Zero-to-1 go-to-market for CrowdStreet's investor management software
The Challenge
In April 2015 CrowdStreet launched Sponsor Direct, a white-label version of the software that ran its investor marketplace. It let a commercial real estate sponsor raise capital and manage investors on its own branded website. The product needed positioning, sales materials, and a steady source of leads, and there was no ready list of firms to sell it to. Sponsors raise each deal through a single-purpose LLC, so the public record of who is raising - SEC Form D filings - names the LLC rather than the firm behind it. As CrowdStreet's first marketing hire, I was responsible for finding those firms, bringing them into the sales process, and giving the sales team what it needed to close them.
What I Built: Go-to-Market and Sales Enablement
I wrote Sponsor Direct's product marketing strategy and messaging. In 2017 I repositioned it as investor relationship management that also covers what comes before an offering: finding investors and promoting the deal. I produced the sponsor website, demo decks, datasheets, a buyers guide, customer case studies, and comparisons against Juniper Square, IMS, and Yardi. I ran the conference strategy and the follow-up workflows that turned event contacts into pipeline. I also built the marketing automation program in Salesforce and Pardot and co-wrote the sales playbooks. With the Sales Director, I trained the SDR team.
What I Built: The Sponsor Targeting Database
I built the first version myself. A spider pulled SEC Form D filings for commercial real estate raises, and web spidering, regression analysis, and LinkedIn research linked each deal to its sponsor firm and general partners. I ranked sponsors by average investors per offering and flagged each as a Marketplace prospect, a Sponsor Direct prospect, or both. Capital Brain and Real Capital Analytics data scaled it up in 2017. Matching contacts to ad audiences through LiveRamp let one prospect list run across Pardot, LinkedIn, Google, Meta, direct mail, and remarketing, ahead of SDR and sales calls.
The Results
Sponsor Direct closed its first deal in May 2015 and at least 68 by April 2017. From Q4 2015 to Q4 2016, new Sponsor Direct wins doubled and initial Sponsor Direct bookings grew 2.8x. Sponsor Direct's share of all new sponsor wins rose from 52% to 62% between 2015 and 2016. Marketing-qualified leads produced 79% of sales opportunities in the year to May 2017. Sales accepted leads grew 7x from Q1 2016 to Q3 2017, and the lead-to-accepted conversion rate rose from 25% to 35% over the second half of 2016. The sponsor targeting database became the base of the company's outbound sales.