How Pelago Closed Over $2 Million in New ARR with SaaSMQL

So I'm here today with Chad Eaglehoff, who is the Senior Director of Demand Generation at Pelago. Hi Chad, thank you for joining me today.

Happy to be here, Franco.

So we have been working together now for almost exactly 2 years between SAS and QL and Pelago has been a very great partnership. So I would like to hear from you directly. First, if you can give us a brief background of Pelago and your role. And then I would like to understand a little more about our partnership.

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm Senior Director of Demand Generation here at Polygo, as you already mentioned. My run, all of our campaign investments and the main priority of my job is making sure that we are able to build demand and take the marketing budget that we do have and turn that into revenue that we can close for our sales team. So anything from campaigns to events to outbound all falls underneath my role. At Pelago, we are a virtual clinic for substance use management. We focus on helping members cut back, stop, or otherwise manage their substance use. So we focus enterprise, really far upmarket, selling into HR benefits teams to provide as a standalone benefit to provide to their employees. So, you know, really, really critical solution if this this time, and really exciting to be where we're at at this stage in our journey. I think originally when I reached out to SAS MQL and we started down this journey, I was very new in my role. I have now been here for just over 2 years, so very new right off the bat starting in this role. And I needed something that could deliver pipeline to these enterprise, from these enterprise accounts that I could stand up relatively quickly that would be effective, that I could programmatically set up and get traction at these large accounts, senior decision makers in a way that felt budget effective, but efficient, right? So that's, yeah, we had spoken before and I was familiar with the model of SaaS MQL and I felt like it was a potential quick win. And the important thing there is being new in that role, you know, you make strategic bets over time. And this was one of the first big ones that I made. And, you know, 2 years later, we can look at this and say, you know, that it's, it's been a success. So I'm really happy to, number one, have had the opportunity and number two, for us to be able to look back and say like, oh, this has been a really effective partnership.

So So far, that's fantastic. And I would like to know what kind of stood out to you 2 years ago when you made a decision to work together. Was there something in particular that was appealing to you on our process, on the way that we work, or our approach compared to the other solutions that you evaluated?

Yeah, I think for me it felt like a unique unique solution, right? Having the combination of really highly targeted outbound combined with direct mail based on engagements. I had done this before in a past life on my own. I knew how hard it was to set it all up and to do it effectively. You guys had it in a program that worked, that was easy on the on my end to manage. And also, I feel like there was a belief that if we can incorporate this with the right messaging to the right targets with the right gift and a program that really is taking advantage of those key moments of interest, that it could be effective. And I hadn't really seen an agency or a program that was available that you could kind of plug in that was built in this way that felt end-to-end, right? I think that was another component of it where we're not just getting, delivering leads, we're delivering, you know, qualified meetings that our BDR team and sales team is picking up and turning right into meetings there. So the ability to do this again, be— have it, majority of it run, you know, through our marketing team, but still have that outbound component to it was, you know, highly attractive to me. And also knowing that, hey, we're focusing on market, can we get the attention of these large prospects where, you know, so many of our channels, email, phone are very saturated. Can we find that? Can we break through the clutter? And this program so far for us, in many instances, has done that.

Perfect. That's fantastic. And you guys work with really large enterprise companies like Fortune 500, even Fortune 100. So what were, what are the results that you've seen so far? Anything that you can share in terms of like the success of actually engaging these, these very large corporations?

Yeah, so, you know, first off, again, when you're focused at 10,000 employees and above, those are again accounts, decision makers that are hard to reach. They're hard to get traction with. So, but with that, right, high big barrier to entry, but high reward, big ACV for us particularly. So it makes the quality of those potential opportunities and the deal size of those opportunities means that if we can find some success there, the math quickly works out in our favor. Over the last 2 years, we've had 64 leads that have come through the program. 30 of those have turned into opportunities, crossing over $10 million in pipeline, over $2 million in closed one revenue that, you know, is actually contracted for us. So again, unequivocally, it's been a success when we look at the different channels, tactics, programs that we've run over the last 2 years. Our ABM program with SAS MQL always stands out as one of our, one of our top performing I wanna just simply call it a tactic because of the combination of tactics, but we call it a channel, right? Certainly for on a campaign basis, this has been one of our most effective channels, campaigns, and really vendor relationships.

Yeah, it's great to hear that, you know, the ROI was there because that's one of our primary focus when we work with any client is, you know, whatever ROI are we getting, what measurable results we can get. So it's really good to see that the return is there and, you know, the program has been scaling as we wanted from the beginning. Because like you said, some of those companies are really hard to engage. They are bombarded with messages across every possible direction. So it's good to see that we were able to build something that was successful. So on your experience overall, would you recommend other SaaS companies to work with us for their ABM program?

Absolutely. I think, you know, when you go into an engagement like this, you need a partner that's gonna be flexible. You need a partner who's gonna be creative and help you think outside the box. Okay, we have a program. Let's make sure that this is, you know, really dialed in to your particular segment, your particular market. Your messaging clearly and making sure that you have a strategic thought partner on that end to help you bring these campaigns to life in a way that's gonna be effective. As a, you know, demand gen marketer, my job has always not just been to create leads, right? It's to create pipeline that can convert, right? Like we focus on business impacting metrics, right? Like not vanity metrics. And so at the end of the day, are we able to build pipeline? Are we able to create revenue with this program? And the answer again has been yes. And so, you know, when outside of the soft things of like, do I enjoy working with you all? Yes. And you have been a great partner. At the end of the day, are you providing the things that I need to be successful in my role for us to be successful as a company? And the answer again has been yes. So absolutely would recommend working with SAS and QL again.

That's awesome. Yeah, the soft things are nice, but without the ROI, we probably would be hard to work for more than 2 years together, right? That's the reality. Thank you, Chad. I really appreciate you sharing your experience. It's been great working with you and your team at Pelago from our perspective. So really appreciate it.

Thank you, Franco. It's been fun.