Revenue River

Please describe your company and your position there.

Wealth Management, Registered Investment Advisor. Vice President of Personal Wealth Management.

For what projects/services did your company hire Revenue River?

Develop a series of videos to explain our investment strategies to clients and prospects.

What were your goals for this project?

Attract new prospects and help expedite their understanding of our investment approach. Better educate existing clients.

How did you select Revenue River?

We researched a handful of firms, but decided Revenue River would be the best fit. We liked that they were local, explained their process well and pricing was reasonable.

Describe the video(s) and the process in detail.

5 videos, each approximately 2 minutes. Animation with our voiceover. Taking complicated investment topics and making them easy to understand.

We wanted the videos to be approachable to the general investment public rather than too academic or high-falutin.

Videos explore our approach to the .Com bubble, the Housing bubble, how we score investment risk, our approach to volatility, etc.

What was your vendors' project management or feedback process?

They've been great. Typically we work with 2 or 3 members of Revenue River. Their feedback and responsiveness has really helped this project move along smoothly.

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

We have already begun receiving prospective client inquiries stemming from this brand new video content.

We were hoping for something like this later this year, but were pleasantly surprised to start getting notice right out of the gate.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We have found the workflow between our team and Revenue River proceeds in a timely fashion with professionalism, well set expectations, and good communication.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The videos they have produced thus far have been just what we were hoping for and within our budgets. It has also be very nice working with Sam, Laurel and the team.

Are there any areas for improvement?

So far, no. Things have been right as rain.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of Privo, an AWS consulting partner headquartered in Boston. We help customers migrate their infrastructure data into AWS and then support and modernize that infrastructure over time.

What challenge were you trying to address with Revenue River?

We needed assistance with marketing and building our brand. We hired Revenue River to build out our CRM and working on campaigns and video strategies.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Revenue River is completing work for our business in sprints. The first sprint entailed building our marketing automation foundation through our automation platform and CRM using HubSpot. Their team assists with email automation and HubSpot workflows. Before deploying anything, they use a workflow chart for planning and showcasing how the system works. They’ve also redesigned our website to be more user-friendly and help with buyer personas.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with over 12 people spread across different fields, including a campaign manager that facilitates teams on both sides. We’ve interacted with their video, automation, and web design teams.

How did you come to work with Revenue River?

Revenue River is a customer of ours that we’ve worked with for a long time. Through our relationship with them, we’ve seen how they leverage automation for their internal processes. Since we had a similar need, we hired them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spend around $9,000 a month. The work will be about $110,000 per year.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Revenue River in November 2018, and the work is ongoing.

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

Revenue River saved time for our business. Without them, we would’ve had to build on our team. We’ve saved around 50% on hiring. Their team has gotten us to the market much faster. Revenue River’s expertise has helped our productivity and efficiency.

How did Revenue River perform from a project management standpoint?

Our campaign manager is like our quarterback, coordinating between our teams. Our business adopted some of their project management tools and incorporated them into our practice. Their team does an excellent job of keeping everyone on task. We’ve communicated using Slack, Teamwork, and Google Sheets.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their overall culture is fantastic. Revenue River is a fun group to work with and have become an extension of our team. Along with their creativity, we appreciate their automation mindset. We trust their team and recommendations.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t think so.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Clients should make sure they have resources set aside to commit their time to work with Revenue River. They have a team dedicated to working with you and will give 100% as long as you supply them with the resources.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm a VP of growth at a water analytics company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Revenue River?

We saw a decline in our organic traffic, so we started looking for a company to help us improve and sustain our website.  

What was the scope of their involvement?

First, they audited every page of our website that had traffic flowing to it. Then, they provided technical assessment and recommendations for optimization, which we executed on. They would make a change, copy a link to a specific page, and send it back to our technical team. They also helped us sustain the flow of the organic traffic.

What is the team composition?

We had an account lead, who was the technical expert we worked with directly.

