WorkForce Software

Software company implements fully functional lead-management approach within 60 days using Engage B2B marketing automation solution

The Company
WorkForce Software Inc. is a leading manufacturer of complex workforce policy and compliance management solutions. Automating interactions between an employer and its work force results in lower payroll processing costs, compliance with state and federal regulations, and increased productivity and employee satisfaction.

The Challenge
WorkForce Software has a unique challenge in that its prospects have widely varied business titles, ranging from chief financial officer to payroll director to VP of HR. Because similar job functions have different titles depending on the industry, WorkForce Software had trouble qualifying leads that entered the marketing queue through its Web site.

WorkForce Software also lacked the right tools to properly qualify its leads. The process was handled by telemarketers and the sales department through phone calls and emails, which was time-consuming and led to inconsistencies in how leads were managed.

“After reviewing our lead-generation process, we saw a huge gap in our knowledge about the readiness of prospects in terms of budget, buying intention, business challenges and timeline,” said Bob Gallagher, vice president of marketing, WorkForce Software. “Due to the nature of our products and the vastly different buyers we do business with, it was critical to get these prospects engaged with our marketing programs on a mass-quantity level and start collecting the information needed to efficiently uncover a growing number of well-defined opportunities. We made the decision to look at marketing automation solutions to help achieve this goal.”

The Solution
WorkForce Software reviewed at least five vendors before choosing Silverpop Engage B2B (formerly Vtrenz). “We chose Engage B2B as our marketing automation platform for several reasons, including our desire to work with a proven, mature vendor and the ability to meet our business requirement through several automated marketing scenarios that could be executed without any special programming,” Gallagher said.

With the help of Silverpop’s support team, WorkForce Software was able to quickly and effectively implement the Engage B2B solution. Soon after, the team began collecting relevant demographic data through Engage B2B's Survey module and utilizing its lead-scoring and lead-nurturing features.

WorkForce Software requires all its prospects to sign up for a WorkForce account in order to download premium content or participate in its marketing programs, such as a Webinar. “Workforce Software offers premium content as part of our marketing programs.  We believed that people seeking to consume our premium content through our marketing programs would be willing to provide us information in exchange,” said Charles Kim, direct mail manager for Workforce Software. 

Using the Engage B2B Survey module, WorkForce Software asks prospects several qualifying questions at sign-up, such as type of system currently being used and size of organization, as well as follow up questions over time as additional premium content (e.g. white papers) is requested, thereby collecting important qualification information about its leads. The fields and information are readily available to the sales team via Salesforce.com.

The marketing team then developed a lead-scoring method within Engage B2B based on prospect responses to the survey questions. Leads with higher scores are routed to sales via Salesforce.com, while those with lower scores are put into an automated lead-nurturing program in which additional survey information is collected. Higher lead scores are determined by amount and quality of prospect participation. For example, a frequent website visitor that also downloaded an “ROI Kit” might pass the threshold from “cold” to “warm” lead.

The Results
Within 60 days, Workforce Software was able to completely reengineer its lead qualification process using Engage B2B  so that incoming leads are providing valuable, self reported information that is ultimately  turning into more sales opportunities.  “Our marketing efforts are focused on efficiently uncovering a growing number of well defined opportunities,” said Bob Gallagher. “We are seeing improved productivity and dramatic year over year increase in opportunities using Engage B2B.”

Through a combination of Engage B2B email campaigns, and an increased investment in pay-per-click advertising, Workforce Software experienced a 4X increase in the number of “Contact Us” and “Demonstration Request” leads coming in through Web site.  “Normally this type of increase would have overwhelmed sales,” Gallagher said. “However, now that we have put structure around how to identify quality leads, we can segment those leads by the information gathered during the lead-qualification process. Sales only acts on qualified leads sent to them via the Salesforce.com integration, which is saving both time and valuable resources.”

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