Agencies play a pivotal role in helping clients achieve their objectives and goals. From boosting revenue to exploring new marketing opportunities, agencies help bridge gaps in expertise and resources to help their clients thrive. However, even the most promising partnerships can face challenges, as client retention and churn reduction become critical measures of success.
In this blog, we dive into the key findings from our discussion with Brian Yanks, Chief Operating Officer at Convert It Marketing, Maddy Martin, Senior Vice President of Growth at Smith.ai, and Chris Nelson, Senior Manager of Vertical Marketing at CallRail. We’ll discuss how Convert It Marketing identified a gap in its strategy and how the Smith.ai and CallRail integration helped prove its value to clients and reduce churn.
Why clients choose agencies
At its core, the client-agency partnership is a business relationship. Clients rely on agencies for their expertise to help fill gaps in marketing, personnel, and talent.
In turn, the agency empowers its clients to achieve even their loftiest goals, including:
- Growing revenue through strategic marketing initiatives
- Exploring new areas of marketing developments and opportunities
- Filling gaps in marketing expertise
- Delivering cost savings compared to in-house staffing
How to drive client retention
Just like any great business relationship, trust is the cornerstone of a thriving client-agency partnership. To establish that trust and drive agency client retention, focus on three pivotal factors:
1. Responsiveness - Are you as an agency responsive to client needs? Communication is absolutely key here.
2. Responsibility - Do you own what you have agreed to own? Are you delivering it? Aligning expectations and accountability ensures a smoother journey toward goals. Taking ownership even when the results aren’t where you and the client want them to be goes even further.
3. Results - Are you delivering results? Know the data and dive into it in order to help refine your strategy.
Let’s look at how Convert It Marketing used the CallRail + Smith.ai integration to help reduce client churn.
Case study: How Convert It Marketing identified a gap
Problem
Convert It was experiencing churn on its high-performing accounts even though it produced high-quality, lower-funnel leads for its clients. Their clients had trouble closing leads which created a tenuous relationship for Convert It.
Assessment
Using CallRail Marketing Analytics, Convert It identified that client accounts were missing many phone calls during business hours. After analyzing nearly 150,000 inbound phone calls (leads) over a 12-month period, Convert It determined that 33% of inbound calls were missed. Through countless conversations and surveys with its clients, Convert It found that clients were waiting hours and sometimes even a day or more to respond to web inquiries.
Solution
Knowing that clients could not staff or scale their intake teams, it was critical to make sure phone call leads were answered, and that web forms were properly engaged. Convert It developed a script to engage leads based on the area of practice they were calling about. They also implemented a three-part text/email drip campaign to engage any prospects immediately. Convert It also tested three call answering services. After one year and about 10,000 intakes, they landed on Smith.ai and migrated 100% of their client's information.
Results
Over the past two years, client churn on Convert It’s lead gen product has reduced by nearly 50%. A significant portion of this improvement is attributed to Convert It’s intake and automation product.
Close leads effectively
With the CallRail + Smith.ai integration, you can position your agency as an indispensable partner in your client's journey toward lead conversion success. CallRail helps you identify the marketing campaigns that are driving conversions for your clients and the ones that aren’t. Additionally, with Smith.ai, you can enhance the efficiency and responsiveness of your agency operations with virtual receptionists.
Watch the full webinar on-demand here.
