Marketing on the Verge

How Northrop Grumman Used Account-Based Marketing to Win a $2B Deal

Northrop Grumman's Information Technology sector knew a good opportunity when it saw one: In 2003, after the Commonwealth of Virginia created the Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA) to consolidate all state IT services under one single agency, the newly formed VITA began looking for a partner that could help the state improve its IT infrastructure and deliver managed services to more than 90 executive branch agencies. The $2 billion IT Infrastructure Partnership, the largest IT award in state government, would span 10 years and support economic development in multiple regions of Virginia. 

Northrop Grumman knew it was well qualified to do the work, but it had a perception problem to overcome: In Virginia, the company was viewed largely as a builder of ships and submarines, and its depth of experience at both the IT and state levels was not well recognized or understood.

Understanding the Customer, Collaborating with Sales 

To better position itself to win the contract, Northrop Grumman took an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) approach. Early in the process, the company devoted significant effort to networking with key players to better understand VITA's key issues, concerns, and objectives as well as to gain insight into how those influencers perceived Northrop Grumman.

It quickly became clear that VITA was looking for a partner with: 

• Best-in-class IT expertise

• A significant presence in Virginia

• A commitment to economic development in the most depressed areas of the state

• A focus on delivering the best possible options and offers to the state employees potentially impacted by the program

According to Liz Schwatka, director of marketing and communications for Northrop Grumman's Commercial, State, and Local Group, "Building a deep understanding of VITA's goals and objectives was a critical first step in winning this contract, and our business development team played an invaluable role in defining key themes and identifying target audiences. Marketing and business development were 'joined at the hip' on this positioning and branding initiative for three years. We worked together to figure out how to reach the right people with the right messages at the right times and places. It was a very collaborative effort, and we couldn’t have implemented the campaign without them." 

Planning and Executing the Marketing Campaign

Building on its knowledge of VITA's goals and objectives, Northrop Grumman's communications and marketing team designed an integrated marketing campaign to raise awareness of the company's technology expertise and solid Virginia roots. Consistent messaging across all communication channels was key to the campaign:

• Advertising focused on Northrop Grumman as a vital, longtime member of the Commonwealth's business community as well as on the company's people-focused culture.
• Sponsorships and speaking opportunities were selected based on the technology content, and subject matter experts were chosen based on their technology know-how.     
• The company's grassroots efforts focused across the state, particularly in southwest Virginia, where company executives spoke at local community events and higher-education venues and submitted op-ed pieces to local newspapers.
• The company also developed a video featuring Northrop Grumman employees talking about their individual experiences working for the company and working in Virginia.

As a result of its branding campaign, Northrop Grumman received more than 200 media hits in local, state, and national publications regarding the VITA contract. Anecdotal feedback also suggested that state executives were taking notice of Northrop Grumman, its presence in Virginia, and its technology expertise.

Communicating Via the Customer Experience

Schwatka was quick to point out that although the branding campaign certainly had a big impact on the success of Northrop Grumman's bid, it was really the customer experience that clinched the deal. "At every single touchpoint with the client, Northrop Grumman wanted to reinforce that it had the expertise and Virginia roots that VITA was looking for. Our employees—from the most technically oriented delivery people right on up to Ron Sugar, our Chairman and CEO—went to great lengths to make sure that VITA felt confident in Northrop Grumman's abilities and comfortable with us every step of the way."

She stressed that the participation of senior-level executives was particularly important because their participation in media interviews, speaking engagements, and community outreach demonstrated to VITA just how committed Northrop Grumman is to the state's success.

Results 

Northrop Grumman did a number of things right to win the 10-year, $2 billion contract with VITA. First, it made sure that the marketing and business development teams worked closely with each other to gain a deep understanding of VITA's issues, priorities, and needs. Second, it took that insight and translated it into a highly focused branding campaign that was designed to widen the perceptions of key decision makers within the state to include knowledge of Northrop Grumman's IT expertise and its deep Virginia roots. Third, it ensured that every interaction the customer had with the company would reinforce this new perception.

