Behind the Curtain: How Sales Can Turn Influ2 Ad Engagement into Revenue

Okay guys, thank you everyone so much for joining. I'm really happy to have you in our first part of our webinar series called behind the curtain. In this webinar series, we're going to tell you how Influ uses Influ internally. So I'll tell you how marketing is using it. And I also have my colleagues here, Anastasia, our senior account executive, and John Schoffer, our sales development leader. And they'll be helping me uh with this task today. I'm really happy to have you guys to support me. And in this specific webinar, we're going to uh tell you how to turn influ engagement into revenue. So, in particular, Anastasia and John will walk you through uh our top offunnel playbook uh that our SDRs are using and how they're working within Flutu engagements and uh how we're supporting open opportunities uh for our account executives. And again, here are your here are your hosts and your speakers.

Um, and to start on the right note, I just wanted to acknowledge that as someone who's been reporting on outbound results for the past 3 years, outbound is definitely becoming more difficult. We already went through a recession that kind of never happened, but really affected the mood of the market and we're now going through uncertain times that are also affecting the situation. the sales cycles are getting longer and as you can see most of the companies are trying to address this issue by increasing their volume but when everyone's increasing their volume and conversions are going down um SDRs are now facing a much harder um task of being relevant being purposeful and being human and actually we created this webinar to tell you how influencing us influ how it can help you be all of those things and the first thing that you need to do is bust the sales and marketing silos. Marketing and sales alignment is

a very, you know, it's a trending topic, but it's actually very complex and difficult. So, I'm not going to tell you how you should do it, but I'm going to tell you how we did it. So, for us to be aligned means that we know who to target, when to target, and what actually qualifies as a strong intent signals for our sales. And the way we do it sounds easy and logical, but I know that it's very hard to achieve for many companies is we work from the same list of accounts and from the same list of contacts in those accounts. So thanks to our system that we set up in Salesforce and integrating influence into it, we know sales know who we are targeting and we know who sales are targeting and when we're doing that. So we are completely aligned. we're in sync um with that. And to make a strong signal for a salesperson, it means that hey, they already have a list of like 50 people that they have to reach out today. And when one of the person or a

couple of people from that list are already engaging with our creatives right now, it's a no-brainer for them to start reaching out to that person and prioritize them and, you know, use the context that they have from the ad campaigns to personalize and make their outreach more relevant. And here is a very simple explanation of what contact like what stands behind the contact level intent. So you can see here marketing launches a relevant ad. There could be any ad like this is just an example. Someone clicks on it, your prospect clicks on it, you get an engagement notification and you can get it in email, you can get it in Slack, you can get it in Salesforce or whatever CRM you're using. Um so those notification will follow your infrastructure and you already have the name, you already have the company, you know their LinkedIn link, the creative that they're engaging, the landing page that they're visiting and you can use all of that information to create manual outreach that refers to the messaging in

that creative. And on average for us that really doubles the conversion when we compare it to just cold outreach. And it's not working just for it's it's working not just for us. It's also working for 130 leading GTM teams that are using Flutu right now. Um and using flu to contact level ads to boost pipeline by 82% on average. And that pretty much concludes almost concludes my part of the webinar and I'm very happy to welcome John. John will walk you through uh how WinFlut 2 is being used by our SDR departments. And to give John a better introduction, our joint program last year fueled 123% growth in outbound generated revenue. And John is here to share you to share with you how that actually happened. Awesome. Thank you, Anna. Um John Schroer, director of sales development at Influ. I'm going to walk you guys through how my team is using Influ internally to pinpoint exactly who's

engaging with our ads and how that invisibility is reshaping the way we're prioritizing our outreach and driving pipeline for our sales team. So, let's jump in. Um, there's a common challenge that a lot of outbound teams face today. Account level intent tells you an account is showing activity, but it doesn't necessarily tell you who inside the account is actually engaging. Account level intent forces outbound teams like ours to guess who to prioritize for sequencing. And more often than not, it can waste a lot of time and energy. These issues can also be compounded when you're looking at approaching enterprise or mid-market level accounts where there could be many many people in the persona that you're targeting. We understand this and within Flutu it's different. So through contact level ads we are able to connect engagement signals directly to name buyers. We get a ton of stuff. We get like their full name, their title, company, and exactly what ad or content they're interacting with. So whether

