2014 Silver Business to Business

How did the campaign make a difference? Small and medium businesses (SMBs) are an important source of revenue to Microsoft UK, contributing £2.5bn in 2012. But this B2B relationship lay in the hands of third-party resellers – and the comms were heavily sales-focused, which customers ignored. Microsoft decided to change the conversation so it became more about listening to what the customer wanted, rather than telling them what to buy.

A richer relationship with customers developed. Open rates increased from 14% to 60%; click-throughs were seven times higher than in previous campaigns. The new strategy has driven engagement, fuelled the sales pipeline and strengthened brand loyalty, becoming a model for all Microsoft UK communications.

Strategy The brand used an email-led relationship marketing program to fundamentally change the way it spoke to SMBs – creating a more valuable conversation between professionals: ‘Tell us what’s relevant to your business and we’ll tell you exactly what you want to know’.

The program used data-driven insights and modelling to create highly personalised emails. The main component of the program was the creation of an intelligent system that could learn content preferences – so that emails became more and more interesting to the recipient. The program also understood the current value of customers against their potential value.

By segmenting customers into value bandings and building an understanding of further spending potential, the system ensured that product content was always tailored to the audience.

Creativity At the heart of this change in attitude is the philosophy that marketing is no longer B2B, it is B2P: Business-to-Person. Creatively, this meant working to a highly customisable, tilebased email template (taking design inspiration from Windows 8.1) that delivered a selection of targeted content, driven by the profile of the SMB customer. In effect, each email was a virtual mini-magazine based on the individual’s professional concerns. And with each further email, the magazine better reflected their needs, learning from interactions.

The resulting system tapped into a vast and growing content library that could populate the email content blocks as engagement data was collected.

Results Making it really personal gets results. The previous generic, product-led email metrics told a story: open rates of only 14.6% and click-through rates of less than 1%.

The One to One program was based on an unprecedented amount of customer data analysis and modelling, which paid off with increased email open rates of 60%. And click-through rates were seven times higher than previous campaigns – indicating that customers were much more engaged.

It is clear that the strategy of building a stronger relationship with the SMB audience has driven engagement, fuelled Microsoft’s sales pipeline and strengthened brand loyalty. It has become a model for all communications, not just SMB, and influenced how communications across other business groups and products are planned and executed.