Today, the company is focused on continuing to demonstrate its commitment to the Commonwealth of Virginia and is looking to leverage its success in other states and municipalities across the country. According to Schwatka, "This is a huge contract that will result in capital investment of nearly $270 million and create hundreds of new jobs in the state. It was inspiring to see how the whole company pulled together to help make this happen. Personally, I found it highly rewarding to have a role in supporting this partnership, and I'm looking forward to supporting new opportunities through similar integrated marketing campaigns!"

*To learn more about Account-Based Marketing and how it can help your company, consider attending ITSMA's Account-Based Marketing Workshop on March 4-5 in Boston, MA.

This post first appeared as an article in ITSMA's E-ZINE.

 

Xerox's New Look Helps to Solidify Services- and Solutions-Oriented Positioning

On Monday, Xerox unveiled a new look and logo that it hopes will reflect the position it has established in the market over the last few years as a company that is contemporary, customer-centric, and -- most of all -- about way more than copiers.

The new look isn't about new positioning, per se, but about solidifying the position Xerox has worked to create for itself over the last few years as less of a product company and more of a trusted advisor around its customers' document/information-related business issues.

I love it that, in justifying the need for the new look, Xerox is highlighting the fact that it has a robust services business, citing a couple of stats that emphasize the company's commitment to its services business:

• New technology and services are generating billions of dollars in recurring revenue for Xerox. (Through the third quarter of 2007, services deals generated about $2.5 billion in annuity revenue, an 8 percent increase from the prior year.)
• Xerox is doubling its research and development in services-related offerings.

This decision to build the services and solutions business and distance itself a bit from its product heritage is a smart strategy; as we all know, technology products become commoditized awfully quickly, and services and solutions tend to provide higher margins.

A few other factors that played into the decision to update the look include product innovation and a commitment to do business in an environmentally sustainable way (click here for a good article on what sustainability means in the services and solutions space).

Although the jury's still out on the new look itself, Xerox's decision to solidify its more services- and solutions-oriented positioning is right on the money.

Top Seven from '07

I always enjoy listening to the radio around New Year's Eve because I like hearing countdown programs that play, for example, the top 102 songs of the year or the top 97 greatest rock songs of all time. So, in the spirit of those fun countdown programs, here's a list of the seven most downloaded ITSMA research documents from 2007:

7. ITSMA Services Marketing Framework. A perennial favorite, the ITSMA Services Marketing Framework outlines ITSMA's view of all the components that go into a successful approach to services marketing.

6. Making the Case for Marketing: Communicating with Senior Management. This PowerPoint presentation outlines five key steps marketers must take to effectively demonstrate marketing's value to senior management.

5. Critical Skills for Services Success: The Services Marketing Competency Report Card. This Web Briefing (playback available) features guest speakers from IBM and Siemens Nokia Networks and provides an overview of current performance in the services marketing profession across seven categories: strategy and market planning; portfolio management; marketing communications; relationship management; marketing operations; sales channel enablement; and alliance management.

4. ITSMA's 2007 State of the Marketing Profession Address. This Web Briefing from last January (playback available) outlines how marketing can have more impact on the business through its interactions with business leadership, sales, and customers.

3. Account-Based Marketing: Best Practices and Critical Success Factors. This Web Briefing (playback available) provides suggestions for how to organize for, measure, and scale Account-Based Marketing.

2. Five Lessons for Competing in the Global Market: An Interview with Malcolm Frank, Cognizant's SVP of Marketing and Strategy. This fantastic transcript of a speech Frank made at an ITSMA event provides five key lessons on how to achieve marketing success in a global market.

And the winner is....

1. Solutions: Showing Value and Winning Business. This whitepaper -- which I co-authored (sorry, have to brag a little) -- outlines three critical steps that solutions providers can take to show the value of their solutions and win more business.

 

Cisco "ARMs" Channel Partners to Sell More Services

In 2005, Cisco Systems made a decision: Marketing was going to enable the company to more effectively sell services to the SMB market by creating a program that would motivate its channel partners to more consistently:

• Attach services at the point of sale
• Renew service contracts
• Execute multiyear service agreements

To do this, Cisco created the Attach, Renew, Multiyear (ARM) Service Incentive Program.

