In 2023 we were hired for the engagement with the highest hold rate we have ever recorded.
88 per cent. Of 85 meetings booked, 75 took place, across nine months and more than a dozen countries. Nothing else in our book comes close at that volume, and the reason is instructive.
The ask was small. Publishers were not being asked to buy anything, change a system or convince a finance director. They were being offered content that fills a gap in their own product, and a meeting to discuss it costs a digital director half an hour of a day he already spends looking for engagement.
When the first meeting has almost no cost and an obvious potential upside, people turn up. Most of the hold-rate problem in outbound is not persuasion. It is asking for too much too early.
What we did
Nine months across the Gulf, Egypt, the Levant, North Africa, Turkey, South Asia and South East Asia. 85 meetings booked, 75 confirmed held, 85 companies introduced.
Media groups and publishers: MBC, Al Jazeera Media Network, Dubai Media Incorporated, Gulf News, Khaleej Times, Arab News, Asharq News, The National, Youm7, Al Ahram, Times of Oman, Oman Observer, Manorama Online, Singapore Press Holdings, Mediacorp. Telecoms: du, e&, Omantel, Batelco, Vodafone Qatar, Zain Jordan, Umniah, Asiacell, Djezzy, Maroc Telecom, Algérie Télécom, Telecom Egypt, Etisalat Egypt, Libyana, Virgin Mobile. Platforms and games businesses: noon, Anghami, OpenSooq, Qatar Living, Bayut and Dubizzle, Nabd, StarzPlay, Viu, The Entertainer, Tamatem, SandSoft, FRVR.
One campaign, twenty countries, one lesson about lists
A programme this wide fails on list quality rather than on messaging. The pitch barely changed between Cairo and Colombo. What changed was knowing which of a country's four telcos actually owns its own portal, and which media group has a digital team with the authority to add a section to its own app.
That research is unglamorous and it is most of the work. Two people ran this engagement for nine months, and the difference between their good weeks and their bad ones was almost always whether the previous week had been spent on the list.
What it shows
If you want meetings to happen, shrink the ask. A first meeting that requires a budget conversation holds at sixty per cent; one that offers a publisher something their audience will use holds at nearly ninety. Design the offer around what makes the first meeting easy to accept, then earn the harder conversation later.