Penetrate new markets with an integrated strategy

Watch this play as a webinar, Adina Apachitei, Global Director Best Practices Program at AVEVA and Catherine Olivier, VP of Global Sales Development at Cognism, walk through how AVEVA built an integrated, regionally adaptive GTM model for new market penetration.

The session unpacks how to move from disconnected sales and marketing efforts to a truly collaborative execution framework—driving measurable impact in highly technical, complex buying environments.. 👇

Most companies still operate with marketing, SDRs, and sales functioning as separate units. This results in siloed campaigns, conflicting metrics, and missed opportunities to coordinate on touchpoints with the buying committee.

AVEVA flipped that model.

Instead of handoffs between departments, they introduced integrated execution.

This meant:

• Bringing Lead Development Reps (LDRs) into campaign planning from day one.

• Structuring around shared pipeline goals, not isolated KPIs.

• Using signal data to inform execution across all teams.

• Sharing ownership of conversion outcomes.

The LDR team became a strategic extension of marketing and sales, not just a follow-up engine.

“Our team is no longer seen as the follow-up department. We’re full go-to-market partners who co-own market penetration strategy.”

Global campaigns often struggle when they hit local markets. Either they’re too generic to resonate or too rigid to adapt. AVEVA solved this with a layered GTM planning model.

Here’s how they approached it in three steps:

1. Global teams define core campaign themes, value propositions, and focus industries.
2. Regional marketers and LDRs adapt these based on local buyer behaviour, account data, and sales feedback.
3. Sales provides input on priority accounts and validates campaign direction.

This collaboration is structured with shared quarterly plans, shared asset folders, and regular syncs to ensure feedback loops across all stakeholders.

For example, suppose the global theme is “sustainable operations in energy”. In that case, the French team might localise that to focus on marine engineering firms and run executive roundtables tied to regional legislation.

This balance of central guidance and regional ownership proved critical to AVEVA's entry into new market segments with limited legacy presence.

Rather than relying solely on MQLs or account lists from sales, AVEVA uses a “signal-first” approach to market penetration. This helps ensure they’re targeting truly in-market accounts, rather than just ticking demographic boxes.

Signals include:

• Intent data: Search behaviour, content engagement, and third-party signal tools.

• Technographic and firmographic data: Which tools accounts use, headcount changes, and recent funding.

• Behavioural signals: Webinar attendance, content downloads, site visits.

• Historical pipeline signals: Closed-lost deals, paused opportunities, past engagement.

This layered view—sometimes referred to internally as “signal stacking”—enables the LDR team to prioritise outreach more confidently.

Before any campaign launches, LDRs enrich the account list using Cognism Sales Companion to identify key personas, map the buying centre, and validate the account’s readiness. This improves outbound conversion and strengthens campaign performance across paid media and events.

Overhauling its outbound process was one of the most impactful parts of AVEVA’s market penetration example.

Outbound is no longer generic, automated, or AI-written. Instead, LDRs craft sequences rooted in campaign context, persona insights, and active collaboration with product and industry teams.

Typical outbound structure:

• 8 to 14 total touches.

• 3 to 5 emails.

• Cold calling.

• LinkedIn social selling.

• Mid-sequence manual personalisation.

• Tailored assets: Case studies, roundtable invites, persona-specific value points.

Before they go live, all templates are peer-reviewed—often with subject matter experts. Messaging varies significantly by persona: an operations engineer gets technical insights, while a VP gets ROI narratives and strategic impact.

AVEVA’s LDRs also embed dynamic decision points mid-sequence to insert personalised outreach based on live engagement data (e.g., which content was clicked, who attended a webinar, etc.).

“If a campaign is running in the marine vertical, our LDRs work directly with our portfolio experts to write messaging that speaks their language—before the first call is even made.”

When signals surge or a campaign goes live, AVEVA activates a coordinated multi-channel approach. That includes:

• Marketing: Paid ads, content syndication, email nurture, social proof, and PR.

• LDRs: Personalised outbound, LinkedIn engagement, and targeted cold calls.

• Sales engineers: Live demo support and technical validation.

• Field sales: Discovery calls and opportunity creation.

• Events: Roundtables, webinars, and customer meet-ups.

This model ensures buyers see AVEVA’s message at multiple touchpoints—from ads to inbox to personalised outreach—while building trust through high-quality human engagement.

Executive roundtables and user groups have been particularly effective in new or low-awareness markets. These small, curated events provide relevance, credibility, and social proof.

“We use roundtables to break into mid-market segments unfamiliar with AVEVA. Peer conversation and social proof work better than any deck.”

FAQs

Here are some often asked questions about this market penetration example.

How do you align content between marketing and SDRs?

Content is co-developed based on campaign goals. LDRs are involved from the start, giving feedback on what’s landing and helping tailor assets for use in outreach. A shared campaign planning doc per region is also reviewed each quarter.

Do cold calls still work?

Yes—and they’re critical. In many EMEA markets, cold calls drive up to 70–80% of meetings. The key is making them relevant and timely, supported by signals and personalisation.

Check out our latest cold calling report for more data.

What’s your outbound conversion rate?

The target is around 10% conversion from targeted accounts to booked discovery calls. But some regions overperform (12–15%), while others are lower (~5%), especially when entering new segments.

Do you use AI to write emails?

No. AVEVA avoids fully automated AI-written outreach. AI is only used to reduce research time—e.g., identifying job changes or surfacing news. LDRs write and tailor their messaging with support from campaign and product teams.

What subject lines perform best?

Avoid generic sales phrases. Subject lines focused on industry insights, peer feedback, or direct use cases perform best.

Examples:

• “Feedback from your peers in marine operations”.

• “New approaches to ESG reporting in energy”.

• “How [Company] cut downtime by 18%”.

What do you consider a successful response rate?

Response benchmarks vary, but high-performing markets see strong reply rates tied to specificity and signal relevance. AVEVA emphasises reply quality and follow-on engagement over opens or click-throughs.

How do you prioritise which markets or segments to penetrate first?

The team combines signal data (intent, tech usage, hiring) with regional feedback and GTM priorities. They pilot segments with strong signals and clear messaging, then double down where conversion and engagement emerge. Executive roundtables are often used to break into unfamiliar segments.

How does AVEVA enable SDRs to scale across such a broad portfolio?

Through upfront campaign enablement, portfolio experts brief SDRs on value propositions, use cases, and terminology per segment. SDRs use this to build relevant messaging and ask more thoughtful discovery questions, especially when handling technical solutions across marine, mining, and manufacturing.

How do you define success for outbound beyond meetings?

AVEVA tracks awareness lift, multithreading success, persona coverage, and engagement quality (e.g., who interacted, what content resonated). Conversions aren’t only measured by meetings; they also look at funnel velocity, follow-up demo quality, and opportunity readiness.

Find more GTM Plays for Sales Leaders in the hub. 👇