Pyxl

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

The company I work for is a large pharmacy.

What is your position?

I serve as the vice president of marketing.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Pyxl?

We needed ongoing support for paid SEM [search engine marketing] and digital advertising. Additionally, we were looking for a certified HubSpot partner that could help us out with integration into our marketing automation tool.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

We use them on a retainer basis for items that come up within HubSpot. They help us with landing page support, deeper integration between AdWords or LinkedIn advertising, and help coordinate that within HubSpot for reporting.

How did you come to work with Pyxl?

We only choose to work with partners that are already existing partners within the HubSpot ecosystem. That is the biggest criteria when choosing someone to work with. They offered us a local, young, and sharp team that understands the business. They work quick and ultimately seemed like the best fit. Because they are a national agency, they have a team outside their local team to help with overflow work.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

Roughly $10,000 a month for at least the last year [since 2015].

What is the status of this engagement?

We are currently working with them on a monthly retainer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

They find novel solutions to challenges that we've had for an extended period of time, which is great. They also understand our advertising spend, so they optimize that to ensure the best targets and the best conversion ratios.

How did Pyxl perform from a project management standpoint?

They're strong with project management. Having them in town helps so if we need to we can just jump in a room and work through challenges. They work within Basecamp, which is our tool of choice.

What distinguishes Pyxl from other providers?

Pyxl is detail-oriented around due dates, specs, and they've got a process that is ironed out for the development and release of all their digital campaigns.

Is there anything Pyxl could have improved or done differently?

No – not that I can think of. I'm quite satisfied with them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Our organization manufactures and markets pharmaceutical products specifically for cancer patients. We have one product that is for cancer pain.

What is your position?

My title is senior marketing manager. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Pyxl?

I was not involved with our initial work with Pyxl, but we had brought them on primarily for web design work. We needed websites. We needed something that would be done inexpensively, but that would also be able to provide us very good value, as well as a quick turnaround time.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

We use them to do a lot of web design and development work but also for some other smaller projects, such as signage for meetings and helping us out with templates for presentations.

How did you come to work with Pyxl?

I wasn't here when we first started working with them. However, we wanted somebody that was local. Somebody here had either heard of them, so we sent out a request for a project bid, and they came through.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The cost was in the $50,000 to $200,000 range. We've also had numerous projects that were less than $10,000 and a few a bit more than that amount.

What is the status of this engagement?

We are currently working with them. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics, metrics, or other feedback from your work with Pyxl?

I don't have any hard and fast figures on this. Our website has seen increased use. Comments and compliments on our websites have been very positive, particularly for things like signage and responsiveness, and our own internal metrics have all been extremely positive. The way Pyxl works with us has been very responsive.

How did Pyxl perform from a project management standpoint?

Pyxl's project management was very good. They understand what the timelines are, and they've been very quick to respond. They've been very proactive in contacting me, in seeing what I need. If there are any issues that come up in our meetings, they're not only responsive to those issues, but they also come up with possible solutions to those challenges.

What distinguishes Pyxl from other providers?

We have been turning to Pyxl for their creativity and campaign development. They have been extremely responsive with those last-minute projects.

Is there anything Pyxl could have improved or done differently?

There is always room for improvement. That being said, they have done a very good job. They're very good with designing websites and have great creative input. Pyxl has been good about generating creative ideas to reach out to our target audience, and they always keep us apprised of some of the newer technologies that we might want to employ.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are Maryville College. It's a four-year private, liberal arts, church-related college.

What is your position?

I'm assistant director of admissions communications. I work with prospective students and families as well as work with our communications and marketing and admissions departments on producing publications and electronic newsletters to market the college.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Pyxl?

