Customer Case Study: Sprout.ai

Key results in just 6 months:

• Marketing audit and strategy delivered in 11 days
• Website overhaul and brand update led to a 33% increase in traffic and 250% increase in marketing lead generation.
• Marketing improved the sales pipeline with a 160% increase in demo requests and +12% increase in demo-to-sales qualified leads conversion
• Sprout.ai marketing campaigns were featured in leading publications such as Insurance Times and CityAM.

Sprout.ai is a Series A insure-tech SaaS start-up providing end-to-end claims automation technology to the insurance industry with clients including Zurich UK and AdvanceCare, part of the Generali Group.

The average time it takes for insurers to process claims is around 30 days. Sprout.ai innovative solution reduces the claims process time from 30 days to near real-time using intelligent AI and automation. Sprout’s technology delivers fast and accurate decisions and exceptional claims experiences, driving high customer retention with improved efficiency.

The Challenge

The leadership team at Sprout.ai wanted to invest in marketing as they knew it would be vital to support the business growth so they were looking for a full-time hire to run the marketing function but knew they needed more immediate support in the interim.

The team at Sprout.ai wanted strategic marketing direction as well as execution services. They were looking for someone who could get to know their business quickly, review existing marketing channels and provide them with a holistic marketing strategy. But not just provide the strategy and go, like other consultancy but someone who could also start executing on this whilst they found the perfect full-marketer to join their team.

What happened

Sprout.ai brought Louise Read, Founder of Codi on board. Codi specialise in providing fractional CMO services and marketing execution services.

Through an extensive marketing audit across all existing channels as well as a competitive and marketing review, Codi identified three key areas to support Sprout.ai grow:

1. Brand awareness – Sprout.ai was in a unique position in that their clients were problem aware. Leading insures know they needed a solution like Sprout.ai. However, due to the relatively early nurture of the start-up potential clients weren’t necessarily aware of the brand. This meant that one key challenge was raising brand awareness and establishing Sprout.ai as a leader in claims automation.
2. Prospect Experience – Sprout.ai provides a very sophisticated solution that attracts globally recognised insurance providers and executive leaders. Despite this, marketing programmes such as top-of-funnel capture and nurture experiences hadn’t been set up in order to provide a first-touch experience that reflected the sophistication or the solution, their buyers and the level of investment required.
3. Systems and processes – In order to accurately report on the impact marketing was having on demo requests and more importantly ARR, systems and processes needed to be set up that enabled effective tracking, optimisation and reporting.

What did we do?

At Codi all our SaaS marketing projects start with a marketing audit. The audit process allows us to get under the hood of a SaaS business, going through channel by channel to identify what’s working, where challenges lie and identify opportunities. The audit process also delves into the market, competitive landscape, personas and a business’s value proposition.

Using the findings we were able to benchmark Sprout.ai marketing activities against industry standards to identify where they were excelling and establish further opportunities for growth.

Codi delivered a full marketing audit and strategy in just 11 days, presented to the leadership team and subsequently the rest of the business.

What did we do?

Once we had buy-in from the senior leadership on the marketing approach, Codi set to work to execute against the plan.

To increase brand awareness, we took a two-pronged approach. The marketing audit had identified opportunities to make improvements to the website that in turn would improve traffic to the site and inbound enquires. This led to a website overhaul with updated messaging and a complete brand refresh. The new site was optimised for SEO, to capture leads, and for demo requests.

At the same time, we established a regular content calendar that included blogs, guides, customer stories, SEO-optimised content, quarterly thought leadership pieces, and PR, as well as setting up a monthly newsletter to keep subscribers informed.

With these projects, we were able to increase overall traffic by 33%, with a 50% increase in organic search, 28% increase in direct traffic and an 85% increase in overall conversions on the site. We expected this increase, which is why at the same time we set to work creating nurture automations in Hubspot to take someone from a content download to a demo request. That in turn improved conversation rates from a demo request to an opportunity. More recently we have also added lead and behaviour scoring to identify leads that are approaching the demo stage and deliver timely personalised messaging to help them cross the line.

We also ran various other marketing initiatives including paid media advertising, industry events and quarterly thought leadership programmes featured in leading publications such as Insurance Times and CityAM.

Lastly and most importantly, all this work needed to be brought back to the business goals and how it was supporting ARR growth and building a pipeline for the sales team. The sales team were using Salesforce but the marketing programmes were being run through Hubspot. We integrated the two systems allowing for consistent reporting and working closely with the sales function we determined the sales and marketing funnel stage, identified timeframes for conversion, and set up attribution and a reporting dashboard.

The results

We have loved working with the team at Sprout.ai and we think the feeling is mutual…

“We cannot thank you enough for the work you have achieved with us here at Sprout.ai. It has been nothing short of incredible and has given me a newfound belief in marketing and its true value. In such a short time we have seen our marketing transform and this is having a direct impact on the bottom line.” – VP of Sales, Sprout.ai

“Thank you for all you have done. In a short period, you transformed our marketing through quite a few hefty projects and we already see the results!” CEO, Sprout.ai

In just 6 months of working in close partnership with the VP of Sales and CEO we were able to:

• Increase traffic by 33%
• Increase in Marketing Leads by 250%
• Increase demo requests by 165% (MQLs)
• Increase conversions from Demo to SQLs by 12%

What’s next

We continue to support the team at Sprout.ai, but our aim is to set clients up for success and provide our clients with flexible support. We are working with the team at Sprout.ai to continue delivering marketing programmes whilst also helping them to hire a permanent stellar marketer.

If you are interested in finding out how Codi can support you and your business with a marketing audit and strategy we’d love to talk to you.

Codi provides CMO-level support and execution services working in partnership with sales leaders to devise a strategy for growth.