The background
Microsoft Dynamics traditionally co-funded their marketing programmes with their key partners but had very little visibility on the marketing ROI which this returns. In 2009 they decided to take a new approach. To identify an agency that could manage a selection of their tier 1 partners, across multiple industries, to provide marketing strategy and support.
This comprised an integrated, multi-touch campaign with marketing analytics and prospect mapping and tracking to measure the ROI at every stage of the buying cycle – McDonald Butler was that agency.
McDonald Butler worked closely with 18 partner companies in the following sectors: Manufacturing, Services, Public Services, Cross Sector and Niche Sectors
The challenge
The goal was agreed at the outset of the campaign, to deliver 300 marketing qualified opportunities across the overall programme and provide a warm prospect community which could be nurtured through the buying cycle.
Delving a little deeper, this entailed engaging partners in a connected marketing and sales programme. In conjunction with a working team from client companies, we identified the following objectives to drive achievement of this goal:
- Support the Microsoft Dynamics proposition by creating qualified leads to build intermediary business;
- Assist partners in getting to the starting line (value proposition, database development, content creation);
- Deliver a tangible ROI on marketing investment both for Microsoft and the partners involved;
- Provide 100 per cent visibility of reporting;
- Support the creation of a strong lead pipeline;
- Generate qualified leads (prospects and opportunities)
- Maintain a ‘clean’ marketing database
Why McDonald Butler?
McDonald Butler was selected for several reasons for Microsoft’s 2009 channel marketing programme, including:
- Microsoft needed an agency which had a model to measure the ROI at every stage and provide comprehensive visibility every step of the way.
- The ‘on the ground’ partners themselves are dedicated to technical excellence and lean heavily on the expertise of agencies that can help ensure programmes are business-issue led and can deliver an integrated programme which goes beyond traditional telemarketing (to include messaging and value proposition development, profiling of prospect databases and integrated, multi-touch demand generation activity).
McDonald Butler was able to provide this depth of service.
The solution
We worked closely with each individual partner to understand their capabilities and share their views of prospects and routes to market that might have the highest guarantee of success.
McDonald Butler was responsible for every constituent element of the campaign, from preparation and database cleaning through to sitting down with all stakeholders at the end of the activity to discuss what went right and where lessons could be learned for the future.
We carefully defined our target audience of C-level executives from each of the five key sectors (Manufacturing, Services, Public Sector, Cross Sector and Niche Sectors), ensuring that we optimised the opportunities for each of the programme participants in their own specialist fields.
For each element of the campaign (x 18 in total) we undertook three key stages:
The results
Our results included:
- 18 partners engaged
- 331 marketing qualified opportunities (target 300)
- 1 in 3 conversion from Marketing Qualified Opportunity (MQO) to sales qualified lead
- 100 per cent visibility of results across the channel for Microsoft and partners
- The total community was 20301 contacts in 7425 companies.
McDonald Butler uses a unique measurement and lead-tracking model which has been developed in-house and deployed with demonstrable results on client challenge after client challenge; Awareness ? Interest ? Desire ? Action. From this we could show:
- Awareness – 4344 contacts in 2584 companies, going through to:
- Interest- 859 contacts in 712 companies, going though to:
- Desire- 283 companies and 331 contacts and at
- Action- we delivered 117 contacts and 113 companies (marketing leads which have been deeply nurtured by sales into sales engagement with a value of opportunity assigned to each.)
The future
As a result of the success of the programme, Microsoft has taken the UK model and is now rolling this out globally across key territories.
The feedback
“In the past, Microsoft partners typically focused on tactical, single-touch point telemarketing campaigns. In contrast, our programme with McDonald Butler was truly integrated, both strategic and tactical, with multi-touch points and on-going nurturing of leads through the buying cycle to increase impact and response. Overall, we are delighted with the results and the impact this has had on our channel marketing”
Rebecca Williams, UK marketing manager, Microsoft Dynamics
