F-Secure - Lead Qualification Case Study

F-Secure Appointment Setting campaign generates 40% lead to opportunity conversion and potential Marketing ROI of 8:1

Founded in 1988, with headquarters in Helsinki, Finland, F-Secure Corporation has approximately 1,000 employees in over 25 offices and security labs worldwide. With more than 27 years of experience in cyber security, the company’s proposition encompasses end-point security, network security and security management solutions. Their products protect businesses in more than 100 countries and are distributed via a network of 3500 active resellers and 200+ operators. F-Secure’s award-winning products have been distributed to tens of millions of consumers and over 100,000 corporate customers around the world, protecting customers against everything from crime ware to corporate cyberattacks.

Campaign objective and project background

Having recently joined the business, F-Secure’s UK and Ireland Corporate Marketing Manager undertook a review of processes. It was felt that the UK market offered significant untapped potential and, as the incumbent agency was not able to provide a long-term solution, it was necessary to engage a new agency. After a period of review, the Corporate Marketing Manager engaged The Telemarketing Company to support the new business initiative, calling UK companies to set up diary appointments for the F-Secure sales team.

Prior to campaign launch, a briefing session took place on-site at the agency offices and a detailed brief was formulated to capture F-Secure’s target audience and required outcomes from the campaign, and to understand the proposition and messaging for their range of award winning IT security products.

Project execution

F-Secure needed to target IT decision makers including IT Managers or IT Security Managers. Given the spread of organisation sizes, the decision maker would vary, and where the specific job titles did not exist, callers needed to identify the correct individual in the business. Once the decision maker had been identified, the ultimate goal of the call was to generate an opportunity, confirmed via email, with a copy of the call recording for each outcome sent to F-Secure to facilitate the sale.

Given that endpoint protection is a commodity product, where a solution already exists within businesses, prospects do not have an immediate need and overcoming inertia is a challenge. A strategy was therefore agreed to focus on building a pipeline, enhanced with insight with which to nurture and guide prospects along the purchase path, ultimately providing a feed of well-qualified opportunities for F-Secure’s sales team.

The project was assigned to the technology sector specialists within the agency due to their experience communicating complex propositions and their ability to engage with senior IT decision makers. To support pipeline nurture, it was critical for agents to capture current usage, current supplier, length of contract and other intelligence around customer needs and pain points. They could then carefully position relevant benefits and the unique selling points of the F-Secure proposition in the context of customer specific interests. Where a potential prospect was not interested, the team would establish the reasons why, again capturing valuable intelligence for future use.

Regular review points, robust reporting and a solid feedback loop supported strong collaboration between client and agency at the start of the engagement. Call recordings provided with each outcome enabled the client to give guidance on the approach and insight to help improve outcomes. In addition to calling skills and the ability to communicate the client proposition, agents needed to match the brand’s tone of voice, as they were calling on behalf of F-Secure. A number of different agents with different backgrounds and experience were tested in the early stages of the campaign until the right fit was found.

At the start of the campaign F-Secure provided data from previous telemarketing activity. Whilst there was good volume, the data had been inactive for some time, so it was very difficult to gain traction initially from a very cold base. Data needed to be managed intensively and was segmented and filtered so that calling could be focused on the better quality pots. In-depth analysis was undertaken and the data mined and profiled based on levels of previous interaction to try and wring as much value as possible from this source.

To supplement the original database, a small new feed of warm data was sourced, which included basic end-user information, account mapping (decision maker, influencer, and recommender), current anti-virus program, expiry date and usage period.

Results

As a result of the close partnership between client and agency, particularly in the early stages of the engagement, to find the right fit of agent, optimise the approach and proactively manage data, a strong pipeline began to form. The lead information and deeper intelligence gathered supported a much more targeted approach, giving the F-Secure team a clear view of leads in the immediate buying window, as well those to be nurtured in the medium and long-term, feeding a healthy future pipeline for the company.

In the first quarter of calling alone, 22 demo appointments were secured and from those, nine turned into a pipeline opportunity – a conversion rate of 40%. Opportunities generated represent a value in the region of £55,000 which, allowing for the costs of the new data feed, represents a potential ROI of over 800%.

The current campaign continues to deliver a regular drip feed of well qualified leads and opportunities to feed

F-Secure’s sales pipeline. Based on success to-date, the client and agency are also looking into the possibility of an additional engagement to support F-Secure’s partner network.