50% Increase in pipeline growth

Challenge

Erwin van der Vlist considers employee communication to be the lifeblood of a company. While working for a supermarket during college, he experienced first-hand the challenge of communication with frontline employees. Oftentimes, his store resorted to posting flyers on bulletin boards, displaying messages on company TVs, or calling people one-by-one—all inefficient methods that couldn’t accommodate the immediate, two-way communication necessary to run a business.

In response, van der Vlist launched Amsterdam-based startup, Speakap, to solve this very problem. Speakap, an internal communications mobile app, replaces traditional, low-tech communication methods and serves as an online communications hub for the latest company information, integrates with customers’ existing tools (like HR systems), and collects employee feedback.

The value of Speakap transcended markets—no matter where a company was located, if they had a large number of field employees, communication was likely a struggle. Because of this, van der Vlist knew it was important to expand beyond its current European customer base into the United States.

However, once the startup entered the US market, they realized they would need to scale their efforts to break into the retail, manufacturing, hospitality, and construction industries—all of which had major potential to benefit from a solution like Speakap due to their high percentages of non-desk employees. “Compared to Europe, the US market is much larger and much noisier. We needed to be really strategic and innovative with our Go-To-Market approach in order to be successful here,” explained van der Vlist.

Solution

Speakap was familiar with ZoomInfo as they had leveraged DiscoverOrg’s B2B data intelligence in the past and had a positive experience, especially in terms of the quality and accuracy of its data. “When we saw ZoomInfo and DiscoverOrg’s new combined platform we were extremely impressed. It has the best of both worlds, in terms of the intelligence, data and technology of the legacy platforms. Also, I like that the new UI feels more modern. It’s more appealing—and it’s very user friendly and easy to navigate,” explained van der Vlist. “For us, it was an easy decision.”

“I was immediately impressed by the quality of ZoomInfo’s data. Once we started using it, our bounce rates dropped to under 1%. It was really amazing to see,” stated van der Vlist. “Aside from data quality, what really caught my attention were all of the insights, integrations and features that are now at our disposal. With ZoomInfo we have everything we need to maximize sales productivity.”

Specifically, van der Vlist was most intrigued by the power of ZoomInfo’s Streaming Intent capability—which allows his team to identify prospects interested in topics relevant to Speakap’s company and products—in real time. With ZoomInfo’s Streaming Intent, van der Vlist has 12 key topics identified, which his teams use to prioritize their outreach. For example, reps can see who the highest-potential accounts are, what topics they’re interested in, and when they took a relevant action (i.e., performing a web search of terms relevant to Speakap). From there, reps can time and tailor their outreach with targeted messaging and content.

“We use ZoomInfo’s Streaming Intent as a starting point to say, these manufacturers are looking for our type of solution, right now,” van der Vlist says. “Then we look at the relevant C-suite and director-level contacts across those companies and load them into a high-touch sequence, which is very personalized.”

The Results

“When we target companies that we’ve identified through Streaming Intent, we see a 25% higher engagement rate. Additionally, these prospects are converting faster and at a much higher rate,” explained van der Vlist. “We recently closed 3 opportunities in half the time of our typical sales cycle. Why? Because we got in front of interested buyers before our competitors could. We captured their attention and delivered value at exactly the right time. Access to ZoomInfo’s Streaming Intent is like having a superpower. There’s no other way to describe it.”

With ZoomInfo’s Streaming Intent data, we have a constant stream of interested prospects. We’ve increased the number of opportunities in our pipeline by over 50% and, if we close a quarter of those, then we’ll be two years ahead of our projected revenue goals.

Erwin van der Vlist
Founder & CEO, Speakap

Overall, Speakap has been able to scale up its outbound efforts in the US market thanks to ZoomInfo, which has been critical to improving their results and driving brand awareness.

“I have a small team but now that they’re empowered with ZoomInfo, it’s as if one person is more effective than two,” van der Vlist says. “More importantly, ZoomInfo provides the right data that enables us to scale our programs in the United States and Europe. We’re now able to find the highest-potential customers as fast as possible.”