How ClearPivot Used Databox to Shift From Manual Reporting to Real-Time Improvements

For companies in industries that require a laser focus on trustworthy content and professional integrity, aligning with the right marketing partner can make all the difference.

To generate informed content, drive leads, and close sales, you need an agency that truly understands what’s at stake.

For many clients in surgical specialties, medical devices, SaaS, and B2B, that agency is ClearPivot. 

Founded by Chris Strom in 2009, ClearPivot serves clients through content creation and strategic campaigns in content marketing, email marketing, web analytics, SEO, and social media. The company is focused on serving specific verticals that require an expert approach to content creation and growth strategy, in many cases involving a specific focus on data privacy. 

To fulfill the reporting needs of its fast-moving clients and the company’s own internal analytics, ClearPivot needed a full-service reporting tool that could integrate numerous data sources for itself and its clients.

The data burden at the company had become time-consuming, and the insights suffered from a reporting lag that could slow down progress. They turned to Databox for the solution. 

We recently talked with the founder Chris Strom and ClearPivot’s Marketing Director, Maia Morgan Wells, to learn how Databox is creating better insights and better client relationships. 

Time For Better Reporting

Before Databox, the team was relying heavily on metrics gleaned from numerous feeds.

In order to create a narrative for clients and explain how their marketing efforts were translating into progress, they’d spend the first week of each month manually compiling the data and reports. Strom explained the time-intensive process they undertook for each client.

“We were using Google Spreadsheets. It took a lot of time. Basically they were about six pages and multiple tables of data on each page,” said Strom.

The Project Managers were then tasked with pulling together metrics data manually, from traffic numbers and top page counts, to leads per page and ad statistics. Then, all the findings needed to be rendered into another reporting tool.

Strom estimates that the move to Databox saves the team up to two and a half hours per client, per month. Even in the early days, this could translate to twenty or more hours saved over the course of a month.

As the company expands and takes on new clients and verticals, getting the reports up and running is a snap.

“It’s pretty quick and easy spinning it up,” said Strom.

The quality of the data utilization vastly improved, as well. With data at the ready, the lag time typically associated with manual reporting processes was eliminated.

Before Databox, says Strom, “We would never schedule monthly meetings with clients in the first week in the month… we’d spend half the first week of the month making the reports.”

With access to data when you need it, those important early days of the sale cycle could be used engaging in the activities that move the needle.

Also, where previously insights could take weeks to surface, with access to real-time data, the team could spot trends and help clients make changes with more agility.

“It’s also much more visual and easy for the clients to see and understand themselves,” explains Strom.

ClearPivot’s Top Integrations

Internal Reporting Gets a Lift

The same reporting improvements that clients enjoy, Strom is finding quite useful for the team’s own analytics. Using the integration baked into Databox, the team is able to see a diverse offering of high-level and granular data, delivered over a few easy-to-read Databoards. 

Like many clients, ClearPivot uses Databox internally to keep tabs on the most important website and marketing metrics fed from HubSpot, Google Analytics, and Instagram Ads.

Strom can also dig into the financial metrics for the company through the integration with Quickbooks. “I use Funnel Charts to track our revenue, gross margin, expenses, net margin, net operating income… I used line charts to track revenue and expenses over time.”

Using this data, Strom was able to create goals through custom formulas. He can easily track more complex metrics, such as marketing percent of revenue, training spent percent of revenue, and custom queries to track those informative ratios. 

Real-time access to data has given the team a level of immersion in their relevant stats and metrics. Through Databoards, the project managers “can be exposed to the progression of things in the course of doing their work.”

And it doesn’t require a data analyst background to get the information you need. Databox makes it easy.

With manual reporting, “it requires a lot of specific knowledge of other platforms and their reporting. I think part of what Databox does is eases the burden for marketers to have to learn reporting in all the different systems. It saves so much time.”

Agility and Accountability

Having access to up-to-date data allows the team to do well for their clients and themselves. First, it allows them to save time and cut to the chase, allowing them to deliver the insights they need most. 

For Maia, it starts by getting familiar with the data. Where surfacing insights with Google Spreadsheets would take valuable hours of time, with Databoards, Maia is able to cut the research time down to just one hour per client.

Within that hour, Maia is able to formulate a narrative that will give her clients the information they need to make data-driven decisions. The visual nature of the reporting also makes it easy for Maia to quickly grasp the salient details.

“I’m a very visual person—and I think a lot of marketers are. So looking at a huge spreadsheet of information doesn’t work very well for me. I like to be able to visualize, and I love that it’s in real-time.”

“If everything looks fine, we don’t spend a ton of time talking through every data point.”

Using the information contained in just a few Databoards, Maia is able to lay out the narrative on what’s currently happening, what’s working, and where they can continue to grow.

“When you can look at the results of what you’re doing in real-time, it allows you to make those strategic shifts that result in big gains for the clients faster.” 

In order to create effective plans for your clients, they first need to trust you.

In a marketing landscape where data can get above the fray of marketing speak, real insights can allow an agency to quickly help establish that trust in its brand.

“A lot of people have been burned by marketers, where they’re promising things that they can’t deliver,” explains Maia. “Databox allows me to help my clients have confidence in what our agency is doing for them.”