Analyzing Outbound Campaigns - May 2023 Performance

👋 Hey, Jon here! Lead volumes are trending in the right direction, customer acquisition costs are starting to see month-over-month declines (still a bit higher year-over-year though) and closed revenue has seen a welcome growth as we enter the summer months.

However, and this is a big however.

Unsold estimate volume is creeping up, and in many cases, we are seeing it at 2x of closed revenue.

When I analyze business performance using our data, I focus on how well revenue opportunity moves through the sales pipeline. A bunch of new leads are great, but if they’re getting “stuck” somewhere in the sales process, it’s an opportunity for improvement or budget adjustment.

During the busy season, the most common trend I see (via the data) is that revenue potential from estimates grows because the focus is on converting new leads.

I’ve written about Chiirp outbound campaign performance a few times, and capacity is certainly a factor, but if you aren’t doing some form of outbound campaigns, you are missing opportunity. PPC had really strong performance last month, but the pipeline (sold revenue) was down 23%. This is when outbound campaigns can help re-engage customers who already have an estimate or are in some stage of your sales cycle.

Let’s dive in!

Chiirp Outbound Campaigns Had a 15.8% Response Rate in May

This is up nearly 6% from the prior month. If you text 100 people, based on this sample of over 7,000 outbounds, you could expect nearly 16 of them to respond.

The key is context, timing and audience.

6% of customers who received a text message ended up booking an appointment, but some campaigns fared better than others, and the key will be testing your own audiences and messaging to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

You can actually watch this video starting at 14:43 to hear Jon Ryan (President, Genz-Ryan Plumbing & Heating) talk to Ryan Fenn (Chiirp) about using data to figure out what’s working and double-down on it.

62% of Closed Revenue Came from Unsold Estimate Follow-Up

Out of 20 campaigns, 62% of closed revenue came from 1 campaign focused on unsold estimate follow-up.

I’ll nerd out briefly for a minute - if you aren’t familiar with the Pareto Principle (the 80/20 rule), it’s worth reading about. You’d be surprised at how frequently it shows up in the real world, and it actually shows up in the Chiirp data.

The Pareto Principle is usually recognized as something like “80% of revenue comes from 20% of customers” or “80% of points scored in the NBA come from 20% of the players”.

In our case here, 15% of outbound campaigns generated about 80% of the closed revenue.

The first two articles I wrote about outbound campaigns highlighted just how much revenue they were bringing in with the hope that it would show this audience the power of targeting messaging to an existing customer base.

The next phase of the analysis is figuring out what messaging and audiences in particular are driving revenue, which in May was:

(1) Open Estimate Follow-up

(2) Lead Follow-up

These two campaigns (named differently across different businesses, but the audience and messages are similar) dominated when it came to revenue performance.

For example, nearly 14% of customers in the open estimate category ended up with net-new revenue directly from that outbound campaign.

So, if you finish the month with 300 unsold estimates, turning them into an audience with targeting messaging could help you close 14% of them.

That campaign in particular generated over half a million dollars in closed revenue.

Analyzing the Performance of Outbound Campaigns Based On Audience Sizes

Early data showed that larger audiences tended to bring in larger volumes of revenue, which made a lot of sense.

More messages = more at-bats = more conversions.

However, now that we have more data, more messages don’t always equal more revenue.

Some audiences punched far above their weight. Specifically, open estimate follow-up and lead follow-ups had medium-size audiences of a few hundred customers and generated more revenue than broader tune-up or annual maintenance reminder audiences that included a few thousand people.

The takeaway?

Spend time analyzing your campaigns - the audience, the messaging and the timing.

Specifically, look for the 20% of campaigns generating 80% of the closed revenue.

If you know what audiences and messaging work well for your business, you can double-down on those, refine and improve to increase your ROI.

We saw audiences as small as 15 people still generate $5,000 - $10,000 in closed revenue, but audiences of 10 or fewer people generated $0.

The highest response rate campaign was open/unsold estimates, with nearly 50% of those who received a message responding. That campaign also had the highest average ticket (as expected).

If I had a high number of unsold estimates entering a new month, that’s the first campaign I would start with.

Chiirp Generated $747,000 in Closed Revenue Across 3 Locations in May

Each month, I report closed revenue from a sample of accounts using Chiirp outbound campaigns.

I know I sound like a broken record in that each month I emphatically share that outbound campaigns work and generate outsized revenue and ROI, but it’s always good to put numbers against it.

In May, across 3 businesses, outbound campaigns generated about $750,000 in net-new closed revenue, with over $1.6 million of revenue opportunity (this number includes new unsold estimates and sold jobs).

Even if lead volume is strong and your job board is full, keep in mind how effective outbound campaigns are at driving revenue.

Until next time . . .

-Jon