From manual emails to automated campaigns at Larmer Brown

“CRM integration was crucial, and Spotler have the expertise in-house to manage this effectively […] It integrates well and enables us to track campaigns back to a contact level.”

Before integrating Spotler, Larmer Brown’s marketing team desperately needed marketing automation software. The company was marketing to a strong client base that had grown organically using Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Marketing initiatives were largely event-driven, with invitations to webinars and conferences emailed to their client database directly from Dynamics CRM.

However, as the size of their database grew Larmer Brown’s email hosting company, Rackspace, raised concern that they were at increased risk of getting blacklisted if they continued to send the emails directly. Larmer Brown’s email marketing was ALL manual – sending to over 1000 contacts at a time – emails were tracked against contact records in Dynamics CRM, but they could not see how many had been opened or track click-through results.

Moving off manual work

Whilst the database was a good size, performing email merges using Dynamics CRM with Outlook meant Larmer Brown was unprotected. As Rackspace urged them to look for an external automation provider, being on the verge of getting blacklisted, it was time to look for a different solution.

What led them to Spotler? Initially, Larmer Brown looked into three different marketing automation tools, of varied complexity and cost. When the marketing team realised that Spotler was the provider of Spotler Leads, which they had been using to monitor traffic on their website, they saw Spotler as the “one size fits all” solution for them.

While some of Spotler’s competitors seemed on par, Spotler’s integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM was seen as a key strength for Larmer Brown and the reasonably priced software. With their client database already established on Microsoft Dynamics, plus their existing use of Spotler Leads, Spotler could provide Larmer Brown with one automation platform with which to manage all of their marketing activity

What impact has Spotler had?

Larmer Brown’s marketing had been a little haphazard in the past. SpotlerLeads had been used to assign warm leads to telesales, Dynamics CRM recorded qualified leads, and emails were painstakingly sent out manually using Dynamics with Outlook. The tools were there, but they weren’t working together and there was far too much manual intervention required between processes. Larmer Brown needed to take the legwork out of their marketing campaigns.

They wanted everything in one place, to make the process much slicker and faster and, most importantly, they needed to be able to see the results. With Spotler’s integration, Larmer Brown got exactly what they wanted. Not only are all their marketing tools now easy to access in one place, they can automate their marketing campaigns and report on them in the same area too. Creating campaigns in Dynamics and pulling them across to SpotlerMail was simple with one easy movement. Dynamics was good at segmenting organic data into relevant groups before setting senders, domains, and emails all in a few clicks with SpotlerMail.

New way of working

Even after setting up the automation itself, the ease with which Larmer Brown found they could track the results they got from their prospects was phenomenal. Has Larmer Brown changed the way they work since integrating Spotler? Different areas of Larmer Brown’s business are allocated to other account managers. Now that they’ve enlisted the help of Spotler’s software, Larmer Brown can identify leads based on their website visit and assign them accordingly.

In addition, Spotler Leads & Spotler Mail+ work together to give the sales team more prospects, meaning their already strong database is constantly growing. Telesales are alerted when individuals register for events so that they can get in contact straight away, streamlining the enrolment process. In the future, Larmer Brown will be looking at ways to nurture unidentified visitors through the sales funnel, based on their website behaviour. Spotler has provided so many opportunities for Larmer Brown to manage and grow its clientele.