B2B marketers have always been eager to accelerate the sales cycle and help their companies win more deals. But as the economy slumps, companies are making substantial cuts in budgets and resources, leaving marketers needing to do more with less and still deliver value to the bottom line.
WorkForce Software is a leading manufacturer of complex policy and employee compliance management solutions. Its software automates interactions between an employer and its work force, resulting in lower payroll processing costs, compliance with state and federal regulations, and increased productivity and employee satisfaction.
The company's marketing department faced a unique challenge in that its prospects have widely varied business titles, ranging from chief financial officer to payroll director to VP of HR. Because similar job functions have different titles depending on the industry, WorkForce Software had trouble qualifying leads that entered the marketing queue through its Web site.
“After reviewing our lead generation process, we saw a huge gap in our knowledge about the readiness of our prospects in terms of budget, buying intention, business challenges and timeline," said Bob Gallagher, vice president of marketing, WorkForce Software. "Due to the nature of our products and the vastly different buyers we do business with, it was critical to get these prospects engaged with our marketing programs in order to start collecting the information needed to efficiently uncover a growing number of well-defined opportunities. We made a decision to look at marketing automation platforms to achieve this goal."
WorkForce Software reviewed five vendors before choosing Silverpop Engage B2B (formerly Vtrenz). "We had a great desire to work with a proven, mature vendor and Engage B2B had the ability to meet our business needs through automated marketing scenarios that could be executed without any special programming," Gallagher said.
Like so many other marketing operations these days, WorkForce Software's marketing team needed to:
* Collect demographic data from its leads
* Maintain ongoing contact with prospects identified as not yet ready to buy through a lead nurturing program
* Score leads to determine at what stage in the buying cycle each lead is at and move those deemed ready-to-buy to sales
Silverpop Engage B2B allowed WorkForce Software's marketing team to accomplish its goals quickly and effectively.
“Marketing has always been ROI-driven, but it has become even more so with the current economic issues companies are facing," said Bill Nussey, CEO of Silverpop. "Additionally, marketers are increasingly called upon to do more with less, and that is driving a growing interest in lead-management solutions with sound analytics and strong marketing-automation capabilities."
Within 60 days of implementing Silverpop Engage B2B, WorkForce Software was able to reengineer its lead qualification process to ensure incoming leads were providing valuable, self reported information that is ultimately turning into more sales opportunities. Through a combination of Engage B2B email campaigns and an increased investment in pay-per-click advertising, WorkForce Software experienced a 400 percent increase in the number of "Contact Us" and "Demonstration Request" leads coming in through its Web site.
"Now that we have put structure around how to identify quality leads, we can segment those leads by the information gathered during the lead qualification process," said Gallagher. “Sales only acts on qualified leads sent to them via the Salesforce.com integration, which is saving both time and valuable resources."
Source: http://www.crm2day.com/
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