DiscoverOrg Case Study

A Living Data Engine

If DeAnn Poe worked anywhere else, she’d be her company’s target customer.

As the head of marketing operations, she runs all of marketing’s behind-the-scenes activities. Stacking different technologies to execute, enhance, and measure campaigns, she’s the definition of a modern marketer.

Her company, DiscoverOrg, supplies the data that makes modern marketing possible. DeAnn describes the company as a “sales intelligence solution” built on rigorous human research. 250 people gather information “on B2B buyers that sit within IT departments, marketing departments, finance, HR, sales, and the C-suite.”

Researchers also gather intel on topics like an organization’s projects, content consumption, and personnel changes. By refreshing its information every 60 days, the company provides sales and marketing professionals “a living and breathing data engine” to fuel prospecting efforts.

A Major Disconnect

DiscoverOrg’s identity is built around growth, both for its customers and for itself. Six times, it’s been on the Inc. 5000 List of America’s Fastest-Growing Companies.

In the middle of 2016, however, the engine seemed to be stalling. “Growth had slowed across the organization,” says DeAnn, “leads, demos, opportunities, revenue.”

To get back on track, the company began a major effort to reform its pipeline. One of its major goals was to get better insight on what actually worked.

“There was a major disconnect between our marketing and sales departments,” says DeAnn. “Our numbers did not match up and we were not focused on shared goals for driving revenue growth.”

“With lack of visibility into campaign performance and funnel analytics, no one was able to definitively identify the levers needed in order to redirect the organization up and to the right,” she says. “We were unable to answer critical questions, in order to identify where we should focus our lead gen efforts or stop allocating resources to drive growth.”

In simple terms, part of the problem was a matter of trust. “Sales didn’t trust what was in Marketo and marketers didn’t trust what was in Salesforce.”

The Attribution Solution

As a first step, DiscoverOrg chose Salesforce as its single source of truth “since every department had access to the platform and so much of our data lived in that system.” Then, DiscoverOrg sought out a key addition to its technology stack.

“After exploring various campaign attribution solutions, we selected Full Circle Insights, because it was the most robust, could provide the insight that we were looking for on campaign and process performance, and was native to Salesforce.”

The new solution had to keep up with DiscoverOrg’s operations. “We have a pretty sophisticated process for routing and reporting on leads,” says DeAnn. “We needed a solution that was able to handle all of those complexities and to be configured to match our unique process.”

Full Circle Insights not only matched that process – it enhanced it. DeAnn’s team added custom fields in Marketo and Salesforce “to support the granular data inquiries now possible with Full Circle, including Job Category, Call-to-Action, Lead Temp, and Company Type.”

Visible Sales Cycle, Tangible Results

The results of the Full Circle Insights integration speak for themselves – and DeAnn speaks for the results.

“We have gained greater insight into how a lead moves through the sales cycle. Instead of tossing over leads to Sales with little to no information about what happens next, the Marketing team is able to watch leads that were generated this week convert into demos (or not), follow up with Sales to understand the fall out, and celebrate with the Sales team when a deal closes.”

“The organization can now see definitively the source of bookings within any certain time frame, the velocity of the sales cycle, and the type of campaign that was the tipping point. We are able to drill in to see which channels have the highest conversion rate or the lowest as well as which generate the highest average deal size. We can track SDR [sales development rep] contribution, tracking how many calls were made prior to a lead hitting MQL and how many were made up to the Opportunity close.”

“Overall, DiscoverOrg has seen conversion rates and new business sales increase almost 50% quarter-over-quarter. Visibility into the sales cycle has directly contributed to this growth. The Sales and Marketing teams are greater aligned around the tracking of leads, demos, pipeline and revenue. And armed with proof that the Marketing team sourced 52% of the revenue generated in Q4, our marketers are walking a little taller.”

As Full Circle Insights has helped DiscoverOrg achieve success, DeAnn says it’s also changed how marketers’ success is defined. “They can think beyond the leads,” she says. “The marketing team now has goals around demos set and pipeline generated. Those were goals that were thrown around before, but we didn’t have a great way to accurately track that. Now we can.”

Next Up: More Growth, More Insights

DiscoverOrg is committed to continued growth – and so is DeAnn.

Looking ahead, she plans to use Full Circle Insights to help understand marketing’s influence beyond a single “tipping point” of direct campaign attribution. “Now,” she says, “we want to understand the touchpoints that influenced an opportunity.” She also plans to improve how the marketing team moves existing customers by tracking “campaign attribution as it impacts renewals and upsell opportunities.”

For these and future initiatives, DeAnn and her team move forward with confidence in Full Circle Insights. “I am constantly bugging our Full Circle business analyst with ‘Okay now we want to try to do this. Can Full Circle help us do this?’ Amazingly, the answer is always that it can.”

Download the full DiscoverOrg Case Study to learn how they saw conversion rates and new business sales increase almost 50%.