Meghan is the VP of Marketing and Suralink. When she joined Surlaink they were beginning to implement Hubspot but their system was held together with Duct Tape and Bubble Gum. She was the CRM Admin because she didn't have any resources to help her.
Meghan and her team suspected they were doing the right things but they had no clear visibility into what was actually working for them or not.
The company went through a financial transaction and the new owners wanted to see data that showed how the company was actually doing.
The current state of Suralink's Hubspot produced bad data and provided a poor customer experience. The system was not reliable.
They could not show the investors the data they wanted to see and did not have the data they needed to make good decisions for the business
So Meghan decided to see if she could get some expert help.
Meghan decided to enlist Optiqs.
Optiqs began working with Suralink to understand the current go-to-market systems and realized that Suralink needed to have its foundation rebuilt.
Optiqs Identified 3 core functions that needed to be fixed:
Lifecycle Stage definitions were loose and needed to be standardized.
Lead Management was chaotic. It needed to be rebuilt ensuring leads were routed to the right place rep the right data.
Attribution was non existent. They attended a lot of in person events and they needed to unlock visibility into how these were performing.
In 6 months Optiqs rebuilt the infrastructure from the ground up.
Lifecycle definitions were standardized with agreed upon definitions by all the Go To Market teams.
Lead Management was rebuilt with reliable order of operations.
Custom attribution was built unlocking visibility into the impact of in person events.
With the right foundation in place the C-suite and Board now had confidence in their data. They were able to make better decisions and could now actually forecast. Which wasn't possible before Optiqs.
MEGHAN: Getting Attribution at events was "Really sketchy." There wasn't a clear process to account for the event leads that Suralink was working. It would take the team hours sometimes days to ensure that the lists had the data they needed to upload into Hubspot. When they uploaded to HubSpot it wasn't attributing to anything important or meaningful.
List uploads that used to take 2-3 hours per event now only take 15 minutes.
It used to take Meghan 3-4 weeks to pull numbers for the board. With the infrastructure and reporting Optiqs built for Suralink, it now takes less than half a day. "Most of that on formatting slides."
With the help of Optiqs, Suralink ripped off the duct tape, threw away the bubble gum and could now realize the value of their investment by gaining visibility into how the business was running.
MEGHAN: "So I think as a marketing leader, it has become more critical than ever to understand and be able to prove the value of your marketing programs and Optiqs has helped us do that.
JON: When was it that you realized that Optiqs was working for you:
MEGHAN: "Yeah, so it was actually probably about, oh gosh, six, nine months ago, like halfway, that halfway point where we had put all that work into the infrastructure and the systems.
We're starting to see the fruits of our collective labor as it were. I was working with our VP of finance. He's an amazing person, very numbers-driven. We worked together very closely, on slides for the board deck. And, he was asking me for these numbers.
Instead of having to spend my entire night or my entire weekend, trying to go pull numbers I went to a dashboard that Optiqs had built for me,and pulled them in three minutes. I sent them over to him and he was like this makes sense this is exactly what I was looking for. The board is going to be so happy and it was like the first time I was like finally You know, the year and a half before that, without any operational help at all.
And it was this moment of everything coming together to give us that holistic view of our data and our marketing programs. I didn't have to pull board numbers while watching my nightly shows."
MEGHAN: "Because of the work that Optiqs did for Surlalinks marketing team, they were able to show the efficiency of their marketing dollars and get more budget to pour into marketing. They've been able to see the return of their marketing dollars and where they are sourcing their deals. That enabled the team to get more budget in a time when most marketing budgets were getting slashed."
Another benefit is that Optiqs has been able to help connect the Go To Market teams and provide better data for all 3 teams, Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success.
MEGHAN: Get an expert and get it quickly, get it early...
If you wait too long, you will end up in a place that you do not want to be. So bite the bullet, get out there, find an expert, and have them help you.
A lot of things in marketing you can muddle through. You can say, I can learn how to write a blog post, or I can do some AB testing on some digital ads, or I can fiddle around with some messaging.
Operations is not that way you really need to know what you're doing, otherwise, you'll be in a constant cycle of redoing and it can honestly impact your reputation in the company if you can't prove the value of what you're providing, especially as a marketer.
So just do it. It's worth it. It's worth every penny. It might seem expensive, but it will absolutely pay off in the long run.
MEGHAN: "I guess I'll just address it directly. I worked with a lot of operational people throughout my career, and John and Voltage are the best.
They have absolutely transformed our marketing department and our business, and you would be making a mistake if you didn't bring them on.
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