How did Accolade’s marketing team turn largely-empty notebooks into customers?
Senior Manager of Marketing Operations Kat Snider and her team wanted to appeal to HR leaders during open enrollment, HR’s busiest time of the year. So, Snider and co. launched the company’s first-ever direct mail campaign, sending Accolade-branded notebooks to HR leaders who might find them useful.
“The open enrollment notebooks were mostly blank pages for notes,” Snider said. “But every few pages there were infographic-like tidbits about open enrollment data and fun facts. We sent them to HR leaders in key target accounts and included a handwritten note from their sales rep, which expressed they looked forward to connecting again after open enrollment season.”
Snider said her four years at the company taught has her that the most impactful lead generation campaigns are often born from a desire to create a lasting impression and not directly impact the bottom line.
The marketing campaign paid off: According to Snider, it re-engaged customers, generated revenue and become a regular part of the team’s outreach strategy.
In an conversation with Built In Seattle, Snider stressed the importance of showing value in marketing efforts and laid out how her team works closely with sales to optimize the lead generation to deal-closing pipeline.
Why did you decide to test the open enrollment notebook approach and what were the results?
That program was effective because it wasn’t one we set up to accomplish any short-sighted numerical inquiry or meeting goals. We simply wanted to offer something of value and position ourselves as top-of-mind for prospects when the busy season ended. Our market development reps (MDRs) booked appointments when they followed up, and the program has been influential for us in the years since. We just closed a key strategic account that was re-engaged by the program three years ago. Sending notebooks was our first time dabbling in a direct mail strategy. Thanks to its success, we continued to invest in it more to see its positive impact.
That program was effective because it wasn’t one we set up to accomplish any short-sighted numerical inquiry or meeting goals.”
How do you gauge the quality of the leads you’re generating?
We use Salesforce with Pardot to capture and score data. Our team works closely with MDRs, who we view as the frontlines in gauging the quality of the leads we generate. With their help, we built a robust lead scoring system and continue to have an open feedback loop with them to perfect the system. We also use Tableau to build reporting. We look at inquiry conversion to pipeline by source and marketing influence of pipeline creation.
How do you work with the sales team to convert leads and refine your lead generation strategies over time?
Our funnel moves through typical steps: suspect, inquiry, MQL, SQL. Marketing makes a handoff to the sales team at the MQL stage, and our MDRs will make outbound efforts from there. Our database has the accounts we want to go after from an account-based marketing approach, and if a lead comes in under one of the accounts, we convert to a contact.
We work lockstep with our MDRs to refine our lead gen strategies over time. Our strategies are always evolving, but due to our long sales cycle, we are patient with converting accounts to closed-won deals. We see it as an ultra marathon, not a sprint.
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