Our ranking puts us ahead of most other technology-focused agencies in the UK, as 30 of the 40 names on the list say they have IT/telecoms clients.

Over the past year, we’ve started working with a number of new companies, expanded the scope of our work for existing clients and welcomed friendly new faces to our 50-strong team.

The future looks equally exciting.

You can read the full report at b2bmarketing.net

It’s a challenge most vendors have. In one corner is a large sales team. In another corner is an army of partners that can help them to close, or grow, an opportunity. But how to match them up?

This is the issue Symantec came to us with. Our solution? E-Match. A rather clever secure website, with a database back end, that matches opportunity to partner.

With some quirky creative that ties into finding your perfect match (it was launched on Valentines Day after all) the sales person can search for their perfect partner by making selections from a series of drop downs, and then be presented by a summary of most appropriate partner to work with, with a % score to show how well suited they are.

The results? Well it’s early days but 100% of the sales people we’ve launched it to think it will help them get new business.

As the use of video in marketing becomes increasingly popular, here’s an example of a recent animation we created to promote an Avaya end user service.

The strong silhouette figures, bold use of colour and up beat music give this video a particularly distinctive look and feel. The red line takes you on a journey through all the business benefits on offer from this new service, in a way that’s clear, concise, but also engaging.

Together, all the creative elements build a credible, sophisticated identity for the service. This video was just one part of a larger integrated campaign that included emails, direct mail pieces and a microsite – click here to view the campaign microsite.

So harness this love of opinion and find out what your customers really think.

With Virtual Debate you can broadcast debates, discussions, webinars or events and enable your customers to provide live feedback and opinions as the action unfolds. From simple polls to yes/no votes and online chat boards, you can canvas, collect and report on real opinions as they happen.

Give your customers a voice and let them help you shape the future of your business. Contact us now to find out more.

You on you:
I’m often described as ‘cynical, paranoid and weird’, but I have flaws too. In a previous incarnation I worked as an Illustrator/Visualiser with a global client base. Following a two year stint with a marketing company as graphic designer/coffee maker, I went solo in 1976.

My first client was infamous publishing entrepreneur Felix Dennis, designing ‘cult’ posters for fanzines. Then I produced a series of covers for the original Doctor Who novelisations (Target Books). Soon afterwards I was illustrating album covers for Paul McCartney and other rock luminaries, while also visualising for the rock-design outfit Hipgnosis.

By 1978, I had picked up an award from The Society of Illustrators in New York, for Ted Nugent’s ‘Weekend Warriors’ album cover. (recently featured on the set design of Channel 4′s American TV series ‘One Tree Hill’).

For the next three decades I worked for many of the major ad agencies, design groups, publishers, film and record companies.

I later diverted into developing concepts for children’s TV, but my projects were generally canned in Cannes! (the nearest ‘miss’ being the ‘Octopus’ Garden’ project with Ringo Starr! Don’t ask)! This in turn lead me into character design which proved more viable. Designs include the ‘Faith Girl’ icon for Faith shoes and more recently; the ‘Uly Bug’ identity for DJ Jonathan Ulysses.

What qualities do you bring to Second2?
Experience, skill, diversity, humour and wisdom teeth.

Which project have you been most proud of during your time at Second2?
There are so many my chest aches. I enjoyed working on the Second2 ‘Xmas card’ email. I’m quite proud of that, the Toshiba caricature project and the illustrations for the First Capital website.

Perhaps, due to my ever-expanding waistline and whitening beard, I was destined to become Second2′s Santa representative for Xmas 2009. I was given the opportunity to create the Second2 ‘Xmas card’ email and supply the Toshiba Xmas gift also.

Three things you love:

• Family
• My guitar
• ‘Five-a-side’

Three things you hate:

• Meat
• Celery
• Getting too old and fat to play ‘Five-a-side’

Where would we find you on a typical Saturday afternoon?
Quite often we head into town, grab some veg from Borough Market (no celery!), do a bit of culture; galleries/theatre or the flicks (always matinees), then beer and home. On Sunday morning I play football and spend the rest of the day recovering!

Every one of us is bombarded with new offers and ‘reasons’ to switch our suppliers every day. The winners in today’s marketing circles are those that are able to build a long term relationship with their partners and customers. It’s about creating dialogue.

But it doesn’t have to be difficult.

STEP 1: LET’S GET PERSONAL

I wouldn’t open a letter addressed to ‘To whom it may concern’ – it’s failed at the first hurdle. If they don’t know who I am, it’s unlikely that I’m going to be interested in their offering.

To cut through that clutter, marketers need to show in an instant that they’ve considered the recipient when putting a communication together, even to get their attention.

Economies in digital print mean that you can afford to tailor your direct mail pieces to make them all the more relevant for each recipient – personalising the messaging, graphics and event details, etc.

