Searching For a Central Marketing and Sales Ecosystem

Before HubSpot, Alsid used various tools to manage their marketing and sales processes, including Salesforce, Mailchimp, Microsoft Forms, Buffer, and Bitly. None of these platforms caused issues on their own, but the lack of a unifying tool was the biggest challenge for Alsid. They were growing fast and needed a central hub to help bring everything together.

Skyler Schmanski, Deputy Chief Marketing Officer at Alsid, says, “We were on the cusp of raising Series A funding, and our marketing team was set to explode from one to 10 members in less than a year. We needed the digital glue to link our marketing, sales, and ops, and that meant a solution capable of providing powerful native features and equally powerful integrations.”

Alsid looked for a solution that would allow them to automate their efforts practically and report their results quickly. It was vital they felt supported not just during the implementation period but also beyond. Alsid’s marketers knew HubSpot ticked all the boxes. “The promise of working alongside our customer success manager sealed the deal,” explains Skyler.

Alsid began their HubSpot journey with Marketing Hub Professional in early 2019. Soon after that, they added Sales Hub to the mix and upgraded to Marketing Hub Enterprise.

Building an Inbound Marketing Machine and Maximizing Automation

Alsid started seeing the first results within months. From the beginning, they’ve viewed HubSpot not just as a tool but a methodology, rallying the entire company around inbound marketing. Skyler explains, “Alsid is an inbound marketing machine. We’ve used HubSpot to share world-class thought leadership that addresses tomorrow’s most pressing cybersecurity challenges. Operationally, we never want to place all eggs in one channel ‘basket,’ so we’re continually rebalancing channels to ensure sustainable growth.” Alsid uses organic and paid social (including LinkedIn campaigns), email marketing, physical and virtual events, and webinars to establish multiple lead generation streams.

The Workflows tool within Markeing Hub lies at the heart of Alsid’s automation efforts and enables them to deliver thought leadership at scale. The marketing team uses nurturing workflows to connect prospects and clients with their thought leadership. Each month has a theme, and every week brings a fresh batch of insights. Alsid combines this with advanced lead scoring and native integrations that align these marketing activities with sales. By delivering real-time notifications to their sales team for new MQLs and demo requests, they can quickly respond to the most qualified leads and close more deals. “At any given time, more than 100 workflows are pulling their weight. It’s a recipe for limitless demand gen,” adds Skyler.

Alsid credits its success to focusing on alignment between marketing and sales. HubSpot’s value had to be established throughout the organization, and that meant marketing goals reflect those of their sales and ops counterparts. Getting buy-in and teammates’ engagement was the key to Alsid’s success because everyone understood what HubSpot could do for them.

Setting, Hitting, and Exceeding Ambitious Goals

Alsid’s results with HubSpot were explosive. Soon after constructing their lead gen definitions, they grew their marketing qualified leads (MQLs) from zero to 1,000 in under six months. That was their goal for the entire year, but they proceeded to hit 4,000 MQLs in 2019. In 2020, they set the goal at 13,000 MQLs, which they achieved by November—and kept going.

These results were possible by linking marketing and sales through KPIs and SLAs at every turn. “Alsid’s hypergrowth begins with our incredible teams and the tools they leverage. We knew that establishing HubSpot’s value for every team member was crucial,” adds Skyler.

That value continues to prove itself. “We trusted HubSpot to listen, to improve, and to support our enterprise as we grew from a team of 20 to more than 100 in just two years,” concludes Skyler. “It’s exactly what we need to achieve our mission of building the future of cybersecurity—alignment of teams, mountains of leads, and upending the way we talk about a $1.5-trillion cybercrime economy.”