A SaaS Company with a great tool and a very narrow customer base struggled to scale its revenue. With the awareness that their competitor is Zendesk, but their software is way more affordable and user-friendly than Zendesk’s, they were adamant to stay in the market. That’s when they found their solution: Targeted Zendesk Customers Database, scaling qualified leads by 3X within just three months.
Client Overview
The client is a SaaS Company that has 100+ employees, specializing in cloud-based customer management software. The tool helped them with file-sharing, company operations, sharing private files, and everything happens seamlessly using one dashboard.
The client caters to small & mid-sized businesses, but really wants to grow to deliver to Big 4 companies. The tool is everyone’s favorite currently because it comes with AI-powered workflows that can be accessed wherever team members are. The sales model is B2B outbound with account-based marketing.
The Challenge
The client was running several multi-channel marketing campaigns, but still struggled with fairly low engagement rates. The sales team was not able to target the right people since they own a database that they verified last in 2014, making targeting very redundant.
Due to an inactive database, the SaaS company faced low response rates from generic lists, poor targeting, and difficulty identifying companies they could target, causing high customer acquisition costs and long sales cycles. Once, an unsuccessful send-out brought them great open rates, but that was to gain about 50 unsubscribers, and with so much effort, the actions were not driving any positive results.
Our client soon discovered an active database of companies using Zendesk.
Why Zendesk Users Were The Ideal Target
The client always considered Zendesk as a competitor, as they aspired to build products that are as effective as Zendesk, maybe more. Zendesk users pay hefty amounts for using the CRM platform, with no integration capabilities or customizable workflows. Zendesk does not allow companies to build their workflows based on business goals.
Our client was not Zendesk; it was all of Zendesk, with its disadvantages turned into advantages. In other words, the client’s tool was built on the basis of being more effective than Zendesk, with more room for AI integration and great business outcomes, all at a great package price.
Campaign Strategy Implemented
We asked our client why existing customers were onboarded for the first time. The client said it was because other AI CRM systems are very expensive, and theirs is priced well with great features. Some clients mentioned how they want to switch from Zendesk to us. So together we looked up Zendesk, their offerings, made a few tweaks, and purchased the Zendesk customers database. This way, our client got a reason to communicate to Zendesk users that something better exists in the market. This directly led to 70% conversions and skyrocketed open rates.
Yes, the product the client is selling is the hero here, but there’s more to this: a targeted customer database with data fields including but not limited to verified companies using Zendesk, contact details of decision makers, industry, company size, and other demographic details.
The targeted database of Zendesk users came with details of CIOs / Customer Support Heads, Support Operations Managers, and CX Directors, giving direct, detailed access to prospects. Cold emails with customization are what finally led to 70% conversions from our first marketing campaign using the database!
How the SaaS company used the targeted database of Zendesk users:
Step 1: Building an ideal customer profile
With our customized email list of Zendesk users, the client could uncover businesses with a certain turnover, with 200+ employees, from the USA, working in the tech and trading industries. This built the deal customer persona for the SaaS company while building a clear path for communications.
Step 2: Account-Based Marketing
While doing market research, we realized the tool is closest to Zendesk CRM, which is how we helped clients. We used the Customer database of Zendesk users in the USA alone because the client was just USA-based at the time.
Step 3: Personalized Outreach
Once the client knew who they were talking to, the messaging focused on providing solutions like CRM AI integrations, strategies to support efficiency, and the benefits of automation based on customer needs.
Customer needs could be determined based on certain data insights, so skimming through the data helped the client understand brands that can be targeted in the USA, based on what pain point, already giving room to explore other audiences with 100% confidence.
Step 4: Multi-Channel Campaign
The client was never limited to the USA, there was always a thought process of the founder, and that’s to find interesting ways to reach out to businesses that needed their solutions.
With our targeted list of Zendesk users, we could adopt multi-channel marketing, and we started Email marketing, LinkedIn outreach, SDR cold calling, hosting webinars, and encouraging the same database to participate, leading to surprising conversions. The database was then filtered from just the USA to all countries for communications.
All the marketing needed became the intent because the right people out there were waiting to be reached, my client had the right database, it’s a match made in favor of success.
Results Achieved
Our client owns a great SaaS solution that the world can enjoy, but nobody to reach out to. With a simple tweak of buying a verified list of Zendesk users, these are the results, quantified:
- Qualified Leads: 3X increase
- Email Response Rate: +42%
- Meetings Booked: 2X growth
- Sales Pipeline: $1.5M generated
Why The Strategy Worked
The Zendesk customers database helped our client centralize, organize, and protect vital data for exceptional business performance. Reliable data lead them to personalized marketing, building customer relationships by tapping into pain points with solutions. The key success factors for marketing success the client experienced include:
- Highly targeted audience
- Accurate technology data
- Personalized messaging
- Ideal product-market fit
Client Testimonial
“Targeting companies already using Zendesk was a sharp turn we took that switched the business for growth. Instead of generic outreach, we are now in direct talks with companies that truly need our solutions.”
Key Takeaways for SaaS Companies
Do not expect performance on the mercy of just a pre-owned database. Databases your business works with will need to be up-to-date, just like your product. It’s only when the database is set up for the right audience that you will be able to see results, as in the case of our client.
Own a verified list of customers that works for your business based on industry, location, or even competitor technology, anything that ties up all your prospect audiences (in general, for example, Zendesk users in the case mentioned above). Expect higher open and conversion rates, high engagement rates, and better results during cold outreach as well.
Make data-driven decisions and expect minimal shocks, only surprises, with the benefits of using an accurate, verified, opt-in database of decision makers. In fact, active databases are a great asset for any marketing team, a blessing more so. Know who you are talking to, concentrate on their pain points while seeing the database compound as results start showing. Beyond acquisition, email marketing increases the lifetime value of customers if utilized well.
Knowing who to target gives a very good segmentation criterion for the database. The more detailed your persona targeted is, the more streamlined you can use the database, seeing more results that’ll get you understanding your customer more deeply, eventually leading to more and repeat business.