How did you come to work with Revenue River?

I was referred to them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $40,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them between February–December 2017.

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

The number of our keywords went up, which helped us get to the top of the page. Our organic traffic also improved. Their recommendations combined with our content and marketing efforts helped us make a big progress.

How did Revenue River perform from a project management standpoint?

They were very responsive and great communicators. We mostly used Excel spreadsheets and email to keep track of the project.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were able to take on a large website and make progress quickly, adhering to our timeline.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can't think of anything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be specific about what you want and what your requirements are. Also, make sure you document everything properly.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m one of the founders of Seventh Sense. We’re a time and frequency optimization system for email. We partner with several large inbound marketing developers, including Hubspot, and provide them with data that determines the best times to send out mass messages to individual users in a database.

What challenge were you trying to address with Revenue River?

We wanted a company that was already part of the HubSpot ecosystem and that could co-market for us.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They started out by testing our system with a couple of their clients. Once they developed an understanding of our services, we asked them to write content posts that would raise our profile with our partners’ clients. The content was featured on our website and social media channels, as well as on their own website, and it explained the achievements our software can yield.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with everyone from their founder all the way down to their business strategists.

How did you come to work with Revenue River?

We looked at companies that seemed to be successful with one of our partners and found that Revenue River was one of the biggest.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent somewhere between $5,000–$10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from January–September 2018.

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

We track where our leads come from pretty thoroughly and we’ve seen a significant increase, not just in terms of total volume, but also in conversions and closed business. It’s only been a short time since they wrapped up their work, but our ROI has already increased at least 300 percent.

How did Revenue River perform from a project management standpoint?

We kept in touch primarily via email and phone calls. For bigger clients, they use dedicated project management software, but that wasn’t necessary in our case. They were always responsive and answered questions effectively. Anytime one team member was unsure, they’d call in a colleague who could get us the results we needed, which helped us get the best possible outcomes on our project.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We were a small fish in a big pond, but they made us feel like a big fish in a small pond. They’ve been a fantastic collaborative partner. I’ve worked with plenty of similar companies in the past and Revenue River possessed a unique level of technical depth. They understand what works and what doesn’t.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything at the moment. Our experience with them has been phenomenal.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be responsive to their needs. I haven’t experienced this, but sometimes when you don’t provide them with the information they need, the workflow starts to lag because they aren’t the sort of people who’ll keep asking repeatedly.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the e-commerce manager for ORR Safety Corporation. We’re a distributor of personal protective equipment and safety equipment for the B2B industrial space. This includes oil and gas, rail, and aerospace. Our products provide head to toe worker protection.

What challenge were you trying to address with Revenue River?

At the time, ORR Safety Corporation was a 65-year-old company with a lot of institutional inertia. We’d always been very old-school sales-driven, but we wanted to get into content and inbound marketing.

Our goal was to drive leads and brand awareness through our website/blog and content. We position ourselves in the marketplace as safety experts, but it was hard to tell just by searching for us on Google. Our in-house marketing team didn’t have a large budget to execute the project by themselves, so we reached out to Revenue River as an agency partner.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Revenue River helped us come up with an inbound digital marketing strategy from the ground up. Initially, they walked us through building buyer personas, sketching out our buyer’s journey, and identifying the key subject matter experts (SMEs) in our company. Once we completed that preliminary work, they helped us gather relevant information from our SMEs to put into blogs.

Setting up our blog involved a range of services, including blog writing, some design work, and keyword strategies to ensure that our content was SEO-friendly. They assigned web designers to build landing pages and graphic designers to fill in when ours was busy on other projects. After getting the blog and site off the ground, they augmented and continue to augment our PPC advertising efforts, working with Google AdWords and LinkedIn to promote our content.

