EnergyCAP, a b-to-b software company, needed a way to leverage consumer behavioral data to automate its marketing. For a company that provides energy and greenhouse gas tracking and reporting for the United States Marine Corps and The National Guard, among others, the ability to market its products was dramatically less important than the work being done by its clients. But without an effective and automated marketing plan, EnergyCAP’s vital services would have had less reach.
Prior to implementing Pardot‘s marketing automation technology in April, EnergyCAP tracked user behavior with Google Analytics. Although Google enabled the company to gain rudimentary insights into consumer behavior, Chris Heinz, director of marketing at EnergyCAP, said it didn’t allow his company to tie prospects to their online behavior.
“We had an email marketing program but no analytics to support what the user was doing,” he explained. “Our [return on investment] was lacking. We weren’t sure if a campaign was a success.”
EnergyCAP’s sales teams didn’t have much customer data aside from what they entered into the company’s CRM system. Heinz did not name the system.
“We realized we needed a tool to manage and nurture leads,” said Heinz.
Prior to his role at EnergyCAP, Heinz had worked with a Pardot salesperson who “sold” him on the benefits of the company’s marketing automation products. Heinz said he worked with this salesperson to begin the review process and Pardot ultimately won EnergyCAP over after a customized sales call in which Pardot addressed EnergyCAP’s needs, namely integrating with pay-per-click ads and online and offline campaigns, as well as how EnergyCAP’s sales team could leverage the system to close existing accounts.
Pardot has helped EnergyCAP reduce the effort expended to launch campaigns. The company previously manually created unique campaigns, built mailing lists, drafted email creative and tested variances. Now, EnergyCAP leverages Pardot’s drip-marketing program to automate campaigns based on preexisting logic templates.
The implementation has already reaped great rewards for EnergyCAP. The organization sends five times more email than it did prior to April, which means more leads and ultimately more conversions. EnergyCAP is also able to monitor leads’ activity, to see who they are, what their goals are and whether they came from a search engine advertisement or a trade show event.
Since April, the firm has doubled conversions from its website from 200 monthly to 420 monthly. The company has also witnessed a 20% increase in overall Web traffic. Open rates for marketing emails have increased 4% over non-optimized emails.
“They worked through our needs and really sold us on [marketing automation],” said Heinz. “They have an easy-to-use interface and their support team is responsive.”
The one gripe Heinz has with Pardot is its inability to integrate with the company’s CRM system. But he said it isn’t a huge problem because once prospects are entered into Pardot, the company is no longer “flying blindly.”
