136: Benoit Leggieri: Livestorm’s Head of Growth on crafting revenue driving workflows with Customer.io

What’s up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Benoit Leggieri, Head of Growth at Livestorm. 


Summary: Benoit offers a behind-the-scenes look at how Livestorm’s martech stack drives growth and personalization. At its heart is Customer.io, seamlessly integrated with tools like Amplitude, Segment, and Mutiny, creating a powerful system that delivers tailored experiences while scaling effortlessly. By leveraging data-driven workflows to address user needs with precision and automating processes like product certification, Livestorm not only boosts conversions but also deepens customer relationships. Their strategic use of gated content for complex demos further enhances engagement, showcasing a martech strategy that’s as effective as it is thoughtful.


About Benoit

• Benoit started his career at a B2B comms agency before joining HUB Institute, Paris’ top think tank as a Growth marketer
• He later joined an event software startup as a product marketing manager
• He was also a part time trainer at a digital marketing school in Paris
• In 2020 he joined Livestorm – the top video engagement software – as a growth manager to work CRO and after only a year he was promoted to Growth Lead and later Head of Growth where he leads a team of 3 growth managers

Livestorm’s Martech Stack Built for Personalization and Retention

Livestorm’s martech stack is a powerhouse, meticulously crafted to enhance every stage of the customer journey. They use Customer.io, Hubspot, SEMRush, and Clay and Benoit unpacks a few other elements. The stack also features Amplitude, the go-to tool for analyzing website conversion rates. Amplitude also helps identify exactly where the user experience can improve, turning insights into action.

Mutiny takes center stage for personalization. By tailoring website content to specific industries and personas, it ensures that each visitor feels like the site was made just for them. Whether it’s through social proofs or custom messaging, this tool helps Livestorm engage B2B clients on a deeper level, making every interaction count.

Segment serves as the backbone of data management. It captures user data and seamlessly distributes it across various platforms, from email marketing to in-app messaging. This orchestration guarantees that every touchpoint with the customer is personalized and relevant, driving better engagement and retention.

Benoit also gives a nod to Refiner, a key player in capturing user feedback. Whether it’s through NPS surveys or specific feedback on new features, Refiner ensures Livestorm stays in tune with its users. Integrated with Segment, it not only gathers data but triggers timely follow-ups, helping to refine the product based on real user input.

Key takeaway: A well-integrated martech stack is essential for delivering personalized experiences and driving user retention. Tools like Amplitude, Mutiny, Customerio.io and Segment work together to create a seamless journey, while Refiner ensures user feedback directly informs product improvements.


The Orchestrator and the Center of Your Martech Stack

Benoit doesn’t hesitate when asked about the centerpiece of Livestorm’s martech stack. For him, the core has always been their marketing automation tool, Customer.io. This tool has been instrumental since Livestorm's early days, especially when they were a small, self-serve business. Benoit attributes much of their growth to the strategic use of Customer.io, which not only automated specific messaging but also provided critical insights into the buyer's journey. The integration with Segment further amplified its impact, allowing Livestorm to capture and utilize data points effectively, which in turn, scaled conversions and expanded their customer base.

As Livestorm grew, so did the complexity of their martech stack. Benoit mentions that as the company evolved, the data warehouse and Customer Data Platform (CDP) began playing a more significant role. Yet, despite this evolution, he remains adamant that the true orchestrator of their stack continues to be Customer.io. Its role in managing and optimizing the buyer journey is so ingrained in their operations that it remains central, even as new tools and processes are introduced.

This perspective reflects a broader trend where companies initially rely heavily on marketing automation tools as their primary orchestrator. But as they scale and gather more data, the role of CDPs and data warehouses becomes increasingly important. However, for Livestorm, the foundational importance of a tool like Customer.io cannot be overstated, especially given its ability to adapt and integrate as the company’s needs grew more complex.

The evolution of Livestorm’s stack from a single orchestrator to a more complex, data-driven system underscores the importance of flexibility and scalability in martech tools. While the CDP and data warehouse have become critical, the consistent thread has been Customer.io’s capacity to grow with them, demonstrating that even as the tech stack evolves, the initial building blocks remain crucial.

Key takeaway: The backbone of a successful martech stack often starts with a solid marketing automation tool. As a company scales, additional tools like CDPs and data warehouses become vital, but the original orchestrator, like Customer.io in Livestorm’s case, continues to play a crucial role in managing and optimizing the customer journey.


Why Customer.io Stands Out for Livestorm

When asked about what makes Customer.io a standout tool for Livestorm, Benoit highlighted three key features that have made it indispensable to their marketing efforts.

1 - First on the list is data integration. Benoit praises the seamless connection between Customer.io and their Customer Data Platform (CDP), Segment. This integration enables Livestorm to map user events and attributes effortlessly, which in turn allows for highly personalized messaging. By leveraging this data, the team can trigger specific campaigns at the perfect moment for each user, ensuring that every message is relevant and timely.

2 - The second feature Benoit appreciates is the user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) of the platform. Onboarding new team members has been straightforward, thanks to Customer.io’s intuitive design. The visual workflow builder simplifies the process of creating and editing campaigns and emails, making it easy for the entire team to collaborate and execute strategies without unnecessary complications.

3 - Finally, Benoit highlights the segment builder as a crucial tool in their arsenal. Managing recipient lists can be a nightmare in many platforms, but Customer.io’s approach, with tags and naming conventions, makes it much easier to organize and clean up lists. This feature not only improves efficiency but also ensures that Livestorm’s campaigns reach the right audience every time.

Key takeaway: Customer.io excels in data integration, intuitive UX/UI, and efficient segment management, making it a powerful tool for personalized marketing campaigns. These features have allowed Livestorm to optimize their messaging and ensure smooth operations across their team.


Crafting Revenue-Driving Workflows with Customer.io

Benoit shares a fascinating look at how Livestorm has leveraged Customer.io to create sophisticated workflows, particularly those focused on driving revenue. This year, the team concentrated on revenue-centric workflows, addressing challenges like incomplete subscriptions and payment issues—common hurdles in any SaaS business.

One notable experiment revolved around abandoned carts. By integrating Customer.io with their data stack, they tracked users who landed on the billing page but didn’t complete their transactions. This e-commerce-inspired approach yielded impressive results. Benoit highlights that almost 15% of users who received abandoned cart emails completed their subscriptions within a week. The key was in personalizing the messaging based on user attributes, which Customer.io handled seamlessly.

For low-engagement users, the call to action (CTA) was straightforward—help them complete the transaction. However, for high-engagement users, the CTA was more nuanced, offering additional resources and the option to speak with a sales rep. This tailored approach not only improved conversions but also deepened user engagement, showcasing the flexibility and power of Customer.io in handling complex scenarios.

Another successful initiative focused on handling payment issues. By collaborating with the finance team, Livestorm implemented a series of follow-up emails to address overdue payments. These ranged from a gentle nudge after one week to more urgent reminders at the three-week mark. What set this workflow apart was its integration with Slack, where alerts were sent to the finance team whenever a payment was completed. This not only streamlined communication but also ensured that teams were aligned and informed in real-time.

