Best B2B product launch campaign
Winner: Rackspace
Agency: Base One
Campaign: Intelligent messaging
During 2006 Rackspace became aware that companies were increasingly outsourcing IT applications, i.e. running applications such as email on a remote server, rather than having the administrative, financial and technical burden of managing such applications in-house. As a provider of managed hosting with an unparalleled reputation for reliability and customer support, Rackspace had cultivated an image based on its technical excellence and the unusually high dedication of its staff to their customers’ needs.
The company was aware that its reputation would make an ideal springboard for extending its services into the new marketplace of managed email services. Rackspace knew the sector was growing fast and wanted to secure its share.
Rackspace has an excellent relationship with Microsoft. It holds the highest level of accreditation as a gold’ hosting partner, and invests heavily in staff training to ensure that customer-facing staff are also Microsoft certified. The close relationship with Microsoft meant that Rackspace was ideally placed to offer the Microsoft software, Microsoft Managed Exchange, as part of a wider solution.
Rackspace created Intelligent Messaging. The solution was a combination of established, industry-recognized software backed up by Rackspace’s unquestioned ability to support the customer. Already trusted to host websites for thousands of companies in the UK, the challenge in spring 2007 was to explain to existing customers that they should buy into Rackspace’s new managed email product as well.
With customer communications known to be quirky and idiosyncratic and a brand promise like no other, Rackspace continually produces advertising and other customer communications which stand out from the crowd. The three-month period preceding Easter 2007 saw Rackspace and Base One developing a direct mail campaign aimed at the decision-makers at its existing UK customers. Recipients were already familiar with Rackspace’s disregard for convention and well aware of the brand personality. It was therefore in-keeping with their expectations to receive an unusual mailing in late March. In total 3000 existing customers drawn from Rackspace’s customer database were targeted.
Rackspace decided to turn the edible gifts at Easter’ theme on its head by focusing on the chemical ingredients of chocolate. Each customer was sent a pharmacy-style blister pack containing small egg-shaped chocolates. The foil backing was labelled with the chemical compounds phenylethylamine and theobromine, which are naturally present in chocolate and have been associated with brain stimulation. Conventional medicines contain a list of ingredients, instructions and information. So did the Rackspace treatment’. The document accompanying the blister pack explained how chocolate helps people communicate more intelligently and made the parallel with Rackspace’s new intelligent messaging solution.
With their appetite whetted, prospects were invited to a new microsite within the Rackspace website: www.rackspace.co.uk/Easter, which explained the benefits of taking up the offer. Since all recipients were existing customers, they were also invited to call their account manager. As an additional incentive customers were also offered one month’s free trial.
The campaign was short but astonishingly successful. Within the first month 1643 mailboxes had been sold to individual users among customer companies. Not only that but word-of-mouth recommendations brought in 49 mailboxes from new customers – even though the campaign was only aimed at existing ones. From comments received, Rackspace confidently expect that more customers will come in during the course of the year once their existing contracts with other organisations expire.
From a budget of £15,500 and with each mailbox generating revenue of £30 per month the campaign is already responsible for an estimated annual revenue of almost £600,000. The return on investment is a staggering 38:1.
Fabio Torlini, marketing director of Rackspace, is understandably happy with the results. “I was delighted with the launch of the Intelligent Messaging solution. It vindicated our belief that our customers would choose us for their managed email solution because they knew and trusted our ability to manage their websites. The launch was perfectly managed, both in terms of timing and the enormous buzz created by the mailing itself. Intelligent Messaging is now an important and lucrative part of Rackspace’s business.”
