By upgrading an already successful content syndication program, Splunk gained better traction with the prospective accounts that meant the most to their business.
The brand established an engaging demand generation foundation from which they could further combine more targeted channels and innovate strategies into the future. This campaign ultimately diversified how Splunk’s digital efforts influenced the pipeline.
About the client company
The Splunk platform removes the barriers between data and action, empowering observability, IT and security teams to ensure their organizations are secure, resilient and innovative.
Founded in 2003, Splunk is a global company — with over 7,500 employees, 850 patents and availability in 21 regions around the world — and offers an open, extensible data platform that supports shared data across any environment so that all teams in an organization can get end-to-end visibility, with context, for every interaction and business process to build a strong data foundation with Splunk.
Strategy – broader business issues the company faced
The Splunk platform removes the barriers between data and action, empowering observability, IT and security teams to ensure their organizations are secure, resilient and innovative.
As the global pandemic quickly accelerated businesses’ digital capabilities, Splunk was strategizing to scale up its demand generation efforts within digital marketing.
While field marketing had been one element within the demand generation framework, the brand had other digital marketing channels already in place that could readily be optimized. By refining these efforts, Splunk could enhance pipeline through digital channels, particularly scaling content syndication and display programs.
Splunk’s always-on content syndication program has historically proven to be a reliable source of return on investment. However, the program’s mix of demand generation partners needed diversification at scale and additional optimizations.
With the audience’s interests in mind, Splunk started a new digital campaign based on ‘Observability’ for DevOps and IT personas while scaling their cloud and security programs.
Objectives of the campaign
The campaign’s overall objective was to impact Splunk’s bottom line with increased pipeline contribution from digital channels. Specifically, the brand was aiming to expand the opportunities for marketing attributed pipeline from new tactics.
Just Global was able to establish an engaging demand generation foundation from which the brand could further combine more targeted channels and innovative strategies into the future. This campaign would ultimately diversify and increase Splunk’s pipeline.
The target audience
The target audience was IT professionals and other members of the B2B buying committee for data operations decisions. These individuals based out of North America are digitally-savvy with keen interests in advancing their knowledge around data sciences and infrastructure.
Media, channels or techniques used
The crux of retooling Splunk’s content syndication program was a thorough analysis of their existing vendor relationships. Diversifying Splunk’s mix of lead generation providers (and eliminating a few less qualified and less transparent) would introduce them to new audiences, technological advancements and prove an even stronger ROI for lower investment costs.
With a new mix of partners in place, targeting could be focused beyond suppression lists, intent and all-inclusive account targets. To generate the most marketing attributed pipeline, the program zeroed in on the prospective accounts with the highest potential for return.
Historical creative performance was evaluated in tandem with reviewing the most appropriate content across the buyer’s journey to sustain engagement and move closer to a sale. The marketing content with a history of increasing MQLs and ROI were selected. The entire marketing experience for audiences was reviewed to create a seamless journey between targeting the right person, with the right creative content from the ad itself to the value of the landing pages they were directed to.
The media mix included content syndication, branded content, digital media, email and programmatic.
Timescales of the campaign
Splunk’s marketing efforts could work smarter, not harder, with the content they already had in play.
By upgrading an already successful program to include more modern and varied partners, alongside several other identified optimizations, Splunk could gain better traction with the prospective accounts that would mean the most to their business. What’s more, the program developed a vendor performance tracker along the way to enlist only the top performers in terms of ROI.
As a market leading solution provider, Splunk could draw on a valuable archive of relevant content for their target audiences. Leaning into an optimized ABM content syndication program would serve two purposes:
- Provide engagement, interaction and nurture opportunities for the target accounts that could provide the greatest impact on pipeline contribution.
- Establish a data-driven strategy to prove impact over time and ensure further brand-to-demand connections.
The revitalization of Splunk’s content syndication program could provide long-term thinking with successful growth strategies in a world of daily optimizations.
This strategic overhaul took a couple months to plan while the campaign itself ran for ten months.
Results
The latest quarterly reporting proved a total ROI increase of 27% in pipeline influenced from the content syndication channel. The strategic introduction of new partners contributed the greatest volume of return on investment.
Within the quarter, influenced first-touch attribution pipeline contributions increased 94% and full-path attribution increased 44%.
Splunk also produced a higher level of brand awareness and new pipeline opportunities through a 78% increase in number of impressions delivered compared to last quarter.
Quarter-over-quarter, there has been incremental and steady (+3%) improvement in engagement (CTR) for display media tactics.
Both regional theaters and the targeted ABM list produced ROI-influenced increases: +28% in U.S., +46% in Canada and +54% in Splunk’s top 150 key accounts.
The alignment of creative content to specific business units, buyer journey’s and targeting proved consistent performance and continues to outperform itself.
The analysis of top performing content was able to further inform Splunk on the themes that engage their audiences the most in digital channels. Furthermore, the top-performing content syndication partners were identified for future investments.
Based on fluctuation in marketing programming, Just Global were able to identify always-on tactics to support demand generation. Programs included top-of-funnel, middle-of-funnel and bottom-of-funnel audience engagement. These account level activities can be trackable, retargeted and nurtured for further expansion.
This campaign stands as a shining example of best-in-class lead generation. The audience needs, considerations and sensibilities were placed front and center to build a successful relationship between prospects and brand. The reformed content syndication program delivered trackable results that impacted the business. With detailed feedback, optimizations and collaboration, Splunk’s marketing team was able to secure a directly attributable pipeline from their efforts.
