Braintree Email Marketing Success Story

Growing A Small Business in Tough Times

Faced with tough economic times, shrinking IT budgets, and stiff competition, software and services reseller Braintree builds a successful email marketing campaign with ZINFI Technologies.

When the U.S. economy took a nose dive in 2008, it affected the whole world. 45 minutes from the U.S. border and with 90% of their business revenues coming from U.S. companies, Canadian software and services reseller Braintree also felt the pain. Nevertheless, working with a dozen OEM vendors and partners like Oracle, VMware, McAfee, RSA, and EMC, Braintree has been overcoming the odds by leveraging multitouch lead nurturing campaigns executed by ZINFI to show off its technical expertise in virtualization, security and more in order to deepen its reach to existing and new customers.

Challenges

“Working with vendors can sometimes feel like operating in a black hole—they’re big, you’re small, and you’re on your own,” says Joseph Reid, President and CEO of Ontario-based Braintree, a four-person consultancy.

Engaging with a vendor means signing up to meet specific technical certification and challenging sales revenue goals. Achieving a $1M revenue target is no easy feat for a small company like Braintree. Even with the availability of partner marketing programs, sales support and marketing development funds (MDF), it’s up to the individual partner to make the sales happen.

“The email lead generation campaign we did contributed immensely to our goal of developing pipeline,” says Joseph Reid, president Braintree Group. “We’ve done others with other vendors and I was blown away with how quickly we had results.”
~ Joseph Reid
President, The Braintree Group Inc.

Solutions

Rapidly adjusting to the tough market conditions of 2008 and after, Braintree relied on its solid relationships with vendors for great products and an extensive selection of support materials. For marketing expertise — including how to navigate the partner portal, find product and technical information, access training materials and support, and select the most appropriate marketing campaigns — Braintree turned to ZINFI.

“Major vendor portals are a bit overwhelming because there are 25 email marketing campaigns to choose from and you don’t know which one is going to deliver for you,” says Reid.

“The email design, the templates to choose from are awesome with ready-links that made it easy for me,” says Joseph.

Results

As a result of one email campaign, Braintree realized 25 leads within a month of launch. They achieved almost $2M in potential pipeline results stemming from a single email campaign, and they are gaining traction as they follow up the leads. “For a small technology management consultancy, that’s a great way to get through a slow summer and kick-start fall business,” said Reid.

“Partnering with big OEMs has been a great strategy for us and our business is getting better because we’ve sustained these relationships,” says Joseph Reid, president of Braintree Group based in Ontario, “We also realize the value of a strategic spend on marketing. I couldn’t be more pleased with the dedication and support that I have received from ZINFI.”

Although at first Reid was reluctant to take ZINFI’s introductory calls, they persisted, and he listened. “It made sense. They provided the missing link between me and the OEM vendor. ZINFI provided me the concierge services that I didn’t know I needed. Having that ZINFI third arm in marketing was a huge help.”