Automating Operations with a HubSpot Integrated Tech Stack

The Need

Digital Media Academy had been expanding, and recognized the need for a streamlined automated system they could use as a central source of truth to enable them to scale. HubSpot referred us to DMA to help them with this project, as it would involve custom work, intensive project management, consulting, overall end-to-end customer journey and process mapping, and integrations. DMA needed to integrate their full operations into one system including:

• Lead management
• Ecommerce sales
• Customer and vendor support
• Course communication with parents of students
• Creating student course credentials and providing access to the education portal
• Information on students, parents/guardians, educators, vendors, leads, and courses
• Business reports in a dashboard
• Management and clean up of contacts and email lists
• On-demand developer support

The Project

Digital Media Academy reached out to get automated systems in place before their next round of courses started. The scope of the project was very large, so deliverables needed to be phased. We co-created the list of action items based on their top priorities in regards to operations, sales, service, and marketing. We also had a very short timeframe before their next round of courses started. With this in mind, we mapped the ideal first state of the project and ensured the client had a contingency plan to manage operations in case there were any hiccups along the way that would delay launch. We then pooled our resources and contacts within our network and got to work, with multiple team members heading up the part of the project within their skill set to simultaneously build out DMA’s system. The scope of this project required daily internal check-ins and two meetings per week with the client, plus break out sessions. In the end, we were able to meet the client’s deadline in a phased approach that started with the basic functionalities, and expanded into the more “nice to have '' portions of the project. Our relationship evolved to where we provided consulting and ongoing management and updates.

The Challenge

These were the challenges within this project;

• Information was housed in many places and needed to be consolidated 
• Salesforce data was not organized in a clean way for import
• A new website was in the works when we started working with them and needed to be considered in the integration
• Integrations needed to happen with many SaaS platforms including HubSpot, Google Classroom, WooCommerce, WordPress, Calendly, Gmail, Mailchimp, Google Sheets, Google Admin, Stripe, and RingCentral 
• Short timelines
• Coordinating with multiple other third parties
• They needed to move from a “Frankenstein system” to a user-friendly, single source of truth intuitive system

The Solution

Given the complexity, the first step was to audit the current state of where all their information was stored, and map out the future state to model how their system should function. This way allows us to troubleshoot if we know where down the line something failed during testing. 

The first goal was to migrate everything from their current CRM (Salesforce) into HubSpot so that all data was kept intact for customer service reps to reference back to. 

Operations

The next priority was creating a process to manage eCommerce transactions and automatically store information and provide students with the credentials they needed to access their learning portal. We used HubSpot workflows to automatically send registration and reminder emails to the parents and auto-created a user in Google classroom. All of this information was stored in HubSpot for the DMA customer service team to manage accounts and resolve support requests. 

Sales

DMA’s business model included both B2C and B2B audiences. B2C would come in through purchases on the website but like many businesses with a B2A structure, the more B2B customers and partnerships you have, the more opportunity for growth. We built out a sales process and pipeline for their sales team to manage prospecting efforts and incoming leads. 

Service

HubSpot’s Service Hub enables us to connect forms and emails into a central inbox and automatically create support tickets to be managed. Automation was put in place to update the ticket’s status based on who last responded and if a response is needed from DMA or the customer. With these essentials in place, we implemented a survey that was sent to the parent/guardian after a course was completed.

Marketing

At the start, DMA had a general newsletter that they would add all parents to after a course was complete. This is a great start to building up a list and we came in and refined this process to be more relevant to their customers. The following segmentation was put in place: 

1. After a course completed, a series of upsell emails were sent out with information on the next course in the series.
2. If they did not sign up, they were added to a newsletter.
3. If they were enrolled in an upcoming course, they were removed from the newsletter so that they would not be receiving any sales related communication that may be irrelevant.
4. With all of the customer’s information being stored in HubSpot, we could create highly targeted lists based on their interests, previous courses enrolled, and their purchase journey. 
5. Segmentation based on the type of customer they are.

Integrations

By choosing HubSpot, it enabled Digital Media Academy to either integrate their other SaaS platforms, or in some cases, remove some altogether with the built-in features HubSpot offers.

Accounts integrated in:

• HubSpot
• Google Classroom 
• WooCommerce
• WordPress
• Calendly
• G.Suite - Gmail, Calendar, Meet
• Mailchimp
• Google Sheets
• Google Admin
• Stripe
• RingCentral 
• Social platforms
• Google Ads

Accounts we phased out:

• Autopilot
• Klenty
• Sendy
• Mailchimp
• Salesforce

KPIs

With the new central source of truth, KPIs could be better managed and monitored with the use of report dashboards. Some of these reports included:

• Revenue sources
• Number of students enrolled in each course category
• Average transaction size
• Course waitlist numbers
• Revenue by the source of the first interaction
• Number of deals in the pipeline
• New business vs existing business

The Results

1. Over 100 automated workflows were created
2. Over 100,000 contacts added into the CRM
3. 13 integrations made
4. An estimated 250 effort hours saved 
5. SAAS overall cost reduction of 30% from previous system