Salesforce increased its average order value via a demand generation programme
Salesforce is a provider of customer relationship management (CRM) software. The company’s sales, service, marketing and cloud platforms are rated as ‘best in the market’ by Forrester and Gartner. The company has also been ranked the most innovative in America by Forbes magazine for the last four consecutive years.
Demand gen programme
Research shows across Europe and the US many large enterprises struggle with customer service performance. According to one US survey, 92 per cent of companies report declining customer satisfaction; a key performance indicator for customer service success.
Salesforce identified this as an area where it could add real value for large enterprises, as many find it difficult to get a single consolidated view of each customer. This single view is critical to being able to respond consistently and efficiently to each customer interaction, regardless of channel – this is a key capability of Salesforce Service Cloud.
As a result, Salesforce’s UK enterprise marketing team took the opportunity to promote transformative change for those UK enterprises with over 2000 employees.
The marketing team worked with sales to come up with a demand generation programme with three key goals: the first was to generate sales-qualified leads from selected enterprises across several industries, the second was to increase their average lead value and the third was
to ensure marketing would directly contribute a specific percentage of sales pipeline per quarter.
Getting the message right
Working with a leading B2B marketing agency to research and define the target audience, Salesforce focused on the sales, marketing, HR and customer experience job roles within enterprise-level organisations with over 2000 employees.
The next step was to come up with messaging that would resonate with this target audience. Salesforce wanted to get across the genuine transformative change it can offer an organisation in a short space of time. Thanks to its in-depth understanding of specific markets and audiences, Salesforce was able to offer real examples of improved customer experience specifically within the enterprise space. Lastly, it was important to show the solutions could be implemented within weeks.
Campaign activity
The campaign comprised of several touch points, including pre-calling accounts before sending a direct mail pack. The DM described Salesforce’s ability to help prospects achieve a single customer view of their target market, and how this would enable prospects to both communicate with and service their clients’ needs better.
The marketing team was particularly keen to use DM because they wanted to test a marketing approach outside of just email. They felt it would help get cut through for their message.
The DM was followed up with supporting nurturing emails sharing useful content relating to the industry and the particular job function of the recipient, written in a less formal, one-to-one style.
Salesforce used its own CRM platform to track lead progression, with shared access between marketing, sales, and the marketing agency to make the sharing of information and campaign reporting quicker and more efficient.
The power of nurturing leads
One of the most important aspects of the campaign was its focus on nurturing quality leads over time, providing a more consultative approach to selling. For example, the use of follow-up emails became increasingly personalised as accounts and prospects were nurtured. This approach really paid off as there was a significant uplift in leads about halfway through the campaign.
The demand generation programme exceeded all its targets, increasing the average order value to five times what they’d originally anticipated.
A third of the opportunities generated were combined cloud opportunities, showing the programme helped prospects recognise the benefits of transformative solutions across the organisation.
Thirty-eight per cent of the leads came as a result of multiple touch points rather than during initial contact, showing the value of a bespoke but scalable approach to nurturing opportunities and the value of a longer-term marketing programme over isolated campaigns. As a result of this success, Salesforce is now rolling out the campaign more widely to three key industries.
Andrew Lawson, managing director, Salesforce, explains: “[The campaign] has shown how engaging enterprises over time will allow us to target fewer, higher-value accounts more effectively, and will enable my sales force to make real inroads into the UK market and across Europe.”
