Cleanse
Prevent
Segment
Route
Enrich
Capture
DataExchange
CASE STUDY
WATERMARK INSIGHTS
Watermark Insights used RingLead’s data orchestration platform to clearly identify their ICP following a series of mergers and have been able to add an additional $2 million to their pipeline.
Watermark Insights have accelerated their growth ahead of expectations by orchestrating their data in synergy.
“We started out with deduplication, but now we orchestrate our data. Since harnessing RingLead’s orchestration to add propensity models onto our workflows we’ve added an additional $2 million into our pipeline.”
– Calon Alpar, Senior Manager of Demand Generation
About Watermark
Watermark Insights is an educational intelligence company that captures and connects data across campus to support student success and advance institutional effectiveness.
- Industry: Information Technology Services & Professional Services
- Company size: 26-50 employees
- Customers: 1,700 higher education institutions.
Watermark Insights are backed by a private equity investor and there are high expectations for the organization to thrive and grow.
Calon Alpar, Senior Manager of Demand Generation, shares how Watermark Insights was able to cleanse their data following an acquisition and remove all their 100,000 duplicates in a few weeks. He explains how by enabling deduplication and lead-to-account matching they now have a more accurate view of accounts and leads by using account data at the lead level.
Austen Adair, Vice President of Sales Enablement at Watermark Insights, also provides his perspective on the Watermark challenges and solutions. He tells us how they were able to achieve their growth goals ahead of expectations by orchestrating their data.
Enabling mergers & acquisitions
Challenge – 10, 000 duplicates created overnight after a company merger
Watermark was formed from a series of company acquisitions. It all came to a head when three companies came together, and each database was merged into the existing Salesforce and Marketo database.
”"When we combined the 3 Salesforce instances, the duplicate contacts in Salesforce pushed all these duplicate records back to us in Marketo - Calon Alpar, Senior Manager of Demand Generation"
Overnight 100,00 duplicates were created in their Marketo. This resulted in marketing being unable to run personalized campaigns, and sales simply could not trust the data, severely hampering Watermark’s ability to generate revenue.
Not only did Watermark have a duplicate problem, but they could not solve it using the native Salesforce deduplication too. Watermark’s duplicates were not just object-to-object but were also cross-object. Cross- object merging of lead to contact or lead to account was simple not possible with the tools they had.
SOLUTION – Single table & lead to contact dedupe, robust surviving record criteria
Calon chose RingLead as he could customize and prioritize how duplicate object information was merged, and merge both object-to-object, and across-object, simply and easily.
Calon established Smart Lists in Marketo which he accessed in RingLead. They used filters on the Salesforce side like, Sync to Marketo, to make sure they were deduplicating people that were in both Salesforce and Marketo.
Using RingLead’s customised deduplication and merge templates Calon identified the data to retain during the merge to ensure no valuable information was lost. They combined lead scores on duplicate records and prioritized picklist values in lead lifecycle and status fields and were able to maintain operational processes and workflows.
Calon established batch tasks within RingLead scheduled to run after hours so the deduplication processes did not impact the businesses day-to-day operations.
Result
Calon and the Data Ops team removed all 100,000 duplicates in a few weeks. Cross-object duplicates were merged, and field data was prioritized and combined. Operations were back up to speed quickly.
Unexpectedly, they saw an increase in MQL’s, through their ability to retain and combine data in ways they weren’t able to previously.
”"We saw MQLS happening after every task because we are now combining activity of records that should have been together all along. This really increased the number of great opportunities for our sales team - Calon Alpar, Senior Manager of Demand Generation"
Maintaining a duplicate free database post-merge
Challenge – Duplicate Data Entering via webforms & manual entry
Once the huge task of matching and merging 100,000 duplicate records was completed, Watermark wanted to ensure that their database remained clean and duplicate free.
Austin, as Vice President of Sales Enablement, was particularly interested in maintaining a duplicate free Salesforce database as they were continually migrating aggregated datasets and importing them into Salesforce. He wanted to ensure his sales teams could access the best leads in their data base and contact speed, confidence, and the right information.