Key takeaway: Personalization and timely follow-ups are crucial for boosting revenue in SaaS businesses. By utilizing tools like Customer.io, companies can craft tailored workflows that address specific pain points, leading to improved conversions and more effective team collaboration.


Enhancing Retention Through Automated Certifications

Benoit emphasizes the importance of activation and retention as often overlooked yet critical components of growth. He argues that by improving these areas, companies can reduce their cost of acquisition. The logic is straightforward: better activation and retention lead to higher conversions, which means less reliance on costly acquisition strategies.

One successful initiative at Livestorm involved the creation of auto-generated certifications, part of a broader project called Livestorm Learning. This cross-functional effort was designed to boost both retention and product stickiness. As Livestorm's customer base grew, including both self-serve and sales-assisted clients, the need to ensure users fully utilized the platform became paramount.

Livestorm Learning is essentially an academy offering comprehensive training on how to get the most out of the platform. The customer success team developed a series of five modules, each aimed at educating users on best practices and maximizing their success with the platform. Upon completing the training, users were tested on their knowledge, and those who passed received an automatic certification from Livestorm.

This initiative not only improved retention but also created a sense of achievement among users. Many proudly shared their certifications on LinkedIn, which served as both a retention tool and a brand awareness booster. Benoit sees this project as a prime example of how focusing on user engagement and education can drive long-term success.

Key takeaway: Activation and retention are powerful levers for reducing acquisition costs and driving growth. Projects like Livestorm Learning, which combines user education with recognition through certifications, can significantly enhance both user engagement and brand visibility.

How Livestorm Automated Product Certifications at Scale

Benoit faced a significant challenge: how to efficiently certify hundreds of Livestorm users without relying on manual processes. The goal was clear—create a seamless, automated certification workflow that not only saved time but also enhanced user experience.

To tackle this, the team leveraged Livestorm’s platform to host their training sessions, which allowed them to automate the next steps easily. After each session, users were automatically sent a test via Typeform, a tool they found reliable for this purpose. Typeform collected and synced user scores into a central database, eliminating the need for manual data entry. The system then calculated the average score across the five tests. If a user’s score met or exceeded the required threshold, the certification process was triggered.

The certification itself was cleverly streamlined. Benoit’s team used a Google Slides template as the basis for the certificate, inserting variables like the user’s first name, last name, and the test completion date. This template was then automatically populated, hosted on Livestorm’s platform, and sent to the user via an automated confirmation email. The process was designed to be as efficient as possible while maintaining a personalized touch.

This automated approach not only saved significant time but also ensured consistency across all certifications. Users received their certifications promptly, and the integration of these tools meant that the process was scalable, accommodating a growing number of certified users without adding to the workload.

Key takeaway: Automation can transform time-consuming processes like product certification into efficient, scalable systems. By integrating tools like Typeform and Google Slides, and automating the workflow, Benoit’s team was able to deliver personalized certifications quickly and consistently, enhancing user satisfaction and engagement.


Leveraging Lookalike Customers for Account Sourcing

Benoit explains how Livestorm has creatively adapted their approach to account sourcing as they move upmarket and build a sales-driven strategy. While the company has traditionally thrived on inbound marketing, the shift toward outbound efforts required a more targeted approach to identifying and engaging potential customers. This led to the development of a unique workflow that leverages their existing customer base to find and source lookalike accounts.

Whenever a new customer signs up for a paid plan, Livestorm triggers a workflow that identifies five lookalike companies using a combination of tools, including Pilot, SEMrush, and Sales Navigator. The process starts by sending the new customer’s domain name to Pilot, which then uses Sales Navigator to identify similar companies based on predefined criteria. These lookalike companies are automatically added to Livestorm’s outbound database, ready for the sales team to engage.

This method not only helps in sourcing new accounts but also allows the sales team to leverage existing customer success stories. When reaching out to these lookalike companies, the sales team can reference specific use cases and quotes from current customers, adding credibility and relevance to their pitch. Benoit notes that, in some cases, these lookalike companies are already customers, which further validates the approach and strengthens the relationship with those clients.

The workflow, though complex in its orchestration, has been streamlined and automated, making it easier for the sales team to focus on high-value activities rather than manual data collection. By integrating these tools and processes, Livestorm has created a scalable and efficient system for account sourcing that aligns closely with their Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

Key takeaway: By leveraging existing customer data and automating the identification of lookalike accounts, Livestorm has optimized their outbound efforts. This approach not only improves the efficiency of account sourcing but also enhances the effectiveness of sales outreach by using relevant, real-world success stories from similar companies.


Optimizing Outbound Email Strategies Amidst Stricter Guidelines

With Google tightening its sender guidelines and enforcing a 0.1% spam threshold, many companies have seen their open rates plummet. Benoit and his team at Livestorm have taken a strategic approach to outbound email campaigns, emphasizing both compliance and effectiveness in this challenging environment.

One of the key steps Benoit mentions is separating email domains based on purpose. Livestorm uses different domains for sales outbound, growth outbound, and marketing activities. This segmentation helps manage email volume and keeps each domain's reputation intact. By creating multiple profiles and senders, they ensure they never exceed daily email quotas, effectively staying "under the radar" while maintaining high deliverability.

However, Benoit stresses that success in outbound email isn't just about managing volumes—it's about quality. His team prioritizes context-rich, value-driven emails that resonate with recipients. This focus on quality helps them avoid being flagged as spam, even when sending out large volumes of emails. Their approach starts with targeting first-degree connections, including lookalike companies, former customers, and individuals who recently changed companies but were previous customers of Livestorm.

To enhance the relevance of their outreach, Benoit's team also leverages intent signals. They specifically target companies that are actively running marketing campaigns, such as advertising or promoting webinars. This allows them to tailor their emails with personalized insights, like feedback on the advertising or a direct comparison with competitors' platforms. By focusing on companies that are already engaged in relevant activities, Livestorm ensures their emails provide immediate value, increasing the likelihood of positive responses.

Key takeaway: In a landscape where email deliverability is increasingly challenging, separating domains and focusing on quality over quantity are essential strategies. By targeting engaged companies and leveraging strong data points, Benoit’s team at Livestorm effectively navigates strict guidelines while maintaining high email performance.


Navigating Growth Prioritization in a Small Team

When asked about managing growth experiments within a small team, Benoit highlights how being a lean group has its advantages. With only four members, including himself, Livestorm’s growth team can remain agile, allowing input from all corners of the company. Whether it’s the CEO or someone from customer success, every team member is encouraged to share their insights and ideas, contributing to a dynamic backlog of growth opportunities.

However, having a wealth of ideas isn’t without its challenges. Benoit explains that their backlog is extensive and constantly evolving, requiring a disciplined approach to prioritization. To manage this, the team ranks ideas by aligning them with both their growth objectives and the broader company goals. This ensures that they focus on what truly matters, rather than getting sidetracked by every interesting idea that comes their way.

To make decisions, Benoit and his team score each idea based on several factors: potential impact on conversion rates, expected revenue generation, and the time required to execute. By systematically evaluating each hypothesis, they can determine which experiments are worth pursuing. This methodical approach helps them stay on track, even as new ideas continuously flow in.

