How Kainos Simplified their Martech Stack and Achieved Marketing Goals in Half the Time with Oktopost

Meet Kainos

Kainos Group plc is a UK-headquartered IT provider with expertise across three divisions: Digital Services, developing custom digital service platforms for public sector, commercial, and healthcare customers. Workday Services, deployment of Workday, Inc.'s Finance, HR, and Planning products to leading organizations across Europe and North America. And Workday Products, who develop products that complement Workday and are used by over 400 customers globally. These purpose-built platforms, automate the testing process, reducing testing costs by up to 90%.

With a strong emphasis on technology, Kainos aims to solve real problems for their customers, overcome big challenges for businesses, and make people's lives easier. Kainos has established a notable reputation since its establishment in 1986, employing more than 3,100 people in 23 countries across Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

The Challenge

Kainos set out on a mission to streamline its marketing data and simplify its martech stack, aiming for an integrated and closed-loop digital strategy. In the face of multiple disparate social tools in their stack, the company grappled with a fragmented understanding of its prospects' and customers' engagement in social as a channel. Consequently, socially driven leads weren't flowing smoothly through their Marketing Automation Platform (Marketo) and Customer Relationship Management (Microsoft Dynamics) systems.

Recognizing the importance of embracing a comprehensive marketing data approach, Kainos prioritized the inclusion of first-party social intent data when planning on two large partner conferences held in Barcelona and another in San Francisco, which saw 15,000+ attendees. These conferences encompassed different time zones, languages, and cultures, and attracted thousands of attendees from various industries and regions.

They wanted a solution that would ensure that both organic social and advocacy engagement data was seamlessly integrated into Marketo so that they could gain a deeper understanding of customer and prospect engagement at the conferences.

For this reason, Oktopost emerged as the perfect solution, offering a comprehensive and streamlined perspective of Kainos's customer journey, starting from corporate social media posts and sales advocate interactions.

The Oktopost Solution

As Kainos consolidated their Marketing Technology around a single MAP (Marketo), Oktopost stood out as a game-changing solution, enhancing the pivotal role of first-party social intent data in their live event lead generation efforts.

Integrating the two platforms and enabling the seamless synchronization of all critical event marketing data, the marketing team at Kainos saw transformative benefits:

The Ability to Establish Concrete ROI for Social Activities

Leveraging Oktopost's advanced capabilities, Kainos gained insight into the specific social activities attendees engaged in at both conferences. This allowed them to:

• Tie organic social media efforts to engagements and opportunities generated at the conferences.
• Turn Advocate engagement and interactions into sales opportunities.
• Make informed decisions and optimize live event strategies based on actionable data insights.
• Facilitate the alignment of their social activities with broader marketing and sales objectives.

I was able to schedule all of our posts and activities a month in advance, then create Smart Campaigns in Marketo to help process people who engage with us at our partner conferences. It gave me back so much time to focus on other activities at the events. Owen Devine, Marketing Technology & Operations Executive at Kainos

Time and Agility With Simple, Integrated Tools

Through the use of Oktopost's tools and features such as post scheduling for organic posts, AI for Advocate posts, and the Oktopost iPhone app, the Kainos Marketing team were able to find time and agility in their social media efforts, enabling them to:

• Find efficiency and productivity for activities at both conferences, including talks, and networking events.
• Free resources so that the Marketing Team could focus on other activities.
• The Oktopost app improved responsiveness and relevance, enabling the team to post updates with engaging pictures, and then re-post these through their Advocates.

Streamlined Lead Scoring and Qualification

Oktopost played a crucial role in enriching Kainos's lead scoring and qualification procedures by enabling the seamless integration of first-party social intent data. This led to several advantages:

• Drive registrations for Kainos sponsored talks at both conferences.
• A closed loop approach to tracking and evaluating lead engagements in offline activities at each conference, including Kainos talks.
• The ability to see a more holistic view of their leads' engagement with their social content leading up to and during the two conferences.
• Could assign lead scores and qualifications based on their specific social activities and share this with Sales in CRM in near real time.
• The ability to prioritize and target leads more effectively, leading to enhanced lead management and a more efficient conversion process.

Streamlining our martech stack with Oktopost and Marketo has closed the knowledge and insights gap in our organic social efforts. The social engagement data we get from Oktopost not only enables us to track, report, and prioritize leads for our sales teams, but also provides our sales partners with holistic lead generation insights. Charlie Oakham, Digital Strategy Director at Kainos

Oktopost Results

By leveraging the streamlined integration of Oktopost, Marketo, and Microsoft Dynamics within their Martech stack for both global partner conferences, Kainos reaped multifaceted benefits that accelerated leads through to their sales teams.

The seamless alignment of these platforms empowered Kainos to draw a clear and direct correlation between social media influence and opportunities, enabling them to measure an influenced 581% ROI for both events. This newfound capability not only enhanced their understanding of the impact of social activities during two live events but also facilitated the development of targeted strategies that amplified the Kainos brand and the personal profiles of Advocates.

In addition, Oktopost's ability to provide insightful and near real-time lead data based on social interactions equipped its sales team with the necessary insight to swiftly identify and respond to promising leads. This operational refinement translated to heightened efficiency within their sales operations, empowering their teams to proactively engage with potential clients, address their specific needs, and foster meaningful connections that nurtured prospects further down the sales funnel.

The integration of Oktopost, Marketo, and Microsoft Dynamics not only streamlined lead scoring and accelerated sales processes but also expedited the success of attending both conferences, with 16% engagement in social activity, up from an average engagement rate of 11% for the year to date 2023.