Campaign: Aspire Program
Agency: Planet Group
Client: Symantec
*Symantec is a global leader in infrastructure software, enabling businesses and consumers to have confidence in a connected world.
*The company helps customers protect their infrastructure, information and interactions by delivering software and services that address risks to security, availability, compliance and performance.
*The program was aimed primarily at Symantec’s Silver’ and Registered’ Partners, and other organisations that sold Symantec solutions but who were not members of Symantec’s Partner Program, along with prospective partners that were able to benefit from joining the Aspire Program.
Why the campaign?
The Aspire Program was developed with Symantec to retain, grow and drive revenue through existing partners, and recruit and build valuable relationships with new partners. The objectives of the campaigns were to build knowledge and understanding about partners in order to implement intelligent marketing initiatives, and also to create and intelligent and evolving database to enhance and build relationships with organisations that sell Symantec solutions. It was also designed to keep Symantec solutions ahead of the competition and at the forefront of their partner’s minds, and to motivate the small business channel to sell Symantec solutions in preference to the competition.
The campaign
In order to target the proposed audience effectively, Planet recommended initial and ongoing data cleansing and mapping activities to build a clear picture of partner organisation history, profile and performance. The initial cleansing and mapping activities involved the consolidation of multiple data sources containing information about partner organisations. The consolidation of the transaction data, along with partner profile information and prospect databases, formed the Master Program Database, and enabled the calculation of targets for each partner organisation, based on historical sales plus an uplift to stretch the partners performance and grow incremental revenue. This process would not have been possible without the data cleansing activity that was undertaken initially.
The campaign was launched through an integrated media campaign consisting of a series of direct mail pieces, tactical emails and letters, with a call to action for partners to register into the program via the Aspire Program website.
Media campaign
*A 6-language website was developed to capture all registrations and serve as a resource for partners to view information about the program.
*An intranet was developed to enable Symantec Channel Marketing Managers to have access to Aspire marketing materials, registration and performance reports by country.
*The program was supported by a series of localised direct mail pieces to each partner organisation within the Symantec partner and prospect database.
*Web banners were placed on strategic channel partner and industry IT websites to attract interest and drive traffic to the registration site. These were also made available to the distributors via the marketing toolkits.
*The profiled data allowed fast-track registration emails to be developed and sent out in local language to enable quick registration by including a unique link that carried the partner’s profile information through from the email to the registration form.
Results
*Total Revenue through the Program (eligible products) $32.5m
*4.7 per cent growth inside the program (year on year)
*7,324 organisation registrations
*7,940 individual registrations
*Promotional email click-through rates of 58%
*The program generated a level of EMEA-wide appeal and success which resulted in its continuation and wider interest from new countries and regions.
JillMurray, Symantec UK comments: “Planet is an invaluable resource for Symantec EMEA Marketing. They consistently deliver to the tight timescales dictated by the nature of our business and always go the extra mile. I have absolute faith in their recommendations; they understand my market and my business ‘completely’. They have, on a number of occasions, helped us to deliver double the incremental sales revenue anticipated. This result can only be achieved by an agency that really understands the target audience and has the expertise to achieve real results.”
