Transforming the traditional with Slack

As long-term Slack users ourselves, we already knew first-hand what Slack could do – so we couldn’t pass up a golden opportunity to position its revolutionary value to the leaders of the UK’s biggest banks.

The Slack team shared this enthusiasm for the potential of their product to transform organisations, particularly in the traditional banking sector, and they wanted us to communicate this in the most emphatic way possible. Together, we set out to transcend the bland, generic statements that often characterise account-based marketing (ABM).

Understanding customers is always our starting point. And our starting point for understanding customers is always talking to account teams. Over a series of online workshops with sales leaders, customer success managers, and solution engineers, we got a clear understanding of the big drivers for tech and IT leaders in UK banking, the competitive landscape for Slack, and the unique selling points of the platform.

But you can’t always see the label from inside the jar. So we conducted a detailed review of the target audience to form a 360 picture of their motivations. What we found were financial services leaders that married a bold vision for their organisations with a deep dependence on their teams to make that vision happen. These leaders were deeply focused on the productivity and happiness of their precious tech talent, and attuned to the frustrations and friction created by email and other lesser tools.

Our first campaign targeted the CSO persona. Based on our insights, we created a suite of assets based on the idea that German sales leaders need to move away from the old-school way of selling in favour of a connected, data-led approach.

To do this, we developed digital ads leading to a bespoke landing page with an ebook, relevant videos, and numerous toolkits and assets for sales teams. For example, the “door opener” emails and intro decks were all designed to help them convert prospects into leads. Then we plugged these assets into an end-to-end customer journey that would target sales leaders across multiple channels.

Armed with this insight, it was easy to connect Slack to the most powerful of motivations for anyone: their personal ambition – and what stands in its way. From here, our creative hook was developed: “You can’t build a new bank with old tools.” A call to arms for visionaries that are in a hurry to create change.

In playbooks customised for each business function (HR, Sales, IT, and Marketing), we set out to show how Slack can support banking transformation across key pillars of customer experience (CX), talent, productivity, culture, and compliance. We also developed advertising and social content with messages designed to trigger curiosity and generate demand.

Our target customers were massive: multiple CTOs and CIOs across a spiderweb of business units. To help Slack’s sales team be more productive, our research team conducted buyer journey mapping and developed strategic insights about the campaign’s target accounts. To do this, we profiled key decision-makers and their influencers, and developed personalised messages based on their specific priorities and challenges. The account playbooks became key parts of the sales kit, enabling more meaningful conversations to be developed faster.