Digital Doorway was founded in 2017 with a clear mission – it wanted to bring the inbound methodology to the B2B IT industry.
“Collectively, we have decades of experience working in this sector, and we had identified a real need for it to transform its approach to marketing and sales. However, as a new agency, we knew that we would need to partner with the right software provider,” explains Jennifer Van Lent, managing director at Digital Doorway.
The agency was looking for a platform that would allow it to create successful buyer journeys, both for itself and for its clients. It also wanted a provider that would give it the support it needed to succeed.
“We evaluated several options, including Marketo and Act-On, but they didn’t have the structured programs that we were looking for.”
Some of the Digital Doorway team had worked with the HubSpot software in the past, and they had been impressed by how it had allowed them to produce joined-up, effective campaigns.
“We loved its usability and power, but what really drew us in was all the guidance, coaching and training that the HubSpot Partner Program offered. As a new agency, we wanted a bit of handholding. Just a few days after launching our agency in January 2017, we signed on the dotted line.”
The HubSpot Partner Program is certainly paying dividends for Digital Doorway. It has seen a 40% uptick in organic traffic, and it gets an average of 15 sales-qualified leads every month.
“We were really excited to become a HubSpot Gold Tier Partner in our first year! We exceeded our initial goals primarily because of the help we received from HubSpot. Our channel account manager provided us with new contacts and prospects to develop, and he worked with us on every new client we closed,” says Jennifer.
Today, the agency has nine clients on the HubSpot software, all on retainer contracts, which has given it the security of income that is so important to a new startup. In managing client onboarding projects, the Digital Doorway team takes a "progress, not perfection" approach. The focus is to enable clients to rapidly get up to speed and launch their first campaign within the HubSpot platform - while at the same time, transferring knowledge, optimising marketing outcomes and helping clients to create high-impact buyer journeys. This enables marketing professionals to quickly realise results and to accelerate user adoption of the platform.
“From our years working within the IT industry, we have seen a lot of "scope-creep" from projects which seem to take months or years before clients see measurable results and a positive ROI. Our approach is to help clients build a solid foundation for their inbound marketing strategy, then train and onboard users as quickly as possible to work directly in the HubSpot platform on campaigns and client engagements. As clients get up to speed with easy-to-learn activities, our agency team works on more advanced marketing tasks - like creating topic clusters, sequences, reports and buyer journeys to manage the entire customer lifecycle. Once clients see what we can do for them, they are eager to sign up to work with us in the longer term. For instance, one company had been in business for about 16 years, but they had never really focused on marketing – they had a basic website that got no conversions. We created their first campaign through the HubSpot software, and within 15 minutes of the first email going out, a prospect responded to a Call-to-Action. That call led to a new client relationship for them. They still talk about it today; they were amazed at how powerful inbound can be.”
Jennifer is confident that Digital Doorway will go on to convince its other clients that are currently using different marketing automation platforms to sign up with HubSpot.
The agency has ambitious plans for the future, and they all involve HubSpot.
“Firstly, we’re going to leverage our data privacy knowledge even more and help our clients to move into the new era of marketing. The HubSpot software is the perfect springboard for that! Secondly, we’re going to develop partnerships with other agencies that we met at the HubSpot events. That’s the HubSpot difference – there is a real sense of community, not competition. Thirdly, we’re planning on developing apps to integrate with HubSpot software. As an agency, we see that as the wave of the future and as a way to secure and grow our retainer business.”