Written by Zak Pines, VP, Marketing at Bedrock Data, Inc
We recently had a chance down to sit down with Luque Wang, Senior Manager of Marketing Operations at Bit Stew Systems, to talk about his approach to demand generation, marketing automation and connecting Bit Stew’s multiple SaaS systems.
Zak: Can you start by telling us about Bit Stew Systems.
Luque: Bit Stew Systems provides a data intelligence platform. We are the industrial leader in data integration, data visualization and predictive data analysis for the connected device. Last year we were named ‘Top 100 Analytics Companies’ and ‘Top 100 IoT Startups’ by Forbes.
Zak: What is your main area of responsibility?
Luque: An important part of my role is to lead marketing intelligence, as well as aligning marketing and sales operations. This includes our entire contact-to-deal process, from generating leads and nurturing them through to opportunity creation, or Potential as it’s referred to in Zoho.
We acquire leads from three main sources: third party databases, attending industry events, and, most importantly, our inbound leads which is those who opt-in through our forms and provide us with their contact information. We score these leads and provide marketing qualified leads to our inside sales team, who then generates sales qualified leads and passes them to the sales team.
Zak: How does the lead scoring work?
We score based on both behavior and demographics, so it’s a combination of the actions you take such as downloading a white paper or requesting a demo, and meeting our target profile. So for example a Director or VP will get a higher score, because they are in our ideal buyer profile, as opposed to a team lead or manager.
Zak: What systems is your team using to support this process?
Luque: Our marketing team leverages HubSpot to drive our inbound marketing strategy, the lead scoring and the lead nurturing. Our inside sales team uses HubSpot to support their calling and once qualified that lead passes over to the sales team in Zoho. Zoho is the CRM system used for all of the sales processes from there.
Bedrock Data is the bridge between HubSpot and Zoho and keeps both of those systems in sync. It’s saved us a lot of time to know that there is consistency in the data between the two systems and that if we are looking at a report in HubSpot and looking at a report in Zoho, the data is aligned. It helps us get more out of both systems by having them so deeply integrated.
Zak: Can you share some more examples of what types of data you find useful to synchronize across HubSpot and Zoho?
Luque: Sure. We have the inside sales team using HubSpot for their calling due to the volume, and they keep all of their notes in HubSpot. Once the lead is qualified, we make all of those activities clearly available to the sales reps in Zoho so that they have full visibility into the history on that lead.
Then as leads are processed in Zoho, this data syncs back to HubSpot so that the marketing team has clear visibility into what’s working and what’s not working, conversion rates, etc.
Bedrock Data is much more than a tool for us, it integrates the entire strategy for us in generating new business from marketing to inside sales to sales., and keeps our sales and marketing teams aligned around their data.
Zak: Are there any insight you can share with us that you’ve gotten from this type of closed-loop process?
Luque: Absolutely. The first thing we see is much higher conversion rates on our inbound leads. Our inbound leads convert at 5 times vs. our third party or events leads.
We also can break down conversion rates by the type of asset that engaged them through our digital marketing. So for example, we have seen our best engagement through video assets, followed by white papers and then case studies. This helps us determine the best use of our next incremental marketing dollar, and where should we spend that money to yield the best return from sales.
Zak: And where do you do that reporting today?
Luque: Again, the nice thing is that by having a bi-directional sync between CRM and Marketing Automation systems, we know the data is aligned between both systems. So we can report out of both.
We can do detailed digital marketing reports on HubSpot and get great insights around which web channels are working – paid, organic, referrals, social, etc.. And because the data is cleanly synchronized to Zoho, we can leverage Zoho for very flexible reporting. Zoho has a business intelligence tool similar to Tableau, so by getting all of our data into Zoho we have a lot more flexibility to do our own analysis than HubSpot can do on its own.
Zak: What was it like working with the Bedrock Data team on your integration?
Luque: It was very smooth. The best part about it was we didn’t need to use any IT resources. We don’t have the resources to spend time working with APIs or figuring out integrations, so the Bedrock Data team was vital to us in creating a pain-free integration between Zoho and HubSpot.
Zak: And how does your data and reporting setup compare to what you’ve used in the past?
Luque: We are in a much better spot. First off, HubSpot itself helped consolidate several marketing tools I’ve used in the past. Before I had HubSpot, I had MailChimp for email, HootSuite for social media and Google Analytics for analytics. Everything worked well within its own domain, but when it came to integrate the data, it was impossible.
So HubSpot consolidates those tools. And then to add in the seamless CRM integration through Bedrock Data, it means we are dealing with one agreed to data set between sales and marketing – so we know we are working with the same data whether we access it from HubSpot or Zoho. That saves us a lot of time between sales and marketing, and helps us make decisions in a timely manner.