When we first approached Pyxl a few years ago – we needed additional resources and help in reaching prospective students nationwide. We needed to get Maryville College's name and brand out there.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

Initially Pyxl helped create a microsite for the college called "Go Maryville" and that assisted us with getting us new prospective students from throughout the United States. When I took on this role, the "Go Maryville" microsite was targeted toward prospective seniors – those rising seniors in high school. They've assisted us not only in creating two microsites, but they've assisted us in writing blogs. They interviewed several of our students and some of our staff members to create various blogs and articles. They also manage our admissions Twitter account and they assist us in trying to get certain key words out there and target the U.S. search engines. Currently, we're trying to have them create email templates for us so we have a standard look across the college. 

How did you come to work with Pyxl?

Our vice president reached out to several vendors to get proposals. I assisted with this search at that time. We went with Pyxl – number one, because they're a local digital marketing company – and two, their president, Josh Phillips, is a Maryville College graduate so he already had that foundation and knowledge of Maryville College and what sets us apart from other higher education institutions. 

We've worked closely with Pyxl since then, and they've enjoyed our partnership so much so that they've asked some of our students to intern with them. I know it's a blessing to me because if I have a question I can email or call them and it's almost like 24/7 service. They get right back to me. We have monthly meetings. They drive to campus or we go out to their headquarters. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Within their monthly reports, I can see how many new leads that they send our way, this past month it was 559 new leads to our database. Those are 559 prospective students that we may not have reached, but Pyxl was able to. Also, they get keywords out there for us like My College Path, which was a microsite. In May [2015], it ranked as the number one keyword. Our study abroad program, too, has been the number one keyword.

What distinguishes Pyxl from other providers?

I love collaborating with them. They're young, energetic, and constantly evolving. The staff at Pyxl is outstanding at being in the know of what's up to date. If I have a question, I can email them right now and within the hour, I have the answer or a phone call. They're just a pleasure. I view them as not only a business partner or vendor but also some close personal friends.

Is there anything Pyxl could have improved or done differently?

No. They're always brainstorming. They're always coming to me with ideas. They're constantly challenging us.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a national contract rehabilitation provider, providing therapy services to the long-term care industry.

What is your position and responsibilities?

I am the creative development coordinator. I help with sales marketing, marketing for the company in general, website, Internet, and any kind of digital media projects.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Pyxl?

At the point of bringing on Pyxl, our website was outdated. The content needed to be reworked completely. In a nutshell, we needed a good facelift at a reasonable cost.

SOLUTION

How did you come to work with Pyxl?

We did consider other companies. I was in charge of meeting with the companies. We wanted to keep it local because we like to have that face-to-face mentality versus trying to deal with people via email or on the phone. I Googled a bunch of different web design, digital marketing companies in the Knoxville area, and met with many of them.

At the time I met with Pyxl, it just seemed that they were on their game. They presented everything in a well-ordered fashion. They were very friendly and easy to talk to. They weren't pushy by any means. They just said, "We're here to help you. If we can, great. If not, if we're not quite a fit, we understand." To me, it was just a very good experience, compared to some of the other vendors in the area.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

Right now, we've probably invested $50,000 to $200,000 in total, with all projects combined.

What is the status of this engagement?

The partnership is growing from where we originally started. We have Pyxl on retainer now, and we're working with them on two other software and web-based development projects. We're definitely still using Pyxl, and we're still happy. We're excited to see where the future's going to take us. We could use them for a lot more but, for right now, they're definitely meeting our needs.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Since I've been with the company, I never saw any feedback or contact forms submitted through the old version of our website. Now that we've launched the updated website, we've seen a number of incoming contact forms coming through asking about rehabilitation and therapy positions, and there's even a few asking about our services and scheduling face-to-face meetings. In my eyes, it's definitely positive feedback related to Pyxl's work.

How did Pyxl perform from a project management standpoint?

The project manager that I deal with directly is great about communicating to the rest of his team about our needs. If there needs to be any clarification, we can schedule a quick face-to-face or a phone call. I think I like that the best, the communication that they offer.

What distinguishes Pyxl from other providers?

