Engineering software developer Mathsoft Engineering and Education Inc.’s shift from direct mail to e-mail prospecting is helping it build business from new companies.
In April — the first time Mathsoft used the medium to search for new clients — the company sent out some 10,000 prospecting e-mails. It gathered about 65,000 leads in just six weeks before cutting off the campaign to give its sales force time to follow up, said marketing manager Bernie Buelow. E-mailings were slated to resume at the end of July, once again at the rate of 10,000 a month.
The Cambridge, MA firm hopes to convert 4% of these leads to sales by the time the $200,000-plus effort ends later this year.
Buelow said the company’s goal is to generate about $3.4 million in revenue in 2002 for its Mathcad mathematical software, base priced at $800.
Mathsoft typically marketed software to its 1.5-million-name installed database, including Fortune 1000 firms such as Procter & Gamble, by direct mail. Response rates ran about 3%. But in the wake of last fall’s anthrax scare, which delayed delivery of its mailings by as much as three weeks, Mathsoft decided to try e-mail.
Marketing electronically has enabled Mathsoft to save at least 20% off the cost of postal mail, revise creative quickly and keep closer track of its sales force, said Buelow. “From this system,” he noted, “we determined that salespeople can handle about 20 leads a week.”
For this campaign, Mathsoft worked with interactive marketing services concern Carat Interactive Inc., Boston, to get permission-based e-mail lists for prospecting.
Because Mathsoft gave Carat only a broad description of the kinds of companies it wanted to reach — engineering and other product development firms — and since Mathsoft did not learn their identities beforehand, it avoided breaching the confidentiality of opt-in e-mail lists.
“This way we keep it legal,” said Buelow.
Mathsoft worked out similar arrangements with other online business-to-business list brokers like Cahners Direct to prospect to subscriber files from such technical magazines as Research and Development as well as compiled lists of engineers and engineering decision-makers.
The company plans to pitch Mathcad to the college market by e-mail later this year. But Buelow admitted, “higher education e-mail lists are a lot harder to find.”
Network
