Pardot Client Case Study – Outkast

Outkast

The Outkast Group consists of a collection of service streams catering to the varied demands of the commercial landscape within the Sydney and Melbourne CBD. Taking upon a layered approach, their service streams provide assistance from initial demolition and construction to creating inspirational and functional office fitouts and beyond. Through careful planning and innovation they create spaces that allow businesses to work more effectively and ultimately become more productive.

The Challenge

Outkast needed one single source of the truth for their marketing and sales departments as they continually expand their operations. They were looking to consolidate their systems and increase their productivity. It was necessary for their future CRM to be able sync with their marketing initiatives seamlessly. This also included a desire to bolster communication channels with their customers, in a timely manner. Moreover, they wanted to better understand their clients behaviour and their needs.

Additionally, a robust email platform was required to regularly communicate with their growing database.

The Solution

Outkast implemented Saleforce.com CRM and began building a sales and marketing ecosystem. Pardot complemented their CRM by acting as the engagement system for the lifecycle of the customer. Thereby a single sales, marketing, and engagement funnel was created. Further, using lead generation and nurturing as a point of engagement with identified opportunities, Outkast can foster relationships with their current leads.

“We were given an invaluable insight into the marketing power of Pardot”

Outkast deployed autoresponder emails, to engage potential leads (e.g. filling out one of their forms) quickly and efficiently.

Autoresponders are commonly used to welcome prospects to a mailing list, send a link to requested resources such as white papers, confirm event registrations, or simply acknowledge that you have received a prospect’s inquiry and will follow up shortly.

Back in 2013, email marketing expert Chris Hexton of Vero said that “about 75% of businesses are missing out on the email marketing sweet spot”. He went on to explain that trigger-based transactional emails are more than 100% effective than newsletters (50% open rate vs 20% open rate). Why? Because triggered emails like autoresponders are contextual.

Outkast has now been equipped with the ability to reach recipients at the moment of engagement, with no manual sending required.

Pardot has also enabled Outkast to better understand their consumers’ behaviours. The app tracks a multitude of touch points within a prospects record. For every prospect in Pardot, Outkast is now able to see how they have interacted with their online marketing initiatives. Did they click on their Google Adwords ad? Did they open an email? Did they access a priority page? The more information they have at their disposal, the more poignantly they can structure their marketing strategy. Moreover, Outkast found Pardot’s prospect scoring useful as a barometer to identify ‘interested prospects’

“Pardot has given us the opportunity to take our marketing to an entirely new level.”

Behavioural targeting and sales integration was established. If one of Outkasts’ sales representatives creates a new lead or contact in Salesforce.com, their marketing team can easily retrieve that record in Pardot. This is especially helpful in their email communication and nurture programs; as the sales integration ensures no one is forgotten.

Pardot’s email marketing solution was easy to use for their marketing team, with a decent list of customizable responsive email templates to choose from.

Instant access to Salesforce.com leads and contacts is a big plus when sending email blasts, whilst the tracking features of Pardot provided greater insight into the behaviours of their clients. The drag and drop interface and automated list segmentation featured made scheduling drip programs a breeze.

“We were able to confidently use everything from drip campaigns to reporting in a very short timeframe”.

– Alice Inigo-Jones – Senior Associate – Marketing.

The marketing team also found that Email A/B testing, rendering preview and the spam analysis were excellent features of the application.

Conclusion

In effect, the Outkast team has gained a valuable insight into their leads and contacts. They are now capable to attribute the source of each incoming lead.

By identifying the source of a lead, and following them throughout the sales cycle, they easily see how their inbound marketing efforts are impacting both lead generation and overall revenue.

Finally, the combination of Salesforce.com and Pardot has given Outkast an extraordinary competitive advantage, through strengthening the functionality and integration of their sales and marketing teams.