Sonata Venture Solutions

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are headquartered in Virginia and have a group of people spread around the country that work for the firm. We help e-commerce organizations grow their top-line revenue opportunities by correlating real user page performance with conversion rates. That's our primary goal as well as providing all the underlying object-level technical details and understanding of where to optimize. So, where there is a revenue opportunity, we show our clients where to go to optimize.

What is your position in your company?

I am the head of the sales group.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Sonata Venture Solutions?

We didn't have a very experienced marketing team, so we needed someone with more experience. At the time, our head of marketing had a relationship with the people at Sonata and had worked with them previously, so they came recommended. We really needed someone to help us establish a baseline for where we are as a business and what our marketing needed to do strategically and tactically.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of Sonata Venture Solutions's involvement in detail.

Initially, their involvement had to do with our website, providing drafts and mockups to help with building a more compelling and engaging site. They also helped us develop marketing pieces, the kind of thing we would hand out at trade shows. So, Sonata helped us with traditional things at first, but then began helping with our email campaigns. We needed to understand how to build compelling email campaigns, drip email campaigns, how to target audiences and how to buy and use mailing lists for these kinds of campaigns.

How did you come to work with Sonata Venture Solutions?

It was really because of a previous relationship that our former marketing manager had with them. It's great when you have previously worked with a company and have developed a comfort level with their expertise. The key person there at Sonata who did most of the work for us knew people in our company. We already had confidence in what they could do. That really helped in the selection process.

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

We spent a significant amount of time working with Sonata – somewhere in the range of 20 to 30 hours a month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Sonata more than a year ago, sometime around January 2014. We still work with them on a quarterly basis. We watch our cash flow carefully, so deciding on contracts is usually done quarterly. Although we sometimes do monthly contracts, we definitely work quarterly with Sonata.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Our Web traffic has gone up significantly. Since I've been on board, I've seen a steady growth of not only just traffic and page views but also an increase in real engagement. What we really want is for people to get involved in our website, to download white papers and other materials, to sign up for a trial and to request a demo. All of that has grown. Because we started with such small numbers, we've grown by thousands of percent, so it's almost unfair to use that as a metric. But, Sonata has helped us build an important foundation for our business.

How did Sonata Venture Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

They took us from ground zero to an established brand. The person dedicated to us was fantastic. One of the greatest things about Sonata is their responsiveness and their ability to work under the tightest of deadlines, to deliver on time with the content or graphics that we needed – marketing ideas that we could put in play. We really transformed the Blue Triangle brand into something solid.

What distinguishes Sonata Venture Solutions from other providers?

What makes Sonata Venture Solutions stand out is their ability to understand our business, to personalize their recommendations and do all that in a timely fashion. In any type of relationship, you have to connect with the people you are working with. We really have a strong connection there, they're easy to work with and very collaborative. I think that was probably the most important thing – having them understand our business and our needs, where we are in our evolution and what's required at each stage. A startup is different from an established company. Understanding our business, being able to execute from that level in a timely fashion was important – and all that with a personalized touch.

In hindsight, are there areas in which they could improve, or things you might do differently?

I think the only thing would be the ability to meet more in person as opposed to on the phone and Web. But, we're pretty much spread out. I work out of New England, we're headquartered in Virginia, and Sonata is located outside of Washington, D.C. When we were able to meet in person, it helped to connect the dots but, unfortunately, we were only able to meet that one time in person. Everything else was done remotely. That would be the only thing I would change – to be able to work more face to face.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Our company is called Telephone Technologies. We're based in Manhattan, and we sell our products worldwide. Our products include business centers for hotels, and ID and passport scanners for hotels, nightclubs, and the New York Police Department. We just came out with a new product, in-room tablets for hotels.

What is your position?

I am the chief executive officer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Sonata Venture Solutions?

We needed someone to manage our public relations and marketing. We're a small company, and we felt it would be more cost-effective to outsource than to hire someone full time.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

It's PR, marketing and everything related to that in terms of budgets, reports, SEO [search engine optimization], and things like that. That's primarily what they do for us.

How did you come to work with Sonata Venture Solutions?

It was a recommendation. At that time, we had outsourced our work to another person, we weren't happy with that arrangement, and someone recommended Sonata. That was about five years ago. We spoke to a couple other firms, but we ended up going with Sonata. We had a good feeling in talking with them. They said the right things and backed up what they said.

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

Depending on what we ask them to do, it's about $30,000 a year. We added another function recently. Prior to that time, we were spending about $24,000 a year working with Sonata.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2010, and we are still working with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

To give you a better idea of why we needed Sonata so badly, although we have shown that we have some good products, not many people knew us. We're based out of New York, and just the local people knew us. We wanted to expand first nationally and eventually internationally.

Sonata is well known and well connected in the industry, has made introductions to people they know and they've developed an SEO campaign for us. More importantly, they have identified which people we should go after down the road, and which we shouldn't. They showed us how to tackle the hotel industry, which is something we knew how to do locally but not outside New York.

How did Sonata perform from a project management standpoint?

I like working with Sonata Venture Solutions because they're very responsive, efficient, and don't nickel and dime you to death. If we have something that's a bit outside of the realm of what we initially agreed to, we don't get charged for it. As long as it's not a hard cost for them, they do not pass it along to us.

What distinguishes Sonata Venture Solutions from other providers?

I like them because of their connections in the business world. They know a lot of people and have made many introductions for us. They know what they are doing in the hotel industry. We don't have someone who says they can do everything but doesn't know how to close the deal. Sonata knows how to close.

In hindsight, are there areas in which they could improve, or things you might do differently?

For the most part, we've never had issues. I think so far we've been pretty much on track with them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are financial advisors who work with federal employees to help them plan and transition into retirement.

What is your position?

I am the chief operations officer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Sonata Venture Solutions?

We were looking for them to help us with our marketing campaign. We were looking to have somebody handle the marketing duties for our company, and they were able to handle everything that entails as far as creating presentations, fliers, and folders. Creating a whole marketing campaign, I guess, is really what I was looking for from them. They've been our go-to marketing liaison of, "Hey, we need to create this," or "Hey, we want to go this route next and we want to open up these doors. What's the way?"

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

They helped us develop a marketing campaign, whether it is social media, print material, or website design. They helped with anything in the marketing world.

How did you come to work with Sonata Venture Solutions?

I've known Laura [Meck, CEO of Sonata Venture Solutions] for 15 or 16 years. She's a client now but a friend, too. She was always like an ear there for me, being able to run ideas by in the marketing world before. She actually brought me the person that we hired before. The person was great. They just had a personal issue that we had to let them go for. At this point, when I went back to her to say, "What do you think our next steps are?" We looked at things, and it was right up the alley of what they did, so it just worked out perfect.

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

At first, it was a larger amount because we were having to do everything. Now, we keep them on a retainer for when we need to create a booklet or a new campaign, or when we need to find better ways of marketing and putting together a social media campaign – how we can reach more people, and what we need more of our posts to be. We pay them about $850 or $875 a month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in 2011-2012, and we are still working with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

They've been phenomenal. Sonata Venture Solutions's professionalism is great, and their quality of work has been great. When they put together campaigns, they truly follow what we want.

How did Sonata perform from a project management standpoint?

They're usually faster than we're able to keep up with.

What distinguishes Sonata from other providers?

I think their metrics, the way that they are able to follow up and say, "Hey, look at how this affected this. Here's the kind of results you're getting from this. You probably want to get more of this." Just being able to go to that, and Google Analytics – all that kind of stuff where they can pull it together, we really like that.

In hindsight, are there areas in which they could improve, or things you might do differently?

I can't think of any.