Grow your business through better leads and conversion.
Pool service companies know that new customers are vital to sustaining and growing their business! Whether you want to grow weekly service or repair, new pool customers must be cultivated. And that requires two basic steps; 1) generating more high quality leads and; 2) converting more leads into new customers.

The secret to high quality leads - generating qualified phone calls.
Here’s a simple fact. The most people call when they make bigger ticket decisions such as weekly pool service, repair, or replacement liners. But in today’s digital world some companies are obsessed with clicks or web forms. Most experienced pool service companies will tell you they prefer a call over a click any day. You simply can’t sell weekly service without speaking to the prospect on the phone and setting up an appointment. So service companies should judge their marketing programs by the number of high quality phone calls directed to their business. Here are the facts from a BIA/Kelsey survey:

• 86% of businesses say calls are the best leads they receive.
• Calls are 12x more likely to become customers than web leads.
• Only 2% of web leads convert to customers.
• Web leads are passive. They are a “sit back and wait until the consumer is doing comparative shopping” approach. Then you are just one of many options that must compete.

The problem and solution.
Most pool service companies don’t have the expertise to proactively drive or improve high quality phone call leads and conversions on their own. And to this point they have had no viable third party options. Recognizing the problem, Xmente created a cost effective solution to help service companies reach and close more high quality weekly service prospects in their service areas. This white paper outlines our solution:

STEP 1 - Reach the Most Qualified Prospects.
Everything begins with reaching the right prospects with your advertising message. A qualified prospect who doesn’t receive your message has no chance to respond. Advertising to unqualified individuals is a waste of time and money. Since only 5% of the average households across the US own an in-ground swimming pool, it should not be surprising that traditional advertising methods such as broadcast, print and outdoor are extremely inefficient. And our research found that email, pay-per-click and online advertising approaches are also inefficient. (To learn more contact Steve Carlyle for our free White Paper: How to Choose the Most Effective Advertising Methods for Selling Weekly Pool Service.) To reach the most qualified prospects, Xmente offers three products:

1. Intelligent Weekly Service Prospect lists. We applied our expertise in large-scale data mining and analytics to over 239 million consumers nationwide to develop the most complete and current address list of weekly service prospects available today. Now you can reach more highly qualified prospects than any other list or advertising option available.
2. Growth Opportunity Assessment. Xmente created this tool to help visualize the number and location of the most highly qualified prospects in your specific trade area. This allows service companies to concentrate marketing efforts on prospects that are easier and more cost effective to service. Xmente’s direct mail is the only advertising method that uses evidence to “dial in” the criteria that delivers the best odds of success – and this assessment is available for free! No Obligation - Contact Steve right now for a free Growth Opportunity Assessment.
3. BP Direct Mail Postcards. (BP = Best Practice) We can design, print and mail high quality, full color both sides, oversize 6”x11” postcards using direct mail “best practices” to give you the best return for your marketing investment. Working with you, we can handle everything from design to delivery. Don’t get swept away by the digital world. With almost 100% reach and an average “open rate” of nearly 80%, direct mail is clearly the optimum choice. No digital or traditional mass media method can approach that.

EXAMPLE - Here’s an example of our Intelligent Weekly Service Prospect List.

Working with a multi-route service company we were able to provide a weekly service prospect list that included three types of prospects:

1. Qualified Existing Pool Owners Not On Weekly Service – Existing pool owners who have sufficient home worthiness and discretionary income to afford a pool service.
2. Existing Pool Owners on Weekly Service – Existing pool owners already using weekly service who may be a candidate for a change.
3. Qualified New Pool Owners – New pool owners who have sufficient home worthiness and discretionary income and may be interested in weekly pool service.

We were able to produce this data for reasonably sized batch mailings with excellent success.

