$1 million+ in revenue from Custom Intent and Workflows in 6 months.

Challenge

In the height of the pandemic as the world shifted increasingly remote in 2020, Brandlive entered hyper-growth mode. “When the NBA cancelled the season and the world shut down, in-person events nearly evaporated overnight. As a result, the demand for virtual solutions skyrocketed. During the first few months of the pandemic, we were overloaded with an avalanche of inbound leads and that’s when we realized we needed to scale our sales team, and fast,” says Sam Kolbert-Hyle, CEO of Brandlive.

As a result, Brandlive’s sales team grew from 2 to 30 and their marketing team quadrupled in size. Kat Kaufman, Marketing Ops Manager at Brandlive, recounts this key period in the organization’s evolution: “Of course, employee growth comes with its own set of challenges, the most obvious of which is that there are more mouths to feed—with an intense appetite for sales leads.”

As the initial panic subsided, Brandlive realized that in order to maintain and increase lead volume they would need to invest in an outbound strategy.

Solution

In the middle of 2020, Brandlive turned to ZoomInfo to help drive their outbound efforts. “We initially brought on ZoomInfo because we knew their data quality was the best in the market and we were confident this was the best way to fuel our pipeline,” explains Kolbert-Hyle. “We take pride in giving amazing demos and we have a high-touch sales process, so ZoomInfo positions our team to go into every conversation highly informed. Because ZoomInfo has so much information not just about contacts but about companies’ organizational structure, it helps us not only land new business but intelligently expand existing enterprise accounts.”

Brandlive invested in ZoomInfo’s Custom Intent solution, giving them visibility into the companies that are showing above-average web browsing activity on the topics that are most relevant to the solutions they offer. “Virtual events is still a fairly new market, so many of the out-of-the-box intent topics don’t apply. However, with ZoomInfo’s Custom Intent offering, we have the opportunity to be extremely specific about the keywords and searches we care about most,” says Kaufman.

Brandlive maximizes the value of Intent with ZoomInfo Workflows, which is a solution that allows teams to build and automate manual processes, driving efficiency and productivity. “We’ve customized ZoomInfo Workflows to flag relevant companies that are spiking on our Custom Intent topics. From there, the best fit titles from those accounts are automatically identified and pushed into our email nurtures and digital campaigns,” Kaufman explains.

Having sales and marketing going after the exact same accounts right when those accounts are showing signs of interest is the ultimate example of good orchestration between sales and marketing.

Sam Kolbert-Hyle

CEO, Brandlive

“Typically we are selling to an event organizer who is planning a specific event that has a date on the calendar. So, in our space, there is a very short sales cycle which is why being able to catch prospects at the start of their research is crucial,” explains Kaufman. “We’ve recently booked demos and closed deals with large enterprise accounts like Bayada Home Healthcare, Conde Nast and Chanel, all because ZoomInfo enabled us to take action, at exactly the right time. We’ve come to realize that enterprise companies demand magical service and ZoomInfo makes it possible for us to offer that, from the first touch to the last.”

“As a company that is experiencing insane growth, Workflows has played an integral role in automating manual processes and ensuring we aren’t letting anything fall through the cracks. We now have a well-oiled process that boosts productivity and fuels our pipeline.”

The Results

Things have worked out exceptionally well for Brandlive. The company has scaled its people from 14 to 200 and exceeded their 2020 revenue target by over 900%. In addition to working with enterprise brands like Nike and Adidas, Brandlive was also recognized by Fast Company as #1 on its list of Most Innovative Companies in 2021 in their live events category.

“Honestly, we didn’t expect this to go this way. As we pivoted, initially it was all-hands-on-deck just to get the water out of the boat with so many inbound leads. At times, I couldn’t get our head of sales on the phone because we were on sales calls 15 hours a day. As we started growing the team we needed a measured way to keep the momentum, drive bookings growth and continue to hit a growing sales number. Thanks to ZoomInfo, we’ve been able to do that—and then some,” explains Kolbert-Hyle.

Brandlive credits ZoomInfo’s Intent data as a core contributor to their success. “We’ve been able to create more efficiency in how we go to market using ZoomInfo’s Intent engine. In the first 6 months, we’ve generated more than 18,000 leads, created multiple millions in pipeline and closed $1,050,000 dollars strictly from ZoomInfo Intent leads,” says Kolbert-Hyle.

“It’s irreplaceable. Not only were we impressed by the depth and breadth of the data but solutions like Custom Intent and Workflows really are a game changer enabling us to scale in a way we never thought possible. Our experience with ZoomInfo has been exceptional. The data, automation and customer service is unmatched.”