Overview
Remind is the education sector’s leading communication platform. Millions of educators, students, and parents use Remind’s products to connect with the people and resources that help them teach and learn. But poor data quality and misrouted leads resulted in slow response times and internal friction.
- Industry
- EdTech, Mobile Communication
- Location
- San Francisco, CA
- Interview with
- Arjun Naskar, Head of B2B Marketing
Solutions
Lean Data Matching
Lean Data Routing
Results
Leads are routed to the right reps through intuitive routing flows.
Speed to lead time has decreased from 3-4 days to just 1-2 hours.
The team now has greater trust in its data, and relationships across teams have improved.
Remind launched in 2011 as a free product for teachers to communicate with students and parents outside of the classroom. The company began to monetize operations six years later, selling to school and district administrators.
Over the past year, Remind has pulled cross-functional teams together to focus on revenue, as well as the product’s impact on students. The company has started to reach out into larger school districts and has ramped up outbound marketing efforts accordingly.
“A lot of teachers, students, and parents in most school districts across the country use Remind, but there isn’t as much familiarity at the district administrator level,” said Arjun Naskar, Head of B2B Marketing at Remind. “We’re focused on these key accounts to ensure we speak to them in a way that resonates.”
Tackling poor data quality and misrouted leads
Remind’s legacy database posed several challenges for the company. Many users who registered for the product when they were teachers had since become school administrators, however, the database didn’t reflect these changes. To complicate matters further, administrators switch schools frequently, so Remind knew that their contact information was likely out of date.
“We had a database of over 80,000 people matched to all sorts of accounts, and it wasn’t clear whether they were still administrators at those accounts,” Naskar said. “It was pretty messy before LeanData.”
In addition, leads and accounts were often misrouted to the wrong sales reps or account managers. Sometimes it would take four days to reach out to leads, and Arjun was bogged down by one-off instances of salespeople reporting misrouted leads. These constant interruptions slowed down key work such as building campaigns.
Misrouted leads also caused internal friction between Remind’s separate inbound and outbound teams. “People were at a loss as to what to do next and whose toes they were stepping on,” Naskar said.
Finding a partner to drive alignment and growth
Remind needed an intelligent, reliable solution that could match leads to the right accounts and route them to the right reps. The company generally has a “build versus buy” mentality, however, it knew the best option in this case was to hire an expert revenue operations partner. Once Remind learned that LeanData could solve its issues with misrouted leads, getting senior staff on board was a breeze.
“This was the first tool after Salesforce that we bought—ever—and it was a quick decision,” Naskar said. “The only option we considered was LeanData. It was fast and easy to get started.”
Remind worked with LeanData to identify key problems to solve for, then LeanData built a blueprint that Remind quickly tested and implemented. The initial implementation only took one or two weeks to complete.
Insightful matching capabilities
Remind can now see when contacts and accounts already exist for new leads, and sales reps can deduplicate the records quickly. This is essential, given the nature of the education sector where people change roles and organizations frequently.
“LeanData helps us ensure we don’t step on each other’s toes, so we can holistically service an account versus debating who gets the lead,” Naskar said.
Faster, more accurate routing
Remind can also analyze new leads to see whether they are a school or district, how large they are, and where they are located. LeanData enables the company to tailor its approach in the same way that one would deal with small to medium-sized businesses versus enterprises.
Remind’s sales team is territory and segment based, so it’s crucial that the company can efficiently and accurately route to the appropriate teams. “A large district like the New York Department of Education is handled very differently than a small school, kindergarten, or private nursery,” Naskar said.
In addition, Remind can respond to leads based on where they are in the buyers’ journey. If a lead has questions or if the lead is ready to purchase right away, Remind can immediately identify and route the lead through the appropriate flow to the right person.
With LeanData’s intuitive routing flows, Remind has improved its time to first sales touch—by 99%, from three or four days to one or two hours.
“We want to make sure every person who comes through gets touched within the same business day. That didn’t used to be the case, but now it is, and that’s incredibly meaningful for us,” Naskar said. “Administrators are very busy, and if you don’t catch them within a certain time span, you may lose them forever.”
Expanding into new markets
Remind’s go-to-market teams are poised to become more complex as the company learns what marketing channels work best for its products. Remind is in its third year of sales, and as its product line expands, the company is focused on which countries and verticals to aim for next. The first priority is to saturate the K-12 market in the United States and convert free usage into paid customers.
“We’re constantly experimenting with inbound versus outbound marketing, and which teams handle which leads and accounts,” Naskar said. “We need a flexible solution that allows us to toggle between various types of routing and matching.”
As Remind grows its team, internationalizes its operations, and expands its product line, the company’s partnership with LeanData will continue to be critical for effectively managing, nurturing, and converting leads into sales.
About Remind
Remind is a communication platform that helps every student succeed by allowing educators to reach students and parents where they are. With free and paid options that support engagement at every level in a school or district, Remind connects educators and families with resources that help them teach and learn.
