Software company implements fully functional lead-management approach within 60 days
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 vice president of human resources. 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. “We chose Silverpop for our marketing automation platform for several reasons, including our desire to work with a proven, mature vendor and the ability to meet our business requirements,” Gallagher said.
With the help of Silverpop’s support team, WorkForce Software was able to quickly and effectively implement the solution. Soon after, the team began collecting relevant demographic data through survey capabilities and utilizing the 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.
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 Results
Within 60 days, Workforce Software was able to completely reengineer its lead-qualification process 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 a dramatic year-over-year increase in opportunities.”
Through a combination of email campaigns, and an increased investment in pay-per-click advertising, Workforce Software experienced a four-fold increase in the number of “Contact Us” and “Demonstration Request” leads coming in through its website. “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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