CipherOptics, an early stage start-up, was faced with the challenge of developing a lead generation program that would target qualified prospects. In addition, the organization needed to implement a full CRM and e-mail campaign capability that would give the organization the ability to manage their business more effectively. CipherOptics had customer, sales and lead data in 3 distinct systems. Data resided in Excel spreadsheets, Goldmine, and Microsoft Outlook. As a result customer data was outdated, and customers could not be effectively marketed to.
After a careful review of business objectives, it was determined that the company first needed to implement a complete CRM system, that was flexible, cost-effective, platform agnostic and had the ability to quickly add users and capabilities. Salesforce.com was chosen as the CRM platform due to its ASP structure, flexibility and scalability. A4DM successfully cleansed the data and migrated to Salesforce.com and the system was customized to meet the clients marketing and sales needs. Over twenty users were brought on-line and trained. A series of successful marketing campaigns were designed and executed to support the sales organization. In addition, Vertical Response was added on as an email component. A complete messaging platform was developed from which a lead generation campaign was designed and implemented which included; electronic mail, direct mail, webinars and podcasts.
The sales team was able to effectively manage their business through Salesforce.com. Sales forecasts were less volatile and reporting to the board became more precise and increased from one thousand, to over ten thousand unique individuals in just one year. Weekly leads increased from zero to an average of two hundred and fifty per week and sales increased from one million to over eight million per year.
