NSK Inc.

Data Loss Gremlins Help Barracuda MSP Partner Land New Business

An MSP finds Barracuda MSP’s marketing tools and support to be just as helpful and robust as the Barracuda Intronis Backup - MSP solution.

Any MSP can attest that winning new business can be a big challenge, and no matter which vertical markets you focus on, IT services do not sell themselves. Getting prospects’ attention requires a focused and innovative marketing plan, something the average MSP is ill-equipped to handle on its own. NSK Inc. is a company that understands this dilemma. Founded in 1997 as a certified woman-owned break-fix IT company, NSK made the transition to selling managed services in 2010, and today the MSP specializes in selling Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions and managed IT services, including backup and disaster recovery.

Cathie Briggette, vice president of marketing and sales at NSK, has been with the company since its inception. When a new vendor partner comes on board, she contacts their marketing department and sees how the two companies can help each other out. Sometimes that experience isn’t so helpful. “One of our biggest office software vendor partners recently created a partner portal that contains marketing collateral and other tools designed to help partners sell their software,” she says. “Half of the features on the site don’t work, the site as a whole is very glitchy, and the overall experience is painful, to say the least.”

Fortunately for Briggette, she didn’t let that experience stop her from reaching out to the Barracuda MSP marketing team after NSK partnered with the company. “Almost immediately after contacting Barracuda MSP’s marketing department, we developed a strong rapport,” she says. “We liked that they are also big proponents of HubSpot, a content marketing platform used to plan, execute, and track marketing tasks. We quickly became big fans of the Partner Toolkit, too, which we find to be a highly effective and comprehensive resource, and that includes rebrandable sales and marketing collateral such as data sheets, brochures, case studies, email templates, press releases, and presentations.”

From Email Blast to Face-to-Face Meeting — To Sale!

Last year, NSK took its vendor partnership to a new level by working with the Barracuda MSP staff and utilizing the rebrandable assets to create a comprehensive marketing campaign. “We had a few calls with Barracuda MSP that led to a full-blown marketing project to hundreds of prospects,” recalls Briggette. “We used their “Data Loss Gremlins” package, which personifies six different kinds of data disaster scenarios with appropriately named gremlin characters. We did six separate email blasts, targeting each gremlin (e.g. Scorch, Klepto, Mal, Whoopsie Daisy, Scratch, and Mayhem) and driving users to our website.” Briggette says the emails generated 222 new unique visits to her company’s website, several hundred clicks, and 21 personal users who downloaded additional disaster recovery assets and/or signed up to receive the MSP’s newsletter.

The MSP then followed up with Barracuda MSP for assistance with the next step. “We wanted to host an educational lunch-and-learn and to invite each of the prospects who showed interest in our disaster recovery campaign,” she says. “We selected three topics for the event: disaster recovery, cloud security, and Microsoft end of life products and we asked a Security Management Associate whitehat hacking expert and an MSP subject matter expert to be our guest speakers.”

Through additional marketing efforts that included newsletters, mailers, social media, and phone calls, NSK was able to get 20 people to its lunch-and-learn. “Within three months of the event we were able to close a deal, which turned into a managed services contract that generates recurring revenue for our company worth $30,000 a year in network IT infrastructure and security solutions, remote monitoring and management services, and Barracuda ECHOplatform backup and disaster recovery services,” says Briggette.

Since the event, NSK has continued working with Barracuda MSP and utilizing marketing resources in its social media, newsletters, and print handouts. “We don’t have an in-house designer,” she says. “Being able to work with a partner like Barracuda MSP, and leverage their designs which we can easily rebrand has been a huge benefit for our company. We brought on 12 new clients last year, each one of which had some touch point with our Barracuda MSP rebranded marketing collateral in the sales process. Our marketing initiatives with Barracuda MSP have paid for themselves many times over, and we could not be happier with their support and partnership.”