How You&Co Spends Less Time in Meetings & More Time Hitting Client KPIs

Every product does its best to define value for its customers; However, “best value” can’t always be measured solely by “biggest” or “most” in terms of features and functionality.

Sometimes, the best value can be found in identifying the very best fit for your use case.

This was the situation for Andy Twomey and Will Forsyth of You & Co. The digital marketing agency, offering services to the Software as a Service (SaaS) market in the team’s native Australia, needed a way to communicate metrics and goals to clients quickly and effectively.

While they had access to tools that gave them a wealth of information, in many cases, the volume of that data could prove overwhelming.

They needed a better solution.

Finding the Right Fit

While You & Co. had previously used Databox for a portion of their tech stack, the team had taken some time to explore other reporting options.

They explored Google Data Studio as an alternative for report development. While the tool gave the team everything they needed in terms of accessibility to data, it required a lot of legwork to get the job done, and often resulted in more detail than was really helpful for clients.

The reports were high quality, but their development could take hours out of the day; that’s a costly investment in an industry where being efficient with budgets and time is a big part of ROI.

Many of the company’s clients are early-stage SaaS firms, so keeping lean operating budgets was especially important.

Also, to facilitate data acquisition through Google Data Studio required the use of a 3rd party app, an added expense, and another step in bringing their reporting together.

Where Databox can pull from a variety of sources natively, making the switch made sense.

As for the reporting detail, “We tended to dive into a lot of granular metrics,” said Will of their approach. “Some of our customers just want to see the numbers.”

Data overwhelm was detracting from the story they were trying to share. They needed something that fit customers’ reporting needs, without requiring hours of work to create. They decided to give Databox a second look.

Giving the Customer What They Need

The team got back to work with Databox recently, using its easy-to-use integrations and presentation to pull key metrics together and share them directly with each client.

Using Databox with a curated set of templates, the team keeps track of many of the common high-priority metrics, such as ad spend, channel engagement, activations, and retention.

“We live and breathe on channels because you need to understand the individual efforts that you’re putting in,” explains Andy.

The team also keeps a close eye on ad spend. “Especially with clients on tight budgets, [we’re] making sure that we’re sticking to what they need to have,” says Andy.

By providing customers with access to an account, it allows them to enjoy a “just right” level of information, spot trends, make decisions, and understand what is going on within their campaigns in real-time. The simplicity and access to information provided the team with a high level of transparency and accountability.

One client has even started using Databox for other own internal needs, customizing feeds in order to fully take advantage of the data capabilities.

This ease of communication is even more important with the advent of stay-at-home orders.

“We still have meetings, and we do them remotely. We get the Databoard up, and it’s easy. It serves really well,” says Andy. It has cut down the time spent in meetings, allowing both the team and their clients to focus their efforts where they matter most.

“We’re not trying to attach it to a huge amount of explanation,” says WIll.

The format allows them to do a check-in, and then dive in tactically to address any interesting or unusual findings within the metrics. The team loves having a Databoard they can go to and reflect on, and collaborate with our customers on. Andy and Will say it’s enabled better conversations with customers since the data is presented in a way that is more digestible.

You&Co’s Top Integrations

Data Now, Functionality for the Future

Access to data is as good for the team as it is for the clients. They love the at-a-glance quality of feeds, giving them an ideal first step in analyzing the metrics more in-depth.

“Databox has been good to surface top-level information,” says Andy. “I tend to work from simple to complex reporting structures… If I notice something happening in top-level analytics, I can then dig into them in Google Analytics.”

While the team relies on a robust tech stack for its reporting tools, Databox is making important metrics visible, so that they can be contextualized by further research.

“Using Databox has cut the time it takes to gather data almost in half. Rather than digging around analytics and custom spreadsheets, we’re able to jump into the Databox report and grab the snapshot. It’s meeting ready and much easier to read than a spreadsheet, the team finds it much easier to gather around a Databox slide,” says Andy.

As the team begins to use Databox more, they’ve begun to envision ways that it could fit into their upcoming plans. For instance, the team is currently in development on a new project that can benefit from real-time data. We’re excited to check in with them in the coming months to learn more about their progress and the new ways they’re making use of Databoards in their daily work.