UpCurve Case Study: “We Couldn’t Live without SalesIntel”

We sat down to talk with Koosha Araghi, Director of Marketing at UpCurve Cloud. UpCurve is a team of U.S.-based, Google-certified deployment engineers, trainers, and consultants who have helped over 6,000 businesses transition to Google Workspace.

Introducing UpCurve

UpCurve is an early SalesIntel customer and Araghi is a SalesIntel power user. Besides helping UpCurve run its marketing campaigns, SalesIntel has been essential in maintaining business during the changes brought on by the Covid pandemic.

We’ll review why SalesIntel continues to deliver value to UpCurve, the importance of clean data during and post-pandemic, and the new SalesIntel features UpCurve has come to rely on.

Finding SalesIntel and Never Looking Back

“We tried many popular tools back in the day. SalesIntel was a step ahead from day one.”

UpCurve tried all other major data providers before SalesIntel but struggled with the results. Poor data quality frequently caused high bounce rates and problems with emails being labeled as spam. Emails would end up never even making it to recipients’ inboxes.

“We would get some decent leads out of them, but it would also risk spam traps, high bounce rates, and getting flagged by Hubspot – It was a nightmare and a constant roll of the dice. We dealt with all kinds of problems, but SalesIntel immediately mitigated all of those concerns.”

SalesIntel became deeply embedded into UpCurve’s sales and marketing process. Both teams use to find new prospects and avoid sales having to waste time finding and calling contacts on their own.

“[The data] is a big lead driver. You can never go wrong by providing your sales team with a clean, up-to-date list of accurate contacts that check all the right boxes!  

“On the marketing front, we can be sure our hard work creating educational content reaches the right prospects.”

The data has also been what keeps SalesIntel Araghi’s first choice for a data provider.

“Ultimately, it’s the data that mattered, and it was clean from day one.”

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Successfully Switching from Events to Email Marketing

Before the Covid pandemic, UpCurve was hosting events across the country. Using SalesIntel was essential for generating a high attendance rate at the events.

“It was hard to fill seats doing traditional methods of outreach, but with SalesIntel, we were able to really fine-tune getting the right execs from the right departments to show up.  

“On our national tour, we were able to consistently fill seats and convert a number of leads from the events. It was great.”

But once Covid hit, in-person events were no longer an option. And, contact data was decaying at a faster rate as people changed jobs or worked from home.

“As Covid escalated, people were leaving jobs, and things were really going haywire. Contacts might be at one place one minute and gone the next. We started to see a big spike in bounces and fewer opportunities. Thankfully, a quick update from SalesIntel added the ability to re-verify contacts, which helped us refine our data and increase lead quality.”

With re-verification, Araghi and his team were back to work.

“The SalesIntel team fixed our problems immediately. It might take an extra day to get our data back with re-verification, but I was sure that I wouldn’t risk bounces, spam traps, or worse. The data was as clean as possible, and the quality was solid. Despite the erratic climate, open rates, clicks, and replies returned to nearly normal levels.”

Araghi also used SalesIntel’s verification tools to efficiently maintain contact with clients, despite constant data decay.

“We also used SalesIntel to help clean up our current data and refresh our customer contacts. Our monthly newsletters went from a low 30 percent open rate to 54%, with soft bounces well under 0.5%. That wouldn’t have been possible without SalesIntel.”

Using More than Contact Data to Win Deals

Besides using SalesIntel’s contact data, UpCurve uses technographic, firmographic, and intent data along with the VisitorIntel tool to segment and target ideal leads. 

UpCurve uses firmographic data to target either small or mid-sized companies and specific verticals, so they can then tailor their outreach content. The biggest success has been using technographic data. During the pandemic, technographic data was used to find companies using Google competitors (e.g., Microsoft) and working remotely.

“We would look for companies on Microsoft Products. We would then combine that with other solutions like Zoom, Webex, Slack, etc. Then we would market remote working solutions packaged around Google Workspace to help simplify their tech overhead and provide them with a comprehensive all-in-one solution.”

UpCurve’s largest source of new customers is companies switching from Google competitors. With technographic data, Araghi can find ideal companies using a specific competitor and target them for outreach.

“Once prospects have the right information, they can decide whether Microsoft is a better platform for them or Google. Technographics, intent data – all of those options have been powerful tools to help us fine-tune the contacts we’re pulling and then be able to send them the right educational content. Combining all of these means more effective outreach, shorter sales cycles, and closing happier customers.”

Araghi can get highly granular for laser-targeted campaigns and high success rates. A recent example was finding small business marketing leaders available for upselling.

“I was looking for people within a particular 50 to 200 space because we were looking for key marketing contacts. I looked up current customers of Google Workspace with various other integrated tools using the technographic options. I was able to fine-tune that to 400 qualified contacts.”

Along with finding leads for specific campaigns, SalesIntel’s VisitorIntel tool reveals companies that have been looking at UpCurve’s site and are warm leads.

“We get a sense of who’s visiting, what companies there are, and what we might be missing, and then I can share that data with our sales team. They can look up specific contacts on LinkedIn or generate a list of executives and managers on the fly.”

By using firmographics, technographics, and VisitorIntel, Araghi can continually feed his sales team strong leads and increase sales velocity.

Knowing Customers Always Come First

Araghi highly rates SalesIntel’s UI and data, but the best part has been the outstanding customer service. Whenever there is a need or an issue, Araghi knows he can talk directly to someone and get the help he needs. 

“The customer service bit was our initial driver for making the switch to SalesIntel. Before, with other vendors like RainKing and DiscoverOrg, getting any representative to help with questions in a reasonably timely matter was an absolute nightmare. Combine that with their overall poor contact quality. It was rough.

“At SalesIntel, everyone I’ve worked with has been excellent and supportive. SalesIntel keeps customers first, and it’s why we’ve stayed on for nearly four years.”

“We Couldn’t Live Without It”

The combined data, feature set, and customer service experience have made SalesIntel essential to UpCurve.

“It’s core to our outbound efforts. It reduces the time to pull data and execute a campaign. It’s got a significantly better ROI than buying a vertical-specific list. The data is refreshed and scrubbed frequently to reduce any potential friction from bounces or spam traps.”

Over the years, SalesIntel has been updated to include more integrations and easier usability.

“The tool Is continuously being updated and upgraded. Integrations with Hubspot and Zoho have been helpful and improved our workflows. New collaborative features make it easy to create a segment and have the sales team do their outreach directly out of SalesIntel.”

Pre-pandemic, SalesIntel made sure events were full, and UpCurve made a big splash, during the pandemic it kept outreach going, and now it continues to help convert new customers every day.

“Between a healthy sales pipeline and improved retention rates thanks to better contact with our large customer base, SalesIntel is a crucial part of our success, and we couldn’t live without it.”