The Microsoft Ready Study Campaign was designed to engage with senior IT and Business users of Microsoft technology and applications in the Communications Sector. The campaign adopted interactive techniques including the online ready study; a research utility to understand an enterprise’s state of readiness for the adoption of advanced business process integration

For an organisation the size of Microsoft demonstrating integration across its own business processes in the appliance of joined up marketing and sales processes is essential yet challenging..

Whilst the campaign sought to generate business intelligence from prospect customers it was also an effective exercise forMicrosoft’s own sales and marketing practices to collaborate further. From the outset of the planning stage the project team considered how the campaign cycle management would engage with the internal Microsoft sales and marketing units. Another key aspect of the campaign was the targeting of key regions in Europe and the requirement for multiple languages. This approach needed to be taken into account for all activities including emails and the website – it also contributed to the ability to raise awareness of Microsoft in these regions and sctors.

The outbound campaign elements included the pre-researched targeting of key operational contacts within the Communication Sector industries via high quality personalized direct mail and similarly targeted emails. All out bound and inbound recipients of the campaign were tracked and traced through the Anderson Baillie campaign management toolsets including the creation of an online real time management Activity Monitor. The Activity Monitor allowed project team remembers to review traffic through the sites and even individual users level of interaction with the ‘Ready Study’. The study itself was carefully crafted with interactive advice notes and summary report generation.

Microsoft pre-sales personnel, armed with contact intelligence garnered from the campaign, were tasked to engage with the prospects to help complete the study or move to the next stage of the cycle a Microsoft infrastructure and applications feasibility audit.

The campaign was successful at raising Microsoft’s profile from its desktop brand association, whilst also influencing the corporate players in the Communications sectors (Telco, Broadcast, Print and Publishing) improving awareness of Microsoft’s market verticalised solutions.

 A website was developed to receive traffic from the e-mails, built to web standards and cross browser compatibility it also included an interactive ‘ready study’ essentially a questionnaire that displays aggregated real-time results from other users who have answered similar questions. At the end of the questionnaire the user receives a customised report based on their responses with guides to help with short comings revealed by the report. The website its self is multi-lingual, the different languages are accessed via different URLs. White papers and a range of useful information are also featured on the site.

Behind the scenes the development of the bespoke Activity Monitor allowed Microsoft to analyse results in real-time, with break downs via industry through to individual results. This data could then be exported for integration into SalesLogix and other CRM systems. (Screenshot of Activity Monitor with dummy data URL 4 in supporting material section).