Thought Leadership Series: Social Media Marketing with Michael Parker from Serena Software

This week we are featuring a social media marketing campaign that Michael Parker and gang from Serena Software launched. They have some very impressive results. I am thinking they are very mavericky. Very mavericky indeed.

Welcome Michael. I recently became a “Super Masher” on Facebook. Would you mind explaining to our readers what this means? Does it mean I do all the work at Thanksgiving? Does it have to do with punk rock music?

Registering to be a “Super Masher” means you have seen the “GO @#$% YOURSELF“ video from the “I’m A Super Mashup” group on Facebook, and that you have joined the group. Being a “Super Masher” means you recognize how simple, collaborative process-centric applications are important to today’s business, and you are supportive of new technology in the workplace that lightens the load on IT and reduces costs.

So this was a social media campaign? Do you mind sharing with us how it was executed and what your results were?

The “GO @#$% YOURSELF” campaign was a follow up to the highly successful integrated viral video campaign, “JUST @#$% IT!”, which ran on YouTube, garnering almost 1.2 million views and was the #1 video on the site for 2 days. With “GO @#$% YOURSELF!”, Serena leveraged the Involver video/social media platform to serve this viral video within Facebook to generate over 2 millions views.

Viewers could not only watch, share and embed the video, but they could also join the Super Masher group and invite their like-minded business friends to join via contest to see who could get the most folks to join. While definitely an alternative method to communicate Serena’s value, we were focused here on not simply driving awareness, but actual leads. Towards that end, we enabled users to download our software or a white paper directly from the Facebook Super Masher user group.

When users came from YouTube or Facebook, we brought them to a landing page served up from our Marketbright system. That way we could identify and track all inquiries and leads. Those that actually converted to leads were passed off to Saleforce.com, where a sales person would follow up. If someone did not become a lead, we could at least identify that interested party, and serve up our banners via remessaging.

In addition to driving viewers from our video to product downloads or white papers, we also integrated our Search Engine Marketing with our video campaigns. Those who were searching on the relevant key words would be brought to a landing or registration page housed by Marketbright. On the “Thank You” pages, we would serve up links to the video, so videos drove to product downloads. And product downloads drove to the video. All designed to get as much “social networking in the enterprise” as possible, so viewers would get every opportunity to watch the video, and then share it – thereby spreading the word and increasing the opportunity for Serena to generate self-identified leads.

With Facebook, Serena experienced a click-through rate of 0.72%, more than 14 times the industry average of 0.04% for Facebook. We did drive actual conversions and leads across both YouTube and Facebook, however, we do not release final lead numbers externally.

Were you primarily concerned with branding or lead generation? How did this campaign affect both?

While branding and awareness were definitely on the radar, lead generation was the primary target. This campaign – including both the YouTube and Facebook activities – were huge for branding and awareness. Serena received recognition from industry technology media like Information Week and The New York Times, and even TVGuide called us “those crafty bastards at Serena Software,” completely unsolicited. This is a testament to the power of viral videos and social networking in the enterprise, whereby we provide quality content to our target audience (beyond the outdated PDF datasheet) and let it go viral.

The biggest marketing reward came when Serena (along with Brief Attention Span, our viral agency) won the OMMA 2008 award for Best Business-to-Business Integrated Online Campaign, and was a finalist for the OMMA 2008 award for Best Online Viral Campaign.

As I commented earlier, our results for Facebook exceeded standard banner click thru’s by 14 times the industry average, and this led to the product downloads and leads, which was critical.

Is viral marketing a large portion of your overall marketing campaigns? What other types of activities are you doing and what kinds of results are you getting?

All marketing in its best sense should be viral. The most trusted source is not the marketing guy or gal, but your colleague in another department or company. There is no greater reference than someone you know and trust saying “you should read/see/buy this.” That validation is critical – especially in today’s unprecedented economy.

Therefore marketers should be looking to develop any piece so that not only one person reads or downloads it, but that they pass it along. Viral video is still very new for many companies – business and consumer alike – yet a proven tool in my experience. In fact, when dealing with technology solutions, video can be a preferred medium because of how much it can engage your target audience. And you have the ability to be much more creative in addressing real business issues and solutions.

Of course, Serena still uses all the more traditional mediums such as white papers, Webinars, downloads and trials for our SaaS/On Demand offerings. The results of each of these varies, but keeping in mind the same basic premise as our “@#$% IT!” video series – quality content will bring your target audience.

Have you had any unexpected outcomes from these campaigns?

If they say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, then the most interesting take-away from this and other Serena campaigns is that we have seen some of the top brand name technology companies (you know who they are) as well as a few consumer companies literally lift our marketing tactics and execution to push their products. I must say, while they have more money than Serena, they have not achieved anywhere near our results, which continues to reinforce one of my primary beliefs – quality content will find a way to your target audience. Bad content will always be recognized.

Thanks Michael!

Links
YouTube Video –  www.youtube.com/mistermashup
Facebook App – http://apps.facebook.com/supermasher/watch
YouTube/Serena Success Story – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj2y77UBuOg
Serena MashupTV – www.serena.com/mashuptv