it's a click, a page view, sustained impressions, we get full visibility into exactly who's leaning in, how often, and how they're engaging with us. And this type of intent arms our team with a lot to personalize and and make our outreach better. Instead of just chasing large persona pools or cold accounts, our team is now building our day around connecting with decision makers who already recognize our brand. They understand the value that we offer and the context that our ads provide make our outreach two times more effective than if we weren't using them as part of our outreach. So twice as effective with contact level ads. And I'll give you an example. Picture this. A CRO at one of your target accounts is spending 2 minutes on your product landing page after clicking on an ad. We don't consider this a lead. This is a conversation that you can start with confidence through context and intent. So let's talk a little bit more about how SDRs are using influ2 internally here every day to drive

stronger pipeline. It starts off with real time signal capture. Uh when a prospect engages meaningfully, what we call clicking on an ad or crossing 15 plus impressions and seeing our ads, an alert fires in Slack and in an Influ2 platform. And this just isn't a ping. This is a target report that gives our SDRs full context. They get the contacts name, their title, company, priority level, again, what campaign they're engaging with, and even the landing page behind the ad. Before the s before our STRs are beginning their outreach, they already know what's resonating with the named buyer. And as we can all uh appreciate and understand, we're knowing where to spend time and outbound is really important and we need to be extra efficient with that time in order to hit quota. So these signals are really giving us a lot of affirmation where we need to spend our time and where where we are going to build success. Um once we have

those signals we are enrolling them into what we call an EBS sequence an engagementbased sequence EBS. Um and SDRs are adding um contacts into this sequence. It's a multi-day um sequence that's pretty short and pointed. And this sequence is tailored to the ad or the content that they engage with. It's packed with a ton of visuals. Think personalized videos, LinkedIn touches, and crisp email copies that are aligned with the content they're engaging with. The sequence is designed to hit fast while the signal still warm. So, it only lasts a couple days. And in the event that we're unsuccessful in flipping the prospect in this shorter sequence, we will move them into a longer form sequence over a course of a couple weeks. And this larger sequence will piggyback off the content they're engaging with, but it will also layer in different components and value props based on their title uh and what they value. So, the thing I want to highlight

here is like personalization is key. These contact level ads not only are identifying people that we need to prioritize, but they're also giving us a lot of uh signals in terms of the messaging that we need to continue to cultivate. Um, so I'll give you an example here. Um, I can't get too specific, but we had a a B2B SAS company in the enterprise space and we moved them into our EBS sequence after a number of impressions and clicks. And it was in our second day of outreach through email correspondence that he actually confirmed he saw some of our ads. It piqued his interest uh and he was looking to learn more. So our our timely outreach was that much effective and just bringing him in and setting those next steps. Um you know the thing that we want to really take out of this is timing is critical. Anna we can go to the next tab. Um, timing is really critical, right? We want to strike while

the iron's hot. So, internally, our team has a SLA of following up within 24 hours, and that's what we recommend is a 24 to 48 uh hour follow-up. Uh, and follow up in a timely manner is essential to driving that conversation. Um, we get inundated with a lot of different advertisements and and and things in this day and age. And so we want to be sure to capitalize on the content that they've already viewed and use that as a good foundation to continue to build on the conversation. Um we understand this to the point where we actually got more creative and built an additional campaign called a pre-all campaign. Understanding that timing is critical here. We wanted to see how we could free up time for our SDR team while also maximizing the number of at bats they could give themselves to be successful. So we thought of building a sequence that was primarily built around just calls. And what we did to support this is we launched a ad campaign that would go out about a week or two prior to our calls. And this was a way that we

could warm up these accounts, these contacts. We could give them more context for who Influ is and how we could help them in their day-to-day. And when we caught these people on the phone, we were able to really build a conversation around their engagement uh and the context that they had was that much more valuable for making the most of that conversation and setting next steps. So in summary, a couple things that I want to highlight here is you know outbound to Anna's point has become very congested. it it can be hard to stand out and we've really seen how these contact level ads have been a way that we can instigate interest and also understand where we want to spend time to be more successful. Um, these contact level ads are helping us build awareness with name buyers. They're helping us be more efficient with time and because we're aligned on ICP, we're seeing a a substantial sales accepted conversion rate and building pipeline north of 85% this year. So this collaboration and partnership with marketing, it honestly feels necessary and natural and that's

