The Challenge

With an enhanced mandate to deliver growth for payment processing, Point-of-Service products and merchant service offerings, a major payments processing company needed to be more effective with their SMB sales and marketing

Utilizing the personas, customer journey and segments created during the previous SMB Buyer Journey project that FA had conducted, a quick-hit campaign was launched, a persona-based campaign sequence was created, and a roadmap was built to drive growth by treating customers based on their needs.

Project Description

Activation activities were identified based on availability of resources and customer data, leading to a layered approach to Persona Activation. A quick-hit email campaign with one persona was conducted, while persona surveys and screens were launched. These outputs fed into a persona identification model that was used to identify targets for a follow-on campaign using the 4 core personas. Finally, a roadmap was created highlighting next steps.

Outcomes Delivered

• Quick Hit Email Campaign – Created an email campaign and target list for the persona most easily-identified from customer prospect data. Confirmed segmentation approach, with an open rate of 40% and click-through of 1%.
• Customer Surveys and Lead Screening – Devised survey questions to pose with existing Voice-of-the-Customer surveys, and as part of lead screening for prospective customers. These were released during the project, but will continue to feed persona models on an ongoing basis. Based on results, 80% of customers identified with one of the 4 core personas
• Persona Identification Model – Worked with client analytics team to create model to identify prospects and leads by persona – using surveys, lead screens, web nav, marketing responses, prospective customer information, and existing customer behavioral data.
• Interim Campaign – Repurposed existing materials to address specific needs for each of the 4 personas across the acquisition customer journey, resulting in a 6-contact sequence for each.
• Long-term Roadmap – Delivered a roadmap that outlined subsequent activity in a Now-Next-Later framework. Immediate barriers that needed to be addressed were identified, while additional activity that could continue were shown (offers, campaign coordination, new creative content) . Required investiments for long-term activation were presented.