The goals were challenging, the deadline short and the insight of top-management data was critical to achieving success in this key digital campaign on behalf of Pegasystems.
Pegasystems (Pega) is a software company that offers strategic applications for sales, marketing, services and management. It wanted to move away from middle-manager-focused marketing to understand the issues affecting Chief Information Officers and engage with and obtain data on its new key audience.
Pega partnered with iResearch Services, a global data-driven thought leadership agency, to conduct this campaign. Research is at the heart of everything we do, with evidence-based research knowledge empowering brands to connect with their audiences to build digital trust and be respected as thought leaders.
iResearch Services created a global Tech Trends report to lead the campaign, validate the hypothesis, develop fresh insights and achieve critical goals in four months.
Reaching and understanding our audience were crucial to the success of the campaign. We surveyed over 1,300 senior executives from businesses with revenues of $1 billion or higher, in 12 countries and seven core sectors and conducted 12 qualitative interviews.
Our insightful Tech Trends research provided the backbone of a campaign that ran over 18 months. The flagship report generated more downloads in the first 10 weeks than the average lifetime consumption of any previously written content for Pega. The campaign will generate insights to cover entire campaign cycles over 12-18 months.
Our breakdown of insights allowed for quick assimilation and achieved a record number of shares.
The campaign set out to elevate Pega’s thought leadership to a C-suite audience, present the company as a technology leader and innovator, produce long-lasting value, and boost business objectives.
Crucial to this was creating a voice for Pegasystems that was relevant to the needs and challenges of the boardroom. Above all, Pegasystems desired an uplift of 20% in new contacts generated and fresh leads.
The content marketing campaign needed to improve on the average lifetime consumption of previous campaigns, which was for at least 18 months.
The strategy was to locate and survey 1,300 senior executives from leading businesses worldwide with revenues of $1 billion or higher, using this information to create a new Tech Trends 2025 report. The insight from this exclusive survey formed the backbone of a campaign that ran over 18 months. The flagship report generated more downloads in the first 10 weeks than the average lifetime consumption of any previously written content for Pega. The campaign will generate insights to cover entire campaign cycles over 12-18 months.
Pega also wanted to utilise this content in an evergreen way, with multiple purposes, including at its showpiece event, PegaWorld iNspire. Externally, the content was disseminated through cross-industry and sector content campaigns, global PR activity, webinars, videos, the flagship annual conference, related infographics and other online resources.
The key challenges were in audience delivery, business value and benefit – to create an innovative campaign that could produce better results than ever before, reach a new, premium target market, outlast all other campaigns in longevity and create more contacts and leads.
Pui Chi Wong, Director, Global Brand Marketing at Pegasystems, says iResearch Services over-delivered on all the key challenges. “Our ‘Tech Trends’ content marketing campaign has outperformed and over-delivered in all aspects, which is testament to iResearch Services’ expert consultancy and collaboration. Throughout the campaign, the team at iResearch supported us every step of the way to ensure we maximise the potential output from the project, and to deliver true value to our business.
“Examples of this are the significant increase in new leads generated, which was a key metric for us at the outset of this project. Combined with the engagement that our campaign has received; we can clearly see that iResearch has helped us to forge new relationships with a key demographic audience for Pegasystems. The tangible results that have been delivered through this project are unprecedented for us, and our relationship with iResearch will certainly continue.”
The Tech Trends Future-Proof 2025 report and thought leadership campaign has generated 31% more in new leads, surpassing the target by 11 percentage points. The campaign is set to generate more leads than any previous thought leadership campaign for Pega, and it has also received a faultless Net Promoter Score of 10/10 for iResearch Services by the brand.
Pega’s Tech Trends landing page has a conversion rate over 400% higher than the running average of similar campaigns. In the first quarter alone, Tech Trends outperformed the average lifetime consumption (18-24 months) of all of the company’s written content by around 66%.
The open rate of emails is four percentage points higher than other email communications sent so far this year.
An associated ‘What’s Next for Tech?’ webinar achieved a 162% gain over Pegasystems’ average webinar registrations. Its replay registration rate is 58% higher than average.
The report has been showcased at Pega’s annual event, PegaWorld iNspire. Don Schuerman, CTO at Pega, wove the research findings into his keynote speech, which resulted in an extra 100 downloads of the Tech Trends report on the day alone. From this point, the report has averaged a record 100 downloads a week.
Don Schuerman says, “The power of the insight that iResearch Services provided us with to run this campaign has been unparalleled. They perfectly recognised our intent, understood our objectives, and ultimately aided us in achieving our goals. Through thought leadership, our market resonance has risen significantly, proving the value of iResearch’s capabilities.”
