Upfront Business Development

Ensuring Experian CheetahMail capitalise on an event to win new business

"Upfront are great not just at tactical projects such as filling events, but more importantly, finding new prospects and building long-term relationships to nurture them through the sales cycle, which helps our sales team be more effective."
 

Roy Jugessur - Head of Sales, Experian CheetahMail

Experian CheetahMail is the trusted service provider of email marketing and customer intelligence technologies for top enterprises worldwide. They asked Upfront to help make their annual Retail conference a success by getting the biggest names to attend.

The approach – looking at it as a new business exercise

The audience for the conference was, naturally, companies Experian CheetahMail was keen to work with, including decision makers and key influencers. So we decided to approach this as a new business campaign.

Our short-term priority was obviously ‘to get bums on seats’, but we always had our longer-term objective in mind, which was ultimately to help Experian CheetahMail win new business.

We started by putting together a bespoke list of retailers, and sourcing key contacts at each company, and we began calling them within two days. As well as generating strong interest in the conference and a high number of sign ups, we were able to use the event as a springboard for establishing ongoing contact with prospects.

The outcome – a successful event and several new clients

After the conference, which was a big success, we sent all delegates follow-up material by post. This has enabled Experian CheetahMail to embark on an ongoing new business programme, which now is at the heart of their marketing activity.

Other successes include:

• 100% increase in sign-ups for the conference, directly attributed to Upfront’s calling activity
• 32 attendees signed up as a result of our calls, with 63% attending.
• Meetings secured with a number of leading retailers as a result of post-event follow up
• Over 50 appointments generated over a 12 month period
• 42% of appointments attended have turned into clearly defined opportunities (brief, pitch, RFP)
• Business has been won with 7 major multi channel retailers, including entire John Lewis business