Yay!Starter Marketing

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Managing Director of Ultima Group, a company based in the UK that provides both face-to-face training and e-learning in the specialist field of crime scene & biohazard decontamination. In addition, we provide national response services in this field and an e-commerce platform for these specialist products.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire , and what were your goals?

The initial scope we presented to Yay!Starter was to: 1. Aid in building brand awareness of our new e-learning platform. 2. B2B lead generation for this platform. 3. Social media management and marketing.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Yay!Starter came recommended by the Managing Director of a company we were working closely with during the development of our e-learning platform. We had been working with another marketing company prior but they had been fired due to poor performance.

Having heard Yay!Starter’s in-detail proposal on what they could bring to the table, the ideas they had and the timeline, we knew we would absolutely want to work with them.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and marking tools used.

The e-learning platform was not an established brand. It was therefore suggested to use a B2B cold outreach campaign via email and LinkedIn, utilising Lemlist, Expandi and Active Campaign, as well as focusing on building a presence on social media.

Once customer profiles had been researched and segmented we were able to reach out via LinkedIn messaging and email, to let potential customers know that we had solutions for this gap in training that we knew existed. As the e-learning platform was not an established brand as previously mentioned, it was then suggested to host a webinar featuring myself and external experts to help provide additional credibility to our training.

We invited all of the companies we had targeted via emails and LinkedIn. Interest was strong and we reached a 50% attendance rate for those that had signed up.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Our primary contacts are Growth Marketing Director and Co-founder, Jessy Conflon and Project Manager Kish Tosar. Both have helped us immeasurably and continue to do so as we deep-dive into improving our SEO across all sites.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The results of our lead generation campaign were very positive. First off, the webinar was great for not only lead generation, but also for brand awareness, with 169 people registering their interest on LinkedIn. Over 50% of the sign-ups attended the webinar, our cold outreach email campaign had an open rate of 65%, compared to the industry average of up to 25%. O Our email response rate was 16%, while the industry average is 5%.

The number of leads generated in total were 48 from the webinar and 43 leads from the email and LinkedIn outreach.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Communication is first class and nothing is too much trouble. Real-time messaging via Slack and weekly catch-ups ensure you are constantly in the loop. Monthly reports are detailed, well presented and well explained.

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

Their ability to react and adapt strategy with very little warning. It was a particularly difficult and volatile environment in our industry due to the COVID-19 pandemic, through which Yay!Starter has worked with us, and they have coped remarkably well with our ever-changing requirements.

They are consummate professionals. The feeling of working with colleagues and friends rather than an agency is established in the workflow impressively.

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

There were some specific occasions where the attribution of sales directly to marketing efforts was empirically very clear but tricky to link to cold, hard data.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm co-founder at Scholarcy. Scholarcy is a UK based technology company applying machine learning to extract structured data and knowledge summaries from scholarly content.

Our technology is used by universities and researchers around the world to sift the masses of published and unpublished research faster and identify the key findings more easily.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Yay!Starter Marketing?

Scholarcy is a relatively new startup (incorporated in 2019) and had experienced strong growth in the first half of 2020 for its consumer app, all of which was driven organically. By June 2020 we had thousands of researchers and students around the world using our consumer app with much of the growth coming from SE Asia and the US.

At the same time, we were trying to promote and sell institution-wide licenses of our technology to universities and we had hired sales resource to help us with this in the US and Canada. We approached Yay!Starter because we needed help designing and launching a B2B campaign targeting librarians and research directors at institutions across North America.

But we also wanted their help to build exposure of our consumer app through advertising and a stronger social media presence. As we are a small team, we need both the expertise and additional resource to help with this so we approached Yay!Starter following a recommendation back in September 2020.

What were your goals for this project?

We had a few goals when we began talking to Yay!Starter to see if they could help us:

1. Raise our brand profile both with students and researchers as well as academic librarians in North America.
2. Build on the growth we had seen for our consumer app with targeted advertising and social media campaigns.
3. Ascertain whether there was real opportunity for B2B sales of Scholarcy in North America.

SOLUTION

How did you select Yay!Starter Marketing?

We presented our goals / areas we needed help with to Yana. She took all of this information away, along with lots of background material about our business and presented us with a very comprehensive, detailed proposal which reflected an understanding of both our technology and our challenges.