how we're winning here at Influ. Annel, I'll turn it back to you. Yay. All right. Um, so John, thank you so much for summarizing how our playbook I mean you did a you done a great job. Um, so it's now let's now imagine we have an opportunity. Uh, we converted that with our SDRs. I'm now moving on to my partnership with Anastasia and Anastasia will walk you through how we use Influ to support our open opportunities because that's also that we do at Influ. And again to give a great introduction to Anastasia, she doesn't just hit quota, she crushes it. Um just look at her quota teamman in 2023 2024. Um we're all very we're all very lucky to work with Anastasia and report on revenue together. So I'm looking forward to 2025. Um, Anastasia, the floor is yours. Thank you for this modest introduction, Anna. It's a pleasure to be here today. Setting up for success. Definitely.

Well, first of all, guys, it's worth to mention that we are a small but but mighty team. Uh, we're only four account executives with very large quotas that are increasing year-over-year, which means we have to be as efficient as possible with our time and efforts. And I guess this quarter attainment numbers that you saw earlier are the result of that. Us having no other choice but to be productive and of course influ plays a huge role in it. Um our very own tech helps me do more. It helps me expand my reach and it helps me humanize my sales process. So when I talk about the humanization of the sales process, what I mean by that is obviously any opportunity that's in my pipeline, any evaluation that I'm having involves a buying group, right? a certain number of people in each account that are part of the decision-m process and usually I'm in touch with a few of them right some of my champions that I'm in active conversations with uh but still there are usually many other decision makers and influencers that are not joining the

calls or they're not very responsive to my emails to my LinkedIn messages but they can still influence the deal right and that's where marketing comes into play it allows me to use advertising as a channel to create connection s within Flutu and with myself without that direct outreach. And the thing is advertising channels are largely untouched territory, right? Prospects are not being reached on a personal level, on a contact level by every other vendor through ads. Most messaging out there through ads is generic. It's horizontal. It has no human connection. So when they see my face and my our relevant ads, it creates that personal connection. And the beauty is is that it's done in scale. So together, marketing and I are able to expand my reach and target many more prospects than I would through my efforts alone throughout the entire sales process. As a result, it helps me and influ Brand to stay top of mind. Um it helps us build targeted awareness and engagement and

that happens obviously with with the right people um within the right with the right audience list and it helps me multi-thread more effectively. And speaking of multi- threading and overall managing multiple deals at the same time, I need to be efficient, right? I mentioned with a small a team and a lot to meas to manage. Um the hardest part here is deciding what to do with the limited time that I have on any given day, right? So if I have a free hour, what do I do with it? Should I follow up early stage conversations? Should I move current deals forward, close deals, reach out to potential expansion opportunities? All of that is important to my success and my quota and there are so many deals that I could possibly do at any given point in time. So with engagement data that I get at a contact level from influ intuition or waste time on random outreach. My outreach is instead datadriven. I know where and when to

multi-thread and which accounts are showing increased activity. I can see who exactly is the most engaged in each account both in early stage pipeline or ops that are further down um the funnel um whether I've spoken with some of these people or not and I know who I should prioritize today basically. So if the engagement comes from the champion that I'm already in touch with it's a good time to check in with them kind of stay top of mind keep that connection going. If it's a new contact who is relevant, but I haven't had a chance to talk to them yet, this contact level add intent from Influ gives me that signal that right now is the best time to try to connect with them, to build meaningful connection, to ideally get them to be involved in the evaluation, right? To convert them to another champion that would help me push the deal further. And moreover, it's it's not only who to reach out to, it's also checking what ad they interacted with. and it gives me some context um in terms

of what to talk to them about, what to mention to them so that so that I have better response rates from them. So um now how we started that alignment right we uh started with sales and marketing coming together we analyze the sales process and we still kind of do that consistently. We align on insights. We're align on timing. We look at the weakest and most important steps during the sales cycle and we figure out what messages we want to deliver to accounts at specific stages of the funnel in order to keep them engaged and keep pushing them further down the funnel all the ways to all the way to close one right and obviously we use advertising right as a channel to distribute this relevant content across the whole buying committee. So what's also is amazing is that these ads then not not only build great awareness but they kind of give prospects the illusion that they're doing the research on their own rather

