Having reached the milestone of 14 million users, Loom was ready to shift from a purely product-led marketing strategy to a go-to-market demand generation strategy targeted at enterprise clients.
Troy Arias, Marketing Operations Manager, was charged with overseeing the strategic shift.
Troy soon realized he needed a tool to support demand generation campaigns—but he wasn’t interested in a quick fix.
Instead, he wanted a platform that would meet the needs of his demand generation team as well as those of Loom’s entire marketing group long term.
When Troy stepped into his new role, Loom used a disparate set of tools for marketing, including the HubSpot CRM platform. But the marketing team had hardly scratched the surface of what the HubSpot CRM platform could do.
Instead, it was using a different communication tool to build its lists.
Troy explains:
“We used a communication tool to build lists, segment users, and build targeting. Then we’d export those lists to a CSV file, import it into HubSpot, and then send out email campaigns off that CSV upload.”
Time-consuming campaign set up
With so many steps in the process, the marketing team spent a lot of time setting up each marketing email.
“Not only did every single email take a ton of time, but it was also super monotonous to build,” says Troy.
Adding to the complexity, the existing communication tool had limitations.
“It wouldn’t allow any more than 10 criteria within one ‘or’ statement,” says Troy. “It also came up with wildly incorrect field matchings.”
Integration with other systems
Troy wanted to find a more efficient solution for his demand generation team.
At the same time, he wanted to choose a solution that he could expand to the entire marketing team sometime in the future if desired.
This goal added to the difficulty of his task. With so many disparate tools in use, Troy would also have to find a solution that could integrate with all the existing tools, including Splash for landing pages and Livestorm for webinars.
After considering his options, Troy decided to lean into Loom’s existing HubSpot CRM Platform instance and implement Marketing Hub Enterprise.
Troy started by carefully building out the platform without disrupting the ongoing activities of the entire marketing team.
“It’s like trying to build the ship and sail it at the same time,” says Troy. “We worked to build out our operational structures—and do it in a way they could be reused in subsequent campaigns.”
Workflows and team self-service
At every stage, Troy looked for opportunities to automate processes and enable self-service by the marketing team.
“I wanted to make it as easy as possible for an event marketing manager or campaign manager to pull from an active list or create a list from scratch without getting bottlenecked,” says Troy.
At the same time, Troy set up HubSpot permissions and approvals to strike the right balance between enabling self-service and maintaining control.
“We want our teams to move as fast as they want to move, without us holding them back, to ensure the best experience for our users,” says Troy.
Automation across disparate systems
Troy’s push to automate wasn’t limited to Marketing Hub but also extended to Loom’s other systems—thanks to the integrations available with the HubSpot CRM Platform.
Troy explains:
“If we have an event set up in one system, we have a workflow that triggers when someone registers for that event. That workflow goes through HubSpot and automatically adds a campaign to our sales platform. This flow happens automatically—with no one touching it.”
Time to focus on strategy
With the time savings that the HubSpot CRM Platform workflows and sequences have rendered, Troy and his team have more time for valuable strategy work.
“When you automate and take away a lot of those tactical tasks, you’re free to think about what you’re actually trying to accomplish,” says Troy.
For Troy’s team, that means not losing sight of the big picture, including examining their marketing from the customers’ perspective.
“We have time to get into the headspace of ‘How do I want to experience this as a user?’,” says Troy. “It’s a big driving question that’s easy to overlook when you’re lost in tactics.”
Success with long-tail nurturing
Even though Troy and his team have just gotten started with demand gen, they’re already seeing results.
In fact, several campaigns have already converted into six-figure deals.
Troy expects these kinds of results to continue, thanks in part to Marketing Hub’s ability to attribute results to specific marketing activities.
“Having the ability to see what’s converting in our pipeline, and attribute it to specific content we issued six months ago, is amazing,” says Troy.
Future expansion plans
Today, Troy is already talking to the broader marketing team about going deeper with the HubSpot CRM Platform.
“When they see what we’ve set up in HubSpot, such as workflows and triggers, they want the same for themselves,” says Troy. “They see the value and want to build off it.”
Since going deeper with the HubSpot CRM Platform, Troy’s team is building campaigns 80% faster. What used to take 35 hours a month can now be done in seven hours, which frees up valuable time for strategic thinking.
Based on this experience, Troy doesn’t hesitate to recommend HubSpot to others.
“HubSpot simplifies tactics way more than any other tool I’ve used before,” says Troy. “It’s easy to build processes and easy for your team to use. And once you have it in place, it frees you up to focus on devising strategies that will take you to the next level.”