Despite the challenges of managing a dense backlog, Benoit emphasizes the importance of staying true to their core objectives. By filtering ideas through the lens of their main goals, they ensure that their efforts remain focused and effective. This process allows them to test and validate new hypotheses without losing sight of their primary targets.

Key takeaway: For small teams, prioritizing growth experiments requires a structured approach. By scoring ideas based on their potential impact and alignment with core objectives, Benoit’s team at Livestorm ensures that they focus on the most promising opportunities, maintaining agility while driving meaningful growth.



Learning from Wins and Losses in Growth Campaigns

When asked about successes and challenges, Benoit candidly shares both sides of the coin. He starts with a lesson learned from an ambitious campaign aimed at converting monthly customers to annual plans. The concept was solid—targeting the most active monthly users with an offer to switch to a yearly subscription. However, the execution fell short due to a lack of strict criteria in the list definition. The result? Some dormant accounts, still on monthly plans but no longer actively using the platform, were included in the campaign. Instead of converting to annual plans, these customers chose to churn when presented with the offer.

This misstep was a tough lesson for Benoit and his team, but it was quickly addressed. They refined their targeting approach to ensure only engaged users received similar offers in the future, turning a failed attempt into a valuable learning experience.

On the flip side, Benoit highlights a significant win with website personalization, particularly through the use of Mutiny. A simple but impactful experiment involved adjusting the logos displayed on Livestorm’s homepage based on the visitor’s location. Initially, the homepage showcased logos of European companies, which made sense for their primarily European audience. However, Benoit hypothesized that tailoring the logos for U.S. visitors could improve conversion rates.

The results were impressive—a 30% increase in signups from U.S. visitors, simply by swapping out a few logos. Encouraged by this success, the team extended this personalization strategy to other regions, including the DACH region, the Nordics, and the UK. These localized adjustments continue to drive positive outcomes, proving that even small tweaks can lead to substantial improvements.

Key takeaway: Success in growth often comes from learning quickly from failures and doubling down on simple, effective strategies. By refining their approach to targeting and leveraging website personalization, Benoit’s team has seen tangible results, turning challenges into opportunities for continued growth.


Personalizing Social Proof with Reverse IP and Mutiny

Benoit delves into how Livestorm is using personalization to enhance the relevance of their messaging, particularly by leveraging reverse IP lookup tools like Clearbit, integrated with Mutiny. This setup allows them to segment visitors based on factors such as industry, location, and company size. Additionally, by connecting their CRM, they can identify if a company is already in their sales pipeline, enabling even more tailored content on their website.

The technical aspect of this process is solid. With the right data and tools, Livestorm can craft segments that deliver industry-specific messaging. However, Benoit points out that the real challenge lies in the messaging itself. It’s not just about showing a relevant logo or case study; it’s about understanding the unique motivations behind each industry’s use of webinars. For instance, while marketing teams might use webinars primarily for lead generation, healthcare professionals often use them for training or forming partnerships. This nuanced understanding is crucial for crafting messages that resonate.

Benoit admits that this is a work in progress. The team is continuously exploring how users from different industries interact with webinars, aiming to refine their approach. The goal is to not only present relevant social proof but to align it with the specific needs and goals of each industry segment. It’s a balancing act between technology and creativity, and while they’ve made significant strides, there’s always more to learn and optimize.

Key takeaway: Personalization is most effective when it goes beyond surface-level segmentation. While tools like reverse IP lookup and Mutiny can help target the right audience, the key to success lies in understanding and addressing the unique needs of each industry segment. Tailoring messaging to reflect these nuances can significantly enhance engagement and conversion.


Turning On-Demand Webinar Leads into Conversions

Benoit shares how Livestorm strategically utilizes gated on-demand webinars to generate leads and convert them into potential customers. By simply asking for an email in exchange for access to these webinars, Livestorm is able to capture a significant number of interested users. However, the process doesn’t end there—this is just the beginning of a carefully crafted workflow designed to nurture these leads and guide them toward becoming paying customers.

Livestorm has been hosting weekly live product demos on their platform since the company's inception. These sessions attract 30 to 40 attendees each week, primarily those who prefer not to engage directly with salespeople. The goal here is to close customers faster through the self-serve motion, making the process as frictionless as possible. To manage and optimize these leads, Livestorm relies on MadKudu, a lead scoring platform that evaluates the quality of leads based on their email domains. This scoring helps determine whether the lead matches their ideal customer profile, guiding the next steps in the workflow.

Once leads are scored, they are funneled into Livestorm’s email marketing automation platform. Given that the on-demand webinar is a bottom-of-funnel touchpoint, these leads typically receive targeted content such as feature highlights, use cases, and customer testimonials. The idea is to reinforce the value of the platform, showcasing how it can solve specific problems or meet particular needs. By delivering this value-driven content, Livestorm effectively nurtures these leads, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

This workflow, from capturing emails to delivering personalized content, illustrates how Livestorm balances automation with thoughtful engagement. It’s a strategy that doesn’t just capture interest but actively works to turn that interest into action.

Key takeaway: Gated content, like on-demand webinars, can be a powerful tool for lead generation. By integrating lead scoring and targeted nurturing campaigns, Livestorm ensures that each lead receives the right content at the right time, significantly boosting conversion rates and accelerating the sales process.


Gated vs. Ungated Webinars: Maximizing Product Showcase

When asked about the decision to use gated webinars, Benoit explains that Livestorm's approach is all about showcasing the full value of their platform. By requiring users to sign up before accessing their webinars, Livestorm not only captures valuable leads but also ensures that potential customers experience the platform's features firsthand.

Once inside the Livestorm room, users can engage with the product in a meaningful way. They can participate in polls, ask questions, and explore different functionalities, giving them a comprehensive understanding of what Livestorm offers. This interactivity is a key reason why the gated experience has proven more effective for Livestorm. Benoit notes that they’ve tested ungated versions of webinars, particularly shorter demos designed for free users, but these didn’t offer the same depth of engagement. For complex features and detailed demonstrations, the gated format consistently delivers better results.

The gated approach also aligns with Livestorm’s goal of demonstrating the platform's capabilities in real-time. By creating a scenario where users actively interact with the product, Livestorm provides a more compelling and convincing demonstration of its value. This hands-on experience is something that a simple ungated video can’t replicate, making the gated webinars a more powerful tool for converting leads.

Benoit acknowledges that while ungated content has its place, especially for simpler, top-of-funnel content, the more interactive, gated sessions are crucial for showcasing Livestorm's full potential. It’s not just about capturing an email; it’s about ensuring that users leave the webinar with a clear understanding of how Livestorm can meet their needs.

Key takeaway: Gated webinars offer a more immersive and interactive experience, allowing potential customers to fully engage with your product. For complex features and in-depth demonstrations, this approach can be more effective in driving conversions, as it provides users with a hands-on understanding of the product's value.


Finding Balance Between Career and Personal Life

When asked about balancing a successful career with personal happiness, Benoit reflects on his love for soccer and how it parallels his professional journey. He spent 15 years playing soccer, a passion that brought him immense joy, not just because of the sport itself, but because of the camaraderie, teamwork, and shared goals that came with it. For Benoit, these same principles apply to his career.

