“If you don’t think intent data works, you’re doing it wrong!” Gabriela Allen, Head of Demand Generation at Verizon, had the crowd chuckling with this statement at Forrester’s B2B Summit in Austin Texas. She joined Hannah Swanson, Senior Director of Marketing at Intentsify to put a spotlight on Verizon’s impressive success story.
It was a full room and attendees were buzzing at the booth to say, “How do we do what Verizon did?” Here are 5 takeaways from the on-stage case study:
1. Break down silos. Every enterprise employee knows that this is easier said than done. Verizon’s data science team was already using Intentsify’s intent data to power their proprietary sales tool. Gabriela quickly noticed that they were missing out on the data’s full potential without aligning the data science, content syndication, and digital ad teams. The hypothesis was that if the demand generation engine was also powered by the same intent data, they would drive more opportunities — essentially supercharging both marketing and sales. Once aligned, the teams would be rowing in the same direction at the same time.
2. Create joint KPIs. If you are effectively breaking down silos you also need to align goals and create joint KPIs. Across the display and content syndication teams, they looked at the relationship between form conversions and content syndication leads delivered, as well as opportunities generated. In addition to the joint KPIs they maintained more granular metrics like impressions, visits, and cost per visits for display, and MQLs and CPL for content syndication.
3. Align team budgets. According to Gabriela, aligning team budgets was arguably the hardest step. But without a combined budget, they wouldn’t be able to achieve their campaign goals. In this new demand generation campaign, digital ads would feed content syndication which would feed MQLs for sales. When one team wins, they all win — and the budgets and goals were aligned to reflect that.
4. Create a pilot. Pilot programs are an excellent way to demonstrate success, make a business case, and uncover areas for improvement. When Gabriela revamped their strategy using Intentsify to fuel their intent-driven marketing programs, they honestly thought it would work. They just didn’t realize how fast it would work. Gabriela shared that they hit a human bottleneck and the BDRs could not keep up with the increased lead volume. And after six weeks, the display portion of the campaign exceeded total campaign goals and was extended for an additional 4 weeks.
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- 836% to goal on pipeline opportunity value on content syndication leads
- 44% decrease in cost-per-visit on display campaigns
- 171% to goal on display campaign form completions
- 4-5 decision-makers identified and engaged at target accounts
One of the key differentiators of Verizon’s program is that they understood that the initial outputs of the intent-activated demand gen programs (leads, buyer insights, opportunities) didn’t have to be the finish line. Instead, they understood that every output becomes an input to the program and adds more strength and clarity to the intent signals. Once these programs keep cycling, more of the buying committee is uncovered and the BDR teams are better equipped to reach out with a timely, relevant message.
5. Intent is not a silver bullet. To echo the opening quote, to do intent data “right” you need to understand that it’s not a magic solution. To be successful you need compelling content and strong creative. You need to know how to activate the data in targeted digital programs to really see the results. Where the magic happens is when your intent-activated programs reach the right people with the right message at the right time.
The Verizon team partnered with Intentsify and knocked their pilot program out of the park. Their recipe for success was the ability to detect early-stage demand on key accounts, target customized topics relevant to Verizon’s solutions, and get hands-on support from Intentsify’s managed services. At the end of the day, Gabriela shared that she didn’t pick Intentsify. But, she saw the opportunity to expand the data science team’s use case to supercharge the whole demand generation function. And the success of their pilot program was only the beginning.
