HUT 3 wins the top prize for ‘Most Commercially Successful Campaign’ at our 2023 B2B Marketing Awards. Transforming Atos/Eviden’s healthcare and life sciences division, the 12-month global campaign exceeded expectations, securing an outstanding €249 million pipeline — five times the initial target of €50 million. HUT 3’s strategic approach resulted in exceptional ROI at 73,876%. The campaign facilitated the closure of 39 deals, marking a historic achievement in Atos/Eviden’s 26-year history. HUT 3’s campaign for Atos/Eviden is a testament to its prowess in delivering unparalleled commercial success.
Campaign summary
Through the delivery of a 12-month global campaign, HUT 3 has enabled IT company Atos/Eviden to secure an unprecedented amount of new business for its healthcare and life sciences division. The project aimed to present leaders in hospitals and healthcare organizations with a vision of the future of healthcare and how Atos/Eviden could help them get there via its cutting-edge digital solutions.
To achieve this, HUT 3 created a 50-page thought leadership report (informed by interviews with 35 global industry leaders) and 30 related assets, including articles, eBooks, fireside chats, videos, infographics, and interactive digital models – all of which were delivered through LinkedIn via an ABM lite campaign with clustered geographies.
HUT 3’s sector-leading approach to data was key to the campaign’s success. By tracking engagement across all gated and ungated content and utilizing intent data, the team could target content to the right lines of business and job functions on a global scale. The campaign has directly enabled Atos/Eviden’ sales team to close global deals totaling €71.7m, resulting in an exceptional ROI of 73,876%. The client commented: “This is the best-performing campaign in Atos/Eviden’ 26-year history. The results are phenomenal.”
About the client company
France-based Atos/Eviden is a €11 billion revenue IT service and consulting company with 111,000 employees across 71 countries. Its healthcare and life sciences division improves services for hospitals and healthcare providers by showcasing cutting-edge digital solutions, including cyber security, AI, decarbonization tools, smart buildings, and more. Its clients include Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, Columbus Regional Healthcare System, and Phillips.
Strategic context
The issue for Atos/Eviden was simple: clients saw the business as an IT outsourcer, rather than a strategic partner that could revolutionize their operations with pioneering technology. For years, Atos/Eviden tried to change perceptions via fragmented, short-term campaigns but saw limited success.
It was clear Atos/Eviden needed to think bigger and utilize a longer-term ABM approach to engage its audience consistently throughout a sales cycle (18 months). However, despite having a dedicated ABM function internally, Atos/Eviden lacked the resources to deliver a global ABM campaign. That’s where HUT 3 came in.
Objectives and strategy
The ultimate objective was to secure a €50 million pipeline of new business within 12 months.
To achieve this, the six-strong project team developed a bold, data-driven ABM lite (one-to-few) strategy to engage prospects on a global scale via an in-depth thought leadership piece.
This multi-phase content marketing campaign would show the audience a clear, achievable vision of the digital future of healthcare, and how Atos/Eviden could help to get them there.
The campaign objectives were to achieve:
- 575,000 impressions.
- 5,400 clicks/engagements.
- 4,000 landing page visits.
- 3,200 PDF downloads.
- 20 marketing qualified leads (MQLs).
Target audience and customer insight
The campaign’s content needed to engage director and C-suite-level decision-makers within hospitals and healthcare organizations and be relevant across different countries and funding models (i.e. privately/publicly funded).
Utilizing Atos/Eviden’ existing customer and prospect lists, the campaigns would target regions where accounts had the greatest growth opportunity: UK, USA, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, and India.
As the limited budget prevented a strategic one-to-one ABM approach, HUT 3 segmented regions into clusters and allocated budget evenly.
ABM growth of existing strategic accounts:
- 20% UK.
- 20% USA.
- 20% Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg), Nordics (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden) and Switzerland.
- 20% Australia and India.
Net-new logos:
- 20% UK and USA.
Messaging and creative
HUT 3 interviewed 35 high-profile Atos/Eviden customers and partners to inform a 50-page ‘Big Rock’ thought leadership report, which was repurposed to support three further campaigns:
- Frontline perspectives: focused on current issues for healthcare leaders.
- About the patient: focused on care trends and changing demands of patients.
