Mediaboss Marketing

AUSTIN, TX--(Marketwire -06/04/12)- Harte-Hanks, Inc. (HHS), a worldwide multichannel, direct and targeted marketing company, announced today that its Mason Zimbler digital agency business has garnered three advertising awards for technology clients: two Business Marketing Association ACE Awards for social media on behalf of clients IBM and Sage HRMS, and one Killer Content Award, presented by DemandGen Report, for client Sage Fixed Assets.

The ACE Awards, which honor the best in business-to-business marketing creative, and the Killer Content Awards, which recognize business-to-business efforts that rely on content marketing strategies and tactics, were both announced recently in New York City.

"Using content and social media strategies in business-to-business marketing -- as well as lead generation and nurturing efforts -- truly defines and drives relevant, insight-driven conversations today," said Kevin Kerner, managing director, Mason Zimbler USA, a Harte-Hanks company. "Both IBM and Sage recognize how these drivers translate to new business and satisfied customers. Our ability to help them achieve business-to-business marketing and sales objectives is what has made these efforts so compelling in these two award competitions."

A description of the respective entries follows:

IBM, 2012 ACE Award for Social Media Lead Generation Campaign, presented by the Business Marketing Association (Winner): Mason Zimbler helped IBM implement a social selling program that included personalized Web, Twitter and LinkedIn pages for seven Public Cloud inside sales representatives. In six months, the program increased aggregated LinkedIn direct network size from 535 to 3,500, and increased potential impressions and reach of social-selling messaging from 54,000 to 1.3 million. It also triggered 10 orders on the first day of a 60-day free trial. As a result of the agency's initial program with the client, all 1,700 IBM North America inside reps have been trained in social selling. Within the target audience, the team collectively has made 50,000 LinkedIn connections and posted more than 20,000 tweets, and digital representative pages have received 100,000 visits in the past six months.

Sage HRMS, 2012 ACE Award for Social Media Lead Generation Campaign, presented by the Business Marketing Association (Honorable Mention): Mason Zimbler helped Sage HRMS build an integrated social media strategy that aligned social media marketing efforts with demand generation campaigns and leveraged specific social media channels, such as Slideshare, that were more relevant for business-to-business lead capture. The strategy triggered nearly 7,000 total Slideshare page views and more than 140 downloads in six months for Sage HRMS and its lead generation content; it drove top-of-funnel traffic from Sage HRMS social media channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to its website; and resulted in higher form submission rates from click-throughs that come from social promotions.

Sage Fixed Assets, 2012 Killer Content Award, presented by DemandGen Report: Mason Zimbler created content for Sage Fixed Assets that was leveraged on the company's blog and re-purposed for its lead nurture program. Mason Zimbler developed and used an infographic on fixed assets for the company's blog, a supporting traffic strategy, and influencer contact to produce extraordinary results: 444,151 potential impressions via the infographic, including mentions by top influencers, among them Daily Infographic, Guy Kawasaki and Alltop; more than 100 "social sharing" activities on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn; and, upon infographic release, a 2,500 percent increase in new visitors to the Sage Fixed Assets blog and a 600 percent increase in average daily visitors over the pre-posting average.

"These campaigns and their results tell us how marketing dynamics are changing, with social and content leading the way to relevance and sales in business markets," said Gary Skidmore, president, Harte-Hanks Direct Marketing. "Our clients' commitment to success and the innovation of our Mason Zimbler team combine to show how insights and passion translate to results."

A full listing of 2012 ACE Award winners is available here: http://64.90.161.29/bmanyc/AceAwards2012/winners.html. A listing of 2012 Killer Content Award winners is available here: http://www.demandgenreport.com/archives/feature-articles/1157-demandgen-report-announces-killer-content-award-winners.html.

[Editor's Note: For campaign visuals from Sage HRMS, Sage Fixed Assets and IBM, contact Drew Hansen at andrew_hansen@harte-hanks.com.]

Read more:
Harte-Hanks: Mason Zimbler Wins Business-to-Business Content and Social Media Marketing Awards