Ultima Cleaning Academy Email Outreach
Ultima Cleaning Academy created a product that was highly valuable to thousands of companies, but needed to gain attention fast. With no major brand to build off, they came to us.
Taking the cleaning industry online
BACKGROUND
The Ultima Cleaning Academy is the training arm of the Ultima Environmental Group, which has been providing general and specialist cleaning services for the last 20 years. Experts in their field with experience handling trauma scenes, biohazard removal and pest control, they were well equipped to make areas as safe and clean as possible as COVID-19 spread across the country.
Traditionally the training they offered had always been face-to-face, but in spring/summer 2020 they decided to start providing e-learning courses. With everyone stuck at home and businesses raring to reopen, Ultima Cleaning Academy created four COVID-19 related e-learning courses to help cleaners get the country ready for the end of the lockdown.
An Unbelievably Valuable Product, but No One to Give it to
THE CHALLENGE
The product itself couldn’t have been more valuable, given the circumstances. Companies could get their cleaning staff to learn how to prepare workplaces for the incoming return of workers/customers, and they could do so from their own home. All that was needed was to get the word out to the thousands of UK offices, companies in hospitality & leisure and transport companies.
However, this is where things became a little tricky. The Ultima Cleaning Academy was a brand new arm of the Ultima Environmental Group which had effectively zero brand equity. What’s more, they had no time to spend on growing their brand or building contacts. This service was useful now – no one knew how long COVID-19 would last or what would be put in place to combat it. The Ultima Cleaning Academy needed to alert companies to their offering ASAP.
Find the Firms, Give them Value, Get them on Board
THE WORK
As the Ultima Cleaning Academy did not yet have an established brand, we decided to opt for a B2B cold outreach email campaign and a LinkedIn outreach campaign.
Firstly, we needed to create customer profiles, taking time to think about who could these courses best serve.
Companies that kept their cleaning in-house, as well as small to mid-size cleaning companies, were the obvious targets. The four courses offered specialised in COVID-19 cleaning for buildings (e.g. offices), vehicles (e.g. coaches and taxis), leisure and hospitality (e.g. pubs and restaurants) and aircrafts. For companies within these industries, we looked into who would be the key decision makers: HR Managers, Operations Managers, Company Founders, Managing Directors, etc.
Once the customer profiles were fleshed out our data scientists got to work, hunting out those that fit the bill and finding their contact information. Spread between LinkedIn messaging and emails, we began telling our audience that ‘we know this is something you/your cleaning teams are struggling with, but we can help’ (editing our messaging for different sectors).
We sent out 5 emails across a similar theme, always ending with a CTA to arrange a call for a demo or request a free trial. However, we knew we couldn’t expect companies to just sign up their teams to the course there and then. We needed to give them value. We needed to show them that the Ultima Cleaning Academy were experts and qualified enough to train their teams.
We decided to host a webinar for them on how to return to work safely, inviting all of the companies we had targeted via emails and LinkedIn. Interest was strong and we reached a 50% attendance rate for those that had signed up.
After the webinar, all attendees were offered a free trial of the e-learning courses, and the sales team followed up with them to continue the sales process.
Outperforming industry standards on a tight deadline
THE RESULTS
The results of our lead generation campaign were very positive. First off, the webinar was great for not only lead generation, but also for brand awareness, with 169 people registering their interest on LinkedIn. Over 50% of the sign ups attended the webinar, Our cold outreach email campaign had an open rate of 65%, compared to the industry average of up to 25%. Our email response rate was 16%, while the industry average is 5%. The number of leads generated in total were 48 from the webinar and 43 leads from the email and LinkedIn outreach.
We were thrilled to see such results, all delivered within a 3 – 4 month window, sticking to the razor thin deadline we needed to work towards. Ultima Cleaning Academy remain a client and had this to say about the campaign:
I feel our marketing is in the hands of consummate professionals and the progress we’re making is beginning to become tangible. As a company, the team are an absolute joy to work with and communication and response speed is top class! – Jamie Browning, Technology Manager.