How Symphonic Digital consolidated their marketing stack using VBOUT

Host: Brooks Van Norman – Success Manager at VBOUT

Client: Steffen Horst – Co-Founder and CEO of Symphonic Digital

1. Can you give us some background on your business, who you serve and what your focus is?

   We are a boutique-style agency. We are very small still, even though we were founded in 2013. We serve small and medium-sized businesses but also agencies. We have a white-labeled part of our business that works with agencies from small to mid-size, whenever they have overflow work that they need to take care of or they have a client that needs something where they don’t have the capacity. We don’t just jump in to execute the task, but we also provide strategic and client support as well. I always tell agencies that work with us that they get everything from execution to a full hands-on service that helps them grow their business.

2. Is there specific geography or vertical that you serve?

   Not really but most of our clients are on the west coast of the US – but if someone comes from New York and says that they need help then we are not going to say no. If it fits and we can help them then I’m happy to bring a team together and see what we can do.

3. What were you guys using before you started working with VBOUT and what were some of your frustrations in that area?

   As a German, I like to make things as affordable as possible. We had looked into systems such as HubSpot and Salesforce. They have a huge price tag that I wasn’t ready to pay and the company wasn’t that big. We were using MailChimp for email and had signed up with just the normal HubSpot free CRM and some other tools. But once we got a bit more into the marketing automation side and saw what we wanted to do, we found that it was going to be difficult to connect these systems to push information from one system to another. Then we started looking at the marketing automation market to see what was available.

4. How did you first hear about VBOUT?

   We started off looking at the biggest companies on the market but they were way out of our price range. From there I went on to look at what other systems were out there and that must’ve been when I came across VBOUT. You guys stood out from the mass and had great reviews with people talking very nicely about you. They were hitting all the points that were important to us as a business.

5. What was the main reason you decided to do business with VBOUT?

   One reason was the price. We looked at how much our previous cobbled together solution was costing, purely as a software cost without even looking at the cost in human resources of maintaining all of the different software. As it turned out, VBOUT cost the same, if not slightly less, than our previous setup, plus VBOUT had many additional features. We really wanted to automate a lot of the things that we did and connect things, including email and landing pages. VBOUT allowed us to do that.

6. The ‘goal scoring’ and customer journey process is quite important for you. How do you hope to use it for you and your clients?

   Once you capture email addresses or on your website, they are usually anonymous but with VBOUT we are able to capture that data and see where the person is in their customer journey because of the pages they view and their behavior. You are left with something tangible to talk about when you reach out to them. Having all of the information about a customer and their journey, all in one system as with VBOUT is very useful for us. It allows me to have a much more targeted conversation once I reach out.

7. How would you describe how it has been working with us so far?

   The onboarding sessions are interesting because they are nicely broken up into the different elements that the platform offers. They show you how everything works and this is great because the setup is usually where things fall apart if you don’t have it right. The other part that I like apart from the onboarding is the support side. It is great because you always have someone who you can meet with and answer questions within five minutes and the people there really know what they are talking about. It is a great reminder that VBOUT is customer-focused.

8. What is the one area where you think you’ve gained the most value with VBOUT so far?

   I think it has helped a lot with our weekly and monthly newsletters and podcasts. Before we were using different systems, with VBOUT we have templates and it is all much easier. We have also gained a lot of value as part of the customer experience, we can now feed customers relevant information based on their behavior rather than just sending out something that is general. We have seen much better results.

9. If somebody is reading this and considering VBOUT, why should they take action now rather than waiting?

   I think each company needs to judge how big is the pain point with the current software and they should let that decide how quickly they move. I always tell people to educate themselves about other systems and find the features that matter to them. But if your company is looking for a solid email system, with lead scoring capabilities, landing pages, automation, and such then I really think people should check out VBOUT and see how it compares. For this, I’d really recommend the VBOUT comparison chart on the website.

10. If somebody reading this wants to find out about you and your business – where can they find you?

    You can find me on Linkedin, check out our website at symphonicdigital.com, or email us at contact@symphonicdigital.com