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B2B Marketing Strategy

Comprehensive Inbound Marketing Services & Digital Strategy for SaaS Web App “ClockInEasy”

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ClockInEasy is a mobile app and SaaS platform for employee time-tracking & workforce management. The company had a strong product development team, but faced challenges marketing the product with enterprise competition.

INDUSTRY

SaaS & Web Apps

CLIENT

ClockInEasy

CATEGORY

Inbound Marketing

The Challenge

Even the most superior product requires significant marketplace exposure to succeed. ClockInEasy had built a fantastic employee time-tracking tool that would make payroll easier for businesses of any size; however, the SaaS company was facing increased difficulty garnering the exposure it needed to properly scale. In a competitive market with sizable legacy-enterprises vying for the same B2B customers, ClockInEasy sought a more comprehensive approach to generate meaningful growth.

The Approach

After initial discussions to align a shared vision, ClockInEasy retained our services for a strategic overhaul of its digital presence and broader inbound marketing solutions. We sought to implement a cross-channel strategy that would target, engage, and secure customers through meaningful content and advanced marketing automation tactics. By constructing a cohesive customer journey across multiple touchpoints, we aimed to drive growth through improved reach and conversion rates.

Inbound Marketing Solutions

Brief Summary

This project showcase includes details about scope, method, process, and client results. It is told chronologically to guide you through our approach. For those who would prefer a simple, brief summary of project services and our results, we’ve included the short descriptions below. If you would like more details about the process, feel free to skip these summaries by hitting the “Scroll to Details” button.

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Our inbound marketing services included digital strategy development, content marketing, on-page SEO optimization, off-page SEO, conversion rate optimization (CRO), landing page creation, and advertising campaigns. Additionally, we completely redeveloped the entire inbound email funnel for their sales channel: the free trial email campaign. Using ActiveCampaign, we created advanced automations, on-site events, and personalized messaging to each user’s engagement level with the platform.

The results were highly successful, meeting and exceeding client goals including a tripling of organic web traffic, a doubling of on-site conversion rate, and significant growth in monthly recurring revenue (MRR). Even with the significant increase in traffic, our inbound email funnel was able to boost unique engagement and increase the overall trial-to-sale rate of the funnel with advanced automation. A full-length, downloadable case study is linked just above.

“Build something 100 people love, not something 1 million people kind of like.”

Brian Chesky, cofounder of Airbnb
Co-founder of Airbnb

our strategy

Buyer persona development for a SaaS client targeting B2B customers

No two businesses are alike. Similarly, no two business customers are either. Adapting your messaging strategy and tailoring the user experience of each distinguishable audience segment is crucial in order to achieve your maximum conversion potential.

We initiated our approach by creating audience profiles and buyer personas, from which effective distinctions in messaging strategy could be derived. We then set out to implement our communications design strategy, tailoring on-site content, landing pages, and the inbound email trial funnel to each core segment.

By closely monitoring audience response, we were further able to optimize for both on-site conversions and sell-through events using marketing automation in the sales funnel built for ClockInEasy’s inbound leads.

messaging architecture

Communications Design for a SaaS Web App with Traditional Clientele

Our client was situated in a unique position, ClockInEasy bridged the gap between traditional blue-collar businesses and Silicon Valley technology firms. The software-as-a-service (SaaS) company provides timesheet & employee management software for businesses in multiple sectors that often are composed of hourly labor-forces.

With a large concentration of their customers operating in verticals like construction, retail, home services, installation, and valet & parking industries, communicating to the varied needs of these different sectors was paramount.

Working closely with both the product and operations team, we got to work on addressing core customer needs—in both communications strategy and  broader product-market fit. From there, we developed a multi-front content strategy and generated assets for both inbound & outbound campaigns.

UX & Conversion Optimization

Boosting engagement and onsite conversions with advanced analytics and CRO tools.

While many strategies focus on driving new traffic, one of the many benefits of CRO strategies is their ability to properly capitalize on the greatest business asset of all: your existing audience. To improve onsite conversion rates, we deployed advanced analytics tools to measure user engagement, analyze audience response, and conduct a comprehensive UX audit. These tools included heatmaps, live-visit recording, and sales funnel visualizations to record and analyze user site behavior.

By mapping drop-off points in the sales funnel, we were able to pinpoint crucial areas for improvement. The heatmaps of aggregate user click & scroll data, alongside site visit recordings, let us analyze points of frustration in greater depth. Together, these tools helped guide our strategy to improve the on-site experience.

Pairing this data with a creative perspective, we focused on adding a sense of tangibility to the platform that would provide a clear expectation of what the product “looked and felt like.” This concrete understanding would then aid in platform adoption by providing users with a visceral understanding of the product.

Departing from pure feature descriptions and abstract icons, we generated modules that included direct visualizations of the platform with value-add communications. The “How It Works” page design highlights the culmination of this approach.

Provided with more context about the product they were buying into, alongside subtle enhancements to the customer journey, users converted at a significantly higher rate. The changes more than doubled the site’s prior rate and were nearly triple the industry-average figure.