”"RingLead allowed us to combine all the disparate data sets that were in individual Excel files into one consistent database. We now take all of the inputs that go into our propensity model and apply them directly and systematically into Salesforce."
Solution –Real Time Dedupe & Lead to Account Matching
Austen connected multiple enrichment sources using RingLead’s single orchestration tool. They then established ongoing normalization and deduplication processes as data entered their database.
Result
Watermark have maintained the clean database that they achieved after their batch deduplication effort. This has then led to them being able to improve multiple processes.
”"We have been able to ensure that we maintain a clean database, which is essential for an efficient and effective path toward meeting our aggressive growth goals - Austen Adair, Vice President of Sales Enablement."
Enable Account Based Marketing
Challenge – No relationship between leads and accounts and incomplete data
Watermark was formed from individual companies that had their own CRM instances that focussed on different segments of the same market.
With more than 6 people being involved in purchase decisions (Harvard Business Review), the merge of the companies meant that Watermark’s ICP was confused and unclear. Watermark did not know what their Ideal Customer Profile looked like and which leads or contacts to target.
This meant Watermark:
- Lacked data-driven prioritization of accounts to focus marketing and sales contact
- Were unable to identify the key decision makers to attend tradeshows, webinars and engage with content like whitepapers
- Wasted valuable time with little return
- Experienced underwhelming MQL’s from their time intensive marketing activities.
”"We spent a lot of time and effort on creating white papers, facilitating webinars and what we thought would be high value marketing activities. But ultimately, we found the number of MQLs underwhelming, and when we did have success, it was not repeatable – Austen Adair, Vice President of Sales Enablement"
”"Before we can implement RingLead’s lead to account matching, we weren’t really able to market to leads from an Account Based Marketing perspective - Calon Alpar, Senior Manager of Demand Generation"
Solution – Use lead to account matching for holistic view
Watermark has set up an automated process to link incoming leads to existing accounts. RingLead’s proprietary lead-to-account matching feature provides a more accurate view of accounts and leads. Salespeople have visibility of account data at the lead level.
Result
Organizations using a strong ICP are achieving higher account win rates of 68% (TOPO).
Watermark Insights can now identify their total identifiable markets and break them down into key demographics based on their ICP. They can find the right contacts in the right accounts and really align their sales and marketing efforts so that they can meet their very demanding growth expectations.
”"We have been able to ensure that we maintain a clean database, which is essential for an efficient and effective path toward meeting our aggressive growth goals - Austen Adair, Vice President of Sales Enablement"
Solution – Use enrichment to enable segmentation
Austen used RingLead’s data orchestration features to enrich key demographics for individual products from the IPEDs database. They normalized and enriched data, linked leads to accounts and then segmented into key categories based on the job-titles. This categorization allowed identification of the important decision makers within accounts they marketed to and to identify their ICP.
Demographics for individual products were pulled from the IPEDS database and operationalised the application of this data to their overall propensity model. This model indicates probability of success for each investment product which is then pushed to Salesforce.
The model outputs a value to provide insight into the likelihood of selling into an overall account. It uses scoring to prioritize activities, contact and engagement based on the calculated best chance of success.
Watermark have combined this model with enriched data, account-based segmentation and territory assignment rules to route leads directly to the right reps.
”"We put in front of our reps the accounts where they are most likely to be successful. Our sales development team now focus all their calling efforts based on our Ideal Customer Profile. Sales and marketing are aligned. We tackle our accounts with a true account-based marketing approach - Austen Adair, Vice President of Sales Enablement"
”"We now have a full picture of the people in our database and the organization that that they're a part of. We can campaign based on what is happening at their accounts. Lead to account matching really helps us understand that overall account view - Calon Alpar, Senior Manager of Demand Generation"
Result
By enriching with account level demographics from the IPEDs database they have been able to efficiently develop the Watermark Insights Ideal Customer Profile.
