Using AI For Targeted Customer Acquisition Campaigns In Waste Collection
In an ideal world, a customer calls in, wants to sign up for waste collection services immediately, and happens to be situated along the collector’s existing route.
Most of the time, however, the customer acquisition process is a lot trickier.
Selling waste collection services to SMEs can be an inbound or outbound process. Today, we’ll go into the pros and cons of each.
The Inbound approach
Following up on the incoming calls from potential clients already interested in your waste collection service is the most effective process. The collector already knows that the customer wants a waste service now and has all the contact details of the person to speak to.
The downside of it is the limitation for the number of people calling in and the location of the potential customer.
Chances of new customers being en route the current servicing routes are low, which makes it likely that the collection company has to increase their route duration, instead of augmenting the density of the service to reduce the service costs.
The Outbound approach
This approach allows for much greater control over the number of potential clients as well as profitability. That is why Outbound calls to brand new customers is a major activity for sales teams.
There are two ways to get new leads: cold calling or purchasing a bulk list of leads from marketing agencies.
Cold calling
Sales teams can make cold calls or knock on doors to source potential clients, but this requires a lot of leg work. Field managers need to make initial contact with the potential customers (leads), find the right person to speak to and check whether they are interested in a new waste collection provider. This is an extremely time and labour intensive operations.
Marketing agencies leads list
To cut down on the leg work, companies may invest in purchasing a bulk list of leads from marketing agencies. This way, remote sales teams can contact possible new customers on the phone first and prioritise the candidates for a walk-in sales appointment.
The downside is that these lists typically have very low quality data and will require significant manual validation from the waste collector before they can start cold calling.
Other agencies providing vetted lists of ‘warm’ leads (i.e. with contact details and general confirmation for the current need of a new collection provider) lack coverage and volumes. They also typically charge high cost per lead due to a significant component of manual work on their side.
Our research shows that out of a bulk list of company names with registered addresses (thousands of companies), only 45% will be active companies with available contact details.
From there, 35% will be located in larger properties that do not have the autonomy to take care of their waste, such as a company operating from a co-working space that cannot choose their own waste provider.
Lastly, only 2–6% of the initial bulk leads will be looking for a new service provider within the next 2–3 months.
Curated data means lower acquisition cost
There is a direct correlation between the acquisition cost and the benefits of using curated customer lead data.
The productivity of the sales team and customer acquisition cost (CAC) are highly dependent on a high volume of good quality customer leads with accurate contact data.
How we lower customer acquisition cost (CAC) and improve route density
Waste Labs platform helps waste collection companies to optimise route profitability while servicing commercial and industrial customers.
We identify waste producers in the area predicting those likely to re-contract soon.
Our Artificial Intelligence (AI) further recommends prospects aligned with the collector’s operations in the area, based on their marginal service cost and waste potential.
Our service provides 5x higher coverage and data accuracy of prospects in comparison to leading waste leads providers.
Here are the four main steps to help collectors launch strategic sales campaign and maximise route profitability:
- Collecting and aggregating waste producers’ data: gathering data from diverse sources such as business directories, government data, geospatial data, etc.
- Extracting and validating high-potential leads: providing 90% fewer false leads compared to other lead generation providers.
- Mapping, instant costing and providing pricing support: mapping lead lists allows waste collection companies to focus on 1–3% of customer leads recommended for their routes.
- Kicking-off the Sales campaigns: planning targeted sales campaigns for general and/or specific type of waste.
If interested to find out more, feel free to get in touch with us.