Understanding the Channel

Before reaching out to its channel partners, Cisco needed to gain a better understanding of their challenges in selling to SMBs. By evaluating its network of partners, Cisco discovered that although two-thirds of a partner's revenue and profit comes from services, less than one-third of Cisco's channel partners were selling services as a component of their standard business.

"We knew that it wasn't that our channel partners didn't want to sell our services," said Lauren Robinette, senior manager of marketing at Cisco. "They knew that they were leaving money on the table just as clearly as we did. But many of our partners believed that Cisco services competed directly with other partner offerings, and because of this, a number of them chose not to position services. Training partners and their sales staff to understand why Cisco services are different and how to sell them is the ultimate goal of the ARM Service Incentive Program."

The ARM Service Incentive Program

Managed by Cisco's Customer Advocacy Field Marketing group in the U.S., the program is designed to provide channel partners with quarterly, self-paced learning opportunities around topics that include:

• Making the first service sale
• Selling service for uncovered equipment
• Selling service contract renewals
• Selling multiyear service agreements
• The value of selling technical services
• Lifecycle services
• Leading with consulting services

For each topic, the ARM team develops sales guides, quick reference tools, and training modules that include a market overview, sales best practices, and strategies for objection handling.

Channel partner owners/managers who rally at least five of their sales reps to participate in the program have the opportunity to receive joint marketing funds from Cisco. The funds help partner organizations create demand-generation campaigns for the SMB market. Additionally, recipients of the funds are given access to an online resource that enables them to create customizable email blasts, postcards, ads, and flyers to reach SMB customers while reducing time-to-market and overall costs.

Cisco also provides incentive for individual sales reps to participate in the program by offering them a chance to win prizes such as iPods and XM radio receivers. To encourage continued participation in the program, each quarter Cisco provides new prizes for new tests passed.

According to Robinette, this two-pronged approach has been key to the program's success. "By targeting both owners/managers and individual sales reps, we're providing two very strong reasons to participate: to benefit the business by increasing the sale of highly profitable services and to benefit the individuals who sell those services by giving them a chance to win cool prizes."

Cisco enrolls participants in the ARM program through targeted email marketing. Owners/managers and individual sales reps receive tailored email campaigns around each quarterly learning opportunity. Each time an email goes out, the ARM program Website receives approximately 40,000 hits. The opt-out rate for the emails has been less than 0.02%. Robinette attributes these results to the quality of Cisco's reseller database and the value of the educational content Cisco has created.

Results

In its first year and a half, the ARM program provided training to more than 8,026 sales reps at 1,456 companies on how to sell services in a new, exciting way. Service sales in the SMB market have grown by more than $312 million as a result.

The program continues to gain momentum, and Cisco plans to offer updated content and new topics to help channel partners build robust services practices into 2008 and beyond.

NB: This article originally appeared in ITSMA's E-ZINE.

"I Don't Smoke, so I Take a Facebook Break."

The Professional Marketing Forum got this great quote from a respondent to its November 2007 survey on Web 2.0. I like it because I can relate; I love Facebook for helping me to reconnect with old friends, but I haven't found much use for it yet in the professional arena. (Admittedly, B2C companies are probably having much more success with Facebook marketing initiatives than us B2B-ers.) If I go on Facebook during the workday, it's usually because I'm taking a short break.

According to the PM Forum survey, some employers aren't happy about these "Facebook breaks," with 18% of the 191 respondents to the PM Forum survey indicating that their firms ban Facebook on office computers. (In contrast, 20% of respondent said their companies allow free access to Facebook and approximately 30% said that their companies have no policy regarding employee use of the social networking site.)

Additionally, about 20% of those surveyed indicated that they are considering establishing a corporate presence on Facebook, which is cool when you consider the fact that 70% of the respondents work in the law or accounting sectors -- neither of which is known for being particularly cutting-edge.

