Campaign Mgmt Platform Dev for Mktg & Advertising Company
- Custom Software Development Web Design Web Development
- $10,000 to $49,999
- June 2024 - Ongoing
- Quality
- 4.5
- Schedule
- 4.5
- Cost
- 4.5
- Willing to Refer
- 4.5
"They consistently tied technical decisions back to user impact."
- Advertising & marketing
- Orlando, Florida
- 11-50 Employees
- Online Review
- Verified
DEVtrust has built a campaign management platform for a marketing and advertising company. The web-based platform is designed to streamline marketing campaign creation, launch, and monitoring.
Since working with DEVtrust, the client has seen campaign setup time reduced by 75%, platform uptime of 99.9%, and error rate on campaign publishes below 0.5%. The team has deep technical expertise, organized the work into clear, time-boxed sprints, and has communicated transparently.
The client submitted this review online.
BACKGROUND
Please describe your company and position.
I am the CEO of an advertising & marketing company
Describe what your company does in a single sentence.
A growth-focused newsletter and sponsored content platform.
OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE
What specific goals or objectives did you hire DEVtrust to accomplish?
- Build Campaign Management Platform
SOLUTION
How did you find DEVtrust?
Upwork
Why did you select DEVtrust over others?
- High ratings
- Pricing fit our budget
- Company values aligned
How many teammates from DEVtrust were assigned to this project?
2-5 Employees
Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.
Campaign Management Platform – Scope of Work
1. Project Overview
We will build a web-based Campaign Management Platform (CMP) designed to streamline the creation, launch, monitoring, and optimization of digital marketing campaigns. The system will serve internal marketing teams and external agency clients, providing an end-to-end solution from strategy through reporting.
2. Functional Scope
2.1 User Management:
Account Types: Admin, Manager, Analyst, Viewer
Authentication: SSO integration (OAuth 2.0), role-based access control
User Profiles: Preferences, notification settings, API keys
2.2 Campaign Lifecycle:
Creation & Setup: Templates for common campaign types (CPC, CPM, CPA)
Budgeting & Scheduling: Daily/total budgets, start/end dates, pacing controls
Audience Targeting: Demographics, geolocation, interests, custom segments
Creative Assets: Upload, versioning, approval workflow
2.3 Media & Channel Integrations:
Ad Networks & Platforms: Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, programmatic partners
API Connectors: Automated bid/publish, error handling, rate-limiting
Manual Channels: CSV import for email, direct placements
2.4 Analytics & Reporting:
Real-Time Dashboards: Impressions, clicks, conversions, spend vs. budget
Custom Reports: Scheduled exports (PDF/CSV), white-labeled for clients
Attribution Models: Last-click, first-click, linear, time-decay
ROI Calculator: Revenue inputs, goal tracking
2.5 Alerts & Notifications:
Threshold Triggers: Budget burn rate, performance dips, delivery issues
Channels: Email, in-app, Slack webhook
2.6 Administration & Maintenance:
Logging & Audit: User actions, API calls, change history
Data Management: Backup, retention policies, GDPR compliance
Monitoring & Support: Uptime alerts, ticketing integration
2.7 UI/UX Design:
Responsive Layout: Desktop-first, mobile-responsive for dashboards
Wireframes & Prototypes: Iterative feedback cycles
Accessibility: WCAG 2.1 compliance
2.8 Quality Assurance & Testing:
Unit & Integration Tests: Coverage targets for core modules
End-to-End Testing: Selenium or Cypress scripts
User Acceptance Testing (UAT): Beta release with key stakeholders
2.9 Deployment & Training:
Environment Setup: Dev, staging, production on AWS or Azure
CI/CD Pipeline: Automated builds, deployments, rollbacks
Documentation: Technical docs, API reference, user guides
Training Sessions: Workshops and video tutorials for end users
3. Key Deliverables:
Requirements Specification Document: Detailed functional and technical requirements
Design Mockups & Prototypes: High-fidelity UI designs and interactive prototypes
MVP Release: Core campaign creation, scheduling, basic analytics, and reporting
Integration Connectors: Tested modules for Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and LinkedIn Ads
Full Analytics Dashboard: Real-time metrics, custom reporting, ROI calculator
Alerts & Notification System: Configurable triggers and delivery channels
Test Suites: Automated tests covering unit, integration, and E2E scenarios
Deployment Pipeline: Configured CI/CD for all environments
User & Technical Documentation: Comprehensive guides and API reference
Training Materials & Workshops: Recorded tutorials and live sessions
RESULTS & FEEDBACK
What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?