Based on the proposal and a few meetings with Yana, we agreed to work with Yay!Starter for an initial 3 month period during which time they would implement a range of B2B and B2C marketing activities.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

After analysing our customer profiles and personas, the team at Yay!Starter sourced over a thousand contacts across universities in the US and Canada with our target job titles. They also identified 994 LinkedIn profiles that matched the target profile.

They then developed a multi-stage email campaign, using some content we had already prepared (eg. blog posts and white papers) and asking us to develop new material including videos to highlight features and benefits of our app. Finally, the helped us create a landing page which let B2B contacts request an institution-wide free trial. Across 4 separate content-led emails they educated and nurtured our potential clients.

They used multiple versions of each email sent to A/B test copy, content, and overall approach. For LinkedIn, they ran a campaign which began with us asking for 10 minutes of contacts' time to discuss the challenges their researchers and students faced when it came to literature reviews and information literacy.

In parallel with this work, the team managed our profile on FaceBook and Instagram, generating twice weekly posts to increase engagement. They also designed a series of FaceBook ads and guided us through all technical implementation in order to effectively track the effectiveness of these ads.

What was the team composition?

Our primary contact throughout the project has been Jessy Conflon. She has helped us so much. We have really benefited from her expertise on consumer marketing as well as her technical knowledge, methodical approach and hard work. She has laid the groundwork for a much more systematic, measurable B2B and B2C marketing strategy at Scholarcy.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The North American email campaign that launched in November and ran into February had open rates of 46% (libraries) and 54% (research offices), and the LinkedIn campaign had an acceptance rate of 20.1% - providing Scholarcy with over 350 new connections from their exact target audience.

We were able to arrange ~20 exploratory meetings with librarians and students and set up several free trials with key personas which gave us useful product feedback. For B2C we have recently modified our facebook ads strategy and are still assessing the results of this.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Very effective. The team communicates openly and frequently. We have regular catch ups and they also provide us with a detailed monthly report.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

We are impressed with their hard work and the effort they put in to understand our business and watch us succeed with enthusiasm. They take what they do very seriously and for us, it has been like having an extension of our team which has been great.

BACKGROUND

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the CEO of the National Association of Licensed Paralegals. We're the professional body for paralegals in England. We provide membership and nationally recognized paralegal qualifications.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Yay!Starter Marketing?

We needed help with our marketing efforts. We used to have a consultant, but because of their other commitments, we needed to look for a new partner. We needed someone who was on the ball, future and forward-thinking, who would be able to push us forward to where we wanted to go.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They were tasked with pushing us forward, with a limited budget, to promote our growth and effectively our budget's growth as well. They delivered effectual social media advertising on LinkedIn and Facebook, created content for the betterment of our Google SEO, took care of the newsletters for our members, and made contributions in so far as ideas on moving forward in marketing.  In terms of SEO, they also managed paid ad campaigns and strategy tactics for success, as well as keyword research and backlinking services.

What is the team composition?

We have one main point of contact, who also delegated tasks to other teammates at times.

How did you come to work with Yay!Starter Marketing?

Our previous consultant referred us to Yay! Starter Marketing.

How much have you invested with them?   

I won't disclose any figures, but I will say that we started off with a very limited budget which was increased slightly.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in March 2019, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Their success is proven by new memberships, new enrollments, and an increase in revenue. They've done exceptionally well through social media, and have increased our followers on LinkedIn, and the participation on Facebook has increased as well. They've been very good in terms of meeting our budget and timelines. They keep a close watch over the keyword research and are removing those that aren't necessary, changing them, and adding to the list.

How did Yay!Starter Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

Their management has been exceptionally professional and incredibly efficient. They’ve given me a report every month. We use Trello for communication purposes. They've approached me with innovative ideas, which we appreciate. They've been very on-the-ball, sharp, and efficient.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their professionalism, knowledge, and experience they have with marketing are incredible. I'm just blown away by them so far. Considering that their brief was just to increase everything without specific parameters, they've delivered far beyond my expectations. I'm happy and it will be an ongoing project.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can't think of anything at the moment.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It depends on what's required by the prospective clients. I have full faith in the Yay! Starter team to be able to communicate everything they'll need to be successful, or recommend someone who can get the job done. If anyone's looking for efficiency, Yay! Starter is the company to choose.