This is a story that we submitted to Marketing Sherpa. We had an interview setup with them to work on the story but Jon Kern ended up leaving Compuware which sort of ruined the story. Anyways, below is the story that we submitted to Marketing Sherpa.


Successful lead nurturing with an Evangelist

Compuware OptimalJ is a very sophisticated software product that is marketed in the B-to-B technology market. The product is used by an extremely intelligent, homogenous, and segmented audience that is very influential in the buying process. For the product we have a Technical Evangelist named Jon Kern who is well known in the software industry.

Our purpose when we began was to build a community and loyal following around Jon Kern. Jon’s message is non-product specific and he gives free advice about how to develop better software. We wanted to put a face to our marketing efforts and communicate a jargon-free message. We have been able to accomplish our goal with several types of media: e-mail newsletters, blogs and webcasts.

In August of 2005, we released the first edition of the Jon Kern e-mail newsletter. It was meant to portray a non-product specific message to our audience regarding the technologies and practices that directly relate to Compuware OptimalJ. This became a monthly newsletter and gained a large audience that wanted to learn from an industry expert on how to build better software. The newsletter list membership has grown 100%. We increased the opt-in list by purchasing media placements and by utilizing viral marketing. We have also made many improvements to the newsletter that have increased the open rate from 23% to 27.3%.

Jon Kern also has a blog that we promote through his newsletter. We have seen drastic increases in his blog site traffic which has led to a major software media vendor, SYS-CON Media, to spotlight his blog on their website. In one year the number of unique visitors has grown by over 900% and the total visits 3600%. It is also important that the blog is syndicated through RSS, more than 27% of our visits come from RSS Readers.

We have seen Jon’s popularity grow as he is requested to speak for many companies and asked to speak at many tradeshows. Magazines like Java Developer’s Journal have also asked him to write material for them, this is free advertising for us.

Most people see Jon as a “trusted advisor” and that is our purpose in using Jon as an evangelist and in lead nurturing efforts. The people that want to know what products or tools Jon recommends will get his pitch, but only when they ask. We are now working to harvest leads from Jon’s newsletter membership list. People that register for special offers receive a follow-up email. If they take action on that email they will receive another follow-up by email or from a Sales rep.

We see these lead nurturing efforts working very well for us in the future. We promote a non-product specific message to our prospects with free advice from an industry expert. When people are ready to buy our product, we make sure to give them many opportunities to raise their hand.