Case History: Microsoft Buddies Up for Internal Marketing Effort

Frustrated by a maze of automated help options when you’re looking for an answer to a simple question?

Microsoft has the answer, at least for independent software vendors.

It has developed a program, ISV Buddy, to facilitate one-on-one relationships between Microsoft employees and ISV’s, and to provide the latter with a personal contact, an advocate and friend within the company. Launched last spring by Microsoft’s Platform Strategy and Program Group, ISV Buddy is part of a larger initiative to strengthen collaboration with software developers who rely on the Microsoft platform.

“They’ve had different programs to serve ISV’s, some more pure marketing or PR, but what’s different with this is that it involves Microsoft employees and a relationship that is developed between them and the ISV,” says Eric Anderson, White Horse, director of agency services. White Horse, an interactive marketing agency, was brought on board the project to help develop the ISV program.

To enlist Microsoft employees, surveys were sent out to determine what would motivate them to join the program. A large point of employee resistance to participate was lack of time. But that didn’t stop everyone. “There’s a certain type of person who is really into this kind of thing,” Anderson says. “We call them the true believers, Microsoft developers very passionate about their job. They’re the ones who want to put the word out. It’s natural for them.”

Using the true believers as its base contact point, White Horse embarked on an internal marketing campaign to spread the word about what it termed employee evangelism. “We decided do it virally, rather than having a e-mail blast to the company asking employees to sign up,” says Anderson.

An e-mail was sent to a few hundred developers with the expectation that they would pass it on. “We spread the word from true believers to non- believers because true believers were our best assets,” Anderson says. “They’re passionate about Microsoft. We wanted to take advantage of that natural behavior.”

The select seed group of developers received an e-mail inviting them to check out the ISV Buddy program and an accompanying interactive piece, in which animated versions of Microsoft executives render notorious Windows error messages as beat poetry. The expected viral passalong happened as planned, resulting in over 10,000 viewings and more than 1,500 employee evangelists signed up. A second e-mail consisting of a formal invitation to join the program was sent almost a year later. That yielded an additional 1100 “buddies.”

Both the viral piece and the formal e-mail invitation linked to the program’s internal Web site, which further encouraged program participation with a sweepstakes offering a grand prize of a 42-inch plasma TV.

Word of the program was spread slowly to ISV’s through e-mail and links on ISV Web resources.

To date there are 65,000 ISV’s globally. The Program

White Horse created a matching tool to improve the quality of buddy pairs. Matches were made based on an ISV’s interest, location, language, role and the kinds of software programs he or she works with.

Volunteer Microsoft employees typically receive about two e-mails a week from their assigned buddies with questions that are usually handled via e-mail. “There’s no specific knowledge that’s needed and no script,” Anderson says. “All employees have access to resources to help them. A lot of the work is just facilitating.”

Although no quantitative surveys have taken place, Anderson views the program as a success based on feedback from both the Microsoft employees and ISV’s.

“I have heard how much it has helped ISV’s do business with Microsoft,” he adds. “From Microsoft employees feedback is more along the line of, ‘I feel great because I helped an ISV. There is a charitable aspect to that.”

The program is not set up to compete with or replace technical help but to augment it. Anderson admits that those resources are less than perfect due to automated systems and long wait time for responses.

“They’re not nearly as good as someone you can call on to help you,” he says. “The big ISV’s, like Adobe, have relationships with Microsoft. But a lot if ISV’s are companies of 50 people who may be the next Adobe five years down the road but right now they’re just a mom and pop so they have to go through channels that are less than ideal.”

Currently the program is headquartered at Microsoft’s Redmond, WA campus but future plans are to expand it globally as demand increases.

”The internal marketing piece of it was that Microsoft decided that their employees are their best marketing tool. They’re going to turn Microsoft employees into individual marketers on their behalf. Most employees would like to be able to help their company, they just need tools to make it easy. That’s what this is set up to do. Make it easy; make it fun and cool to do. It provides a framework for people to become evangelists for Microsoft.”