HVAC Outbound Campaign Performance Analysis: April 2023

👋 Hey, Jon here. Last month, I wrote about our new integration with Chiirp to accurately attribute outbound campaigns to new revenue generated, and I have a lot more data to share with you!! We saw April bring back more demand (higher lead volume) but didn’t see as much new revenue generated through organic and paid channels largely because a smaller percentage of leads turned into paying customers. This is where an outbound strategy can really help move the needle.

We continue to see powerful results from Chiirp (both direct responses and indirect responses) when used properly.

Note: This data is from four locations across the US, and accounts for over 26,000 customers who were Chiirp’d at (received outbound campaign messages via Chiirp).

With that, let’s dive in!

Outbound Campaigns Generated Over $1.5 million of Revenue Opportunity in April

Revenue potential is the sum of estimates (one per customer), sold revenue (scheduled but not completed) and closed revenue (completed and collected), which helps us understand the total revenue opportunity generated from a marketing channel or conversion tool.

Outbound campaigns generated over $1.5 million of opportunity across four locations for the month of April, which is pretty impressive considering the total cost basis of these campaigns was ~$5,000.

That’s a 300x return on investment in terms of potential revenue.

When tracking these returns with our platform, we are looking at both indirect and direct responses and account for when appointments are booked, when jobs are completed and when these messages are sent out to truly understand net-new revenue opportunity.

I wrote last time that we’ve seen fall-out-of-your-chair performance with outbound campaign revenue performance and that trend has continued throughout April and into May.

Considering that these are customers who are in some stage of the sales cycle with your company the data suggests they are one of, if not the best, audience to target with specific messaging.

We recently heard from a client that their outbound tune-up campaign generated a lot of direct responses with people saying they didn’t need tune-ups, but needed something else.

And those “something elses” were often higher ticket jobs.

Everyone is busy and has a million items are their to-do list, especially during the summer (travel season, anyone!?). While this feedback is anecdotal, it does show the power of making it convenient for your customers with with targeted messages delivered right to their phones.

Outbound Campaigns Generated $769,281 in Closed Revenue

On a $5,000 investment, $769,281 of closed revenue works out to a 154x return on investment. That is a staggeringly high return and the same client referenced above also went on to say that they couldn’t generate new revenue this inexpensively anywhere else.

It’s worth noting that 62% of customers who booked an appointment did so via a direct response to the outbound campaign (versus indirect - receiving a message and later converting via the website).

The highest-performing campaigns were tune-up offer focused and sent to the largest possible audience within that businesses’ client base.

We saw multiple tune-up campaigns generate over six-figures of closed revenue.

Outbound Campaigns Converted 2.7% of Customers

Just over 10% of customers who received an outbound message responded to it.

And of all customers who received a message, 2.7% of them turned into paying customers with a net-new job.

We’re still in the early stages of tracking this aspect of revenue flow, but initial signs point to volume campaigns with compelling offers to reengage customers as the best revenue-driving campaigns.

Lead follow-up campaigns are a close second, despite having a much smaller audience, because the conversion rate was much higher (just above 30%).

Outbound Campaigns Generated An Average Ticket of $2,464.93

Despite the bulk of messages focused on highly discounted tune-up offers across multiple locations, those converted customers spent an average of $2,464.93 on jobs generated from these campaigns.

As we get more adoption and data, I will write further about campaign strategies and the optimal mixes to optimize revenue at different points throughout the year, but again, this is an early indication is that receiving discounted offers can lead to up-sells for higher average tickets.

Closing Thoughts

Whenever I am analyzing data and consulting clients, I am usually looking at three levers of efficiency improvement:

(1) Lead volume and quality

(2) Lead handling and marketing operations

(3) Outbound and sales follow-ups

Of course there is much more to look at, but generally, almost always one of these three levers could be improved to have outsized results on performance.

Throughout the history of this substack, I’ve largely written #1 and #2 on this list, but now that our platform has expanded capabilities to track outbound campaigns, this data will become a regular feature due to how powerful the performance has been.

Multiple businesses recently told me that despite higher lead volumes in April, they were still off-budget for revenue, and that outbound campaigns really saved them and provided a much-needed bump in revenue while they struggled to close inbound leads.

Until next time . . .

Jon