AI Case Study
Epson America increases engagement and marketing qualified leads by 240% and 75% respectively with AI-powered sales assistant
Epson America has leveraged Conversica's AI-powered automated sales assistant to achieve standardisation and optimisation of lead outreach and communication. With Rachel, which is capable of having human-like, two-way email conversions, the company claims it has been able to achieve a 240% increase in engagement, 75% increase in marketing qualified leads, 500% increase in influenced pipeline and $2M incremental revenue in 90 days. Following the positive results Epson has extended its use of Conversica to tie channel sales back to website-originated leads.
Industry
Technology
Technology Hardware And Equipment
Project Overview
"Conversica's Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered sales assistant uses human-like, two-way email conversions to automatically engage and qualify leads, freeing up sales reps to close more business.
Through Rachel’s efforts, Epson has learned quite a bit about how best to nurture prospects, including the fact that they need to be touched, on average, six to eight times before they respond and that they are more responsive if they are emailed at the times they prefer.
To standardize and optimize lead outreach and communication, Epson implemented Conversica’s AI automated sales assistant with unlimited bandwidth, that uses human-like, two-way email conversions to automatically engage and qualify leads, freeing up sales reps to close more business. Rachel has been able to spot concerns in emails that were then passed directly to a dealer or internal service to fix potential problems. And, in following up with customers, Rachel was able to uncover additional sales opportunities. Epson has extended its use of Conversica to tie channel sales back to website-originated leads.
The official response rate of 51% delivered by Conversica is a 240% increase from the baseline established at the beginning of the test period. “Of the leads that have engaged with us, 35% are considered hot, which is an increase of 75%,” Nickel notes. “We’ve seen the in uenced pipeline grow to more than $3 million and actual wins of more than $2 million in revenue.”
There have been other bene ts as well. Rachel has spotted concerns in emails that were then passed directly to a dealer or internal service to x potential problems. And, in following up with customers, Rachel was able to uncover additional sales opportunities. For example, a customer might con rm they had purchased a projector and wanted more. Rachel would recognize that as a hot lead and pass it to the right rep right away, accelerating the response to the customer before they could ask competitors to bid.
Epson has extended its use of Conversica to tie channel sales back to website-originated leads. “We will send an email from Rachel to the end user and ask whether they heard from the dealer and we will send an email to the dealer asking whether they were able to contact the prospect. It’s been a huge bene t just being able to report on this activity.” In addition, with a deeper understanding of dealer productivity enabled by Rachel, the company is able to tweak lead ow to the best-suited partner. Nickel is very pleased with the progress, and said that Epson is considering rolling out more Rachels to other business groups and integrating them with marketing automation."
Reported Results
Epson America states the following results:
* 240% increase in engagement
* 75% increase in marketing qualified leads
* 500% increase in in uenced pipeline
* $2M incremental revenue in 90 days
* Accelerated the response to the customer
Technology
"Conversica’s AI automated sales assistant uses human-like, two-way email conversions to automatically engage and qualify leads."
Function
Marketing
Customer Management
Background
"In charge of lead management, events, as well as sales enablement and training for Epson America’s ve commercial groups is Chris Nickel, Senior Marketing Manager. Currently, the company generates leads via its website, trade shows, direct mail, email marketing, social media, print advertising, online banner advertising, and a brand awareness campaign called “Where There’s Business, There’s Epson.” Together, these activities generate approximately 40,000 to 60,000 leads each year.
'When I took over the commercial group three years ago, a key question was how to optimize how we were handling leads,” Nickel recalls. “There wasn’t a solid process in place, and it had become more complicated as we extended the product lines. Having a diverse set of products meant we had leads with multiple product interests and, frankly, the sales reps weren’t really following up on a consistent basis'.
That’s because the reps were remunerated by sales on named accounts—not by sales on leads sent to them—thereby leading to disinterest in the leads that didn’t line up with their named accounts. 'Before Conversica, leads would come in and whether they were good, bad, qualiefied, or not qualified, we would just turn them over to our salespeople,' Nickel notes. 'We had no insight into what the reps were doing with them. This meant that I needed to nd another way to guarantee prospects the responsiveness they needed'."
Benefits
Data
Email text