Case Studies

From Startup to Six-Figure Revenue in 12 Months

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Summary:

Agencies have to move fast to provide results for their clients, and working with a startup business can be especially make-or-break.

Incrento, an inbound marketing agency headquartered in Ecuador, worked with Wanderbus Ecuador, a startup in the travel and leisure industry. Incrento used their accelerated engagement plan combined with SharpSpring’s marketing automation platform to achieve remarkable results.

12 months
Wanderbus generated 2,000 new customers from over 60 countries

Challenge:

Wanderbus faced many of the challenges that are typical for startup organizations: no web presence, low budget, and a need to move fast within the marketplace. In addition, the startup had a small and inexperienced team that needed an agency that could leverage marketing automation to help them achieve their marketing goals. These challenges are typically not a recipe for success when it comes to quick revenue growth for startups.

Solution:

Incrento knew that they needed to take a different approach with Wanderbus. Being quick, efficient and agile were going to be critical if the client was going to see success. Incrento also knew they had to change their agency model when working with a startup. Wanderbus had a lower initial budget, but a huge opportunity for future revenue. Incrento created an accelerated engagement plan to allow them to shift their pricing model to a lower retainer fee while partnering with Wanderbus on a revenue sharing plan.

 Right away, Incrento knew that SharpSpring was going to be the perfect marketing automation platform to use with Wanderbus. SharpSpring’s platform was incredibly affordable, which was important when focusing on controlling costs. The platform was also full-featured and flexible enough for Incrento to be able to leverage tools like personas, lead scoring, analytics, lead nurturing, and third-party integrations.

“SharpSpring’s technical support is fantastic. The support team consistently helps us incredibly fast and has solved 100% of our problems..”

– Diego Jaramillo, Incrento

Campaign

Tactic 1

Using SharpSpring’s customizable buyer personas, Incrento was able to identify and document Wanderbus’ unique buying journeys to quickly and easily qualify leads.

Tactic 2

Incrento leveraged lead scoring within SharpSpring to track users’ engagement, page activity, and demographics. They then used those unique lead scores to engage with potential customers with the right information at the right place and at the right time.

Tactic 3

In order to engage prospects, Incrento developed unique educational emails focused on each of Wanderbus’ persona’s pain points. They leveraged the custom buyer personas built out in SharpSpring and nurtured potential customers by delivering these emails at the right time during the customer journey. SharpSpring’s platform makes it easy to automate nurturing campaigns like these, in order to educate prospects and stay top of mind throughout the sales process.

Tactic 4

Understanding how marketing messages and campaigns were performing was a critical success factor for Incrento. Being able to evaluate performance and continuously optimize to achieve results rapidly meant Incrento could benefit from their revenue sharing model sooner. SharpSpring’s robust analytics allowed Incrento to identify nurturing email performance and optimization opportunities. Incrento was also able to thoroughly track the lifecycle of each lead and set up triggers to automate email nurturing and deliver leads to sales when ready.

Tactic 5

Incrento took advantage of SharpSpring’s powerful Zapier integration to connect third-party applications like Intercom and Neverbounce. This allowed Incrento to build a connected ecosystem of platforms without creating additional time-consuming and manual work.

The Results

Incrento implemented a fast-moving, results-oriented approach, fully utilizing SharpSpring’s marketing automation platform. Here were some of the key metrics:

12 months
Went from $0 to six-figure revenue
60K
Website growth per month
2,000
New customers from over 60 countries

Key Takeaways

By building customized personas and buyer journeys, in addition to utilizing email and lead analytics, Incrento was able to accelerate results for Wanderbus. During the process, Incrento had several key takeaways that led to their success:

Constantly Analyze Performance

Since revenue growth was the name of the game for Incrento, being able to optimize marketing efforts quickly and frequently was essential. Their team analyzed sales and marketing tactics on a weekly basis to understand what was working and what wasn’t. Incrento credits this constant analysis with their ability to impact revenue growth.

Deliver Value During the Buyer’s Journey

Prospective buyers are often faced with an overwhelming amount of information during the buyer journey. Incrento understood that they had to use content marketing and email nurturing to deliver the right, valuable content to prospects at the right time. Using SharpSpring’s analytics, Incrento focused on building a nurturing program that obtained better leads that closed faster.

Focus on Metrics that Matter

Rather than getting distracted by looking at too many data points, Incrento identified a few key performance indicators that mattered to them. They used industry benchmarks for comparison and focused on constantly improving performance.