Who would have thought that less than five years ago, ViB was just one and a half people, and a handful of brave customers who dared to try our method to B2B demand generation?
Fast forward to now, we’ve doubled our top-line growth for the fourth year running. In 2022 alone, we delivered over a quarter million qualified leads to help our customers exceed their B2B demand generation goals. It’s crazy to think about ViB’s journey and how we started, and I can’t emphasize enough that we couldn’t have done it without our incredible customers.
It was such a pleasure giving back to all of you over a special year-end celebration earlier in November. If you managed to make it live, I hope you had fun meeting team ViB (check them out again on our Linkedin), and the world-famous illusionist, Danny Ray, of course, who once again completely blew me away.
Beyond being able to say a massive thanks, the event was also a report card of sorts, where we looked back at the great results we’ve accomplished together. We also looked forward at how we’re going to evolve as a company and continue doing amazing work in 2023.
Catch the full recording of our year-end customer celebration, or keep reading for my 2022 recap.
Table of Contents
2022’s biggest successes in B2B demand generation, by the numbers
At ViB, our goal has always been to help marketers and sales professionals improve their results by simplifying B2B demand generation. Judging by numbers, team ViB has been crushing our business and customer goals on repeat!
Here are some of the most important metrics that I shared.
255k qualified leads
We’ve delivered over 255,000 leads for our customers so far in 2022, which is a new record for our proprietary, community-based demand generation model. And it’s not just the raw numbers that matter — it’s also the quality of leads we’re delivering. Making sure the leads are in-market and fit each customer’s targeting requirements remain a core part of our process.
One of the greatest things that ever happens to me is when customers share about their program. Just a few weeks ago, a customer in the security space shared with us that they received a $167,000 annual contract from a lead we sourced. We’re getting so much amazing feedback and results from our customers that are higher than ever before!
4,700k appointments sourced
Our flagship B2B appointment setting service still remains a fan favorite. The thousands of warm, opted-in leads are definitely the reason we’re able to make such a big impact on our customers’ sales funnels.
This year, we’ve seen some of the most successful stories as well like with Abnormal Security, which is a young cybersecurity startup, generating 67x ROI using ViB Appointments. The leads are converting at an 82.5% lead-to-opp rate — meaning that nearly 8 out of every 10 leads we deliver end up turning into actual business opportunities. Way to go!
31,000k webinar registrations driven
Making event and webinar marketing a breeze for our busy customers is a big highlight this year too. Using a mix of advanced firmographic targeting and good ol’ B2B email marketing tactics, we’ve secured hundreds of real registrants and attendees for each webinar hosted by our customers.
A success story I love is with AtScale, where we managed to secure a challenging-to-capture ABM prospect in our community, not to mention over 500 net new registrants with no audience fatigue. These conversations with our customers really make up for all the hard work the team puts in.
32,000k content downloads
White papers, case studies, opinion pieces and other business resources are getting milked to the fullest on our portal. Our customers are seeing a huge boost in their content marketing performance with us, even when compared to other B2B content syndication platforms. We’re continuing to strategically promote each piece of content through ViB Syndication, and expand our community to minimize any kind of audience saturation.
2,700k unique email programs delivered
Finally, topping the charts for number of programs delivered is ViB Emails, aka SmartSend. It’s one of the first few services I conceptualized years ago, and today we’re sending millions of emails each month for our customers, for a range of top-of-funnel applications like branding and ABM.
I couldn’t be more proud of the ViB team too, that’s always able to deliver this service in what feels like a blink of an eye. We’re talking about full emails built and sent in under 48 hours.
Giving back to those in need
Taking a step away from these performance numbers for a moment, using our business for good beyond profit has always been an important personal value, and it now also forms the foundation of the ViB spirit.
Likely the most meaningful highlight of the year was our service-first pledge where we worked with dozens of organizations to help those who need it most. This year, we chose two specific org-wide initiatives.
1. Homeless Coalition — computer literacy program
As part of a multi-phase pilot program with the Homeless Coalition of Palm Beach County and Goodwill, we’ve donated 10 laptops and 10 online education license seats, and are volunteering personally through an ongoing mentoring program.
This initiative is so important to us, because we’re giving these people a better chance of meaningful employment so that they can try to escape the cycle of homelessness. The ViB mentors truly are giving the needy hope, and I’m immensely grateful for that.
2. The Bucket Ministry — water for Kibera pledge
This one’s a major team effort as well. In fact, it’s even bigger! Earlier this year, we pledged to donate 1.5% of all sales to bring clean, life-saving water to Kibera, a part of Nairobi, Kenya — and the largest slum in Africa.
With everyone’s contribution, we raised $210,000 with The Bucket Ministry!
I can’t express the biggest thank you to our generous customers who purchased demand generation services with us, the ViB team who delivered each request, and the many who donated out-of-pocket during this National Water Quality Month.
Our donations are now serving approximately 34,000 people who were drinking dirty water and suffering from waterborne illnesses. We’ve also raised enough to donate over a thousand buckets with water filters that last 20 years.
