When dealing with closed-lost accounts, most companies cut their losses and move on.
But Clari isn’t like most companies. Instead, they closely examine closed-lost accounts and find new ways to bring them back to life.
Or, at least, that’s what Tyler Pleiss and Derek Antti — Clari’s Senior Marketing Manager and Revenue Development Manager, respectively — set out to do with their recent “Wake the Dead” account-based strategy.
Using 6sense display ads, Clari’s Wake the Dead strategy reinvigorates closed-lost accounts. The initiative recently resulted in $1 million of qualified pipeline in just one quarter.
Clari secured major wins through Wake the Dead, but achieving these results first required learning how to take full advantage of 6sense’s solution.
The Challenge
Tyler and Derek joined Clari in early 2022. Although Clari was already using 6sense at the time, their revenue team was not using the platform to its full potential.
For instance, the team didn’t fully understand how to best leverage 6sense data, resulting in a “spray and pray” go-to-market strategy. Instead of focusing on logos expressing genuine buying intent, Clari’s sellers targeted any big brand that came to mind.
On top of that, the results they were seeing from LinkedIn Advertising hit a plateau. Tyler explains: “We got to a point, especially on the marketing side, where we were running a lot of stuff at one time. That can sometimes oversaturate the people you’re targeting.”
So, Tyler and Derek empowered their team to optimize 6sense data and capabilities, which culminated in its ultra-successful Wake the Dead strategy.
The Solution
Losing an opportunity doesn’t mean it’s gone forever. Further, the reasons why accounts don’t turn into a win can change or vanish over time. Looking back on a year’s worth of closed-lost opportunities, Clari sought specific criteria such as failure to launch, meeting no-shows, bad timing, executive turnover, and budget restrictions.
To revive these closed-lost accounts, Clari had to:
- Align revenue development managers (RDRs) and account executives
- Align on messaging and assets, and
- Launch display ads using 6sense
Clari’s use of 6sense Display Ads targets senior-level personas and sends them to curated landing pages powered by Folloze, a buyer experience platform.
Once accounts reach Clari’s website, Derek’s team of RDRs receives those buying signals and targets the proper accounts to generate new opportunities.
“It gives our RDRs another avenue that’s outside of outbound or following up with inbound,” Derek says. “Then you couple this with 6sense, where you get the data that tells you who to chase down and what they’re interested in.”
The Results
With 6sense, Clari’s revenue team went from making educated guesses to knowing exactly who to target and how.
As Tyler wrote in an article on LinkedIn, Clari targeted 42 accounts with a goal of six meetings booked, four qualified meetings, and $500k in pipeline.
By the end of Q4 of the 2023 fiscal year, they achieved:
- Eight meetings booked
- Five qualified meetings worth over $1.1M in pipeline
6sense Display Ads reached all 42 accounts with a 79% account click-through rate (CTR).
Additionally, 93% of accounts engaged with display ads, and 67% showed increased engagement on Clari’s website.
From a cultural perspective, Clari’s internal adoption of 6sense has produced impressive results. For example, from Q1 of the fiscal year 2024, 43% of meetings booked have come from 6sense purchase and decision accounts.
“We’ve seen 6sense be considered a strong source of data to help all of our sellers align their focus and attention on the accounts they target for the year, the quarter, the week, and the day,” Derek says.