Further improvements were made with onsite chatbot automations and guided tours using Intercom. These strategies enabled us to drive engagement with the 97% of web visitors who typically leave without submitting a contact form. With messaging automation, we were able to reduce total site-abandonment by 6% through Intercom alone.

116%
Boost in Conversion Rate
+259%
Conversion Rate vs. Industry Avg.
Giving Context to the Abstract:
Noticing user behavior consistent with a desire for more platform-specific context, we changed the design language.
By moving from icons and abstract graphics to grounded modules with organically infused product imagery, we provided more tangibility.
New User Experience Engagement Results:
Analyzing the changes in user behavior with heatmap data, we noticed meaningful results.
The new modules quickly became a focal point of engagement, with cursor data indicating users actually "reading along" with the design layouts.

email marketing

Email Automation Tactics to Optimize the Free-Trial Funnel for Engagement, Conversions, and Sales

All the traffic in the world doesn’t matter if you can’t convert on it. For any startup, SaaS platform, or mobile app, your free trial funnel is the most essential factor that can, and often will, single-handedly determine your success or failure.

The primary sales channel, the driver of engagement and revenue, a free trial email funnel is the channel which all else “flows through.” In order to ensure the success of our broader efforts, we initiated a complete sales funnel redesign using advanced email automation techniques.

Segmenting users by their onsite behavior, we built a complex intake funnel that deployed personalized messaging for each stage in the buyer journey. Content was A/B tested for optimal results and automated funnels were constructed according to a series of conditional logic parameters.

The funnel was designed to guide users through a process that would drive engagement, garnering platform-adoption, and result in trial-to-sale conversions. Our newly designed email sales funnel was highly-successful, garnering click-through-rates nearly double the industry average, open rates of nearly 50% (funnel-wide), and an overall boost in trial-to-subscriber rate.

We worked closely with the development team at ClockInEasy to implement custom site events which we could use as triggers for the trial funnel. While some email automation campaigns were triggered by a discrete event (e.g. congratulating users on adding a report), most were used to generate “lead scores,” a running tally of their crucial engagements.

We isolated the site actions which we considered to be the most crucial elements of platform engagements. This would then serve as a proxy for “conversion likelihood,” which would allow us to tailor our messaging by actual engagement with the web platform. We then used these scores to segment trial users into discrete “lanes” based on their engagement. Personalized messaging could then be deployed depending on their “stage” in the buyer journey.

Disengaged users would be sent campaigns that encouraged re-adoption, offering helpful starter tips, and a personal demo. Moderately engaged users would be sent specific tips relevant to their stage, encouraging a move “one step up” the ladder. Highly-engaged users would garner limited-time sales offers as our call-to-action, having already seen value in the platform.

Email Marketing Automation: Segmented Campaigns by Platform Engagement
Email Blast Campaign (Reports Template); Free Trial "Welcome" Email (On Mobile)

content marketing

Driving organic traffic with content that builds genuine customer relationships

Our content marketing strategy focused on the identification of high-traffic inbound opportunities, driving organic search impressions and social engagement. We developed useful resources, organic content, social graphics, and dynamic landing pages that provided value for users and initiated a relationship with the client.

With a dual-aim of adding product context and capturing user attention, we set out to generate individualized “modules” that both informed and engaged users. Initial content, like the interactive savings calculator and landing pages for our Capterra campaign, were intuitive brand assets to develop.

Additional resources, such as the “Timesheet Templates” landing page, were identified through an evaluation of data trends in the client’s analytics. By analyzing organic traffic and search terms, we were able to pinpoint significant opportunities that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.

Content was promoted on various channels including social media, digital promotions, outbound email, and a campaign on Quora we coordinated with the client. By providing these resources upfront, with a desire to develop a helpful relationship in which we prove value before pursuing a sale, we were able to further generate relevant traffic, which our inbound sales funnel was designed to capitalize upon.

Landing Page Generation (Capterra Page)
Landing Page Generation (How It Works Page)
Content Marketing Assets for Capterra Campaign
Additional Content Marketing Assets

client results

Driving significant revenue growth through improved customer messaging, user experience, and compelling content marketing

The project was a noteworthy success for the client, resulting in significant organic traffic growth, conversion rate increases, email funnel engagement, and ultimately, subscription-revenue generation.

New onsite content, interactive resources, and external content marketing efforts helped the client boost search rankings, expand its keyword base, and increase total organic traffic to its website.

The new targeted web-pages also significantly contributed to onsite conversions, with the landing page developed for our Capterra campaign achieving conversion rates over 25% of unique users, a figure more than ten-fold the industry-average conversion rate.

A three-fold increase in web traffic, combined with a doubling of the onsite conversion rate, and an improvement in the email funnel’s trial-to-sale rate, all served compounding effects to generate substantial growth in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) for the client.

Project Results & Case Study

The results were highly successful, meeting and exceeding client goals including a tripling of organic web traffic, a doubling of on-site conversion rate, and significant growth in monthly recurring revenue (MRR).

A full case study is available here.

+334%
Organic Traffic
418%
Boost in Search Impressions
+259%
Conversion Rate vs. Industry Avg.

www.clockineasy.com

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