Summary
To support challenging sales targets and establish a strong pipeline of opportunities into 2011, O2 wanted to launch a campaign to increase its BlackBerry smartphone connections.
To support these goals, a three-month promotional incentive had been agreed within O2 to offer new customers a £50 credit for each smartphone they bought, which could be redeemed against future BlackBerry hardware purchases. Using this promotion to help make the case to switch to BlackBerry, The Marketing Practice (TMP) worked with the O2 Enterprise marketing team to create an integrated multi-touch campaign to drive connections before year end.
The Marketing Practice created a campaign based around the concept of ‘Good Fortune’. This theme gave O2 a platform to develop a variety of messages to communicate the benefits of BlackBerry smartphones, showing not just how the solutions could help business, but also why the promotion gave the campaign timeliness – and could improve their financial fortune in the process.
The campaign was delivered through direct mails, a microsite, online banners and emails all of which were underpinned by telemarketing. The three-month campaign resulted in 65 immediate face-to-face meetings and a ‘nurture pot’ of 434 organisations which formed a strong sales pipeline for 2011.
Client
Bought in 2006 by Telefonica, O2 is well-known as a leading mobile provider to consumers and businesses. O2’s Enterprise division targets organisations with 2,000 plus employees – offering everything required to keep a business connected from a fixed, mobile, voice, data and technology perspective.
Following the recent joint venture with 2e2, O2’s customers are now able to outsource their IT and communication needs to a single provider, helping to join up communications and reduce costs by up to 30 per cent.
Strategy
The three-month campaign was created to support the sales effort in 2010 and develop a strong pipeline for 2011 too.
An offer-led campaign aimed at showing how the smartphones could create efficiencies while reducing costs was agreed as the most effective way to communicate the benefits and the offer (a minimum of 50 smartphones bought would give the purchaser £50 per phone to spend on more hardware).
The promotion’s offer gave an incentive to buy now, although the campaign still needed to demonstrate the business benefits of a BlackBerry solution to generate initial interest and demand. Intelligence gathered from the telemarketing allowed the messaging of the campaign to be refined as it progressed, which led to some enhancements to the website and more tailored industry-led messages to be drawn out in the emails.
The theme of the campaign was ‘Good Fortune’. This concept lent itself to the commercial efficiencies that BlackBerry smartphones deliver, plus the ‘good fortune’ of the promotion itself. The theme was taken through the creative execution with a wheel design on the high value direct mail and website.
Objectives
O2 and The Marketing Practice were clear on the campaign objectives – to create a high impact and engaging offer-led lead generation campaign to increase the number of BlackBerry smartphone connections. Specifically:
- Secure 75 sales meetings for the sales team
- Create buzz and interest around the BlackBerry offer from O2
- Build a strong pipeline of suspects for 2011 campaigning
Target audience
The target audience was IT and telecommunications managers across all vertical sectors from O2’s prospect base. O2 provided the prospect data, which was also updated and enriched as part of the campaigning process. In total the campaign reached 6,780 commercial and public sector organisations over the three-month period.
Media and timescales
The campaign, all underpinned by telemarketing, ran from September to December 2010. Collateral and mechanics included:
- High value direct mail – A ready reckoner design, which allowed recipients to scroll the wheel and calculate how much credit they would receive with the promotion on one side, then flip over to see what that translated into smartphone model-wise
- Low value direct mail – case study-led A5 flyer demonstrating the specific benefits of a BlackBerry solution
- Microsite – echoing the ready reckoner design, the website calculator wheel could be spun to assess the credit value available with your purchase.
- Good fortune guide – Eight-page PDF guide echoing the benefits of BlackBerry, provided customer testimonials and gave further details of how the offer worked. This was hosted on the microsite and also used as follow up to an initial stage of unprompted calling
- Online banner – hosted on O2.co.uk, pushing people through to the microsite
- Emails – produced and deployed in four waves. There was one HTML designed version and three plain text emails, two of which were industry specific, highlighting the specific industry benefits that BlackBerry could address
Timescales
Read your fortune guide – 15 September: 108 guides sent as part of the unprompted calling (Telemarketing limited to prospects only)
Microsite – Live 24 September: 1343 unique visitors to the website; two per cent clicks
Corporate web banner – 1 October: 1050 unique clicks to the website Wave one HTML email 5 October : Open rate 18.98 per cent
CTR 16.05 per cent
CTR 0.32 per cent
Direct Mail (Ready Reckoner and Standalone leaflet) – 14/15 October 4,000 total sent to prospects and customers: Ready Rec. – 25 per cent recall rate
Leaflet – 14 per cent recall rate
W2 plain text email 28 October: Open rate – 14.8 per cent
CTR (customers) 1.51 per cent
CTR (prospects) 0.93 per cent
W3 vertical specific emails 11 November: Overall email stats – open rate: 11 per cent , CTR: one per cent (Vertical specific: F&PS, IT & Telecoms = most opens (1522 per cent)); IT & Telecoms = highest CTR at 10 per cent (all other verticals average at c.0-1 per cent)
W4 Fwd style final email 22 November Open rate – 10.38 per cent; CTR – 0.21 per cent
Timescales
Successes include:
- Sixty-five immediate face-to-face meetings generated and 147 meetings within six– 12 months
- Generated a nurture pot of 287 organisations who were interested in meeting with O2 in 12-18 months
- 25 per cent recall rate from customers receiving the ready reckoner direct mail campaign
- Click through rate of 16 per cent for first email campaign following direct mail
Client testimonial
“We went from the campaign brief to 434 opportunities in just three months thanks to The Marketing Practice’s sales-savvy marketing approach. We’re working closely with sales to position O2 as a trusted and helpful advisor – and TMP’s understanding of the sales cycle, plus a hands-on approach to delivery is key to helping us achieve our goals”
Zoe Frost, O2 Enterprise Marketing