than us actively selling to them. And I also prepared several examples of the ads that we're running for the prospects once the opportunity is created. Um so we can jump to the next one. Yeah. And this one on the left is actually my favorite because, you know, there is no better way to start the call than uh a prospect saying, "Annastasia, seems like I've known you forever. You're all over my feed." Um it's it's a nice breaker. It makes things kind of easier, right? And here on the right, for someone who is a no-show, we also have the creative solution for that um as well. uh where we can target them with ads even if the the call didn't take place hopefully for them to then re-engage. Now here is another example of what we show to prospects after the demo. So for those who attended the call uh we show personalized video where I thank them for the call and I share my excitement about the next steps. And you know guys, you cannot imagine how many times people thank me for such a personalized video um thinking that I recorded it just for

them and I had to kind of disappoint them that actually it was recorded about a year ago. And you know the only reason why it felt so personalized to them is because it was relevant and it was shown at the right time in front of the right audience. And again for those who were not part of the demo we have another ad to get them kind of to learn more about influ. Now here on this slide we have some examples of product feature ads. Um this is another helpful kind of set of ads where we show the value and capabilities of our tag to obviously the whole buying group. And no matter how great and excellent our product is, it's still a rather new concept for the market. So this helps help educate, nurture the prospects, share what and how is possible within Flutu. So instead of kind of me pushing the guides through my champions and asking them to distribute them internally um to educate um everyone else who is not part of the conversation, we're able to do that through ads in a very controllable and

non-intrusive way as well. So yeah, overall kind of ads is is kind of new way to deliver important content not just for product features but ultimately for anything and um yeah during the the last final stages of the sales cycle um when the value of the technology has been proven and the customer wants to have a proof that we are a reliable vendor that's when this this type of thought leadership content social proof becomes the most valuable. So we usually show it a bit further down the sales cycle. So yeah, to sum it up, Influ helps me work more efficiently. Um, you know, advertising used to be a black box on the marketing side and sales couldn't get direct value. Even if there was some engagement, at some point it wasn't clear who it was coming from. So it was basically impossible for sales reps to act upon it. Um, and yeah, now it is possible. And at the end of the day um deals happen between people. People buy

from people and this contact based advertising supports that human connection. Um it drives real impact. So that's one of the reasons uh I'm able and we are as a team able to accomplish so much with such a small team. And you know something I want to wrap up with today is if you are on the marketing side and after listening to what John and I shared um at some point you had a thought that SDRs and sales reps they don't want us touching their accounts or if you're on the other side if you're um part of the sales team and at some point you thought you know I'd rather marketing not get involved here. I think that that's worth pausing on because speaking from my experience and I I would probably talk on behalf of all reps that see success uh what really drives us all sales reps is closed deals revenue for the company achieving quota revenue for ourselves the money that we earn right so when marketing brings a

way to help accelerate that it's not about stepping on toes it's about working smarter together and getting more close business together. And if there is resistance to that kind of collaboration, it's usually a sign that something deeper needs alignment. You know, whether that's strategic goals and approaches at a management level, whether it's the trust or communications or um or expectations. From what we've seen, when sales and marketing kind of align on the level of agreeing on which contacts to go after together from the target accounts and then prioritizing those contacts that are showing intent, the impact can be huge like two to four acts pipeline kind of huge. Um, so yeah, I leave you with this. If working together feels hard, then I would recommend to take a step back and ask why. Because when both teams, sales and marketing, are focused on the same goal, which is generating more revenue, the rest should

fall into place. And with that, I'll hand it back to Anna. You leave them with me. I do. Okay, guys. Thank you so much for for making this happen. Uh we're going to finish off with a very quick step-by-step guide with the takeaways that we have from this webinar. So, number one, build your audience together. Make sure you're going after the same people at the same time. Uh, make sure there's full funnel air cover because the deal doesn't stop at the handoff. It should continue and marketing should continue working with that audience to support their sales. Um, marketing should make sure that sales are getting their real time intent signals where they work and it's actually not that hard to implement within Flutu especially. Uh, make sure you have leadership buying and visibility. uh always you know refer to our revenue reporting look at the deals that you generated and report on your success together and yeah you'll be you'll be successful

um one last thing thank you so much for joining I just uh wanted to promote something as well we recently created a report on how to fix sales and marketing misalignment to drive more revenue so if you're interested in learning more and different approaches and playbooks that we share in there. Please, it's available on our website or you can download the report from the um QR code here.