“We were impressed from the start.”

Daniel Bleichman is the Sr. Manager of Marketing at Cato Networks, an Israeli-based startup that pioneered the convergence of networking and security into the cloud. 

Daniel saw value from UserGem’s always-on pipeline engine during the first demo call.

“I  saw potential in the use case from our first conversation. From that point, it was my job to fine-tune and drive internal awareness of the product with the SDR team and other departments,” Daniel says.

He continues, "Once UserGems was fully onboarded, and the SDRs started seeing how successful it was, the program scaled from there. It's one of those programs you know will be successful, but you don’t know how to do it. You can try to do it manually, obviously. But having it seamlessly work with your system can be very difficult.”

“UserGems literally gives you ‘gems.’You don’t need to do a lot to polish the gems. It’s already ready. You just need to take it.”

UserGems has enabled Cato Networks to grow the pipeline and increase the number of qualified leads in the funnel while also improving alignment between the SDR team and Marketing.    

Here’s how Daniel and the team realized their pipeline goals. 

The challenge: pipeline anxiety, long sales processes

Pipeline anxiety is a pressing challenge for numerous revenue teams.

Daniel explains, “The sales process is long. So, we try to make sure people have the best information they need to make a decision. And make sure they get a piece of content that’s relevant to their stage in the funnel.”

“Plus, there are a lot of moving parts in hitting our pipeline goals. And a lot of people are involved in winning deals. You can’t reach your own goal without other people hitting theirs. Everything needs to fit together seamlessly. What you are doing to hit your goal relies on other people doing their job, and the easier you make it for them, the better,” he continues.

Getting the UserGems pipeline generation tool up and running

UserGems has helped improve the visibility of revenue teams' actions across the organization. For example, the Marketing team can send dedicated messages to specific team members to get leads moving.

Prior to UserGems, “implementation was a two-part process,” Daniel says. “First, we needed to understand what would work for the people receiving the reports (our SDRs), the workflow after we get data from UserGems, and how to use it in our system.”

“You have an amazing support and technical team. They are always available. That part of the implementation was swift.  One or two meetings and we were able to implement it quickly.”

Daniel continues,” Then it took a few months to fine-tune how we were going to reach out to the UserGems leads, decide on the cadence, and align on who would reach out — Marketing or the SDR.”

Cato Network’s favorite pipeline generation playbooks with UserGems

Cato Network implements two playbooks with UserGems: (1) automating repeat purchases when key contacts join new companies, and (2) automating contact discovery for their Account-based Marketing (ABM) program.

With the first playbook, Daniel loves the level of granularity they get with the ‘gems’ from UserGems. 

“For the outreach, we target a decision-maker or key persona that has used our service. We reach out saying, ‘congrats, we know you were happy using Cato at your previous company. And we’d be happy to engage again,’” he explains.

Daniel continues,” We keep the outreach simple, and to the point. Personal and straightforward.”

For the second playbook, the Demand Generation team uses Account Tracking to automatically find potential new buyers that join their target Accounts. Identifying these new contacts has enabled Cato to enroll thousands of new prospects into their ABM campaigns. 

After launching the Account Tracking playbook, UserGems found 75% of Cato’s buyer contacts were missing from their Target Accounts. And have since sent over 15,000 new potential buyers directly to their Salesforce.   

Cato Networks' culture of collaboration has further improved with UserGems.

“Internally, we are very collaborative with the SDR department, and UserGems brought us even closer. The Marketing team is providing our SDRs with low-hanging fruit, which means we can help them hit their quota easily,” he says.

Results

Increase in pipeline generated ✅

Sales and marketing going after the same buyer together  ✅

Leveraging relationships with past customers to drive growth ✅

The Sales team uses Contact Tracking to drive pipeline resulting in 25X their contract size, while the Marketing team uses Account Tracking to advertise via ABM campaigns, driving an additional 15X in pipeline. 

Carmella Kettner, Sr. Director, Global Sales Development, says, “Since the UserGems implementation, our SDR Team has seen a huge benefit in identifying new projects through personas that already knew Cato. We treat them as valuable Gems!”

Everyone at Cato Networks has also been impressed with how helpful the UserGems program has been to the company’s bottom line. 

Daniel explains,” For the Marketing team, we look at our SDR team as our internal customers. The SDR team is the first point of contact with potential customers. And we need to provide them with relevant leads and information to do their job.”

“So, one big success for us with UserGems was the SDR team being so pleased to have tech that really assisted them with their job. It takes the SDR much less time to act on UserGems contacts. UserGems increased our pipeline and the amount of qualified leads we were able to add to the funnel,” he continues. 

At the risk of repeating ourselves, Daniel believes UserGems was a key component in improving the relationship between the SDRs and Marketing.

He says,” The connection between Marketing and the SDRs has grown substantially. SDRs always want to get more support from Marketing. And UserGems was key to providing support.”

Carmella adds, “we have a big team of SDRs [60 individuals], and UserGems has really helped us build a stronger relationship with our Marketing Team by allowing us to collaborate better. And include Daniel in some of our bi-weekly meetings to make sure our teams are aligned about our strategy in re-engaging these job changers."

Any tips for other Marketing leaders looking to collaborate with Sales, Customer Success, and RevOps on UserGems?

Daniel has one tip for getting other departments on board. 

“I would say start with team members you already have a connection with. Especially those that know the impact of Marketing. SDRs can be less connected to Marketing. But a few of them are very involved and know the impact. So, lean on those folks and their directors and make them into champions”

“Find a few successes and communicate those successes. Show the impact and how easily it can be done. You have to prove why they should stop other efforts. Show them that UserGems will be better for their quota and their bottom line..”

And for teams looking to implement UserGems, Daniel has a power tip for you:

“In the beginning, we sent emails from Marketing but didn’t see an impact. We learned the emails need to go out through the SDRs. Be more personal with your outreach. Finally, time is of the essence. You shouldn’t wait long with reaching out to a prospect that got a new job. Act fast.”

Ready to kiss your pipeline anxiety goodbye by turning your buyer job changes and relationship insights into an always-on pipeline engine? Book a demo to learn how.