Case Study - T3 Direct Marketing

We get an eagle eye view of all our client's activities and can determine which leads are most costly to generate, which campaigns are the most productive and profitable and can provide amazing real-time statistics on our clients' market demographics. Jonathan Mason, Director of Marketing

About T3 Direct Marketing

Companies hire T3 Direct to generate leads. T3 Direct provides appointment setting, guaranteed marketing, and face-to-face meetings. In addition, T3 Direct also deploys scalable customer relationship management (CRM) and sales force automation databases (SFA), email drip marketing, voice & fax broadcasting, search engine marketing and pay-per-click management. T3 Direct grew more than 500% in the past 5 years, and 37% in the past 6 months alone. The company has expanded into a new 96-seat call center to handle the explosive growth. The secret to T3 Direct' success is their ability to show their customers real value, backed by guaranteed results.

Challenge

Prior to implementing Zoho CRM, T3 Direct used ACT to manage a contact database, Telemagic to provide outbound dialing and phpBB, an open-source bulletin board, to enable client lead retrieval. This cobbled together system worked fine when T3 Direct had only a handful of clients, but as they grew, the need for a robust and integrated system became more prevalent:

• Data was stored in disparate systems rendering it too difficult to determine the profitability of clients and activities.
• Sales personnel had multiple systems to update.
• Scheduling appointments proved difficult without shared company calendars.

When searching for a solution to these issues, cost was an important factor. Due to competition from other agencies and marketing firms, T3 Direct needed a solution with a relatively low total price, while still providing simple set-­up and customization. The solution also had to be secure and accessible from any browser. A hosted software-­as-­a-­service (SaaS) solution was preferable.

Solution

Senior management at T3 Direct has a diverse background and years of industry experience in different processes, systems and with other telemarketing companies. At his previous company, T3 Direct Director of Marketing Jonathan Mason had evaluated dozens of CRM providers prior to implementing Zoho CRM. His experience with Zoho CRM far exceeded his expectations.

T3 Direct selected Zoho CRM to replace the existing contact management, collaboration and sales activity tracking systems:

• Zoho CRM's built-in lead routing is configured based on several variables, such as location, time zone, and other factors, ensuring that the clients'sales staff weren't double booked or scheduled to be in two distant places in too short a time span.
• The Zoho CRM Plug-in for Microsoft Outlook is utilized to synchronize calendar and task items with Outlook.
• A USB Recorder records calls made between sales staff and prospects.
• Zoho Project is used to track internal projects as new clients sign on or additional marketing campaigns are initiated by existing clients.
• Zoho CRM proved so strong and flexible that T3 Direct decided to provide a copy to each client as part of their offering.

Result

The top three benefits that T3 Direct realizes by using Zoho CRM are:

• Increased revenue: Returns have decreased by 24%, an average savings of $97,000 per year. Client retention has increased because clients see the value in having all their activities in a single CRM database, easy to track and manage. The Zoho Outlook Plugin has also helped in increasing client
  retention by granting sales staff a choice of using Outlook or Zoho.
• Lower costs: Due to automation of tasks, quality control costs have decreased resulting in a savings of $22,500 per year. Overdue accounts and receivables have dropped by 18% translating into $11,000 per month in liquid revenue.
• Lower risks: Integration with other systems, such as Asterisk PBX using Zoho PhoneBridge and Zoho Projects, allows for automation, error elimination and improved efficiency.
• T3 Direct realizes a tangible $120,000 per year in increased revenue and lower costs. They also estimate at least $40,000 per year in intangible gains such as client retention, increased sales and improved cash flow.