By further personalising the call to actions on your DMs and emails with a unique url such as www.getmoremargin.com/jamescollis, you instantly create an added level of intrigue. This has shown to boost response rates considerably – but it doesn’t stop there.

STEP 2: GOING BEYOND THE GIMMICK

The personalisation of graphics and urls grabs attention – it’s a bit of fun. But marketers could be missing a trick if they don’t exploit the real opportunities behind the technology.

SmartURL enables you to tailor the landing pages with the content and messaging that resonates best with your audience – for maximum impact.

If you know what product your customer last bought, their preferred reseller or how long it’s been since they last spoke to you, you can easily reflect this in the messaging and imagery that appears on their landing page.

If you’re inviting a key customer to a seminar, why not use their postcode to pull in a map from their office to your event. You know who they are so there’s no need for a registration form. Confirmation of their attendance, dietary requirements or a request for a call back can all be done at the click of a button.

STEP 3: NOW WE’RE TALKING!

By taking the steps to make your audience feel special – be it your channel partners, prospective or existing customers – you gain valuable mind share. Through real-time reporting, you can also see which areas of the site each recipient visited and what actions they took, enabling you to follow up in the most appropriate way.

And this is where the dialogue really begins.

The more you can get your audience to engage with you, the more knowledge you can gain about their preferences in return, and the greater your ability to build a more valuable, lasting relationship with them.

See how Emulex used SmartURL to boost response rates in the ‘Get More Margin’ campaign

We are pleased to announce the acquisition of bChannels by Adventis Group plc.

bChannels a leader in the development of channel programs for technology companies. Mirroring Second2’s focus on customer service and expertise in the technology sector, bChannels services are extremely complimentary to Second2’s  and enable us jointly to provide a unique range of services to our clients. bChannels’ services include:

• defining the structure of channel partner programmes
• profiling of current and potential partners
• MDF and rebate management
• channel sales reporting analysis
• programme support helpdesks

bChannels has enjoyed considerable success since it was founded in 2005 by Matt Rowland-Jones, Phil Gowing and Chris Bard. All three founders, who will stay with the Company following the acquisition, have extensive experience across the technology & telecoms industries, and have built a channel sales & marketing consultancy that plans and executes optimal channel sales and marketing solutions.

For more information please visit www.bchannels.com

We are extremely excited about the additional services that together we can provide to our clients.

If you would like more information please contact James Collis.

The majority of online video content is created as short bite-sized snippets. Not only is this content different from typical TV content, but the way we view it is different. We lean back for television. We lean forward for online. And with the knowledge that we only remember 20% of what we hear, 30% of what we see, but an incredible 70% of what we both see and hear – it’s no surprise that video has quickly become a must have for B2B marketing departments.

New production methods, tools and knowledge remove concerns of video being expensive, time consuming and un-trackable. No longer do you need to have a room full of producers, directors, and lighting, sound and wardrobe specialists to deliver a 2 minute product walkthrough.

Is it a phone? Is it a mailer? Is it a website? No it’s a video! Put that in your basket of tactics for 2010!

You’ve seen it around. The subtle advertising on the back of car park receipts, on supermarket trolley handles, or even on the hanging straps on trains and buses! Ambient Media is growing fast as more and more advertisers and marketing gurus strive to find new ways of getting in front of their target audience.

Ambient media also includes techniques like projecting huge images on the sides of buildings, slogans on the hot air balloons, and stickers on escalator steps.

Ambient marketing does provide a very effective way of getting a brand message in front of consumers. It can create mass attention in specific audience groups and locations, and directly interacts (or interrupts) the consumers normal every day activities.

It doesn’t need to be ‘big’ either – ambient could be used at trade shows, press events, or in your own office to promote new initiatives to staff and visitors.

The Emulex ‘Get More Margin’ campaign provides a real example of how SmartURL generates significant results.

The brief was to recruit resellers who were not currently selling the Emulex server connectivity solutions. This resulted in the development of an integrated campaign, consisting of direct mail, email, landing page and letter pack.

Heat sensitive cards were mailed to the target audience revealing a unique personalised URL when touched. This was followed by the personalised letter pack and email.

The landing page was personalised for either HP, IBM or Sun depending on which vendors that reseller specialised in. The site content was also managed with links to relevant vendor product materials, call-to-actions and contact details for the relevant OEM sales manager at Emulex.

The campaign was a huge success and achieved an impressive 11% response rate.

• Develop the most appropriate campaigns
• Engage with your partners and provide them with the tools to implement effective lead generation campaigns with limited resources
• Have complete visibility of the effectiveness of your partner marketing campaigns
• Review results and track leads in real-time
• Achieve better results, faster, at lower cost

The Partner Marketing Delivery Platform is a suite of integrated web-based applications, creative services and processes, including a comprehensive reporting dashboard that provides real-time access to detailed results and ROI data for your marketing campaigns.

