Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Because of our unique capabilities we are often asked the following questions:
- What kind of company are you?
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A Direct Marketing agency? A Database marketing company? A Software company?
We are all of the above and none of the above.
Our objective is to come as close as possible to automating personal sales conversations. There is a huge difference between talking with someone and talking to them. Nearly all mass media and online messages talk to people, not with them. Conceptually, we are using web pages, email, and multimedia as point to point communication tools – similar to the telephone. We communicate with people individually. We can monitor what they are doing and how they are responding. Within the context of everything we know about each contact, we dynamically alter the message, content, and even the medium to be as relevant possible.
In order to provide context sensitive, profile driven communications across multiple media types in real time and in order to provide our clients with exceptional results, WebReply has created a uniquely powerful technology platform that is constantly evolving. This requires engineering and management skills similar to what would be found in a sophisticated software company.
Because our conversations with contacts are data driven, the core technology involves deriving complex, real time responses from multidimensional date warehouses. This means that for a portion of our activity, we might appear to be similar to a database marketing company.
Because we deliver results for our customers as a service, we must provide many of the services that would be expected from a high quality DM agency.
Our clients view WebReply as a selling machine. - Do you sell a product or service?
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WebReply is a services company.
- Who does the creative?
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WebReply has an in-house creative team and can provide full creative services to our clients. We also frequently work with in-house client creative teams and/or client selected agencies.
- What do you mean by proprietary?
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Our business methods and technology are proprietary and patented but our technology is open. WebReply was the first company to offer mass customization of direct marketing messages delivered via the web, email, multimedia, and print. We have invested heavily in our technology platform and have a number of U.S. and international patents pending.
- How scalable is your process?
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Typical campaigns run from a database of a few hundred names to several hundred thousand names. The architecture of the technology does not limit the size of a campaign.
- Can you provide a 360° view of my prospects?
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Yes. WebReply can track activity through all response points and generate comprehensive analytics and profiling. Touch points can include pop-ups, banner ads, search results, postal mail, email, personalized portals, newsletters, reports, journals, webinars, live seminars, trade shows, TV ads, radio ads, print ads and web site(s). For some value propositions, this can be a very effective way of converting anonymous contacts into named prospects.
- Can you help with lists?
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Yes. Obviously if the list is weak, result will not be optimal. Nearly all “house” lists are loaded with poor data. None of the commonly used CRM systems have strong duplicate detection capability. Typically, a record will be flagged as a duplicate only if the email addresses are identical. People frequently use multiple email addresses. A specific contact might use their business address, Hotmail address, Gmail address, etc. and end up in your list several times. (We refer to these contacts as ambiguous duplicates.) If you send the same message to a prospect using all of the email addresses that you have for them, you have a 99% probability that they will opt out. Expect that 10% to 20% of the names in your list are duplicates. Expect that another 10% to 20% describe the wrong people and 10% to 20% contain bad or incomplete data.
WebReply utilizes several proprietary software tools to clean databases. Our goal is to optimize the number of valid names that are the right levels and in the right industries for each client. It should be noted that when dirty data is used, campaign performance metrics obtained can be very misleading.
In addition to thoroughly conditioning lists, we frequently source lists in order to augment our clients basic data. - Can you integrate with my SFA/MA system?
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Yes. Most have standard mechanisms that facilitate the exchange of data.
- What kind of results can you expect?
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Most clients achieve a 2x to 3x improvement versus the strategies employed prior to engaging WebReply.
- Can you help us with offers, creative, strategy, segmentation, copy?
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Yes. We offer all of the services that you would expect to receive from a premier agency. Campaigns are developed and delivered utilizing our proprietary technology platform.
- How long does it take to get a campaign launched?
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Most new campaigns typically are developed within a 4-6 week cycle, our standard lead time to get a campaign implemented and launched
