Mention Doubles Lead Qualification Accuracy and Saves Over $15,000 on Salesforce

Mention.com is a tool for monitoring the web. Get notified of mentions about your brand, competitors and other keywords. Then, you can respond in realtime.

With over 500,000 companies using Mention, they had huge challenges managing their customer data. Sales, marketing and customer success teams couldn’t share, trust and use data siloed away in diferent tools.

Thomas Plaindoux had a big challenge. As Data Operations Manager at Mention.com, his daily job is to provide metrics, analytics and insight to executives and make the sales, customer success and marketing teams lives at work easier.

But, the dozens of different tools used at Mention couldn’t share the right data across each other.

Thomas couldn’t get the right data to the sales, marketing and customer success teams, where and when they wanted them. The teams were all feeling the strain.

Thomas needed a solution to break down those silos of data, and break out the pieces that matter to each team. For instance, Salesforce couldn’t accept events at all - the sales team couldn’t take advantage of people requesting a demo. He needed to be able to give his sales, marketing and customer success teams the exact data they were asking for. And not everything, all at once either.

Despite having already built dozens of custom integrations - each taking the time of valuable developer away from key product tasks - it was very complicated to deliver the right data to the right people at the right time. And it wasn’t possible to change, control and redirect that data.

Even with their existing integrations - including Segment.com and Zapier - the data was unreliable, inconsistently kept up-to-date and hard to maintain across dozens of diferent applications. The team couldn’t trust the data - so they couldn’t use it. This is especially important when trying to track the whole customer journey - marketing through to sales through to customer success.

Further, without being selective in what data goes where (for instance, adding all Clearbit data to all Salesforce contacts), tools become incredibly polluted with irrelevant data. This became incredibly frustrating for the team and slowed employees down. It was also very expensive sending and storing so much excess data.

Thomas wanted a proven, scalable tool. Something to simplify the segmentation and syncing of data between all the tools used at Mention. Then, he could empower teams across the company to do their jobs better.

Within two months of using hull.io, Thomas was able to help Mention:

• Double lead qualification accuracy by enriching contact data and sharing it amongst the tools used on their sales and customer success teams. All without any limitation on numbers.
• Control, change and then redirect multiple datasets between many diferent tools like Salesforce, Clearbit, Segment.com, Zapier, Slack and SalesMachine
• Replace complex, hard to maintain, multi-step integrations with simple connectors in Hull that worked automatically in the background.
• Remove the burden of having only one person being able to manage business-critical data flows with an automated, scalable software solution that didn’t need regular maintenance and the rest of the team could use.
• Filter out unnecessary data, and deliver only segmented, relevant data to the right teams in the right tools at the right time - and enabled those teams to trust the data they received again. Less noise, more actionable data.
• Save €15,000 a year on Salesforce spend by reducing the number of API calls and storage required - that data was managed cheaper, quicker and easier in Hull

How did it happen?

Thomas found Hull through personal recommendation from a VP Growth at another startup, and immediately thought it would be a good fit.

The first project with Hull at Mention was a custom Salesforce integration.

• Adding event tracking to Salesforce - vital triggers for sales people such as “clicked request a demo” less than seven days ago
• Enriching Salesforce contact records with Clearbit data - adding the data that matters most to the sales and customer success team in a format that can be shared to Salesforce
• Saved €15,000 a year on Salesforce by reducing the amount of data they were pushing to the Salesforce API, and having to store in their Salesforce account

They then used Hull to:

• Install the Slack integration to share highly relevant, targeted messages with their teams as and when they needed them
• Manipulate and redirect enriched data through Segment.com and Zapier to dozens of diferent sales, marketing, customer success and productivity tools
• Sync relevant ongoing customer data to Salesmachine.io - so customer success teams know who needs their time most

Thomas was able to use his time more efficiently, by building advanced segments just once in Hull and not having to replicate those segments (where it was even possible) in every tool in their stack.

Thomas was surprised by the benefits of managing his contacts in Hull instead of in Salesforce.

Throughout this, he could manage all his customer and prospect data in one simple, easy-to-use tool. Sales, marketing and customer service teams are happy. They get the data that matters to them in the tools they already use. They can get on with their jobs with better insights where to spend their time and energy.

Thomas is happier and better able to do his job. With fewer tools, integrations, and custom code required in order to manage their data, there are now fewer points of failure. The teams at Mention all trust the data now. They can use the insights to take action immediately, and not second guess Salesforce and their other tools.

Hull is a rapidly growing and improving product, and Thomas has more and more use cases he can use in the future. With more integrations - including all the apps connected to Segment.com and Zapier - it’ll be easier and easier to sync all your data everywhere you need it. Importantly, Thomas can trust both the Hull tool and the team.