SCT, a technology provider for colleges and universities, is conducting a multichannel campaign for a product that helps schools store records online.
SCT, Malvern, PA, began the campaign last month by sending rich media e-mails to 4,000 of its customers who pre-registered for one of its conferences, SCT Summit, in Toronto. The e-mails, which targeted administrators from finance and human resources departments, were sent three days before the conference began to generate leads and build awareness about the product, called e-Print Reports.
“By doing this pre-conference e-mail, a lot of people came to the conference wanting to hear more about the product,” said Karen Kelty, marketing director at SCT.
The rich media e-mails gave recipients the option of clicking through to a special URL address, eprint.sctcorp.com, to receive more information about the product or pass it on to a friend.
Within two days of being sent, 5 percent of the recipients clicked through to find out about. To date, the e-mails have received a 30 percent click-through rate.
TMXinteractive, Philadelphia, provided the streaming technology, tracking and reporting for the rich media e-mails and sent them as well. Susan Murphy, vice president of marketing at TMXinteractive, said the pre-conference e-mail blitz prepped recipients with information about the product prior to the on-site product sessions and promotions.
“SCT had educated clients coming to their sessions,” she said, “and they had folks with a significant interest.”
At the conference, Kelty said, SCT handed out little promotional trees in plastic bags, which coincided with the campaign's environmental theme, “Save Money, Save Time, Save Trees.”
The rich media e-mails have generated 125 leads for SCT. The company has closed three of those deals.
Last week, SCT began a telesales drive to follow up on leads generated from the e-mails, Kelty said. The company hopes to close 25 percent to 30 percent of those leads, she said.
In addition, the e-mails had a viral effect, with some 100 people passing them on to friends. Response rates for the e-mails that were passed on were not available.
SCT will wait to analyze the leads generated from the rich media e-mail drive before making plans for another e-mail campaign, Kelty said.
The company also intends to launch a direct mail campaign next week to drive traffic to the product's URL address and to generate more sales leads. SCT, which has 11,000 customers, is targeting the 7,000 customers who did not attend the conference, Kelty said.
Kelty said the company is leaning toward using a white-paper mail piece filled with facts about the product.
Meanwhile, advertising and interactive agency fabGorgon, Philadelphia, developed the creative for the e-mails and redesigned SCT's Web page for the product. Kelty said that since the redesign in April and the e-mail campaign, traffic has increased nearly fourfold.
SCT displayed the URL on the promotional trees it handed out at the conference, Kelty said.
FabGorgon president Jesse Kramer said the Web site, which was changed from HTML to Flash format, was easier to navigate after the redesign. In addition, the redesigned Web site features a calculator service, allowing visitors to see how much they could save by using the product, he said.
