NetApp’s sales and marketing teams were unable to create effective outreach programs before working with EBQ. Within months of their partnership, NetApp saw:
Records created from 3 Trade Show Events
Actionable Contact Database
The Challenge
NetApp creates innovative storage systems and software that help their global customers store, manage, protect, and retain sensitive data. In 2010, NetApp launched a suite of software and storage solutions designed for the healthcare industry, including electronic health records (EHR) and picture archiving and communication systems (PACS).
Initially, NetApp hired someone to lead the healthcare targeting initiative and obtain vendor certifications for their products. They compiled their contact lists, which came from different sources, including trade show events and database vendors. Unfortunately, their marketers realized they did not have a good database of prospects to kickstart their lead generation efforts.
“The marketers asked us to do this, so we built the vertical and had our products certified. We were market-ready, but then realized our lists were not,” said Jessica Jorgensen, NetApp’s Senior Marketing Manager for Healthcare.
As they evaluated their contact list, NetApp’s sales leaders noticed huge limitations, such as poor data accuracy or missing data altogether. While email programs typically require only basic contact information, NetApp’s sales team needed far more to personalize their calls.
“Of all the data we had, 15-18% was inactionable. It just died in our system. What’s more, 50-60% of the data that was usable contained errors. So, we were only getting the value of about one-third of our data investment,” said Jessica.
Even some of the contacts from their trade show events were irrelevant to their sales efforts. Turns out, their lists were often built from trade show attendees turning over a business card who were just trying to win a giveaway. There was no way to pre-qualify these individuals before they entered the database.
The Solution
EBQ helped NetApp deliver accurate and complete data and create custom databases. They started by cleaning up their invalid contacts’ information.
Oftentimes, it takes a sales rep 3-4 calls before they realize a contact is not a good target. To accelerate their lead qualification process, EBQ helped enrich their database quickly with verified phone numbers, company names, and email addresses.
Within months, EBQ delivered 7000 records from 3 different trade shows. 2000 records from the original lists were deemed to be valid sales leads.
Since NetApp invested $100,000 in one trade show alone, the HIMSS Conference & Exhibition (one of the largest and most important healthcare IT conferences in the U.S.), budgeting money to cleanse the data from this and other shows made sense.
The Results
Today, NetApp’s sales prospect list is 100% actionable. But the impact is more than just an accurate and comprehensive database.
NetApp’s sales and marketing teams are elated with their custom contact database because they don’t have to waste time reaching out to irrelevant contacts and have more productive calls. After all, the better the data, the better the return.
I now insist on having EBQ as a part of my budget every quarter. EBQ is part of what we consider a best practice. I’m a pretty tough customer, and I couldn’t be happier
NetApp x EBQ
Find out how EBQ created NetApp’s custom contact database, resulting in higher lead generation wins