We partnered with Sojourn Solutions to help us address the challenge of driving technological transformation to enable us to work smarter, including outlining processes for developing marketing campaigns, lead generation, and lead scoring across the organization. Our latest joint initiative, the automated email renewal solution, was a massive success – to the point that my CFO asked us to roll it out across our organization.
Chad Lloyd, Director of Sales and Marketing Operations,
Naylor Association Solutions
Naylor Association Solutions, with corporate headquarters in McLean, Virginia, works with trade and professional associations across the nation, including the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA), the United Motorcoach Association (UMA), and many more, helping them maximize membership engagement and generate more revenues. Naylor’s services and business units include member communication (creating various publications for associations), event management, and association management.
Challenge
Naylor’s challenge was on the technology side, because its previous outreach efforts to get renewals from existing advertisers, as well as its approach to advertising prospects, involved a high level of manual operations performed by Naylor’s sales reps. “It was basically an outbound telephone sales operation,” explains Lloyd, “and most of our existing customers were simply agreeing to renew on the phone without any upsell. We were paying sales commissions, but getting little ROI” from the sales-reps-on-the-phone approach.
Solution
Lloyd and his team, working with Sojourn Solutions and Eloqua, developed an email automation system that helped them run their renewal campaigns. The application took customer data from Naylor’s MIS (management information system) and CRM and put it into the field merges within Naylor’s automated renewal emails in Eloqua. The integrations allowed for the sharing and accuracy of relevant customer data, making the automated emails personalized to the particular advertising customer.
Results
Renewals came in faster via the automated renewal campaigns, generating more revenue without any involvement from the sales reps. Prior to launching the renewal campaign, 95% of Naylor’s renewals were processed in an average of 87 days. After the launch, Naylor was capturing 95% of its renewal revenue in an average of 24 days (63 days faster). “We shortened the amount of time to get renewals, and therefore recognized those revenues much faster, which made our finance people very happy” explains Lloyd.
A success story now being spread across Naylor. Naylor’s CFO recognized the efficiency and increased revenues that Lloyd was driving with the automated email renewal campaigns. Unsurprisingly, the CFO then asked Lloyd to help roll-out the successful automated email solution across the Naylor organization. “We’re bringing this new capability to other parts of the business, and also expanding it to our highest-spend advertisers and new advertisers,” he says.
