From sales spreadsheets to a Salesforce-and-Marketo machine

Working alongside BAA’s CEO and National Sales Manager, the objectives were set: centralise prospect data, increase conversion rates and, in turn, sales. That meant upgrading lead management from multiple Excel spreadsheets to Salesforce, migrating contact data to Marketo and syncing the two, integrating the call centre software, building lead scoring into a priority management process, and moving every website form to Marketo. A 50,000-lead database of New, Cancelled and Withdrawn prospects was being worked with manual calls and emails and nothing else.

The implementation delivered centralised lead management with Marketo lead scoring surfacing hot prospects and Interesting Insights inside Salesforce, automated weekly reporting through custom dashboards, and a fully integrated stack: social platforms into Marketo, Google AdWords into Salesforce. Training sessions at BAA’s campus, a Salesforce centre of excellence, recorded demos and how-to guides made the up-skilling stick.

The nurture strategy activated the dormant database by CRM status: an autoresponder triggered on status change, six emails and two SMS per journey, backed by Facebook retargeting driving leads to a callback landing page. Dynamic content by study intent and state kept every message relevant, and cadence logic eased off the longer a lead sat in a stage. Aligning Salesforce, VETtrak and ad data gave BAA a single cost-per-enrolment view across every channel, driving the media mix that cut cost per enrolment.

Over six months, Marketo activity generated more than 900 requested call-backs and over 200 registrations. The New Leads nurture sent 28,000+ emails at a 27.9% open rate with 23.4% of clicks becoming callback requests; the Withdrawn nurture converted 35.2% of its callback requests to registered students. An SMS campaign of over 1,000 messages delivered a 13.74% call-back rate, and 76% of all registrations were impacted by campaign activity, with email metrics exceeding industry benchmarks throughout.