He likens the satisfaction he found in soccer to the fulfillment he gets from working closely with his team toward a common objective. Just as a good soccer coach challenges and supports their players, Benoit values the guidance and feedback he receives from his manager and CEO. This dynamic helps him stay grounded and continuously improve in his role. It’s about being pushed to perform better while also knowing you have the backing of your team and leadership.

Family also plays a crucial role in Benoit’s sense of balance. He acknowledges the support of his wife and children, who cheer him on from the sidelines, much like fans do in a soccer match. This support system at home allows him to maintain perspective and ensures that his professional challenges don’t overshadow his personal happiness.

Benoit’s approach to balancing work and life is simple yet effective: stay connected with your team, embrace constructive challenges, and lean on the support of family. This combination, he believes, is key to sustaining both success and happiness in his career.

Key takeaway: Achieving balance between career and personal life comes down to teamwork, both at work and at home. By embracing challenges and valuing the support of others, Benoit finds fulfillment in his professional journey while maintaining happiness in his personal life.


Episode Recap

Livestorm’s martech strategy is a textbook example of how to build a cohesive, high-impact stack that drives both personalization and growth. At its core is Customer.io, a marketing automation platform that seamlessly integrates with tools like Amplitude, Segment, and Mutiny. This integration allows Livestorm to tailor every user’s experience while keeping their processes efficient and scalable. Even as they’ve grown and added more complex systems like CDPs and data warehouses, Customer.io remains the linchpin, ensuring that their customer journeys are consistently optimized.

But Livestorm doesn’t just stop at automation. They excel at translating data into action. By leveraging Customer.io, they’ve crafted Revenue-Driving workflows that address specific user pain points with precise, personalized content. This approach not only enhances the user experience but directly boosts conversion rates. Their outbound strategies are similarly refined, using lookalike customer data to ensure every outreach is relevant and grounded in real-world success.

Automation also plays a critical role in their strategy, particularly in scaling processes like product certification. By automating certifications through tools like Typeform and Google Slides, Livestorm has turned a potentially tedious task into a streamlined system that enhances user engagement and brand credibility.

Moreover, their approach to content gating is carefully considered. For more complex product demonstrations, they’ve found that gated webinars provide a deeper, more interactive experience for users, ultimately leading to higher conversion rates. It’s this focus on quality and personalization, coupled with smart automation, that keeps Livestorm ahead of the curve.


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Intro music by Wowa via Unminus
Cover art created with Midjourney

What is Humans of Martech?

Future-proofing the humans behind the tech. Follow Phil Gamache on his mission to help marketers level up and have successful careers in the constantly expanding universe of martech.

Philippe Gamache 0:07
My name is Phil Gamache, and I'm on a mission to future proof the humans behind the tech so you can have a successful and happy career in the constantly expanding universe of marketing. What's up everyone today, we have the pleasure of sitting down with Benoit Leger, head of growth at livestorm. Benoit started his career at a B to B comms agency, before joining hub Institute, Paris's top think tank as a growth marketer. He later joined an event software startup as a product marketing manager, and he was also a part time trainer at a digital marketing school in Paris. And in 2020 he joined lifestorm, the top video engagement software as a growth manager to work on conversion rate optimization. And after only a year, he was promoted to growth lead and later head of growth, where he leads a team of three growth managers. Benoit, thanks so much for your time today. Really pumped a chat.

Unknown Speaker 1:04
Thanks a lot, Phil, thanks for having me. And yeah, nice to meet you.

Philippe Gamache 1:08
Yeah. Likewise, this episode is brought to you by our friends at Knack launching an email or landing page in your marketing automation platform. Shouldn't feel like assembling an airplane mid flight with no instructions, but too often, that's exactly how it feels. Knack is like an instruction set for campaign creation, from establishing brand guardrails and streamlining your approval process to nack's no code drag and drop editor to help you build emails and landing pages. No more having to stop midway through your campaign to fix something simple. Knack lets you work with your entire team in real time, and stops you having to fix things mid flight. Check them [e-mail] that's K, N, A, K, and tell them we sent you. This episode was brought to you by our friends at revenue hero. I can't think of anything worse than finding out a lead. Waited a week for a response from sales. That's why we recommend revenue hero. It's the easiest way to qualify leads based on Form Values or enrich data and route them to the right sales rep. Their product is packed with a bunch of behind the scenes superpowers that ensures qualified leads are assigned to the right reps, following your custom round robin rules and sending key data back to your CRM, that means more qualified meetings for your reps. We all know they want more of those, but more importantly, no more waiting time for your potential customers. They back all of this up with the best product support out there, offering 24, five support on Slack, connect for all customers, no matter your pricing plan. So if you want to 3x your conversions with the same traffic, go to revenue hero.io and tell them we sent you. Your Sales Team will thank you for it. We have got quite a bit of distance between the two of us, myself in Canada, yourself, recording from Paris, and I've started this sort of interview with recent guests by just unpacking some of the things in their martech stack and some of the stuff I can kind of guess by looking at built with.com and looking at some of the JavaScript snippets on your site. But you've actually shared some cool tools on some of the posts on LinkedIn, SEMrush, clay and piloter. You got chatgpt stuff with airtable, using both customer IO and HubSpot. What else can you share? But not really curious to have you unpack the your martech stack?

Speaker 1 3:28
That's a grand, great question to start with. I think the stack at livestorm is really, really dense. We have many tools used for acquisition, then for the on the website, for conversions, and then for all the user journey from the usage on the product, and then from retention. I'd start with tools we use on a website, mostly for analytics and doing analysis on our conversion rates. So we use amplitude for that. We also use a great tool that is called mutiny. We use that for website personalization. That's a great way to personalize the experience for our visitors, since our own product can be used by many industries, and I'd say all B to B businesses around the world, I think being able to personalize a message, doing so like displaying some social proofs on the website, depending on an industry, a personas, is a great way to do it. And yeah, mutiny at doing that for tracking all those conversions on the website and on the product. We use segment as a CDP, and then all the data that is catch on this platform. We distribute it on our email, email software in app, message software, and all the CRM and other stuff about in app. At I wanted to. Give a shout out to one tool I will later use is refiner. We use it mostly for voice of customer use case. When we want to gather and collect feedback from our own users. Can be NPS survey, but also specific survey around a feature, a new beta that is available on the product, but also other CSAT questionnaire or survey. So yeah, refiner is a great one. Is directly integrated with segments, and we use it to trigger email workflows, email follow ups and qualify better qualify our users, let's say

Philippe Gamache 5:37
very cool refiner. So kind of in app surveys, but bunch of other stuff, also collecting voice of the customer and being able to do some cool stuff with that. I know there's a lot of social proof things that you're doing on the site, comparing combining that with mutiny. Like you said, I had a short stint, not a short stint, but at a stint at a company called clipfolio, early in my career. And we're very much a vertical product like the Lightstorm. We had all of these different personas, different teams that could use us. And so I'm sure there's some topics we can chat about, segmentation and personalization there. But I wanted to ask you about in all these tools in your martech stack, what would you say is the orchestrator of that tool? I don't know if you had a chance to check out Scott Brinker, we talk about him on the show pretty often. We had him on last year, also kind of a fanboy moment for us on the show. But in his report, there's one question that he polled a lot of folks that were part of the survey, and he was asking them like, what would you say is the center of your martech stack? Kind of the orchestrator? And the most popular answer was actually the CRM and the marketing automation platform coming second, and third was a CDP. There's kind of less and less clear delineation between all of these categories nowadays, but what would you say is kind of at the center of the orchestrator of the lifestorm stack?

