How to Increase Opportunity Creation Rate by 24x Like Okta

Recently, Okta decided to expand its vision for the future. Already the category leader for identity management, Okta set the ambitious goal of winning the logos of the world’s biggest and best companies. The team decided on an ambitious progression of its primary go-to-market segments, which today includes IT modernization, security, and digital transformation. 

To support the company’s broader goals, the digital and regional marketing teams decided to formalize their collaboration on account-based marketing (ABM). At this point, the Okta team was early in their ABM journey.  They needed to align the various teams trying to target, reach and convert the company’s evolving target account list (TAL).

But a few challenges stood in their way:

• Support ambitious growth targets
• Find prospects aligned with Okta’s new go-to-market angles
• Reinvigorate reach and engagement outside of live conferences and in-person events
• Evolve account targeting beyond sales-nominated prospects
• Understand prospect intent to curate content most likely to resonate
• Focus investments on accounts that are most likely to buy

The Step-By-Step Process Okta Used to Launch Intent-Based Campaigns

Here are the steps the Okta team took to kick things off:

1. Tested Intent Campaigns for Three Core Themes

The Okta team created new segments based on the interests and keywords that align with their new go-to-market pillars (IT modernization, security, and digital transformation). Specifically, the team looked at various segmentation options, based on a prospect’s stage in the buyer’s journey (for example, awareness vs. lower funnel offers).

2. Create Content Maps

The idea here was to answer an important question: how do we move the target audience toward their end goal? To do so, the team built new Content Maps to surface the best resources and offers based on a prospect’s: 

• Level of interest

• Stage in the buyer’s journey

3. Review Account List and Content Maps with Stakeholders

At this stage, the Okta team looked at various segmentation options—geo, journey stage, etc.—to further personalize creative. From there, the team was ready to review the updated account list and content maps with the sales team and the solutions marketing team.

4. Conduct Technical Audit

During this important step, the Okta team gathered the engagement and conversion baselines they’d need to measure and improve performance after the launch. As part of this effort, they looked at gaps in automating audience pushes and considered step-by-step views into campaign watches.

5. Launch and Optimize

At this point, the team was ready to activate its new RollWorks intent playbooks. Of course, the work didn’t stop there. To further ensure timeliness and refine audience size, the team performed continuous optimization and refinement of TALs, keywords, and creative. They:

• Used dynamic lists to make sure their account lists stayed up-to-date

• Activated scoring using RollWorks Fit Grade feature

• Regularly connected with sales and marketing on TAL and intent keyword accuracy

• Consistently refreshed creative with latest content and paused low performing ads

• Tested new ad types and content (HTML5 ads and customer stories, for example)

The Impact of Okta’s Intent-Based Strategy

Since launch, the Okta team has seen impressive results, including:

• 17% improvement in click through rate (CTR)

• 2.7x reduction in cost per conversion

• 63% reduction in time from opportunity creation to closed deal

• 22% increase in influenced revenue 

This shift in strategy has allowed for more granular targeting and a diversified media mix—based on engagement level—for channels like LinkedIn. Overall, the Okta team has seen how powerful intent can be for prioritizing in-market accounts. Moving forward, they’ve committed to continuous optimization to keep campaigns healthy and accounts engaged.