Customer story

Six questions ngrok answered before a buyer ever saw the campaign.

A missing buyer role, a new HealthTech audience and a HIPAA blocker. ngrok found all three before launch.

WhyUser used for Audience Research Landing Page Testing Email Sequence Testing

WhyUser showed us the buyer role we were missing and the HIPAA question buyers would ask (and what security personas need), before emails went out.

Sam Crowell RichardCRO, ngrok
Before Audience Discovery

Getting to a live test took time.

ngrok’s Marketing Operations team runs campaigns with Sales. Before WhyUser, audience research and copy review both had to finish before any buyer saw a campaign.

01 · Find the audience4 weeks

Research, enrich, group roles, find patterns, validate with Sales.

02 · Get the copy readyMultiple reviews

Draft, review, revise, approve. Then buyers finally saw the campaign.

A lot of people reviewed the campaign before a buyer ever did.
The journey

From a market ngrok knew to a new one, in six steps.

  1. 01Customer connectivity3/4 roles
  2. 02First aha4/4 after the fix
  3. 03HealthTech run4 weeks → hours
  4. 04New audience100+ roles
  5. 05Message testHIPAA blocker fixed
  6. 06Live2 of 5 forward
01 · Customer connectivity · Start with what ngrok already knows

Could Audience Discovery see the audience ngrok already knew?

ngrok first ran Audience Discovery on its customer connectivity use case. It helps a SaaS company reach private systems inside its customers’ networks, with no VPN or firewall changes. Audience Discovery reads a page and finds the buyer roles it fits. ngrok already knew the four core roles here, so its existing landing page became the benchmark.

3/4 Known core roles surfaced
ngrok Sales “What’s missing?” Product Managers
WhyUser proofThe result exposed a question worth checking.
02 · The first aha

The missing role pointed back to the page.

Sales confirmed the customer connectivity page did not speak to Product Managers, so the campaign could miss them. ngrok updated the messaging, then ran Audience Discovery again.

Before3/4Product Manager absent
After4/4Product Manager surfaced
03 · Audience Discovery · Run 02

The first run proved the known. Now change the vertical.

ngrok already knew its customer connectivity buyers. Next, it kept the same use case and pointed it at a new market: HealthTech. The question was simple. Who buys there?

Keep the use caseCustomer connectivity
Change the lensHealthTech
Run Audience DiscoveryAgain
Same use case. New vertical. Fresh buyer signals. 4 weekshours
04 · Into HealthTech

Who is in the new audience?

The HealthTech run surfaced more than 100 related roles, and ngrok Sales validated them. ngrok checked one strong signal against its real healthcare inbound. That buyer had asked about BAAs, the contracts HIPAA requires before a vendor can handle patient data.

100+HealthTech roles to explore, validated by Sales. One strong role signal: Clinical Informatics.
WhyUser signalClinical Informatics
Real inboundA senior clinical informatics leader
And that buyer hadalready asked about BAAs
From discovery to targeting

Discovery became targeting. WhyUser found the roles. ngrok added the context.

ngrok combined three inputs and built the outbound list in Clay, its list-building tool.

WhyUserHealthTech Audience Discovery100+ roles, including Clinical Informatics
ngrokHealthcare inbound + lookalikesreal buyer behavior
SalesBuyer knowledge + validationcommercial context
Built in ClayHealthTech outbound audienceready for the five-message test
Ground Reality

Audience Discovery finds the buyers. Ground Reality gives them context.

Ground Reality builds each simulated buyer from real evidence, such as ngrok’s site, social sentiment and customer transcripts. ngrok had a grounded base committee on Day 1, then grew it for HealthTech.

Day 1Ground Reality

Starts when the account is created. No setup required. Grounded base committee ready within hours.

ExpandAudience Discovery

New target → grounded committee within hours, not weeks of manual research.

Most tools need weeks of manual data mapping. WhyUser’s Ground Reality ingested our site, social sentiment and customer transcripts in minutes, and it keeps learning.

Nichole LaRueHead of Marketing Operations, ngrok
05 · The message test

Five people. Five ideas. One HealthTech buying committee.

Five people at ngrok, from Marketing Ops, Sales, the CRO and Product Growth, each wrote one outbound email idea. All five were tested on a buying committee built from the new HealthTech audience.

  1. 01Marketing Ops
  2. 02Sales
  3. 03Sales
  4. 04CRO
  5. 05Product Growth
All five tested against the same committee
Same grounded buyer benchmark

Every approach faced the same HealthTech committee before any email went live.

Before send

The security buyer wanted to verify the HIPAA claim.

The proof already existed in ngrok’s Trust Center, but the emails did not link to it. WhyUser surfaced the gap before launch, and ngrok added the link.

HealthTech committee simulationThe security persona flagged aBlocker“Can I verify the HIPAA claim?”
Before launch
ngrok fixed itDirect link toHIPAA reportsin the Trust Center
WhyUser proofBuyer feedback became a campaign change.
06 · Live in Apollo

The five emails went live together. Then ngrok narrowed the field.

Early live signal · test in progress 2/5

ngrok sent all five in Apollo, its sales email tool. Two of the five ideas moved forward to the next round, based on early opens and clicks. The test is still running.

Every WhyUser signal on this page is simulated. Where this page says a signal matched, ngrok checked that signal against real data it already had. The live results are ngrok’s, not WhyUser’s.

What changed before launch

The live test still mattered. WhyUser changed what ngrok knew before the test began.

  • 3/4 → 4/4messaging evidence
  • 100+ rolesnew vertical audience
  • BAA intentbuyer reality
  • HIPAA proofchanged before send

A grounded committee gave every idea the same buyer benchmark before launch.

Keep the learning

The offer changed. The learning loop kept going.

Then ngrok’s offer changed. ngrok rewrote the two leading emails to match and ran them through WhyUser again before the next live round.

  1. Two ideaslive signal
  2. Offerchanges
  3. Rewritenew versions
  4. WhyUserbuyer feedback
  5. Nextapply + test
WhyUserBuyer evidence earlier.
ngrokAdds context. Decides what to apply.
The ngrok loop

ngrok tested before launch. Then learned from what happened after.

  1. Audience
  2. Committee
  3. Simulate
  4. Fix
  5. Go live
That’s the loop.

Marketing has a staging environment now.

Stage your next campaign →Start with Audience Discovery