The proven method of talking to individuals in enterprise is a 'meat eating' sales team walking into the lobby of the building where people work and talking to the receptionist. This is probably worth doing outside of enterprise, too.
It is expensive. It is time consuming. It is valuable.
On the other hand, I think most people hate most emails because every email is an item on their TODO list because every email must be processed and processing emails takes time. The most time efficient way to process emails is to mark them as spam and never see an email from that source again. For me, if a company sends me an automated email, that's usually what happens because if and when I want more information or to learn about updates, I can just visit the website (and odds are that the content of an autogenerated company email consists of links to the website).
Good luck.
For some reason marketing types simply do NOT get that their carefully crafted email marketing missives are automatically consigned to spam. Do they read every email they are sent? Probably not, but their conceit is that their emails are special and should be read.
In my situation that person has already come to me. But I cannot convince him (it's usually him, not her) to talk to me. He is window shopping. He is just looking around and playing by himself, but whenever approached acts as if he wasn't there.
These guys are on my website because they need a custom app. But I don't know what app, with what features and how I can help them.
I'm looking for a hint on how to approach these guys and make them talk.
Anyone?
Maybe you get a lot of useful information. Maybe very little. At least you know what getting past the front door entails.
It is very easy for staff to create fake email addresses to get a free trial and kick the tyres. Unless they end up using your product they won't be interested in demo-calls, etc. Most technical staffers hate sales calls, so offers of demo-calls are more likely to be seen as pushy sales calls.
BTW what is your conversion rate from free-trial to paid plans?
I need to give some background I guess. Our platform is a codeless development framework for mobile apps. So it is not easy process for users to actually make their goal come true = build the custom app they want. This is where our support would come in handy, but we need to talk to the user first, to find out what app he wants to develop. Then we could even prove him it is possible, by simply developing it in a few hours.
But we haven't found a formula to make those enterprise users actually start talking to us...
So does Intercom tell you that people have tried using your product once, deemed it too confusing and have ditched it?
Since I don't know which of the many products that the Google search came up with is yours -- you do have paid ads? -- I can only broad brush presume that the product promises more than it can deliver and thus is quickly discarded after one failed attempt. If the persons trying out your product wanted consulting services, then there are number of firms who explicitly are offering that approach to solving the mobile app creation requirement.
Perhaps you could provide a wiki / FAQ / forum which is only accessible using the email that was used to activate the free trial. Then with a bit of instrumentation you might be better able to discern the steps that evaluation users take.
I wouldn't say it promises too much, because it indeed enables developing mobile apps. But I have to fully agree with another sentence you wrote: the product is quickly discarded after failed attempt.
The product is good. But because it is powerful, it comes with a learning curve. Imagine Photoshop - nobody is a master right after starting to use it. How long would it take a human being to learn how to develop apps? Let's say a few months or years - because it requires to learn how to code. With our product learning how to create an app and actually creating it, takes a few hours in total. But still, this is a few hours you need to invest.
So what I would like to achieve with those enterprise prospects, is to get them speak to us right after they fail, instead of discarding.
Any advice on how this can be done?
Psychologically people will not admit to failing, they will blame the product instead and most won't be wanting to speak to anybody about it. I might be over-generalising, but many techies prefer to avoid telephone calls.
There isn't much you can do about past subscribers to your free trial. Possibly a bulk email about a "new version".
You could revamp your website, include your bit about "Powerful Product requires some learning curve to become proficient." AND include a video to developing a mobile app with your product. I would go about this by coming up with an example mobile app, then video tape the entire spiel as you would do it over the phone, but this time to a video. Make it easy for new users as well as returning users (invited by above email) to follow along. Then include in the video an invitation to call for "your complimentary one-on-one ramp up session".
It would be an idea to update your app as well. Include the link to the video, etc in the splash screen. If possible detect when a session has been exited quickly and display the offer of consulting.
I would even go as far as suggesting that you recruit a friend who has never used your product to have a go and video their attempt, etc. You could even then come to their aid. In the past usability studies often used videos to identify problems with products, you could go further and use it not just to improve your product, but to also demonstrate its ease of use.
All the best to you. If there's anything I could do to return the favor, please just let me know.
What specifically are you trying to get them to do? Why do you want to initiate a conversation? How are you getting them to sign-up? Clearly you're doing something right in getting the sign-ups, maybe you can tweak that process to get them to expect or initiate the conversation themselves.
Our follow-up email is professionally-styled. And short. Offering a personal free demo-call on how to operate our platform. The email is based on examples by other successful companies.
So perhaps someone has gone though these roadblocks and can give an advice?