The toughest job in marketing is to find new customers at a  reasonable cost.  Last month I ran a test campaign to see how best to introduce the eVO e-commerce service.

The problem was that no prospect would have heard of the brand name and few would immediately identify the product advantages since no competitor has been promoting the linking of a website to a CRM database for SME companies.  

The advantage was that we could identify potential targets by looking at their existing websites. Any company offering a standard range of products but not an on-line ordering facility can immediately benefit from eVO.

So I first emailed about 50 companies that seemed likely prospects. No Response! Did that mean the product was wrong? Not necessarily when typical response rates to an emailshot are around 1%.

I then followed up by phone. The first finding was that the majority of people who should have seen the message had not seen it, or did not remember it.

Lesson 1: Recipients need priming in advance. Emails from someone they have never heard of, on a subject not their current priority, are overlooked or deleted.

The phone however showed clear advantages. Apart from the usual problem of getting through to the right person, it is easy in most cases to find who you need to talk to. Once contact is made, you can establish very quickly if they are likely to be interested in your product. Then, by sending details by email, you can start an ongoing discussion and get valuable feedback from the prospect.

Lesson 2: The telephone is the quickest means of getting a reaction from prospects that includes the reasons behind the reaction.

Lesson 3: For a small scale test market, use the phone to assess initial interest, email to communicate complex data and a follow up phone call to establish future potential.

Then adapt your product and plan according to your customers' reactions. You can now sensibly plan, and cost, a larger roll-out.

If you want help with a test market exercise, click below: