications as part of an educational campaign. The goal was to keep the client on the prospects’ radar and ensure their need for food sensitivity testing in their process. We generated content to attract relevant audiences to the client’s profile.

  • Step 4. LinkedIn outreach campaign

Two weeks later, we engaged prospects in our LinkedIn outreach. The mechanics were similar to the email outreach, with the only difference in the number of waves and appearances both in messages and the prospects’ newsfeeds. This approach helped us significantly increase the response rates.

Prospect engagement workflow

Results
  • 95%customer satisfaction rate
  • 5appointments booked per month
  • 50%cold email open rate

It’s worth mentioning that this project was oriented towards tackling the challenges and the quality of outcomes rather than quantitative numbers. With the customized workflow and modified strategies, we found a way how to convert responses from not interested to interested.

  • In the first three months, we delivered approximately 3,000 broker leads and 1,500 HRs leads. Once we shifted the strategy primarily focused on HRs, we delivered 3,000 more leads in the rest 2 months.
  • An average open rate was around 30%, but after testing different subject lines we achieved 50%. In terms of response rates, they had a solid 3–5%.
  • On average, we were delivering 5 appointments per month. This led to the first closed deals.
  • The deal the client should close soon is going to be the biggest one signed in the U.S.

Challenges Belkins encountered

  1. Targeting brokers that would yield immediate results. Finding prospects who would convert into clients proved challenging in this niche, as the client’s product was new to the B2B realm. Despite numerous calls with prospects, the conversion rate remained low. Thus, our campaign focused on educating and engaging the target audience through multiple channels.
  2. Get HRs interested in the product. Similar to the brokers, we needed to find an approach that would facilitate HRs exploring the client’s product and understanding the value. With this purpose, we incorporated an educational campaign through LinkedIn to boost the client’s online presence and educate the audience in a non-salesy manner.
  3. New product to B2B sector. YorkTest pioneered the US market but faced a challenge with demand while targeting B2B prospects. They showed no interest in the client's product as it did not address the needs of their employees. That’s why we refocused our strategy to target employee benefits managers within innovative and progressive verticals, such as software development and digital marketing, who would be more receptive to the client’s offer.
  • Reading duration10 min
  • Published3 Aug 2023
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