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked with three different account managers, one of whom serves as the main account lead. We have weekly meetings with them, and they liaise between us and their team. Currently, I work with Taylor (Campaign Manager, Revenue River). If I have any needs, be it PPC, HubSpot, or blog redesigns, she coordinates with the appropriate specialist and acts as the project manager.

How did you come to work with Revenue River?

My director found them on a shortlist of top agency partners who work with HubSpot.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent between $150,000–$200,000 thus far.

What is the status of this engagement?

The engagement began in September 2015, and the relationship is ongoing.

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

Two years ago, we read an article about blog subscriptions and knew we had to throw down the gauntlet; we wanted 10,000 blog subscribers. We chose an impossible number for Revenue River to strive for, or so we thought. But, within a couple of years, they’ve gotten pretty close. We’ve seen huge rises in all of our salient digital marketing measures and key point indicators (KPIs). They continue to charge head first toward our goals.

How did Revenue River perform from a project management standpoint?

Their level of project management depends on the account manager, but, in general, they’ve been immensely responsive. At one point, we used Trello to coordinate the project, but we now just work directly with our account manager.

Our current manager is extremely organized and keeps her promises. When she says something will happen, it happens. She's proactive about getting information to us and keeps us informed of where tasks are in the pipeline. For example, if we’re working on a PPC project or landing page, she’ll update us frequently about who is working on what and give us time estimates. The team hits their mark 99% of the time.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Compared to other vendors we’ve worked with, Revenue River excels at understanding a problem and coming up with solutions. The team steps up to challenges and always remains positive even when we encounter setbacks on campaigns. Moreover, they’re willing to try new things. I’ve always felt that they’ve pushed us forward instead of the other way around. They’re real leaders in terms of strategy.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re good at taking our designs and mock-ups and realizing them. However, we rely on them to be our digital marketing experts. We’re all trying to learn on our own, but we need them to know all the new information coming out. They understand search algorithms, video marketing, and SEO, but they aren’t as strong with user experience design. It can be hard to get insights into how people interact with the site, where the pain points are, and what best practices are for future direction.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Revenue River is at the forefront of trends in digital marketing, so you have to trust their expertise. Part of what’s made us successful is that we're confident in their abilities and let them push us how they see fit. Other companies that struggle with Revenue River typically aren’t willing to experiment with new methodologies or strategies. They're too set in their ways. But when we listen to Revenue River’s advice and follow their recommendations, they’re typically spot on. There’s no point to hiring industry experts if you don’t listen to their expertise.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Smalley and Company is a business-to-business distributor of construction products. We sell sealants, coatings, waterproofing, concrete restoration, and fire stop to subcontractors. We also work with architects, consultants, and engineers, trying to change specifications when it comes to building commercial buildings and projects. I am the Technology Manager.

What challenge were you trying to address with Revenue River Marketing?

One of our core values is listening to our customers, understanding their expectations and delivering solutions. We had been hearing that our previous website built on the ASP.NET platform was slow. The checkout process was slow, would freeze up, and had become stale. I think we launched that in 2010 and added the shopping cart feature in 2012. We wanted to refresh and re-engage the website presence, and also tie more directly with our e-commerce into our ERP [enterprise resource planning] system.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They took the lead on being project coordinator. They put some beta looks together and built the framework for the redesign. We have two software platforms running concurrently. RHIAG is the e-commerce part of it. The challenge was making those merge together. They did everything from start to finish. They also helped write some blog articles. We did a 90-day sprint campaign where Revenue River provided content marketing services. They helped write blogs and created content for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. We wanted to increase awareness of the website and drive more e-commerce business to the website. When we went live in July, they made those marketing efforts.

How did you come to work with Revenue River Marketing?

I’ve had a relationship with Eric [principal] going back to when we had a relationship with the marketing/website company that built our first website. Eric probably made us aware that he had a different company. I had contacted a couple of other companies and talked to their references. After those conversations, considering the price and turnaround time they all offered, Revenue River was selected.

How much have you invested with Revenue River Marketing?

