Situation

Post merger, this mid-market software company needed to integrate and align the new company’s lead lists, sales funnel and marketing programs into one inclusive system and process. A decision was made to move from HubSpot and Mailchimp to Salesforce and Account Engagement (Pardot) to support the more complex sales environment the new company would need to address.

The new entity had strategic marketing experts, great content marketers, inbound marketers and a seasoned Salesforce Administrator with no expertise in Account Engagement. The company had a wide-range of content ready to be leveraged in both demand generation and lead nurturing campaigns and an opt in database that represented close to 70% of the market.

Challenge

The marketing team was skilled in brand, creative, strategy and inbound marketing. The CRO and Salesforce Administrator were tasked with taking two different sales processes and multiple inbound and outbound marketing processes into one consistent sales and marketing operations process.

Company had developed their new go-to-market strategy and defined their new sales process. They needed help launching their new technology stack and then wanted their new combined sales and marketing operations team to take over the day-to-day management of the system.

Solution

The company hired Gabriel Sales to implement Account Engagement (Pardot)- deploy features, train on best practices, streamline Salesforce connections and integrate several additional third party technologies. Company then wanted Gabriel Sales to initiate several initial Marketing Automation Campaigns and Content Management Tools before training and transitioning the entire tech stack to their existing team for ongoing day-to- day management and execution.

Month 1

The engagement started by meeting with the Company’s CRO, Salesforce Administrator and Marketing Director to understand:

• Who is using the system?
• How are they using the system?
• Success Criteria for Sales
• Success Criteria for Marketing
• Sales Process
• Campaign Strategy
• What They Wanted to Measure/Track
• Reporting and Insight Needs

Gabriel Sales crafted a final plan for a basic implementation and a systematic 90 day roll out of campaigns with final timelines and critical dependencies.

Gabriel Sales then quickly launched into the technical setup of Account Engagement (Pardot) including all Salesforce.com integrations and third party integrations.

Month 2 and 3

Gabriel Sales worked with the Company’s marketing team to launch the systems with:

• Initial campaigns
• Initial database segmentations
• Continued quality checks and testing 
• Continued best practice workflows
• Conversion reports and insight dashboards

Gabriel Sales worked with the CRO to refine automated:

• Lead scoring
• Prioritized lead lists
• Weekly engagement reports

Simultaneously, the Salesforce Administrator and Marketing team started their basic training in Account Engagement (Pardot) using Gabriel Sales online subscription training course on Salesforce Account Engagement (Pardot): Build Your Basic Skills on Udemy.

Month 4 and 5

Worked with Salesforce Administrator, Marketing Team and Sales Team to ensure they understood how to leverage and maximize the effectiveness on the new sales and marketing technology. Training and transition included:

• Email Templates and List Emails
• Engagement Studio – Marketing workflows and best practices
• Dynamic Lists
• Triggered Automations
• Custom Redirects
• Page Actions
• Segmentation Rules
• Automation Rules
• Lead Scoring and Grading
• Forms and Form Handlers
• Landing Pages and Templates
• Lead Views
• Prioritizing Leads
• Campaign Tracking and Reporting

Results

Within 3 Months

The Company’s Account Engagement was fully implemented, launched with best practices and multiple initial marketing campaigns were up and running and producing scored leads prioritized in their CRM.

Gabriel Sales’ Certified Salesforce Administrator and Certified Account Engagement Specialists were able to train the company’s marketing team and Salesforce Administrator with all they needed to know to take over the systems and campaigns on a day-to-day basis.

Company contracted Gabriel Sales for an ongoing 8 hour/month of additional best practice training and support for an additional 6 months.