SmartAcre

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

My company provides data-driven translation technology and services. I am the head of demand generation for the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SmartAcre?

They have been supporting us with strategy consulting and also technical initiatives when it comes to our HubSpot and Salesforce integrations and campaigns.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They help us in a lot of different ways. Right now, for example, we're working on lead scoring, which is they are a very important part of my job. They have helped us discontinue the previous scoring system, which was not up to par what we needed, and have been implementing a new scoring system for us and helping us roll it out. They have also helped us with lead routing, the logic behind our distribution of leads, and our marketing and sales strategies with our development team.

On a more technical level, we've been working with them on LinkedIn advertising, using landing page and email templates and writing advertising copy there. They mostly focus on our sales side with our Hubspot efforts. In a broad sense, they have helped us with lead conversions, strategic advising, and some more technical aspects of advertising and marketing on a day-to-day basis. They have created some content

What is the team dynamic?

I work with a lot of different people, but our main contact is Melissa. Melissa is our go-to person for anything that we need. We mainly interact through Basecamp, where we manage all our different tasks and questions. We also have a standing hour-long weekly call where we go through different updates on the work that has either been done on our end and theirs.

How did you come to work with SmartAcre?

SmartAcre was a part of the HubSpot network and our team found them on there. They appeared to be more cost effective than the others. They seemed scrappy and willing to roll up their sleeves and they also have knowledge of SFDC efforts and integration.

How much have you invested with them?

We have invested around $80,000 a year with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in February 2016 and it’s still an ongoing engagement.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They’ve been really great to work with. The one piece of advice I would give to anybody when working with externals is to be open to sharing a strategy with what is going on within the organization. These types of organizations are supposed to be an extension of the team, so if they are not kept in the loop, then they will not be able to give you what you really need.

So far, the lead scoring results are very positive and I’m quite excited about what they have done. Aside from that, they’ve been easy to communicate with and they're responsive. We’ve been running ad campaigns with them to promote different pieces of content and parts of the website on LinkedIn. On a monthly basis, they look with us at the results, which have been strong, and work with us to figure out what we can tweak to make it better as we go.

How did SmartAcre perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re very responsive with me because. There have been some challenges when it comes to updating our notes in Basecamp to stay on track with little projects, but we have very open conversations with them about any issues. I don’t really have anything negative to say in terms of communication at this point.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have a very in-depth knowledge about HubSpot, which has come in very handy for us, especially for me being new to HubSpot. That has been very helpful and I feel like they really understand how our set-up is structured because it’s somewhat unique to every company. They understand how all of those important tools work together, so they are able to give me specific answers and solutions that I can implement.

Are there any areas they could improve?

While this is somewhat on me, I wish that I would have a more thorough understanding of how everything has been set up and where all of the components live. That’s probably the only thing I can think of right now.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a specialty plastics provider in the industrial manufacturing sector. I am the marketing manager and I work on our CRM and digital marketing.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SmartAcre?

When I first came into the department, we had recently purchased a marketing automation tool called Pardot. Our initial meetings with SmartAcre were to get a feel for how we could put a playbook together, how the tool could be used, and what its potential was. We were trying to figure out a lot of that on our own, and we realized with the scope and magnitude of it that we wanted to get some professional help. They were great from that first engagement and we have had a relationship with them ever since.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve done a range of work over the years with them. The first thing they put together for us was a marketing automation playbook, which was definitely more of a strategic look at how we would go forward with a comprehensive strategy. This included, for example, how we would restructure drip programs, how we would want to segment our audiences, and some thought leadership work. We have a small internal team that can actually execute the work, so they did more of that sort of cerebral strategic element for us.

We did also tap them for some creative and technical work from time to time. They created some infographics for us at one time and they also designed a few pages from a technical standpoint, including some simple HTML coding and layout modifications for some templates that we have in place and didn’t have the capability to do in-house.

As our relationship moved forward, we grew with them, to an extent. They help us develop a lot of those competencies, so they do a great job of sort of teaching us as we go so that we continue to push the frontier together. Today, we’re still engaged and one of the things we’re working on is a marketing analytics framework. We laid a lot of foundation over the last few years and wanted to be able to measure the effect of marketing efforts and to quantify that in dollar terms to understand the ROI for different investments we’ve made and different tactics we have used.

Our newest project for this year has been starting some AdWords work and they are helping fill a temporarily open role on my team related to email execution. Like everything else they’ve done, they’ve been knocking it out of the park. They are very supportive, responsive, and willing to work with the rest of the team here, so I don’t have to play the role of a middleman.

What is the team dynamic?

The relationship started with two of the principals, Mike and Dave. As the organization has grown, we've kind of made a shift to an account manager named Melissa. She has been absolutely incredible to work with and we really enjoy working with her. Depending on the nature of any given project, they've got resources on their teams that are experts in different areas, so they'll bring in the appropriate resource based on the project.

We generally reconfigure the team as needed and continue to run the main communications through a point person on their team. However, we have the opportunity to get direct access to the team and work in a way that makes the most sense and not in a way that is overly structured or rigid. They give us more flexibility in that aspect, which is something that we really appreciate.

How did you come to work with SmartAcre?

They actually used the same tool in order to market to us and get our attention. So, from the get go, that got us hooked on the idea that they knew they were doing. They've got all of the sort of things you would look for in terms of the baseline certifications. But the two big things are that they are really easy to work with and they also help teach us. Because of this, we look at our engagement with them from a long-term perspective. They want us to learn these tools with them so we can gain some expertise and move onto new challenges more quickly as we grow.

We've tried some other people in this space, particularly in marketing automation, and the expertise wasn't there. It wasn't easy to work with other groups and it was quite clear too that they weren't interested in being a learning partner. All of these factors together have made SmartAcre a valuable partner and a vendor that is very different from other relationships that we've had.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them around August 2014 and it’s still an ongoing engagement. We work on a project-to-project basis. We've been in pretty constant contact for the last three years.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

While we have worked on many different projects with them, one of the landing pages that they designed for us was designed much better than some of the more standard stuff that we use. It was for our design group that is based on visual appearance and making products stand out on the shelves. We continue to use that foundation today to promote our annual color design guide and we've generated hundreds of prospects through that landing page.

How did SmartAcre perform from a project management standpoint?

They had very strong project management. We use a BaseCamp channel, which they diligently populate and encourage us to use as well. They usually respond to my emails and phone calls within the same day. This nimble and agile relationship allows us to respond quickly and hit deadlines even when we run into obstacles.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I keep going back to the strategic element. It's not just that they come in and do the mechanical pieces, but they understand the bigger picture and are able to be a teacher as well as a service provider. These are traits that you just don't see regularly.

Are there any areas they could improve?

At one point, we tried to give another provider a chance to perform work in this space. This turned out to be a negative experience and it didn’t take us long to return to SmartAcre. We've been really happy with the work they’ve done and there's nothing that I can complain about.