Today is International Systems Administrator Appreciation Day. But you probably already knew that, right? It’s not just a Hallmark holiday.
For the second year in a row, we wanted to do something to celebrate. But first, a little background for the uninitiated.
Our startup, Aprigo, is selling a SaaS suite of apps for IT pros to manage all their unstructured data (aka files). The product, Aprigo NINJA, focuses on both the access management side- who has access to which files, which files are accessible to whom- and the storage capacity side- showing how storage is being used, what kind of junk is taking up valuable space, etc.
Our audience consists of IT Managers, IT Directors, CIOs, and of course systems administrators. They’re the guys that- in many cases- are going to be the ones using our product on a day-to-day basis.
So we put together a small facebook campaign targeted at sysadmins in the United States only, offering a $10 iTunes gift card. Here’s what it looked like:
The goal was to get ~100 sysadmins to sign up. That only took a few hours.
Impressions: 443,209
Clicks: 393
Signups: 113
This was more of a goodwill campaign, as we weren’t trying to hard sell these guys. Instead, we sent out the cards via email- after I scratched off 100+ individual iTunes cards- and called to make sure they were received. I then just asked whether they had ever heard of us before and if they’d had a chance to check out the product. That was really all. Sysadmins are super busy, and rather than coming off as bribing them with $10 to listen to a sales pitch, I really wanted us to be perceived as a company that cares about sysadmins.
Was it a success? I’m not sure yet. On the surface, I think it was good at introducing us to a group of potential users in a positive light. On the other hand, it’s hard to tell how many will actually try out the product and turn into a sales ready lead.
Comments on this entry are closed.