Umbraco Uses G2 Solutions to Increase Average Deal Value by 30%

Software buyers conduct extensive research.

That means software sellers need to show up throughout the research process to increase touchpoints and help buyers evaluate solutions against other alternatives. 

Umbraco leverages G2 to do just that. The company increased sales and the quality of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) by enhancing their visibility on G2 and using intent data to understand what buyers are looking for.

Umbraco is an open-source content management system (CMS) known for its intuitive editing experience, flexibility for developers, and seamless integrations. The company offers a cost-effective CMS that scales with business and unlocks a world of opportunities. Today, more than 1 million websites worldwide run on Umbraco.

Umbraco recognizes the value of reviews, not just because partners and competitors are leveraging review sites for their own benefit.

Previously, Umbraco would sporadically collect some reviews, but after realizing the importance of being found where buyers actively look for software, the company wanted to step up its game.

Realizing the importance of being present and comparable

Software buying is a long process, and the Umbraco team was no strangers to it. 

Niels Christian Laursen, Digital Experience Promoter at Umbraco, explains, “It takes time for buyers to narrow down which vendors they want. You need to tick a lot of boxes. It takes time for research and meetings, so the process is very long.”

Umbraco understood that throughout this buying process, it’s crucial for companies to be present when potential customers are researching or comparing suitable products and alternatives. 

Lars Skjold Iversen, Team Lead at Umbraco, shares, “We understand that software buying is a long process. It has multiple stakeholders and comparisons. We realized we had to try a  review website since we wanted to be found when someone was looking for alternatives or comparative analysis.”

Reviews provide authentic, third-party testimonials for potential customers and validate their decision when considering a product. After exploring several options, Umbraco decided to partner with G2, the world’s largest and most trusted software marketplace, to generate user reviews. 

Skjold Iversen explains, “If we show up on G2 as a viable alternative to products customers know about, we might be added to the shortlist of options they would consider. We would like to be comparable.  And we want to make sure when buyers do that, we are there.”

Umbraco already had a large market presence in the UK, but the company focused its sales and marketing efforts on expanding to the enterprise market in the United States. 

Umbraco’s flag bearers were inspired by Google’s customer journey model. They were keen to increase touchpoints in the customer journey and amplify their users’ voices in G2 reviews.

Utilizing resources to increase potential touchpoints

At first, Umbraco wasn’t aware of how tricky and time-consuming it can be to generate quality reviews. But G2 helped them run campaigns to generate more reviews and offered incentives to reviewers, like Amazon gift cards. 

Umbraco noticed that many of their leads had some activity on G2 before they were captured in their CRM. This inspired the company to double down on generating more reviews. Monthly chats with G2 helped them to get inspired by other companies’ efforts with Review Generation.  

Umbraco also recently enlisted G2 to set up a booth to collect reviews at their annual knowledge-sharing conference Codegarden. Skjold Iversen shared, “There were a lot of happy attendees and good sessions – oh, and 62 new reviews, as far as I can see. So we're really happy with that, as well."

Today, Umbraco is at a place where they consistently generate reviews. They get 75% of reviews from in-app review ask prompts, 20% from customer events, and more than 5% come from G2’s strategic outreach campaigns.

As Umbraco started generating more reviews on G2, the company also saw this as an opportunity to capture customer feedback on their product and offerings. The Custom Questions feature on the G2 review form allowed them to gain specific insights into what their users liked and disliked about the product. 

Aside from reviews, Umbraco also leverages G2 Buyer Intent data to target the right people in the right companies that are actively researching them. 

G2 Buyer Intent helps Umbraco get rich insights on potential buyers who are interested in their product. This signals the sales team, and they use this data for lead enrichment purposes, resulting in more deals that can be traced back to G2. 

“We keep finding new uses for buyer intent data. We can see that many customers are using G2 at some point in their journeys. Having this data in there makes sense and helps us justify our investment in G2.”

Lars Skjold Iversen
Team Lead at Umbraco

Skjold Iversen reflects, “Intent data helps us understand who is comparing us with other products and who is visiting our profile. If we can broaden this, we can catch more leads in our category. Complete buyer intent data helps us get more value from our money spent on LinkedIn ads.” 

Furthermore, G2’s Trust Badges provide social proof to potential customers and even helped increase conversion rates. Umbraco ran an A/B test to compare conversion rates of landing pages with and without G2 software badges. Although the company just kicked these tests off, early results show an increase in conversion rates for pages that displayed G2 badges. 

This prompted Umbraco to incorporate more G2 badges in their paid ad campaigns, helping them to improve conversion rates once again. The company then increased its spending on LinkedIn ads and started generating more MQLs.

Laursen shared, “With the G2 Buyer Intent integration, we’ve increased our LinkedIn budgets, making it one of our biggest paid channels.”

Engaging potential buyers and increasing conversions

It didn’t take long for Umbraco to see the value of G2. In fact, the company recently became a leader in enterprise web content management software on G2’s Summer 2022 Grid Report. 

Umbraco observed the impact of G2 on their deals for close to 7 months and shared some numbers to validate these points:  

*The data in this article uses EU number formatting.

G2 Marketing Solutions continues to be essential for Umbraco to generate more MQLs, improve conversion rates, and engage potential customers who are searching for software. Umbraco is still working with G2 to expand across other categories and increase their touchpoints throughout the customer journey.

Skjold Iversen reflects, “We can see that we have a better conversion rate on our website by using badges and reviews. We have also increased the total MQLs we send to our sales team. We haven’t seen any patterns in the sales cycle, as it varies with every customer. But based on data, 15-20% of leads have some kind of activity on G2 before being created in our CRM.”

Learn how G2 Marketing Solutions can help you generate more leads and strategically close deals.