Panda Security leads a new era in IT security with Adobe Target and Campaign.
How moving to subscription services brought Panda closer to its customers.
Grew subscriptions from 20% to 60% of revenues in just 3 years
Objectives
Convert customers from traditional box security to recurring subscription contracts
Transition free customers to premium services through targeted promotions
Improve campaign workflows to deliver timely and personalised experiences across channels
Results
Subscription revenue jumped from 20% to 60% of sales in 3 years
50x increase in speed of critical campaign workflows
Reduced time-to-market for new campaigns from 1 week to 1 day
Increased clicks for product notifications by 200% among free users
Transforming IT security for today’s customers
“The days of basic anti-virus software are over. Today’s customer is always on and always connected, be it through their computer, their mobile, or one of countless other devices, and with that comes the need for more comprehensible and flexible IT security.”
As the Head of Monetisation and Ecommerce at Panda Security, Manu Díez knows what people have come to expect from a modern IT security provider. Since 2019, he and his team have been using Adobe Target and Adobe Campaign to get closer to Panda Security’s digital customers and engage them with more timely and personalised marketing campaigns.
“The days of basic anti-virus software are over. Today’s customer is always on and always connected, be it through their computer, their mobile, or one of countless other devices, and with that comes the need for more comprehensible and flexible IT security.”
Manu Díez
Head of Monetisation and Ecommerce, Panda Security
Panda Security is a top 10 endpoint security software provider, delivering next generation anti-virus protection to consumers and businesses around the world. The company was acquired by WatchGuard in 2020, a move that strengthened its leading software offering with an innovative range of network security solutions.
Díez’s mandate is to help Panda Security redefine the way customers purchase IT security. More specifically, with the company moving away from traditional box solutions and towards a subscription delivery model, his team is creating and rolling out timely campaigns to inform customers about the advantages of subscriptions and inspire them to make the transition themselves.
In-app communications that pop
For Díez, the shift to subscription does offer clear advantages. From a logistical perspective, users no longer need to renew their licenses or pay for ad-hoc upgrades. When it comes to marketing, they don’t have to deal with constant reminders about their software expiring or prompts to renew licenses.
“We scaled back our communications with subscription users because renewals are automated, which means we don’t have to remind them as often that their contract is coming to an end,” adds Díez. “Instead, we send them less frequent but more valuable communications, be it tips on how to use new features, important updates about their contract, or advice on how to get the most from their investment.”
Most of Panda Security’s campaigns are either sent via email, or through in-app push notifications for customers that already have its software installed on their devices. Adobe solutions have been instrumental in helping Panda Security with this unique approach to in-app targeting and promotion.
Few campaign management solutions are designed to handle in-app notifications out of the box, but by working closely with Adobe Consulting Services, Díez and his team found a workaround that has proven both effective and quick to roll out.
“What makes our comms unique is that we send them as pop-ups directly in our anti-virus applications. We therefore need to personalise every message based on each customer’s profile and the devices they use, which is why we decided to have Adobe Campaign and Adobe Target working together,” says Díez.
Panda Security now builds all of its marketing content directly within Target while drawing on data from Campaign to personalise any dynamic fields. This approach helped to achieve 70 million page views for its personalised messages alone.
“As a result of integrating the solutions, we’ve made our communications more relevant and less repetitive. No more pestering customers and compromising their in-app experience. Instead, we just give them a gentle nudge at opportune moments with information they actually need,” Díez adds.
Personalised security at scale
Due in part to these more personalised communications, Panda Security has made impressive headway in its transition from a legacy software provider to a subscription-based business. Subscriptions accounted for just 20% of the company’s sales in 2017, but by the end of 2020 it had flipped its business model, driving this figure up to 60%.
Three years after beginning its transformation, Panda Security continues to reimagine its product portfolio for an increasingly digital customer-base. The company is also changing the way it markets and sells its solutions on digital channels, which is no small feat for a business of its scale and complexity.
Panda Security’s large and diverse user-base is one of its greatest strengths, but also one of its greatest challenges from a marketing perspective. The company has roughly millions of customers globally, most of whom own multiple devices running different sets of applications. Of these, Panda Security manages both free users and premium subscribers, with the aim of growing the latter.
“Segmenting customers on this scale is a major job, especially when you have to be mindful of which device they are using in the moment and which services they’ve signed up for,” admits Díez. “Not only do we have to get the right message to the right people, we also have to make sure the format is suited to their preferred channel. For example, our in-app notifications for mobile subscribers are very different than our email campaigns for free desktop users.”
His team implemented Adobe solutions in late 2019 to help overcome such scale and complexity issues, and to deliver more personalized campaigns geared toward growing its subscription business. Since then, Panda Security has sped up campaign workflows by a factor of 50 and reduced the time-to-market for new campaigns from a week to just one day.
These advances are largely down to the improvements Panda Security has made to its personalisation and cross-channel marketing practices. With the help of Adobe Campaign and Adobe Target, the company can now build more complex use cases and roll out real-time campaigns, without sacrificing efficiency or performance.
In fact, Panda Security’s processes have never been more efficient. The company has also gained more control over its campaign orchestration and can now test content performance directly within Adobe Campaign, making its processes more streamlined and less error prone. In addition, easy access to campaign reporting allows Panda Security to analyse, learn, and improve its performance over time.
Crucially, the company’s content has begun to resonate more deeply with customers. Product notifications sent to Panda Security’s free users via its custom channels have experienced a 200% rise in clicks, while notifications for its subscription customers have seen a 50% jump in clicks.
Next up for Díez and the team is to explore new options for A/B testing and personalisation using Adobe Target, as they continue to get closer to customers and build up Panda Security’s subscriber base.
Consulting and collaboration
What truly set Adobe apart for Díez was its consulting team and their recommendation to use Adobe Campaign and Adobe Target together. “This was a real differentiator because the combined solution covered all of our operations, on top of which we got a premium tool for web personalisation and A/B testing. In short, we got more than we asked for, and we’re still discovering new ways to exploit the technology,” he adds.
Adobe’s consultative approach also helped Díez tackle some of Panda Security’s other constraints, including a short implementation timeframe. Issues with the company’s previous systems had begun to negatively affect its campaigns, jeopardising Panda Security’s primary source of consumer revenue.
“A large percentage of our invoicing is directly linked to our consumer campaigns, so we had to act quickly or risk seeing our numbers drop dramatically,” Díez recalls. “With the help of Adobe Consulting Services, we were able to implement and go live with both Target and Campaign in just six months.”
The final selling point for Díez was the ease of integrating Adobe solutions with Panda’s existing systems. The company was merging with WatchGuard throughout the implementation, so the impact on other business applications had to be minimal. With the exception of a few minor modifications to Panda Security’s middleware, the team did not have to make any changes to its data model or processes.
“Our job is to help customers take full advantage of the platform, and with Adobe’s help we are getting better at doing that each day.”
Manu Díez
Head of Monetisation and Ecommerce, Panda Security
A complete digital security marketplace
Since launching its subscription service for consumers, Panda Dome, in 2017, Panda Security has seen steady growth, ushering in a new era of IT security that puts more power into customers’ hands. Boosted by the ability to deliver targeted and timely communications, Díez and his team continue to play a central role in transforming the company’s delivery model and its digital customer experience.
“Panda Dome is becoming so much more than an anti-virus solution. It’s a digital security marketplace,” Díez says. “Customers can access our parental controls, password protection services, and an ever-growing range of features, using any device or operating system. Our job is to help them take full advantage of the platform, and with Adobe’s help we are getting better at doing that each day.”
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