How We Revitalized an Existing Database with Marketing Hub, Driving a 24% Monthly Increase in Leads Through a Content-Led Strategy

The Client came to us with a major challenge of moving from a sales-first company to a marketing + sales organization.

During our audit of the client’s 2 CRMs - HubSpot and Salesforce - we identified 6 key problem statements:

1. They had a database of 440K Contacts that the client had sourced from various sources- trade shows, databases, internal sources, sales outreach, etc.
2. This database was not cleaned up, and was not enriched from time to time.
3. Even if the data was enriched, there was no process to nurture good quality leads and qualify them.
4. As there was no integration/sync between the Sales and Marketing Teams, there was no clarity on the requirements of Sales from the Marketing Team and vice-versa.
5. The Marketing team was not aware of the Sales Pipeline, and therefore, they could not initiate any activity to provide qualified leads to the Sales team.
6. Because of this lack of clarity and communication, the Marketing Team was not able to initiate any marketing motions.

Phase I: Comprehensive Audit and Documentation

• We decided to undertake a comprehensive analysis of their 2 CRMs - HubSpot and Salesforce (Salesforce for the sales team, and HubSpot for marketing), and the integrated tech stacks.
• We also did a thorough audit of their database along with lead generation sources.
• Once we were through with that (the database had 73K job titles, so it was quite an audit), we documented our findings.

Phase II: Blueprinting and Onboarding

• We created a blueprint for their list cleanup, nurturing of existing database, and qualification of this database from contact >> MQL for a sales handover and MQL >> SAL >> SQL for conversion. 
• The blueprint also contained net new demand generation, lead scoring and qualification processes with playbooks for the sales team.

Phase III: Marketing Hub Implementation

• Once we finalized the blueprint, and took a buy in from the client, we built out workflows for lead nurturing and list cleanup.
• We also built out the lead scoring model on HubSpot along with building marketing asset templates.

Phase IV: Marketing Motions and Demand Generation

• We initiated various marketing campaigns and motions for nurturing the existing contacts to qualify them as MQLs, and sales handover, and for net new demand generation through HubSpot.
• We also fixed the errors in the integration between HubSpot and Salesforce, so that the qualified leads would flow seamlessly into Salesforce, while also giving the sales team the autonomy to give detailed feedback on the lead qualification.

1. Creating the blueprint:

• One metric created two blueprints
  1. 1 for nurturing the existing database of 440K contacts,
  2. 2nd for net new demand generation from marketing motions
• These blueprints mapped end-to-end sales and marketing processes, including what marketing assets to utilize, which marketing channels to initiate these motions on, nurturing of these contacts, scoring them and qualifying them from contact >> MQL >> SQL >> conversion.
• Once they were qualified for the sales team to take over, there was a nurturing drip for sales qualification as well, along with a sales playbook.
The blueprint also contained a cold sales outreach process.
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2. Nurturing

• The blueprint also included a newsletter nurture for existing database and getting a buy-in from these contacts for a marketing nurture.
• Upon subscription to these newsletters, these leads would be nurtured through marketing emails, thereby qualifying them for sales motions.

3. Lack of Marketing Assets

• The team had close to no marketing asset in their armory. It came upon One metric to work closely with their subject matter experts (SMEs) to create ebooks, blogs, customer success stories and infographics to be shared along with the newsletter.

• As the initial marketing assets generation was slow, there was massive repurposing of existing content. Ebooks and customer testimonials used as blogs, social media content and infographics.
• But then One metric took upon the onus, and ran these nurture and newsletter campaigns with little or no input from the Client.
  
  

4. Marketing and Sales Sync

• One of the biggest challenges (and achievements) that One metric was able to pull off was to create a two-way communication between their sales and marketing team.
• The sales team could now demand their desired number of qualified leads from the marketing team, and the marketing team could ask for feedback from the sales on the qualification.

1. Month on Month Lead Influx

Since its launch at the end of September 2023, the Client’s newsletter and nurturing campaign has consistently yielded an increasing number of leads. There are two parallel campaigns running- one with the existing database, and the other for net new leads.

2. Month-on-Month Influx in the number of qualified lead

3. 100% increase in qualified leads

These two campaigns have resulted in a better integration of the sales and marketing team, which is helping in better qualification of leads (just as they were supposed to be).

4. From an Audit to a Full Fledged Demand Generation + HubSpot Project

The client came to us for an audit and blueprint of how their marketing process would look like. The client today is one of One metric’s most engaged clients.