Analyzing Outbound Campaigns - July 2023 Performance

Chiirp Revenue Performance

👋 Hey, Jon here! After a strong June finish across the board, July hasn’t shown much of a slowdown in terms of demand. This week’s newsletter will take a look at Chiirp's outbound campaigns and how they performed in terms of response rates, revenue opportunity, and closed revenue.

Thoughtful outbound campaigns can be very impactful (the data says so!) especially during the busy season when lead volume increases and follow-up becomes less at the forefront.

PS - our CEO, Kevin LeSage, will be co-presenting with Katie Donovan (CEO - CAMP Digital) at CAMP Digital’s upcoming Digital Marketing Summit at Google NYC on August 22nd, 2023!

If you’re interested in attending the event (I highly recommend it!) you can RSVP here. Shoutout to CAMP for being kind enough to invite us to the event :)

With that, let’s dive into the data!

Chiirp Outbound Campaigns Had a 15.9% Response Rate in July

In this sample of 3 separate businesses in different locations, outbound communication was sent to over 16,500 unique customers and nearly 16% of those customers responded.

Last month, we saw a 9.7% response rate, but it was to a much larger audience (+80%).

Total responses dropped just 14% despite a much smaller audience size than the prior month.

I’ll cover how that impacted close revenue and revenue opportunity in the following sections, but I know that “unsubscribes” are a constant worry of any outbound campaign and I think the data suggests that you don’t need to be afraid of going to smaller audiences with more targeted messaging.

Let’s look at how the rest of the month-over-month data performed 👇

Total Revenue Opportunity from Outbound Campaigns Decreased By 26% But Was Above $3.3 million

The total revenue opportunity (the sum of unsold estimates, sold jobs, and closed jobs attributed to Chiirp based on events-driven data) decreased from the prior month but still generated over $3.3 million in revenue opportunity for just 3 locations.

Unsold estimate campaigns drove far and away the highest revenue opportunity out of any other campaign, but only had the sixth-largest audience out of the 50+ campaigns analyzed.

The number of booked customers did decrease by 35%, but this was not proportional to the audience size reduction (80%).

Despite less revenue opportunity, the campaigns were more efficient on a per-customer basis and still generated over seven figures of opportunity per location.

Average Tickets Increased 2% Month-Over-Month

Average tickets increased again, but only slightly as they were already high from peak numbers in June.

This is likely because much of the success in terms of revenue generation came from campaigns focused on the follow-up of unsold estimates.

Smaller dollar special offer campaigns were still impactful (some generating five figures in closed revenue) but many of those tech flips are still in the unsold estimate category.

My hunch is that ticket prices might be peaking and will come back down a bit in August, but only time (and the weather) will tell!

Closed Revenue From Outbound Campaigns Decreased 20% Month-Over-Month to $2.58 Million

Chiirp generated over $860,000 in closed revenue from net-new jobs per location in this sample for the month of July - so while it was down from June, these are still very impressive numbers.

There are always trade-offs when implementing a new marketing tool, process, etc. but if you’re debating about adding outbound campaigns to your strategy, here’s the framework I use when making recommendations to businesses:

When I am consulting on revenue performance, the first thing I am looking at is the ratio between total revenue opportunity and closed revenue.

Most businesses close about half of their revenue opportunity but this tends to slip in the summer months because of the continued flow of calls, forms, chats, etc. to the business.

This means that the revenue number from unsold estimates grows and grows, so when a business tells me they’re doing well, but want to know where they’re leaving opportunity on the table and ask how to fix it, this is typically the lowest hanging fruit.

Outbound campaigns can create demand (typically through an attractive low-dollar offer to get a tech in the home) but they can also channel demand back to your business when sent at the right times in the sales cycle.

The two top-performing campaigns in July were unsold estimate follow-ups and they generated over seven figures of net-new closed revenue.

If you’re seeing trends of increased conversions from your ad campaigns, but closed revenue is only going up slightly, take a close look at your follow-up process.

This is where I am seeing a majority of businesses leave dollars on the table, and whether or not it’s automated, outbound touchpoints and more focused messaging can help you capitalize on this opportunity.

It is a tough balancing act, especially with capacity, but increased marketing costs means that every lead and customer in your funnel counts even more so than it has in the past.

Until next time . . .

-Jon