Aligning marketing and sales for growth.

PriceFX streamlines sales with Interactive Webinars now built into Adobe Marketo Engage; Interactive Webinars capability in Marketo Engage is powered by Adobe Connect.

Pricefx

Established

2011

Employees 502

Pfaffenhofen, Germany

https://www.pricefx.com/

90%

of closed deals influenced by webinars

Objectives

Strengthen buyer trust and accelerate decisions in long sales cycles by elevating voices from partners and existing customers

Reduce time spent manually managing webinars to focus on delivering more valuable messaging to prospects

Streamline marketing stack by expanding upon existing Adobe marketing technology

Improve collaboration between marketing and sales with accurate exchange of information

Results

Delivers consistent, engaging webinar experiences for prospects, influencing 90% of sales

2 hours saved for each marketer per webinar with templates and program cloning to streamline webinar production

Reduced $26K of martech cost by switching to built-in Interactive Webinars functionality inside Marketo Engage

Delivers accurate qualified leads to sales with a single platform for marketing automation

“The migration to Interactive Webinars went so smoothly that most people didn’t notice when we made the switch."

Kelly Pronek

Vice President of Commercial Excellence, Pricefx

Strengthening buyer confidence

In the five years since Matt Dawood joined pricing software company Pricefx, he’s been excited to see the difference his marketing contributions make for the company and its customers. As the industry’s first cloud-native pricing software platform, Pricefx works with some of the world’s biggest companies in manufacturing, automotive, and other industries to help them gain visibility into pricing analysis, strategy, and management.

Companies typically sign lengthy contracts with plans to oversee pricing for tens of thousands of SKUs, leading to long sales cycles compared to typical software-as-a-service products. As Marketing Director, Dawood knows the importance of delivering omnichannel marketing experiences that delight customers at every touchpoint and give them the confidence to move forward on their buying journey. Webinars are one of Pricefx’s most important channels for engaging customers.

“Nothing builds more confidence in Pricefx than hearing from our partners or existing customers,” explains Kelly Pronek, Vice President of Commercial Excellence at Pricefx. “At least 90% of our closed deals have had people attending a webinar either live or on demand during the last stretch of the opportunity cycle.”

Pricefx hosts at least two webinars a month to showcase the partner ecosystem, hear about successful use cases from existing customers, or keep customers updated on product features. As important as webinars are for sales, the marketing team struggled to find an ideal webinar platform. Senior Marketing Specialist Jeff Warhol, the primary webinar coordinator for the 20-person marketing team, worked with many different platforms, but none had just the right balance of functionality and ease of use.

In particular, the platforms lacked smooth integrations with Adobe Marketo Engage and Salesforce to support more effective lead generation. That changed when Pronek heard about the Interactive Webinars feature in Marketo Engage, powered by Adobe Connect.

“The migration to Interactive Webinars went so smoothly that most people didn’t notice when we made the switch,” says Pronek. “With everything on one platform, we don’t just pass on more qualified leads to sales, but we also deliver a better experience that helps prospects see Pricefx as a reliable leader.”

“Interactive Webinars has been a breath of fresh air when it comes to getting information that we trust. Everything works together so everyone from marketing to sales can use data to move prospects through the customer journey.”

Jeff Warhol

Senior Marketing Specialist, Pricefx

One platform for all marketing

When Pronek started the demand generation program at Pricefx, she quickly recognized the importance of working across teams, and bringing together operations, marketing, and sales to nurture prospects. One of her first actions to support this goal was to migrate to Marketo Engage. With this marketing automation solution in place, marketers can easily manage complex marketing workflows and connect dozens of applications, including Salesforce CRM, to qualify leads and pass on insights to sales teams.

With the introduction of a Marketo Engage native webinar solution, the marketing team now has all webinar information — registrations, attendance, downloads — automatically incorporated into the marketing platform. Dealing with other webinar platforms required spending valuable time on manual data imports and exports or investing time and resources in building and maintaining integrations. Even with integrations in place, errors often occurred when transferring data, which meant that marketing and sales couldn’t always trust that they had a full list of attendees or accurate emails for each participant.

Now reliable attendance information feeds into lead scoring so that sales representatives can follow up with qualified leads immediately after a webinar. This helps sales representatives approach leads when they’re most excited about Pricefx, which can result in closing deals faster.

“Interactive Webinars has been a breath of fresh air when it comes to getting information that we trust,” says Warhol. “Everything works together so everyone from marketing to sales can use data to move prospects through the customer journey.”

“With the customizable pods and more reliable email communications running through Marketo Engage, we improve experiences before, during, and after webinars to increase attendance rates and encourage sales.”

Matt Dawood

Marketing Director, Pricefx

Easier operations, better experiences

Warhol and other marketers now use familiar Marketo Engage operations to create custom webinar audiences using smart lists. They can automatically send invites and welcome emails for upcoming webinars and then send different emails to people who registered for a webinar depending on whether they attended or not.

Webinars are now much faster and easier to create. Using capabilities of Adobe Connect, Dawood and his team created multiple layout templates for webinars, enabling marketers to quickly add custom layouts. For example, webinars that introduce existing Pricefx customers start with a pre-recorded interview with the customer to provide a more polished experience and reduce technical errors. Then the webinar might switch to an interactive screen with live video, chat, and Q&A pods so that webinar participants can ask follow-up questions.

Warhol uses campaign cloning to duplicate previous webinar experiences. This saves up to two hours per marketer when setting up webinars, totaling around 40 hours of labor per year. All of this functionality comes as part of the company’s existing Marketo Engage license, allowing marketing to eliminate webinar platform costs while improving experiences.

“Interactive Webinars makes it easy for customers and prospects to hop onto webinars without needing additional logins or downloads — something that’s essential for our biggest customers who might have restricted online access,” says Dawood. “With the customizable pods and more reliable email communications running through Marketo Engage, we improve experiences before, during, and after webinars to increase attendance rates and encourage sales.”

“With Marketo Engage and features such as Interactive Webinars at the heart of our omnichannel marketing strategy, we get the message out that we can bring value and transform pricing for any customer.”

Kelly Pronek

Vice President of Commercial Excellence, Pricefx

Putting the best foot forward at every touchpoint

Customers choose Pricefx for reliability, innovation, and ease of use. It’s important for the marketing team to make sure that interactions across every touchpoint reinforce these traits so customers know they are making the right choice with Pricefx.

“While we are a relatively small company, we want customers to see that we can deliver the same level of service and technology they might expect from the world’s biggest software providers,” says Pronek. “With Marketo Engage and features such as Interactive Webinars at the heart of our omnichannel marketing strategy, we get the message out that we can bring value and transform pricing for any customer.”