Rapid Notify Increases Opportunity Generation by 50% – While Reducing Manual Labor Processes by 416 Hours Per/Year

Challenge: Growth stunted by email that doesn't scale

Rapid Notify began its adoption of digital marketing by sending individual emails, then graduated to sending mass emails through its CRM, Salesforce. Salesforce's limited email capabilities couldn't support the campaign growth Rapid Notify needed, so the company moved to a third-party email service provider (ESP) chosen for its ultra-low pricing and Salesforce integration.

In short order, the ESP also proved too limiting. Data couldn't be integrated into Salesforce Workflows or Opportunity reporting, and email follow-up was limited to a basic resend. The small-scale technology offered zero growth potential, zero automation, and zero ability to build more sophisticated and dynamic marketing campaigns.

Challenge: Sales and marketing can't share data

At the same time, the sales and marketing teams were operating in silos, using disparate systems and manual processes to identify leads, track and score leads, and communicate hot prospect sales readiness. It became obvious that Rapid Notify could generate more sales opportunities and increase revenue if sales and marketing data were integrated.

The company realized that it had outgrown the stand-alone email marketing tool, and needed to adopt a marketing automation system that could enable major new initiatives as well as handle bigger email campaigns. But the company had only a small budget allocated for marketing technology, and so was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Choosing a solution

Rapid Notify used Salesforce.com's AppExchange to prospect for a solution. After interviewing every marketing automation vendor in AppExchange, Rapid Notify selected Act-On, saying the company offered the same service for one-third the cost of the others.

Fast implementation

Within a week the Rapid Notify team had completed the core 1:1 training and were well-versed in messages, forms, and automated programs. Within two weeks, the team executed its first dynamic content email marketing campaign.

Lead scoring lifts closing rates 20%

Rapid Notify uses Act-On's real-time lead scoring to automatically identify hot prospects and pass these higher-priority leads to sales, resulting in a 20% higher closing rate. In addition:

• 50% greater opportunity generation
• 150% increase in event attendance through using Act-On landing pages with links to forms for each event, and automated reminder and follow-up emails
• Automated programs (such as trigger emails) reduced the need to create manual campaigns, saving over 400 hours annually

Salesforce integration for ease and alignment

Rapid Notify's sales team uses Act-On (including sending one-off and mass emails) right from an activity window within the Salesforce dashboard. There's no time lost switching between systems.

Act-On's Instant-On marketing database is programmed to sync critical data with the Salesforce database automatically, while Salesforce remains the database of record. This allows marketing to push ready leads to sales, while keeping not-quite-ready leads in the marketing database for scoring and nurturing along the buyer's journey. This pays off in 20% higher closure rates for Rapid Notify.

Efficiency that scales

The marketing team operates more efficiently with email template features and dynamic content and more effectively with segmenting. Today, Rapid Notify can customize the content in an email dynamically, based on lead identifiers. This means the marketing team needs to create only a single template that has the ability to dynamically deliver specific, targeted messages depending on demographic group and industry targeted – saving time and effort.