Heinz Marketing

BACKGROUND

Could you describe your company?

We provide software solutions exclusively to real estate agents. We service about 130,000 real estate agents across the country.

What is your position?

I manage all of our new customer acquisition efforts.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What were the business challenges you were attempting to address when you initiated the project with Heinz Marketing?

We have a relatively understaffed marketing team coupled with two different sales teams, and one of those sales teams makes up about 25 percent of the business. Because of their share of sales, they didn’t get as much love as the other side. We needed Heinz to come in fill a gap for us. We needed them to focus on that smaller sales group, and help them build up their business and some of their marketing efforts.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of the project in terms of components. Did it include custom design, development, training, or support.

We held a strategy session with Heinz where we looked at our goals for the few months that we were planning to work with them, and decided what we actually needed. They came up with a plan to help us meet those goals, and the biggest piece of the plan was coming up with some new marketing content and some new nurturing email messages. All of those things were to be implemented into our marketing automation tool. That’s really where they came into play, getting some focused content for our broker audience, which is the sales team they were supporting, and then putting our existing contacts or at least prospects into a nurture program.

What marketing automation platform did you use?

Eloqua is what we have in house.

Could you explain why you selected Eloqua compared to some of its counterparts?

I wasn’t here when our company chose Eloqua. I came in shortly thereafter. I think the main reason was the robustness of Eloqua, and what it can do on the marketing automation side compared to some of the other tools, which were really email focused.

How did you actually select Heinz Marketing to work with?

I believe there was a previous relationship with Heinz. I'm not aware of what that relationship was, but Heinz has been around our company here and there. However, this is the first major project that I actually had the opportunity to collaborate with them.

Could you give me a sense of the size of the initiative in monetary terms?

I believe we spent anywhere between $50,000 and $75,000 for their services.

How long did the lead nurturing program take complete from conception to implementation?

I believe the entire process took between three or four weeks.

Was that within the estimated timeframe, or did they exceed the timeframe at all?

It was within the estimated timeframe. There were some internal things outside of Heinz's control that emerged on our side, but that was unrelated to them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics or metrics that would demonstrate the effectiveness of the work they delivered?

I'm looking at data from our campaign. Because it was a drip-nurture campaign that was deployed, it’s rather difficult to review its full effectiveness. They created a new outbound content campaign for us, which was a broker-focused white paper. We generated approximately 300 leads from that alone, which is double what we would normally get without their efforts.

Do you believe that Eloqua was the correct platform for your business needs?

Overall, yes. But, in some instances, it causes confusion because it's got so many different functionalities. I also believe that we attempt to use Eloqua in a way that it wasn’t really designed. Eloqua was designed to integrate with a CRM system like Salesforce, but we don't have Salesforce for the majority of our sales team. Thus, we’ve tried to use Eloqua as both a CRM and a marketing automation tool, but it's really geared for marketing automation.

How do you feel that Heinz Marketing performed on this project?

I think they’ve done a good job, especially given some of the internal issues they had to face with us. They’ve been able to hold up their side of the project at all times. We’ve been the ones that miss deadlines from time to time due to internal conflicts and constraints.

When working with Heinz Marketing, is there anything you would consider unique or special as compared to other solution providers you worked with in the past?

Their knowledge of Eloqua has really helped, along with their expertise in the marketing automation space. It was clear to us from the beginning that they’ve done a lot of marketing automation projects of various sizes and complexity.

In retrospect, are there any areas that you feel Heinz Marketing could improve upon, or that you might do differently as the client before approaching this type of project?

The only thing I can think of is establishing a more clear sense of ownership before the process began. There were situations where we thought that they were doing something, but really it was on our end. We should have known it was on our end, but we just didn’t. It wasn’t made explicitly clear to us. That missing clarity of ownership with certain things would have been nice.

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your company?

We are a provider of online math learning software.

What is your position?

I’m the Marketing Director.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What were your company’s business goals for initiating the project with Heinz Marketing?

We were searching for outside expertise in marketing automation, lead-management process, lead scoring and lead nurturing.

How did you select Heinz Marketing as your solution partner?

I had crossed paths with Heinz when I was the Director of Marketing Communications at a different company. We had a brief relationship with Heinz at that point in time. They helped us implement our Eloqua solution and I remember being very impressed with their overall performance.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of the project in terms of components: did it include custom design, development, training, support, etc.?

The entire project had two phases, with the first phase divided into three parts. The first part was to devise a new lead-scoring strategy that we could implement. The second part included campaign tracking and setup because we wanted to make sure we were doing everything correctly. The third part was initiating a service level agreement between our sales and marketing departments so we could streamline the lead scoring process. The second phase revolved around our lead nurturing process. We basically assessed the lead nurturing campaign we’d deployed, conducted an audit and then came up with recommendations on how to improve the process.

Could you give me a sense of the size of this project in either monetary terms or in the number of personnel that were delegated to the project?

The team from Heinz consisted of three consultants. We collaborated heavily with them for the duration of the project, but I’m sure there was a number of support staff involved, too. As for the cost, it ranged between $50,000 and $100,000. The exact cost is confidential.

When was this project completed?

Phase one was completed in Q4 of last year and phase two was completed in Q2 of this year.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of the results, could you share any statistics or metrics that would demonstrate the effectiveness of the work they’ve delivered?

It’s hard to say. We’ve seen an 80% increase in qualified leads this year, but I can’t definitively tie that to the consulting project. I can say that the project has given us a new level of confidence in the direction we’re going. Our strategy is sound and if we run into issues along the way that we’re unable to cope with, we can always contact Heinz and tap into their expertise and knowledge base.

How do you think that Heinz Marketing performed in this particular project?

I thought they did a great job. I would say that they were a nine out of ten on phase one and eight out of ten for the second phase.

When working with Heinz, was there anything that you would consider either unique or special about them as compared to some of their competitors?

I’ve never worked directly with any of their competitors, but I have been in a position to evaluate some of them. My own perception of Heinz is that they are very nimble, very responsive, and very affordable.

In retrospect, are there any areas that you feel Heinz could improve upon or that you might do differently as a client when you approach this type of project?

Only one thing comes to mind. I think they could have been slightly less promotional. We began the project with a very specific set of goals and requirements that were essentially tied to our budget, which was impossible to increase. I understand their approach because it’s in their interest to be given more work, but as a relatively small client I just couldn’t extend any more resources. This has really nothing to do with the project itself. They performed superbly. This is just an observation.