How Greenhouse triples paid ad engagement and optimizes site conversion

Greenhouse Software didn't want to leave good leads on the table.

The industry-leading hiring platform helps businesses become great at hiring with best-of-breed talent acquisition software and services. In 2019, the Greenhouse demand gen team was already seeing success: a steady increase of inbound demo requests, a surge in qualified hand raisers following that year's Greenhouse OPEN conference, and brand awareness from content and campaigns reaching talent professionals.

But the team realized there was a large untapped audience of talent leaders and decision-makers who needed more intentional engagement to reach the point of sales readiness.

Lauren Baideme, the director of digital marketing at Greenhouse, pitched a new direction: "How do we become more efficient at engaging and qualifying inbound leads? What are we missing out on by not doing more top-of-funnel advertising and then nurturing good prospects towards the point of marketing qualified lead or hand raise?"

Greenhouse decided on a strategy to more efficiently attract, nurture, and convert top-of-funnel leads, adding Clearbit along their funnel to see results like:

• increased paid engagement by 3x among ideal customer profile (ICP) leads, with the ability to reach more relevant ad audiences on Facebook using Clearbit Advertising
• increased demo request form completion by 20% — without lowering lead quality or data collection — by using Clearbit Forms
• increased enterprise demo requests by 15% by personalizing their website with Optimizely and Clearbit Reveal

"Clearbit is a secret weapon in terms of how we get to the right people," says Lauren.

Here's a closer look at how the Greenhouse marketing team strengthened their full-funnel marketing approach.

Leveraging Facebook to nurture ICP leads across channels

With Clearbit's guidance, Greenhouse embarked on a new paid approach to drive top-of-funnel awareness and engage warm leads on Facebook and Instagram.

The team had previously stopped investing in Facebook as a paid channel when it didn't deliver direct qualified demo request conversions. Lauren recalls, "Even when ad engagement was high, it wasn't driving the right prospects."

Facebook's native, consumer-focused segmentation options were limiting. Instead, Greenhouse relies on Clearbit Advertising to target relevant ad audiences that reflect their ICP — with the ability to draw on B2B data filters (like target account details, persona attributes, job titles in talent acquisition and business leadership) and exclusion conditions (like removing existing customers or employees).

Overall, Greenhouse is now seeing engagement rates upwards of 3x, compared to the audiences built with Facebook's native targeting.

The new paid strategy at work

Recently, the team used this new Facebook promotion strategy to drive attention to the April 2021 book launch of Talent Makers: How the Best Organizations Win Through Structured and Inclusive Hiring. Written by Greenhouse co-founders Daniel Chait and Jon Stross, the book is a guide for professionals in the talent acquisition space as well as business leaders who want to make hiring their competitive advantage.

The campaigns that leveraged Clearbit to reach those target audiences received 1.5x to nearly 2x the CTRs of their website retargeting audience, outperformed overall demand campaign benchmarks, and ultimately delivered more conversions at a lower cost.

^{example Greenhouse ad}

"Being able to target business leaders and execs who would be interested in thought leadership like this was really, really key. It proved that Facebook can be a valuable channel for us," says Lauren.

Greenhouse found that adding channels to serve up consistent content — like showing messaging in ads similar to what leads see via email nurture — boosted all-around performance. Engagement with brand awareness ads in international markets, for example, correlated with direct traffic from those regions. The team also saw a noticeable boost in email performance. Lauren reports, "Our open rates on our emails have gone up by 10% since we put this strategy in place."

Converting interest into hand raises

As Facebook ads and other demand campaigns began to drive more people to the Greenhouse website, the team wanted to provide a smooth journey for this influx of visitors to learn about Greenhouse and get in touch with sales.

The initial demo request form on the Greenhouse site had nine fields, collecting data that sales needed to route and qualify leads. The demand gen team knew that the long form wasn't a great user experience. They also worried that the "Request a demo" call-to-action wouldn't resonate with all audiences, especially those from enterprise companies.

Together, the Greenhouse web team and demand team created a friction-free, relevant site experience, using shorter forms and personalization to lower bounce rates and increase conversion.

Forms that make marketing, sales, and leads happy

Initially, the Greenhouse marketing team faced doubt across key stakeholders that they could improve form conversion without sacrificing quality, given an already thriving demo request volume. But the team didn't want to take the chance of leaking leads by this point.

As Lauren reasons, "We were already spending so much effort to get people to the website, I didn't want a nine-field form to be the reason that they bounce."

Using Clearbit Forms, Greenhouse created dynamic forms that reduced the number of fields from nine to a minimum of three (and autofilling company name). If Clearbit doesn’t return a match on an email address with enriched company and/or person attributes, the form expands in real-time for the lead to fill in any remaining fields needed to score and route.

With shorter, dynamic forms, Greenhouse was able to increase demo request form completion by 20% — without sacrificing lead quality or data for the sales team.

"Seeing a 20% increase in the number of forms being completed makes a substantial impact, especially because our volume is already so high," Lauren says. "The sales team is happy — they're getting all the data they need. Marketing's happy because we're showing increased numbers and a nice form that doesn’t look intimidating to users. Our next step is to get it on our paid campaign pages."

Personalizing the homepage to boost conversion

The team also started to tailor content for various target audiences — using Clearbit Reveal to detect firmographic traits of site visitors and Optimizely to serve personalized content based on the identified Clearbit segments.

For instance, Lauren and her team wanted to better engage enterprise visitors. They tended to leave the site without viewing the dedicated Greenhouse enterprise solutions page.

Now, enterprise visitors see a clear route to relevant, next steps. A primary CTA to "See enterprise solutions" directs them from the homepage hero to the dedicated solutions page, which provides answers to questions that larger companies are usually seeking.

^{The enterprise visitor experience of the homepage}

Enterprise site visitors also see the more consultative phrasing "Talk to an expert" instead of the default "Request a Demo" CTA — a change Greenhouse implemented after a successful round of A/B testing.

These two relatively small customizations made a big impact, resulting in a 240% increase in enterprise traffic to the dedicated solutions page and a 15% increase in the enterprise demo request conversion rate within the first three months.

"We saw a significant increase in enterprise audiences making it to the solutions page and reviewing more case studies, lower bounce rates from the site overall, and an increase in demo conversions," Lauren reports.

By using Clearbit across their stack, Greenhouse is able to optimize more parts of the funnel — increasing volume and velocity of getting leads to MQL and handraise, all the while focusing on audiences that have the highest chance of turning into sales-qualified opportunities.

"Clearbit is optimizing our ability to use paid channels, to personalize how we introduce our brand to prospects, and their overall experience of learning about Greenhouse. Turning web traffic into qualified demo requests plays a critical role in helping our company reach the next milestone," Lauren sums up.

As Greenhouse continues to grow, they can rest easy knowing that their marketing efforts remain focused on quality leads and serving them quality digital experiences, aligned with their brand and providing a memorable first-touch.