ServiceNow is a cloud computing platform designed to help companies manage digital workflows. The company’s goal was to have its field marketing managers be the last mile to ensure all teams were operating off the same data to initiate outreach at the right team and with the right messaging following the company’s rapid growth.
“We’ve seen massive growth lately, which led to the creation of additional product lines and the desire to break out in different regions,” explained Heather Rath, ServiceNow’s Director of Field Marketing West. “There’s a lot of complexity as we look at sales’ needs and priorities, and if we break out a new industry team, they might have different priorities than an existing core team.”
The Problem
Rath’s problem was all in the name: As the company’s Director of Field Marketing West, she didn’t have much expertise or insights into the accounts that would operate out of ServiceNow’s East Coast buying centers. In addition to identifying geographic specificity, Rath also wanted to:
- Enhance the data fueling mid- and post-funnel ABM strategies; and
- Promote stronger collaboration between sales and marketing.
“Ultimately, our priority is to drive new and accelerate open pipeline to close — we’re not looking at loose metrics,” said Heather Rath. “But when we’re delivering interactions, engagements or account insights to sales, we want to make sure we’re delivering the most qualified, sales-ready engagement and the most up to date information and materials to sales to ensure we’re starting that conversation at the right time.”
And, in terms of the Western enterprise’s already existing ~1600 accounts, Rath wanted to ensure her team was focused on post-lead engagement for each account to ensure it was being targeted with the appropriate strategy and messaging. As Rath puts it, “our ultimate goal was to connect marketing awareness to sales readiness.”
“When we talk about post-lead engagement, we want to ensure we have the right programs with the right messages to support those open opportunities and drive them to close,” she continued. “However, we can’t use the same tactics across the full funnel, because messaging will be different dependent upon the industry, persona and intent data we’re receiving.”
She continued that she wanted to build a pathway to connect marketing awareness to sales readiness.
“The handoff, or insights, we deliver to sales is what’s most critical to the campaign — so often we’re executing programs, whether it’s a live event or online program, it’s always important to ask, ‘Why is this important?’ Why are we asking sales to do this?’” explained Rath. “We wanted to make sales more successful as we look across all stages of the funnel and promote that ABM mentality.”
The Solution
ServiceNow adopted MRP Prelytix, an enterprise ABM platform, to leverage its analytic capabilities to synchronize efforts across both field marketing and campaign teams. By leveraging MRP’s insights and orchestration capabilities, Rath was able to seamlessly move top-of-funnel marketing leads into mid- and post-funnel sales leads.
On the geographic side, MRP analytics helped Rath identify what region intent signals were coming from so her team could act accordingly with the right messaging. For example, if the signal’s coming from San Jose, that would indicate a retention play is needed; if it’s originating from Charlotte, that could indicate a new acquisition.
“The great thing about the analytics tool is that we can get laser-focused not only on the geography and region, but also home in on specific accounts that might need additional support,” Rath explained. “We’ve been able to build micro clusters, if you will, that enable us to get very targeted on specific personas, intent, propensity or buying groups to execute successful campaigns.”
She continued that the team is also leveraging “two-touch” campaigns, which wrap a broader, early-stage outreach with a more targeted direct mail campaign. Rath emphasized that campaign follow up is “critical.”
“We collaborate most with extended marketing campaign and product management teams to ensure we have the right messaging, and then we connect with our inside sales and solution sales experts to ensure they’re driving the follow-up,” said Rath.
The Results
To best showcase ServiceNow’s results from the MRP ABM implementation, Rath cited a specific campaign she ran for a vaccine management company that required her team to quickly pivot and leverage insights and data to formulate a success campaign on the fly.
She explained that her team was able to prioritize accounts that were searching for specific keywords based on certain solutions that target personas and accounts ServiceNow did or did not own. As a result of its efforts, the team saw 3X sales-created pipeline.
“Collaboration is so important — not only at the top of the funnel but through the funnel,” explained Rath. “Being able to leverage these intelligent insights and meet accounts where they are is key to our business, in addition to ensuring we’re delivering the most pertinent information at the right time. The more actionable and qualified insights we can deliver to sales is just going to increase that trust and level of partnership. Having everyone on the same page and striving toward the same goal is really important.”
