Challenge
Okta is the leading independent provider of identity for the enterprise. The Okta Identity Cloud enables organizations to securely connect the right people to the right technologies at the right time. With over 6,500 pre-built integrations to applications and infrastructure providers, Okta customers can easily and securely use the best technologies for their business. Over 8,950 organizations, including Engie, JetBlue, Nordstrom, Takeda Pharmaceutical, Teach for America, T-Mobile and Twilio, trust Okta to help protect the identities of their workforces and customers. Okta’s software is valued by a wide spectrum of industries, and had a highly developed Buyer Persona, with Decision Makers falling into 3 buckets: IT, Security, and Product. One of the challenges Okta faced was sourcing decision makers’ contact info to take their outbound motions to the next level. Prior to working with CIENCE Data, Okta’s business development and sales teams used to do all of their contact research internally, and relied heavily on Demand Gen cornerstones including webinars, white papers, and trade shows to acquire leads. At the time, there was little sophisticated targeting, consistency, or predictability at the top of funnel. With regards to Outbound, Okta saw enhanced custom sales research as an opportunity to level-up their contact acquisition strategy and gain a competitive edge in their Outbound motions. They found that some subscription-based research tools had decayed contact data, especially direct phone numbers. An additional pain point was the difficulty (and sometimes outright inability) to acquire accurate email addresses and phone numbers for their ideal decision makers using various social media and research tools. These data validation and cleansing issues were causing enormous time inefficiencies. With sights set on driving new revenue and creating more sales opportunities, Okta sought an experienced, expert external prospect data and lead generation services company to augment, supplement, and replace some of their internal efforts. There were several factors that influenced Okta’s decision making process when choosing a lead generation partner. First and foremost, Okta sought the highest data quality available. They were also looking for a team of people that could support them and handle frequent, urgent requests. Also of importance was the desire for a strong, trust-driven working relationship with their outsourced research team. In addition to these requirements, the CIENCE Data team has built custom processes and tools to ensure accuracy and accelerate the transfer of data and information seamlessly to the Okta acquisition marketing team to use for their outbound go-to-markets.
Solution
How CIENCE Data Helps Okta Meet Their Growth Objectives Instead of simply seeking to obtain generalized lead lists, Okta tasked CIENCE Data to build customized, targeted, high-value contact information for specialized personas at very specific organizations. Okta also sought to improve the accuracy and output around contact acquisition. Rather than Okta’s internal team spending countless hours seeking and verifying accurate prospect contact information, CIENCE Data provides them fresh, enriched and custom data to support their sales development teams. CIENCE Data’s head researcher, Natalie German – dedicated to Okta – leads the analysis of Okta’s database and looks for gaps in persona contact coverage.
Results
2,800 weekly hours saved by Okta’s teams due to CIENCE Data’s research 1 Million contact records researched and enriched 99.9% effective contact data accuracy When Okta is looking to launch a product or feature, CIENCE Data provides accurate info for personas in sectors that Okta had not previously explored. This practice ensures that Okta has the sales intelligence they need before initiating any sales outreach. The sales intelligence gained through CIENCE Data research also enables Okta to develop new acquisition strategies for new markets which, in turn, creates demand for more data. All the data Okta receives from CIENCE Data is cleansed and enriched so their database management team can preserve their time to focus on more important priorities. Okta is also able to harness data from their own sales and marketing teams to create suppression lists which allows CIENCE to refine research and better curate lead lists. The common understanding of needs is the foundation for Okta and CIENCE’s ongoing partnership. Over the years as CIENCE Data has gained the trust of Okta, they can deliver optimal results with minimal direction. This saves Okta’s team valuable time and resources. Improving the Process - Learning From A Positive Business Relationship The Okta Acquisition Marketing team and CIENCE Data leveraged their strong working relationship to develop procedural efficiencies. Over the course of the two-plus year partnership, processes are continually upgraded to accelerate project time frames, resulting in 50x contact data processing times to meet Okta’s SLAs and aggressive growth objectives. CIENCE continues to build and optimize proprietary contact acquisition software and tools to support Okta’s acquisition marketing objectives. These are aimed at increasing data accuracy and providing dashboards for better visibility and faster actionable insights. The CIENCE Data team joins Okta’s working group meetings as they prepare cross-functional campaigns, affording visibility and transparency. Okta trusts CIENCE to be an integral member of their team. Numbers That Drive Success Since the beginning of Okta’s and CIENCE’s partnership, CIENCE has researched and enriched more than 1 million contacts with a 99.9% effective accuracy rate. Okta’s Acquisition Marketing has seen significant improvement in their sales pipeline performance. As CIENCE built new tools and processes to scale contact research and enrichment, Okta continues to make impressive gains attributable to their strategic contact acquisition efforts, with attribution modeling tied to the organization’s Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of Lead Generation.
CIENCE
Voted Best B2B Lead Generation Companies - Producing Qualified Sales Leads. CIENCE is a service provider that helps businesses increase sales pipeline.
Want fresh marketing stories in your inbox?
Get the weekly email that makes you a marketing genius.
Stay informed and inspired, for free.