Promoting an Auto Club Membership and Credit Card Protection Program to a House File of Credit Card Holders on a Discounted 30-day Trial

Situation

For this campaign we called current credit card holders and offered them a trial membership in an emergency roadside assistance service for $1 for the first 30-days, and then $6.95 per month automatically billed to their credit card.  This offer included a discount coupon book valued at $800 as a free premium.  Additional auto club benefits included trip planning maps, lockout benefits, and access to certified technicians for second opinions on vehicle repair estimates.   Customers could cancel at any time and receive a full refund for the current month's billing.  Customers who accepted the primary offer were then offered a discounted 30-day trial on a credit card protection plan as an upsell.  Here again, the cost was $1 for the first 30-days and then $4.95 per month thereafter.   Additional benefits of the credit card protection plan included an annual credit bureau report, price security for sale priced products, extended warranties and other benefits.

Solution

We did not have to ask the customer to give us any part of the card number over the phone, since the client was using his or her own credit card holder list, and already had the number on record.  We simply verified the customer's city or date of birth as a positive identifier.

Results

AVAILABLE NAMES WITH PHONE NUMBERS: 214,000
 
ORDERS: 10,795
     PRIMARY/AUTO CLUB 9,859
     UPSELL/CREDIT CARD PROTECTION 936*
SALES PER HOUR 1.02
 
TOTAL LEADS USED: 172,568**
TLU RESPONSE %: 5.71%
 
CONTACTS: 94,689**
CONTACT RESPONSE %: 10.41%

*  The Credit Card Protection Upsell is a recent addition to this program. The upsell conversion is averaging 27% over the two most recent months of activity.

**  Calling was still in process at the time this case study was prepared. Hence, these are not final list penetration statistics.


New Credit Card Acquisition

Situation

The credit card industry has seen a tremendous increase in number of credit card accounts and the number of issuers.  With the pie being split many ways, issuers are looking for creative ways to gain market share.

Solution

A large credit card issuer asked us to utilize our marketing expertise for a short-term marketing program to sell credit cards to members of several affinity groups.  Our innovative sales strategies enabled us to define the types of credit card users (either convenience users or borrowers) and utilize match appropriate benefits from the card that would best meet the needs of the consumer.   This resulted in an attainment of 146% to goal.

Results - Benefits

We attained the highest balance transfer rate amongst all vendors (17%).  Our procedures for qualifying a customer netted the highest sales yield and retention of all vendors.  What was a short-term push has developed into a long-term relationship that still continues today.


Welcome Call with Upsell

Situation

In an increasingly competitive market environment, savvy banks know that fostering their current customer relationships is the best way to increase revenues per customer and increase the number of banking products and services each customer holds.  A large regional bank uses a "welcome call" to foster these relationships and to increase revenue generating opportunities as well.

Solution

Two weeks after a consumer is approved for a credit card we place an outbound phone call to them.  During this call the consumer is introduced to the bank and offered the convenience of credit card activation along with a brief customer service survey.  Card activations increased over 30%.  We also offered the opportunity to add authorized users at no cost, which netted a 10% increase in new users.  Balance transfers were also offered at competitive APR's.  Even with these successful results, we felt that there was an even greater opportunity to cross-sell and up-sell other products as well to increase banking revenues.

Results - Benefits

Testing of our suggestions began.  Upon credit card activation the customers were informed of the availability of free on-line banking netting a 29% increase in on-line banking transactions.  A cross-sell to the banks' checking account service was also tested with 11% of the customers being hot transferred to the bank and opening new checking accounts.  An up-sell to a credit card protection plan was also offered with a 35% acceptance rate and a retention rate exceeding 90%.  All of these programs performed greatly exceeded the banks' expectations.

The banks objective was to be able to increase market share, customer revenues and customer satisfaction.  Based on the final back-end results these programs proved to meet and exceed all of the bank's key objectives.


Pre-Qualified Home Equity Loans/Lines of Credit

Situation

A regional banking institution desired to offer their customers a Home Equity Line Of Credit or Home Equity Loan.

Solution

We were asked to make a follow-up outbound call to non-responding customers that received a direct mail piece offering them a HELOC.  We qualified the customer, collected all the necessary information then "hot transferred" the customer to a Home Equity Specialist.  This lead generation program netted a 25% conversion rate for the bank.  Due to the success of the campaign, all transferred calls couldn’t be handled.  We then utilized our on-line fax capabilities to generate a faxed lead for the "Specialists".  The customers were advised a callback would occur within the next 2 days.

Results - Benefits

With our abundance of branch locations we were able to use a specific TSR profile that combined personality and professionalism; traits that are very conducive to a productive lead generation program.  Our telemarketing experience enabled us to modify qualifying standards, which supplied the lending institution with high quality leads (up to 1,000 per day).  With the recent change in lending rates the program has now become an inbound call with the same processes in place (volume is now 10,000 per day).


Credit Card Protection

Situation

Credit card issuers strive to create additional sources of revenue generation while still delivering customer-focused products and services.  Credit protection is now offered to provide banking customers additional security and peace of mind while generating significant revenues to the issuing institutions.

Solution

We began calling the CP program with mild success.  Feedback from the consumer was that the product was too expensive.  This led us to believe there was opportunity.  We spoke with the client and suggested that we offer CP as a down-sell to the current offer.  The client agreed and began testing.  Results exceeded client’s expectations.

Results - Benefits

Today, various down-sell and cross-sell products are available for several segments of the clients lead base.  Over 150,000 people are receiving offers on a monthly basis with a conversion rate of approximately 10%.  Also, various premiums are being tested and appear to be a huge area of opportunity as well.


Business-to-business High-Speed Internet Access Via DSL to Existing Customers on a 30-Day Trial

Situation

For this campaign we called current small business customers for an RBOC and offered them a 30-day trial on DSL Internet service.  The lead-in offer was priced at $59.95 per month for dynamic service with a maximum connection speed of 768K/128K.   We used probing questions and a consultative selling strategy to uncover the real needs of the prospect, which allowed us to offer a variety of packages for either dynamic or static service with speeds ranging to up 768K/768K.  The top package was priced at $159.95 per month.  There was a $99 one-time charge for the modem.  At various times, the client would offer $100 cash-back, which most customers applied to the cost of the modem.  Routers were available for either $79.95 (4-port) or $149.95 (8-port).  A self-installation kit was included in the price.  If the customer insisted on professional installation, the cost was $199 to send an installer to the company location.

Solution

The lists were segmented by industry type, which allowed us to penetrate the best performing segments more deeply.  An important element of this campaign was the need to conduct timely callbacks.  We found that the customer frequently felt a need to consult with his/her superiors or technical staff prior to offering a final OK.  Hence, we installed special callback technology that would allow us to code a specific callback time into the record and then have our predictive dialer attempt callback at the specified time and day, and then deliver the call to the same TSR who made the original contact.  Callback sales were 37% of the net sales, and closed at a 4% conversion versus 0.1% for regular leads, a 4,000% increase in performance.

Results

The following statistics represent 15-months of data.

NAMES RECEIVED: 2,033,000
CALLABLE NAMES WITH PHONE NUMBERS: 1,225,000
% AVAILABLE FOR CALLING: 60%
 
TOTAL SALES: 6,487
HOURS: 57,150
SPH 0.11
 
TOTAL LEADS USED: 924,650
TLU RESPONSE %: 0.7%
 
CALLBACKS ATTEMPTED: 60,220
CALLBACK SALES: 2,427
% CALLBACK SALES TO TOTAL SALES: 37.4%
AVERAGE DIALS PER CALLBACK SALE: 6
CALLBACK CLOSE RATE: 4.0%