When Itai Boubil joined Impact Hub Singapore as CMO in 2014, there was no closed-loop marketing system in place. The marketing team was generating significant interest through various marketing initiatives -- from social media to email marketing -- but was using several disparate systems. This fragmented approach to marketing created a blind spot in Impact Hub’s reporting. “We couldn’t see where our best fit customers were coming from and what their journey looked like. We didn’t know how we were closing customers.” The lack of visibility left Itai unable to forecast revenue.
“The goal was to connect the sales activities and the marketing activities,” says Ruben Hamilius, Impact Hub Singapore’s head of marketing and champion of internal marketing and sales alignment. Ruben wanted to close the loop with data and provide the sales team with information on the prospects to whom they were selling and in turn, give the marketing team valuable feedback on resulting conversion rates.
Before joining Impact Hub Singapore, Itai had used a number of marketing automation systems including HubSpot, which he discovered whilst researching inbound marketing. Inbound fascinated Itai, who had studied marketing at university. “I never believed in outbound. I always thought that this ‘push’ type of marketing was the wrong way to go, and when HubSpot started the inbound movement, I thought, ‘wow.’” Itai jokes that the other marketing tools he had used previously had aged him by ten years!
Having seen the results inbound and HubSpot could deliver, he knew he had to bring HubSpot to Impact Hub Singapore, and then to the wider Impact Global company. He even went as far as incorporating it into his employment agreement when he joined.
Once Impact Hub Singapore bought HubSpot Marketing and Sales, the first task was to bring all of the disparate platforms into one system. By switching to HubSpot for social, email, SEO and CRM, the team could see the full funnel for the first time ever.
With data pouring into one place, the marketing team could see exactly where the sales were coming from and began to pivot their strategy as a result. Itai describes the process as eye-opening. Insight after insight emerged, revealing that leads from social were the most likely to close. Subsequently, Itai and his team adapted their persona strategy. “These are the insights you get when you use the tool, and for me, it was an eye-opener,” he recalls. “It shows you a picture you did not see before.”
