--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rapid-fire FAQs

How would you describe UserGems to a friend who knew nothing about it?

I would describe UserGems as an automated email, contact engagement, and contact enrichment-like software that tracks and emails champions who move jobs.

What are your top three benefits of UserGems?

1. It's an efficient way to drive incremental qualified pipeline.
2. It's an automated process that doesn't require a ton of handholding or manual processes.
3. I like the combination of contact enrichment and the ability to act on the data (UserGems provides job changes in your CRM along with the automation to add those leads to an email nurturing sequence). Most companies can do one or the other. But being able to automate both is key.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Electric is an IT solutions company redefining how organizations handle information technology. And they are growing super-fast.

Seth Steinman, Director of Growth at Electric, knows that hyper-growth brings the challenge of growing marketing revenue at an efficient price.

“We’re doubling every year. And so, at a broad level, I’m always trying to figure out how to bring in more revenue at lower costs. That’s my job,” says Seth.

“This includes SEO to drive more website traffic, database emails, paid search, paid social, paid affiliates, podcasts, out-of-home advertising, sponsored and hosted events, and more.” Seth continues.

For Electric, introducing UserGems was a great way to keep marketing revenue in lockstep with the company’s growth.

Seth adds, “I think [what UserGems is offering] is unique; it’s a new kind of channel to achieve that goal, combining contact & account enrichment with automated emails. I think it’s going to become table stakes for revenue teams over time.”

Discovering UserGems

It all started at a swimming pool in the Sunshine State.

“Christian called me when I was working by the pool at my in-laws’ house in Florida. I’m 100% in agreement on the value of having champions advocate for us, so I didn't need to be sold on the value prop."

I was skeptical whether you guys could deliver it because [tracking contacts for job movements] is a tricky thing to do. But you also have a money-back guarantee offer, so I figured ‘I can’t lose on that. So, you got me, and it’s been wonderful,” Seth explains.

Finding happy customers that change companies — How Electric uses UserGems leads

“The program is mostly automated through Marketo. If the UserGems lead responds to a meeting, then they become like an inbound lead, and they go to an inbound SDR,” Seth says.

UserGems’ primary use case is tracking happy customers that change companies.

“As a young company, we don't have a ton of customers. We’re at 700 customers now. And each of those has a handful of IT decision-makers. That’s not a huge number for us. 

So, we expanded our scope to have UserGems monitor the job movements of our late-stage prospects as well. These people know our value props and, for various reasons, didn’t go with us during that particular sales cycle. But when they move to a new company, perhaps there’s a use case for Electric,” Seth explains.

This is all automated through Salesforce and Marketo.

“A unique aspect to Electric is that we have a lot of end-users. The way our product works is every single person at the company can message Electric via Slack or Microsoft Teams if they have IT problems. So, they might be on the customer success team or marketing team; they’re not IT decision-makers, but they still know about us and what we do. Those contacts are not in our Salesforce. But we can export those emails, and UserGems tracks their job movements. When they move, it creates a new opportunity for us to reach out,” he continues.

When reaching out to our previous users, the value proposition is to ask them to refer us to their new decision-maker.

Next steps? “We’re hiring an email marketer who can spend more time with UserGems and figure out even more use cases to incorporate,” Seth adds.

The (champions) prospecting model

“There's no other company doing [what UserGems does] right now. And I think that we can all agree that your champions are one of your most valuable sources of referrals and new revenue,” Seth says.

He continues, “I also appreciate that I don't have to do much to get it going. It's pretty automated. I would almost consider an always-on campaign which is the goal for me. I don't want to be required to build new emails every month, and usually, that’s the case with email; it requires a lot of updates, changes, and tests. So, while I do think there's an opportunity to do that and maybe get a little better, we're still getting good results from having it set to always on.”

Lead Volume vs. Lead Quality — the UserGems difference

“I think focusing on lead volume is the wrong way to look at pipeline generation; I know a lot of companies that buy these crazy expensive lists from affiliate sites that claim to have qualified leads. But when you call them and they're like ‘I've never heard of you!’,” Seth says.

He adds, “We focus on Cost per Dollar of ARR (annual recurring revenue) and Cost per Dollar of Pipeline. So, I don't care at all that an incremental source like UserGems might be a lower volume because the conversion rates are high, which makes sense. After all, they've heard of us. So, the cost is efficient. And I don't need to do a ton of manual work – it’s always running in the background.” 

We agree! Do you?