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Like many agencies, Anode was founded by a couple of individuals who did everything themselves, building a business that delivered great results to a network of personal connections. Even though their digital agency specializes in mastering tech tools like Piwik Pro, growth came from the old-fashioned way, mostly by word-of-mouth.
But then like many great agencies, co-founders Xavier Marzec and Hugues Hermenault started thinking that they could – and should! – expand their business beyond their personal networks.
They also knew, however, that effective outbound marketing is easier said than done. So they turned to an expert, Timothée Franc, who showed them why Captain Data should be part of their process. The goal? Automate time-intensive data workflows in order to free Xavier and Hugues to spend more time on precision messaging.
As Tim notes, “There are 10,000 digital agencies in France – standing out is hard. To do good outbound, getting into people’s inboxes is just the first necessary step; what you really need to do is find the right message that shows why people should work with you. That’s where you want to be investing your time and brainpower.”
Anode started by looking at the various no-code solutions that could start them down the outbound path, but many weren’t up to the level they were looking for.
“There are lots of tools out there to scrape LinkedIn, but people have understood that they aren’t very secure,” said Tim.
“They’re afraid that they’ll end up spamming their network, or that their account will get suspended, or just that it won’t really scale. Since Captain Data can get the data without those concerns, and it then gives you the power to do so much more, it’s a great solution."
Tim laid out a series of steps to construct Anode’s outbound machine. After defining Anode’s unique value proposition and Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), he set up three key data sources to search through: LinkedIn Navigator, the Yellow Pages, and Google Maps.
Captain Data steps in right off the bat to securely automate the data recovery in each of these sources. Using API access, Tim is able to automatically pull data into Captain Data, which then later pushes the cleaned data into Hubspot, Anode’s CRM. The final step in the chain occurs with Lemlist, which lets Anode send outbound messages via email and LinkedIn Messenger, with the results being automatically sent back into Hubspot.
“Captain Data works as the foundation stone for the whole data process,” Tim says. “Everything pivots around what it lets us do. Most agencies end up with really generic outreach via Facebook Ads or LinkedIn; but we were able to do something much better with Anode.”
Specifically, with the workflow up and running, Anode is free to start dialing in results and looking for micro-segments. Because even though they’re wanting to grow their business, that doesn’t mean they want just anybody as a client. Instead, they’re looking for some precise niches where they know that their services can make a difference.
After all, it’s much better to have 10 new clients who are ecstatic about what you bring to the table than 100 new clients who spend most of their time complaining about how you aren’t really fitting their needs.
Tim began by working with Anode to identify and test 20+ potential micro-segments, with the data centralized via Captain Data and Hubspot. To that, they added A/B testing on email headers and bodies. These efforts let them drill down into both customer personas and the best means for generating positive responses via messaging.
For example, one micro-niche that they’ve identified was people who had recently changed jobs (at very specific technical levels) whose new companies were using a particular analytics solution. By automatically finding those people and contacting them with a targeted message regarding the opportunity to resolve certain known issues by switching to Piwik Pro, Anode gets fast results with a highly favorable ROI.
“I now have 5-6 qualified meetings each week, my co-founder has the same. And we’ve already signed tens of thousands of euros in new deals,” Xavier told us.
Those new deals, sourced using a multi-step workflow that leverages Captain Data’s complete capabilities, make the investment a no-brainer for Tim.
“You get the full value of Captain Data by building workflows that let you go far beyond LinkedIn, and when you automate those searches. Anode is now set up to automatically have their outreach launched on a weekly basis, with rolling windows looking for people who have just changed jobs. We have a bunch of dynamic filters set up, and the process gives reliable results that can be fine-tuned as time goes on.”
The complete process Anode used
