The Company
Based in San Francisco, Calif., Cloudwords is a cloud-based Translation Management Platform that enables its customers to select and interact with vendors that will translate any type of content, including marketing, website, documentation and product, from any language to any language, and centrally manage all translation projects.
The Challenge
As the head of a start-up, Cloudwords’ CEO Michael Meinhardt was looking for a marketing technology platform that would enable Cloudwords to track every dollar spent to justify its marketing expenditures. “We’re extremely passionate about measuring the effectiveness of our programs,” says Meinhardt. “Our main goal is to quickly understand what is and isn’t working because, as a start-up, we don't have the luxury of time or a massive marketing budget.”
The Solution
Cloudwords’ requirements for a marketing automation solution were fairly extensive, with its most important criteria being the scalability to grow with Cloudwords from its current start-up phase to a company that would ramp significantly to meet the needs of the $20 billion translation industry.
After a competitive selection process, Cloudwords chose Silverpop Engage. “We selected Silverpop Engage because the team took the time to understand our goals and challenges and adapted a pricing model that fit our needs,” says Meinhardt. “Secondly, Cloudwords leverages social media whenever possible throughout our content, and I was really impressed with Silverpop’s Share-to-Social feature, which we could easily incorporate into our campaigns to help make our content go viral.”
Since implementing Silverpop Engage, Meinhardt has focused on creating compelling content that engages prospects and retains customers. This has included taking a more strategic approach to segmentation. “Through segmentation, we’ve been able to craft specific messages to our audiences at different points during the sales cycle,” says Meinhardt. “Silverpop Engage gives us the flexibility to slice and dice user data into very specific paths, which is amazing for a start-up like ours.”
In addition, Cloudwords has integrated Silverpop Engage and Salesforce.com to streamline the lead-generation process and enable its demand generation team to get immediate insight into prospect and customer engagement. The Contact Insight module available within Salesforce.com enables Cloudwords’ Demand Generation team to view each contact’s interactions, including his or her site visits, Web-page views, form submittals, file downloads, email sends and Share-to-Social activity. Some of this behavioral data is available via Silverpop Engage’s Web tracking functionality, which captures and stores Web-tracking history of anonymous visitors on Cloudwords’ website. Once identified, that information is included in the Contact Insight module.
To help build its database and send more relevant messages, Cloudwords recently rolled out a weekly campaign in which users were asked to answer a question about a video on its homepage for a chance to win a gift card. The user data it retrieved from the contest then updated in Salesforce.com and Cloudwords’ Silverpop database.
The Results
Focused on engaging new and current customers, Cloudwords has learned the value of sending relevant content to subscribers based on where they are in the sales cycle. Email open and click-through rates doubled when Cloudwords adjusted its “one-size-fits-all” approach to sending emails with relevant messaging according to where the contact is in the sales cycle.
Cloudwords’ gift card contest also proved highly engaging for its contacts. “The video contest has been widely successful, and those users who participated have started to receive very specific emails targeted at bringing them relevant information around education for the translation industry,” says Meinhardt.
The integration between Silverpop Engage is a “no brainer,” according to Meinhardt, especially given the benefit of the behaviors accessible through the Contact Insight module in Salesforce.com. “Contact Insight gives our salespeople the real-time insight they need when talking to a prospect or customer, and every morning it’s the first thing they review inside Salesforce.com before they begin their day,” says Meinhardt. “Our Demand Generation team loves the quick view the Contact Insight module provides, as well as the understanding of where the user has landed on our website and from which campaign. Having this information available at its fingertips allows our Demand Generation team to have relevant content for every conversation.”
Download the PDF to learn how Cloudwords doubled their open and click rates, and uses the Contact Insight module within Salesforce.com to access real-time information to have more relevant conversations with prospects.