We’re not stopping here for sure. Every profit dollar represents an opportunity to pass on kindness. We’re going to keep searching for ways to give back, through charity or volunteer work. If you want to be a part, please reach out to us. We’d be thrilled!
If you’d like to further contribute to this amazing initiative for Kibera or read more about our trips there, head over to my giving page.
Our expanding portfolio for 2023
The road ahead is full of excitement. We have big plans for the next year, which include launching new services, automating key processes, and becoming an even bigger brand that’s synonymous with quality.
As Halstead, our new VP of Product and Technology, shared over the customer celebration, we’re seeing significant macroeconomic movements that we’re expecting to continue into 2023 as well.
And so the question that we’re always asking ourselves here at ViB, as we expand our offerings, is what can we do to make sure that we’re continuing to drive results for our customers? How can we keep innovating new services and features that are measurable, that are meaningful, and that are actionable?
We’ve three main pillars we’re planning to grow over the next year, and a lot of that has actually come out of our customer advisory board meetings, where we get real feedback and requests from real customers. So here’s a quick but exciting sneak peek.
1. Deeper community insights to capture in-market clients
Our ViB community is a goldmine of business intel. We’ve done a lot of work to understand the demographics and firmographics of our community, but we want to go deeper.
We want to know what they’re buying, who’s buying it, why they’re buying, how much they’re spending on different things, and of course get an actionable sales opportunity out of every response.
That’s where our brand new community insights service comes in. With purpose-built surveys deployed on demand, we strategically survey targeted accounts in the ViB community. We’re then able to obtain comprehensive sets of zero-party data that accurately identify business units who are actively in the buyer’s journey.
Consider these survey questions we included in a recent pilot run as an example:
Finally, we also ask each respondent if they want to opt in to have their responses and contact details shared.
This means that our customers don’t just get a list of questions and answers at the end of the day. They get real leads who represent active mid-of-funnel opportunities, and valuable internal sales insight that can be actioned on with great results.
We’d love to get everyone’s thoughts on its potential value as we continue fine tuning the service. If you’d like to learn more or get your feedback heard, we’ll be launching a few virtual product testing session soon; stay tuned for more details.
2. A better approach to “intent” — zero-party behavioral data
Intent-based marketing has been a hot topic for awhile. But talking to our customers, we’ve learned that the way intent is dealt with now doesn’t produce great results for them.
There are a number of issues with how it’s handled right now like Halstead mentioned during the session, which is also how we want to start moving forward with a smarter solution.
It's kind of a black box for a lot of you guys. It's really focused on delivering signals that tell you more about what is going on with a particular company or a particular market segment.
And what we wanted to do was take some of the best elements of intent and we'll definitely be using intent signaling in these offerings, but with a focus instead on behavior.
The first major part of our expanded targeting options is tapping once again into zero-party data. It’s unlike many providers who are limited to making interpolations with just second and third-party data. Such generalized industry data fall slightly short of what modern B2B marketers need.
Instead, our community gives us the ability to ask strategic questions and obtain zero-party data, i.e. data that’s intentionally and proactively shared by a customer. We can enquire about highly behavioral traits, like how a prospect is moving through the market, and in such a deterministic way that guarantees accuracy and delivers leads.
Combining this new zero-party behavioral data together with the current firmographic targeting options we already know and love, we get a new premium service offering that assures intelligent, high quality leads.
We’re also knee-deep in the exciting product testing phase, so please do reach out if you’re keen to be a beta tester with us.
3. Responsive reporting for in-flight programs on the customer portal
Our final exciting plan for the 2023 roadmap focuses on the customer experience as we move towards a larger SaaS vision for ViB.
Over the next few months, we’ll be introducing a multi-function customer portal that will deliver on-demand statuses of in-flight and completed programs for active customers. It’ll also streamline key tasks like tracking analytics, ordering and billing.
The customer portal’s main capabilities in a snapshot:
- Monitor statuses of in-flight and completed programs
- Get all-in-one reporting capabilities: performance tracking, downloadable reports, more control over how and when you receive reports etc.
- Manage account information and communication options
- Simplify ordering, billing, renewals, and handling of tax & finance documents
- Integrate via API with key sales, CRM and performance tools
Although we’re making some big changes, our customers can rest assured that they’ll still get the same white-glove service they know ViB for.
The portal should augment and actually improve upon that feeling of white glove service, by making sure that you've got the data that you need when you need it.
There’s lots of room to explore here, and we’re eager to learn more about how we can build this portal to best fit our customers’ needs. What features would be most helpful?
P.S., based on the live poll we ran on which launch our customers were most excited about, we received the most votes for ‘all of the above’. So we know we’re on the right track!
Above all, it’s all thanks to you
ViB’s growth and customer impact for 2022 has far surpassed our wildest expectations.
To our customers reading this, we’ve achieved more than we ever could have imagined, and it’s all thanks to each of you. Thank you for trusting us as your B2B demand generation partner, and also thank you for being a part of our journey to revolutionize the B2B marketing industry.
The best is yet to come! I know we’ll have a great 2023 together.
Let us know what you think?
I’d love to hear it! Tell me your feedback, concerns or suggestions via email, reach out to your reps, or drop us a quick note.