The whole project was over $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

All the projects have been completed.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Some feedback has been that there are things they would want to change on the website. That being said, we also have feedback that it’s great. We had some webinars leading up to our strategic meeting and the traffic is up by 57% over last year. E-commerce is up by 30% year over year.

How did Revenue River Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

They did excellently. They have a very intensive project planning chart they follow. I probably slowed it down because of all the content we have. They could’ve probably moved faster, but we needed to make two platforms coincide.

What did you find most impressive about Revenue River Marketing?

They’re very professional and organized.

Are there any areas Revenue River Marketing could improve?

No.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

The Chopping Block is a recreational cooking school, retail store, and event venue in Chicago, Illinois. We have two locations: in Chicago downtown in the Merchandise Mart and in a northern city neighborhood called Lincoln Square. We offer cooking classes, private cooking, and events, as well as gourmet retail items. We also have food-friendly wines and craft beer. I am the Marketing Manager.

What challenge were you trying to address with Revenue River Marketing?

We needed a completely new website. We hadn’t had a redesign in about 12 years, which made my job much more difficult. I became aware of HubSpot and after doing some research, I thought it might be a good fit for The Chopping Block. I was looking for a website designer on the HubSpot COS platform that could do something original that didn’t look like the templates that most of the HubSpot sites look like. I was looking for somebody who could think outside of the box. I needed someone who could convey our voice and brand, but that also utilizes the HubSpot COS since I knew that that was the platform I wanted it built on.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They did the complete redesign, from the initial sketches to development. We worked on that project for a little over a year. It’s a beast of a site; it’s over 100 pages, so it was definitely a huge project. We started off with the design team to figure out what we liked and what we didn’t like. At the same time, we went through a whole rebranding process; so we had a new logo, new colors, new look of our stores, and they incorporated that into the look of the site as well. They developed each page of the site in the HubSpot COS, did keyword analysis for our SEO, and meta tag data. They put all that data into that site and optimized the pages for keyword analysis.

How did you come to work with Revenue River Marketing?

I knew about Revenue River Marketing through the work that I do with them at another company. Revenue River Marketing is an inbound marketing agency; however, they do design work, which we wanted. I had met Eric, the owner before, so we had a relationship. When I was looking for designers on the COS, obviously I reached out to him and asked for a quote, compared that with other top HubSpot designers that I found across the country, and decided that they would be the best fit for the project because of their experience, their past work, and the ideas they had for us. I really liked my project manager, Mike Del Cuore, and the design team, so it was a good choice.

How much have you invested with Revenue River Marketing?

It was in the range of $10,000 to $50,000 for our site, and that was everything. We paid them quarterly, and they definitely had deliverables and due dates to meet before next payment; there was never any issue with any of that.

What is the status of this engagement?

All projects are completed.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

We definitely have specifics to report. We actually have a case study on HubSpot’s website. We had 4.6 times increase in our blog views per month, 59% increase in organic traffic in 9 months, and we had 139% increase in website leads in 9 months. This was written after 9 months of the launch.

The site itself is much easier to navigate. We’ve had extremely positive feedback from our customers. The old site was really awful. I actually wrote a blog post with Revenue River for HubSpot about that. As far as the design went, we went with a Pinterest tile style.

The most important thing for me about the redesign is that it’s on the responsive COS. Before, we weren’t mobile-friendly at all; I knew we had to do something. The fact that it’s on that mobile-responsive device design is a huge benefit for me because obviously, everybody is doing things on their phone now.

How did Revenue River Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

They did great. Mike, our project manager, was extremely responsive and went above and beyond. I’m the same way, so we actually worked really well together. I was kept informed throughout the process. When we have ever had issues, they have been minor and Revenue River Marketing fixes them quickly.

Even today, I can still email Mike with any questions and they are quick to respond. I feel like I can just pick up the phone and call them. It’s a long-standing relationship. It wasn’t like they did the project and I never heard from them again.

