Company: Pavilion Technologies
Contact: Jordan Weiss, Marketing communications manager
Location: Austin, Texas
Industry: Software, B2B
Annual revenue: Confidential
Number of employees: 125
Quick Read:
Privately held Pavilion Technologies sells model-based software that improves the manufacturing process for specialized manufacturers, such as chemical and cement makers. The company's Web site and marketing materials say Pavilion commits to delivering the highest ROI in the industry, offering a proprietary methodology that ensures "predictable results."
Clearly, Pavilion knows how important it is for businesses to track ROI. But two years ago, its marketing department realized it was having trouble tracking its own ROI. Hence, it was difficult to know how effective its programs were or to justify to management that additional funds were needed.
Pavilion ultimately found a solution through a software system that helps monitor all prospects who visit its Web site. The visitors are categorized and put in a comprehensive profile that is automatically distributed to Pavilion's sales team, and salespersons engage the leads at just the right time to close deals. The software has also helped the marketing department improve efficiency, double the number of yearly email campaigns it conducts, and better track its ROI.
The Challenge:
Pavilion Technologies, which sells manufacturing optimization software for specialized manufacturers, decided in 2005 that it need to revitalize its marketing efforts. It wanted to transform its operations into a set of integrated processes that would help increase sales and allow Pavilion to gain understanding of its ROI on marketing expenditures.
As a first step, Pavilion's sales and marketing staff needed to improve how they shared valuable customer response information across discrete marketing channels. For example, Pavilion regularly used email campaigns to promote company webinars and conferences while reserving multi-channel marketing campaigns involving direct mail and telemarketing for lead generation. Because these campaigns were isolated from one another, the marketing team couldn't compare prospect response information to increase the effectiveness of its overall marketing program.
The marketing team found it difficult to quickly figure out which prospects were responding favorably to which campaign, as well as to correlate Web traffic and activity to outbound direct marketing efforts.
"We were looking for a way to dive deeper into our programs and get increased insight on the individual performance of our campaigns," said Jordan Weiss, Pavilion's marketing communications manager. "We were also looking for solutions that would allow us to execute marketing programs more efficiently without increasing our headcount." He said he didn't expect to be able to add to his team of six people.
The Campaign:
Pavilion's marketing department thought it might find a solution in a comprehensive software system, particularly if the system could help bridge the existing data gap between marketing and sales while increasing department efficiency.
Pavilion had an average sales cycle of six to nine months. Its marketers thought that they could accelerate this cycle by providing more detailed information to the sales representatives about a prospect's area of interest, recent Web site activity and participation in marketing events. Using this data, reps could focus on those leads most likely to buy and tailor their selling value proposition with information that would most likely resonate with the prospect.
By associating marketing activity with a prospect throughout the entire sales cycle, marketing would get invaluable insight into which combination of events produced the best revenue opportunities. This information would immediately improve the team's accountability and help justify to management the money and resources required for future marketing campaigns.
In August of 2005, Pavilion installed Eloqua Corp.'s Eloqua Conversion Suite, a software system that enables business-to-business organizations to execute, measure, and automate multi-channel marketing programs. Pavilion's marketing team hoped to use it to develop marketing campaigns across multiple media, including direct mail and email.
The software identifies and quantifies all prospects who visit Pavilion's Web site, whether they're located in Chicago or Beijing, and puts them in a comprehensive profile that is automatically distributed to Pavilion's sales team. This helps sales engage leads at the right time to close deals.
Pavilion also installed Eloqua Program Builder, which uses real-time analytics to automatically take specific actions on prospects. The software automates many of the repetitive manual steps involved in executing e-marketing initiatives, which is especially beneficial for small marketing departments.
"We started (using the software) in August and noticed benefits immediately," said Weiss. "It helps us execute programs efficiently with a far reach." Eloqua also helped Pavilion design personalized campaigns, such as customized, personalized microsites to deliver targeted messages to prospects. "We now track customer actions and communicate with them wherever they are in the world," Weiss said.
The Results:
In the first year of using the new software, Pavilion was able to:
- Double the number of email campaigns conducted from the previous year, without increasing headcount
- Increase the effectiveness of each campaign by boosting email delivery rates and open rates by 99% and 100% percent respectively
- Track email campaign outcomes to a level of detail previously unattained—reporting on not only how many emails were delivered and clicked through, but by whom, how often and where prospects went on the Pavilion Web site.
The benefits went beyond email marketing, however. At the end of the day, Pavilion's
marketing team is responsible for delivering sales leads—not just clicks. In this regard, Pavilion saw concrete results.
"Over the prior year (before we began using the software, we attributed just 42 leads from the web site," said Weiss. "After implementing Eloqua's solution, we generated more than 200 sales leads from our web site in just four months."
Lessons Learned:
- Integrate sales and marketing as much as possible. Private companies in particular may find themselves behind the times when it comes to integrating multi-channel sales and marketing campaigns unless they are willing to take an honest look at how they can improve the way they work together.
- Tracking ROI is useful for not only planning your budget but also validating your marketing department to senior executives. "We always found it was invaluable to be able to track ROI, but the software really helped us increase our visibility," said Weiss.
- Make sure your vendor meets your expectations and offers help when you need it. Weiss said he has stuck with Eloqua because it has been particularly helpful in meeting his department's changing needs.
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