An Information Security Company Experiences a 1002% Increase in Leads Created

Challenge

Nearly a year ago exactly, Pwnie Express welcomed a new VP of Marketing and with that a new generation of Pwnie's marketing and sales efforts. Coming onto the team, Dimitri Vlachos quickly identified a number of gaps within their current processes and was eager to find a HubSpot partner that could support both strategically and technically with building out marketing and sales automation that scaled alongside Pwnie's growth.

Pwnie Express found themselves in today's common software start-up story: growing quickly with venture capital funding and a board of directors to answer to, but little to no visibility into their pipeline. A lack of visibility leads to a lack of accurate reporting, which ultimately causes skepticism about marketing and sales' ability to work together to hit revenue goals. Pwnie found themselves unsure of:

• Their primary buyer personas (they had 11 before working with us)
• Their lifecycle stages (they weren't able to report on MQLs or SQLs)
• How to automatically qualify and hand off leads to sales (there wasn't a standardized process)
• The appropriate MQL follow-up process
• How to report on the full funnel

Because of all of the above points, marketing wasn't generating the best leads they could and sales wasn't following up with the hottest leads in a standardized manner. Working together, we changed all of that.

Solution

We worked with Pwnie Express on a number of different projects and services beginning with our Digital Onboarding Workshop, where we defined their primary buyer personas. Once we understood who we are attracting to the website and targeting for conversions, we needed to understand what it was about these leads that made them qualified for a sales conversation.

This is where our revenue operations project became key. Through an intensive four-week project, we worked closely and collaboratively with their marketing team to define criteria that indicate a lead is a marketing-qualified lead (MQL). Through this process, we looked to identify the different pieces of information we could translate into form fields and a funnel-driven form strategy. We completed detailed documentation for their marketing and sales team which defined:

• Each lifecycle stage
• Master form strategy for each stage of the funnel which included progressive profiling and SMART fields
• Automated persona attribution
• Lead scoring
• Lead flow handoff and assignments

After we defined and documented all of the above elements, the New Breed team moved forward to implement everything within HubSpot.

We leveraged HubSpot workflows to create internal automation that would set leads to MQL based on our setup criteria, as well as assign them to the correct sales rep based on territory. This workflow also sets tasks for reps with due dates to ensure sales was making their first touchpoint within the first 24 hrs.

We also leveraged the reporting add-on to build pipeline reports for snapshot views of how leads are progressing through the funnel. Once we had all corresponding assets created, we led a training session with the marketing and sales team to ensure everyone was on the same page and in agreement with all processes.

Result

The configuration of their revenue operations via HubSpot tools has generated tremendous efficiency improvements and true visibility into their pipeline. And now, leads are actually progressing through the funnel as they should. Previously, they were jumping right from lead to customer. In the six months prior to working with New Breed, Pwnie's funnel had huge holes:

• Subscribers - 219
• Leads - 2,486
• MQLs - 0 SQLs - 0
• Opportunities - 0
• Customers - 0

In the six months following our implementation of MQL criteria and all of the corresponding assets, we were able to bring Pwnie's funnel to life:

• Subscribers - 2,609
• Leads - 27,416
• MQLs -1,015
• SQLs - 260
• Opportunities - 81
• Customers - 12

As you can see, we were able to not only obtain true funnel visibility but also a 1002% increase in leads created. Pwnie is now able to report back to executives and the board on marketing success and pipeline health.

With the implementation of the necessary automated processes, Pwnie was able to track visit-to-customer attribution that they wouldn't have been able to track without us, earning them a 300% return on their investment with New Breed on our Digital Onboarding, revenue operations workshop and other additional services.

Our relationship with Pwnie continues to evolve and grow as the months go on. We've seen massive success from our revenue operations project, and we find ourselves constantly iterating on our MQL criteria in an attempt to hone in on MQL-to-SQL conversion rates. By automating the qualification process, we were able to not only pass over qualified leads to sales but actually make that lifecycle stage progression so we can report back on the full funnel.