Adaptive Computing, a cloud computing provider selling to Global 2000 clients, was looking for a more efficient way to get leads from its web forms and trade shows into the sales pipeline. The company had recently migrated to Salesforce.com for its CRM software and wanted an automated way to streamline the capture and distribution of leads from its web site as well as trade shows and webinars.
Before implementing Act-On earlier this year, it took the sales team at Adaptive Computing up to three weeks to follow up with prospects who registered on the web site and downloaded the vendor’s free Open Source scheduler, due to the delay in getting the customer information into the CRM system. Now that the registration data is automatically entered into Act–On and synchronized with Salesforce, the sales team can make that contact within 24 hours.
The time savings alone that Adaptive Computing has experienced in moving from manual import to automated data collection has justified the cost of adopting marketing automation, Nate said.
“Salesforce is great software, but we really wanted to take our demand generation efforts to the next level by adding the functionality of marketing automation,” Nate said. He noted that the integration was up and running within hours, which was important to maintaining the team’s focus on sales and marketing rather than technology.
The system is also integrated with Citrix‘s GoToMeetings, he said, which has streamlined the process of webinar follow-up.
Nate said they are rolling out the application to its salesforce to provide sales representatives with a complete picture of the lead’s interactions with the company and enable lead scoring. “There is a powerful lead scoring capability that is fully customizable, enabling the sales people to start with the leads that have the highest scores.”
The system also gives the sales staff insight into what content a lead has looked at so that they can tailor the conversations to the interests of the prospect without spending time going over material that they have already reviewed.
“The sales people can scroll down to see what white papers a prospect downloaded, what web pages they viewed and what webinars they attended,” Nate said. “It provides sales people with great insight into the prospect’s story before they make that call. That is powerful.”
Atri Chatterjee, CMO, Act-On, said that the vendor says innovative companies such as Adaptive Computing are seeking seamless integration between marketing and sales. “It really is about how marketing efforts translate into sales. ‘Likes’ on social media don’t pay the bills. Companies today are looking to integrating marketing and CRM so that there is a smooth handoff and transition of leads from one stage to the next.”
