How A Growing Marketing Agency Uses Databox to Make Real-Time Decisions & Increase Client Retention

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When Social Hustle co-founders Dalin Bernard and Christopher Parrett took on a small consulting project together, they had no idea it was the beginning of a thriving agency.

Eventually, their client roster grew and their burgeoning business needed a name. Social Hustle was born, and a year ago, they started running the agency full time.

Bernard and Parrett are now opening a second office in Austin, Texas with plans to double the size of their team in 2020.

Databox has been an integral aspect of their growth over these last nine months as they enter this exciting new chapter. Here’s how the platform has supported every aspect of their client relationships from proposals through to retention.

1. Immediate performance insights

Before Social Hustle’s team began using Databox, one of their flagship clients asked co-founder Christopher Parrett for year-over-year reporting on a specific metric. Parrett knew that he couldn’t pull the metric — not with their current roster of tools. It was a small wake-up call that Social Hustle needed an all-in-one platform that offered more flexibility. Their team signed up for a half-dozen demos for new data platforms. “Databox was, by far, our favorite,” says Parrett.

In the past, Parrett had used Raven Tools, but it lacked the easy-to-understand visualization that they wanted for clients. They also used Google Data Studio to create custom reporting.

“It was a much more manual process,” Parrett says. “If clients wanted to see something for a specific connection, I would have to handmake it. But in most instances, I couldn’t make them what they were looking for. There wasn’t a solution for it beforehand. Databox solved the issues we were having and then provided us with additional functionality.”

Databox is 6x more efficient than manual reporting.

Databox transformed Social Hustle’s workflow. Instead of spending hours on manual reporting — or disappointing clients with limited metrics — their team had the data they needed to grow their clients’ companies without the headache.

Now clients could understand their company’s performance in just moments. As Parrett summarizes: “It’s 50-60% easier to immediately understand top-level metrics with Databox than with Raven Tools.”

Parrett also credits Databox with the team’s ability to stay agile and make real-time decisions.

“I can look at it in a glance, I can get a health check or directional understanding far quicker,” he says.

That efficiency translates to internal collaboration as Social Hustle scales.

“We all know where our source of record lives, and it’s within Databox. Anytime you streamline a tool to be a sole source of record, progress happens faster,” shares Parrett. With their growing team on the same page, there’s no limit to how much they can succeed as a company.

2. Stronger sales and client engagement

When agencies use Databox, they pass on the biggest benefits of the platform to clients. Social Hustle’s two founders start any engagement with a dynamic sales pitch that emphasizes the way that they build processes around Databox. Their proposals include an entire section on the tool because they’ve received such fantastic feedback from current clients.

It’s no surprise then, that Databox is also at the center of the onboarding process, too.

Templates make it easy to develop custom reporting without reinventing the solution manually for each new client.

“In every onboarding call we have with our clients, we pull up the integrations and we ask them to let us know which services they’re using,” says Parrett. “Then, we take the templates from our management account and we push the templates we created into their accounts. We create the connections, set up the monthly reporting, invite the user to the platform and invite them to use the apps.”

It takes minutes and hours, not days, to develop comprehensive reporting systems that underpin the client-agency relationship.

From there, the team can leverage the tool. “Every time we have our monthly reporting call, we talk through each Databoard. That way, they get used to seeing it and understand that’s where we’re going for our metrics.”

Beyond these more detailed monthly check-ins, Parrett’s team schedules snapshots for every single client. Each snapshot links to a Carousel, which streams the clients’ Databoards together into one full visual report. It only takes a few seconds for clients to know how their company is doing, which builds trust and engagement.

3. Extra value and better results for clients

Christopher Parrett emphasizes that, even though clients hire Social Hustle to meet specific goals, his team takes a holistic approach to supporting the company.

Whether clients have questions about physical marketing or even radio, Parrett is available for consulting. He says, “It’s easy to find someone who is good at one task, but there’s really a gap in the market for companies who want to be there to assist and lift in all the ancillary aspects around it.”

The Social Hustle team relies on Databox to provide insight, not just into the agency’s performance, but metrics for the entire company. Parrett emphasizes, “We really work to grow everything, even when they’re coming for one specific thing.”

Databox’s Carousel mode is integral to the holistic approach that sets Social Hustle apart from the competition. “It allows us to give all the information to everyone at once. Whether they’re the marketing team or the email team, I want them to have access to understand the direction that the company is going,” he says.

Social Hustle and Databox become a part of the daily operations of the client, making them both indispensable moving forward. “People don’t want to cancel because they don’t want to lose this reporting hub, where everything they do is connected in a single place. You literally provided a resource and a tool for them to go to for everything,” summarized Parrett.

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