Case Studies
Metadata
CASE STUDY
Metadata is an autonomous demand generation plat- form that automates the most critical but often tedious tasks in marketing to help companies efficiently scale their demand generation efforts. Through machine learning, a proprietary corporate-to-personal identity graph, and automatic optimization to revenue KPIs, Metadata’s platform generates demand from target accounts and converts them to customers much faster than legacy methods. Innovative B2B marketers at Zoom, G2, Okta, ThoughtSpot, and Workato rely on Metadata to create harmony between marketing and sales by lowering costs and saving time to ensure marketing drives revenue.
“We knew we had a technology that empowers B2B marketers to drive revenue and execute strategies more efficiently, but York IE shaped the narrative with the conviction that Metadata should be a standard component of all B2B marketing stacks.”
JASON WIDUP, V.P. OF MARKETINGLeading up to announcing their funding of $6.5 million in an oversubscribed Series A round, the goal was to position Metadata in a class of their own to significantly attract attention for their announcement. Facing a highly saturated market of more than 9,000 other MarTech vendors to stand out from, they wanted to create an escalation of excitement, specifically around institution- alizing the autonomous demand gen platform category. The partnership with York IE ignited the first steps to telling the Metadata story. Their mission has always been to empower and enable the marketer to spend their time doing what they’re good at — creative, strategy, and content, not excel spreadsheets. Metadata looks to alleviate marketers from the tedious manual tasks they dread, but helps them to amplify marketing campaign execution to build a predictable pipeline and marketing ROI at a scale that’s not humanly possible.
To implement proper storytelling, the team at York drilled into the vision of Founder and CEO Gil Allouche to show how they sit on top of the sales and marketing stack. We wanted to emphasize how Metadata can alleviate this bottleneck in taking the human guess- work out of demand gen campaigns and get the right content in front of the right people at the right time. “We knew we had a technology that empowers B2B marketers to drive revenue and execute strategies more efficiently, but York IE shaped the narrative with the conviction that Metadata should be a standard component of all B2B marketing stacks,” said V.P. of Marketing, Jason Widup.
APPROACH
Together, Metadata and York IE leveraged that corporate story to carve themselves into this new autonomous demand gen category. They kicked off their engagement to build momentum to the release, aligning everything internally with their brand’s messaging.
They started to tell the story in a phased approach so Metadata was a known entity before the big announcement.
The York IE team first looked at how to educate their audience by dripping content out well before the Series A launch. They focused on Metadata’s messaging hierarchy, defining the category they were in and aligning themselves consistently with that message.
York IE then worked closely with Metadata to generate thought leadership pieces and owned content derived from the hierarchy that showcased their expertise in the autonomous demand gen market. Another notable addition was the creation of the podcast, By Marketers, For Marketers, hosted by Widup, positioning him as a resource for marketing operations and technology leaders with martech knowledge and solutions.
In conjunction with the content, Metadata had three noteworthy and timely achievements to highlight. For one, they were ranked 233rd in August 2020’s Inc 5000 list as one of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies. At the same time, they were named in the top leadership position in the G2 Summer 2020 Grid® Report for Account-Based Advertising Software. Lastly, Metadata won LinkedIn’s “Innovator of the Year” award, recognizing them for making a significant impact on customers and the partner community through a new and innovative service or solution with LinkedIn Marketing Solutions.
Collectively, York IE and Metadata knew if they could create a push around these successes, it would set the stage leading up to the oversubscribed Series A. “We had an opportunity to plan and drive a momentous Series A launch, setting the stage of our 2020 achieve- ments as well as the message we wanted to convey around autonomous demand generation and what the future is for marketers,” said Gil Allouche, Founder and CEO. “Our vision was able to be executed on and position us as a top choice for B2B demand generation marketers.”
“We had an opportunity to plan and drive a momentous Series A launch, setting the stage of our 2020 achievements as well as the message we wanted to convey around autonomous demand generation and what the future is for marketers.”
GILL ALLOUCHE, FOUNDER & CEO AT METADATA.IO
With a steady foundation of visibility as the springboard, York IE now looked to create a news hook around their compelling raise. This release looked to drive media interest in an industry that’s now familiar with their platform from all the pitched content.
One of the key messages of the Series A to go along with being oversubscribed was highlighting how Metadata was creating something new that all marketers needed. The launch was backed by invest- ments from VCs, over a dozen Metadata customers and employees, and notable entrepreneurs, including Mark Organ (founder of Eloqua), Ilya Volodarsky (founder of Segment), and Gary Nakamura (CEO of SocialChorus). This well-rounded belief in the platform with capital from within the company and from outside heavy hitters helped to frame the Metadata narrative that this category of autonomous demand generation deserves attention.
YORK IE EXECUTED IN A TWO-PRONGED APPROACH
1. Pre-pitched it out to the media, specifically giving TechCrunch the exclusive to interview Gil and show-
case the story behind how Metadata and marketing has evolved.
2. Mapped out a full-court press with follow-up content on social from within the company, giving employees the tools they needed, like social cards, to help promote Metadata’s differentiation in the market. This became
a pivotal moment for internal staff to get excited and feel supported, which in turn energized them and their networks to promote what Metadata was doing.
The team at York IE prides itself on a drumbeat market- ing strategy to consistently deliver micro and long-form content and ensure it weaves a narrative that stems from the company’s messaging hierarchy. In this case, the goal was to continue the momentum from the oversubscribed Series A launch with a steady iteration of that messaging that drives the conversation and category creation.
“We knew every marketer has the ability to do their job better because of Metadata. The future of the martech landscape is autonomous, and we were looking to ensure Metadata was seen as the solution for demand generation campaigns. Making their story known and positioning them as leaders in their space set the stage for a successful Series A launch.” said Kate Campbell, Vice President, York IE.
This post-release push to all relevant targets resulted in the increase of analyst and influencer coverage around Metadata and demand generation technology in general. They gained 13 pieces of coverage starting with TechCrunch, followed by MediaPost, MarTech, and CMSwire. They also gained 14,000 pageviews for the week, a 161% jump from the previous month. The uptick in demos from website visitors led to a 100% increase for that month.