Helping HP Deliver Maximum Wood Behind The Arrow
Company: Hewlett-Packard Field Marketing Organization.
Situation: Lack of sales/marketing integration; disappointing ROMI
Background: HP Field Marketing is a large, proactive organization that develops scores of direct mail and marketing programs annually to support an equally dynamic sales force. Over time, management observed notable differences between response rates and ROI among campaigns created within the same department.
Action: Our assessment team discovered that marketing strategies and mailer content were often developed independently, without input or consideration from HP's sales force. This lack of coordination resulted in ineffective messaging, leading to higher production costs and below-average response rates. After soliciting customer and sales-team feedback, WPM helped integrate HP's sales and marketing groups and jointly develop more than 50 individually customized vertical-market programs. To keep them in synch with marketing, we also recommended that sales teams receive training, program announcements and copies of new collateral at least two weeks before any mail drops or program launches.
Results: Mail response rates jumped to 5%, with a 23% conversion rate to qualified leads.