According to new ITSMA research, there are a number of marketing activities that differentiate the best marketers from the rest of the pack, and experimenting with Web 2.0 is definitely one of them:

• Customer advisory boards
• Webinars
• Web 2.0
  – Blogs
  – Podcasts
  – Social networks
• ROI/TCO tools
• Telemarketing

Here's why ITSMA's Julie Schwartz thinks that the best marketers are experimenting with Web 2.0: "The best markers are experimenting more with newer marketing techniques such as blogging, podcasting, and social networking. They're more willing to take risks and do something different from the status quo, which can lead to impressive results when your competitors are stuck in an undifferentiated rut. So these marketers' willingness to try new things (and not just new Web 2.0 things) is a big factor in why they're so effective.

"On top of that, I'd like to point out that although Web 2.0 techniques are not the most effective ones in marketers' tool chests today, they will certainly become more effective as the next generation of business leaders comes of age and joins the workforce. The marketers who are experimenting with Web 2.0 now will be in a much better position to communicate with the next generation than the marketers who are taking a "wait and see" approach. Better to practice now and gain some expertise before everyone starts using these tools (even if some of the tools you experiment with ultimately do not take hold) than to wait for the train to leave the station without you on it."

So marketers, if you aren't yet taking "Facebook breaks," they might be just the thing to help spark the kind of creative new thinking that will send your marketing straight to the top!

ITSMA's Approach to Account-Based Marketing

You may have heard/read me talking about Account-Based Marketing (ABM) in the past, but if not, here's a quick overview of what it is:

ABM is a structured approach to developing and implementing highly customized marketing campaigns for single accounts, prospects, or partnerships. By treating each target as a market of one, companies can increase demand and profitability within their most important accounts.

A number of ITSMA members have had great success with ABM, including Xerox, Northrop Grumman, HP, Accenture, Avaya, EDS, IBM, and more.

ITSMA has a three-phased methodology for helping companies successfully build and implement ABM programs. Here's a quick breakdown of our approach:

1. Phase 1: Program Planning & Design. Here's where you lay the foundation for overall program success. Identifying executive sponsors, finding sources for funding, and selecting target accounts are just a few of the important topics addressed in Phase I of our framework.
2. Phase 2: Account-Specific Project Implementation. Once you've laid the groundwork for a successful program, it's time to look more closely at what needs to be done within each individual ABM account. This phase includes understanding and analyzing the account, defining and selecting plays, building and executing the marketing and sales plan, and measurement and review.
3. Phase 3: Program Management & Evaluation. Here you evaluate the overall program and determine how you will improve and grow the program. To scale your ABM program, other important issues need to be addressed, including staffing, funding, and organization.

I mention all of this because we at ITSMA have seen that ABM enhances demand, positioning, and profitability within companies' key accounts and, if you haven't already implemented an ABM program, it is something you ought to consider.

To help companies that have implemented ABM (or are thinking about implementing ABM), we're kicking off a new benchmarking study that will answer questions like:

• How much should we spend on ABM programs and how should the funds be allocated?
• Are our current systems adequate to manage a program like this?
• How many staff people do we need to manage a growing ABM program?
• What is the role of the sales function in implementing a successful ABM program?
• How does the sales organization measure success?
• How many accounts can one marketer comfortably handle and what skills are critical to success?
• How much does it cost to fund a central ABM program office?
• What kind of return on investment (ROI) can be expected on ABM account campaigns and activities?
• What are the best ways to scale the ABM program within a specific geography? And globally?

For more information on the study, visit:
http://www.itsma.com/research/prospectus/ABM_mk3765.htm

PPC Marketing Best Practices: Part 3

And now for our last tip from Cognos on paid search:

PPC Best Marketing Practice #3: Landing Pages

Once clicked, each ad delivers a user to a landing page. Many advertisers deposit these visitors on a standard page such as their homepage. Often, there is too much information and little that speaks directly to the interest of the user. To capture more leads, Cognos currently has more than 30 customized landing pages for the PPC campaign. These include the user's keyword in the title, a repeat of the incentive, little text, and only two options for action. Completing a truncated form allows the user to get the advertised incentive. For users who fear forms or who are not ready to convert, there is also an escape "No thanks" button that goes to a relevant page on Cognos.com. Web statistics show that visitors who choose the "No thanks" button often convert somewhere else on the site.