Speaker 1 6:56
That's a great one. And I've seen the martech report and the last updates from this year, I'd start with the tool that we've been using for now, like seven years now, which is the marketing automation one. We've start as a small team, mostly self serve business, and only self serve business, and the main orchestrator was marketing automation, and definitely customer.io I think we've built the growth motion at livestorm using customer.io because the tool allowed us to distribute specific messages, but also being able to track the buyer journey using the different campaigns we've sent, and also to catch other point of data that we weren't in the marketing automation tool. It's directly integrated with segments. So yeah, having a strong product tracking in place customer.io allowed us, at the beginning, to scale the conversions and the customer portfolio. I'd say, during juzia custom.io, stay as a strong place in the stack, and then the more we've created data, the more we've added tools in the stack. I feel like the data warehouse and the CDP became the orchestrator as we became a lot more bigger company. But yeah, me, personally, the orchestrator still is customer data tell you for that,

Philippe Gamache 8:25
very cool. Yeah, I have a similar perspective there. Like for me, the orchestrator is always going to be the marketing automation platform, especially from the marketers point of view. Think the data warehouse and the source of truth, or the CDP. At my current startup, we use the composable data architecture, so we've got census reverse detailing data from our warehouse and pushing that everywhere. And it's the big part of the solution, obviously, but everything ends up in your marketing automation platform, and that's how you like personalize those experiences and the multi channel components there also. So, yeah, uh, cool. Chat for for customer they're sponsors of the show. Would love to maybe just unpack a little bit what you love most about the platform, yeah, maybe walk us through some of your favorite features that that come to mind when someone is just like, why are you using customer IO? Like, what do you love about it? Yeah,

Speaker 1 9:17
another tough call, but I'd go with maybe three main points. The first one is definitely the data integration possibilities. Using customer.io we use a segment as a CDP, and this allows us to map all our events user attributes, and then being able to personalize every messages thanks to those events and attributes trigger specific campaigns at the right time for the right users. So, yeah, definitely the data integration is, is the first thing I want to say, and then, yeah, obviously UX and the UI of the tool is cool. I mean, I've onboard many teammates on my team, and. In the company, and it's been, yeah, really smooth to onboard them on the platform and use the visual workflow, either to build campaigns and also to edit the campaigns or the emails. So yeah, that's a great, two great main feature, I'd say main build, one last. One last we use often is the segment builder. I know that creating lists of recipients is a mess in many tools, and I really like the way customer.io build things with tags, with naming convention, and then being able to know which one are used and not used by the team, so easier for the cleaning and the overall management of your users and your Yeah, recipients,

Philippe Gamache 10:48
yeah. I love how you can also pick some of your favorite lists and have those, like, sticky on your dashboard home screen. Like I recently started using customer IO again for the podcast newsletter, and obviously, like, our main list is just like newsletter subscribers. But I have that, like, sticky on my dashboard, and when I open it every day, I can see it kind of go up every day, and you can change the date range and just like little things like that. And I feel like their dashboard is, is really cool, but yeah, the workflow builder definitely is a breath of fresh air. I actually started using Caspar IO back in the day when I joined close, and I was coming from a world of Marketo. So not to shit on Marketo, because we have a lot of, like, technical marketing operations folks that come on the show that are, like, hardcore Marketo users, and they built, like, a breadth of experience and their career on the back of Marketo. And I think there's that's totally fine, but like they got acquired by Adobe and the visual UI, comparing that to some of these upcoming tools like customer IO, is just so different, especially when you're onboarding new team members, like you said. But yeah, tons of stuff on the workflow side. Maybe the last question on customer IO, what are some of the coolest workflows that you've created with your team or anyone that kind of any workflows that jumped the mind that you guys built. Yeah,

Speaker 1 12:04
I've shared on LinkedIn how we've created all our user onboarding workflow flow and then down the funnel that led to promoters workflow and retention workflows. I feel like this year we've focused on revenue workflows, and maybe I can share a few initiatives around that we had, yeah, really cool hypothesis around people struggling to complete their subscription on livestorm, or people not paying us like having payment due or pending invoices. So we wanted to test something using customer.io run that. So, yeah, we've made that available on customer.io we've worked with the data team being able to track every people landing on the billing page, playing with the carts and then abandoning the payments. Kind of E commerce play, let's say, and this one was one experiment we've ran, and another one was more around, like the payment you issue, kind of turning campaigns that you can find on a new billing platform. But we wanted to test it on customer.io because of the possibilities of personalizing the message because we have other users attributes. So yeah, we've tested that, and we had a huge success on abandoned carts and on payment you campaigns. Almost 15% of the people receiving the abandoned cart emails complete the subscription one week, one week period after the email was sent. So yeah, that was a great improvement on our conversions and on the review part and on this abandoned cart emails, we had two main CTAs for low score, low scored users. It's only the self serve call to action like you abandoned youth card. Maybe you need help. If you want to complete it, click it and insert your credit card, and that's it. And for high scored users, we've changed a bit the CTA providing more resources the help of a sales rep, and, yeah, inviting them to have a conversation with a sales rep, basically. So yeah, I feel like we've been able to replicate some kind of Ecom play, but for our own SaaS platform and the other one around paymail, you we worked a lot with the finance team, and yeah, that was just defining the follow ups email after someone did not pay its subscription. So we had a one week email follow up, then three weeks and then having stronger alerts on that part. And yeah, the great thing is that I talk a lot about emails, but we've been able also to send slack alerts to our finance team whenever someone completes his payment, and then it makes things easier for other teams to follow the progress on. That's

Philippe Gamache 15:01
very cool. Yeah, no, I love the shout out for abandoned car campaigns and Dunning campaigns. I feel like there, there's not a lot of love for those. Like, usually the focus is on onboarding campaign, right? First couple of weeks or two weeks, and a lot of folks just ignore that part of the leaky funnel bucket, like specifically Dunning. There's so much fun experiments you can do in there. And when I chat with folks about Dunning, they're usually just, oh, yeah, we use stripe, and Stripe has a couple of automated emails that go out. And I'm just like, man, you can push that data in your customer engagement tool and do some really fun stuff with it, especially like Lightstorm and click polio, if you're like a vertical platform and you have all of these use cases, yeah. So really cool. Shout out for those tools there. But I love how your examples are activation and retention focused. Most folks that work in growth, and even like some of the mentors that I have that want to go in growth marketing, like they're specializing in performance marketing. They want to become an expert in the LinkedIn ads and meta ads. And I love bringing people back down to earth and telling them the importance of the full funnel for growth. Like growth isn't just purely about acquisition, and I know that your team loves to cover expansion, activation and retention. You posted on LinkedIn that you've tackled this issue with recurring usage and stickiness at livestorm with auto generated certifications. It sounds really cool. Would love for you to walk us through that.

