Founded in 1985, Blue Yonder is a world leader in digital supply chain transformations. As a billion-dollar company, Blue Yonder invests in world-class technology platforms to fuel continuous growth in their go-to-market strategy.
Two platforms crucial to Blue Yonder’s success are 6sense and Drift.
PT Umphress is Blue Yonder’s Global Director of Digital Marketing. He says, “When I joined the company (in 2022), I was excited to hear we had both 6sense and Drift because they are two tools that I always wanted at previous employers and could never get the budget for.”
Blue Yonder’s integrated use of these two tools has amplified the company’s success with 6sense-targeted Drift chatbots.
The Challenge
Although Drift and 6sense were already implemented when PT joined Blue Yonder in 2022, the tools still had tremendous potential to create even more value.
For example, Blue Yonder marketers were still using inside knowledge and sales team input to build static target account lists.
“At Blue Yonder, 6sense was initially only being used by ABM marketing teams, primarily for individual account insights that could be leveraged in personalized campaigns, but we knew 6sense could be used on a broader scale. We started to create dynamic segments to power targeted display and social ad campaigns, as well as share or sync those same segments to other tools in our stack,” said PT.
There was also an opportunity for website visitors to receive a B2B buyer experience they’d come to expect from other online resources. “Today’s digital audiences expect immediate results,” he says. “They have less patience, they want to talk to somebody now (via chatbot), and if you’re not going to do it, your competitor is.”
To maximize their potential, Blue Yonder refocused on integrating 6sense with key platforms, like Drift.
The Solution
ABM with 6sense
Blue Yonder first implemented 6sense in 2020 to streamline its account-based marketing strategy. “6sense is foundational to any targeted marketing that we do,” PT says. “It’s our ABM engine. It’s at the heart of everything. If something is claiming to be ABM and it’s not connected to 6sense, it’s like having a body part that’s not connected to your brain.”
The first step was pivoting from static target account lists to dynamically defined audiences and integrating 6sense more directly with LinkedIn.
Blue Yonder ran one-to-many ABM programs designed to cover a large set of accounts, focusing on prospects in key industries such as manufacturing, retail, and third-party logistics (3PL). This consisted of almost 30 always-on LinkedIn ad campaigns targeted toward accounts in awareness, consideration, or buying stages, as defined by 6sense.
PT says the one-to-many program had a “more scalable downstream impact on pipeline than other campaigns.” The results illustrate his point:
- >40% increase in accounts in the purchase stage
- >35% increase in anonymous website visits
- $145 cost per lead (CPL), below the target of $200
While many companies traditionally focus mostly on 1:1 ABM campaigns, PT says 6sense powered one-to-many campaigns gave Blue Yonder the ability to deliver broader coverage to thousands of accounts with greater targeting and conversion than traditional advertising.
“The best part of the ‘always-on campaign’ is that it’s not time-boxed or limited to a specific region. Because it’s powered by 6sense, it’s truly dynamic,” PT says.
Tailored Experiences with Drift
With all the effort Blue Yonder put into driving their ABM engine, it was also important that accounts showing interest were then engaged and converted.
Though Blue Yonder implemented Drift in 2020, they weren’t leveraging Drift’s live chat to book meetings. Under PT’s purview, Blue Yonder set up a pilot group with a few business development representatives (BDRs) across different time zones, industries, and solution sets using Drift to drive meeting bookings. As PT says, “It’s not about time-to-lead anymore, it’s about time-to-meeting.”
With the success they’ve seen with Drift so far, Blue Yonder’s goal is to arm every BDR with a Drift license by the end of the year.
Better Together: Drift and 6sense
Together, Drift and 6sense make a powerful duo in Blue Yonder’s go-to-market efforts. Drift leverages 6sense’s account identification capabilities to drive more personalized conversations with website visitors. In fact, Blue Yonder uses 6sense intent data in their Drift playbook.
Here’s how the 6sense and Drift integration works:
- Dynamic segments are created in 6sense, based on a variety of company-specific attributes including, but not limited to: name, size, location, technographics, intent signals, fit score, and on-site behavior.
- 6sense shares these dynamic segments with Drift, allowing Drift playbooks to be targeted/fire based on a site visitor’s belonging to a particular 6sense segment(s).
- These playbooks are thus better able to convey segment-specific messaging and enable segment-specific routing/assignment to sales reps.
- Additionally, 6sense-sourced data about a company will appear to a seller/Drift user within the Drift company info panel. This helps to empower more meaningful live chat conversations with visitors.
Using 6sense and Drift, companies like Blue Yonder can target, engage, and convert high-value buyers from target accounts the moment they land on their website.
“The Drift and 6sense integration is foolproof. When you’re in Drift, you can just go through your parameters for your decision trees in a playbook and it automatically knows which information is relevant because of 6sense. Or, if you’re a seller in Drift and looking at account profile info, it’s automatically pulling in data from the 6sense side.”
PT Umphress
Global Director of Digital Marketing, Blue Yonder
Additionally, the integration enables Drift to act as the “voice and face” of Blue Yonder’s website, which provides a more human and personal user experience. “The live chat gives it personality and identity. We have this cute little blue robot called Lumi that exists on pretty much every single page,” PT explains.
Takeaways
While Blue Yonder has been using 6sense and Drift since 2020, it was only when they tapped into the combined strength of both platforms that they able to take their go-to-market and ABM strategies to new heights.
Here are some key takeaways from Blue Yonder’s expansive Drift and 6sense use cases:
- Using 6sense, running one-to-many always-on LinkedIn campaigns can be successful in targeting wider audiences. Blue Yonder’s one-to-many ABM program resulted in a >40% increase in accounts in the purchase stage and more than 35% increase in anonymous visits.
- Drift’s chatbot capabilities improved customer engagement on Blue Yonder’s website, with research showing that people are three times more likely to share their information with a chatbot than in a traditional form.
- Integrating 6sense and Drift made daily workflows easier and led to an increase in opportunities and influenced pipeline.
Learn more about the 6sense Revenue AI Ecosystem and the vast network of integrated partners.
