A Deeper Dive Into Marketing Automation
Founded in 2014, Deep Instinct is the first company to apply deep learning to cybersecurity. Deep Instinct’s artificial brain learns to recognise any type of cyber threat, so that it can immediately block new exploits and attacks.
This fast-growing startup emerged out of stealth mode in November 2015, and began offering its solution to large enterprises in the finance, healthcare, telecommunications, retail and ecommerce sectors. It knew that inbound marketing would be key to reaching these customers; the challenge was to find the best way to do it.
“At the time, we were working with an agency that was using the Act-On software. However, it was taking days, or even weeks, to create a Landing Page, and that didn’t work for us. As a startup, our budget is limited, so we decided to move all our marketing in-house,” says Maya Nix, marketing director with Deep Instinct.
Maya and Deep Instinct’s chief marketing officer began to search for an automation platform that was not only effective but easy to use.
“I had used Act-On and Marketo in the past but hadn’t found them that intuitive; they weren’t user-friendly enough for what we wanted to do. However, we were both keen on HubSpot. We were avid readers of its blog, and we had been impressed by calibre of the content and the thought leadership that it provided.”
The next step was to evaluate the HubSpot Marketing Platform.
“We found that the HubSpot software had all the features we needed for success. We would be able to manage every aspect of our inbound strategy ourselves – we could be a ‘one man show’ and still get a lot done.”
Deep Instinct’s management agreed, and the company signed up with HubSpot in 2016.
A Streamlined Route To Success
Deep Instinct was keen to take advantage of all that the HubSpot Marketing Platform had to offer, and the HubSpot support team helped it get off to a flying start.
“They were patient and helpful, and we worked closely with them to hone our strategy. Once we had that foundation of knowledge in place, we knew that we’d be able to set everything up in the right way,” says Maya.
First, the company defined its personas and created content to appeal to them. It put those whitepapers, webinars and articles on Landing Pages, and added Calls-to-Action and Forms to encourage website users to engage. It also used the Social Inbox, posting across LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, to drive more visitors to its site.
“We saw an uptick in the quantity and quality of our leads almost immediately. As our Contacts Database has expanded, we’ve gotten a much better view on who our potential customers are, and we make sure that they are enrolled into Workflows that suit their interests. Our sales department is benefitting as well, because we’re able to send them leads who are genuinely interested in what we can do for them.”
The marketing team found that the HubSpot software lived up to its reputation for being quick to learn and intuitive to use.
“Other solutions we used in the past were clunky and hard work. The HubSpot Marketing Platform is plug and play; you don’t need to be a graphic designer or a programmer. You can be a small team like us, doing a million and one other things, and still produce something that looks professional and gets great results.”
Results That Grow Month-on-Month
Deep Instinct has achieved some impressive results since it started using the HubSpot software – website traffic has grown by 39%, while organic traffic increased 55%.
“This year, just from January to April, we grew our lead numbers by 100%, and we achieved a 2% conversion rate. We’ve also noticed that certain content items are particularly popular. One of our best performing pieces is a whitepaper on ransomware, which achieved a 26% visitor-to-lead conversion rate. We’re very pleased with that, and it helps us make smarter decisions about the topics we’re going to cover in the future.”
The company has realised that the more it uses the HubSpot software, the better its numbers get; it is now seeing increases across all its important metrics month-on-month. For example, click-through rates from social media rose by 92% from March to April, while click throughs from email marketing increased by incredible 1,340%.
Although Deep Instinct has a long sales process, it has already scheduled meetings and demos with several potential customers.
“The goal is to keep scaling our activity. We’ve got the top of the funnel covered, so we’re going to work more on getting leads through the middle and the bottom of the funnel. The HubSpot software will be a huge part of that.”