Using segemention and scoring, Watermark have been able to prioritize accounts for both their sales executives and marketing efforts. They now know they have a high probability that they are reaching the right decision makers and know the exact people they want to attend their events and engage with their content.
”"We have been able to ensure that we maintain a clean database, which is essential for an efficient and effective path toward meeting our aggressive growth goals - Austen Adair, Vice President of Sales Enablement"
Lead routing and territory management
Challenge – Lead routing and territory management
Watermark had complex routing rules. As the first step they needed to understand the account the lead belonged to. As additional layers of complexity, each account had different rep territories and the solutions the account uses were factored in. This data was obtained through manual processes and routing based on the sales rep rules established in Salesforce.
Lead routing took too much time, was complex, and resulted in suboptimal allocation of leads to reps.
”"It essential for us to have understanding of the account to be able to fire the complex routing rules that we have in our organization - Calon Alpar, Senior Manager of Demand Generation"
Solution – Orchestrate data for automated account based routing
By adopting the full suite of RingLead’s features, Watermark Insights noworchestrate their data as it flows through their operations. With each process their records go through, the more accurate and useful their database becomes.
”"Extra account data, and using segmentation gives us greater understanding of the different cohorts of our audience and who leads need to be routed to - Calon Alpar, Senior Manager of Demand Generation"
Result
With complete, rich and current data on their records can automate complex lead routing scenarios and route leads quickly to reps.
”"With RingLead we can enrich our database for leads, contacts, and accounts and use orchestration to normalize, cleanse, deduplicate, segment our data and match leads with accounts. We have been able to leverage all these functions to enable fast and accurate routing of the right leads to the most suitable reps. - Austen Adair, Vice President of Sales Enablement"
Integrate external Data Sources with Dataset & Real Time Workflows
Challenge – Inability to operationalize external data sources
Due to the relatively small nature of their market, Watermark Insights found that they needed to locate and use multiple data sets to enrich their data. They used the IPEDs database which consists of especially large data files which they would then export, combine, and then apply manual formulas in Excel for their propensity modelling. This meant:
- Manual processes to export and import data
- Time consuming aggregation of data in Excel using cumbersome V-Lookups
- Unstandardized unrepeatable modelling processes that could not be operationalized
- Varying and inaccurate of prioritization of leads and accounts
- Inefficient use of sales rep time and poor conversion rates.
”"It essential for us to have understanding of the account to be able to fire the complex routing rules that we have in our organization - Calon Alpar, Senior Manager of Demand Generation"
Solution – Orchestrate data for data efficiency
Watermark Insights not only enriched their data, but harnessed single platform data orchestration to normalize, enrich, deduplicate, segment their data base. This allowed them to automate their manual enrichment, segmentation and scoring processes in a single solution without using Excel.
”"RingLead allowed us to combine all the disparate data sets that were in individual Excel files into one consistent database. We now take all the inputs that go into our propensity model and apply them directly and systematically into Salesforce - Austen Adair, Vice President of Sales Enablement"
Result
Their propensity model has become an integral part of their operations and now is able to adjust and move with any changes in the IPEDs database. They are always operating with the right data in real-time to target the right people at the right accounts.
Watermark Insights have been able to apply their propensity model to all 4, 000 higher education accounts in the USA and prioritize each of those accounts for each individual sales executive, down to which accounts have the best contact data.
They have also been able to operationalize this into a workflow so that identifying high priority accounts with the best contact data is a reliable and repeatable practice.
Watermark’s results in a snapshot
Watermark Insights worked with RingLead to initially overcome their data deduplication problems. What they found is that by using all RingLead’s features to orchestrate their data they had powerful tool that allowed them to:
- Add an additional $2 million into their pipeline
- Apply their propensity model to all 4,000 higher education accounts in the USA and operationalise the process into a workflow
- Align sales and marketing teams through clear identification of their ICP
- Accelerate achievement of their expected growth strategy
- Exceed their initial ROI estimates
- Accelerate their growth.
”"We've leveraged all of the functions that RingLead provides to create the optimal Salesforce data experience and advance our aggressive goals much quicker than we ever anticipated."
