ESET
Turning a Trade Show Presence Into 31 Qualified C-Suite Meetings While Sales Team Stays Focused on Selling
COMPANY BACKGROUND
ESET has developed threat detection software since 1992 and now protects more than 100 million users across 202 countries. Competing in a crowded cybersecurity market means brand recognition alone doesn’t guarantee access to mobile network operators that drive revenue growth.
At the time of the engagement, ESET’s sales team was preparing to attend Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, one of the industry’s highest-stakes events for building relationships with mobile carriers.
THE PROBLEM
ESET’s sales team only gets a handful of days each year in the same location as mobile network operator decision-makers: Mobile World Congress. In previous years, sales hadn’t been able to focus on building net-new business at the event, so the job of setting up meetings fell to ESET’s marketing team instead.
Running trade-show prospecting at the scale MWC demands, on top of everything else marketing already owned, meant the work needed additional support. ESET wanted a strategic partner who could drive an impactful presence at the show, secure onsite meetings with new, highly targeted C-suite prospects who had real decision-making power, and free sales to focus on quality engagements during and after the event.
WHY ELEVATE
ELEVATE had already delivered a Mobile World Congress program for ESET once before, so when the same challenge came around again, ESET returned to a partner with a proven track record instead of starting a vendor search from scratch.
The ELEVATE team had worked with other enterprise cybersecurity vendors who’d attended MWC in past years, so they understood the event’s nuances and culture well, ensuring they were able to move quickly instead of learning on the job.
ELEVATE'S APPROACH
Using ELEVATE’s Event Arc methodology, ELEVATE first validated and enhanced ESET’s contact data before a single email went out, so every touchpoint reached a real decision-maker at a real target account rather than a name pulled from an outdated list. That same discipline shaped how the program itself got built.
ELEVATE and ESET’s sales and marketing teams worked through the project brief together, defining the engagement flow, conversion guidelines, and meeting process as one team. Because sales had a hand in setting the brief from the start, the meetings ELEVATE generated were qualified against what sales actually needed, not a generic volume target.
THE SOLUTION
ELEVATE ran a 13-week program built around four interconnected workstreams:
- Data. Cleansed and enhanced seven separate contact lists, totaling 1,515 contacts, into a single dataset structured for direct upload into ESET’s CRM once the show ended.
- Messaging & Project Brief. Built the engagement flow, conversion guidelines, and meeting process in collaboration with ESET sales and marketing.
- Multi-Channel Outreach. Ran five email campaigns and called into more than 1,775 contacts to validate decision-makers and secure onsite meetings, while also driving attendance to a networking event hosted by ESET’s Chief Technology Officer, Juraj Malcho, for contacts who wanted to meet with ESET but couldn’t commit to a specific time at the show.
- Content. Wrote every email touchpoint used in the program, from initial outreach through meeting reminders and post-show follow-up.
The process of setting the brief, sharing product knowledge and taking the time to understand ESET’s focus audience really separated ELEVATE from any other prospecting vendor we have used in the past.
– Head of Global Marketing Programs
ESET
The RESULTS
13 weeks, Mobile World Congress
- 600 C-level contacts validated, confirming outreach reached the right decision-makers at ESET’s target accounts
- 31 onsite meetings secured with C-level executives, 20% over ESET’s original target
- 20 additional meetings identified for ESET’s sales team to pursue beyond the show
- Five post-show meetings booked for contacts who wanted to meet with ESET but couldn’t attend MWC in person
- Following the show, ELEVATE continued executing follow-up and prospecting against the contacts acquired at the event, extending the program’s value past the close of MWC
ELEVATE has become our trusted partner and vendor of choice to drive marketing ROI by building a quality pipeline of opportunities for our sales division. ELEVATE has truly become an extension of our sales team filling in a much needed gap between ESET’s sales and marketing groups!
– Head of Global Marketing Programs
ESET
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