We recently had the pleasure of working with one of our clients to help restructure a marketing awareness program, in a world with no trade shows.
The scenario:
The Technical Advisory Group (TAG) at Cohesity, started the year with a targeted and themed marketing plan to create awareness and social media chatter. They had created and scheduled a series of trainings and events around a Race Circuit Theme, complete with a trip to the Grand Prix in Amsterdam. In January, we started coming up with race related ideas. A big piece was around events at VMWorld, one of the largest trade shows in the industry. We came up with ideas, orders were placed and everything shipped to STK Promotions to be warehoused until trade show season. Specifically related to VMWorld, we ordered SWAG for two distinct programs.
1 – Eight unique 1/64 scale cars, each roof printed with a letter spelling Cohesity
2 – Car jump starter/battery packs
Then the pandemic happened.
All of that product was here in our warehouse but the mechanism to hand it all out was gone. The team had to adapt and get creative.
The Track Walk (set of 8 cars)
Original Plan: A scavenger hunt. At VMWorld, each member of the team would carry a bag of one type of cars and folks would have find each team member and collect the set, one car at a time.
Pandemic Plan: The team created an online course with eight sections. It was quick and probably took participants about 20 minutes to complete. This was not a simple task and they did a lot of work to find the right tools and to pull it all together, but they did it.
How we helped: Prior to the Track Walk going live, we pre-packed the cars in boxes with a note from the team. Then when the program started we were ready to go.
At the end of the Track Walk, participants landed on a form where and were asked to enter their shipping address. That shipping information was automated to create an order in our shipping software. At the end of each day, we printed the labels and stuck them on the pre-packaged boxes.
We typically use the customer’s FedEx account to ship any product from our warehouse. However, this time it made sense to use USPS and save our client several hundred dollars in shipping.
We packaged and shipped 144 car sets, over the course of two weeks.
vExpert 2020 Gift Program (Car jump starter)
Original Plan: Again, at VMWorld, folks that have achieved vExpert 2020 would stop by the Cohesity booth, maybe see a demo and talk to a rep, maybe not. But they would check in to be verified as a vExpert and receive their gift.
Pandemic Plan: The team had to conjure up some more creativity. The Track Walk had been very successful, so they created a similar training. There was an additional step this time, the participants had to be verified. Team members watched as entries came in and authenticated each participant. When each vExpert completed the course, the process on our end was the same.
How we helped: Again, shipping information created an order in our shipping tool. As we had done with the Track Walk, we ordered boxes and proper shipping labels to fit the starter. We pre-packed the boxes and stacked them back on the shelves. At the end of each day, we printed labels and scheduled a pickup with FedEx.
Pre-packing helped a great deal here, as we shipped 134 starters the first day, 56 the second day and as I write this, the last 15 are waiting for the FedEx driver.
We shipped a total of 205 starters in four days.
These were win-win projects for both TAG and STK Promotions. We were able to provide new fulfillment services for our customer. And they were able to not only distribute the SWAG they bought BUT they also collected more qualified leads. On top of that, there has been about 100 mentions per day on Twitter for both Cohesity and STK Promotions, pretty sweet. Thanks Cohesity, for allowing us to help be a part of the solution.
Thanks for reading, Julie