Work Stories

Windstream Enterprise: How to “Thrive on” in uncertain times

#B2B, #MessagingStrategy, #DemandMarketing, #ExperienceDesign, #MarTech

If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that staying connected to others—at home, at school, at work—is critical to our well-being.

As a network services provider, Windstream Enterprise (WE) wanted to embrace that reality and reassure its customers that it has the technology to keep them connected today and prepare them for a prosperous future.

The WE team worked with Quarry to launch Thrive on, a campaign aimed at 50,000 WE customers to create awareness and generate demand for its strategic cloud solutions among C-level, vice president, and director contacts in IT, Finance and Operations.

Windstream Enterprise launched Thrive on, a demand marketing campaign aimed at key WE customers to raise awareness and interest of WE cloud solutions.

Enabling real connections in isolating times

During the global pandemic, many senior IT executives were forced to rapidly implement large-scale remote work solutions and accelerate their cloud migration plans. WE, in collaboration with Quarry, saw this as an opportunity to assist enterprise IT and business leaders in understanding the challenges they faced. Moreover, WE aimed to showcase its expertise, vision and experience in addressing those challenges with its strategic solutions.

Quarry developed Thrive on—a multi-touch, multi-channel campaign designed to generate awareness and interest in WE cloud solutions, create urgency and drive high-quality leads for the WE Sales team. Once launched, the campaign would be the most all-encompassing integrated campaign WE had ever done.

The campaign would be the most all-encompassing integrated campaign WE had ever done.

A creative idea you can thrive on

Connecting, collaborating and relating to one another is tough when you’re supposed to work together while apart. As a concept, Thrive on was all about building empathy with our B2B audience. It showed representations of our audience succeeding at their work in their own homes—in its realest and purist forms (babies, pets and messes included). The concept gently moved the audience beyond the coping phase with a positive, aspirational call to action—enabled by WE solutions, support and expertise.

Narrowing down, leaning in

In its initial phase, Thrive on targeted more than 50,000 business accounts across WE’s footprint in the U.S. These accounts were segmented based on fit, behavior and predictive scoring using sales intelligence from 6sense.

The campaign incorporated a wide range of tactics—content syndication, targeted display ads, search engine marketing (SEM), paid social, among others—and a strategically orchestrated set of marketing emails and sales-initiated follow-up comms to deliver relevant messaging across various stages and touchpoints of the buyer journey.

A battery of marketing tools and technologies were used to personalize the program to accounts and individual contacts, including Google Ads, TechTarget, Oktopost, Marketo and Uberflip.

Hitting pipeline paydirt

Over the course of the campaign, nearly 12,000 accounts moved forward in their buying journey to yield an impressive opportunity pipeline worth $14.6M in monthly recurring revenue (MRR). The campaign succeeded in building awareness of WE’s expertise and experience. It showed customers that WE is the supportive, responsive and innovative partner they can count on to keep their enterprise connected today and beyond.

Thrive on sample stats

Driving leads by leading with empathy

With plenty of high-quality leads for WE’s sales team, Thrive On delivered. By addressing the pandemic’s challenges head-on, Windstream Enterprise connected with customers in a real, empathetic way.

From brand and messaging strategy to buyer experience design and activation, the Quarry team dug deep and thrived on to bring this multi-touch campaign to life. Cheers to Colin Phillips, John Van Daele, Jeff Anton, Nicki Munro, Michael Palmer, Carolyn Niebel, Cem Uçan, Dave Whyte, Natalie Van Der Pas, David Chirakal, and Frances Ranger