Next steps for a growing team
When Digital Manager Iva Dulkova joined British Red Cross Training, the marketing team was being restructured.
Along with hiring, Iva wanted to take the team’s strategy to the next level.
“We had been working primarily with paid advertising, purchasing lists, and cold calling. I wanted to optimize what we were doing, build a lead generation strategy, and introduce marketing automation.”
Seeking automation efficiency
Several groups within the organization were eager to modernize their operations.
Without a CRM, the sales team relied on a booking tool to store contact information. It didn’t offer any analytics, and left them sifting through names manually and following-up without a systematized process.
The data team was also eager to upgrade. They had to work in the sales team’s booking tool as well as a custom CRM that the organization was building.
“The data team was literally going through the different systems, exporting data and keeping it in spreadsheets.”
What Iva envisioned was a full CRM solution that could integrate the team’s different tools, support time-saving workflows, and deliver an excellent customer experience.
Complicated coding required
Although British Red Cross Training had purchased a tool for managing email campaigns, it was too complex for the team to use.
Iva says, “It required a bit of coding to build templates and emails, and the brand marketing team didn’t have the technical skills. So they ended up hiring an email marketing agency to create and send out emails from their own platform.”
To eliminate manual processes and unnecessary costs, they'd need a new system that could do it all for everyone.
“User-friendliness was really high up on the list. Everyone from the bottom-up of our sales, marketing, and data teams had to be able to work with it so we could align our sales and marketing efforts.”
Increasing ROI
For Iva, an easy-to-use solution was the key to adopting more profitable approaches.
She wanted to make it easy for the team to switch to efficient organic traffic strategies and inbound lead nurturing.
“To make it work, we needed a sophisticated system that was also easy to use. That’s where HubSpot came in.”
Inbound strategy enabled
Iva chose to use Marketing Hub to kick off a new inbound marketing and lead generation strategy for British Red Cross Training.
“We needed to start creating right away, using smart content, and attributing revenue to specific marketing activities. HubSpot was perfect for that. Plus, it would help us tie in our activities with the sales team and create better, warmer leads for them.”
Quick to launch
Iva says, “I knew it would take time to build my team, so I needed a platform that was very easy to use and that I could use efficiently.”
Iva says, “I felt strongly that HubSpot would be a good fit for us because it could help us start delivering results without a hassle.”
As soon as she began to test Marketing Hub as a proof of concept, the benefits started rolling in. The team got up and running with virtually no learning curve.
“I already knew the platform, and we added members to the team who also knew how to use HubSpot. So it was quite a quick win.”
Perfect fit to purpose
When Iva introduced HubSpot to her manager, he could see that it was designed to help sales and marketing people work more effectively.
Iva says, “We did in-depth surveys with our teams, comparing the solutions on user-friendliness, fit for purpose, cost, and security.”
The security issue related to their terms of service regarding information governance.
“We have a lot of signed agreements with key account customers that we won’t export their data outside of the EU. HubSpot’s new data center in Germany supported our commitment perfectly.”
They decided that HubSpot was the right fit.
“It won based on user experience as well as overall value for the cost.”
Personalized content and warmer leads
“Having access to personalization was huge,” Iva says. “It allowed us to segment the data and create personalized journeys for specific lists of people across the marketing spectrum.”
She used smart content to link relevant content across the site and incorporate it across paid and organic campaigns.
Sales and marketing alignment
As Iva’s team started generating leads with Marketing Hub, the sales team slowly started engaging with it.
“One salesperson started looking at the leads on HubSpot and reaching out to follow up. Then we continuously had more people coming on board.”
As it became clear that Marketing Hub was improving the quality of leads, the sales team decided they wanted to expand the services. So they added Sales Hub and Service Hub to bring all the teams together.
“We looked at the chatbot function to support the call center staff when they were having really high volumes of people calling to ask questions,” Iva says.
Attribution and optimization
“I think the most important benefit was revenue attribution,” Iva says.
Being able to see exactly what marketing campaigns and downloadable materials were generating revenue allowed her team to optimize their efforts and set revenue goals.
It was a giant step forward for their lead generation strategy.
“Before HubSpot, we only had visibility over the large deals and purchases that were documented by our salespeople,” Iva says.
When the time came to evaluate the proof of concept with Marketing Hub, it was easy to measure the wins it had delivered.
“We recognized that HubSpot was working really well for us and we were getting good value from it.”
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