The Partner Marketing Delivery Platform is modular, and fully customisable to your requirements. You can launch the platform with those elements that you are ready for today, and add others as your needs develop. Each implementation is customised with a bespoke interface designed to your requirements, and can be integrated with your MDF and partner CRM systems as required.

The Partner Marketing Delivery Platform comprises:
•    MDF Management and Planning
•    Campaign Development
•    Campaign Implementation (bespoke, managed and self-service)
•    Asset Library
•    Reporting Dashboard

For more information please contact Kirsty Gilchrist at kirsty {at} second2.com

Datasheets are used to help explain the benefits and specifications of particular laptops. However, as Toshiba have such a huge range of laptops, it can prove both costly and timely to produce a datasheet for every model. We proposed a datasheet creator application that would automate the production of any business laptop datasheet, pulling all the specifications and descriptions from the Toshiba website, therefore ensuring the details are always up to date through a direct XML feed.

The datasheets are instantly created as a PDF, offering a comparison option between other laptop SKUs in the same family, and a choice of which specifications to include.

The datasheet creator application is live at www.toshiba.co.uk/datasheet. Both customers and Toshiba staff are using the tool and finding it incredibly useful. Marketing contacts are freed up to work on other projects, money is being saved each time a datasheet is produced, and Account Managers can provide their customers with bespoke datasheets as and when needed.

What started with just business laptops has now progressed to a consumer laptop version, and also a TV version; and we also have a Digital Imaging version in the pipeline.

With our experience in the development of interesting ways to engage with our client’s channel and customers, along with our understanding of the storage market, it was no surprise that Overland approached us to help launch a new programme to recruit partners for their newly acquired SNAP portfolio.

The brief was to push the brand and develop a campaign that really made an impression, both functionally and emotionally. With so many organisations having SNAP installed, and people not really knowing how popular it was, we developed the concept ‘It’s a Small World. It’s a SNAP World’.

We planned an interesting route around London and produced a series of High Definition videos from key roof top locations around the city. We then added a “tilt-shift” effect on all the videos to make everything look miniature – so literally the world got smaller!  We used still images for the European countries, but added the same “tilt-shift” affect so each country had recognisable landscapes to improve response.

The result was a full screen flash video website which tied in the key concept and the key messaging within succinct areas across the site, without losing the visual impact of the videos.

The feedback across the whole world has been hugely positive. We created an outstanding, instantly visual and inspiring campaign, which is so different to anything the storage market is doing currently, both for resellers and end users.

Visit www.manageinasnap.com to view the reseller site
Visit www.yourdatainasnap.com to view the end user site

With the significant amount spent on marketing and its critical role in driving revenue growth, it is a financial imperative to effectively measure the impact of your marketing efforts.

The most vital element of any campaign is the ability to analyse the results, and at Second2 we believe accountability is as important as the creative. mysecond2.com is an online tool that provides our clients with instant access to real-time, detailed results and leads for their Second2 campaigns – and it’s free of charge.

It’s a simple, easy-to-use tool that delivers all the information you need, when you need it, and all in one place.

Email Second2 at kirsty.gilchrist {at} second2.com to request a demonstration.

This tool enables resellers to quickly and easily build their own communications to help generate leads. With a choice of templates, graphic options, and the ability to add and edit their own text, they can efficiently create bespoke communications to support sales activity.

Using best practice templates that are web and mobile optimised, developed to adhere to your brand guidelines and support strategic marketing objectives, as well as providing your partners with the flexibility to promote their own message and style – the Self-service Marketing Campaign Builder enables quick and effective partner marketing.

Email Second2 at kirsty.gilchrist {at} second2.com to request a demonstration.

Reaching customers during their purchasing process has always proven to be a tricky task, but with 97% of IT B2B buyers using Google at some point in their research/purchasing process*; then it becomes clear that Google AdWords is an invaluable asset for marketing teams.

Google’s precise targeting and the ability to control how much your willing to pay per click means you can target customers at the exact moment they’re searching for your products or service, and at an affordable price, resulting in a higher return on investment (ROI) for your advertising budget.

With your ads appearing when users search for your keywords you’re no longer looking for an audience, instead you’re targeting an audience which is already interested in you.

One reason AdWords ads have such incredible ROI is that you decide on how much you would like to spend per day and what you’re willing to pay for each click of your ad, so there’s no minimum spending requirement.

Second2 works with you to reach your audience through the development of your AdWords strategy; from creating relevant ads and determining keywords to use, to the structure of your account in order to generate biweekly and monthly reports.

We also provide advice and expertise in optimising your website landing page to improve the performance of your Google AdWords account, helping to reduce the cost of keyword clicks.

To find out more, email our AdWords specialist on marcus {at} second2.com

^{*Source: Global IT Business Purchasing Trends, Media-Screen, October 2008}