The Small Business Specialist Community (SBSC) is Microsoft’s initiative for Partners - those selling Microsoft software directly into small businesses.

To join the SBSC, members must take a certification to prove their skills and in return get accreditation as a Microsoft Small Business Specialist – with the chance to pick up hot new business leads. But many Partners weren’t aware of the strong reasons to join.

Our challenge was to demonstrate the benefits of the SBSC in an impactful, intriguing and persuasive way. And to convince as many Partners as possible to join.

Everyone loves to see their house or office from the air. Such a personalized campaign, with its vivid demonstration of the core benefit of SBSC, gave us a highly effective way of motivating Partners to join. The campaign generated 49% response overall - with 53% responding to the DM, 45% to the email and 17.5% to the follow up email.

As a direct result of the campaign, sign up to the SBSC reached 51% of target for the whole of 2007.

Put your business on the map.

We knew that new business leads would be the key motivator for our audience. So we decided to link our recruitment drive to an upcoming £600,000 campaign, specifically aimed at generating leads for SBSC Partners.

Taking personalization to a new level, we created an integrated campaign (dm, email, microsite) around the simple but effective idea of ‘putting your business on the map’.

Using aerial mapping and postcode data, we linked each target business to a stunning aerial photograph of their premises – directing them to their very own microsite, featuring a personalized, moveable aerial photograph.