How Zylo Uses Primer to Consistently Achieve 10X Pipeline ROI While Going Upmarket

Zylo’s Challenge: Reaching Highly Specific Buyers in a New Market

Zylo is pioneering a new category: SaaS Management. Powered by the industry’s largest dataset of 40 million SaaS licenses and $40 billion in SaaS spend, Zylo brings order to SaaS sprawl and unlocks significant cost savings while maximizing software value. Their customer list is a who’s who of top companies such as AbbVie, Adobe, Atlassian, Intuit, Salesforce, and Yahoo. But selling into an emerging space comes with its own set of challenges.

We’re building a market that doesn’t fully exist yet,” said Chris Cruz, Senior Director of Demand Generation and Digital Marketing at Zylo. "We needed to reach niche enterprise buying groups who don’t even know they need us yet."

They wanted a tool that made it easier to build and update targeted audiences—something lightweight, fast, and connected to the rest of their stack.

The Shift from Metadata to Primer

Zylo was already using Metadata but found it overly focused on campaign orchestration and lacking the flexibility needed to build and adjust targeted audiences quickly. Chris discovered Primer through an ad that focused on one thing: match rates.

Our audiences are small and specific—often under 50,000 people. If only 30-40% of those match in ad platforms, the whole program falls apart," Chris explained. "Primer didn’t just promise higher match rates, they delivered."

Primer's match rates, Salesforce integration, and individual-level targeting won out. "I needed something that could build amazing audiences based on role, intent, and sales activity. That’s what Primer does."

Precision Targeting in Action

Zylo’s ICP spans multiple departments across global enterprise companies—IT, procurement, finance, and executives. Each persona cares about something different, and each requires unique messaging.

Using 6sense for initial intent signals, Zylo:

• Pulls active buying signals into Salesforce
• Syncs intent-qualified accounts and personas into Primer
• Builds highly tailored audiences by role, vertical, and engagement stage

6sense can help identify in-market accounts, but its ad targeting is limited to the account level—there’s no way to target specific personas within those accounts. Primer fills that gap by enabling precise, individual-level targeting.

Primer lets us take something broad like 'any company with software' and narrow it down to 'IT leaders at global enterprise accounts actively researching SaaS management,'" Chris explained. "We can't do that anywhere else."

Real-Time Sales Alignment

One of the biggest unlocks? Marketing to active sales opportunities in real time.

When a deal becomes an active opportunity in Salesforce, the audience updates instantly in Primer and starts getting ads. I can look my CMO in the eye and say, 'Yes, we're already marketing to them.' That's powerful."

That dynamic approach extends to everything from vertical pivots to customer lifecycle campaigns.

We pivoted to a new vertical in five minutes. We cloned an existing audience, filtered by vertical, and instantly had a campaign-ready list of 75,000 decision-makers."

Deploying Audiences Across Google and LinkedIn

Zylo primarily uses Google—both paid search and Performance Max (PMAX)—along with LinkedIn.

Performance Max

• Primer audiences are used for top-of-funnel awareness
• Google's built-in retargeting drives bottom-funnel conversions
• Lower CPMs than LinkedIn make PMAX a cost-efficient play

Search

• Primer powers both inclusion and exclusion audiences
• Helps control budget by narrowing to high-fit buyers

"We’re just beginning to test Primer audiences in search, but it’s already helping us spend smarter."

The ROI: 10X Pipeline Efficiency While Moving Upmarket

Zylo holds marketing 100% accountable for generating pipeline—and Primer helps them deliver.

Our KPI is pipeline generated per dollar spent, and we aim for 10x. We consistently hit that with Primer," Chris said. "And we’re doing it while pushing further upmarket every quarter."

The best part? Primer adapts as Zylo’s strategy evolves. "Every time our CMO says, 'Let's pivot,' I know I can come back to my desk and have the new audience live in 15 minutes. That’s just not possible with most tools."

Conclusion

Primer enables Zylo to turn niche enterprise targeting into a scalable, real-time growth engine. With unmatched audience precision, dynamic Salesforce syncs, and multi-channel reach, Zylo doesn’t just reach its ICP—it moves them down-funnel.

I’ve told anyone who will listen: if you're in demand gen and serious about targeting, you need Primer. It does exactly what we need."