How Harness.io Automates Its Free Trial Offer With LinkedIn and Zapier
San Francisco-based Harness.io is provides an intelligent software delivery platform that enables engineers to deliver software faster, with higher quality and less effort. The platform is designed to help companies accelerate their cloud initiatives as well as their adoption of containers and orchestration tools like Kubernetes and Amazon EC.
Challenge
A longtime LinkedIn advertiser, Harness.io began using LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms in January 2020 to reduce friction and increase lead volume. “It was critical for us to have a solution that was triggered immediately in real-time so that leads could get up and running within the platform and start seeing the value of Harness. If there are days or even hours before that initial engagement, we find users don’t end up using the product, it becomes an afterthought,” said Geoffrey Taft, director of digital marketing at Harness.io.
The forms were successful, but with the influx of leads came the additional challenge of routing those leads efficiently and accurately. Provisioning accounts and getting them into the company’s Marketo system required a clunky process of manual steps across multiple people. With several hoops to jump through, there were many delays and even lost requests. “On top of that, when we started digging into it, we noticed that there were roughly 200 leads that never made it to our CRM system, and we had no context as to why, ”said Sara vonDohren, senior manager of programs at Harness.io.
Solution
To solve the problem, Harness.io turned to LinkedIn marketing partner Zapier. One goal was to automate the provision of accounts and eliminate snags stemming from the manual process. Another was to deliver their trial link to leads more seamlessly and speedily.
“With the Zapier integration, we’re able to eliminate the question of, ‘Is the lead going to make it into our systems? Will the account be provisioned?’ Now, we can focus on engaging our customers and bringing them further down the funnel,” Taft said.
Results
With the Zapier integration automatically handling account provisioning, the company was able to dramatically increase its speed-to-lead rate and streamline a tech-heavy process. “We’re now seeing customers that are more engaged in a more consistent manner,” Taft said. “It’s a repeatable and predictable process that allows us to focus on growth at scale.”
VonDohren added: “It is essentially a developer solution that can be used by marketers. It’s really simplified the resources and support we would need and given us the ability to build these developer-esque solutions ourselves.”
Enabling Better Automation With Zapier
The Harness.io team was able to further leverage the Zapier integration to support its UTM tracking system by adding unique fields. “It’s helpful for adding information to the lead as it’s collected and even funnel and sort leads from LinkedIn to better organize them before it reaches Marketo,” vonDohren said. “One of those for us is UTM. Using Zapier, we can add certain UTMs based on the information we get from LinkedIn and tag this to the lead without having to send it to Marketo.”
Automated Auditing Enables Swift Fixes
Thanks to this improved tracking ability between LinkedIn, Zapier, and Marketo, the team also receives increased visibility when things go wrong, enabling Harness.io to quickly address issues as they happen. “We wanted to find a way, to not only get 100% accuracy in terms of leads being carried over from forms to Marketo, but make sure that we had some sort of audit trail to verify if there was an error, what exactly the error was, and be able to log it,” vonDohren said.
Making Sign-Ups Fast, Easy, and Pain-Free
Ultimately, LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms combined with Zapier reduced friction with potential leads, making the trial sign-up process fast and painless, especially as the company scaled up its offers. “This is the free trial they’re requesting. We need to deliver on that request in seconds or they lose interest,” said vonDohren. “It can’t happen in minutes, let alone hours or days — that was never an option with the volume we knew we would experience.”
“The Zapier and LinkedIn integration is customizable, fast, and easy to set up. If you’re someone on LinkedIn, and you’re going to sign up for a free trial or experience, you need to have something in your inbox within seconds. The quicker we can be with getting leads the trial they’re expecting, the more we see that effort reflected in our pipeline.” – Sara vonDohren, Senior Manager of Programs, Harness.io
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