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Shutterstock Case Study

About Shutterstock

Shutterstock is one of the biggest stock photo companies in the world, offering the best quality, royalty-free stock images, photos, vectors, illustrations, footage, video, and music for nearly any application. From illustrations to vectors, when you need the perfect stock image for your website or blog, they have you covered. Their massive selection of stock footage and music tracks are the ideal choice to set the scene in your next short or feature film.

Nick Lazio

Strategic Partnerships Manager

Industry

Internet

Website

www.shutterstock.com

Challenges & Scope

Challenge: Shutterstock would typically have to do manual research to determine how its users would benefit from an API integration. This took too much time away from their team, and they needed a partner who could efficiently work as an extension to produce quality, hand-curated accounts for their outbound efforts.

ICP: Print on Demand, Video Creation, Ad builders, Website Builders, Email marketing industries.

Solution: While other companies had offered Shutterstock data enrichment services, CIENCE customized their approach to match Shutterstock’s needs. Working together closely, Shutterstock shared their list of existing accounts with the dedicated research team, who then used this information as a base to customize an ideal list lof qualified accounts for the Shutterstock team to pitch APIs to.

Why CIENCE

Finding it difficult to determine a strong target account, Shutterstock had been actively looking for a vendor to help relieve their team from prospecting so that they could focus on the actual outreach of their roles. After interviewing several companies, Shutterstock determined that CIENCE was the only vendor who understood and was capable of helping them with their research needs.

This capability made CIENCE stand out above the competition. Furthermore, “they were able to make a list of all the accounts that we’ve reached out to in Salesforce and look for brand new accounts that were a fit for our services.” Nick Lazio, the Strategic Partnerships Manager of Shutterstock, worked very closely with the team to identify and refine potential good fits. Once there was a solid match, those fits would be provided to Shutterstock’s CRM so the Shutterstock’s own team could pitch their API integrations.

Results

Between October 2019 and February 2020, the CIENCE team successfully delivered 700 accounts to Shutterstock. Initially, there were about 70 companies that were not the right fit. After a deep dive into the target audience, CIENCE quickly replaced them with ideal, high-quality accounts with a need for Shutterstock’s service. Pleased with this list of 700 accounts, Shutterstock stated:

“Demonstrating their drive to develop a long-term relationship with their partner, they put in extra effort to ensure that they delivered quality work. The customization that they were willing to provide really set them apart from other vendors. If we can close a handful of the accounts we were given, the engagement will be more than worth it.” – Nick Lazio.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many accounts did Shutterstock receive from CIENCE?

CIENCE delivered 700 hand-curated target accounts to Shutterstock between October 2019 and February 2020. When approximately 70 initial accounts were found to be poor fits, CIENCE replaced them with high-quality alternatives, maintaining the full list of 700 qualified accounts for Shutterstock’s API outreach efforts.

What specific challenge did CIENCE solve for Shutterstock?

Shutterstock’s team was spending too much time on manual prospecting research to identify companies that could benefit from an API integration. CIENCE took over this research function entirely, freeing Shutterstock’s Strategic Partnerships team to focus on outreach and closing rather than list-building.

How did CIENCE customize its approach for Shutterstock?

CIENCE worked directly with Shutterstock’s existing Salesforce account data as a baseline, then identified net-new accounts that matched Shutterstock’s ideal customer profile — companies in Print on Demand, Video Creation, Ad Builders, Website Builders, and Email Marketing that were strong candidates for API integrations. Qualified accounts were delivered directly into Shutterstock’s CRM.

Why did Shutterstock choose CIENCE over other B2B data vendors?

After interviewing multiple vendors, Shutterstock selected CIENCE because CIENCE was the only provider that demonstrated a clear understanding of their research needs and willingness to customize the engagement. Other companies had offered data enrichment services, but only CIENCE showed the flexibility and capability to build a tailored account list from Shutterstock’s existing CRM data.

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