Building buzz prior to the show

Real-world Results: Lynnhaven Marine Leverages ARI’s
FootSteps™ to Increase Boat Show Leads and Sales By
Chuck Guthrie, President –Lynnhaven Marine
Lead generation and management starts before a lead comes in, with tools and
processes designed to support our sales strategy. At Lynnhaven Marine, our
marketing efforts combine a powerful website, supported by ARI’s ePro™, and
a sound lead management strategy based on ARI’s best practices and provided
by FootSteps.
As we do with all shows, we leveraged FootSteps before, during, and after the 2011
Mid-Atlantic Sport & Boat Show in Virginia Beach, Feb. 11-13. Our goals were to
convince existing prospects to take advantage of boat show specials, and entice
new visitors to consider doing business with Lynnhaven Marine.
Building buzz prior to the show
We all know that the majority of show attendees make a short list of exhibitors
prior to the show, a decision often based on the information and invitations they
have received. With that in mind, we first included a teaser about the show (dates
and location) when we sent our New Year Best Wishes e-blast in mid-January. We
made sure to alert recipients about great discounts at the upcoming show.
Three weeks later, we ran a “Boat Show Starts Next Week” campaign to our
entire database. Buyers respond to incentives so we included a discount coupon
for the ticket and a mention of free parking on site – what lead generation and
management experts like ARI refer to as traffic builders. We were able to create a
campaign in five minutes. With FootSteps, quick and easy access to prospects lists
and pre-written templates are at our fingertips.
Another advantage of FootSteps is that we are able to track and measure every
effort. This pre-show campaign had a 23.53% open rate. According to the Q4 2010
North America Email Trends and Benchmarks Results, a quarterly analysis compiled
from 7.4 billion emails sent
by Epsilon to multiple
industries, the average open
rate was 22.1%.
Analyzing results
I believe that our pre-show
efforts were successful
because the email was
personalized and sent by
the same salesperson
prospects had become
familiar with through
previous communications.
As consumers face rising
volumes of spam and emails,
the sender recognition and
the power of your dealership’s brand are critical in
driving a response
Building Relationships at the Show
We have a defined process followed by all our team members during the show:
We enter all leads into FootSteps the same day they came by the booth and send
them a Lynnhaven Marine-branded “Thank You” email, using an automated
template from FootSteps. This brief communication comes from the salesperson
they met, includes the boat of interest, and invites the prospect to contact the
sender for further assistance, should he or she have further questions. We then
follow up with a phone call within a couple of days to secure an appointment.
To drive new leads, we organized a contest, “Enter to win free storage at our
boatel”, which generated 113 new leads, as prospects had to share their contact
information to participate. As a direct result of this effort, five new boatel leases
were signed and two re-power engine jobs were quoted.
The following statistics are valid as of March 17. Hopefully, we will have turned
more leads into sales by the time you read this case study!
• 21.43% of new show leads turned into sales.
That leaves almost 79% of new leads we have to follow up with properly
until we seal the deal. For us, this is the beginning of a series of
conversations to convince them to choose Lynnhaven Marine. To that end,
I assign each lead to the best salesperson. Moving forward, our sales
manager will review leads daily to make sure that they are effectively
managed.
As for units sold and delivered, our philosophy is that every buyer is a
potential returning customer. FootSteps will immediately generate five
follow-up dates to keep in touch with customers, make sure they’re
satisfied with their purchase, and promote services to drive incremental
service sales.
• 41.67% of sales were closed at the show.
This means that more than 58% of the deals are being worked on. At this
stage, potential customers have been quoted or we have secured a
deposit. We rely heavily on phone calls to get them to take action.
Email is an effective tool for running campaigns and answering initial
questions but calling prospects is the way to go to begin building a rapport
and secure in-store appointments to accelerate the buying cycle.
• Average sales lead time was 6 days.
Customers who made a deposit at the show were sold and delivered
within 6 days on average. Due to bad weather conditions, we were not
able to extend the opportunity for boat show prices with a post-show
open house so we made that offer to leads we considered as
“highly interested”.
Lead Generation and Management Overview
ARI’s solutions have played a critical role in Lynnhaven Marine’s success for the past
nine years. Our revenue-generating website consistently drives traffic to our showroom and increases leads so we can keep building the pipeline for future sales. Last
year, we saw a 35.2% increase in leads, compared to 2009, despite challenging economic conditions. Today, our online presence represents over 60% of our sales.
Having a proven lead management solution in place allows us to hold our
prospects’ hand throughout the buying cycle until they are ready to commit. We
have 30 lead sources so FootSteps has become an invaluable asset because we can
manage and track all leads from a single point, using auto-responders to increase
our response time, and branded email templates to keep in touch with our customers and generate more leads. Our current average response time is 23.4
minutes, an accomplishment I am quite proud of considering that several studies
have shown that the sales conversion rate drops significantly after just two hours.
One of our guiding principles is continuous improvement on all fronts. In addition
to making the most of ePro and FootSteps, we have also embraced ARI’s education
offerings to continuously increase our return on investment. All our staff-members
are e-business savvy and capable of developing and managing “digital relationships”
– a phrase we coined.
Without ARI’s solutions in place, we would be missing out on millions of sales
opportunities.