The Customer
A nonprofit software leader ready to embrace outbound.
When Anna Curtis, senior digital marketing manager, joined Neon One in late 2020, the company was getting most of its business from leads that came in from Google Ads.
It was a fruitful model, but not a sustainable one.
“Naturally, the cost per lead will go up each year and you’re going to spend more. If you’re not investing in other channels now, you’ll have a much harder time expanding or diversifying how your sales team sources business in the future.”
To unlock new opportunities (and avoid getting stuck doubling their budget to funnel the same number of leads to sales), the marketing team looked for a solution where they could continue running display ads—this time in a way that would connect back to what their sales team was doing.
The Challenge
Gain more visibility into display advertising and become more niche with targeting.
Despite having the unique advantage of targeting nonprofit companies whose information is public, Neon One faced an all-too-common problem. In terms of quality leads, running display campaigns through Google Ads was hit or miss.
“We're pretty familiar with our ICP, but Google Ads isn’t catered to B2B. We weren’t able to access the level of targeting we needed and we saw a lot of junk come through. It felt like a wasted effort.”
Making sure the marketing team spent their ad dollars wisely meant looking more strategically at sales activities.
“We felt a disconnect from sales with our existing programmatic setup. We needed to know what our sales team was doing. Who are they reaching out to? Who’s engaging with us? Are they the right people—and how do we target them with display ads?”
The Solution
Leverage RollWorks, Salesforce, and segmentation to surface engaged and high-fit prospects.
The marketing team at Neon One team chose RollWorks to help deepen sales activities—and while it took a few months to secure buy-in, it was ultimately an easy sell.
“RollWorks sold itself when we decided to invest in a solution. Not only were we able to present the data we’d collect, we were also able to talk about how traditional methods of outbound aren't comparable to what we’re getting with RollWorks.”
But to fully reap the benefits of the platform, Neon One’s marketing team knew they couldn’t just plop RollWorks in front of sales and tell them to look at the data.
They had to show their sales organization what kind of data they’d see in Salesforce—and more importantly, help them prioritize it.
“As a manager, I’m looking at how we improve from an operations standpoint. If we're collecting certain data through Pardot, how can we improve? And how are we ensuring that the sales team is using all of the data we feed into Salesforce to have better conversations with prospects?”
One major way Anna and her team empowered sales was by creating a dashboard to assist with outbound prioritization.
“We wanted to put our sales team in the position where they could easily decide which accounts to contact based on the data—especially given limited time for outbounding. We’re now able to say, ‘Here are spiking accounts, here’s their fit-grade, here’s the account list they’re in, and here’s their journey stage.’”
The Payoff
Proof display media works, efficiency during a downturn, and a growing relationship with sales.
Neon One’s still early in its outbound ABM journey, but they’ve already seen meaningful results.
“Proving display media in the past was daunting. RollWorks makes it really easy to show the impact of our ads through accounts we’ve closed since they’re tracked within the platform. This helps us prove value quickly so we can keep doing what we need to do.”
Adopting RollWorks also helped the company streamline its software spend. When planning for the year ahead, the marketing team evaluated what to keep and what to cut—and, as Anna notes, “There was no question whether to keep RollWorks because it enables us to get so specific, targeted, and efficient with who we’re reaching.”
In the upcoming year, Neon One plans to expand its use of RollWorks to promote standalone products—a new venture for both sales and marketing.
“Our sales and marketing teams have primarily focused on our core product, Neon CRM, but actively advertising specific products will come up soon, and we plan to use RollWorks to help us navigate that challenge.”
