MCAFEE

See how we helped McAfee move beyond rented email lists with an integrated SMB marketing program that combined research, rich media, lead capture, landing pages, promotions, and advanced tracking to generate leads and acquire tens of thousands of new customers.

Our Challenge

McAfee needed a more effective way to reach Small and Medium Business decision-makers, with a focus on companies under 250 employees and a hyper-focus on businesses with fewer than 25 employees. The target audience included technology professionals, consultants, and small business owners who often ignored security messages unless they had an urgent need.

McAfee had relied heavily on rented email lists, but rising list costs and declining response rates made that approach less viable. They needed a smarter lead-generation strategy that could build awareness, educate prospects, capture leads, support longer sales cycles, and position McAfee as a valuable security resource for SMBs.

Our Approach

We evaluated SMB research and developed a broader acquisition and retention strategy focused on reaching prospects where they were already spending time online, building McAfee’s in-house opt-in database, and creating more useful touchpoints throughout the sales cycle.

Our work included recommendations for improving McAfee.com’s SMB pages, strengthening opt-in opportunities, using data tagging to better track lead sources, and testing alternative channels such as co-registration and RSS feeds. We also developed promotional strategies including free trial offers, direct mail mini-CDs, gift-with-purchase incentives, and partner programs with brands such as FedEx Kinko’s, The UPS Store, T-Mobile HotSpots/Starbucks, QuickBooks, and Network Solutions.

The centerpiece was an innovative rich media campaign built around the fictional LAN Network News Team, a group of animated anchors reporting from inside a McAfee-protected network. Because McAfee Total Protection stopped threats before they became problems, the team had very little breaking news to report.

These interactive ad units ran across business and IT news networks and allowed users to request a whitepaper, register for a demo, start a free trial, or opt into future communications directly from the ad experience. We also extended the campaign characters to ShopMcAfee.com and landing pages, while using advanced ad-serving technology to track both immediate response and delayed purchases.

Our Results

The work helped McAfee move beyond rented email and establish a more complete SMB acquisition engine built around audience research, lead generation, website optimization, promotional partnerships, rich media, landing pages, opt-in programs, and advanced tracking.

The LAN Network News campaign became a highly successful new customer acquisition channel. The rich media units achieved a 10.9% interaction rate, generated a significant volume of registered sales leads, and helped McAfee acquire tens of thousands of new customers in the first 90 days.

Most importantly, the delayed-sale tracking revealed the true value of the campaign. Eighty-five percent of customers who purchased from the campaign did not click directly from the banner. They viewed the ad, remembered the message, and returned to purchase up to 90 days later. That insight proved the importance of combining brand awareness, education, lead capture, and measurement into one integrated B2B marketing system.

The result was more than a successful campaign. We helped McAfee develop a broader SMB marketing model designed to drive leads, build an owned prospect database, support sales over a longer decision cycle, and position McAfee as an ongoing security resource for small and medium-sized businesses.