Summary page
In June 2010, Kingpin Intelligence initiated a Lead generation campaign for Microsoft to increase opportunities within small/medium businesses, to generate sales for their breath developer tool efforts. With the above campaign producing outstanding results, Kingpin Intelligence was asked to do a further lead nurturing drive on previous leads generated.
Kingpin Intelligence produced a tactful and productive means of transforming cold leads into warm sale prospects. This was achieved by creating a direct Microsoft hotline for customers interested in information for developer tool usage/purchase, via telephone efforts with skilled operators and through close communication with resellers and Microsoft’s sales department.
The Campaign launched in September 2010, and will continue as a retainership in the next fiscal year. We have provided a solution which has enabled Microsoft to be successful in a market where they had little traction previously. Furthermore, the design and development of our lead nurturing has proven to be of such value that it has enabled Kingpin Intelligence to continue being an essential part of Microsoft‘s sales planning drivers.
About the client company
Microsoft is a multinational computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures and licenses a wide range of software and hardware products. As of the end 2009, Microsoft was ranked as the third largest company in the world with over 88,000 employees.
Strategy – Broader business issues the company is facing
Microsoft conducted research to analyse their main revenue streams as a whole. It became clear that over 60 per cent of their revenue came from their SMS+P (Small to Medium Solutions and Partners). The DPE (Developer and Platform Evangelism) Group – responsible in part for sales of developer tools – saw potential in a market to which they had not previously tried to sell. They were unsure of the best method of reaching this audience, how to sell to them and how to manage the leads which were generated. In order to help solve these issues they turned to Kingpin Intelligence who developed a lead generation and nurturing engine as well as strategies as to how this programme should run.
Objectives of the campaign
The objectives of this campaign were as follows:
Nurturing:
- To have consistent and on-going lead nurturing. This was to ensure that only sales ready leads were passed to the resellers so they could focus on short terms wins – leads that did not fit these criteria remained with the agency until they were ready to be passed over.
- Installation of a direct Microsoft sales hotline – this was to ensure direct contact with potential clients and have the ability to address any issues or queries they may have. This also gave a voice to the company which initiated trust and comfortability.
- Operator call backs – to keep in contact with warm leads and generate continued interest in the products.
Reporting: To be able to track levels of leads generated, conversion rates of resellers, analyse quality of data sets, analyse average number of leads generated in given time frames and track ROI.
Management: To have a system in place where the resellers were managed by Kingpin. This was to ensure leads were being followed up, but also gave the resellers opportunity to show how they could perform.
Recommend: Throughout the campaign Kingpin Intelligence were encouraged to give recommendations as to how the programme could be boosted or tweaked where necessary. This also included recommending resellers to be on-boarded or removed where this was seen fit.
From a tangible perspective, the success of this campaign would be responsible for an upturn in revenue for Visual Studio 2010 and MSDN from an audience which had not been targeted before.
The target audience
The target audience for the campaign was small organisations, individual software developers and small software development teams in the UK.
This is a particularly challenging audience for Microsoft because:
a) Small business and developer teams tend not to have large budgets in place for adhoc developer tool upgrades.
b) In this market open source (essentially free) alternatives are prevalent and are a huge competitor to Microsoft.
c) This is not an audience often targeted by Microsoft – certainly in this manner for this product set.
Media, channels or techniques used
The activity centred on the use of a demand generation engine designed specifically for this campaign. A range of marketing techniques were used to help drive fuel into the engine. The main parts of the engine were as follows:
a. Telephone based nurturing team in place to keep leads warm until they are ready to be passed over to sales team for formal sales identification and then distribution to resellers
b. Management and enhancement of leads generated by Kingpin Intelligence via web monitoring.
c. Placement of collateral on The Register and with eMedia to drive downloads which acted as “warm leads”.
d. Provision of an inbound line “The Microsoft Visual Studio Helpline” to field inquiries which arose from email activity carried out by the Microsoft team.
e. Analysis team in place to track conversion rates, tracking lead sources and spotting market potential.
Kingpin Intelligence also conducted more nurturing activities to nudge the leads forward including:
a. Regular reminder emails with updated information to align with the development of Visual Studio or MSDN at large, and;
b. Regular interaction with all resellers to discuss offers they could provide to help close contacts down.
Timescales of the campaign
The time scale was developed to incorporate all the various facets included in this campaign from introductory research to lead generation and nurturing. The campaign model was designed in July 2010 and was kicked off in September of the same year. It just recently closed in early June 2011 and has been kept on retainer ship through to the next FY.
Results
The above campaign is still ongoing; however the following results have been achieved from campaign launch to present date (September 2010 – June 2011).
• No of leads generated – 703
• No of leads converted – 58
• Revenue generated – £80,592
• Pipeline revenue – £900,000
Kingpin Intelligence has already generated a profit for Microsoft with the campaign still being driven and its end date far from reach.
Client testimonial
“Talking to the technical audience is never easy and we needed to find a way to reach potential customers. Kingpin was able to find really targeted data and come up with an approach which allowed us to talk to customers about their development needs and challenges. We were able to reach nearly 5000 customers and generate 750 opportunities, with pipeline worth over £900k in potential revenues”.