What did you find most impressive about Revenue River Marketing?

The design that Revenue River Marketing was able to come up with and execute sets them apart. Redesigning a site always looks great on paper but often isn’t executed well. Revenue River Marketing was always able to follow through. I’m constantly updating the site and they made it super easy for me to do so.

I’m definitely not a coder or a developer. They made it very easy. I can switch up the video on our website in a matter of less than five minutes. We won HubSpot’s Customer Success Award last year at INBOUND in 2015.

Are there any areas Revenue River Marketing could improve?

The backend of the site could’ve been a little more organized but that is just because I am very organized. Other than that, it was a very smooth process, and they did a great job.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Tolison & Williams is an estate planning, probate, and family law firm. I am an Associate Attorney practicing in elder law, estate planning, and probate.

What challenge were you trying to address with Revenue River Marketing?

We were using a company that was hosting our website and we weren’t getting the results we wanted. Because of that, we decided to look elsewhere and found Revenue River Marketing. We needed a website redesign and an agency to help with digital marketing.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Revenue River Marketing is hosting our website and doing a full redesign for us. That part hasn’t been completed yet, but they’re sticking to the timeline, which is great. They are switching our website over from FindLaw and rebuilding the website in HubSpot. They are doing all our inbound marketing: SEO, social media, content marketing, blogging, and adding new pages of content. They are also assisting us with outbound marketing, such as producing business cards, redesigning our logo, and print ads. The agency has created new profiles for us in LinkedIn, and they’re even going to go into Avvo and help us out there. We still haven’t decided if we’re doing Google Plus or Twitter; we’re still deciding if those would be beneficial. If that pushes through, Revenue River Marketing would create accounts and manage them for us. They’d be posting and monitoring based on our input.

How did you come to work with Revenue River Marketing?

I was relatively new in the firm and I had a marketing background, so it was on me to find a new marketing company. Revenue River Marketing seemed like they could deliver.

How much have you invested with Revenue River Marketing?

We pay Revenue River Marketing under $5,000 a month, as well as an initial set-up fee for all the work that they have done.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with Revenue River Marketing for three months now.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Everybody loves the branding that Revenue River Marketing did for us. It’s just awesome. We get tons of compliments now on the new logo. Before, no one really mentioned our logo at all. We don’t have metrics in terms of social and website traffic just yet, but we will. Overall, we are happy with the work that they have done so far.

How did Revenue River Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

Revenue River Marketing has been really good in terms of project management. They have a main point of contact that’s always there, and even the support staff has been fantastic. I can call the SEO or design person directly if I need to instead of calling the project manager. Eric is always available, and it’s just helpful that the head of the company is willing to talk to you whenever you need something.

What did you find most impressive about Revenue River Marketing?

Our general experience with Revenue River Marketing has been amazing. This is hands down the best company that I’ve seen out there. The web design is whatever we want it to be and they’re very flexible. They’re as collaborative as we need them to be. For our logo, we told them what we wanted and they put it together. They were able to make changes to make the logo a little better, which was pretty great too.

Are there any areas Revenue River Marketing could improve?

So far, they have done everything well. I don’t have any complaints.

Please introduce your business and what you do there.

We are an alternative and functional medicine medical practice in Golden, Colorado. Our concierge medical practice has been here for 20 years. I am the chief of operations.

What challenge were you trying to address with Revenue River Marketing?

We had never concentrated on local marketing efforts. Most people come to us from word of mouth, from our doctor's books and speaking engagements. The company started to notice a decline in new patients during the last six years, so we decided to work to change that.

I knew I needed somebody that could help me with all facets of marketing and not just with building a website. I needed continued marketing support and help reaching new patients. Revenue River Marketing also helped us with direct patient-to-patient referrals, using newsletters and blogs and getting the staff involved.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Primarily their work involves social media and content creation. We had a previous website, and they helped with the tone and language of the new website. We're currently building our social media, and we're already seeing results. We had never gone down that road where we had someone actively utilizing Facebook and Twitter. That's building very quickly.

