Blue skies for Sterling Commerce

Sterling Commerce turned to Ice Blue Sky with a very specific brief to generate awareness and new prospects for its Supply Chain software applications, targeting senior business managers in manufacturing, logistics and distribution companies. IT buyers in these sectors know Sterling Commerce fairly well for infrastruture products but the company was less well known among the crucial and lucrative business buyers.

Sterling Commerce selected Ice Blue Sky for its long list of credentials and references specifically in the areas of supply chain. With only 150 companies to target, there was a need to deliver a high conversion rate to meet KPIs

The primary objectives were to make Supply Chain and IT executives understand clearly how Sterling Commerce’s products can improve visibility across international supply chains better than the more well-known enterprise brands, by positioning Sterling as a domain expert. A key objective was to generate at least 10 new senior executive prospects from tier one organisations.

A three-part strategy that combined budgetary pragmatism, creativity and cutting-ege trends in B2B marketing was created:

  1. Intelligently combine good old-fashioned face-to-face communications with online marketing to strengthen these new relationships cost-effectively
  2. Make it as easy as possible for new prospects to connect and engage with Sterling, using personalised and persona-based content and communications vehicles that speaks their language and empathises with their busines challenges.
  3. Design an intelligent, integrated campaign that employes the optimal tactic (for effectiveness and cost) at each phase of the communications lifecycle

The campaign kicked off with a themed event to the target prospects. Implementing persona-based marketing principles, and combining this with personalised URLS, personalised email invitations were sent before the event and confirmed participation by deploying senior, industry-experienced consultants who were able to communicate effectively and personally with this audience. To complement these tactics, serveral different communications methods were carried out prior to the event to minimise attrition which resulted in very, very few drop outs for the event (less than 10%).

The calling was leveraged to not only generate event delegates and sales meetings, but also to gather observations, questions, interests and feedback. This intelligence was used as a foundation upon which to build a series of highly personalised communications to issue through a range of on- and off-line channels, including highly personalised direct mail and email, combined with personalised URLs, which meant we could easily track responses and initial sources of response.

Taking the intelligence gathered from the event and from the calling, another online resource centre was created, which contained a “Top Tips” guide to supply chain visibility. Using persona-based messaging, we were able to directly tap into each individual target to guide them to value-based content that exactly matched their business pain.

By taking this highly personalised approach we were able to have in-depth contact with key senior decision makers, and by using a combination of print, digital and face to face, we made the most use of a small budget.

Results:

  • 44 per cent engagement with target auience (up form zero per cent)
  • Sales prospects grew by an average of 25 per cent with each stage of activity
  • By sending both the personalised flyer and email we increased conversion by 50 per cent with those targets

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