The challenge
A sweeping financial crisis is difficult for any company – but when you’re in the business of helping companies research the financial stability and credit worthiness of other organisations in order to mitigate business risk – the challenges are amplified. Following customer feedback and with the aim of providing confidence and a positive customer experience in times of economic instability D&B decided to act.
After listening to their customers, the marketing team concluded that a highly targeted webinar focused on the topic of risk mitigation, aligned with a well-respected brand, was the best campaign strategy. However, the marketers at D&B had a short timetable, so they needed to leverage internal resources and use tools they had at their disposal to develop the campaign.
Having the webinar hosted by a well-known, industry thought leader would provide both the draw they needed to drive registration and deliver added value to strengthen brand positioning in the wake of a challenging economic climate. However, executing the campaign in a short time frame would be critical to the program’s success.
The Solution
The marketing team at D&B U.K. was confident they could deploy the entire campaign in-house using the Eloqua marketing automation platform which automates the touch points between prospect interactions to save critical time and resources. By conserving bandwidth, they were able to spend time securing the services of Liz MacKean, of BBC’s Newsnight, as the webinar moderator. Aligning D&B with another highly respected brand and having a well-known journalist chair the event would help to promote the webinar, drive attendance and assert D&B as thought leaders in the area of risk mitigation.
Executing a multi-step event campaign can be a tedious, time consuming process. With discreet paths for people who register and require reminders versus people who fail to register and require follow up emails, event management can be cumbersome if executed manually. However, using Eloqua, D&B was able to automate the workflows in advance so that as customers took different actions, the program would kick off different steps and send the appropriate communication – from reminder emails to voice mails and follow-up communications after the webinar was over.
While getting people to register was important, D&B was most concerned with ensuring that on the day of the webinar that they had maximised attendance, so with the extra time they saved leveraging automation, they added another dimension to the campaign. The team recorded a voice mail reminder from Liz MacKean and scheduled delivery an hour before the event. Everyone who registered for the webinar and provided a phone number, automatically received a voice mail from the noted BBC journalist, an hour before the event was scheduled to take place, encouraging them not to miss the live broadcast. This added a relevant, personal touch that helped drive attendance on the day of the webinar.
The multi-channel webinar campaign was deployed on the Eloqua platform which triggered communications based on the action a user took. Using Eloqua’s email editor, the team developed a HTML email invitation and a landing page with a registration form. Eloqua’s flexible landing page technology and form engine meant that the team could build the entire campaign from start to finish without relying on IT resources or waiting around to have pages built or hosted. Additionally, because reminders were sent, automatically, to delegates who registered for the event and to people who received the initial invite but didn’t register, the team had time to focus on driving attendance to the webinar in creative ways. For example, they used ICS files, so that every confirmation email contained a link that allowed the registrant to add the event to their calendar – another great way to mitigate drop-off because it marks their calendar and sends a reminder.
Result
The marketing team at D&B set some benchmarks for success during the planning phase of the campaign and exceeded expectations with the results. The webinar had 5% more attendees than the original estimates, with initial registrations surpassing expectations and 53% more than the team had planned. Overall, the campaign was completed in the allotted 8 week timeline.
Charlotte Currie, Customer Marketing Manager, D&B, said, “Eloqua made it appear to our customers that this type of marketing activity was something we have the expertise to do on a weekly basis, when in fact it was one of the first times D&B had implemented a campaign like this.
“The success and high attendance to the webinar means that we are able to take the positive learnings onto our next event with Eloqua which will now only take a third of the time to implement.”
Integrating voice and email to drive attendance and provide relevant reminders and a highly personalised experience ensured that as many customers attended the event as possible. Traditionally, there has been a high dropout rate from registration to actual webinar attendee, so the integration of voice into the campaign was a crucial part of ensuring a full turn out to the event. Using a call from the celebrity speaker added a highly personal, yet cost effective, touch to the campaign and is something D&B will definitely do again in the future.