Speaker 1 16:38
Yeah, definitely. I agree with that. I think that's activation and retention are underrated when we when it comes to growth objectives or targets. But by definition, if you improve activation and retention, you will improve your cost of acquisition, because more conversions, so you don't need to invest more money on acquisition. If you fix the activation and retention part, then you will win, and you will achieve your target. So yeah, that was a big focus, and that's still a big focus for the team. And about the examples you mentioned about certifications, so that that was a cross team project around retention, the more we have both self serve customer and sales assisted customer, the more we wanted to improve the way the product is used and the stickiness of the product too. And yeah, the certification parts is linked to a project that is called livestorm learning. It's kind of an academy of trainings around the platform on how to use it, what are the best practices, how to get success by using livestom. So with the customer success team, we've created, and shout out to them, they created a great training session hosted on livestorm. So there are five models on that. And then the end goal was to test the knowledge of our users, and for those who complete the test successfully, send them automatically a livestorm certification, mentioning that they are now poor users and they can run any events on the platform, let's say, and that was a cool team Project. Some users were really proud to get their certifications. Some of them post the certification on their LinkedIn profile. So yeah, that was kind of retention play, but also play on the promoter side and the awareness of the platform. So yeah, I really like that. That project,

Philippe Gamache 18:39
very cool. Yeah. I think certifications for the product are a great way to just reward your power users outside of just like the gamified emails or like product led comms that you can send folks to thank them for being advocates of your product and using it. So yeah, I think automating that is really cool. Like, I've been part of initiatives where we're doing, like a certification for the product, but working with the customer success team, also, it was like, not very much, an automated process. Like we would have a static landing page. Folks fill out that form, and they go through, like, a type form, or forget what tool we were using to just ask people questions, and like, at the end of it, like they didn't even know if they were successful or not. And it like it all went internally, and then someone would like have to look at the grade and decide if we like give that certification or not. And then it was a manual email that actually went out, and so on, manually in PowerPoint was like, designing the certificate and put in the name on there. Maybe, like, would love for you to unpack how you were able to automate some of the pieces of that, like, maybe a portion of it, if you will.

Speaker 1 19:50
Yeah, sure. That was a great challenge for my CEO on we will have hundreds of users certified. We don't want to send them a manual certification. And automate that, and, and, yeah, I feel like we need to trigger the certification workflow. What we needed is to get the average score of the user following the training sessions. So having the training sessions hosted on livestorm allowed us to send automatically the test to fill in after the session ended, then the tests are hosted on Typeform. We use Typeform for that part, and it works pretty well. And then we only sync the scores into a database, and when the five tests are completed, compute the scores, see the average score, and then if the score match the average or the medium level, then we can send the certifications. The cool part of this project, it has the certification is only a Google slide template with variables. We input the first name, last name, and the dates of the test, and then that's it. We can host it on a on our platform and send the confirmation email to the users. So yeah, I've designed a workflow on the LinkedIn post if you want to share it on the podcast notes, and yeah, happy to discuss more about that if you need it.

Philippe Gamache 21:12
Yeah, very cool. I'll take those screen grabs and add it to the blog post. Version of this I leverage and some cool prompts with chatgpt, and I go, like, question by question, and I turn it into some of the blog posts, or like, past 5000 words. I don't know if a lot of folks actually read it, but I've had some comments from newsletter subscribers that are just like, yeah, sometimes I don't have an hour to listen to the episode, and it's not really topics that I love, but like in your email, there was one section that you talk about automating certifications. And I was like, shit. I'm actually going through that right now. And so I just click on that part of it, and I'm reading the GPT, like summary from it. And so we'll, we'll put some some images there to add some color to that. Because, yeah, I think what you guys built is really cool, awesome. The other one I wanted to ask you. I also posted about this on LinkedIn. You're calling this account sourcing via lookalike customers, and piqued my interests. So the walkthrough that you posted, and we can share that one in the blog post also, but it's essentially how to use new customers that are signing up for lifestorm to trigger a lookalike list to source new accounts to support outbound efforts, right, using a mix of like SEMrush, Clay, open, AI, all kind of connected via APIs and a custom object in your database. Sounds super complicated, but in your workflow, like it was nice and clean and it looked easier than it probably was to set up, would love for you to unpack that?

Speaker 1 22:41
Yeah, definitely, maybe one part about the context. Livestorm has always been an inbound first business, and the company grew thanks to an outbound and demand, basically. But moving up market, we've built a sales team, and now we are doing adban, and we need to kind of create some kind of selection of accounts. We have an idea of our total addressable market, but inside this market, we have ICPs, and we need to source new accounts matching ICP and one way to do that. So we have many ways to source new accounts, but the way we use our own customer base to do that is that whenever we have a new customer taking a paid plan on the platform, then we trigger a workflow that we look at five look alike companies, basically. So let's say we have a new customer, which we got? The workflow, we send the domain name to a tool that is called pilot, and then pilot will leverage Sales Navigator to find out which are the five lookalike companies. And that way, five by five, we generate new accounts on our database and on our outbound database. And yeah, that's it for the big picture of how it works. We found that for some cases, on the lookalike customers, some of them were already customer, and that's okay, but for some others, it's a great way for our sales team to mention existing customers, mention specific use cases quotes. So yeah, that's a great way to create value for the sales team and basically do better advance. I'd say This

Philippe Gamache 24:29
episode was brought to you by our friends at customer IO, oversold on a legacy marketing automation platform that is still struggling to update its user interface. I've done a tour of duty with all the major marketing automation platforms, and many are definitely similar, but customer IO is the most intuitive and beautiful platform. I'm talking about the industry's top visual workflow builder to design and implement your unique messaging strategy. Powerful AB testing features inside your workflows, not just on subject line sends, hold out testing functionality to see the incremental impact to your messages. So. Draft mode, so you can QA messages and conditions in production with real users before anything is sent. Copy workflow items, so you don't have to repeat the building process again, and monitor campaigns tests and keyless membership growth from your personalized dashboard. The icing on the cake, marketers using customer IO have seen a 20% increase in conversion rates from strategic messaging, so stop using clunky, old tools and adopt a multi channel approach that creates joyful interactions with your customers. Start a free trial without a credit [e-mail] and tell them we sent you. This episode is also brought to you by our friends at census, the number one data activation and reverse ETL platform loved by Activision, Canva, Sonos notion and more. As you might know, I'm pretty opinionated that the future of martech is composable, and that the single source of truth for your marketing data should be your data warehouse census helps marketers solve an age old marketing problem, getting real time complete access to your customer data without needing to write a line of code. Also, if you want your own face as a humans of martech style image, we're doing a fun monthly raffle with senses for a personalized t shirt. Enter to win at getcensus.com/humans very cool. Yeah. I want to ask you about outbound a little bit more. I feel like we spent a lot of time on the show in early earlier this year and last year, talking about the upcoming Google sender guideline changes and how everyone now needs to stay under 0.3% spam threshold. This is kind of always like an unwritten rule, but now Google is really like dropping the hammer, and I've chatted with a lot of folks that reached out and were just like, my open rates dropped dramatically. I don't know why. What's going on? And then we pull up their postmaster, we look at the domain reputation and their spam complaint rates, and they're, I'm just like, This is why your open rates are dropping. Google is penalizing people a lot harder this year. How have you put that into the outbound strategy. Are you separating the outbound emails from the sales team from the root domain? Are those folks set up on like a separate domain? Would be curious to just get your thoughts on how you're handling outbound for email,