On-time Delivery & Quality:
MVP launch delivered in 12 weeks (2 weeks ahead of schedule)
100% of core API endpoints passed QA with zero critical defects in production
Ad Network Integrations:
Live, bi-directional connectors built and validated for Google Ads, Facebook Ads and LinkedIn Ads with 99.8% uptime over the first quarter
Error-rate on campaign publishes below 0.5% thanks to automated retry logic
Operational Efficiency:
Campaign setup time reduced by 75% (from ~2 hours manual to ~30 minutes via platform templates)
Manual data-entry errors dropped by 90%, as measured by reconciliation against network reports
User Adoption & Satisfaction:
20 pilot users onboarded within 2 weeks of beta release
Average user satisfaction score of 4.6 / 5 in post-training surveys
85% of managers running weekly “self-serve” campaign launches by month 2
Reporting & Insights:
Custom report generation latency under 10 seconds (versus ~3 hours previously)
Delivered over 150 automatically scheduled PDF/CSV exports with 100% on-time delivery
Alerting & Budget Controls:
95% of over-spend events caught by real-time threshold alerts before budget exhaustion
Zero client complaints of budget overruns during the first quarter
Reliability & Maintenance:
Platform uptime of 99.9% (measured via New Relic)
Mean time to resolution (MTTR) for incidents under 30 minutes
Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?
Agile Framework with Two-Week Sprints
They organized work into clear, time-boxed sprints, each with a prioritized backlog and sprint goals. Sprint planning sessions set expectations up front, and sprint reviews/demo meetings every other Friday let us see tangible progress and give immediate feedback.
Consistent, Transparent Communication
Core Milestones—MVP release, first ad-network connector, analytics dashboard, alerts module—landed within 5% of their originally committed dates.
In two cases where dependencies shifted (a third-party API delay and an unexpected scope change around attribution logic), they proactively communicated impacts and re-baselined those sprint dates, keeping the overall roadmap intact.
Responsiveness to Change
When we asked mid-project to add Slack alerting alongside email, they scoped out the work, provided a quick prototype within one sprint, and rolled it into the next release with no slippage on other deliverables.
Their triage process for urgent bugs guaranteed a response within 4 business hours and a fix/demo in the next stand-up.
Proactive Risk Management
Early in development, they flagged potential performance issues around large data exports. They ran proof-of-concept benchmarks and recommend architectural tweaks, which we adopted—avoiding costly rework later.
They maintained a running “risks & mitigations” log that we reviewed together each sprint.
Documentation & Hand-Off
Ahead of each major release, they delivered updated technical docs, API specs, and runbooks—so our operations team could take over smoothly.
Training sessions for our analysts and managers were scheduled promptly after beta and again before full launch, with recordings for on-demand reference.
What was your primary form of communication with DEVtrust?
Virtual Meeting
What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?
Here’s what stood out as particularly impressive and set them apart:
Deep Technical Expertise
They not only mastered each integration’s API nuances (Google, Facebook, LinkedIn), but anticipated gotchas—error-handling, rate limits, pagination—so our production rollout went flawlessly.
True Product Partnership
Beyond “build to spec,” they proactively suggested feature refinements (e.g. adding pacing controls, enhanced attribution models) that improved usability and ROI.
Responsive, Empathetic Team
Every question, change-request or late-breaking priority was met with “how can we help?”—not “that’s out of scope.” Their guards were down, and they genuinely treated our goals as their goals.
End-User Focus
They consistently tied technical decisions back to user impact—mocking up live prototypes, running quick usability checks, and iterating until the workflows felt effortless.
Performance-First Architecture
From day one they built with scale in mind—caching strategies, performant queries, horizontal-scaling patterns—and our dashboards handle millions of data points without a hiccup.
Transparent, Data-Driven Communication
Every sprint report was backed by real metrics—burn-down charts, QA pass-rates, API latency stats—so we never had to guess where things stood.
Culture of Continuous Improvement
Post-mortems weren’t finger-pointing; they were genuine retrospectives with clear action items. After every release, they shipped refinements faster than we could ask.
Those qualities—technical excellence married with true partnership and user empathy—made them not just a vendor, but an indispensable extension of our team.
Are there any areas for improvement or something DEVtrust could have done differently?
While DEVtrust excelled in most areas, a few constructive tweaks could make future engagements even smoother:
Earlier Documentation Handoff
Although final docs and run-books were comprehensive, getting preliminary API specs and data-model diagrams one sprint earlier would have accelerated our internal integrations and QA planning.
More Granular Sprint Estimates
Most stories were estimated accurately, but two larger features (bulk-upload CSV import, advanced pacing rules) ended up spilling over by a day or two. Breaking those into smaller, more granular stories would help flag scope creep earlier.
Enhanced Self-Service Training Materials
The live training sessions were excellent, but expanding the on-demand video library—short “how-to” clips for key workflows—would empower new users to onboard themselves without waiting for refresher calls.
Proactive Cost vs. Benefit Reviews
A mid-project checkpoint to review “nice-to-have” versus “must-have” features in light of budget and timeline could help prioritize or defer lower-ROI items more strategically.
None of these are deal-breakers—in fact, they’re fine-tuning suggestions. Addressing them would further streamline delivery, reduce friction for power users, and ensure every deployment is as bulletproof as possible.
RATINGS
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Quality
4.5Service & Deliverables
-
Schedule
4.5On time / deadlines
-
Cost
4.5Value / within estimates
-
Willing to Refer
4.5NPS