How Descope increased their LinkedIn Ads ROI by 25% with AdPilot
Descope is a drag-and-drop customer authentication and identity management platform. Its no-code workflow builder helps organizations create and customize the entire user journey for their apps.
Descope sells to enterprises and SMB companies and has a two-pronged GTM motion: product-led and sales-assist growth.
We sat down with Shane Poyar, Growth and Mark Ops Manager at Descope, to understand how they use Factors to navigate long sales cycles and increase their LinkedIn Ads ROI by 25%.
Everstage’s Challenges
Converting traffic into sales is like piecing a jigsaw puzzle. Manually tracking accounts and monitoring campaign data felt like chasing shadows. Incomplete data and bot traffic muddied the water, making it hard to see our true impact. Tools were supposed to help, but with their low account match rates, we were often left in the dark. We needed something better.
Descope has faced the dreaded challenge that startups are all too familiar with: navigating long sales cycles. They lacked visibility into their buyers’ journeys—what their users were doing online, which touchpoints mattered most, and how to focus their efforts on what worked. This made it harder to identify what worked and scale it.
- Lack of visibility into the buyer journey
"We wanted to really understand who's visiting our website, and our docs, and what actions they were taking off-platform, like on G2 or LinkedIn, and tie it back together", says Shane.
- Manual list uploads for ads: Descope relied on manual list uploads for audience targeting, often leading to missed opportunities to engage users at the right moment. Shane shared, “Without the ability to act in real-time, even the right content and targeting fell short, especially in a competitive market where timing is everything."
- Wasted ad spend: A few large accounts took up most of the impressions. Nearly 92% of accounts saw less than 100 ad impressions per month.
“Large accounts took up most of our budget. It would make far more sense if these impressions were distributed across 10 accounts instead of just one", says Shane.
- Manual and fragmented reporting: Descope’s team used spreadsheets and hired an agency to handle their reporting, but it slowed down their processes and couldn’t give them concrete and actionable insights.
As Shane put it, “It felt like too many cooks in the kitchen, all trying to make sense of the same overwhelming amount of information. Most of the work ended up being manual and reliant on spreadsheets because we lacked a solution that truly met our needs."
Why Everstage chose Factors.ai
With Factors.ai, we're no longer in the dark. The data consolidation is like magic, no more juggling multiple platforms. Our ABM campaigns and, thus, our outreach got a big big boost in performance. In short, it's our single source of truth.
Descope evaluated alternatives but found Factors.ai offers robust features with greater flexibility and startup-friendly pricing.
“You guys offered a product that had an edge over others in a lot of different ways. We thought it was a great solution that really checked a lot of boxes for us to be able to speak to the right accounts and ensure that we're maximizing our return on ad spend.”
Descope leveraged Factors.ai as a central part of their two-pronged strategy, combining product-led and sales-assist approaches.
- Complete visibility into buyer journey: Using Factors, Descope gained transparency into account behavior, enabling their sales team to identify the optimal time to engage with prospects.
“Once a user is identified on our site, we analyze all the intent signals and the engagement score. When a user becomes hot and has taken some of those critical actions, that's when we're notifying our salespeople to be able to reach out to that person”, says Shane.
- Show ads to the right accounts at the right time: With Factors, Descope could deliver ads to high-intent prospects at the right time to drive consideration.
According to Shane, “Factors’ Audience Sync allowed us to tailor LinkedIn Ads to each stage of the customer journey. Awareness-stage users received educational content, while engaged users got personalized, actionable CTAs, ensuring precise targeting and effective engagement.”
- Save ad spend with impression control: Descope used Smart Reach to control the number of ad impressions shown to each account. This allowed them to distribute nearly 140k (~25%) ad impressions to other accounts.
"We were initially hesitant about impression control, but after just two trial periods, it proved transformative. We realized how much further our budget could go. We saw more efficiency and reached more accounts without overserving just a few large enterprises", says Shane.
- Complete visibility over channel performance: For instance, Shane's team discovered how LinkedIn Ads influenced their deals. Previously, they only tracked ad clicks, resulting in fewer opportunities attributed to LinkedIn Ads.
- Using LinkedIn Conversions API: Shane shares, “With third-party cookies on the decline, we’ve shifted entirely to first-party data to tie everything together and engage users genuinely interested in Descope’s products and services. It has become a core part of our marketing stack—absolutely table stakes for how we operate.”
The Results
With Factors.ai, we've seen real results. It simplified our data, made our campaigns smarter, and boosted engagement. Simply put, it made our work more efficient and effective.
With Factors.ai, we've seen real results. It simplified our data, made our campaigns smarter, and boosted engagement. Simply put, it made our work more efficient and effective.
Future
Converting traffic into sales is like piecing a jigsaw puzzle. Manually tracking accounts and monitoring campaign data felt like chasing shadows. Incomplete data and bot traffic muddied the water, making it hard to see our true impact. Tools were supposed to help, but with their low account match rates, we were often left in the dark. We needed something better.
Descope is gearing up to scale and launch personalized marketing campaigns to their prospects and take more data-driven decisions to create a cohesive GTM strategy.
“Factors is still absolutely in the story for next quarter's goals. We're a fast-growing startup looking to scale in a lot of ways. That means bigger budgets, more data, and more personalization. We're going to need to leverage Factors even more.
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