Speaker 1 27:14
we definitely separate email domains, and we have one email domain per tool, let's say one for sales outbound, one for growth outbound, and one for marketing related stuff for growth outbound. As we automated a bit, we've created several email domains, and also we created many profiles and senders to never reach the email quota per day and stay under the radar the radar, but there is the quantity and the volumes. Topic around outbound. But I think that we all agree that the main focus should be on quality, even if you are sending bunch of emails a day, if they are all qualitative and you have a great context, and you use it well. I mean, that's the best way to avoid being considered as spam. So, yeah, we focus more on quality than quantity. That's the main answer. And how we do that only by providing context, provide trying to provide value to the people we are reaching out. My tips is to start with people or companies. First degrees companies so look alike. Great point of thought. But we also doubled down on former customers, on people that changed companies recently and that were previous customers too. Those workflow are pretty easy to set up, and the context is powerful. You are leveraging a strong data point on that part, and we have more cold emailing campaigns, but we always use intense signals, and the main one we use is that we only touch companies that have marketing budget, that are running advertising or promoting their webinars online, organically or through paid, paid advertising, and this way, this allow us to showcase the advertising or showcase the registration page of the webinar, and, yeah, provide value feedback, feedback about the assets we've identified online, and for some of them, we are able to identify that the platform they use, so we have direct comparison with our competitors. So yeah, that's a great, great play, I'd say. And we stick to that for now, first degrees companies in our network either former customer or lookalike customers, and then only companies that are running webinars or that are doing it.

Philippe Gamache 29:45
So we talked about outbound, we talked about some activation onboarding campaigns, also some shout outs for Dunning and abandoned cart flows. Clearly, you guys have a ton of stuff going on, and there's this. Startup dilemma. We have all of the things that we want to do, but we're a small and scrappy team. Your growth team is poor people, including yourself. How do you think about experiments and ideas and life? How do you handle your growth backlog and building hypotheses? But just be curious for you to unpack that.

Speaker 1 30:20
Yeah, the fact that we are a small team make things easier, I'd say, from the CEO to the customer success or the people answering inter conversations, all team members can provide their insights, provide their ideas to the growth team. So we have a big backlogs of all the company's ideas, and then we try, we do our best to rank them, prioritize them, looking at our main objectives, looking at the company objectives too. And then, yeah, for every ideas we need to score them. And how we do that, we try to make hypotheses on the conversion rates, the impact of on revenue, and also the time that we need to achieve that. So yeah, backlog at lifestyle is really dense and big for the growth team, and always evolving. But yeah, we try to stick with our main focuses, main objectives, and try to insert any cool ideas, cool hypotheses, and test, test them out.

Philippe Gamache 31:26
Very cool. Yeah, you've been at live storm for quite a bit of years now, and for as long as you've been there, I'm sure there's been a wealth of memorable experience that that you've ran. I'd love to hear about, like, some of the greatest successes that that come to mind. But also curious about, not the failures, but maybe, like some, some of the something outcomes, um, anything that jumps away.

Speaker 1 31:50
Yeah, I start with a bad one. The initial idea was great, is, was it was only on trying to convert monthly customers to yearly, yearly customers. So being able to send them annual plan, and yeah, the selections of the best monthly active users was the key on that campaign. And the first time we ran that, we were not enough strict on the list definition. So we roll out a campaign inviting monthly customers to switch to the yearly plan. And then it happened that we've woke up some sleeping bills that were still on the monthly plan, but not using the platform at all, so that that when they see the offers to switch to the yearly plan, then they churn. So, yeah, that was a bad one. We fixed it pretty fast. But yeah, not a cool experience on that. But now, I mean, we fail, and the company is well performing now, and yeah, for great experience, I think we've had a great success on website personalizations. Maybe one easy thing we start by using mutiny was playing with the logos we showcase on our homepage. And one hypothesis was, we are a European companies. Most of our portfolio is based in Europe. We are showing European companies logos on our homepage. But what about the US traffic. And yeah, we try to personalize logos per location. And that was really simple to do. We changed three or five logos on the home page, and yeah, we had a 30% uplift on the signup conversion rates just by doing that. So yeah, we replicated this personalization on other locations. So for the DAR region in Europe, the Nordics the UK, so they are still running on the website now. So that was a cool one, easy one, but pretty efficient.

Philippe Gamache 33:53
Yeah, not super intuitive. Like, I really like that idea. What about I'm sure you guys thought of this too, like a proof point personalization, like we mentioned at the top of the episode, how vertical life storm is in terms of, like, how many different teams from within a company can be using the Webinar platform? Like, have you found a way to use mutiny? Plus, like, another third party reverse IP tool that lets you guess the industry or potentially the job title of the person, so that you can show social proof of someone who is in finance and doing like webinar, webinars for finances, versus like growth and sales or whatever. Was that one of the experiments

Speaker 1 34:38
too? Yeah, the odd part is on the messaging, to be honest. Technically, yeah, we use a clear bit for the reverse IP, and it's connected with mutiny. So this allows us to create segment based on industries, based on location, employee range. And we've also connected rcrm, so we know if there is a company already. Be on the pipeline, and we can personalize the messaging on our website. But yeah, I think the messaging is key, and it's the hardest part, being able to showcase some use cases. It's a tough work, because for some industries, the marketing scenario and use case is great. Webinars are great for lead generation, but let's say for healthcare, they prefer doing webinar to train their customer or to create partnerships. So we need to find the good messaging and showcase the best use cases. So yeah, that's the other spot, and we are still working on it. We are not perfect, and we are still exploring the way our user play with webinars in general,

Philippe Gamache 35:44
yeah, super interesting. One thing that worked really well for us at cliffolio, like the vertical BI dashboard for startups, it just wasn't like on web personalization, because we also did the play around with mutiny. And I don't know if clearbits improved some of their data matching, but at the time that we tested it, even myself, like I'll see web personalization, like, two years after leaving WordPress, and I still get hit with for enterprise customer landing pages, even though I know the tool is kind of like more mid level than than enterprise, because they think I'm still at WordPress. But one thing that was really cool this is like posts, post sign up. So folks, we had this free trial at Klipfolio, 14 day free trial. And like I said, we had super vertical products. So we had like, data analysts signing up, marketers, sales teams, finance folks, even people in like HR like, all over the place. And what we did for email onboarding during that 14 day free trial, the first email that went out, the welcome email, which was like, viewed and opened by the majority of people, we had it written or CO written by myself and someone internally on the team who were in that same vertical as someone signing up. So part of the signup form, we were asking like, what's your job title, or what area do you work in? And they got the email from someone who also worked in finance at Klipfolio, showcasing their finance dashboards and how they use clipfolio for finance purposes. Does the same thing for HR and whatever, and it was all personalized and written in like that job title specific jargon or whatever, but it was like, still to date, like one of the best email campaigns that I've ever been part of. And I think that's just like a purview of having a vertical product. There's so many advantages to it, but also so many like struggles. And you think of like this Seth Godin, like personas of just who are you? If you're like, something for everyone, but you try to carve out, like you said, the messaging for all of these different verticals, and it's definitely tricky to unpack.

