Case Study Overview
THE CUSTOMER
Personify is the market-leading constituent management and engagement (CME) platform that empowers nonprofit organizations to better engage their constituents, maximize revenue, and optimize operations.
THE CHALLENGE
Personify wanted to build an account-based program — but they needed better insights into their target market, buying committee personas, targeting capabilities, and impact on pipeline and revenue.
THE PAYOFF
● 39x lift in engaged site visitors
● 47x ROI on contributed pipeline
● 25x ROI on contributed revenue
● 8.5x ROI on marketing-sourced revenue
The customer
Building an account-based program from scratch
When demand generation senior manager Amber Whatley joined Personify, she was the first and only member of the demand generation team.
That’s because Personify had just made the decision to significantly grow their marketing efforts in order to hit revenue targets. Once coming on board, Amber quickly realized the marketing team needed to build a true account-based program.
“But it was the first time the company was investing this significantly in marketing,” Amber said. “So we had to show leadership value — and show it very quickly.
The challenge
How to work with sales to engage buying centers in a niche market
Amber and her lean marketing team needed an account-based strategy because they were finding that traditional demand generation tactics weren’t working for Personify’s target market.
“The nonprofit market is very change-averse — we really have to reach them at the right time, with the right message, on the right channel, or it’s not going to resonate,” said Amber. “So working with limited resources, I couldn’t just throw ads out and see if they land. To make our budget work, I needed to be fishing in a very small targeted pond.”
Her first step was to partner with product marketing and sales to define their ideal customer profile (ICP). They landed on nonprofits above an annual revenue and staff-size threshold. This alignment lead to a list of the top accounts both marketing and sales would prioritize within their ICP.
From there, they identified the key market segments and personas within target account buying centers: IT, marketing, membership, and executive decision makers.
The next challenge was then to build campaigns that engaged the entire buying committee and provided a personalized experience for each persona's journey
That’s when they turned to the RollWorks Account-Based Platform
The solution
The data and machine-learning to execute highly-personalized plays
Amber and her team chose to work with RollWorks because she felt they not only had the right technology to execute their strategy but also the best account support.
“My bandwidth is my most precious commodity,” Amber said. “My RollWorks account manager really got to understand our organization and my constraints and is very responsive.”
The first thing Amber and her account manager did was to connect their Salesforce instance with their RollWorks account, allowing for a bidirectional sync of data.
This allowed them to import their target account list and known contacts. With that information, the RollWorks’ data and machine learning capabilities were able to target both known and unknown key decision makers across channels and devices.
“Previously, campaigns weren’t working because our target personas were so hard to find,” Amber said. “But now I can upload my lists and find them wherever they are — Facebook, their iPad, wherever.”
They then used the RollWorks Engagement Solution to set up a series of digital ad campaigns that were personalized based on company, persona, sales stage, and more. Amber and the RollWorks design team produced creative that would increase brand awareness, spark engagement, and nurture opportunities to close.
“RollWorks has really helped us not only find our target buying group, but also message to them on a very specific level — to be more effective right when we get in front of them,” Amber said.
The payoff
More engaged accounts and customers — and the metrics to prove it
After running their account-based program for 11 months, Amber more than justified their new marketing budget.
With the RollWorks Measurement Solution, she and her team were able to show a 39x lift in engaged site visitors, 47x ROI on contributed pipeline, 25x ROI on contributed revenue, and 8.5x ROI on marketing-sourced revenue.
“It was extremely important to show we were being good stewards of our marketing budget,” Amber said.
Also with the Salesforce integration, Amber no longer has to pull custom reports for the sales and marketing teams. They can see account- and contact-level campaign results directly in their Salesforce instance.
“I’m providing the sales team contacts who are ready to talk — and giving them crucial insights into what content they’ve downloaded, which pages they’ve visited, what ads they’ve clicked on,” said Amber. “So that's been really, really huge, showing marketing’s complementary impact to their sales activities.”
