Fivetran drives millions of dollars in pipeline with authority-building content delivered via Lead Gen Forms

Challenge

• Fivetran, an automated data integration company, wanted to jumpstart top-of-funnel leads for its sales team — simply sharing content on LinkedIn wasn’t driving sufficient engagement or conversions.
• “We’re really growing as a company, growing as an organization, and that starts at the top with leads,” said Jonathan Weiss, Paid Media and SEO Specialist for Fivetran. “The higher quality of lead, the better.”
• The Fivetran marketing team also wanted to drive conversions among mid-funnel prospects, but they needed to build more trust before the sales pitch. “We have a demo and trial, which is our, ‘Hey, get in and try the product. From there, you’re going to be able to purchase the product,’” said Jonathan. “But if it’s your first time coming to the site, you’re not going to sign up for those.”

Solution

• The Fivetran team partnered with Metadata, a LinkedIn marketing partner and B2B demand engine, with an eye on enriching leads, enhancing ad experimentation, and improving integration with Marketo and Salesforce. Metadata helped Fivetran leverage dynamic targeting for Lead Gen Forms.
• “We can pull in accounts with certain engagement scores or certain variables,” said Jonathan. This enables Fivetran to dynamically target different account stages based on where they are in the sales cycle. “We can get in front of accounts we’ve already identified that might be a little bit more qualified.”
• To convert more qualified leads and build brand credibility, Fivetran offered relevant content downloads to targeted accounts, including a whitepaper and a guide to data integration essentials.

Building trust and brand credibility

• Sharing content via the Lead Gen Forms rather than pushing demos also supported positioning Fivetran as a thought leader in the data integration space and cultivated its brand value as a knowledgeable vendor.
• “If it’s your first time hearing about Fivetran, they don’t care about a demo or a trial. They want to see, ‘Wow. Fivetran really knows about data integration. They know about which data warehouse performs best. We can trust them with our data,’” said Jonathan. “We’re trying to build that trust by showing that we know our stuff.”

Proven ROI and data clarity

• LinkedIn Lead Gen Form campaigns also enabled Fivetran’s marketing team to directly connect conversions with revenues and successfully make the case for continued investment in the platform. According to Jonathan, “We were able to go to our finance team and say, ‘Hey, here’s what we spent the last half of the year. Look at the quality of leads we’re bringing in.’ And that was like, ‘Okay, go, here’s more money. Continue.’”
• The integration with Metadata added deeper insight around lead profiles and attribution, while automatically syncing the data with Fivetran’s Salesforce CRM for greater visibility into ROI. “It makes it really easy to be able to say, ‘Oh, this account was from that click and they ended up being an opportunity,’” says Jonathan. “I don’t have to worry about manually importing leads. It’s just right there. But with any other tool, you kind of have to piece that together yourself.”

Lower Cost Per Lead

• Even as the quality of leads increased and resulted in millions of dollars in pipeline, the CPL was decreasing — from $200 to $80. The Fivetran team was impressed considering the scale of their campaigns. “That’s the biggest surprise,” said Jonathan. “Sometimes as you open the flood gates, you might bring in a little less qualified traffic.”
• As a result, Fivetran will increase its budget spend for LinkedIn Lead Gen Form campaigns. “We want to continue to hit all different parts of our sales cycle, not just top-of-funnel,” said Jonathan. “I figured at some point we would run out of leads, but there are still more people out there that fit into our target audience.”

The Sophisticated Marketer's Guide to LinkedIn

Get the guide