Case Studies

  When you are planning an online event or webinar it’s a great opportunity to expand your prospect pool with new names and contact details.

We worked with Phase 3 to develop an integrated campaign involving social media, e-shots and calling. We also advised on buying new data to give a larger, relevant and up to date prospect pool, to market the event to.

Many events have stayed online after Covid that previously were physical, and this has allowed more people to attend (no travelling cost or time) but has also meant a loss of informal networking opportunities. Thinking about how you can facilitate networking in an online setting is key
 

We executed a campaign where we sought early bird attendees, then the main body of attendees then some late sign ups. Scheduling the campaign in bursts to achieve this.

The work resulted in a good mix of existing customers and prospects attending the event together with some new prospects who were followed up with for feedback and to understand their specific interests by phone after the event.
 

Things to think about

· Buying fresh data ahead of a campaign to get attendance at an event is very worthwhile.

· Timing your efforts to get early bird / main body and late sign ups should also be planned for 

· Following up after the event is essential and makes attendees feel valued.

  The OR Society is the industry membership body for all who work or are interested in Operational Research. Their members cover education, research and commerce and industry.
 

Their annual conference is the focal event and sponsors are sought each year for different parts of the conference – you can sponsor the conference overall, or an event at the conference – pre dinner drinks or the gala dinner – or you can be an exhibitor at the conference.

We designed a campaign including e-shots and calling to a sponsorship prospect list made up of suspect companies who employ data analysts, but also companies / sectors that we felt might be possible sponsors (e.g. specialist recruitment companies / government departments) as well as companies that had simply been attendees in previous years.
 

The campaign was scheduled with a suitable lead time to allow prospects to build the sponsorship costs into their annual marketing budgets and a menu of sponsorship options developed as a follow up email.
 

Being able to succinctly share details of the profiles of past attendees and also suggest ways in which a “return on investment” could be achieved on sponsorship were key parts of the discussions we had.
 

We were able to secure new sponsors at most levels and have laid the foundations for further conversations in future years. 

Things to think about 

· Sponsorship is, for many, a longer term consideration but even where provision hasn’t been made in the annual marketing budget for sponsorship, it may be possible to encourage prospects to “test and learn” by sponsoring a small part of the conference.

· The list of attendees is a key part of the value that sponsors want (especially if the conference is likely to attract hard to identify communities), so conference organisers should consider GDPR and how names are collected and shared.

· Having a broad range of sponsorship opportunities is helpful, as it is unlikely that a new headline sponsor will be secured, if they have had no sponsorship relationship previously. 

Understanding your members 

The car / motor industry has never faced so many challenges in so short a time frame as the last three years:
 

Brexit – Covid – electrification – chip shortage – labour / skill shortage
 

Any one of these could reshape an industry – all of them, one after another, or like busses arriving two at a time, will have a profound and lasting impact on this sector.
 

We started working on this project soon after Brexit and were concerned that this one factor might dominate the discussions and our findings and so we designed the approach to guard against this. Fieldwork started (face to face and telephone) but soon came to a halt as Covid arrived.  We prepared an interim findings report then put the project on pause.
 

18 months later we regrouped and revisited the aims, given that the landscape had changed so much. We then restarted and once the fieldwork was completed, debriefed our findings with the CEO and his membership team, then again with the Leadership group.
 

SMMT believe in insight and have implemented a process where all of the insights are actioned over time, based on biggest / easiest wins first but making sure nothing is lost.
 

We loved this project – lots of big issues – lots of opinions and emotion – and a receptive and forward thinking client.
 

Thank you SMMT!

"The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) engaged Eight Strategy to conduct a qualitative survey of our members, to help us as the largest trade association for the automotive industry in the UK to better understand the challenges and priorities facing our members as well as gathering their views of us as an organisation.

The project commenced in February 2020, and when COVID-19 struck the following month, Alistair and Helen were understanding, flexible and adaptable in accommodating our request for the project to be paused until a time that was convenient for us; the restart happened in September 2021 with the project concluding at the start of 2022.

Alistair and Helen regularly kept us informed on the projects progress, with multiple meetings throughout including two interim debriefs before the presentation of the final results.

