How a B2B Marketing Team Used Zombies to Win Over the C-Suite
When Christine Nurnberger joined SunGard Availability Services in 2012, Marketing and Sales were clearly out of alignment. Marketing’s contribution to the sales pipeline was less than 3%, even though they executed more than 1,100 marketing tactics over the previous fiscal year.
By the end of 2013, that relationship had shifted dramatically. Marketing’s contribution to new revenue skyrocketed to 40% with the average deal size tripling.
At MarketingsherpaEmail Summit 2014, Christine revealed her secret to success: smart content marketing built on intense research, analysis and creativity. It culminated with chief technology officers preparing for the zombie apocalypse and eager to engage SunGard.
In the video clip below, Christine outlines setting the stage for that success with a two-stage direct mail pilot, targeting 56 CTOs in the later stages of the buying cycle:
- Part one was a direct-mail piece made up of a shadow box with a thumb drive, which included a personalized video announcing that, in the coming days, they would receive everything they needed to survive a zombie apocalypse.
- Part two was a zombie apocalypse survival kit — a backpack that included a copy of World War Z, two tickets to the movie and “zombie repellant,” aka silly string.
The response blew the sales team away.
“We had sales people for the first time calling us up and saying, ‘Can we do more of these? We walked in to close the deal, and we saw it on the CTO’s desk,’” Christine said.
Watch the video to get the full details about how the right message given to the right audience at the right time can help Marketing unequivocally prove its value to Sales.
Related Resources
Multichannel Marketing: IT company’s zombie-themed campaign increases CTO 3% at president, owner level [MarketingSherpa case study]
How to Leverage the Zombie Apocalypse for an Award-winning Multichannel Campaign [MarketingSherpa webinar archive]
Email Marketing: 3 award-winning lessons about relevance [More from the blogs]
Four Ideas on Marketing to Digital Natives Versus Digital Immigrants [MarketingSherpa case study]
Event Marketing: Zombie-themed campaign nets $1.2 million revenue impact [MarketingSherpa case study]
Categories: B2B Marketing, Sales Lead Generation B2B content marketing, content marketing, direct mail, Email Marketing, lead generation, zombies
