In 1986, then CBS radio commentator, Charles Osgood wrote a poem titled Pretty Good. Osgood follows a “pretty good student, who sat in a pretty good class, [who attended] a pretty good school, [where] the student was not an exception, on the contrary he was the rule.” When the time came for the student to get a job, he then realized that “life can be tough, [and] pretty good might not be good enough.” Osgood ends the poem with his iconic line, “If you want to be great, pretty good is, in fact, pretty bad.”
In our world of targeting executives, usually in Fortune 1000 accounts, we fully agree with Osgood that “life can be tough” and that a pretty good strategy is not “good enough.” To deliver exceptional results and our typical 20X+ ROI to our clients, we know that the campaign strategy has to be great. It needs to be clear, detailed and well aligned. This includes everything from developing the perfect prospect profile, data acquisition, integration, OpenScripting®, data capture, lead pass, sales closed loop feedback and management. In its entirety, yes the strategy is complex. However, each of these aspects builds upon one another and if the foundation is strong, the campaign will deliver the results that close more revenue.
In a recent campaign, we were asked to use a “pretty good” database that the company previously invested in. Unfortunately, this “pretty good” database was not scoped for this specific campaign, nor was it correlated to perfect prospect profiles. The result is an increased 40% difficulty, time, and ultimately cost.
Our typical metrics, utilizing our clear, detailed and well aligned campaign strategy, would have yielded 6X more appointments and likely 6X more revenue. This is one example where sacrificing early in a campaign strategy can compound the results, both negatively and positively. A strong commitment to data early in a campaign strategy will pay dividends in the future.
In this case, as Osgood said, “pretty good is, in fact, pretty bad.”
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