The findings and insight gained from the interviews conducted were presented clearly and thoughtfully, along with suggested recommendations which will prove invaluable when we consider our own strategy for the next few years.

We’re pleased with the outcome of this research and with our decision to engage the services of Eight Strategy, and would like to thanks them for their support, patience and flexibility whilst completing this project for us."

Simon Winterbottom (he/him)
Member Relations Manager
Member Services and Business Development


 

Event support   

Gartner play an important role in the IT and technology sector with their Magic Quadrant report (this positions the leaders in different technology areas and is used to gain understanding of who the suppliers are if you are considering new technology).
 

Gartner run an extensive programme of conferences and wanted to combine seeking feedback from attendees with qualifying prospects who might be interested in some consulting support from Gartner.

Our team called attendees 2-3 days after they had returned to their offices to solicit feedback – asking particularly what sessions of the conference they had found most useful and why. The conversation was then developed into the projects / challenges they were facing in the next 12 months. After exploring how the conference content had helped shape their plans and thinking we explored whether a follow up call with a Gartner expert in the area of their project would be helpful.
 

The productivity of the campaign was good – as senior decision makers felt valued when we rang to ask for their feedback. The dual purpose of the call was also helpful as priorities and future plans / projects were established before we proposed a “helpful next step of speaking with a Gartner expert”. The calls, very deliberately, were not salesy.
 

Things to think about:

· Seeking feedback shows that you value your customers / prospects and is part of relationship building

· Combine seeking feedback with unearthing qualified leads

· Decision maker conversation levels per call were approx. 50% higher than normal in this campaign

We work with a range of membership organisations on a number of challenges, from membership acquisition, event support and member recovery for those who have lapsed. Generally, these members are 1-6 month’s lapsed but we have also worked on longer term lapsers and have found that still offers a great ROI.   Our results show the ROI on re-signing a lapsed members is greater than trying to find new ones. 

 We worked with BCS, The British Computer Society (The Chartered Institute of IT), to pilot our approach in a competitive scenario with an incumbent agency. The data set on lapsed members was split and an integrated programme of e-shots and calling executed to reach members worldwide.    

We are proud to say that we won the pilot and have now been working with the Institute for almost 5 years.  In the last six months we recovered members who have paid fees equal to 8 times the fee we have charged – so for every £1 of Eight fee we have secured £8.50 for The Institute.  

Our integrated approach of e-shots knitted into calling works successfully with our courteous and supportive call approach. We capture valuable insights about why members are thinking about leaving and pass individual issues back to The Institute for resolution.  

Our client sponsor Eve McTighe-Crew (Head of Customer Care and Engagement) commented:  

“We are really pleased with the work we have been doing with Eight, not only because it has delivered a great ROI, but they are always looking for ways and opportunities to streamline and improve processes and results. They provide us with regular feedback and insight from our members which is invaluable too“. 

We were excited to take on Transmission TX (TTX) as a client as their market is the film industry! They had developed a close relationship with the main Directory of companies and individuals who work in the UK film industry – from Gaffers, Grips and Producers to Directors and Camera people.   

TTX has developed a strong reputation in hiring the very latest camera equipment ( think of the camera that captures Spring Watch), but they also offer lighting and silent generators mounted on four wheel drive vehicles, to power all of the kit used on film sets.   

The campaign involved the Directory emailing a TTX e-shot to all of their members, Solologic researching telephone numbers and then calling the recipients to find out whether they had hire needs and if a discussion could be started with TTX.  

We undertook 5 days of calling each month and generated interest from 60 contacts who wanted follow-up on either mobile power generation or remote Pan, Tilt and Zoom cameras and a further 117 contacts who agreed to receive future communications from TTX.   

Worthy of a BAFTA nomination? Here’s what Jon Boyce (Managing Director and Founder of TTX) said: 

“It’s really simple, we asked them to do some prospect calling and they got us new work with customers who will be with us for the long term – we are really pleased and will do more with Eight Strategy”.    

Many membership surveys contain the same questions year on year and are completed by the same “rant or rave” members, with the core body of members not participating.  Our client who appointed a new Marketing Director wanted more….. 

