Supercharging B2B Outbound Marketing with Intent

Working smarter with targeted ABM outbound

The Challenge:

When a major telecommunications company was trying to increase sales revenue, it encountered two problems. First, while it thought the quantity and quality of its inbound lead traffic was good, the reality was that these leads were only a small share of the total addressable market and primarily from small companies that didn’t represent its industry’s most profitable business segments. Second, when its sales representatives did outbound prospecting, lack of insights resulted in ineffective cold calls. Sales reps had nothing to go by to personalize their outreach methods, nor could they prioritize accounts that had a higher propensity to sign a deal.

So how did the company maximize its marketing resources, improve sales efficiency and start to realize higher-revenue conversion? By working smarter with targeted outbound to high-fit, in-market prospects.

The Plan:

This company set an objective to grow in the more profitable mid- to large-sized company market, and it realized that achieving this growth would require new processes for more effective outbound marketing. Specifically, it wanted to target companies that would be more receptive to their outreach – ones that had an active demand for its products. The company took a three-prong approach:

Hyper-Targeted Segmentation Based on Fit, Timing and Need

Third-party intent data along with Lattice Buyer Insights identified more than 25,000 buying signals, web activity from in-market buyers. This was then used to help identify accounts that were in the market for services similar to the offerings of this company. The company used the leads and intelligence gathered to market to the best leads and personalize company messaging, value propositions and content specific to where prospects were in the buyer’s journey.

Figure 1 – Lattice Buyer Insights identified companies showing signals of early buying activity, with ratings to help prioritize target companies.

Relevant Insights About Each Business

Lattice Buyer Insights provided enough relevant details about each account to allow the organization's sales team to customize messaging and offers for specific accounts. The company received data on prospect fit and rating, compatible technology, intent for purchasing a solution, as well as industry and location information which enable stronger sales outreach.

Figure 2 – D&B Lattice provided rationale for each identified in-market company.

Multi-Touch and Omni-Channel Approach

Working with smaller, more targeted audience meant the sales reps had more bandwidth to spend more time on high-propensity accounts, allowing for multiple touches. To strike while interest was high, outbound campaigns included phone, emails, social, display and InMail.

Figure 3 – A typical outbound campaign included an omni-channel, multi-touch, personalized approach.

Results:

The company was able to supplement their inbound leads with an outbound audience of higher fit, higher intent larger companies that had potential for long term profitability. D&B Lattice provided more than 4,000 “hot” accounts that had the desired firmographics and showed propensity to be in-market to buy telecommunications services. This intelligence provides the sales team 200 newly identified accounts weekly with both company information and key attributes.

The result was that this company was able to expand their market penetration by more than 50% overall and more than 80% in the mid-sized market. Additionally, the buyer intent data they uncovered allowed for more targeted messaging and offers which increased the company’s email open rates.

We like to share our customers’ successes and inspire other teams that may face similar challenges. Due to the sensitive nature of some customers’ businesses and their data strategy, we respect their privacy and do not identify them by name on dnb.com.