PPC Marketing Best Practices: Part 2

Following on from yesterday's post on keyword analysis, here's another PPC marketing best practice courtesy of Cognos, which has an extremely effective PPC campaign that generates more than 1,000 leads per month.

PPC Best Practice #2: Ad Copy

Statistics inform decisions on how best to craft the short, 95-character Google ads. Repeating the user's keyword, using a call to action, identifying an incentive such as a white paper, choosing what URL to display, deciding when to use capital letters: Each detail has a direct and measurable impact on whether or not an ad gets clicked. Google and other engines also allow for multiple versions of the same ad. Cognos must choose whether to display the most "popular" ad more often for additional clicks or to eschew clicks in favor of circulating the different ads more evenly for a higher-quality click. The right choice is different for each keyword.

PPC Marketing Best Practices: Part 1

With many thanks to Brian O'Grady, pay-per-click (PPC) manager, Search Warrant Online Marketing, Cognos, I'm going to share secrets for maximizing your paid search campaign results.

(For those of you who need proof that Brian knows what he's talking about, Cognos transformed its PPC campaign from one that focused on branding and captured just nine incidental leads in 2004 to a lead generation machine that produces more than 1,000 leads a month.)

Best Practice #1: Keyword Analysis

This includes determining what words are important to the organization, what words customers actually search for, and whether or not the searchers that use these keywords tend to turn into leads and revenue. Similarly, the same keyword can be targeted in different ways, with different associated costs and results. For example, keywords can be selected for broad or exact matching. If the match type is broad, the search engine will display results that include the keyword as part of a longer group of words entered by the user; if it is exact, the search engine only shows ads that match the keyword alone. Other options like choosing singular versus plural keywords or purposely targeting misspelled keywords are also considered. Each choice impacts the ROI for each keyword.

Stay tuned for best practice #2...

ITSMA Research Reveals Top Professional Services Brands

And the winner is... wait for it... IBM!

Okay, maybe not the "winner," per se, but the professional services company with the most brand equity. And what exactly is brand equity? It's a combined and weighted score that ITSMA calculates based on unaided awareness, aided awareness, first firm to call, familiarity, and preference.

This year, we evaluated 20 providers as part of out 9th annual Brand Tracking Study for Professional Services and Solutions, drawing on interviews with 401 North American buyers of IT professional services and solutions to get our results. So, the five companies with the highest brand equity scores are, in descending order:

1. IBM
2. Oracle
3. HP
4. Accenture
5. Deloitte

For offshore services providers we examined in the study, we found that Infosys has the highest BEI score, followed by Cognizant and Tata Consultancy Services.

Clearly, providers with deep pockets and a serious global presence have a distinct advantage in terms of brand equity, but the study also revealed some important findings for companies that want to increase the power of their brands, regardless of size or marketing budget:

1. When selecting IT professional services providers, the top selection criteria are dependability, responsiveness, and a collaborative work style. Providers that demonstrate their ability to manage the total customer experience throughout the sales cycle, including the early phases, will gain an important edge over those that 'just' demonstrate a great technical solution.
   

2. No one firm flatly owns buyers' mindshare. Accept that broad awareness is within reach of only those companies that have the largest advertising budgets; abandon the blanket approach to marketing, because it does not guarantee proximity to the brass ring. Instead, recognize that there is plenty of business to go around. Stake out a niche and build awareness with smart, targeted marketing.

3. All professional services and solutions firms sound similar, yet buyers have unique wants and needs that aren't always addressed. Any firm, boutique or otherwise, can examine the evolution of its market strategies to find the associations that will resonate with prospects. It’s important to evolve—and communicate—your unique brands consistently over time.
   
   In addition, ITSMA is a strong proponent of Account-Based Marketing and micro-marketing, because both of these approaches force firms to segment their customers and communicate relevant messages to appropriate customers at opportune times.
   

