Interactive Services
The Company
Interactive Services is an e-learning company that provides customised employee training online – particularly related to compliance. It has been conducting compliance training programmes for over 25 years and has trained over 3 million people.
The Challenge
The challenge for Emarkable was to create more leads for their sales team, achieving a target that would mean almost tripling their leads within a set period. Clearly this increase in numbers would require a great deal of preparation and planning.
The Preparation
The first steps in attempting such a huge improvement in leads are firstly, to prepare and plan a clear strategy that will deliver such results over time, and then to explain that process to the client.
To achieve this, we had to:
- Introduce our Digital Marketing Framework (DMF) and demonstrate clearly how it would operate in the context of this company.
The Plan
The Plan had two separate parts. Both parts required us to develop
- A content strategy, planning and execution
- Thought leadership, ‘nurturing’ content and campaign content.
The first part was an SEO, email and PPC plan that would deliver leads straight to the top of the sales funnel.
The second part was more nuanced, requiring ‘thought leadership’. For example, a 3,000-word e-book was produced and sent to contacts on a specific subject. ‘Nurturing’ required us to follow up on enquiries related to this – people who visited the page, or people who downloaded the book would receive more information on the subject, as well as calls to action.
Website and Social Media
In order to introduce fresh content to the website and hold clients’ interest, a new article on a relevant subject was added every week. To widen social media reach, there were also weekly Twitter and LinkedIn posts. Additional content was generated by interviews, case studies, guest writers, external sources and news, events. We also provided web maintenance, support and improvement. An important element in the design of the website was its loading speed. Because Interactive Services website is a global organization, website loading speed has been critical to user experience; it needs to be fast no matter where a visitor comes from, be it US, Europe or Australia. Emarkable applied website optimizations such as lazy loading technique, content delivery network, bespoke template, compressed assets, and responsive images per mobile and desktop versions.
Marketing Automation System
We supplied a Marketing Automation System, training for the sales staff to use that system, and on-going support in using it. The Marketing Automation System (SharpSpring) includes web tracking, lead scoring and automated workflow, a customer relationship management tool, and call tracking functionality. This platform integrated with the website and allowed us to manage the lead generation process from the first point of contact right through to the sale with full visibility at each stage of the process. The sales team receive a list of each day’s hottest leads right to their inbox, so they can act at just the right time to convert them to sales.
Campaigns
To achieve the objective of achieving more leads, a plan was put in place to create monthly outbound campaigns, based on calendar items, promotions, themes and product launches.
Elevate
As a result of our success with generating leads using SEO and PPC, Interactive Services decided to engage Emarkable for our Elevate Programme. The Elevate programme is a sales and marketing system, a combination of inbound marketing methodology and marketing automation software. This unique platform and powerful suite of tools empowers sales and marketing professionals to drive more leads, convert more leads to sales, and optimise their return on investment. Using Elevate, we were able to delve deeper into the company value proposition and the key messaging, and really get to the ‘sweet spot’ that would help us generate more leads.
Conferences
Emarkable also managed conference activity for Interactive Services. Our marketing team liaised with venues regarding all catering, meeting room set up, audio visual, entertainment and accommodation across multiple locations in the United States and Europe.
Awards
Interactive Services were keen to apply for some of the many awards offered in their sector. The Emarkable team managed the award submission process end-to-end. We took full ownership of the awards strategy, writing and presenting the award submissions from scratch, using available documentation, interviewing relevant stakeholders, and all necessary evidence gathering.
The Results
Interactive Services found the implementation process to be quick and painless, and it started to see value from the beginning.
The Elevate process increased the quality and quantity of leads
Conferences were managed.
Four international awards were added to the display cabinet.
