Better Content, Better Culture: Powering Marketing Initiatives at Integris
Bonusly
IT services aren’t the most exciting topics to discuss. There’s only so much a managed service provider (MSP) can say about our skills, solutions, and partners that set us apart from other MSPs. The attraction for potential clients—and potential employees—is the people behind the technology. When you pick up the phone for support, who’s on the other end? And when you’re stuck on a problem at work, will a colleague come to your aid?
Our people were our strength at Domain Computer services, the MSP where I started working in 2016 as a marketing manager. Based out of New Jersey, we focused on serving a single vertical, law, and almost all of our clients were local businesses. Everyone came to work in the same space, and our 35-person team was close-knit and engaged.
Shaping Company Culture After a Flurry of M&A Activity
Industries change, and the MSP industry is experiencing a lot of consolidation. Looking for a new challenge and more ways to grow, our CEO Rashaad Bajwa started mergers and acquisitions (M&A) conversations. Shortly after we started moving in that direction, the pandemic sent everyone to work at home.
Over the course of the pandemic, we brought on an additional 30-person office and a private equity partner in 2020, and by the end of 2021, we were spread out over 10 locations and had come together under a new brand, Integris.
While none of these changes affected productivity, they did significantly influence our company culture and our interpersonal dynamics. Integris' leaders tried hard to build relationships and strengthen connections between our many offices by hosting events like remote happy hours, all-hands meetings, and other virtual events, but the pandemic limited our efforts. We were one company by name, but people continued to work in silos with limited visibility into other divisions.
But maybe the biggest challenge for our new company was telling our story to the market. Each of our formerly separate companies had a lot of public-facing content around who they were, but we didn't have anything about who we were, collectively, as Integris. As a marketing team, it’s our job to put that story into the world, so it fell to us to build our new culture and core values, and communicate that new identity.
A Platform to Help Reinforce Our New Core Values
Before our merger, a couple of Integris' companies had used a recognition and rewards program called Bonusly. Bonusly allows everyone in a company to recognize their colleagues by writing and sending a note while publicly acknowledging a job well done. Bonusly also automates recognition for important days like birthdays and work anniversaries. Employees can redeem their Bonusly points for items from the rewards catalog. Unlike the typical gift cards that companies give as rewards, which the receiver may or may not want, Bonusly allows people to choose their own rewards.
Anyone can give Bonusly points, and that action is visible throughout the company. Everyone gets allotted points to distribute to others every month, and Bonusly integrates with everyday communication tools, so we see the recognition that accompanies the points: that someone in sales nailed a client presentation, for example.
The Integris employees who had previously used Bonusly really liked it and pushed for its adoption throughout Integris. We set it up so that people giving points must link the action to one of our company’s chosen hashtags. The hashtags were the perfect opportunity to help communicate our core values, which are as follows:
- People first: We are a technology company, but we are powered by people. Our people—and our clients’ people—always come first.
- Do the right thing: Our company name is based on the word “integrity,” and that’s at the heart of everything we do.
- Get it done right: The details matter, so we do it right the first time.
- Own it: When we take responsibility for our actions and hold each other accountable, we succeed together.
With Bonusly, we can draw attention to these four values by surfacing individual actions that are exemplary of our values and adding the corresponding Company Value Hashtags to recognition posts.
My team was pleasantly surprised by just how easy Bonusly is to use and how quickly people took to it. HR did a great job rolling it out and giving everyone plenty of advance notice about the adoption. Via a how-to video, they provided some light training on how we would use Bonusly as a company and introduced Integris' new core values, which were set up in the product as Company Value Hashtags.
Using Bonusly to Boost Marketing Content
Once we saw the company’s fantastic adoption rate—95%!—we started to think about ways to leverage the platform for marketing content.
We’re always trying to gather more employee videos to post to our careers page and social media to give the world a glimpse of the people behind Integris. But motivating people to contribute is hard, especially when we’re remote. IT professionals are often overwhelmed with the daily burdens of putting out fires, so it’s hard to get people’s attention. And when you do get their attention, sometimes people need extra encouragement to open up about themselves. I couldn’t stop by someone’s desk for a casual chat anymore, so I needed a different way to motivate people to participate.
One of our employees had a background in marketing communications in a hospital environment. In that setting, she would go to different floors and ask nurses why they worked at the hospital and what they loved about working there. We decided to try that idea but do it digitally, asking employees to submit videos answering a couple of questions and using Bonusly points as an incentive. We made it into a contest, awarding points to anyone who participated and picking winners in different categories who would get additional points and recognition at an all-hands meeting.
The idea was a hit. We got 20 video submissions in a single push. Since then, we’ve used the same concept for a Halloween contest and a virtual 5K. Similarly, we really want our sales team to be active on LinkedIn. To boost LinkedIn engagement, one of my team members sends me the top performers for the month, and I’ll reward them with Bonusly points.
These internal campaigns are critical in a tight labor market (which is even tighter in IT). We want Integris to stand out while also fighting the M&A narrative. People are afraid of M&A, but it’s not as scary when they see that company cultures aren’t lost, people are being cared for, and this is a good workplace. Bonusly makes it so easy.
Who Tells Your Story?
Since implementing Bonusly, Integris has seen a continued monthly engagement rate of more than 90%, which is impressive for a company that today has around 450 employees. People now respond faster to marketing asks because they know they’ll be recognized with Bonusly points for participating. Without Bonusly, we wouldn’t have seen nearly as much employee engagement with our marketing initiatives.
Marketing is all about making things visible and reinforcing a particular message to internal or external audiences. We initially saw an opportunity in Bonusly to share who we are with the world, but we’ve started to share who we are with each other. My team takes note of Bonusly activity in Microsoft Teams and on the Bonusly platform to see what’s happening internally across the organization. Then, we decide how best to capture some of those stories for our marketing efforts. Bonusly helps highlight and promote the activities and behavior the marketing department likes to see, and people get a little love from everyone across the organization.
In the current MSP environment, everyone is always busy, and things are changing so fast. Rolling out a platform with such high adoption and engagement is exciting and encouraging. Bonusly helped Integris employees to recognize our new core values faster and understand the connection between their actions and those values. We’re building a new culture at Integris and doing it digitally with Bonusly.
