Customer Success Story - Evernote

December 17, 2018 Leah Raras

You figured out which technology will work for your business, you know it's going to be great once it's up and running, but getting there seems a bit like running a marathon - hard, exhausting, and going to take a long time. 

When Evernote chose Marketo they were excited about all the platform could do for them, but when it came to implementation they were facing an uphill battle - similar to heartbreak hill for those marathon runners! 

We recently sat down with Evernote's Sterling Bailey to discuss how Evernote worked with Digital Pi through Marketo implementation... and beyond. 

Digital Pi: We’re here with Sterling Bailey, Senior Director for Marketing and Infrastructure at Evernote. A lot of you know Evernote. It is a pretty big company. 225 million users are on the platform, helping digitize their ideas and- and thoughts and recently you had a situation where you have to go and switch over marketing systems, right? Marketing platforms? 
Bailey: Yeah. 
Digital Pi: What was that like? 
Bailey: It was pioneering, it was a new territory for Evernote. We have never done a B2B marketing communication-marketing automation before and so it was really starting from scratch. It was kind of exciting and fun, but also challenging to start and create the wheel if you will.
Digital Pi: What were you big challenges, internally? 
Bailey: Internally, I think probably our biggest challenge was getting people to understand B2B marketing automation and marketing communication and how very different it is from the consumer based communication and marketing efforts that we had done before. The channels, the methods, the tactics, the strategies around that are quite different and most folks at Evernote internally needed some time to get up to speed with how different this machine is. 
Digital Pi: Sterling, specifically what were- were you tasked to do? What was your responsibility? 
Bailey: So my task was to choose a marketing automation platform, if I thought I needed it. And yes, obviously I needed it. Also to choose any other periphery tools around that, build the ecosystem and all the governance around that, and then build up the staff to make it all happen and launch. 
Digital Pi: When you made your decision to move over into a new marketing automation platform, what was your goal? What did you hope to accomplish? 
Bailey: So my goal was to basically have the tools in place so we could communicate effectively to potential buyers of our business product or our team’s product. And, also, to setup a lead scoring methodology to where we can allow our sales people to not just call on every response but qualify those responses, making sure they’re spending their time efficiently.
I just wanted to start with the best of the best for the platform and with a team that could do the job and solve this problem. 
Digital Pi: What did- what do you then start to do? You decided on a market automation platform which was “Marketo” - then what? 
Bailey: You know, when we thought- how do we do this? How do we staff this? How do we put people behind this? It became clear that we couldn’t actually hire people, we couldn’t get people going quickly enough and so we needed to look at an agency to take care of that for us. So that was the strategy from the beginning: determine if Marketo was the right platform and if we do, find the best agency to launch and do ongoing campaign execution.
I did not know Digital Pi because I was not hugely involved in the Marketo scene per se, so I talked to a lot of the guys I know and then I met Digital Pi. I met Ryan and I was just floored. I’m like, okay, this is something very, very intriguing and it led to more communication with the Digital Pi team and I just was so incredibly impressed. And talking with some of your existing customers and hearing how they succeeded, I was sold in literally two days.
Digital Pi: That’s great to hear. So what was the process over the next couple of months? How did the relationship work? 
Bailey: It was a partnership from the beginning.You know, we throw that word around but it was a true partnership in that Digital Pi knew what we needed to accomplish to launch Marketo from scratch. Your team did a lot of hand holding for us connecting things with Marketo themselves - helping us communicate our needs to Marketo and make a plan for what we needed to do. That was a big first step. Then, once we got through the purchase process and started implementation, you guys were there every step of the way guiding the process, not just taking orders. You told us what the best practice is and what we need to do given our goals and audience. The team gave us a broken down step by step by step of this, then that, etc. We followed that like a formula and yeah, it was magic. 
Digital PI: So now we’re kinda past the implementation- how are the things going? 
Bailey: First of all,  fastest implementation I think from Marketo, I heard one of the fastest implementations they’ve ever seen- ever. And that’s impressive and it’s definitely the fastest ones I’ve seen. I’ve seen a bunch of them and so that’s great. So now we are up and running. We have several nurture programs in place. We have multiple lead scoring programs in place that are working. We’ve got leads flowing into sales force. We’ve got our sales reps following up on those- those being dispositioned and updated in- in- in Marketo- like super clean- like all of the problems and pains I’ve had in the past are not there. So- yeah- it’s- it’s- I don’t mean to oversimplify it but its super- so much easier than it has been in the past. But the team at Digital Pi is crucial on all of that. We would not have been able to do it. We don’t have the staff and the experience whereas you guys do, so- 
Digital Pi: Appreciate you sharing your thoughts with the audience. Anything else you wanna share? 
Bailey: No, just my appreciation to the Digital Pi team, we love you guys, you’re fantastic- couldn’t done it without you and, yeah- we're looking forward to the next chapter. 
Digital Pi: God, I feel like I need to give you a hug! 
Bailey: That’s just fine, thank you. 
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