Our Work

Case Studies

Case Study
Sun Microsystems

Ongoing customer dialogue programs – Driving long-term customer relationships and boosting sales

“We turned to Bienalto for strategic advice about the online space, to gain an external perspective. Bienalto had the willingness to challenge us and show us how to do things better. They will sit down with us and figure out how to solve problems collaboratively – for example, they recently helped us improve our ability to target our campaigns through response propensity scoring and profiling a customer’s purchase history.”

Paul O’Connor, Marketing Director, Sun Microsystems.

    • Overview

    • Bienalto supported Sun Microsystems in Australia and New Zealand with online marketing services for nine years until the company's acquisition by Oracle in 2010.

      During that time, Sun's marketing transformed to include advanced customer dialogue and sophisticated lead-nurturing programs.

      We were responsible for maintaining the Salesforce.com CRM system on behalf of Sun's marketing department, as well as for managing their email marketing and event recruitment programs.

    • Challenge

    • Prior to Bienalto joining their marketing team, Sun had a fairly traditional marketing mix - direct mail, hard copy publications, telemarketing and PR. At that stage, they didn't have much in the way of online marketing.

      They would print a massive 35, 000 copies of on#sun, the quarterly hard-copy publication - and huge piles of these would be 'returned to sender'.

    • Solution

    • The first thing we realised was that Sun's database was in poor shape. We recommended that Sun use Salesforce.com (SFDC) as their CRM for customer and prospect data, and we invested valuable time in building and managing the database.

      Very quickly, Bienalto was able to use analytical tools such as SAS and SPSS to generate highly segmented mailing lists from Salesforce.com, enabling specific targeting through criteria such as job titles, location, interests, response propensity and more.

      Bienalto launched Sun's flagship e-newsletter, Edge, in November 2004. Over the following years we continually tested the email and sought to improve on its design and features - introducing quizzes, surveys and videos to engage the readers and increase the readership.

    • Results

    • It wasn't long before Sun Microsystems stopped print advertising and marketing altogether, with the exception of collateral to support events.

      Over time Edge achieved an open rate of up to 45% and a minimum one third target rate for unique click-through to opened emails. We kept the database fresh through a range of direct response campaigns such as competitions and surveys, each delivering thousands of respones and significant insights about the customers and marketplace.

      The effective use of online channels in Sun's 2009 financial year - despite the Global Financial Crisis, the business transformation and an impending acquisition - meant that 35% of all new sales accepted leads were marketing-initiated in Australia and New Zealand, and the database grew to 90,000+ contacts with matching profiles and response propensity scores.