Summary
"Enabling Sellers with Sales Intelligence" An aggregated view of a contact's engagement with us in the form of a one click view in our CRM tool to drive deeper engagement and conversion. Wow Factor: 1.Account, contact and opportunity level insights. 2.ML & AI enabled best bets to prioritize. 3.Stay connected even when you are not – receive alert on mobile & email with real time engagement updates. 4.Unified engagement view. 5.Real time activity capture.
Challenge
1. The data from different outreach activities done by Tata Communications was residing on different databases and the data was not talking to each other due to which the business was not able to view the complete unified engagement details of the contact. 2. While the inside sales and the account mangers had to virtually reach out to their prospects in the pandemic, they had to view different databases or reach out to different teams to get the details on contacts needs and interest which was time consuming. 3. In a virtual world, the need for sales to have the history of engagement and activities was critical and important. 4. With the challenges faced above, we also had a reluctance from sales team to enter their contacts in the CRM because of which the marketing team was not able to effectively plan outreach activities.
Objective
The campaign objective was conceptualized to provide a single view of contacts Engagement Journey to Sales and Marketing team and to equip sellers with a deeper understanding of customer needs and interests, resulting in more meaningful discussions that can lead to shorter sales cycle and increased conversion rate. The objective was to provide insights to the sales team and prepare them at every stage of revenue cycle to drive the right revenue result. In addition to the insights on contact, sales team also need to understand what's happening across the account to build trust and relationships with the buyer. The objective was to Communicate real-time customer activity update to Sales on mobile, email even when they aren't working in their CRM. Bridge the gap by offering insight into customer responses to marketing engagements across all marketing channels for more relevant and timely follow up.
Strategy
There are various data sources that are integrated with either CRM (Salesforce) or Automation tool (Marketo) through which data is being sourced. We wanted these data sources to talk to each other so we can equip sellers with real-time information to gain a deeper understanding of how buyers are engaging on our website, email activities, events, webinars and ad campaigns throughout the sales cycle. We wanted to provide context around buyer interests and needs in an easy to read and follow solution. With few legacy processes that were set-up, it was difficult to get these data sources talking to each other. All this was getting captured but we had some challenges to get the visibility in one view to sales. We put our heads together to build a feature that is highly visual and easy to understand. The sales should be able Subscribe to receive alerts on the go on email and mobile, create watchlist and monitor future engagement on their top accounts, See engagement view filtering by activity type, so every action is just a simple click. To begin with we looked at different sources of data entry through which data is generated. All these entry sources were then integrated using smart APIs with our automation tool, so Marketo became the common entry source for all data. With this integration in place, all online and offline engagement details started getting captured directly in automation tool. Using the data residing in Marketo, the next step was to get this journey visible in CRM in a one click view. Considering the tight timelines that the sales team are working on, we had to make this view highly visual and easy to understand and it also had to have a unified engagement timeline with all key engagement activities showing at one place.
Data
While implementing this, we had to make the journey insights view relevant to Tata Communications business strategy. To achieve this we had to: 1.Identify and create the notable through the line engagement activities that are important to sales. 2.Activate Contact level view with highly visual summary of contact activities, across channels. 3.Activate Account level view – To get deeper insights by putting the prospect activities in the context of overall account activity. 4. AI & ML enabled best bets to focus instantly on hottest leads and opportunities. 5. Watch list to easily keep tab on customer behavior and subscribe to receive up-to minute list of interesting activities in the form of alerts on mobile or email. Glossary: 1.Lead: Prospect who has shown interest or engagement on Tata Communications outreach activities. 2.Contact: A prospect or customer associated with an account and currently engaging with sales. 3.Account: an individual customer account, organization or partner involved with business. 4.Opportunity: Deals in progress
Solution
This campaign outlines the challenges faced by the sales & marketing team, equips them with relevant information that will help them focus on conversion, plan outreach activities and drive them to reach the Organization goals. In a complex b2b environment that has long buying cycles, multiple buying centers and purchase influence, the sellers while interacting with customers need to be equipped with a deeper understanding of customer needs and interests, which will result in more meaningful discussions. This dashboard view gives sales team visibility into the lead lifecycle and provides a unified engagement view which guides their interactions with prospects/customers. This in turn leads to a shorter sales cycle, increased close rate and quicker revenue growth. The analysis of this journey also gives us good view of what touches and communications are working and what is not. This is helping us to bring change in our marketing strategy where we were able to focus on optimizing our outreach activities and identifying and removing processes that are redundant. The view has: Contact & Account Activity Timeline - A highly visual summary of customer activities, across various channels where sales can quickly understand engagement velocity over time, identify trends and even understand preferred channel. They can get deeper insight on buyer behavior. Account Activity Views – Sales can gain more insight by putting the prospect/contact activities in the context of overall account activity. They can easily overlay account and buyer group activity insights with one simple click, and access account activity details. Visibility to Upcoming Email Campaigns, Events – Sales can gain visibility into upcoming marketing events and campaigns. Make recommendations based on customer needs and interests. This allows sellers to act as a trusted advisor, making conversations more relevant and ultimately drive more pipeline
Results
Implementing the Contact to Customer Journey dashboard view is now giving sales more visibility into the behaviors of Customers/accounts on our Site, and all our marketing assets. They are able to view Complete engagement history of interest and activity of each contact mapped to their account through: • Detailed record view for all contacts mapped to the account • Topic-based activity insight as interesting moments • Real-time activity capture • Subscribe to e-mail alerts on mobile of contacts every engagement with Tata Communications This is helping sales to: 1. Prioritize their reach - prioritize and identify hottest leads and also gain deeper insight into buyer behavior that helps drive engagements to close deals faster. 2. Increased Efficiency - Provides sales with a real-time engagement dashboard of account, contacts and opportunities on our marketing activities. Sales team is now able to get details of engagement enabling better planning & interventions. 3. Cross-sell Opportunities - Basis interest in other Tata Communications products & services, available to sales from the contacts content consumption history on the website/email engagement/event participation. This journey details influenced the overall numbers that we achieved for this Fiscal year : 20% increase in New Customer Acquisition. 140% increase in Revenue through digital resources
