Overview
To implement account-based revenue plays, Zuora’s Marketing Operations team needed an efficient way to match leads to accounts and route them to the right representative quickly. However, they faced two major challenges. First, the out-of-the-box Salesforce lead-to-account matching was prone to errors with enterprise accounts, thus creating manual work for Sales reps. Second, routine changes to Salesforce lead assignment rules required support from Zuora’s internal Salesforce team, delaying important lead routing modifications.
- Industry
- Technology, Information & Internet
- Location
- Redwood City, CA
- Interview with
- Elicia Chen, Head of Marketing PMO
Solutions
LeanData Matching
LeanData Routing
Results
Speed to lead decreased from 1-2 days to less than 1 minute.
The ability to make changes to routing and territories increased from once a month to daily, as needed.
23 percent increase in marketing-sourced new business pipeline.
Originators of the “Subscription Economy,” Zuora is a global, end-to-end monetization platform that provides companies with subscription and revenue management software solutions. Founded in 2007, Zuora went public in 2018 and today employs more than 1,300 people around the world.
When Elicia Chen, Head of Marketing PMO, joined Zuora’s Marketing Operations team in 2019, she noticed some challenges and delays in their lead management processes. Constrained by complex Salesforce lead assignment rules, the Marketing Ops team had no ability to make routine changes on their own. Change requests had to be submitted to Zuora’s internal Salesforce team accompanied by an extensive business requirement document (BRD). As a result, changes happened approximately once per month, not nearly enough to support Zuora’s dynamic Sales teams.
Chen also noticed that the Salesforce out-of-the-box lead-to-account matching application performed poorly when dealing with enterprise organizations with multiple subsidiaries. Even a simple typo hampered the matching process. These problems made Zuora’s account-based strategy less effective.
As inbound motions served up individual leads, the Sales team found themselves manually researching accounts, often using other data vendors to get a full picture of a company’s cross-functional buying team. Since they couldn’t rely fully on the incomplete records of inbound leads, Sales reps focused on outbound motions instead.
Chen, a two-time LeanData user, knew from past experience that LeanData could not only solve Zuora’s lead management challenges but also provide revenue-generating benefits.
A Complete View of Account Buying Groups
Due to the complexity of Zuora’s products, their target buyers work across multiple departments within enterprise companies. Therefore, Marketing uses an ABX strategy to reach these cross-functional stakeholders. ABX motions rely heavily on matching leads to the right account. Having used LeanData at two prior companies, Chen knew she could trust LeanData’s lead-to-account matching.
Chen says that LeanData’s lead-to-account matching tool is “table stakes,” taking out manual guesswork and saving time.
As Zuora’s ABX strategy matured, LeanData scaled seamlessly to support a system growing in complexity. As a result of LeanData optimization and a revamped marketing qualified lead (MQL) model, Zuora’s MQL to sales qualified lead (SAL) opportunity conversion rate tripled from 1.6 percent to 4.8 percent, resulting in a 23 percent increase in marketing-sourced new business pipeline.
Radically Improved Speed to Lead
Recognizing how quickly buyer interest can fade, Chen knew it was essential to get prospective buyers into the Sales team’s hands at precisely the right moment the buyer was ready. Speed to lead was a key indicator of Zuora’s conversion rates later in the pipeline.
As a result of implementing LeanData, Zuora’s speed to lead went from one to two days down to less than a minute. Increasing speed to lead gave the Marketing Ops team more confidence with Zuora’s Sales stakeholders. It showed that instead of running programs in silos and throwing leads over the fence, Marketers were now able to ensure the highest quality leads were delivered to their correct Sales counterpart on a timely basis. This opened the conversation to service level agreements (SLA) and created buy-in from Sales leaders.
Routing Changes Made Quickly and Easily
With the help of LeanData’s no-code FlowBuilder, Zuora now has a more complex and robust routing strategy that Chen reports is “very easy” and “straightforward” to manage. Changes for territory shifts, vacation mode, round robins, and other lead routing logic are made by the Marketing Ops team as needed without having to contact the IT department.
“I no longer have to go through my IT or Salesforce team to make every tiny change anytime the strategy shifts,” says Chen. Her team can now celebrate an SDR promotion rather than stress over the associated routing changes.
LeanData’s routing has allowed Chen to create a multi-layer, dynamic routing flow that was not possible with Salesforce out-of-the-box assignment rules. Zuora’s FlowBuilder contains a “trust hierarchy” of no-code logic rules for detailed territories and even takes into consideration particular accounts requiring the white-glove treatment.
End-of-year territory realignments are now easily implemented, ready and on time for the annual Sales Kickoff.
Laser Focus on Hot Accounts with LeanData & 6sense
Zuora uses 6sense to capture anonymous buying signals and target accounts that are “heating up.” 6sense pushes segments, buying stage predictions, and other rich account data to Salesforce. LeanData then acts as the pipeline to route accounts to the right seller at the right time.
Harnessing the Power of the Tech Stack: Marketo & Salesforce
Chen has spent much of her career working with powerful tools like Salesforce and Marketo and finds that when they don’t communicate, the applications are limited.
Chen views LeanData as an orchestra conductor that helps her harness the complexities of Salesforce and Marketo. With LeanData as the conductor, leads flow between both platforms, helping them work together and sending data in the right direction.
More Than Just Matching and Routing
While LeanData has transformed Zuora’s lead routing strategy, Chen uses it for so much more. LeanData helps Chen update data, send alerts and generate audit logs, giving visibility to processes that may not be working.
Chen says, “LeanData isn’t just a routing and matching tool. It’s also a data update tool and an alert tool. It gives us a much bigger toolbox when it comes to MQLs. We now know when an MQL has fallen through and has not been touched.”
About Zuora
Zuora (NYSE: ZUO) is a leading monetization platform provider for recurring revenue businesses across many industries. Launched in 2007 as a billing platform, today Zuora helps more than 1,000 companies, including 26 of the Fortune 100, automate and orchestrate many aspects of subscription and usage management.
