Time is a fascinating thing. Ordinarily, it’s a subject reserved for philosophers, musicians, or math teachers to muse over. But this is a Reachdesk IQ blog, which means it’s our turn to say something clever about how time waits for no one when it comes to direct mail and gifting.
And, although it may sound silly, it's true. Sending a gift to a prospect requires perfect timing - just like baking a cake. Send a gift too early and you’ll end up with a soggy-bottomed sponge, send it too late and you (and your brownies) will end up burned.
But it’s not always obvious when the time is right to send a gift. Luckily for you, we’ve analyzed the data and have some insights to share…
What is Reachdesk IQ?
Reachdesk IQ is our data-focused blog series where we take a deep dive into the numbers behind gifting. This time, our team of data ninjas has been digging into the ways in which gifting varies throughout the various stages of an opportunity.
However, this is not as easy as it sounds. Different businesses have different opportunity stages and sales cycles ranging from a couple of weeks through to several years.
So, to level the playing field as much as possible, we have broken all new business opportunities into four stages based on the deal close probability metric:
- Creation - 3 months prior to an opportunity being opened
- Beginning - Salesforce stage probability < 25%
- Middle - Salesforce stage probability ≥ 25 and < 70%
- Final - Salesforce stage probability ≥ 70
As you might expect, Marketing teams send most gifts during the creation stage, while we see prospecting (BD) teams leading the way both during creation and beginning, while nurturing (sales / AE) teams send most in the final three phases.
If we look at close rate by stage, it is no surprise to see that the close rate increases the further down the deal process you go - deals that reach later stages are by definition more likely to close. However, it is interesting to note that gifting before an opportunity is opened is more effective than gifting to a newly open opportunity. This suggests that getting your relationship off on the right foot (i.e. with a gift) pays off down the line.
Next, let’s take a look at what people are sending at each stage:
As revealed in our State of Gifting report, gift cards are by some distance the most popular type of gift, although our senders tend to diversify their gifting later in the opportunity lifecycle.
However, if we combine this data with close rates, we see that while eGifts are overwhelmingly the send of choice in the early stages, sending a physical gift at creation delivers better results than sending an eGift. This could be because a physical gift leaves a bigger impression or perhaps because you are more likely to send a marketplace item if you have a better relationship. Either way, it’s worth noting that marketplace items are typically more expensive than eGifts so this is not a strategy that can work for everyone.
Finally we looked at the impact of gifting to different levels of seniority at different stages of the opportunity. The data showed that gifting to power has a bigger impact earlier in the relationship. If you successfully gift to power (VC or Executive) at the beginning of the opportunity, the deal is almost twice as likely to close than if there is no power (no power or head) involved.
Whenever you choose to send direct mail to prospects, make sure to analyze the results within Reachdesk using our new opportunity stage analysis feature. It puts gifting under the microscope at every stage of a relationship, examining activity by team, gift type, recipient seniority, levels of engagement and close rate, helping you to replicate success every time.
What have we learned?
- Gifting earlier gets better results - by building relationships from the get go.
- Physical gifts perform better than eGifts in the early stages of a deal - but they are more expensive to send.
- If you’re going to gift to power - do it early into the relationship to establish a strong connection and increase the likelihood of sealing the deal later on.
- When sending direct mail don’t be like Cher - wishing you could turn back time. Pay attention to the signals and gift accordingly.
For more top tips on what to send to prospects and when to send it, check out our State of gifting report.
