Maintenance agreements lapse for many reasons – none can be called good for their vendors – and once they do, they must either be won back or said goodbye to. That second option is ‘not an option.’
Winning back lapsed maintenance agreements is good for vendors because it returns what could potentially have been enormous lost revenue. It’s also a good thing for renewing customers because maintenance renewal can help them avoid unexpected problems like downtime, decreased productivity and lost revenue, while often providing software enhancements and updated hardware components in the bargain.
With thousands of total customers and hundreds of maintenance contracts expiring in any given year, companies find it difficult to keep up, and discovering exactly why an agreement has lapsed and what the path to its renewal might be, is not necessarily a simple job. An effective Frantz Group maintenance renewal campaign can provide the experience and expertise to fill that gap.
Frantz Group is experienced and expert: “We’ve successfully executed maintenance campaigns for numerous clients, across many industries,” says Frantz Group’s director of Account Management. Indeed, FG has run continuous maintenance, support, and service renewal campaigns each year since 2005, with repeat customers. While most of this work is lead generation with qualified leads being passed to clients’ sales teams, sometimes FG is asked to act on behalf of clients’ sales teams and to close those leads as well.
“With a dedicated campaign and a strategic combination of integrated tactics, we’ve shown our client companies a significant return on their investment by helping them reach out to their customers for renewal of expired maintenance contracts. In some cases, we’ve worked with companies to help secure initial maintenance contracts with their customers as well.”
Maintenance renewal campaigns can show excellent, and fast, ROI: Referencing a recent campaign, FG’s exec continued, “Just two months into the program, one of the leads had already closed. Besides the quick sales cycle, that one lead paid for the client’s entire campaign – three times over.” She continues, “That was somewhat exceptional, but in some instances just one renewal will pay for a campaign. Overall, these campaigns can be very cost effective for our clients.”
What factors increase the success of a campaign? There are several tools Frantz Group has found to be effective as part of a maintenance renewal program and each is unique, but two standouts have been incentives (client offers a tangible benefit to customers to get them back on maintenance) and video, where Frantz Group provides a link to a quick, three to five minute spot, outlining an offer as well as the advantages and benefits to the client’s customers.