We reviewed the questionnaire and built on it to allow the continuity needed for some time series measures, but also sharpened the questioning around why members felt the way they did.  We reviewed the last years initiatives and prompted questions on the impact and value of those activities.  We stopped asking whether membership was good value and started asking what elements of membership were valued and weren’t – and how to make it more valuable for them. 

The output was written up in a compelling data format – succinct & easy to understand with a new scorecard of key metrics.  We summarised the key themes in an infographic that was widely shared within the organisation – making the organisation more aware of members feedback.

Our client, a sporting organisation, wanted to explore the idea of introducing a new scheme which would impact sports and physical activity providers. Exploring who it might benefit, how might it be used and what concerns about this type of scheme were required.  The research was to be used to start a discussion in the sporting community, to engage national bodies and other sporting organisations, and to see if a case existed for this type of scheme. 

We prepared two quantitative surveys – hosted online.  One aimed at adults and parents with children under 17yrs who are coached (respondents from a panel) and one aimed at coaches (respondents were sent an e-shot from our client and a wide variety of sporting organisations). 

The adults and parents with children questionnaire was completed by ˃2,000 respondents.  The project was completed in 8 weeks and gave clear direction to the sporting organisation on how people reacted to the scheme and next steps. 

Negative Net Promotor Scores (NPS) aren’t uncommon in membership organisations, particularly professional ones where membership is a professional requirement.  But how do you unpick NPS so that you can take action and improve it over time? 

We created another measure, which we call the Net Engagement Score (NES).  We also used membership data to create a small number of personas or segments and then measured NPS and NES against these persona groups.  This enabled us to then find out which subsets of membership were detractors even though they were using the organisations services, and those who were promoters despite them not engaging in any activities.  We were also able to identify the personas that were driving down the NPS and thus investigating why they felt so negatively. 

The greater granularity to NPS and also relating this to activity undertaken enabled us to create an action plan to better serve those who felt negatively. 

Brand positioning or brand proposition is used to create clarity around what your brand should stand for in the minds of your members.  This should be distinctive and exciting and also enable members to understand all of the activities you are involved in. 

With this organisation, we went back to the Royal Warrant that first defined what it was all about, then interviewed key stakeholders – a range of members (old and new), the management board, committee members and employers of members.  This gave us the ingredients to create a range of brand positionings which we then tested with members to find which was most compelling. 

The work was debriefed with internal stakeholders in a workshop.  We worked through the stages to developing the different expressions of brand positioning that were tested, explaining what worked and what didn’t, before delivering the ideal solution.  The involvement in the process helped create ownership and excitement around the proposed solution internally. 

Most organisations have less than perfect data and often this is the road block to getting started with a segmentation that would allow the organisation to better meet the needs of members. 

We undertook a qualitative approach conducting depth interviews with different age groups, career stages and length of membership.  From this we hypothesised a number of segments which we discussed and developed with the membership team.  We then took all of the membership data and created a set of rules that allowed us to allocate each member to a persona or segment.  Out of this data exercise we found that we needed to add a small number of new segments. 

We debriefed the project detailing each of the segments and the size / number of members in each one.  We were also able to input the members survey data so for each segment we could report average Net Promotor Score and other key metrics. 

This project started analysing two pieces of information - sales data from the last 36 months, to understand which parts of the commercial offer were selling best, as well as discussing the margin on each product with the finance department. As well as interviewing stakeholders and sales staff, to gather internal knowledge on how things could be improved.  We summarised the data and interviews into a number of issues under the headings of price, quality, channel, promotion, brand relevance and competition. 

Next we conducted desk research to understand the competitor offers, alongside current customers feedback and purchase data to give in depth feedback on their experiences.  We also spoke with those that use competitor products and services, giving us a holistic understanding to the decision journey. 

We made recommendations on products to withdraw, pricing to change and potential gaps in the offer.  We also detailed customer perceptions on where the heart of the commercial offer should be and how far it could stretch to still be brand relevant.  It also identified opportunities for future innovation.  Overall this work highlighted the need to focus promotion and ad materials in slightly different areas and a more formal feedback mechanism was recommended for all customers post purchase.