STEP 2 - Deliver the Most Effective Message.
You have 3-5 seconds to get your prospects attention, period! We call it the “Three Second Moment of Truth.” This means the front panel of your direct mail postcard is critical. Here are the guidelines we follow that have proven to deliver the best results:

1. A concise front panel headline designed so the recipient immediately knows what you’re selling and what’s in it for them. The purpose of your first line is to get people to read further. It should be succinct. It should be highly targeted to your customer segment. And it should stand out and demand attention. On the average, eight out of ten people will read the headline of a well-designed direct mail piece and then decide whether to read further.
2. A compelling offer on the front panel. Direct marketing pieces should include an offer that is sufficiently compelling to drive customers to take the desired action (call a number). The offer should appear front and center and encourage people to act NOW. When in doubt, offer more. The offer can be considered an experiment because response rate is unknown in advance. You can tune up future campaigns based on the results.
3. Focus on benefits. One of the biggest errors people make in advertising is stating features, rather than benefits. Never assume recipients know what benefit can be derived from your product or service.
4. Call to action drives phone calls. Tell prospects exactly what you want them to do – CALL THIS NUMBER NOW to receive the compelling offer.
5. Contact pathway. Whatever you ask prospects to do, give them the means to do it — provide the phone number right away.
6. Company name and logo. Although this needs to be on the front and back of the mailer, it shouldn’t overshadow the offer. Customers care most about what you can do for them — not who you are or how great you say you are.
7. A word on graphics. One of the biggest errors people make in direct mail advertising is focusing on graphics rather than the objective. Direct mail is not a graphics or art contest, its objective is to support acquiring qualified leads.
8. A word on the back panel. The back panel is there to support the offer and call to action on the front panel. People generally turn the card over because they want to know more. Making an unrelated offer, such as trying to feature a different set of services, is distracting and dilutes the front panel call to action.

EXAMPLE - Here’s an actual client example of the front panel of a weekly service post card.

Note the adherence to our best practice post card design:
     Concise Front Panel Headline: Get Professional Weekly Pool Maintenance and Chemical Service
     Compelling Offers: Just $65 Per Month (red priority)
     Focus on Benefits:
          • Below market promo price
          • Professional weekly pool service
          • No risk in giving this a try:
                  - No Contract Required
                  - Satisfaction Guaranteed
     Call to Action: Call ###-###-#### today to take advantage of this great deal from client.
     Contact Pathway: Phone number and company name
     Graphic: A sparkling clear pool supports messages.

Results for a three postcard weekly service campaign (see Step 4 to learn about Xmente Call Tracking):

Number of residential pool addresses in trade area:   11,609
Number of highly qualified prospects:                            4,618
Number selected for mailing list:                                    4,000 (random nth)
Highly qualified leads:
     • Total inbound calls:     216
     • Total unique inbound:  80
Number of leads closed (happy client, limited data):
     • Service:                        32
     • Repair:                          17
     • Remodel:                       3
Close ratio (service): 40%

STEP 3 - Say It Frequently.
The actual “gestation” period of a homeowner considering service can be quite a while. Prospects may look at your mail pieces for several months or more before they make contact. You need to be mailing to these people when they finally become motivated. You want to be “Top of Mind” so they call you even before they begin an internet search. Remember that time and circumstances change all things. This is especially true for weekly service.
You want your message to show up when something happens in your prospect’s life that creates an interest in weekly service. Identifying sufficient frequency may require experimentation as markets differ.

EXAMPLE - Here’s the actual client results of a weekly service postcard similar to the one above. It shows phone calls received for a back-to-back three card campaign (see Step 4 to learn about Xmente Call Tracking).

The vertical bars show the number of phone calls received each day via the unique call tracking phone number for this campaign. Orange bars represent the approximate in home delivery date for each postcard. Note the cumulative effect of 3 postcards and the continuing lead generation “annuity.”

STEP 4 - Track Phone Calls and Measure Results.
Say your goal for a campaign is to grow your weekly service business by generating a certain number of highly qualified phone call leads. How do you know what is working well and what needs to change unless you are tracking the phone calls? But tracking phone calls is not enough. Converting phone leads to customers is critical, and that is all about phone sales skills. Missing phone calls, or handling them improperly, essentially means lost opportunity - that you are throwing away some of your most profitable leads.

