From Too Many Tools to a Joined-Up Solution

InfluencerDB helps brands and agencies to navigate through the complexities of the influencer marketing universe. By the start of 2018, it counted many major companies as clients, including Lufthansa, Asics, CLUSE and Benefit. It wanted to keep maximising its growth, but to do that, it needed to streamline its marketing, sales and customer success activities.

The problem was that it was using an array of free and low-cost tools that didn’t integrate well together. It had Cognito Forms for lead gathering, Mailjet for emailing and Trello for project management. Pipedrive was its primary CRM, which was used for both sales management and customer onboarding and renewals.

“Those solutions had worked well enough when we started, but we had reached the point where they were slowing us down,” explains Sara Archer, senior manager of sales and marketing operations at InfluencerDB.

InfluencerDB realised that an all-in-one automation platform was the best way forward. Following recommendations from colleagues and a good deal of research, Chief Operations Officer, Tiemo Winterkamp, decided on the HubSpot Growth Stack, which encompasses HubSpot’s Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub and CRM.

“It was powerful yet easy to use, and we knew that it would help us save time and foster interdepartmental collaboration. As well as that, we would be able to get the joined-up, smart analytics we needed to keep improving our processes,” says Ariel Dekovic, Influencer DB’s director of global communications.

Nurturing Leads Through Every Step of the Journey

InfluencerDB was already creating great content, but it used Marketing Hub to enhance their content strategy.

“It gave us the framework we needed to start our journey with the inbound methodology,” says Sara. “We’ve set up calls-to-action and forms on our blog posts and throughout the site, which makes it easier to collect leads. We’re also using lead-scoring to establish where our prospects are in the decision-making process, so we can enter them into workflows that nurture them at just the right pace.”

Once a lead signs up to try the freemium version of InfluencerDB’s software, the sales development team takes over and uses Sales Hub to keep nurturing them until they are ready to buy. 

InfluencerDB’s marketing, sales and customer success departments are now all working from the same page. With HubSpot CRM, they can see the status of every lead and customer – nothing slips through the cracks, and they can have more informed conversations. 

“The next step is to incorporate all the features of Service Hub, like live chat and tickets, so that our customer success team can provide the best support possible.”

Sara believes that all the guidance available from the HubSpot team has helped InfluencerDB to get the most out of the Growth Stack.

“Our HubSpot customer success manager has been incredible. For example, we were afraid that migrating everything over to the CRM would be messy and chaotic because we were dealing with massive amounts of data. She made it easy. She is knowledgeable and accessible, and she’s a lot of fun to work with too. That’s important when you’re scrolling through pages and pages of spreadsheets!”

“The HubSpot support department is great as well. I’ve worked with other software providers in the past and HubSpot is head and shoulders above them all. I’ve been amazed by how quickly they come back to me with answers; it makes me want to be a HubSpot customer forever.”

Saving Time and Fostering Collaboration

Although InfluencerDB has only been working with the HubSpot Growth Stack for six months, it already sees benefits. Their average deal size has quadrupled, and the InfluencerDB sales team is now more able to focus on securing longer, more strategic deals at a global scale. Also, blog subscribers have grown by 204%, and the response rate from outbound sales efforts using Sequences was 50%.

“At the end of each month, we’re able to create a report that shows us why we won business or why we lost it. For the first time, we have a real sense of our entire pipeline, so we can repeat our successes and avoid making the same mistake twice,” says Sara.

The company is also saving time, as the Growth Stack’s automation features have allowed it to cut down on repetitive, routine tasks.

“Communication and collaboration between our teams are at an all-time high. We’re sharing more information, and everyone knows exactly what they are meant to be doing."

On the back of its success in Europe, InfluencerDB has recently opened an office in New York, and it plans to grow its footprint in markets across the world.

“The HubSpot Growth Stack will play a big part in that,” says Ariel. “Influencer marketing is a highly competitive sector and to stand out; we need to understand our prospective customers on a deep level. Over the next few months, we’re going to build on our inbound competencies to ensure that we nurture every lead in a targeted, effective way.”