Pepperdata customers are some of world’s largest companies in the adtech, media, finance, telecommunications, and high tech industries. Every day, Pepperdata software helps these diverse companies eliminate blind spots and get the application performance they need, avoiding bottlenecks while increasing transparency and control. Marketing automation serves as the hub of Pepperdata’s go-to-market strategy.
As Ed Colonna, VP, Marketing & Business Development, Pepperdata, explains, “We wanted our marketing automation system to allow us to experiment and iterate our programs, to assess the strategies we put in place, and to work with different vendors so we could analyze what is working and what is not working. It is important to have that visibility into our business.”
The Problem
Growing the pipeline with a tight sales and marketing process was also a critical requirement of this project for Pepperdata.
According to Colonna, “As head of marketing, it is my preference to help with sales development and ultimately deliver a better quality lead so that marketing is more accountable for what gets handed to sales. That wasn’t happening before. We maybe knew how many leads we were generating, but not necessarily able to prioritize based on quality. We were looking for a solution that would get us deeper into that early sales cycle and provide the visibility to actively drive it versus simply saying, ‘Here are a bunch of leads. Good luck.'”
Engaging with a Partner
As Becky Mendenhall, Demand Generation Marketing Manager, Pepperdata, summarizes, “Our marketing automation system is our backbone, and it is part of the integration of all systems from web to salesforce.com to channels and sales. And yet, our ability to measure and track programs was a very manual process, very time consuming, and probably only 80% accurate. We lacked a standardized process that was flexible and easy to use.”
Pepperdata knew that to harness its growing marketing opportunity in multiple customer segments and to delve deeper into sales development, it would require strategic assistance to operationalize and simplify its current processes. According to Mendenhall, “We were looking for strategic assistance to not only operationalize what we were doing but also to make it more user friendly and to implement best practices. To help sales prioritize lead follow up, and to be able to track the progress of our leads to eventual opportunities was of utmost importance.”
The Solution
Pepperdata started its Digital Pi Gold Standard Marketo Implementation with the basics of lead scoring and a lead lifecycle evaluation across channels.
Colonna points out, “We did not want to be the Marketo experts; we want to be the big data marketing experts. A big driver for us was depending on Digital Pi to come in and take care of the nuts and bolts so we didn’t have to worry about them.” He adds, “Digital Pi had a very programmatic, methodical approach, their gold standard, in which they took a very open and flexible platform like Marketo and distilled it into a pretty straightforward process that we could manage and predict. Their standardized approach worked quite well for us.”
Pepperdata credits its strong working relationship with Digital Pi as a critical part of the solution. Recalls Mendenhall, “We met with Digital Pi on a weekly basis. They helped us to define lead scoring for different marketing channels and to set up demographic and firmographic data. They worked with us to define how to get leads pre-qualified and how to upload leads easily so we could see which channels were working well. We were able to do better reporting and have greater transparency with sales.”
“Digital Pi had a very programmatic, methodical approach, their gold standard, in which they took a very open and flexible platform like Marketo and distilled it into a pretty straightforward process that we could manage and predict. Their standardized approach worked quite well for us.”
Ed Colonna, VP, Marketing & Business Development, Pepperdata
The Results
Coupling an insightful lead lifecycle process with a standardized and scalable workflow, Digital Pi brought a new level of simplicity and sophistication to this fastgrowing company’s marketing efforts. For Pepperdata, the expertise and consistent client communication were also critical to project success. Pepperdata quickly saw both quantitative and qualitative business impact from its work with Digital Pi.
Positive Impacts
Increased marketing ROI with data-driven decisions
To meet its marketing objectives and reach its diverse targets, it was important for Pepperdata to have the information to iterate programs quickly and effectively. States Colonna, “Overall, the process with Digital Pi helped us to make better decisions faster, by being able to measure and know what is having an impact.”
Streamlined marketing operations for greater efficiency
By applying best practices to marketing operations such as creating templates and reworking the lead flow after a marketing program, Digital Pi helped Pepperdata accelerate what was formerly a very manual process. According to Mendenhall, “I feel much more confident with Marketo due to the work with Digital Pi. I have seen benefits with streamlining the process of bringing leads into the system after an event or any marketing program. Because we did not need to re-create the wheel every time, we could run more programs, generate better leads with more accurate scoring methods, and see huge efficiency gains.”
Improved sales and marketing collaboration leads to higher lead quality
Improvements in the lead lifecycle engine brought the Pepperdata marketing and sales teams together on the proverbial “same page.” The teams were able to identify how quickly a potential customer moves through the buying cycle and stay ahead of any changes in lead volume and velocity opportunities. As Mendenhall remarks, “Beyond being a second set of hands, Digital Pi helped us to align with our sales and marketing team, so we could put some scoring in place to make it more efficient and more standardized. Now with tighter alignment and better reporting capabilities, we can track and see how things move via stages which has strengthened our relationship with sales.”
Increased sales pipeline visibility
Understanding the impact of marketing on the early stages of the sales cycle was an important part of this project. Explains Colonna, “Digital Pi worked with us to dig deep into that early sales cycle and actively drive it. We gained visibility to manage lead development and keep leads moving, which had a clear impact on our sales cycle. Our lead quality and our hit rate in meetings scheduled both increased. Coupled with some positioning work, we were able to drive a much higher opportunity rate.”
Real business impact
- Improved lead scoring for target accounts and account-based marketing (ABM) programs
- Grew sales opportunities with higher lead quality
- Quickly aligned marketing metrics with sales development
- Increased marketing ROI with datadriven decisions
- Streamlined marketing operations for increased efficiency
“I feel much more confident with Marketo due to the work we did with Digital Pi. I have seen benefits with streamlining the process of bringing leads into the system after an event or any marketing program. Because we did not need to re-create the wheel every time, we could run more programs, generate better leads with more accurate scoring methods, and see huge efficiency gains.”
Becky Mendenhaall, Demand Generation Marketing Manager, Pepperdata
Why Digital Pi?
Pepperdata attributes much of the success of this project to the collaborative nature of the Digital Pi team and their overall expertise. From regular weekly communications with the team to hands-on work with the Marketo implementation, Digital Pi worked closely with Pepperdata to implement best practices in both sales and marketing operations. In addition, Digital Pi brought an enthusiastic, focused spirit to the engagement.
As Colonna remarked, “The Digital Pi team is great – both knowledgeable and fun to work with. For us, we didn’t have to worry about our requirements not being met. We had things we wanted to see, and because they are experts in this field, we were able to draw on what others are doing.” Adds Mendenhall, “Communication with the team was very efficient, and the fact that they were very responsive definitely improved the outcomes of our programs.”