When Splunk introduced a new observability product to market, they faced a brand awareness challenge. Despite being a long-time household name for the DevSecOps community, Splunk was charged with building brand recognition in observability while maintaining brand leadership in the security space.
With an increased brand awareness scope, the marketing team at Splunk had a tall order: Scale output without adding spend. Senior Digital Marketing Manager Jillian Schwantz knew they had to adjust their strategy to accomplish their goals for marketing-contributed pipeline. The new plan was to scale back 1:1 ABM programs that ate up a huge portion of the marketing budget and scale up digital programs like content syndication to generate more qualified leads from target accounts.
Jillian chose Intentsify to achieve these goals because she knew that the Intent-Activated Lead Generation solution would fill the funnel with qualified leads that were actively researching solutions like Splunk’s.
Splunk’s Goals and Objectives
- Increase qualified leads without adding budget
- Understand which content resonates with their audience
- Optimize 3rd party lead generation and paid media programs
- Identify buyers with high purchase intent to increase deal velocity
Results
3X ROI Improvement on marketing-contributed pipeline
8X year-over-year increase in MQLs
Working with Intentsify has been a game-changer for our marketing strategy. Their scalable programs and insightful intent data have not only elevated our outreach efforts but have significantly contributed to a substantial increase in our marketing-influenced pipeline. – Joe Paone, Sr. Director, Integrated Marketing, Splunk
Step 1: Define Target Account List
Before the campaign even began, Splunk gathered their target account lists, identified target buying personas (titles, seniority levels, geographies, etc.) and worked with the Intentsify team to produce lookalike groups to expand their reach.
Once these lists were uploaded to the Intentsify platform, they let Intentsify’s Precision Intent Data optimize their ICP to ensure the target accounts they had on their list are actually the accounts searching for relevant solutions.
Step 2: Content Planning & Alignment
The first ingredient to any successful content syndication program is a large library of content that serves multiple funnel stages. The team at Splunk took content planning one step further and created A/B formats of each asset to test what performs best for their audiences.
Once campaign content was defined, it was critical to ensure alignment among the business development and sales teams. Sales must know how to follow up with the leads delivered from the campaign to be successful. Leads that aren’t nurtured properly – or not contacted at all – will never translate into revenue. The key to Splunk’s success with their lead generation campaigns was a well documented and seamless nurture strategy.
Step 3: Deploying, Monitoring and Optimizing
Once Splunk’s campaigns were live, Jillian and her team never abided by the “set it and forget it” mentality. Her team constantly evaluated campaign and asset performance to ensure the content they were using to generate demand was the content their audience wanted to consume.
These metrics included:
- Account-level intent signals
- Net-new vs. Existing contacts generated
- Asset performance and content alignment based on target audience’s research behaviors
- Marketing-contributed pipeline
- ROI
Step 4: Remarketing Strategy
Content syndication programs don’t just serve net-new lead generation goals. Since Splunk has a wealth of content available, they were able to launch a remarketing strategy to keep engaging contacts generated by Intent Activated Lead Generation through various other channels.
Splunk ultimately chose Intentsify to exceed their MQL goals because they knew that Intent Activated Lead Generation creates qualified demand at a fraction of the price of other marketing channels. Unlike other providers, Intentsify’s AI-powered Precision Intent Data powers each activation channel, ensuring customers only receive leads from target accounts that are in active research cycles.
Intensify employs a robust intent engine, enabling our targeting strategy to pinpoint prospects with the highest intent. This engine automates the process, ensuring continuous improvement in our results over time. – Jillian Schwantz, Sr. Digital Marketing Manager, Splunk
