Our partner event-led marketing strategy...

A couple of partners have asked about the fact that we have "opt-in" events and "opt-in" dates for these events. Good question.

Let me give you a little context and our underlying assumption (basically partners-and MS- will be better off in a pure execution mode than a marketing strategy development mode).

I'm the data mining lead for our team. Using a database that pulls from historical Microsoft sales data, Dun and Bradstreet, One Source, InfoUSA, and a few others, we've created an upgrade workbook that allows us to identify, by product, geo, vertical (whatever) the potential for the sale of a given product (say SQL Server 2005). On top of that, we've used predictive modelling to determine which customer, based on a whole set of criteria, is going to be most likely to buy...and then, just for good measure, we've thrown in an early adopter model, to help us target people based on where the product is in its lifecycle and where they historically purchase...and just for good measure, what if we gave the partners Persona data so they had a better understanding of the audiences they were calling down on and presenting to?

So, what we did, is looked for the largest upgrade opportunities, by geography, and said, "what if we went to the partners and said: Here's a list of companies (can't share individual data) that seem to be upgrade worthy for SQL 2005 within 30 miles of this hotel (which we've selected for you). Here's a telemarketing script, an email invite template, and a deck that you can leverage. All you need to do is...call down on the list (and any others), focus on delivering a bang up presentation, and drive the opportunity, would that be of value?"

Our initial research said that it would be. Since marketing success is based about 60% on the quality of the list pull, we thought we could offload that hassle from you.

Then, we figured, we're going to try and drive 200 partner-led events in the Mid-Atlantic area this fiscal year (through 6/30/07) so we've got operationalize much of the logistics and targeting so we can give partners the focus they need on the key areas, like demand gen and event execution.

I'm sure this won't be the last time I talk about this, but wanted to get it out there.