When we first sat down with Pyxl, we explained what we were looking for. While they gave us the option of starting from scratch, they also presented the option of taking our current CMS [content management system] and giving it a facelift. On the front end, it looks completely different, but on the back-end, it's similar to what we were used to with a little bit more customization. That's exactly what we were looking for.

Is there anything Pyxl could have improved or done differently?

I guess if I were to nit-pick, sometimes the timeline was pushed back. At the same time, things on our end needed to be approved. We were dragging our legs on items, so maybe if we would have met the deadlines that were presented to us by them, we probably could have gotten projects pushed out a little sooner. I think it was on both ends.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Carpathia is a leading provider of hybrid cloud services and managed hosting. We provide these services to enterprise customers, government, and federal agencies across the world, helping these organizations meet their unique security and compliance requirements.

In June 2016, we were acquired by QTS, a leading national provider of data center solutions based in Overland Park, Kansas. As a function of the acquisition, we are now in a unique position to provide our customers the expertise and flexible IT [information technology] infrastructure solutions they need to succeed in today's competitive landscape.

What is your position and responsibilities?

My title is marketing communications manager, but I wear several different hats to include running the day-to-day marketing activities at Carpathia, managing vendors, such as Pyxl and PR/AR consultant, and internal and external communications, in addition to the integration efforts associated with the acquisition. I also oversee a partner enablement manager who is responsible for all partner-related activities for Carpathia.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Pyxl?

The relationship with Pyxl started about seven years ago, when a group of individuals who had previously worked together bought Carpathia from its existing owner. Along with all the other efforts associated with growing the organization, there was a rather large focus placed on marketing and the need to create awareness around the "new Carpathia" in order to make it successful. Pyxl was hired to help address that need.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

I was brought on to handle the responsibility of managing the Pyxl relationship. We started from scratch focusing first on the logo and the website, which then rolled into updating all the branding guidelines, and messaging. You could say it was treated like a startup. Pyxl was very instrumental in helping us grow, and we all kind of grew up together because they were very small at the time as well.

We served as a test ground, if you will, for different types of things that we wanted to try, and that they wanted to try, sticking with the things that worked very well. We evolved in time, as a function of Pyxl growing and bringing on a lot of great talent that they still have today, and have expanded upon today; people in development that guided us on how to build a really functional, successful website, which I think we have. We're very proud of it, and we get accolades on it all the time.

Pyxl has an excellent design team that really brought us out from under the original things that were being used, into a player that would be well recognized and received in the IT world. That's very important, because there are so many companies that play in our space. We wanted to make sure that what we did was well represented in our design efforts, and Pyxl was very instrumental in helping us do that.

They helped us pick out the appropriate platforms to get the most bang for our buck. For instance, we had started with a company called Marketo – a marketing automation platform – to run our marketing campaigns, metrics, and data analytics. We all decided at one point that it wasn't big and robust enough for us, so they went out and found another solution that they manage for us today called HubSpot. We're using that to its fullest capacity, and Pyxl manages that for us 100 percent. They run it on our behalf, and the metrics and the analytics that we get out of it is incredible.

It's a hand-in-hand kind of relationship where we're talking to each other all day, every day. They're in Knoxville, Tennessee, and we're Washington, D.C., but you would never know that we are in separate places by the way we work together. There's a very tight fit. We like to look at them as an extension of us, not necessarily a completely different company. I think that helps a lot.

What they've done in time, and because we've become one of their bigger customers, they've identified a team that is 100 percent dedicated to Carpathia's needs. It's not like a project comes up and they have to find somebody who's not too busy to handle it, or has to fit it into another schedule for somebody else that they're already doing something for. They've identified a total of six to eight people in each area that they provide services in development, design, communications, social, and a dedicated account manager who manages the whole process/relationship. It's become a very well-oiled machine.

Pyxl is extremely familiar with our business. They understand what we do, and that's hard because what we do is hard, and it's hard to explain. When you use the word "hosting," people automatically go to the hospitality industry, and when you have to try to explain that it has nothing to do with hotels, it's hard. Pyxl has really come a long way. They've really made it a point to learn and understand what we do so they can properly represent us and help us.

