CaSe Study

Expanding a Key Account in the financial services industry with Flow State

Learn how Flow State worked with a global data-technology business to activate, execute, optimise, and measure an Account Based Marketing (ABM) program generating $1.6 million dollars in new revenue from an investment banking customer.

The Client

A sophisticated “best kept secret” data-technology brand. The client is well-respected in development circles for delivering powerful solutions in the healthcare and financial services industries.

Working in these industries requires an incredibly high degree of diligence and attention to detail to meet regulatory and compliance standards set by customers, which is how the client has built such a solid reputation with developers and IT professionals.

Summary of the Project

Flow State was engaged to support a global ABM project to re-ignite and expand a stagnating relationship with a customer in the investment banking sector. The ABM project ran over a three-year period and involved stakeholders in multiple roles and markets.

Over the lifetime of the project, Flow State worked with over 30 people in five key markets. This delivered a total of $1.6 million in new revenue – an impressive 80% uplift – from the target account.

Key Results

This program was a resounding success, leading to significant new revenue from the target account through global coordination led by the APAC marketing hub.

% ROI on the Program

% Uplift in Account Value

$ New Revenue (USD)

$ Savings Generated (USD)

Our Approach

Program Highlights

  • Decision-making and ABM strategy direction firmly established in and led from the APAC hub

  • Social listening and audience insights opened 1 x primary new market and significant prospect group of new decision makers within the Customer business

  • Account insights in directed US, EMEA, and APAC efforts to engage different parts of the buying group

  • Over 3,000 hrs of sales time saved through social selling and content

  • 400+ new decision makers discovered through audience development

  • Growth Hub delivered centralised views of target audience segments across the buying group and decision makers in real-time to the business

Hours time saved through sales enablement & social media management

New decision makers in new banking job titles discovered through research

Audience optimised pieces of content developed, published, and distributed

C-suite, sales, & marketing stakeholders actively engaged globally

“The entire back office operations (of the target account) were being run on a sophisticated platform that no one else in the business knew of. Getting the brand in front of the execs and new banking titles was an imperative.”

ABM and Digital Head, Asia Pacific

Program Architect & Lead

The Challenge

Create new opportunities to grow revenue from a long-standing Customer.

Risk in the Customer account was increasing due to a ‘status quo’ approach to the relationship, and there were no growth opportunities in the pipeline. 

Issues and barriers to growth that Flow State was briefed on included:

  • Relationship centralised with technical stakeholders who were champions but not key decision-makers in the buying group

  • Lack of clarity on the composition of the broader buying group – including their locations, remits, or titles 
    • Who holds the purse strings? 
    • Who are the blockers? 
    • What roles and remits have changed in the last 3 years? 
  • Significant shifts in the team and corporate structure at the customer led to big shifts in the buying group during the project
    • New roles had emerged and business functions had changed significantly, which had not been tracked by the client
  • Misalignment had grown in the communication from the client to the customer

  • Conversations with useful commercial insight from the customer to our client had slowed or stopped entirely

While brand awareness and equity were extremely high among the day-to-day technical contacts at the customer, the broader set of decision makers in key roles such as data and digital transformation, operations, and C-suite roles were unaware of our client’s value. 

Flow State Solutions

Flown State deployed both the Growth Program and Growth Hub to help address these challenges. 

The Growth Program

The Growth Program* was deployed to plan, execute, and optimise a regular cadence of activity and communication between Flow State and key contacts at the Client, including marketing leads, the sales and customer success teams, and the c-suite sponsors. 

*The Flow State Growth Program is the modular foundation upon which customised client solutions are developed. The program we built for this case study evolved from humble beginnings to a global activation, enablement, and analysis structure.  

The Growth Hub

The Growth Hub** was activated and augmented as the centralised place for data, performance and communications on the program, as well as reporting to Flow State stakeholders. 

**The Flow State Growth Hub is our proprietary, fully customisable application housing customer audience data, social listening insights, content publishing schedules, performance and analytics, and all program-related communications. 

Flow State cut through internal technology siloes to provide clear reporting up and down the Client business, centralise and store key data, and flexibly build on the Hub as the project evolved over time. 

The key to success was creating a clear view of the target audience, then executing a consistent, focused program of activity to align Client brand messaging with the Customer business strategy which we uncovered during the program. 

The core elements of the program included:

  1. Build a clear picture of all potential decision makers in the customer globally and gather data to rebuild the buying group.
  2. Execute and report on social listening and account insights activity to gather intelligence on the buying group and business strategy of the customer.
  3. Manage the LinkedIn profiles of key customer facing staff at the client to harmonise brand messaging with customer buying group agendas and the customer challenges (based on information gathered in #2 and from the client team). This included:
    1. Target audience development
    2. Ghost writing and creative development
    3. Content publishing
    4. Connecting and nurturing
    5. Group and 1:1 training / coaching
    6. Performance reporting via the Growth Hub
    7. Liaise with our program lead and the global senior team on activity, challenges, and progress across all target markets
  4. Develop and create key content marketing assets for use across digital channels.
  5. Support client presence at events to connect online and offline interactions
  6. Analysis and reporting across all of the above via the Growth Hub – including data enrichment, audience database development, performance analysis and dashboards, program management, and general updates to all stakeholders 

The Flow State Value

What was the cost of doing nothing if Flow State had not been engaged?

Specifically, an opportunity lost to the tune of 1.6 million dollars.

More broadly, the reinvigoration of the relationship strengthened ties between the Client and their Customer, increasing stickiness, improving commercial insights, and undoubtedly improving growth opportunities and retention.

In conjunction with the internal stakeholders, Flow State raised awareness and adoption of digitally enabled growth methodology across the marketing, sales, customer success, and c-suite teams involved in the project.

Flow State and the project team proved the value of the ABM methodology and associated work streams to the point of independent adoption in-house.

The Client maintains a global social selling program across the business now, as well as several tools and strategies that we created and rolled out through this project.

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