For more information on the study and its findings, please see the study prospectus at:
http://www.itsma.com/research/abstracts/bps008.htm

Bullfighting

Seth Godin has a good post today on the secrets of writing to be read, in which he cites some informal research showing that short, simple sentences are more effective at selling books and making ideas spread. I'd also hazard to say that short, simple sentences make marketing stickier.

Seth's post reminded me of an interview I did a while back with Brian Fugere, co-author of Why Business People Speak Like Idiots, co-creator of Bullfighter (a software program that works with Microsoft Word and PowerPoint to help you find and eliminate jargon in your documents), and former CMO at Deloitte. Brian didn't rail so much against long sentences as he did against obscure, jargon-filled ones. In other words, he focused on the simplicity side of the equation.

During our interview, I asked Brian about some of the worst corporate communications offenses he'd seen. Here's what he said:

Pick up one of Enron's letters to its shareholders as it was getting deeper and deeper into trouble. Those guys hid behind obscure language to make sure that nobody knew what was really going on, and to avoid taking responsibility for it.       

Or pick up any press release from just about any technology company and it's going to look like a disaster. They're horrible because they take jargon that means something in their company and expect everyone else to be able to understand it. News flash, guys: We don't.

We have some good examples of bad tech communications on our blog. For contrast, take a look at Google's communications, or Amazon's—you can't find any crummy language anywhere.

I went and looked at the Bull blog to see if they were still publishing examples of crappy communications, and this one made me laugh:

Our mission is to provide world-class thought
leadership and market insight that will foster
innovation and enable the successful pursuit of
client opportunities, while utilizing cutting-edge
knowledge management techniques to make this
information available to all practitioners.

Thinking back to some tips from Made to Stick, it's hard to imagine a statement that's less concrete than this bad boy. By trying to jam all those official-sounding buzzwords in there, they've sapped all the meaning out of the sentence.

Just another good reminder to keep things simple, clear, and concrete.

 

Acting on the Voice of the Customer: How CDW's Online Communities Work

Most companies assume they're giving customers what they want. All too frequently, those companies are kidding themselves. Since its founding in 1984, CDW, a $6 billion-plus technology reseller, has strived to put the customer at the heart of everything it does. Over the years, the company's research team invested millions of dollars collecting customer insights and determining the drivers of customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention. Toward that goal, CDW employed a sophisticated arsenal of customer research techniques, including frequent customer loyalty surveys and focus groups.

However, like many companies, CDW found that competitive pressure was growing, customer spending was cautious, and the Web was dramatically changing the sales process. Despite all its investment in customer research, the company was aware that there were still things it didn't know about its customers. The loyalty data helped identify "bigger customer challenges" but was not specific enough that the company could act on more granular opportunities for improvement. CDW needed to find a way to truly understand what was important to customers and to uncover what it didn't know enough to ask.

CDW Turns to Private Online Communities

As Calvin Vass, senior manager of research at CDW, explored new methods to collect customer feedback in more intimate and continuous ways, he became intrigued by the idea of building private online communities for specific segments of CDW's customer base. He looked to Boston-based Communispace to make it happen.

According to Vass, "Building online communities for our customers made sense to us for two main reasons. First, they'd enable us to get continuous customer feedback rather than semiannual or ad hoc feedback. Second, they'd allow us to really drill down on a particular topic and get insight we could act on. When we act on the feedback we receive from our customers, it shows them that we're listening to them, that we really care. The communities enable us to do that."

How CDW's Communities Work

CDW launched its first online community in March 2004. A year later, the initial community was split into three separate communities: one each for small, medium, and large business customers. Today approximately 400 customers participate in each of these three communities. The company has also launched two additional communities: one for its K-12 market and one for higher education.

Unlike public forums, private communities are facilitated to ensure that conversations stay fresh and strategically relevant. Community-building and research activities keep members highly involved. Through a combination of online chat, surveys, and online focus groups, CDW elicits feedback from its community members on anything from their top IT priorities for 2007 to the topics they would like to see covered in the next issue of CDW's Biz Tech magazine or how they would spend CDW's marketing budget if they were the company's CMO.