The problem is there has been no system for pool service companies to track and analyze phone calls. Imagine if you knew how many calls you got from a specific campaign, whether key phone sales techniques were used, how customer objections were addressed, what specifically you could change to improve your close rate and could Listen to Each Call You or Your Sales Team Received. Now you can do this and more with Xmente’s Call Tracking and Conversation Analytics solutions.

A  Call Tracking. Xmente provides a FREE unique phone number that is seamlessly ported to your preferred company number. This allows our system to identify and track phone call leads that are generated by our campaign. It shows you things like: how many phone calls came in, date and caller phone number. 

Call tracking is good. But it stops gathering data when the phone rings. Why is that a problem? Because there is a lot of useful stuff that happens after the phone rings....Like, Pretty Much Everything of Importance.

B  Conversation Analytics. This product is currently included for FREE and does two things: 1) records every call so they are available for listening at a later date; and 2) Analyzes spoken words to identify three factors about the call:

i. Prospect Interaction. Did the caller speak to a live agent or have to leave a voice message? How long did customers wait before their call was answered? Did the agent display a high level of phone etiquette, enthusiastic voice tone and professionalism?

ii. Contact Information. Did the agent obtain the caller name, phone number, physical address and email address?

iii. Sales Process. Did the agent use skills and techniques to set an appointment, follow up call or convert a sale? Were there any customer objections? Was there a missed opportunity? What can you do to improve?

EXAMPLE - Here’s an example of cost and break even for a 5,000 card campaign.

Conclusion
Xmente has created a straightforward turnkey four-step approach to creating more high quality phone call prospects and selling more weekly service customers. It can be summed up as: The Four Rights: 1) Right Prospects, 2) Right Message, 3) Right Frequency and 4) Right Performance Measures.

The cost is reasonable and affordable. It requires the sale of only a few weekly service accounts to pay for most campaigns. Certainly we agree that having an effective mix of relevant advertising methods maximizes the potential that a new pool prospect will receive your message. But if you are doing nothing, or primarily depending on broadcast, print, outdoor, online or email advertising – STOP – the facts confirm you should seriously consider Xmente as a key element of your media mix.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
 

Are you offering any guarantees?
Yes. We guarantee our lists are the most cost effective way to reach highly qualified new weekly service prospects with your promotional offer. We guarantee the addresses on our lists have been delivery point validated by the US Post Office and that each will be delivered. We guarantee that if you purchase our turnkey postcard services, we will measure the results of your campaign and make recommendations for improvement. Successful lead generation and close is a continuous process and not a onetime event.

How do your costs compare to other post card suppliers?
If you compare the total cost including the same 6x11 12 pt. glossy size card, graphic design, copy, addressing, all postage and delivery to the USPO you will find our prices to be very competitive. If you consider our experience in this market, commitment to best practices and data services to clean and merge your customer list, you will find we have an unbeatable economic offer. The simple fact though is… there is no postcard supplier that offers what we do so it is impossible to compare by price alone. We are not in the printing or list business, we are in the “RESULTS” business.

How can you help measure the results of my campaign?
We can provide call tracking phone numbers and voice analytic services which generate extremely useful and measurable results. We can also print your chosen bar codes for your postcard coupons that provide you with the capability to analyze your transaction data to measure results.

Do you work with my vendors in using co-op?
We are happy to do this and optimize their support. But be forewarned. We have seen firsthand that maximizing co-op support can lead to flawed promotions. Some vendors want to maximize their product exposure on the postcard while service companies want to maximize phone call leads. We can help you get the best of both worlds. The optimum co-op support while making sure your card effectively meets your needs.

Can you help me if I have a budget limitation?
Most of the time, yes. Cost is always a consideration when we analyze a trade area and potential campaign. We want you to always get the most bang for your buck. But if that is not sufficient, we are able to dial in the size of our prospect lists to match almost any reasonable budget. We will always try to work with you if it makes economic sense for you! And if not we will let you know.

To receive a free pdf file of this paper or to inquire about our services, contact Steve Carlyle: stevecarlyle@frontier.com