After several months of working with Pillir, we noticed friction in their flywheel at the Awareness Stage of the Buyer's Journey. Pillir’s website visitors immediately saw the values and benefits of using a low-code/no-code platform to improve SAP operations, but either failed to see the risk of inaction or did not have clean visibility into the hidden costs in their budget.

The last thing any CTO or SAP Architect wants is to embark on a lengthy, resource-heavy project unless there is an immediate need. We needed to show them the real financial impact – the technical debt – of maintaining status quo.  

The Challenge: Exposing Technical Debt

From their partnership with ASUG, Pillir knew that far too many companies had no clue how much technical debt they carry in their SAP environment while some were spending up to 50% of their budget on it. 

To break through the apathy barrier we challenged the audience directly by asking: Do YOU know how much technical debt you have?

Self-Serve, No Obligations

Through a series of 7-10 questions, Pillir can reasonably estimate the range of ERP technical debt for an organization. We built these questions into a self-serve, no obligations online survey that can be completed by anyone at any time. 

The Solution: A Technical Debt Calculator to Show the Real Cost of Inaction

To implement the technical debt calculator we used:

• HubSpot CMS for the landing page and thank you page
• Typeforms for the survey
• HubSpot API to sync Typeform submissions with the HubSpot CRM and tie those sessions to the CMS & analytics settings
• HubSpot CRM for personalization
• HubSpot Marketing workflows & CTAs
• HubSpot Sales suite

Using the Advanced Logic of Typeform

We built the survey in Typeform to leverage the ability of if/then logic and conditional fields. 

The survey is embedded on a HubSpot CMS page but the data collection happens in an iFrame and is stored within Typeform. 

When the survey is completed, we package and push the user’s answers to close the data loop, creating a seamless user experience. This is how it works:

1. Ensure the data submitted via Typeform is pushed to HubSpot and creates a new, or updates an existing, contact record
2. Calculate/set the technical debt range and the potential savings range based on the survey answers
3. Connect that data to the current live session on the HubSpot CMS page with the Typeform submission to allow for personalized result page
4. Send a kickback email to the contact and an internal email notification with the submission data and technical debt calculation properties

Typeform & HubSpot Session Syncing

With the native integration between Typeform and HubSpot it was easy to push the submission data to HubSpot. The challenge was connecting the sessions so that the current website session was refreshed to show the Typeform submission data for that website visitor. To do so we had to leverage the HubSpot API and an additional, hidden form submission on the Pillir site. This connected the two records and allowed us to complete the personalization association for the current HubSpot CMS visitor session. 

Running Calculations for a Data Range

“HubSpot calculated properties was our first choice to set the technical debt numbers but it was quickly ruled out as the if/then logic of the form left some of the properties blank and the calculation won’t run. To allow for the unique combination of answers and the data ranges (i.e., $1,000,000 - 1,250,000) we used a HubSpot workflow to set these contact properties based on the form submissions.” ~ Tanya Wigmore, CRO:NYX Digital

This workflow uses if/then branches to run through the different key questions. The branches identify and set the technical debt and debt savings properties on the contact record.

Personalized Survey Response Page 

Syncing the sessions, running the workflow and having the personalization tokens trigger needs to happen in 2-5 seconds MAX before someone gets impatient and leaves the page. 

We can capture interest with this animation while those steps complete in the background. The page refreshes with the content as soon as it is available (usually within 2-3 seconds).

Results: A Lead Magnet with Pre-Qualified Leads

Within the first month of launch we saw the technical debt calculator drive over 10k sessions and influence over 2k of our existing CRM contacts while creating a spike in new contacts. With the information they provided, Pillir was able to pre-qualify 25% of them. Already, the leads generated via the technical debt calculator are some of the most qualified inbound leads to date.

An increase in website sessions with contributions from the technical debt calculator. 

Technical debt calculator submissions are more qualified and roughly 1 in 4 have been pre-qualified.

Impact: A New Playbook for SaaS

A New Inbound Playbook: Quick, Interactive & Personal

“Our target audience is an advanced techy crowd who is tired of downloading white papers or watching webinars. We were looking for something that will better talk their language, be interactive and provide real-life business value to entice them to move forward in the funnel and consider our solution and the campaign’s success is reflected in the result.  CRO:NYX did an excellent job integrating Typeform’s simpler, dynamic and gradually progressing reports with Hubspot CMS & CRM.” ~ Irit Gillath, VP of Marketing, Pillir

Seeing how well the audience engaged with the survey vs gated white papers and webinars has shaped how we will structure future lead gen initiatives. For the user it’s quick, informative and helpful to get personalized data and the sales team receives more insightful information about the lead when it comes in –making their sales conversations more targeted and effective. 

Motivated Sales Leads

Educating contacts on their technical debt created an instant awareness of the problem and an urgency for action for this previously unmotivated audience. This shift in urgency speeds up the sales cycle which leads to increased revenue, faster. 

For more information on creating engaging lead gen campaigns for your SaaS company, please contact us.