On average, community members spend 30 minutes a week providing feedback to CDW and other community members through diverse activities, including completing surveys, participating in brainstorming sessions, offering advice, commenting on market trends, and sharing experiences.

Results

When CDW launched its first online community, the research team had to work hard to sell the value of the tool to the rest of the organization. Today, says Vass, that's no longer an issue. "Everyone wants to use the communities! Our biggest issue now is how to stagger all the activities everyone wants to do!"

In addition to the value that the communities provide to the business, it's also clear that the customer participants are benefiting as well. According to a recent survey, 84% of community members feel that their voice matters to CDW. And many have expressed how rewarding it is to see the company act on their feedback. As one community member put it, "I like the fact that a vendor cares about our opinions. If it helps make the service we receive better, then I'm all for it."

Another benefit of conducting customer research via online communities is that the voice of the customer is heard throughout the organization at a fraction of what it would cost to conduct traditional one-off surveys and focus groups. Vass estimates that the survey feature for the communities alone has saved the company about $3 million a year. Add to that the $6,000 average cost of a focus group—without company travel and expense to get geographical representation—and the company saves another estimated $1 million per year. This is more than four times the budget for CDW's online customer communities.

"Our online communities have revolutionized the way CDW interacts with customers," said Vass. "It's clear that customers today want to be heard. They want to collaborate with the companies that can help them succeed. Thanks to our online communities, our business strategy is more in tune with our customers' wants and needs than ever before, and that's a beautiful thing."

NB: This post originally appeared in the April 2007 issue of the ITSMA E-ZINE.

And They Said It Would Never Happen with IT Services...

.... Well, check out this article on "outsourcing the elderly."

It has me thinking about Clayton Christensen and two pieces of advice that he gave at ITSMA's Annual Marketing Conference last year for companies that want to increase their odds of success:

• Compete against nonconsumption. Find a population of people who now don’t have access to a product because it's complex and expensive. Figure out a way to make the product simple and affordable, and you have a disruptive opportunity.
• Attack the market leader at the low end. Create an economic model that will allow you to go after a piece of business that is unattractive to the leader. Rather than go after you, the leader will flee up-market.
  

How much do you wanna bet that we'll all be retiring to India one of these days?

If Your Email Marketing Was a Salesperson, What Kind of Salesperson Would It Be?

Aggressive? Overly technical? One of those annoying cold callers who won't stop calling you, even after you've told them that you're not interested in what they're selling?

 Scott Barnett, email marketing manager at Citrix Online, asked this question at a conference I attended last week, and I thought it was a great one. During the same session, Return Path's Stephanie Miller shared some research about how people respond to email, and asked us to think about how we can adjust our own email marketing to improve the response we get.

Here are a few highlights from the research:

• 85% of the business professionals surveyed sign up for email offers
• 87% of them claim email has had an impact on their vendor/business decisions
• On average, there's a 17% increase in the purchase value of subscribers vs. unsubscribers
• B2B subscribers are twice as likely as B2C subscribers to consider email spam if it comes too frequently, but...
• Only 22% of B2B subscribers bother to unsubscribe from emails they no longer want... approximately a third of them just mark these emails as spam so that they go directly to their junk mail folders

These stats make it pretty clear that, done well, email marketing can be very effective. But when it's done poorly, nobody pays any attention at all.

A few tips from the panelists, who were from Citrix Online, IBM, and Cisco, included:

• Eliminate multiple and conflicting messages from within the organization
• Segment, segment, segment... even if you're doing it in wide clusters such as new prospects, lapsed prospects, Website visitors, etc.
• The "from" address and subject lines matter
• A solution-focused message is more effective than a product-focused message
• Put a cap on the number of emails you'll send to a list in any given period and stick to it

Got any others you want to share?

Winning in the Flat World: How Infosys Transformed Its Brand

Think back to 1999. That was the year that Infosys, an Indian IT services company, hit $100 million in annual revenues. Flash forward to March 2006 and Infosys, fueled by growth in the outsourcing industry, had hit the $2 billion mark—a remarkable feat by any company's standards.

