Struggling with manual reporting and outdated insights, Dario Begonja, Managing Director at Hero Factory, sought a solution to help streamline processes and improve transparency with clients. Learn how he used Databox to achieve a 10x increase in client revenue.
Led by Dario Begonja, Hero Factory is a results-based digital marketing agency (specializing in e-commerce) that takes on the entire digital marketing operation for clients. They align with clients on a minimum acceptable ROAS —and if they don’t hit that number, they don’t make money.
In his role as team lead, Dario was responsible for making strategic decisions for clients. Despite having a pretty good handle on client performance, he lacked real-time insights into their campaigns. “I didn’t have great insights into the campaigns that were out there and couldn’t access all of the data… often we were working with data that was already outdated,” he says.
Hero Factory’s results-based model also meant teams would spend hours creating well-explained Reports for each client. “In order to be able to take control over the digital marketing of clients, we think it’s fair that they have complete insight into what we do,” he explains. “I was very frustrated with my people having to build and calculate every single piece of data every time,” he adds.
Frustrated with a long and manual reporting process, Dario knew they needed a solution that would allow them to offer their clients transparency, without taking time away from their work.
Reporting is a huge part of Hero Factory’s value proposition. And something that Dario knew they needed to continue to capitalize on. “Analytics in e-commerce is a piece of the market that no one else has stepped into, so we positioned ourselves as the leading analytics agency for e-commerce,” he says.
With this in mind, he tasked the team with finding a solution. That’s when they discovered Databox.
When implementing Databox, Dario and his team started by connecting all their platforms, both internally and for clients. Given the nature of their results-driven work, the team decided to build personalized dashboards that would effectively showcase the outcomes of their efforts.
Key metrics like Revenue and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), were placed at the top of the dashboard to give clients a quick view into performance. Bellow, they included additional metrics to help explain the main results. Whether it’s a purchase revenue board, an audience board, or others, the aim was to highlight results. “The biggest focus is on revenue and return… out of that you have all the other data sources that explain those first numbers. We do the same for a purchase revenue board, audience board, etc” he explains.
Once the team completed the initial setup, they considered the major part of the work done. Building these dashboards was a one-time effort as they’ll always be available with the latest data whenever needed. Dario elaborates, “We can build reports really quickly, and once we build them, they’re just there. We don’t have to calculate every single time… We already know the situation throughout the month, and we just put a cherry on top and focus on the next steps from the report.”
Clients were also given access to these live dashboards through a URL. “They can see everything we’re doing. They can feel in control of what happens,” he adds.
The most notable result of implementing Databox is that Dario and the team were able to deliver on their core promise: transparency and results. They’ve been able to produce bigger results than competing agencies, and they’re 100% transparent about how those results happen. “For one client, we were able to improve Black Friday revenue by 10x from the previous year,” he says. “We’re on a level with clients’ best results or much above it – real-time analytics is a big part of that,” he adds.
With real-time data and an arsenal of templates and custom-built dashboards, the team is also able to spend way less time on reporting – without sacrificing transparency or high-quality insights. “I think Databox is a natural place for anyone who manages staff to visit each day,” Dario told us. “We work with a lot of software and Databox has been unparalleled. It’s something that’s really made a difference for us in the process of onboarding, making changes…”