Case Study

Sales engagement: Improving lead generation through interactive conversation

Brief

Marketing automation provider Eloqua wanted to create a highly personalised and interactive video to engage its prospects and to help improve the take up of its marketing automation solutions.

Strategy

Eloqua’s goal was to make its technology stand out to its prospects and to present its brand in a friendly and engaging way. The campaign specifically aimed to:

• Convert a higher proportion of Eloqua’s website visitors into qualified and motivated sales leads
• Increase the amount of prospect data captured in the sales process
• Improve the click through rates from banner adverts
• Reduce the amount of time taken to transfer a lead into a sale
• Increase awareness of the Eloqua brand and the company offering

Execution

Working with digital agency Jellyvision, Eloqua designed a quirky, interactive video to educate Eloqua’s prospects on its product offering in a compelling, and highly personalised way. The video combined a mix of humour and company information and was placed on the landing page of Eloqua’s website. During the video conversation, prospects were invited to input their information and were guided through a sales process to identify their unique marketing needs and requirements with the interactive approach helping to ensure they remained engaged. The online conversation was also used by Eloqua to capture information on its prospects for market research purposes and also to assist its sales force in maximising the success of subsequent communications with the leads generated from the video.

Results

The video’s humour and informal sales approach proved highly successful. Prospects who became involved in the conversation spent on average 3 minutes and 45 seconds interacting with its content and those who eventually become sales leads spent in excess of 6 minutes taking part. Feedback from users on the sales method was also largely positive. When asked whether or not the conversation helped them to understand the products and services that Eloqua provides, 43% said it was "very helpful" and 33% said it was "pretty helpful".

Eloqua also fine-tuned its overall marketing strategy through homepage and B2B banner adverts and a personalised e-mail strategy. The campaign has been a considerable success and Eloqua has seen a significant increase in its marketing conversion rates including:

• A 1200 per cent boost in lead volume
• 266 per cent boost in the conversion from leads to sales

The involvement of prospects through B2B online banner adverts also improved:

• Eloqua’s redesigned banner adverts received more than 4 times the number of visits than its previous adverts
• The new adverts have also captured almost double the amount of leads than the old versions
• The time taken to transfer a lead into a sale almost halved

In addition to improved lead generation, user opt-in to Eloqua’s campaigns has almost quadrupled, with a 162% increase in prospect to customer conversion. A clear spike in website traffic is also visible, serving to raise the profile of Eloqua’s brand and expose a growing number of visitors to its product offering.

To maximise Eloqua’s exposure following the start of the campaign, Eloqua and Jellyvision are continuing to drive prospects to Eloqua’s website and are encouraging users to take part in the online conversation. Planned upgrades to increase audience interaction even further include:

• A more compelling offering within the conversation, i.e. introducing white papers
• More specific detail about features on certain paths and the options available to Eloqua customers when interacting with video content
• The ability to move through the conversation at a quicker pace

Brian Kardon, Eloqua’s CMO comments: “Businesses and consumers have become more demanding and are increasingly savvy about the options available to them. Marketers need to make sure they communicate and engage with their prospects in a way that is personalised to their individual needs. As this case study shows, when taking the right approach, interactive conversations can identify the strongest sales leads and help companies understand how to use different channels correctly. By doing this, organisations can improve the effectiveness of their marketing strategies and ensure the potential of their customer data is maximised”.

To view the Eloqua and Jellyvision interactive conversation for yourself, please click here:
http://illuminate.eloqua.com/