- Smart digital healthcare: focused on helping providers move to the healthcare of the future.
Recognizing that different countries have different healthcare models and challenges, interviews explored themes that were specific to each cluster. 30 assets were created and delivered via LinkedIn, including articles, eBooks, fire-side chats, videos, infographics, and interactive digital models.
The agency also created a dedicated website showcasing gated and free-to-download assets. While access to the Big Rock report was gated for lead generation, all other assets were ungated – however, engagement of all assets was tracked.
To maximize value, messaging was remarketed by Atos/Eviden’ sales team via content syndication (Google) and strategic one-to-one ABM email engagement. To guide the sales team’s messaging, the agency created a comprehensive 43-page sales document containing email templates, shareable assets, and tactics for engaging specific customer profiles.
Media and channels used
As this was Atos/Eviden’ first use of LinkedIn to target accounts, testing was vital to ensure messaging could successfully penetrate decision-makers. Testing included:
Channels: Harnessing Atos/Eviden’ account list, HUT 3 identified target users on LinkedIn within each geography. The three campaigns of ungated content were then delivered to clustered accounts via paid and organic activity, as well as via comparable email marketing campaigns. As LinkedIn achieved substantially higher engagements than email, HUT 3 halted emails in Q2 and focused purely on LinkedIn.
Content: Utilising LinkedIn Insight Tag (i.e., pixel) the agency was also able to continually refine the content and refine/retarget the audience to maximize engagement.
Geographies: By identifying the lowest-performing cluster (Australia/India) in Q1, HUT 3 was able to shift budgets to allow higher spending in the strongest-performing cluster (USA)from Q2 onwards.
The insight from the three ungated campaigns enabled HUT 3 to identify highly engaged MQLs, which were retargeted to the gated Big Rock report. Each quarter, the five MQLs with the biggest potential in each cluster were engaged directly by Atos/Eviden’ regional sales teams for ongoing strategic one-to-one ABM.
Key martech platforms or solutions
HUT 3 utilized three martech platforms:
- LinkedIn ABM for outbound paid social (licensed to HUT 3).
- Triblio for advertising (licensed to Atos/Eviden).
- Marketo for email campaigns (licensed to Atos/Eviden).
Timescales
- Planning and development: September to November 2021.
- Interviews, content creation, and sales kit creation: November to December 2021.
- Roll out of three ungated campaigns: January to August 2022.
- Big Rock publication: September 2022.
Budgets
All works were required to be delivered for £83,000, comprising:
- HUT 3’s fees, including consultancy, asset creation, and project management: £53,000.
- Advertising fees for all phases: £30,000.
To minimise costs and carbon emissions, the entire project was managed remotely and delivered digitally.
Results
Concluding in September 2022, the campaign was an outstanding success, generating a €249 million pipeline of new business – c.5x more than the €50 million target! HUT 3 also exceeded all other objectives:
- 1.71 million impressions (target 575,000).
- 9,167 clicks/engagements (target 5,400).
- 5,596 landing page visits (target 4,000).
- 6,598 PDF downloads (target 3,200).
- 25 MQLs (target 20).
Crucially, the campaign enabled Atos/Eviden’ sales team to close 39 deals, totaling €71.7 million (£61.4 million) – something never-before achieved in Atos/Eviden’ 26-year history. Based on an £83,000 budget, this equates to an exceptional ROI of 73,876%. Atos/Eviden were delighted, scoring HUT 3 10/10 for ‘Overall Performance’ and ‘Likelihood to Recommend’.
Testimonial
“HUT 3’s campaign has elevated Atos/Eviden’ brand and initiated discussions with existing customers and new logos. Internally, it’s improved the collaboration and credibility of our marketing and sales teams. We’ve found the campaign so powerful that the content is being showcased within our Business Technology & Innovation Centres and we’re also tailoring aspects for use with future ABM campaigns.
“This campaign marks a major step change in our approach to ABM. Never before have we run a campaign across multiple countries, personas and accounts, with content personalised for each, and multiple assets aligned to the buyer journey. HUT 3’s approach ensured we targeted the right people with the right message and optimised the programmes almost in real time. The results are nothing short of phenomenal.”
Carmen Overton, Global Head of Marketing at Atos/Eviden
