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. Faced with multiple disparate social tools in its 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 its Marketing Automation Platform (Marketo) and Customer Relationship Management (Microsoft Dynamics) systems.

Recognizing the importance of embracing a comprehensive marketing data approach, Kainos prioritized including social engagement data when planning two large partner conferences, one in Barcelona and another in San Francisco, which saw 15,000+ attendees. These conferences encompassed different time zones, languages, and cultures, attracting thousands of attendees from various industries and regions.

They wanted a solution that would seamlessly integrate organic social and advocacy engagement data 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. It offers a comprehensive and streamlined perspective of Kainos's customer journey, starting from corporate social media posts and company advocate interactions.

The Oktopost Solution

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

Integrating the two platforms and enabling the linking of contacts and account engagement during events became critical marketing data, and 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 social engagement of attendees 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 data insights.

• Facilitate aligning 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 so much time to focus on other event activities. 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 was 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 re-post them through their Advocates.

Lead Scoring enhanced with social engagement data

Engagement data linked through Oktopost to Marketo is crucial in enriching Kainos's lead-scoring model by adding social engagement data to the lead's contact record. 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 engagement and share this with Sales

• The ability to prioritize and target leads more effectively, leading to enhanced lead management and a more efficient conversion process.

Integrating our martech stack of Oktopost and Marketo has closed the knowledge and insights gap in our organic social efforts. The social engagement data we link using Oktopost and Marketo enables us to track, report, and prioritize leads for our sales teams and provides our sales partners with holistic lead-generation insights.

Charlie Oakham, Digital Strategy Director at Kainos

Kainos Results Using Oktopost

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.