Proofpoint Builds Relationships with Event Attendees Via Personalized Direct Mail

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About

Celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year, Proofpoint is a leading provider of cybersecurity solutions and specializes in protection against advanced threats and compliance risks.

Industry

Technology, Cybersecurity

Platform

Marketo

Audience

Broad audience, decision-makers to C-level

Introduction

Challenges

Need to make a real, human connection with event goers

Objectives

Create a better post-event brand experience for attendees and find a more efficient way to categorize customers (sometimes more than a thousand at a time).

Results

Attendance Rates at Events
82%
Attendance Rates at Events
6.5x
Pipeline

Growing Pains

Celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year, Proofpoint is a leading provider of cybersecurity solutions and specializes in protecting against advanced threats and compliance risks. The company has partnered with PFL for years using the PFL technology platform to deliver direct mail that creates remarkable brand moments. However, Proofpoint had chosen to use other vendors to send event promotion items and many of the attendees had complaints.

The issue? Items were far too often being delivered broken or dirty in damaged, unremarkable boxes, resulting in repeated calls and emails from unhappy event-goer recipients. As a company that prides itself in outstanding customer-satisfaction rates, this was deemed unacceptable. Despite continuous attendance improvements, Proofpoint knew that finding a partner who aligned with their customer-experience ideals would better aid them in quickly increasing their event growth and attendance rates.

What’s more, disgruntled customers weren’t the only ones slowing Proofpoint down. With events such as their “Power Series” gaining more traction, keeping tabs on who actually showed up and didn’t just fill out a form to get a free gift was becoming increasingly difficult. This manual process of approving legitimate attendees was becoming too time consuming but was necessary to make sure the right people received their promotional items.

Proofpoint CISO

Automating Direct Mail

After looking at the other successful campaigns and experiences created with PFL, the natural choice for Proofpoint was to evolve the relationship and apply the PFL technology to their event strategy. This allowed customers to enjoy an experience in-person, at the site of their choosing, with full intention and immersion, with the right branding—exactly what PFL excels at.

The new strategy started with automation. The goal was to remove the manual attendance auditing method, saving time and expended effort. Through a seamless Marketo integration that automatically showed which attendees were approved, PFL was able to help operationalize the process into something easily repeatable and scalable. Now, Proofpoint could use the same simple system to approve huge lists of more than a thousand decision makers or quickly scale it down to a smaller, more concentrated list of 40 C-levels—or anywhere in between—leading to much more accuracy and efficiency.

Proofpoint Ember Kit

Satisfaction Guaranteed

Adding PFL’s complementary strategy to Proofpoint’s already successful virtual event strategy was a big win for their teams. Since its implementation, more than 40 events have utilized the new processes and over 7000 attendance gifts have been sent.

With the new system in place, Proofpoint hasn’t received any complaints, calls, or emails about promotional items or kits. After all, delivering clean, properly cared-for direct mail is second nature for PFL—an easy fix for us. But this translated into a “huge relief” for the Proofpoint sales and marketing teams. Building a good brand around the already strong “Power Series,” with its great content and speakers, was of the utmost importance to Proofpoint. Unhappy event goers could only hurt the brand. PFL rectified these issues by adding real value and helped Proofpoint’s events grow more quickly than before. According to Proofpoint: “The real value is zero complaints, that’s huge—happy customers and no bad emails from customers. Using other vendors was actually hurting our brand.”

Time and money have also been saved since it’s not being wasted on the old spot-checking process. This might not sound like a big deal, but when you think about the bigger picture—a combination of a better brand experience and happier customers—things come into focus a little more.

All of this ended the Proofpoint teams from having to manually compare spreadsheets and then send their approval to vendors. Now with PFL, the experience is seamless—for the team and the customers. The new marketing automation allows for promotional items to be sent out the day after the event, aiding the customer experience and creating a serendipitous moment. Quickly getting packages to them right after event keeps the event and Proofpoint top of mind.

Proofpoint has been using PFL for just about a year in this capacity to great success. Seventy (70) percent-plus attendance rates, a number that is growing every month, hitting more than 82 percent recently. Further, the series and automation make it easy to track reoccurring participants.

Surprised at the short time span the new processes have been in place, one team member said: “It feels like we’ve always done it this way.” The impact just blows the memory of other vendors away.

Key Takeaways

The PFL platform can adapt right along with you, scaling up or down or using entirely new strategies or complementing the winning ones already in place.

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More Success Stories

Challenges

Need to make a real, human connection with event goers

Objectives

Create a better post-event brand experience for attendees and find a more efficient way to categorize customers (sometimes more than a thousand at a time).

Results

82%
Attendance Rates at Events
6.5x
Pipeline