Delivering 365-Day Connected Event Campaigns
Your customers don’t just cease to exist just because you’re in-between marketing campaigns. So, it’s important that your business maintains 365-day connected communications to keep top of mind with your customers and prospects.
The Challenge
Our client had just gone through a significant rebrand; new and exciting messaging was coming through localised go-to-market messaging in addition to Global Corporate brand imperative. However, the marketing programs were not being employed collaboratively, and the full ROI benefits were not being realised. In addition, our client recognised that their customers didn’t cease to exist just because they were in-between marketing campaigns; they wanted a lead generation plan that was an “always on” communication with customers.
“I don’t have time to process the claims or create and manage campaigns”
“Messaging and content from Global Assets provided by my vendors are too customer centric”
“I need an agency that understands solutions marketing”
“I need far more metric centric campaigns and reporting”
The solution
- 6-city national road show showcasing our client and Partner IT capabilities
- Executive roundtable events to extend the life of the campaign and target other key decision maker profiles
- A national survey to engage the wider customer base and provide talking points at events
- Digital advertising targeting IT decision makers and reaffirming current go-to-market messaging
- Long-term telemarketing to identify and acquire qualified leads, as well as nurture marketing leads to ensure continuous lead funnel throughout
- High-Value Direct Mail targeting named key acquisition accounts
- Sales Team engagement to optimise conversion rates and thus maximising revenue and ROI
How we made it happen
The key to the success of this project was to localise content to ensure alignment of communications into strong, consolidated customer value propositions and messaging that resonated with the target audience.
- Disruptive Technology
- Office of the Future
- Do More with Technology
In addition, an interlock with the business’s sales leaders helped to secure milestones and sales expectations such as lead delivery frequency and quality. A more coherent, closed-loop process was achieved with sales and marketing teams aligned.
In line with the premise of 365-day connected communications, there were no standalone marketing communication pieces. Rather, each marketing vehicle was used as an equally important cog of one wheel. Each campaign track rolled organically to the next campaign track, nurturing customers toward the ultimate goal of sales conversion, while maintain awareness. For example, upon the completion of the 6-city road show for IT Managers, we invited the Executive Management of those companies who attended the events to a C-Suite exclusive breakfast to further demonstrate our key messaging priorities. Moreover, key target contacts that were not responsive to follow-up meeting requests were sent high-value direct mail pieces – this gave sales teams a novel way of breaking the ice and initiating meetings.
Rather than delivering a large number of leads at one time, it was decided to trickle leads over several quarters. This ensured that each qualified lead got the required time and attention of the sales team for follow-up, and reduced the risk of leads being lost in the “sales abyss”. Moreover, a long-term telemarketing planning schedule allowed for marketing leads to be nurtured until such time, where appropriate, they would convert to a sales qualified lead.
Social media content and advertising were also leveraged extensively. Additionally, highly targeted LinkedIn advertising helped to reaffirm the go-to-market messaging and helped to maintain top of mind awareness to the target audiences. Of the leads that where garnered from online sources, high value opportunities that were identified were sent high value door openers and backed up by telemarketing activity to further qualify details and IT requirements.
Throughout the course of this project, Forum Group Events & Marketing met with sales and marketing leaders weekly. This helped to ensure that the campaign remained relevant, dynamic and successful.
The results
- 210% registration target attainment and 130% event attendance attainment at the National Roadshow
- 142% audience attendance reach via social media
- 170% target attainment of sales qualified leads, resulting in 150% revenue attainment
- 73% lead conversion rate of contacts reached by sales team via high-value door openers
- 100% achievement of Marketing Development Funds (MDF)
