How impact.com Cut Their Cost Per Lead in Half with G2

impact.com, a SaaS platform that allows businesses to manage their partnerships, was dealing with rather complex customer journeys spanning eight different channels. 

Holding the responsibility of a $10 million budget, impact.com's director of demand generation, Whitney Donaldson, was looking for ways to cut their CPL (cost per lead) and turn their marketing spend into revenue. 

impact.com turned to G2 to streamline their demand gen outreach and found that by pairing G2 and several other tools they were already using, they were able to capture customer reviews and build efficient pipeline.

Challenges Turned into Triumphs

As they were getting started with G2, the impact.com team recognized the importance of capturing a broad range of customer reviews to amp up their G2 profile and capture the voice of their customers. At first, they were collecting reviews manually, sending quarterly review campaigns, and requesting reviews in one-to-one conversations, and while that was a good start, it was tedious, and reviews were trickling in at a slow pace. 

impact.com was already leveraging Pendo, for in-app messaging to their customers. When they learned that they could also utilize Pendo to request and capture reviews from their customers right in their product, it seemed like a no-brainer.  "We turned on the Pendo G2 integration, and within one day, we got 200 reviews," shares Donaldson “My mind was blown." 

With this new influx in customer proof, the impact.com team started leveraging G2 badges on their website and landing pages. And these efforts are paying off, Donaldson shares “G2 badges get the most clicks and the most engagement of anything else on those landing pages.”

But they didn’t stop there.

Evolving Prospect Engagement with G2, 6sense, and LinkedIn Matched Audiences 

With reviews rolling in, the team at impact.com also looked at ways to streamline their demand gen efforts and pipeline building. 

Along with G2 Buyer Intent, the impact.com team leverages 6sense intent data and LinkedIn Matched Audiences to help build their pipeline. The combination of G2 and 6sense intent data gives them a full picture of when a customer is in-market to buy, and through LinkedIn Matched Audiences, they’re able to serve relevant content to those customers based on what they were looking for on G2.

“We leverage G2 with the 6sense and the LinkedIn Matched Audiences integrations so we can put the right message in front of prospects at the right time.”

Whitney Donaldson
Director of Demand Generation, impact.com

Their flow is as follows: if someone is on G2 searching for them vs. their competitors, they send that data over to 6sense to evaluate if the account is a strong or moderate fit and in the decision or purchasing phase.

If they are a good fit, then they begin their paid media across all of their channels, including LinkedIn Matched Audiences. 

This one-two punch of intent data and paid media has resulted in some big wins for the team at impact.com. “We get about 200 to 250 leads a month from G2 with a 10-20% conversion rate, says Donaldson, “which is higher than a lot of our other channels.”

And even better, their cost per lead has dropped significantly. Donaldson shares,  “Our average CPL was $120. Now with G2, it’s less than half that, at just $53.” 

Beyond brand awareness and improving the lead generation process, G2 is also providing actionable customer insights for impact.com. “Our CEO brings a testimonial or a badge to our company-wide huddles every week. And our sales team is using a lot of our testimonials in their outreaches to accelerate sales,” explains Donaldson. "Internally, our entire company is so excited about G2.”