Microsoft India

Background:

One of our major IT clients wanted to develop database of software developers and IT architects in India. The client wanted to engage these experts through targeted marketing campaigns for promoting its new tool built on latest technologies. There were approximately 1.5 million software professional in India working with IT and Non-IT companies. This database of 250,000 professionals had to be built in the period of 6 months; the task of collection such a huge database in the permittedtime posed a tough challenge for us especially in absence of any secondary source of information. But we believed in our team and knew that despite the high magnitude of the task it is achievable if the right approach is adopted with the right set of people.

The Solution:

We identified engineering colleges that churn out majority of engineers across the country. A team of experts was sent to these colleges to identify and appoint students who were in their last semester of their degree course. That is how a team of around 300 freelancers was built in the first phase of the campaign. The responsibility of these free lancers was to provide us details of their alumni from their respective placement cells. The team had to put the basic details of their alumni in an excel file and forward the details to us in a specified time. Cyber cafes were booked for reporting of database from all parts of the country. Upon receiving the basic contact details the team of callers started contacting all the developers to profile the additional information required. In the first phase of the campaign the team gather approx. database of 200,000 professionals.

In the second phase of the campaign, once the critical mass of database from the field was acquired the telecalling team reached good no. of professionals through snow balling. In the second phase of the campaign we reached around 400,000 professionals out which we successfully profiled database of 250,000 professionals. This exercise continued for four months till the time we achieved our target of 250,000 records.