Multiple channels and campaigns, limited view into engagement
While managing digital campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google, and other platforms, Alma marketers also relied on Mailchimp to connect with current and prospective members. Though the team could use Mailchimp to support mass email blasts, they lacked insights into how these campaigns were driving revenue for the business, and couldn’t deliver tailored communications.
For Carmen Cedeño, Senior Director of Demand Generation, knowing what moved providers to join the Alma community, or where they might have stopped short, was key to connecting providers with Alma.
“We wanted a more integrated, automated approach to our marketing efforts that also takes advantage of all the great customer data we have,” says Cedeño. “At the same time, we must ensure all our communications with therapists are HIPAA compliant. We did a thorough review of marketing automation platforms and Adobe Marketo Engage stood out. It enables us to really focus on building our provider community with much more personalized, effective campaigns.”
Unifying marketing and sales
Fortunately, Cedeño had a previous working relationship with Veronica Lazarovici, Marketo Engage Champion and Certified Expert. Right away, Lazarovici, who joined Alma as Marketing Operations Manager, knew that the solution could give the marketing and sales teams visibility into how providers engaged across all channels—and the ability to act on those insights, at scale.
Cedeño and Lazarovici helped launch Marketo Engage at Alma to act as a centralized hub that pooled data from all channels and activities and integrated it with tools already used regularly by sales. By leveraging the solution’s vital integrations and the intelligent automation, the small yet mighty marketing operations team built the foundation critical to increasing marketing’s contribution to pipeline and grow Alma’s roster of providers across the country.
Using Marketo Engage, the marketing team, can strategically redirect communications to reach providers with the most relevant messaging based on what content clinicians engage with. Once the marketing team delivers targeted campaigns and gathers information about therapists across various channels, they have a reliable customer history that’s easy to share with sales teams through the deep integration with Alma’s Salesforce CRM instance. Using Marketo Sales Insight (MSI), sales teams can access information on completed web forms, webpage visits, and email opens from within the CRM. Equipped with a clearer picture of the services that a provider is interested in, sales representatives can approach individual therapists with personalized follow up.
“We can now engage new prospects and current members alike with content that reflects their interests and goals for their practice,” says Cedeño. “Through faster, more streamlined collaboration between our marketing and sales teams, we’ve doubled our Alma community in 12 months and accelerated our time to market in new states by twofold.”
Turning leads into new memberships
The marketing team has become an increasingly vital part of Alma’s focus on broadening its footprint among providers nationwide. Every month, Lazarovici compiles a report showing the campaigns and programs that engage more providers within the Alma community to determine the best return on investment for marketing activities.
“When we discovered that providers engaged more with certain paid social media channels, we invested accordingly. We saw a 533% increase year over year in paid advertising’s contribution to pipeline by investing in the right channels,” says Cedeño. “Similarly, as we got more effective at reaching providers with the right message at the right time, we increased marketing’s contribution to the pipeline by 21% year over year.”
Marketing automation has also proved to be invaluable in helping sales and marketing win back providers by enabling the team to nurture leads and prospects across all channels—contributing millions of dollars to the company’s bottom line in the process.
“With Marketo Engage, we found that re-engaged providers were 26% more likely to join Alma than therapists newly in the pipeline,” says Lazarovici. “By using the solution to re-engage prospects, we generated an additional $4M in revenue, while reducing our cost-per-lead by 30%.”
