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About Skip ONeill

Skip is a pioneer in the email marketing space. He joined ExactTarget in 2002 and helped build the sales and channel team contributing to the overall success and IPO. He has tenure at a number of other successful ESPs and enjoys helping companies grow. A major component of his role of VP of Sales at iPost is to foster community at all touchpoints. He believes in the fundamentals of sales which is an ongoing understanding of the customers’ needs and goals and to help through planning, collaboration and execution. Skip shares his time between Dallas, TX & Portland, OR with his wife D’Anne. His hobbies include tending to a small backyard vineyard and enjoys making wine and travel.
  • Franchise Development – Increasing the number of Leads & shortening the sales cycle In speaking with many franchise development leaders, there is a nagging challenge with getting more qualified leads into the funnel. Once those names are in the fran dev sales cycle, the second challenge is to identify which of those folks are just kicking tires from the ones who are truly interested in becoming a franchisee . Trying to pursue those tire kickers who have little intention of buying or can’t qualify, is a waste of resources that could be better used in pursuing those how raised their hand and want to start the discussion. New Leads: Image if you will, the fran dev team having visibility into everyone who visits your “become a franchise” page, who do NOT fill out the form. Today, you likely only see those folks who visit the page, complete the form and hits submit. Those names go into your CRM for follow up. Visitors visit the page and ‘abandon” the form for many reasons, some are interruptions, phone ringing, time for dinner, etc. Maybe they are just exploring what it takes to become a business owner. Regardless, wouldn’t you like the chance to start the discussion? Even if they are not ready now, you can always nurture them with an email automation to keep your brand front and center. Tire kicker or hot lead: The other challenge: is once those individuals do submit the form, identifying who are real and who is not. Like separating the wheat from the chaff. Understanding your ideal customer profile and building a persona for those who you’d classify as HOT and leverage a lead/engagement scoring solution to score your leads based in part by your persona AND weaving in their behaviors. For example: Your ideal profile is: married couple, college educated, live in Texas, NC, MO, etc. are currently employed in service or food service as a district manager or regional manager and have $200,000 available to invest. A new lead comes in and you score that person based on how close they match your ICP. Scoring goes further and takes into account their behavior with emails, phone calls, etc. If for example a triggered thank you email has a link to “learn more”, you might assign a greater score to those folks who “click” the link and complete the secondary questionnaire, than those who don’t even open the thank you email. That way those who have the higher score are more ripe for follow up. Having this kind of visibility into your leads database can help to save you time, reduce sales cycles and ultimately help you meet your franchise development goals.

Franchise Development: Increase Number of Leads and Shorten Sales Cycle

2023-08-23T09:43:07-06:00By |Tags: , , |

In speaking with many franchise development leaders, there is a nagging challenge with getting more qualified franchise development leads into the funnel with current lead generation strategies. Once those names are in the franchise development (fran dev) sales cycle, the second challenge is to identify which folks are just "kicking tires" from the ones [...]

  • Segment Your Audience Based on Behavioral Data

Segment Your Audience Based on Behavioral Data

2021-10-28T14:35:05-06:00By |

As an email marketer, you’re probably segmenting your audiences, but are you segmenting based on online behavioral data? If not, you are missing out on lost revenue. And you’re spending more money than you need to with your enterprise ESP. Behavioral segmentation can help you improve opens and click through open rates (CTORs) as [...]

  • How to Be a Trusted Partner

How to Be a Trusted Partner

2022-01-27T12:55:27-07:00By |

In business school, aspiring marketers are taught to focus on customer acquisition and customer retention, meaning loyalty. But without establishing trust, there is little chance of loyalty or repeat customers. Trust is the most overlooked—and possibly most important—factor when it comes to customer retention. Trust is not something to be gained from a single [...]

  • How to Win Back Lost Customers Using Email

How to Win Back Lost Customers Using Email

2022-01-27T12:56:54-07:00By |

Building a solid subscriber list is hard. Keeping a subscriber engaged is even harder. No matter how hard we work to get people to sign up for our email lists, subscriber attrition and abandoned carts are an ongoing challenge for email marketers. Customers abandon email programs for a variety of reasons. They might experience [...]

  • First Impression with your customers is so important – Don’t blow it!

Email First Impression is So Important – Don’t blow it!

2021-10-28T13:44:19-06:00By |

You don’t get a second chance to make the first impression a good impression. That’s why it’s so important for your email programs to start the customer relationship out on the right track. A welcome email series helps to begin building that relationship. When considering how to put together the strategy for a welcome [...]

  • Defining—and Engaging—the Unengaged Subscriber

Defining—and Engaging—the Unengaged Subscriber

2022-01-27T12:57:31-07:00By |

How are you treating the unengaged subscribers on your email list? These inactive subscribers are still on your list so potentially have value. But they obviously aren’t responding to your email marketing the way you’d like. What can you do? First off, let’s define an unengaged subscriber, otherwise known as email non-responders. What is [...]