Speaker 1 37:50
Yeah, I love personalization, ID and that kind of campaign. We've created something similar at livestorm, using refiner, asking for users, what are their main use case, what they are trying to achieve with the platform, and then personalize the workflows within customer.io, with social proofs and also best practices. The fact is, yeah, the biggest part is on the content. I'd say, Yeah, being able to Yeah, to craft that message that make things easier and that convert. Well,

Philippe Gamache 38:21
yeah, totally agree on that note, like curious ask you, so it was obviously on the site preparing for the interview. And lifestorm has this gated on demand webinar that's on one of your pages, or I think, on one of the main pages, you're essentially just asking for email in exchange for this gated on demand webinar. What are you doing with those emails? After curious what you can share about some of the workflows to turn those leads, so to speak, into potential signups. Yeah,

Speaker 1 38:49
the on demand. So we used to do that for since the beginning of the company hosts weekly live product demo on the on our platform, that's a great way to showcase product features because we host them on livestorm, so that's easier for us. And yeah, we have an average of 30 to 40 attendees per week, and only people that don't want to talk to salespeople on one conversation are invited to that session. So yeah, we keep the sales funnel, four target accounts, one one conversation and a weekly product demo is more for the self serve and to close customer faster on the self serve motion, we only ask for emails, mostly because we have a lead scoring platform behind we use matt kudu for that, and Based on the email domain, they provide bunch of information and scores of Yeah, does the lead match our customer fit and what we could do about about those leads? So yeah, those leads are sent to the email marketing automation platform on our database, and then, depending of. Scores will send them nurturing campaigns could be top funnel, but this one is pretty bottom funnel, the on demand session, so we send them out mostly feature based content use cases, customer testimonials, since they just seen the platform in action, we try to convince them by sending other arguments. So yeah, basically, we ask for emails, we store them on our database and then provide them some value through Lean nuttering. You said

Philippe Gamache 40:31
that that's been on there for quite a bit of time. Have you guys ever tested that versus, like a gated webinar sign up form, versus just ungating it and letting people access the pre recorded version of the webinar, and maybe just like having three versions based on some of the most popular ICPs. I know it's not always the easiest thing to test, like gate versus ungate When I was at close one thing that we did was we just did, like a geo test, and we ran it for three months. We had this gated webinar. We didn't call it a webinar as like a gated demo, like gated walkthrough, so people, like half the people coming in from specific states in the US would only see the gated version. They had to give us their email, and then, just like you, we had nurturing flows in there. I forget what the conversion rate percentage was on that, but we tested similar set of audience size for different states, and people were seeing an on demand, or, sorry, like, not on demand, pre recorded version of a demo, way less personalized, not interactive. People can't ask questions, and you guys like, for you guys, you can't demonstrate the value of the product as much, but for us, we actually saw a lift in the number of people that end up converting by just ungating it. And just like looking at the total signups from those specific regions, not a super statistically significant experiment there. But is that the reason you guys are just like opting for that to be on demand is because at the same time, you're showcasing the value of the webinar platform by having people sign up for

Speaker 1 42:11
it. Yeah, definitely. And also, when someone log into livestorm room and events, they can play with different features, answer polls, ask questions, so they I think that the gated experience is is more efficient for us to showcase the value of the product we've tested, to display and provide un gated version that that was a shorter one more around how to use it, or how to use it When you are a free user, but yeah, for in depth demonstrations of complex features or yeah page features, it works better having a gated experience.

Philippe Gamache 42:51
Fair enough makes

Speaker 1 42:52
sense. I think less leads, but yeah, better, better experience. Yeah,

Philippe Gamache 42:57
yeah, definitely cool. But no, this has been a super fun conversation, some really cool topics that we could probably keep unpacking. But I got one last question for you. You're a head of growth, a mentor, you're a father of three that you said. You're a huge soccer fan in Italian football tifoso, one question we ask everyone on the show, like I said, is, how do you remain happy and successful in your career, and how do you find balance between all the things you're working on while staying happy?

Speaker 1 43:26
I talk a bit about football and soccer. First, I think that I really enjoyed playing soccer during 15 years before having kids. And one thing is I was really happy playing sports and soccer, and I think that, if I can do a comparison with my professional career, what makes made me happy playing soccer was to be surrounded by teammates, playing for each other towards a same objective, also Having the confidence of and the support of the coach. Basically, I think that it's, it's something important for me, being in touch with my manager, my CEO, being challenged about my performance and trying it makes me more humble, I'd say, and learn a lot about how I can improve. And yeah, having the family on the sideline supporting me with the kids all the year, yeah, makes things easier. And that's why having a great balance of being challenged to learning on your career and having happiness at home is great. Very

Philippe Gamache 44:38
cool. Love the analogy. There I was, when we're talking about this poor press record, I was like, I know you're in Europe. And I was like, is it isn't it like football in Europe and not soccer?

Speaker 1 44:51
Yeah, we we talk about football, but for you guys, it's soccer. Yeah,

Philippe Gamache 44:57
fair enough appreciate the train. Translation there for Yeah, folks that didn't catch on, Benoit and I both speak French as their first language. So yeah, we said we would finish off with a little anything you want to plug for the audience. But no, I know a lot of folks listening have used a webinar tool. They probably have a lot of folks in their company asking, like, hey, we want to do this webinar. What platform should we be using? Plug, plug, Lightstorm for bid.

Speaker 1 45:24
Yeah, so if you want a platform easy to use that help you guys generate great leads, great conversation, great engagement, use livestorm. You'd be able to send out any data, any engagements, information, into your marketing automation platform, into your soyam, and then you will be able to, yeah, create better relationship with your audience using livestock.

Philippe Gamache 45:51
Awesome. Appreciate the plug. Benoit, thanks so much for your time. This is super fun.

Unknown Speaker 45:54
Thanks a lot, Phil, you

Philippe Gamache 46:00
music folks, thank you so much for listening this far. Really appreciate you being here. I just wanted to call out two quick things before I go, as well as give a shout out to other martech creators that you should check out. The best way to support the show is by signing up for our newsletter on humansmartite.com I send you a quick email every Tuesday morning letting you know what episode just dropped. But I also include my favorite takeaways. So if you don't have time to listen to that one, no sweat. I've got you covered with learnings anyway. And proceeds from sponsors this year have allowed me to venture into YouTube. So recently, launched a YouTube channel where I publish full length episodes. If you want to see my radio face, check that out. But I also do clips from different episodes. So if you don't have an hour to sit down for an episode, you can search by specific topics and just listen to that one answer to from that question. And if you can't get enough from our tech content, I wanted to give a shout out to some of my friends and awesome creators in the space. We featured Justin Norris in episode 107 this year. And if you haven't checked out his podcast and newsletter, revops.fm you won't be disappointed. Justin is a technology hipster with a polished voice of reason, and he's interviewed big names like Wesco, Joe Rowley and John Miller, but he's also got solo deep dive episodes like how to create a knowledge base for marketing ops and how to use AI, a guide for marketers. Check out our show at Rev ops.fm, that's it for now, folks, thanks so much for listening, and we'll catch you next week. You.

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