But Infosys had no intention of resting on its laurels. Rather, aware that it still needed to step up its branding efforts, the company launched a global branding campaign built around the idea of winning in the "flat world." Instead of being seen as simply another offshore services provider, the company's goal was to build a reputation as a trusted transformation partner that can help businesses compete in a global market.

Creating a Differentiated Position

Setting itself apart from many other companies that were still thinking about brand in terms of logos, slogans, and attractive visuals, Infosys knew that to compete with the global leaders, it needed to launch more than a "me, too" marketing campaign. It needed to differentiate itself from its competitors in a way that was relevant, credible, unique, and defensible.

To achieve this goal, the company first conducted research to uncover the issues its customers were struggling with in the new global marketplace. The research revealed three important things:

• There were four forces "flattening" every business environment:          
  • The rise of emerging economies
  • Changing global demographics/redistribution of the global talent pool
  • The ubiquity of technology
  • Increased regulations
         
• Companies were unaware that they needed to shift their operational priorities to deal with the consequences of these forces
• Customers looked at Infosys itself as an ideal flat-world company
  

In response, Infosys set out to help companies shift their operational priorities in four ways:

• Shift focus to fueling growth by becoming globally efficient, cost-competitive producers
• Stop focusing simply on better customer service and start focusing on creating customer loyalty through faster innovation
• Shift focus from merely spending money on information systems and process to making money from information
• Shift focus to winning in industry cycles rather than only in the straightaways

Infosys achieved these goals by creating a new offer to assess the impact of these global forces on clients' businesses and provide a roadmap for the operational changes required to address those impacts. The offering defines four stages of excellence for the flat world and offers clients a financial model that measures the impact of their efforts. All other solutions within the company were aligned to the flat-world offering, and subject matter experts were instructed to focus on establishing thought leadership around the issue.       

With unique offers in place, Infosys shared the results of its research with key clients. The research, combined with Infosys's own reputation as a flat-world company, made the company's new positioning credible and defensible. Now all Infosys needed to do was get the message out.      

The Campaign

The company conducted a multifaceted marketing campaign aimed at Global 2000 firms. It was designed to target four different audiences within an organization—C level, lines of business, sourcing executives, and IT—and focus on "flat-world" topics that were relevant to those audiences.

But before Infosys kicked off the external campaign on July 31, 2006, by ringing the NASDAQ opening bell from India, it conducted an extensive internal campaign to bring over 50,000 of its employees on board with the new positioning. The company launched its extensive internal campaign in January 2006.      

Infosys included the following elements in its customer-facing campaign:       

• Infosys Website
• "Think Flat" microsite and blog
• Thought leadership white papers
• Digital ads in top-tier publications
• Partner programs
• Annual report
• Executive events
• Industry events
• Analyst outreach
• Marketing and sales collateral

Achieving Fifty Percent Growth

From March 2006 to June 2007, Infosys increased its annual revenues from $2 billion to $3 billion. A significant portion of that increase is directly attributable to the online marketing conducted around the flat-world campaign.

In addition to the company's astonishing growth, Infosys became the first Indian company to be added to any of the major global indices in December 2006, when it was added to the NASDAQ-100. Analyst firms such as Yankee Group, Forrester, and TBR are singing the company's praises. And the Infosys sales group created a special new award to recognize marketing's impact on the business.

All in all, the flat-world campaign has enabled Infosys to differentiate itself from both other Indian outsourcing firms as well as the global consulting companies, and it is beginning to neutralize the legacy advantage that traditional IT consulting firms have long enjoyed. Infosys is now seen—by customers and influencers alike—as a trusted business transformation partner rather than just another outsourcing firm.

If you're interested in hearing more about the "Win in the Flat World" campaign, be sure to register for ITSMA's Annual Marketing Conference (November 14-15), where Srinivas Uppaluri, head of global corporate marketing at Infosys, will go into more detail         about Infosys' branding efforts.

NB: I originally wrote this piece for the September 2007 issue of ITSMA's E-ZINE. To subscribe to the E-ZINE, visit http://www.itsma.com/aspfiles/Press/ezine.asp