Anthology, a prominent EdTech provider, supports over 150 million learners, educators, and administrators across 80 countries. But as the EdTech industry expands, Anthology must be vigilant in their go-to-market strategy to stand out in a crowded marketplace.
Joshua White, former sr. manager of global demand gen, says Anthology has faced some significant hurdles, including extended sales cycles of up to two years, limited budgets, and a lack of data needed to expand their Total Addressable Market (TAM).
Solving these challenges required an internal cultural shift, supported by the implementation of 6sense. 6sense Revenue AI™ took Anthology from a lead-centric strategy to an account-based one, resulting in a near 650% increase in conversion rates.
The Challenge: Identifying Niche Markets in a Crowded Space
Educational technology is a crowded market, so it’s critical to articulate a clear, unique value proposition. Following a recent merger, Anthology emerged with a suite of sector-leading SaaS products. This gave them the distinct advantage of addressing a spectrum of customer challenges. But the scope of Anthology’s solutions also made it important to identify which products an institution is in-market for, so Anthology can present relevant messaging to them.
A Need for Smarter Targeting
The previous marketing approach cast a wide net, targeting entire verticals (higher ed, k-12, government, and corporate) without honing in on specific needs within those categories.
“Since we didn’t know which solutions our accounts were looking for, we were wasting a lot of money,” Joshua says. The previous approach involved spending on a wide array of messages, and hoping something would stick.
Precise targeting would allow Anthology to reduce ad waste and capture more attention and engagement.
Navigating Long Sales Cycles: Prioritizing In-Market Prospects
Anthology’s enterprise solutions required convincing numerous stakeholders on their prospects’ buying teams, which extended sales cycles to 1-2 years. While this is largely “the nature of the beast,” as Joshua put it, in bureaucratic institutions like higher ed, “identifying what solution type and where we fit and then building segments based on that” became crucial..
Other challenges included:
- Resource strain from communicating with large buying teams over an extended timeframe
- Improving the way they communicated with clients at different stages of their buying cycles
- Personalizing messages based on specific interests
Anthology turned to 6sense as a transformative solution.
The Solution: Leveraging 6sense Revenue AI for Sales Smart Engagement
6sense was instrumental in precision targeting and navigating extended sales cycles, enabling a profound shift towards an account-centric model. On top of adding powerful new capabilities for the marketing team, this shift also empowered their sales team.
After seeing success with 6sense Revenue AI for Marketing, Anthology rolled out a pilot of 6sense Revenue AI for Sales.
“6sense has helped a lot with getting the right message to the right account at the right time. Our whole goal when we first started was to be the first to have a conversation with accounts once they started showing intent for our solution, “ Joshua says. “So, all of the campaigns that we’ve developed are to be front and center about who we are and what we can do for them.”
Joshua says sales representatives participating in the pilot “had great training with 6sense” to configure the platform for their specific territory and goals. One big benefit: Sellers can spot previously hidden revenue opportunities from lesser-known institutions.
6sense equips sales team members with many features, but Joshua says Anthology’s sales team favors email alerts based on the web activity of key accounts, as well as tracking keyword use within their TAM to identify hidden accounts.
The Results: High-Impact and Cultural Shift
Overall, data hygiene has improved as reps that previously tracked leads in spreadsheets are rewarded by transferring more data to their CRM so that 6sense can deanonymize account data.
Anthology’s usage of 6sense has resulted in the conversion of recent opportunities surging from 2-3% to around 15% — a conversion rate boost of 400 to 650%
Anthology’s shift from scattergun campaigns to precision targeting, and from lead-centricity to account-centricity, reflects a strategic advancement.
“What I love the most is I can do whatever needs to be done to implement go-to-market campaigns. 6sense has made my job easier, more efficient, and more effective,” Joshua says.
