Direct mail builds BetterCloud pipeline influence by 92%

Looking for successful examples of how to turn prospects and clients into a community? Look no further than BetterCloud. With the help of Sendoso, the BlendCloud team has mastered how to engage customers and prospects at every stage of the sales and marketing journey.

The company is one of Sendoso’s top 50 senders.

And it’s a partnership that is paying off big for BetterCloud, with a 529% increase in revenue influenced by direct mail, and a highly engaged community of loyal customers.

Improving brand DNA with gifting automation

BetterCloud helps IT teams with their Software as a Service (SaaS) Operations—the practice of managing and securing the many SaaS applications used across an organization. Since its founding in 2011, gifting has been a major part of BetterCloud’s brand DNA.

“Sending swag to our customers has always been important to our company,” said Joe Kaiser, demand generation manager at BetterCloud. “[Customers] have been collecting our custom hoodies, mugs, and other swag for years.”

At first, Kaiser’s team handled packaging, shipping, and tracking manually. But one particularly large campaign made him seek a more efficient strategy.

“I manually packed a dolly with boxes and took 10 trips back and forth to UPS in the middle of Manhattan,” Kaiser remembered.

That’s when he decided to bring on Sendoso as a partner.

“We have very close relationships with our customers,” added Kaiser. “‘Strive to Delight’ and ‘In This Together’ are two of our company values, and Sendoso helps us live those values with our customers and be on the journey with them.”

Incentivizing the entire customer lifecycle

BetterCloud uses Sendoso for a variety of campaigns throughout the marketing and sales process to reach and engage with its targeted accounts.

Sales development representatives began building off a sending playbook Kaiser developed. They sent coffee eGifts and branded hoodies to confirm meetings. Account executives use Doordash eGifts to incentivize additional conversations.

Both the eGifts and the branded hoodie sends can be triggered using Sendoso’s automated gifting platform. No wrapping or hauling boxes across Manhattan anymore.

For marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) who have shown interest but haven’t set up a meeting, Kaiser encourages SDRs to send a personalized gift and note utilizing Sendoso’s Amazon integration and handwritten note feature.

“We’ve done about ten of these one-off Amazon campaigns and have seen a positive reply rate,” said Kaiser.

Gifting at scale helps build community

BetterCloud also brings customers into the SaaSOps community through their welcome kit campaign.

When a new customer signs, they’re sent a package with a custom branded shirt, tote, chapstick, and a physical copy of BetterCloud CEO David Politis’ books, The IT Leader’s Guide to SaaSOps Volumes 1 & 2.

“They’re getting an introduction to BetterCloud both from a swag perspective and a thought leadership perspective.”

Because BetterCloud’s product is highly technical, onboarding services are critical to long-term account retention. The customer experience team uses Sendoso to send a $25 coffee gift card and hoodie to customers who complete their required onboarding hours.

“Our onboarding program is an important foundation for long-term customer success, and Sendoso helps us ensure customers complete it.”

When customers achieve company milestones like an IPO or a SOX compliance audit, customer success managers (CSMs) send a wine.com eGift or customized BetterCloud socks (a pun on SOX) to congratulate them. Items like branded socks can be created using the Custom Brand Shop and stored at the Sendoso warehouse.

Teams from marketing to sales to customer success have adopted Sendoso to improve webinar attendance, boost meeting rates, accelerate pipeline, send a thank you, and celebrate milestones.

As a thank you for customers’ participation in a reference call or case study, the success team will send branded swag or a box of cookies. They also send seasonal packages that target accounts that are up for renewal that quarter.

Teams from marketing to sales to customer success have adopted Sendoso to improve webinar attendance, boost meeting rates, accelerate pipeline, send a thank you, and celebrate milestones.

Giving back to the community

Recently, Kaiser’s team also launched a community platform for the company’s customers, which has brought the company and its customers closer together.

For example, when a customer lost his house in a fire, BetterCloud sent him a personal note with a movie night swag package for his family.

Though a small gift, the gesture meant a lot.

“Sendoso allows us to be as thoughtful as we can be when we can’t actually visit our customers in person.”

At BetterCloud’s annual event, Altitude, customers were honored publicly for their contributions to the community. All 1,500 attendees were sent a swag package with a shirt, stickers, and socks. Community members were also recognized through an awards ceremony and gifted $200 Amazon eGift cards.

Streamlining the corporate gifting workflow

Looking back at overall sending campaigns, Kaiser has seen promising growth from BetterCloud’s work with Sendoso. One year after adopting Sendoso, they saw a 92% increase in direct mail pipeline influence and a 529% increase in direct mail’s closed-won influence.

Looking ahead, Kaiser will continue to scale BetterCloud’s sending strategy while taking advantage of Sendodo’s automation capabilities—including rolling out self-serve gifting workflows for their sales reps.

“Our goals moving forward are to keep operationalizing and automating Sendoso in Salesforce.”

As their direct mail strategy continues to drive ROI, Kaiser and his team will closely monitor results and double down on the most successful touchpoints and expand.

“My goal has been to expand Sendoso across the entire prospect and customer lifecycle. Our people and culture team are even using Sendoso internally to welcome incoming employees to BetterCloud.”

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