Brainshark Satisfies Hunger for Leads

Relevancy is everything in Brainshark's business.

As a provider of cloud-based solutions helping companies and individuals create, share, and track online and mobile video presentations, Brainshark promises users an interactive experience beyond the static PowerPoint presentation. Brainshark's technology lets users see who watched their videos and for how long, see what files they looked at, and embed surveys and poll questions within presentations. From Staples retail store training to marketing campaign collateral at an investment firm, the use cases for B2B video know no bounds.

When Brainshark markets and sells its video solutions and products, it runs campaigns based on vertical, geography, function, or specific application. An inherent challenge is identifying whether an audience is the target audience to be messaging in the first place.

"We saw [an] opportunity to accelerate our growth by getting better at delivering more relevant messages to the wide variety of audiences that we campaign to," says Art Gehring, Brainshark's senior director of demand generation.

In November 2011, Brainshark looked to Data.com, a provider of business contact data and information integrated with the Salesforce.com CRM system, to help find stronger leads for demand generation purposes.

Brainshark had sourced leads in a more "traditional manner" using bulk lists, but Data.com gave it more control over campaigns through a subscription-based model offering fresh lead information that would integrate with its Eloqua marketing automation platform and Salesforce.com connector.

"When you're in the client [application], you can see exactly what the options are and really drill down and get the best possible audience for your message," leading to better response rates and less people unsubscribing from email campaigns, Gehring says.

By using Data.com to land and grow accounts, Brainshark experienced a 50 percent increase in close rates and increased its marketing qualified opportunities by 100 percent, which drove 40 percent of its new business.

A considerable number of Brainshark users begin their customer journeys looking to solve specific problems, such as getting more out of Webinar investments or more engagement from online training. Once the initial pain points are resolved, the account moves into more nurtured environments, where reps look to build deeper relationships with the customer accounts.

"Data.com has really made a big difference in helping us fulfill our full strategy to help the account-based team understand that there's a lot more ways you can use the solution you've already invested in," Gehring remarks.

Next, Brainshark plans to try Data.com Clean, which identifies duplicate accounts or outdated records and syncs cleansed data back to a user's CRM system. The company wants to increase its investment in lead nurturing campaigns so messages are not tailored solely to a target audience, but also consider what actions potential customers took on the Brainshark site or how they've responded to past campaigns.

As Gehring points out, if Brainshark is going to use a name or an email from a database, it's vital to make messaging relevant and useful. In this instance, "an email is not a be-all and end-all," he says. "You want to introduce the concept, and then the many different ways you can use video. That sort of drove our decision to go to Data.com."

The Payoff

Using Data.com, Brainshark has: