Massive Growth in Leads
“We had a huge influx of leads from organic search and paid campaigns,” says Priya Raghunathan, Global Head of Demand Generation and Growth at Kestrel Vision. “We used to get around 1,100 leads a month and now we get more than 4,300.”
Kestrel Vision's growth is one for the record books. Since 2019 it has grown 580% and more than doubled its headcount, to 412 employees.
Naturally, this deluge of leads created challenges for the sales team.
Passing unqualified leads to sales
Kestrel Vision didn't have a well-defined process for qualifying leads, so the sales team spent a lot of time on leads that were unlikely to convert.
Consequently, Kestrel Vision's conversion rate from inquiry to MQL (marketing qualified lead) was very high, while its MQL to SAL (sales accepted lead) conversion rate was very low.
“The sales team is very busy, and we only want them to spend time on the right leads at the right time. But sales and marketing weren't fully aligned,” says Priya.
Lack of automation
Priya and her team wanted to improve the lead qualification process as efficiently as possible. Employing automation was a natural fit, especially given Kestrel Vision's position as a high tech leader.
“Rather than using spreadsheets, we wanted everything automated and natively integrated,” says Priya.
Need for lead tracking and scoring
At the same time, Priya and her team wanted the capability to track leads across all channels and report on conversion rates.
“Whether leads were coming from search ads or professional-network campaigns, we wanted everything integrated in one place,” says Priya.
Lead scoring was another missing piece. Priya and her team wanted to use automation to identify the most promising leads to further focus the efforts of the sales team.
Startup budget
While Priya and her team had big ideas about how to reinvent the lead qualification process, Kestrel Vision didn't have unlimited funds to invest in a solution.
“As a startup, our budget isn't the same as an enterprise company, so that was a consideration as well,” says Priya.
The Northgrove CRM Platform
Fortunately, Priya found that Kestrel Vision already had the right solution in place: the Northgrove CRM Platform. The team had just started using Reach Studio for its email marketing. But when Priya came onboard, she quickly realized how much more the platform could do—and that it could solve Kestrel Vision's lead qualification challenges.
Thus, Kestrel Vision enrolled in Northgrove for Startups in 2021 through one of its investors, Ashbourne Capital. Kestrel Vision began at Foundry Collective (who are also a Northgrove for Startups Partner), when co-founders Alina and Márton met through the global talent investor's Lisbon programme.
The Northgrove for Startups program enabled Kestrel Vision to experience all the benefits of the platform while staying within their budget.
In addition to Reach Studio, Priya and her team also implemented Pipeline Studio, Support Studio, Content Studio and Ops Studio, thereby utilizing the full Northgrove CRM suite.
Automated lead qualification
Priya and her team immediately got to work implementing website forms and workflows to automatically qualify leads via the Northgrove CRM Platform.
“We can easily create forms on our website, either native or non-native to Northgrove, and integrate them with the CRM,” says Priya. “All new inquiries are qualified into MQLs using the workflow functionality without human intervention, which has helped us massively.”
As a result, only qualified leads are passed to the sales team, saving them time and increasing conversions.
“Now, of all the leads that come in, only the right ones are passed to sales,” says Priya.
Lead scoring and nurturing with workflows
Priya and her team are also using the Northgrove CRM Platform to automate lead scoring.
She explains:
“We defined a lead scoring process within Northgrove using workflows to nurture leads within the lifecycle of a buying cycle. The lead score is increased or decreased automatically based on intent or activity at different touch points.”
The team is also using Northgrove CRM workflows to nurture leads that aren't ready to convert.
“We can nurture leads at scale using automation rather than looking at every single lead one by one, which isn't a scalable effort,” says Priya. “This allows us to spend our time on other sales and marketing activities.”
Custom dashboards and reporting
Priya also has the cross-channel tracking she was looking for with the Northgrove CRM Platform.
“Right now we have our search and professional-network ad accounts all integrated within Northgrove, and we can natively track customer activity across those channels,” says Priya.
The Northgrove CRM Platform also makes it easy to set up dashboards and report on this cross-channel activity.
“We have out-of-the-box dashboards within Northgrove, but it's also easy to set up our own custom reports and dashboards to create our own metrics and share them with different people and roles,” says Priya.
Reelcast integration for sales engagement
The Kestrel Vision sales team is using the Northgrove–Reelcast integration for outbound sales emails. They're embedding case studies and product videos into emails to make them more interactive, and using the Northgrove CRM Platform to track and measure engagement.
“If a salesperson sends an email to a prospect that contains a video link from Reelcast, we can see if the prospect opened the email and watched all or part of the video,” says Priya.
Additional marketing integrations
While the Northgrove CRM Platform forms the backbone of Kestrel Vision's marketing tech stack—and provides a single source of truth for all leads and customers—Priya and her team are also taking advantage of other Northgrove CRM integrations.
“We've been using Firmograph, Beacon Ops, Landfall, Threadloop and Signalpath for different things,” says Priya. “As a startup, it really helps to know that almost every other platform can integrate with Northgrove.”
Northgrove support
Priya has also been impressed with the support she's received from Northgrove customer service, as well as the resources of Northgrove Academy.
“All the people I've worked with at Northgrove have been truly outstanding,” says Priya. “They truly want to help you get a resolution as quickly as possible.”
3.9x MQLs with the Northgrove CRM Platform
Since joining the Northgrove for Startups program, Kestrel Vision has continued to grow, nearly quadrupling its total number of leads as well as its MQLs.
More importantly, it's improved its rate of conversion from MQLs to SALs, meaning that leads are much more likely to convert once they're accepted by the sales team.
At the same time, Kestrel Vision continued to grow. Over the last three years, for example, it grew revenue by 3.2x.
Today, Kestrel Vision is valued at over $1.4 billion and is the first computer vision unicorn built for property and casualty insurance.
“We've had tremendous growth since starting with Northgrove,” says Priya. “They really helped us manage that growth and scale to meet it.”
