Genetically programmed for success.

Expression Analysis was launched in September of 2001, with just two employees and a $1.2 million investment. In the few short years that have passed since then, the company has become a recognized market leader in microarray outsourcing for gene expression, genotyping and resequencing analysis.

There are many reasons for the company’s phenomenal success, not the least of which is cutting-edge technology and really smart people at the helm.

But there’s also a powerful marketing story here – and it begins a year later, when Expression Analysis and VisionPoint Marketing got together.

Great science, not-so-great marketing.

By the end of their first year, the founders of Expression Analysis had made big strides and chalked up nearly $2 million in sales.

They had a website, a marketing database of 2300 contacts, ads in trade publications and some experience with trade shows and direct mail.

What they didn’t have: marketing success.

Their website was little more than “brochureware” – some basic information on who they were, what they did, how to get in touch.

Their marketing database was a mishmash of suspects, prospects, customers and partners; it had never been utilized or cleansed.

The ads didn’t work. Same with the trade shows. Same with the direct mail.

It was nobody’s fault. With the CEO and COO busy applying their considerable expertise to the job of growing the company, and no one in marketing, the COO had to take on the marketing responsibilities. And he didn’t mind admitting that he’d taken just one marketing course during his career.

Then VisionPoint got involved.

The challenges were considerable: Expression Analysis had no brand personality in the marketplace, and the small salesforce had prospects scattered across the globe, with no sales materials except the very “un-sales-y” website.

The role we took on was more like that of a member of the management team than of a marketing services firm.

We began by developing a marketing budget with a comprehensive list of tactics, which we then executed them (an aside: some companies do either the planning or the execution; we do both).

The primary task was to generate demand.

Building awareness and establishing a brand identity as an industry leader were crucial tasks, and they didn’t go unaddressed. But there was a specific and immediate need to deliver qualified leads – and to do so with limited money and people resources.

The demand generation program we developed consisted of three basic steps:

1. Fill the sales pipeline. In order to generate a list of suspects, we did the following:
   
   • Cleansed the existing database by emailing it and obtaining instant feedback on who is still current, who is not, who is reading their email, who is visiting the Expression Analysis website, and who is interested in what service.
   • Gained permission from the people on the database to continue to send email.
   • Added search engine optimization to the website.
   • Redesigned the website to focus on guiding each visitor immediately to the “right” content based on their home page interaction, providing the suspect with information that is compelling, and delivering a strong call to action.
   • Generated leads through email marketing to an in-house list.
   • Generated leads to rented opt-in email lists and carefully tracking results.
   
   


2. Moving suspects to prospects.
   Once suspects interacted with the
   Expression Analysis website or emails, they were considered to be prospects.
3. Prospects were offered a free Gene Reference Guide Book as an incentive to give their permission to receive our email marketing messages.
4. Moving prospects to qualified leads. Prospects were considered to be qualified leads once they:
   
   • Opted in for future communication from “Expression Analysis”:http://www.expressionanalysis.com/.
   • Requested more information on specific services.
   • Requested proposal or quote for services.

Remarkable results.

• The first emailing, delivered to 2300 contacts from the in-house list, yielded nine personal messages, all positive feedback, and two qualified leads each worth $150,000 annually.
• Expression Analysis gained the ability to send a mailing and watch what prospects are doing with that email and on the website, then respond accordingly via email or a salesperson.
• The email addresses of responders were captured in the first opt-in list rental, and all results were tracked:
  
  • 62% opened the email
  • 2.7% clicked through to the website
  • 24 individuals requested the Gene Chip Reference Guide (a quantity that had previously taken a salesperson two weeks to generate)
• With the second opt-in list rental,
  • 91% opened the email
  • 6.2% clicked through
  • four qualified leads were gained, each worth $150,000 per year
  • five projects were realized – and because the content was purposely geared to larger prospects, the projects were valued at ten times the average amount of past projects
• 24% of the internal database had incorrect email addresses and were purged

Plus, in June 2003, Expression Analysis was named to Entrepreneur magazine’s list of 100 fastest-growing entrepreneurial companies in America.

The next steps.

In 2004, VisionPoint Marketing was able to add to Expression Analysis’s arsenal of marketing weapons. One example is the appointment setting we did for them in advance of a major trade show.

We obtained a list of members of the American Society of Human Genetics, but had no way of knowing which would be attending the 2004 show. Calls to those that the client selected as most promising yielded seven appointments – or, put another way, we set appointments with nearly 14 percent of those we got on the phone.

2005 was a very good year.

As Expression Analysis grew, it was able to hire a person whose sole function is marketing, and we changed our role to become more of a guide or consultant. In fact, as the Expression Analysis staff is able to take on more and more of what we had previously done, we have enabled and facilitated the transition by building templates, providing tools and being available for support.

But we still perform an important role.

One example is permission marketing. From a list of zero, we’ve built it to nearly 3000 names within just one year. Every five to six weeks, we reach this opt-in database with a quarterly email newsletter, industry news or alerts, or a press release.

Also in 2005, VisionPoint was instrumental in getting Expression Analysis its own column in a key trade publication. In fact, the publication valued the information so much, it actually paid Expression Analysis to write the column!

To support efforts to secure keynote speaking opportunities at trade shows, we also created speaker bios on members of the EA executive team. The bios were programmed to allow easy customization by the client based upon the conference theme and topic.

And we hold monthly review meetings with the client in which we report on results for search engine optimization and pay per click marketing efforts. Based on benchmarks for the industry and the client’s trending data, we make recommendations for action items and decide which will be handled by the client and which by the agency.

The results continue to be outstanding. Sales were up 80 percent over last year, and Expression Analysis was named to Entrepreneur magazine’s list of 100 fastest-growing entrepreneurial companies in America – for the second time.

We can’t take credit for all of this success, of course, or even the lion’s share. But as you’ll see in the quote from the COO of Expression Analysis, we played a very instrumental role.