The Pyxl team is extremely creative. We've embarked on some really crazy ideas that we thought would never amount to anything and, quite conversely, they've turned out to be really cool campaigns with really great results. They're a young group, they're an energetic group, they're a very talented group, and we are extremely lucky and pleased to have them on our team.

How did you come to work with Pyxl?

When I came to Carpathia, it was just me. Our consulting CMO [chief marketing officer] introduced us to Pyxl. My role was to manage the Pyxl relationship. Here we are, seven years later, Pyxl now has five offices across the country, and they've done remarkably well.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

Our relationship is ongoing and on an annual basis $750,000-plus.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I think we can attribute the awareness that we've created in our industry directly to the efforts supported by Pyxl. Our web analytics continue to show growth every month, from the number of users that come to us to the number of page views, to the amount of time someone spends on our pages. The campaigns we push out are very well received, all tracked through HubSpot, providing open rates, click-throughs, and downloads. The numbers that we get on a monthly basis, and on a quarterly basis, continue to show us that we are growing and heading in the right direction as it relates to awareness and lead generation efforts.

They've become very good with PPC [pay-per-click] and SEO [search engine ]. It's a very competitive space for us with keywords, because there are several companies that do what we do, and we all use the same words to describe it. They've become very good at getting creative with how to use keywords and how to get the most out of the content that we're producing, how we're using it on our website, and how we're incorporating all of that into blogs and white papers. They were very instrumental in setting up our website the way it is today so that we would maximize SEO as well as lead generation activities. They are responsible for the success that we're seeing in our lead generation efforts and ultimately our awareness across the industry.

What distinguishes Pyxl from other providers?

I think, in general across the board, they're all wonderful, young professionals. I like how they focus on bringing in young talent because that's how you stay ahead of the curve. When you get experienced hires like me that have been doing it for years, you kind of get stuck in your ways, and you have to be taught how to do new things.

They used to hire only young people, which I think is great because it keeps everything fresh and innovative. In the last couple years, they've struck a nice balance by bringing in some experienced folks, too, and everybody seems to work very well together. I think they've done a very nice job finding the right talent for the right services that they're offering us.

Is there anything Pyxl could have improved or done differently?

That's a hard question to answer. I don't want this to sound like it's been a cakewalk the whole seven years. There's been some growing pains, but they've always been very good at addressing the issues, talking through them, and figuring out a way to make it right. There really isn't one thing that stands out, that I think they do poorly or I wish they would do differently.

I really have to say that we have a unique relationship, it's a very honest relationship, and it runs both ways. If we are mishandling them, or if we are pushing a little too hard, we definitely hear it – and vice versa, if we feel like we're not getting what we've asked for or what we need, we share it. In both directions, things are addressed openly, honestly and I can say that I'm happy with the relationship. I don't know that there's anything that stands out that I think needs to be fixed.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am an Executive of Celero Commerce

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Celero Commerce is a financial technology company that provides payment processing and business management solutions primarily for small to medium-sized businesses.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Pyxl to accomplish?

• To help support various marketing efforts across the organization
• CRM (HubSpot) support, websites, content development, advertising, etc

SOLUTION

How did you find Pyxl?

• Online Search
• Clutch Site
• Other

Why did you select Pyxl over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Pyxl were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

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RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Meaurable outcomes we see from projects are increase in lead generation, email marketing performannce, brand awareness, and revenue growth. 

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Project management is very attentive to our needs. They consistenly meet deadlines and deliver projects on schedule. They demonstrate a strong understanding of what's needed to complete a project, ask all the right questions, and deliver quality. They are reliable and flexible when it comes to rush projects. 

What was your primary form of communication with Pyxl?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Their people and their expertise! The Pyxl team is professional and tailors strategies that align with our goals.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Pyxl could have done differently?

None!