Signature Story Interview
Case Study
Introducing Snowflake
Snowflake is the data warehouse built for the cloud, with a mission to enable every organization to be data-driven. They combine the power of data warehousing, the flexibility of big data platforms and the elasticity of the cloud to help companies make better, quicker decisions that advance business.
As a leader in the ABM space, Snowflake turned to Sigstr to target their top accounts with personalized email signature marketing campaigns and to gain relationship insights.
Launching an ABM Program
When the concept of ABM was just starting to make a buzz in the marketplace, Snowflake recognized a key opportunity. Realizing that traditional marketing efforts weren’t cutting through the noise, Snowflake’s marketing team decided to start targeting key accounts using a more direct approach.
In close alignment with the sales team, Snowflake’s marketing team created an ideal customer profile that helped them identify high-value prospects. From there, they assigned each sales rep to fewer than 100 accounts, divided up regionally, so that they could focus all of their energy on the best opportunities.
With their target accounts identified, the marketing team began to change their channel strategy to align with ABM principles. They first turned to Terminus to run account-specific display ads. From there, they started looking for new tools to help take their efforts to the next level. They realized ABM would only be effective if they were creating a consistent message at every angle. That’s where Sigstr came into the picture.
Targeting the Right Accounts with the Right Message
When Snowflake first learned of Sigstr, they realized that the platform was a natural extension of their ABM tech stack.
“Our goal with our ABM program is to create unintrusive touch points,” explains Daniel Day, Director of ABM at Snowflake. “Combined with platforms like Terminus and LinkedIn, Sigstr fits in seamlessly. We can ensure each email has a targeted email signature campaign that aligns with our ABM strategy.”
By leveraging Sigstr’s ABM functionality, Snowflake is able to ensure that every time someone in sales emails a prospect, they are promoting the right call to action via a personal touch point. Snowflake’s marketing team aligns Sigstr campaigns to specific ABM targets, industries, and regions. Regional events are a huge part of Snowflake’s ABM playbook, and with Sigstr, they can promote events to accounts located in each hosting city.
“Sigstr creates a great connection between physical ABM, like field marketing, and digital ABM,” explains Daniel, “As any marketer can attest, it can be difficult to create alignment between the two. With Sigstr, we are able to create a unified experience.”
Creating a Content Experience
Another key element of Snowflake’s ABM strategy is the creation of content experiences designed specifically for target accounts. Since embracing ABM, Snowflake has created over 1,000 different content journeys using streamed, displayed, and sponsored content. With Sigstr, they ensure that these experiences stretch into personal communication as well.
By leveraging Sigstr’s integration with Uberflip, Snowflake connects signature campaigns to Uberflip-powered content streams. Without asking for employee input, the marketing team can control the entire content experience of every email recipient.
“The Uberflip integration streamlines our entire process,” explains Hermi Ruiz, ABM specialist, “We can use Sigstr to pique an account’s interest, and then lead that account down a path with Uberflip that gets the company that much closer to making a purchase. We are effectively using Sigstr to jumpstart a content journey.”
Aligning Sales & Marketing Through Relationship Data
With the introduction of Sigstr Relationships, Sigstr has become an even more integral part of Snowflake’s ABM program. By analyzing the email and calendar patterns of Snowflake’s employees, Sigstr Relationships allows Snowflake to see when and if their sales team has followed up with specific ABM targets, how those relationships are growing, and how strong the company’s collective connection is with key accounts.
“One of our goals as a marketing team is to understand how our relationships with key accounts are progressing and then share those insights with the sales team in a digestible manner,” explains Hermi, “With Sigstr Relationships, we can import a list of our target accounts and instantly understand relationship dynamics.”
Sigstr scores Snowflake’s relationship with each of their target accounts, shows when the account was last contacted, and analyzes which contacts within an account Snowflake is best connected to. With a shared source of truth, Snowflake’s marketing and sales teams can build, track, and perfect their account-based engagement strategy.
Sigstr Relationships’ integration with Terminus helps to bring Snowflake’s ABM strategy full circle. By bringing together the power of both platforms, Snowflake is able to score their relationship with every account in the Terminus Account Hub. Terminus measures how close a future customer is to consideration while Sigstr enables Snowflake to understand how their most important contacts are engaging through the entire customer lifecycle.
Reviewing Key Successes
Since launching Sigstr, Snowflake’s sales team has completely entrusted marketing to take over their email signatures and are thrilled to have a common source for relationship insights. They now have users across the globe in EMEA, the US, and Australia.
Beyond aligning marketing and sales, Sigstr has helped Snowflake make their ABM program a smashing success. They’ve experienced 5x the number of views on their event landing pages and uberflip streams alone. And their success hasn’t gone unnoticed. They have won numerous awards, including “Best ABM Program” at both Conex and FlipMyFunnel.
The rules of marketing are constantly changing, but Snowflake has managed to stay ahead of the curve by embracing new marketing channels and understanding that real relationships drive business. We can’t wait to see what they accomplish next.
