A national insurance organization that serves public-sector and nonprofit entities offers online professional development training designed specifically for multifamily affordable housing providers.
Housing professionals can access flexible pricing, bulk purchase discounts, and industry-recognized certifications and courses covering the latest compliance, safety, productivity, and new employee orientation trends.
In this case study, you’ll learn how I helped this organization supercharge its course offerings with HubSpot.
Challenge: The Home-Grown Databases Were A Time-Suck
The client looked to update how it managed both its annual subscriptions and invoicing for individual course sales.
Two main factors led to them recognizing the need to upgrade their business.
The Custom, Localized Databases Were Split
The first challenge was that each type of business—subscriptions and individual courses—were housed in separate databases.
The organization engineered its own custom databases to store this information, thinking they would be a temporary solution until they found a better solution.
More than a decade later, these custom databases were still how the business relied on knowing its current sales in this area.
Distinct Databases Meant Only One Person Knew Them Well Enough
A challenge with home-grown databases is often that one (or a few) people know the system well enough to make changes.
This forced the organization to rely on one person to process its orders, generate invoices, and update the databases.
Solution: Migrate Distinct Databases Into HubSpot Sales Hub
This client had previously switched to Marketing Hub and Service Hub, so they knew that having us help them migrate their disparate databases to HubSpot and onboard them to Sales Hub was the way to go.
Having all of this information in one database helps the organization paint a more complete picture of its customers.
Importing Existing Deals
To get started, we consulted with the client to discover that each type of product—individual course sales and subscriptions—had their own unique sales process.
For that reason, we created separate pipelines in HubSpot so they could track each sale in a way that made sense for them.
Next, we imported around 20 deals of outstanding invoices so they could test the functionality of HubSpot.
This led to importing approximately 1,300 subscriptions in total, tying them to existing contacts and companies in their database.
Generating Automated Reminders
By using HubSpot, the organization could, for the first time, automate the process of sending reminders and following up.
Using Workflows—HubSpot’s email marketing automation functionality—we created four types of automation:
- To follow up with a contact 30 days after they’ve renewed their subscription to check in and see how they’re doing.
- To remind a contact when a subscription payment is due in 7 days.
- To remind a contact when a subscription payment is past due.
- To confirm the cancellation of a subscription.
Within the first 3 months of going live, the organization enrolled nearly 200 deals in these workflows.
Results
This client was fully operational in HubSpot Sales Hub in 90 days.
Reporting On Key Metrics
By merging databases and using HubSpot’s functionality, the organization can now easily report on three key metrics:
- Retention rate – The number of customers who renew from year to year.
- Invoices paid compared to invoices generated.
- Balances due on subscriptions.
Following Up With Lapsed Subscriptions
HubSpot will also now help with automatically following up on subscriptions that weren’t renewed.
Automation has been established to follow up on a lapsed subscription so that the organization may be able to budget that subscription for the following year.
Impact
For the first time in more than a decade, this organization’s individual course and subscription sales are housed in one database.
Those deals are all connected to existing sales, marketing, and support data, all powered by HubSpot.
“We feel we are getting the most out of our HubSpot subscription due to Adam’s excellent understanding of the system and teaching skills,” said a senior customer success specialist at this organization.
“Everything’s working well,” he continued. “I’m very pleased with the way everything turned out.”
If you’re interested in working with me on getting the most out of your HubSpot portal by consolidating processes into one system like this one, please contact me.