How RollWorks Maintains Strong Internal & External Connections During COVID-19

This piece is brought to you by RollWorks Demand Generation Marketing Manager Katie Dunn.

Rollworks’ account-based platform allows marketing and sales teams drive demand fast with easy target account discovery and prioritization, account-based digital advertising, and automated sales outreach.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted nearly every aspect of our daily lives. We’re adapting to the mashup of personal and professional lives, as well as the change in our strategies, quickly and constantly.

Sendoso caught up with Katie in early March. Here’s a snippet of our conversation from then.

How We’ve Changed

At RollWorks, we shifted to remote work about two weeks ahead of San Francisco’s shelter-in-place mandate. Since then, we’ve implemented strategies to help the team stay connected and productive—a big part of our philosophy is that there’s no such thing as being over-communicative during times like these.

While working from home will never replace the community of being face-to-face in the office, here are a few best practices that guide our team as we adjust to remote work:

• If something is super important, send an email and add it to Asana (or your team’s preferred project management tool) so it lives in a centralized channel.
• If it’s a complex campaign with moving parts, our team has recently been doing quick PowerPoint presentations paired with a Vidyard video (something my boss, Jodi Cerretani, is great at!) We find that it gets everyone on the same page without the need of another meeting.
• When making a request, include all supporting documents and links so your teammate has everything he or she needs to get started.
• Lastly, hold your teammates accountable. Everyone is facing a million distractions at home, whether it’s roommates, kids who are no longer in school, or the tantalizing power of Tiger King—so don’t be afraid to send gentle reminders in order to keep things moving at work.

We’ve also found that even simple steps help fill that gap, including holding daily check-in meetings, having our video cameras on during calls, exchanging personal phone numbers, and using Slack for back-and-forth communication.

How Our Marketing Changed

RollWorks is an account-based platform for marketing and sales teams, and we’ve done a complete 180 on our go-to-market efforts. Since events and in-person meetings are no longer an option, we’ve significantly increased our digital presence, using our own product to target personas and accounts.

But we’ve also continued to focus on the relationship with our audience, shifting the tone of our communications and making sure to update promotional messages to be more empathetic and focused on tactics to help customers. As a result, we’ve paused a few of our nurture campaigns to avoid turning off prospects with a tone-deaf message that doesn’t address what’s most important to our buyers and customers right now.

Finally, we’ve been maintaining relationships with our peers and colleagues, as well. RollWorks worked with partners to create co-marketing campaigns, including developing a guide with Sendoso on how marketers can continue to generate demand without in-person events, as well as participating in The Show Must Go On: What 13 Field Marketers are Doing Without Events video series from Sendoso. Now more than ever is the time to band together and collaborate with your colleagues across the industry.

Looking Ahead: What Will Stay the Same

While the challenges of this pandemic are unprecedented, a small silver lining is seeing how teams are working even more closely and efficiently to solve problems, overcome obstacles big or small, and discover creative ways to go to market.

People are leveraging online communities like Slack channels and LinkedIn groups to connect with others while we’re physically disconnected. It’s been amazing to see how in times of trouble, we’re coming together to become even stronger and more united than before.

And I think those connections are something that we’ll continue to see no matter what happens next.