Cisco is a major global supplier of network equipment and management of the Internet.
The objective of the campaign was to generate demand for Cisco’s products and services among its low-propensity and lapsed client base – the ‘long tail’.
The scale of the campaign meant that Cisco’s marketing, telemarketing and sales teams needed to work closely with Loewy to utilise real-time information and ensure that the telemarketing team were able to follow up all contacts as soon as possible.
Personalised mail pieces and microsites, involving the amended title of two Hollywood films, were sent to the target audience:
- ‘The Usual Suspects’ became ‘The Unusual Suspects’, with the message of how normally unsuspecting people can become an ID security threat
- ‘When Harry Met Sally’ became ‘When Harry Missed Sally’, demonstrating how two colleagues missed crucial decisions, meetings or deadlines due to their lack of Cisco’s unified communications.
The rate at which communications were dispatched was controlled by the telemarketing team via a tailored end-to-end marketing campaign system, built by Loewy. By this means the team could follow up communications at a manageable rate.
Tracking the campaign
The telemarketing team logged on to the campaign manager to submit target contact details and ordered the respective mail packs; emails were generated confirming the order. Loewy then processed the personalised mail packs, microsite URLs and dispatches by the DM to the target contact.
If the recipient logged onto the microsite an email alert was sent to the telemarketers when the web session ended. Telemarketers then logged onto the campaign site, viewed the session details and were able to call the target contact within 45 minutes of them leaving the microsite. If the target contact didn’t log on to the microsite an email alert was sent to the telemarketers after seven days, who can then decide to call the recipient anyway.
Following a conversation with the target contact, if there is a definite sales opportunity, its status is logged onto the campaign system for a member of the team to act on. If there is no immediate opportunity, the telemarketer agent orders the second wave of communications to be sent and the process begins again.
The first 14 weeks of the campaign achieved a 40 per cent conversion rate from DM to microsite and a 47 per cent conversion rate from microsite to lead. That amounted to 87 leads from 460 prospects contacted with a potential budget of £12 million.
“The campaign demonstrates that the combination of good targeting, high-impact creative and truly integrated execution really does pay dividends. With a 36 per cent response rate and the great pipeline of opportunities it’s really helped to demonstrate the value of intelligent, joined-up marketing,” says Kathryn Catherine Baddeley, manager of marketing communications at Cisco UK and Ireland.