We have weekly meetings during which they collect content from us. What's even better for me is they don't just get ideas about what we do, but they are able to put everything together for me and get it out. It's almost like an extension of my own staff.

How did you come to work with Revenue River Marketing?

I knew their owner [managing partner Eric Pratt] for many years before he started Revenue River. After I had interviewed multiple companies about a new website, he counseled me about what other things might help.

Their owner is so incredibly knowledgeable about what he does. The more I learned about Revenue River, it was very apparent that they were the way to go.

How much have you invested with Revenue River Marketing?

It's less than $10,000 a month. It's equivalent to one full-time employee, but I'm getting the benefit of multiple employees.

What is the status of this engagement?

We've been working with them for more than two and a half years.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Our new patient inquiries are up at least 5 percent. We just recently launched the new website. I had to delay the launch because we changed some of our offerings, and Revenue River was quick to respond to my need to change direction. We saw a 2 percent to 5 percent increase in the first six months.

We stopped using a previous newsletter company because we finalized our own newsletter. We're much happier with it because now I can track responses, and the newsletter can lead people back to our website.

The way Revenue River integrates everything is very useful and probably why we're seeing not only an increase in calls but an increase in calls that convert to sales. We have leads that are 50 percent sold. I'm very impressed with that increase so far. I know that's only going to get better as we continue to work with Revenue River.

How did Revenue River Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

They are very organized. They set forth a schedule, and they adhere to it. When we've had to change, they were open to that. They keep us on schedule by helping when we're overloaded.

They've done a great job in helping us utilize our own content, adding other content to it, and keeping the posts happening frequently. They are exceptionally organized. They have several people on my team, so I'm never left in the lurch.

What did you find most impressive about Revenue River Marketing?

I've worked with marketing companies in the past, but I've never worked with a group that had such tremendous insight on so many levels of marketing and has shown results so quickly. Their advice and experience have proven effective. The owner is exceptional, and he's brought together an exceptional team.

Are there any areas Revenue River Marketing could improve?

No. I don't have a single negative thing to say. Their pricing is fair, and they fulfill everything they've promised.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm a motivational speaker for national conferences for an organization called Idoinspire.

What challenge were you trying to address with Revenue River Marketing?

I had an old website and Revenue River Marketing redesigned it.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Revenue River Marketing helped us launch a new website a couple of years ago and that went well. I had 2,000 pages on my website, so it was a mess to transfer the content. They had to do redrafts on half of the pages. I think it was more work than they thought it was going to be. After that, they did some SEO [search engine optimization] work for us.

How did you come to work with Revenue River Marketing?

I'm a member of HubSpot and so was Revenue River Marketing. They came up high on the list of people to contact.

How much have you invested with Revenue River Marketing ?

We have invested $5,000 to $7,000 with Revenue River Marketing.

What is the status of this engagement?

The SEO project is complete, but it's still not where I want it. We're going to go back and look at it with Revenue River Marketing.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

I've gotten good feedback on my website, and it looks good. A lot of the SEO stuff I had seen already, but I haven't seen results from that.

How did Revenue River Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

Revenue River Marketing was good in terms of project management. They did a great job at staying in communication with us. They kept us up to date on all the projects we had going and were very on top of staying on schedule.

What did you find most impressive about Revenue River Marketing?

Eric [Pratt, managing partner at Revenue River Marketing] has a lot of enthusiasm, which is always a good thing.

Are there any areas Revenue River Marketing could improve?

The website transfer probably could've gone smoother. It cost more, and it took more time, but you expect that. The SEO was redone two months ago and, apparently, the pictures on my main page weren't optimized. There were things like that I thought were part of the original contract for the website. Now, we're going back and doing that. But, for the amount of money I paid and the website I received, it was worthwhile.