As underlying infrastructure technology matures, companies are turning their attention to user experience improvements to differentiate and add value for their partners. Taulia Inc., a company facilitating early payments on purchase orders, first focused its marketing effort on acquiring buyers as paying customers. After successfully building out its two-sided marketplace, the company next turned to improving the supplier experience through marketing automation. 

“A real shift that we did about two years ago was to view the supplier as the customer in the equation and making their experience absolutely the best it can be. That shift has broad implications in terms of how we’ve gone to market and how we service these companies,” said Bob Glotfelty (pictured), head of supplier success at Taulia. “It’s the full market, from the biggest companies in the world to the smallest, all looking for cash flow on their own terms.”

Glotfelty spoke with Jeff Frick (@jefffrick), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during a visit to theCUBE’s studio in Palo Alto, California. They discussed how marketing automation has helped his organization stay in contact with customers of all sizes, and especially smaller enterprises. (* Disclosure below.)

Engaging a diverse range of customers

Working with a wide range of supplier sizes from Fortune 50 companies to small flower shops presents a challenge in scalably reaching the smaller suppliers, so Taulia turned to marketing automation solutions to deliver content across the spectrum. The company has teamed up with Marketo Inc., whose services allow Taulia to deliver content to organizations that are too small for individual customer success managers to remain in high-touch contact with. 

“If you have a small mom and pop shop, they might have the highest need, but we can’t afford to have a salesperson call them and say we have this great opportunity for you,” Glotfelty said. “For them it has to be extremely low touch but really effective and really easy, so they receive an email and log in, it takes about 35 seconds … we take all of the effort away from them.”

Moving forward, Taulia plans on expanding its marketing outreach to its suppliers to continue educating and engaging the supply side of its market. Glotfelty believes that treating suppliers as customers is essential to the success of the company.

“Two years ago we were at zero [customer success associates]; today it’s about 20, and we’re a company of about 250. … For a software company that’s quite significant,” Glotfelty said. “A lot of it will be continuing to expand on what we’ve already done.”

Watch the complete video interview below. (* Disclosure: Marketo Inc. sponsored this segment on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Marketo nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE