The world’s largest computer company improves strategy to increase B2B marketing effectiveness.

Lenovo is one of the world’s largest providers of B2B hardware solutions, but most people know the computer giant strictly as a manufacturer of personal computers. That creates a unique set of problems for Lenovo’s enterprise marketing team trying to compete in a crowded B2B technology landscape.

The Challenge

Lenovo’s outbound marketing team had a full complement of tools at their disposal, including a large customer database in their CRM platform, strong prospects with Anteriad’s Marketing Cloud, and a number of sophisticated models to help land and close the best deals. The problem they faced was the length of their sales cycle. 

With an extended time to close deals, their predictive modeling was not working. To overcome the data and modeling challenges, the team turned to more costly solutions and advertising that proved ineffective—even in the face of dwindling budgets. They needed to convert more prospects to marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and sales converted opportunities (SCOs), but were finding that their audience was experiencing email fatigue with non-personalized messages.

The Solution

We worked with Lenovo to design a strategy that optimized their multi-channel messaging and layered in the use of intent data. We began by conducting vertical research on top accounts and collecting feedback from product and sales to determine surging topics. We then formulated a plan to monitor commercial target accounts for intent signals across all channels that focused on topic areas like PC and server and created an engagement journey with relevant content to increase MQLs and SCOs.

The strategy incorporated four stages:

1. Scoring

• Build a process to score and prioritize domains based on intent data and trigger intent nurture emails via Anteriad’s Marketing Cloud and Eloqua, as well as display ads via Adobe Audience Manager. 

2. Targeting

• Identify existing target contacts within Eloqua and net-new contacts via Anteriad’s Marketing Cloud at accounts showing intent signals. 

3. Tactics

• Execute a four-touch solution-focused email nurture using Anteriad’s Marketing Cloud and Eloqua Display via Adobe Audience Manager. 
• Conduct tele-qualification via the Lenovo Lead Development Team. 

4. Measurement

• Record metrics for all levels of funnel and activity 
• Marketing qualified leads 
• Sales converted opportunities 
• Net-new contact acquisition 
• Reactivation of dormant contacts

The Result

The orchestrated and integrated approach was a success across channels. When layering in the intent data in the Marketing Cloud environment, Lenovo saw a lift of roughly 25% in open rates and 50% in click-through rates. Additionally, the use of intent data allowed Lenovo to create an “always-on” program that shifts the focus from push to pull based on intent signals, reducing the churn of new content creation and allowing Lenovo to keep more programs in market.

This resulted in:

• 20% increase in leads from website 
• 10% increase in web traffic 
• 2x customer visibility 
• 28% MQL conversion 
• 32x ROI (closed, won business) 
• 75% of new opportunities are net-new business

About Lenovo:

Lenovo is a $60 billion revenue Fortune Global 500 company serving customers in 180 markets around the world. Focused on a bold vision to deliver smarter technology for all, Lenovo is developing world-changing technologies that power (through devices and infrastructure) and empower (through solutions, services, and software) millions of customers every day and together create a more inclusive, trustworthy, and sustainable digital society for everyone, everywhere.