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When Stacy Isemann and her husband Todd realized their company’s revenues were flat while costs were rising, they knew he had to do something. With a marketing staff of just one (that would be Stacy), they knew they had to be very selective in what they chose to do.
The couple started STL Rent A Box in 2012, a company that rents out reusable storage boxes for homeowners and companies moving locations.
They had tried their hand at email marketing previously—they’d used MailChimp but found that the purely self-help aspect of the service was not for them. After spending a good amount of time importing data, they sent out about three emails campaigns, then dropped off after lack of activity.
Stacy met Jonathan Herrick, Head of Sales & Marketing at Hatchbuck, at a local networking meeting in St. Louis—home to both companies. After discussing their marketing issues, Stacy decided to try Hatchbuck’s marketing automation software—something she hadn’t heard of before.
Hatchbuck is one of a new breed of marketing automation vendors geared to the small business market. Most marketing automation platforms were designed for the Enterprise market, where CRM systems are dominant and ingrained in the organization. These marketing automation systems must integrate with CRM, multiplying the complexity of implementation, and of day-to-day usage.
Hatchbuck, like Infusionsoft, Ontraport, and others incorporates CRM functionality into the marketing platform, so there’s no need to integrate. The all-in-one sales and marketing platform is an appealing and intuitive concept for a small business owner. As much as vendors claim to have seamless integration between systems, anyone who’s had to push and pull data between systems knows that integration is not simple.
Rent A Box didn’t even have a CRM system—they kept their contacts in Gmail.
Enterprise marketing automation systems also have extensive marketing bells and whistles which are simply not used by small businesses. But more than that, these features can clutter and complicate the user experience.
After some initial hand holding, Stacy was up and running with Hatchbuck in about two weeks and now considers herself proficient. She Skypes with Hatchbuck support whenever she has a question or needs help.
Rent A Box has a list size of about 6,000, the majority of which are real estate companies. They do a monthly email campaign and make frequent use of the system’s segmentation capabilities.
Stacy also gets much usage out of the CRM feature in Hatchbuck. After each client is done with their move, Stacey sends a thank you, and also asks for testimonials.
Business is going really well for Rent A Box. In fact, customers are doubling almost every month and they recently had to invest in new inventory.
As for Hatchbuck, they are growing nicely as well, tapping into the small business market that’s looking for simple yet powerful solutions to help facilitate both the marketing and sales activities. According to Herrick, “The number of small business opportunities we bring into our sales funnel each month has increased by 250% and our customer base has grown 130% since the beginning of the year as small businesses realize the need for an all in one sales and marketing automation platform.”
For more information about marketing automation including profiles of 12 vendors, see this marketing automation industry overview.
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