Marketing automation and integration deliver 1-2 punch for Brainshark

The Company
Brainshark is the leader in on-demand business communication solutions, with patented software that empowers businesspersons to easily transform Microsoft PowerPoint slides and other business materials into powerful voice-enriched, interactive presentations. More than 1000 companies, including a third of the Fortune 100, rely on Brainshark software and services to accelerate training, increase marketing response rates, shorten the sales cycle
or enhance corporate communication.

The Challenge
Feeding the need for leads was fast becoming an all-consuming job for Brainshark’s  marketing team. Its efforts to create awareness of the company’s offerings and spark a dialogue between qualified prospects and sales were successful, but the process to manage leads and nurture them through the pipeline was clunky and cumbersome.  The biggest obstacle Brainshark encountered was its use of several SaaS offerings that didn’t fully integrate with each other. For example, critical prospect data housed in Salesforce.com (SFDC) wasn’t able to sync with other applications, thwarting marketing’s efforts to utilize that information in targeted campaigns.

“We were spending a high percentage of our time manipulating lead data gathered from sales-oriented activities like trade shows and sales meetings rather than spending time proactively developing strategic marketing initiatives,” said Ed Thompson, director of marketing programs at Brainshark. “Because our email service provider lacked the ability to integrate with SFDC, we spent a great deal of time manually importing lead data from spreadsheets into the various systems.”

The Solution
After reviewing several lead-management solutions, Brainshark chose Silverpop Engage B2B, formerly Vtrenz, for its sophisticated marketing automation, lead-scoring and lead-nurturing features. “Not only is Engage B2B reasonably priced, but it’s integrated with SFDC, which is something we didn’t get from our former solution, and that makes a tremendous difference in our efficiency,” Thompson explained.

Engage B2B’s support staff worked closely with Brainshark’s marketing team to enable them to quickly implement the solution. The first task was to clean up Brainshark’s database of more than 180,000 names, which Engage B2B simplified by eliminating the duplicates. Also, Engage B2B helped Brainshark automate its email campaigns to increase the company’s ability to efficiently and regularly “touch” both clients and prospects with relevant messaging.

With Engage B2B, Brainshark was able to systematically consolidate its customer and prospect data into a single CRM system, eliminating silos of data that had previously existed. The CRM integration gave sales management and marketing visibility into sale rep activity, and enabled them to adjust messaging as appropriate. Engage B2B is also used to monitor email clicks and Web site traffic.

Additionally, Brainshark was able to implement Engage B2B’s lead-scoring feature, which uses implicit and explicit data to score leads. “Lead-scoring allows us to look at a composite view of a prospect’s interest and authority.” said Thompson. “By combining demographic data with campaign and Web activity we are able to build a better picture of our prospect while prioritizing follow-up. It just makes the whole process more efficient.”

The Results
Engage B2B’s marketing automation enabled Brainshark’s marketing team to increase the number of emails sent to prospects by 79 percent, all without adding staff. Additionally, the expanded efforts created a robust amount of activity for Brainshark’s lead development program. Because Engage B2B enables marketers to track campaign participation and use the information to better identify qualified, sales-ready leads, the company was able to surpass its aggressive Q3 lead goal by 10 percent.

“The entire team agrees that Engage B2B has enhanced our email and Internet marketing campaigns,” Thompson said.

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