Last week, UK-based digital marketing think-tank, Econsultancy, published a blog post of marketing automation case studies, presenting six examples that illustrate the business benefits of these technologies, and also serve as proof points for how marketing automation bridges the sales and marketing divide.
It was both compelling and useful, and something we haven’t published in a while. So in the spirit of age-old idioms (imitation and flattery and whatnot) and helpful illustrations, below is a list of six marketing automation examples that demonstrate the value of marketing automation technology to businesses of all shapes and sizes.
US Fleet Tracking achieves $30,000 revenue in Black Friday campaign
It’s that time of year, so this seemed an appropriate choice to kick off the list …
As a provider of Internet-based GPS vehicle tracking and asset management, US Fleet Tracking began using Act-On to increase marketing campaign ROI across multiple systems in widespread markets, including leveraging the power of email and Salesforce integration across desktop and mobile users.
In addition, the company needed to fix the disconnect between software solutions in different departments, which made it challenging or impossible to fully understand the success – or not – of its marketing strategies.
Within a few short days of implementing Act-On, US Fleet Tracking launched its first campaign on nothing short of the biggest eCommerce day of the year. The result: 25% of recipients filled out a call-back form and the campaign pulled down $30,000 in revenue.
Other benefits of using Act-On include:
- It real-time dashboard, allowing US Fleet Tracking see not only who receives each campaign, but all of their engagement actions including email, website, form, and content engagement.
- Ability to send tailored messages based on clients’ needs and interests.
- Reduced time spent on cold calls.
- Increase in qualified leads and sales. In one scenario, Act-On alerted a sales person about a qualified lead, resulting in an $8,500 deal.
Adaptive Computing increases sales by $150k in first month
Explosive business growth is generally thought to be a good thing. But for cloud computing giant Adaptive Computing, doubling its size and success posed a new challenge: keeping up.
In particular, Adaptive needed to significantly increase sales’ ability to follow up with qualified leads, which had been abysmal – taking one to three weeks. With lengthy sales cycles of six to nine months, the protracted follow-ups were contributing to missed opportunities and lost sales.
By integrating Act-On’s marketing automation platform into its Salesforce and GoToWebinar applications, Adaptive’s sales team was able to quickly see where any prospect, lead, or customer was in the sales funnel, better prioritize opportunities, and communicate effectively with audiences based on their current needs, interests, and activity history.
Additionally, the Act-On platform replaced three separate marketing applications, removing system fragmentation and significantly reducing the administrative tasks associated with managing disparate tools.
Among its key results:
- Within the first month of implementation, Adaptive’s sales were up by $150,000.
- The sales team is able to follow up with qualified leads in as little as 24 hours, down from one to three weeks.
- Salesforce integration, including campaign creation, was integrated and functional within a few hours, not days or weeks.
Propelics increases year-over-year revenue growth by 800%
Delivering enterprise-class mobile communication strategies and apps for some of the world’s largest brands, Propelics implemented marketing automation to shore up the gap between its sales force and its marketing campaigns.
The company had previously struggled with a cobbled-together solution that was comprised of fragmented and disconnected tools, underutilized its Sugar CRM application, and forced sales and marketing teams to undergo cumbersome manual processes when creating, measuring, and following up on campaigns.
Following Act-On implementation, Propelics was able to:
- Integrate Sugar CRM, web visitor tracking, landing page and web form creation, targeted email, webinars, automated campaigns, and analytics into a 360-degree view of each prospect and customer.
- Consolidate vendors, enhance visibility, and streamline marketing-to-sales communication.
- Increase lead-generation opportunities by 100%.
The most significant result was Propelics’ YoY 800% increase in revenue after Act-On was implemented.
Progressive increases Webinars from 9 per year … to 9 per day
Progressive Insurance Group has solidified its market niche by smart business practices and innovative campaigns (“Name Your Price” and “Flo” being current crowd-pleasers). But insurance often has a complicated and multi-tiered business model; for Progressive that includes a mix of direct sales and 30,000 independent agents, all of whom sell Progressive products as well as competitor brands.
To remain top-of-mind with its agents, Progressive implemented Act-On marketing automation to manage its end-to-end webinar communication program.
Using Act-On’s campaign automation capabilities, Progressive created and delivered targeted messages to its agents, from initial invitation through post-webcast follow-up. And using real-time analytics, the company was able to capture the full activity history of its agents. This enabled Progressive’s marketing staff to send the right messages at the right time, motivating and educating each agent in ways that are the most relevant and effective.
The company now maintains a frequency of nine separate webcast events on a single day, up from nine events in a single year, saving hundreds of hours of work.
Rapid Notify increases lead generation by 50%
Removing siloes and getting sales and marketing teams to share data was the challenge that spurred Rapid Notify to seek out a marketing automation solution.
A provider of web-based emergency notification systems to a diverse set of industries, Rapid Notify’s growth was constrained by non-scalable, disparate systems and manual processes for identifying leads, tracking and scoring them, and communicating sales readiness. The fragmentation and disconnected data was increasingly impacting the company’s ability to create value-add communications, launch effective campaign, and close sales.
Rapid Notify chose Act-On, integrating it with Salesforce, as well as using it for a range of other activities including targeted and dynamic email campaigns, one-click landing page creation, website visitor tracking, and lead scoring.
After implementing Act-On marketing automation, the company saw the following improvements:
- 20% increase in closing rates.
- 50% increase in lead-generation opportunities.
- 150% increase in event attendance.
- Annual savings of 400 hours, which were previously used for manually managing sales and marketing processes.
And finally … washroom plumbing company improves the sales flow
So many great reasons to include this example, but we’ll keep it all above water. 
Bradley Manufacturing Company, a leader in commercial plumbing fixtures and washroom accessories, used marketing automation to boost the growth rate of the successful 90-year old company.
The immediate need was to increase their ability to effectively communicate with prospects and customers without increasing work load, something its traditional email platform wasn’t able to deliver.
Longer term, Bradley wanted to create a robust marketing program that was easy to learn and use, supported professional campaigns, and provided real-time insights into if and how their audiences were engaging with them – a foundational element of delivering value at the right time and building long-term customer relationships.
By implementing the Act-On platform, Bradley saw several important outcomes, including:
- Increased volume and quality of leads due to social push communications, one-click tailored landing pages and Web form creation, and progressive lead scoring.
- A significant reduction in sales cycles.
- A doubling of email open rates, from 22 percent to 45 percent.
- 100% increase in trade show booth traffic.
- Targeted campaigns that resulted in new international market exposure.
And there you have it, a short list of how today’s companies are successfully using Act-On marketing automation to drive change, making business a bit easier and a lot more lucrative. Be sure to visit our case studies page for more.
Have a success story for us? We’re all ears.