Agile experimentation achieves 1030% increased engagement, 273 leads and 213% ROI

Agile experimentation & audience development: Bright’s campaign strategy delivers impressive results for a publishing company

The Challenge

A global B2B digital media company specialising in publishing and information sought to enhance brand awareness and drive subscription growth for three of their brands on LinkedIn and Meta platforms. To achieve this, Bright was challenged to create and execute a successful campaign that would elevate brand recognition and bolster subscriptions.

The Solution

Bright identified thought-leadership content as a key driver for lead acquisition, along with influencer engagement within each brand’s vertical. To drive subscriptions for the three brands, Bright implemented a 16-week campaign with 23 ad campaigns, each highlighting a unique topic and presented on a gated page to drive subscriptions.

Employing agile marketing principles and a collaborative team with capability from Bright and the publishing firm. To adopt a test-and-learn approach, Bright collected valuable insights, including audience engagement with native platform gating vs. website gating and preferences for ad creative. Bright’s agile experimentation resulted in four varying creatives per campaign on average, with a focus on audience engagement and development.

The Result

Bright’s tailored and targeted approach to paid media marketing delivered a significant impact by increasing brand awareness and subscriptions for the three brands. The application of a test-and-learn methodology enabled Bright to collect valuable data insights, which informed campaign optimisation efforts. By focusing on resonating with the target audiences, Bright was able to use these insights to achieve optimal campaign results.

The paid media proof of concept campaign, generated:

1,490,724 impressions, resulting in 273 leads.
An ROI of 213% based on the commercial value of acquired subscribers
1 of the brands’ LinkedIn page saw a 1030% increase in clicks YOY
Another of the brands’ LinkedIn page experienced a 737% increase in followers YOY

It has been a pleasure to work with the team at Bright. The outputs generated and performance we’ve seen is incredible. They’ve helped share their expertise and knowledge whilst injecting audience development and agile ways of working to upskill our existing marketing team.
Director of Engagement and Operations

September 28, 2023 Alexandra Jefferies

Exceeding ARR £400k targets with agile marketing approach for SaaS business

An agile marketing approach to SaaS success for Reward Gateway

Reward Gateway, an employee engagement benefits solution provider, aimed to launch a new low-touch, scalable SaaS service for SME customers (Reward Gateway for Small Business known as RG4SB). They partnered with Bright to challenge their traditional campaign format and experiment with social media platforms, tone of voice, content, and incentives to understand how to reach and connect with their known and new audience personas.

Challenge

Reward Gateway needed to take an audience centric approach to define themes and topics that appealed to the SME market, understand where and how existing content could be adapted and explore new marketing methods that could rapidly acquire clients and secure the Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) required to demonstrate success.

The Solution

Bright worked with the RG4SB team to rapidly research and understand the audience personas and implement an experimentation-based approach to test, learn, and optimise activities and processes in short sprint cycles to capitalise on learnings. Bright focused on setting experiments and optimising across social media, inbound marketing, events, nurture flows, high-value content, LinkedIn prospecting and a limited free trial offer. This meant RG4SB could reach the new SME audience and convert them through the sales funnel at each stage of the buyer journey.

The Result

Target ARR of £400,000 and 550 customers exceeded
187 new paying business clients acquired
Individual membership increased by 3,454 (64% increase)

The limited free trial and associated campaign messaging significantly increased traffic and generated qualified leads, resulting in exceeding the target ARR. Combined with the agile marketing strategy implemented by the RG4SB and Bright which drove acquisition and reduced churn.

The approach from Bright has been a complete game-changer for us. We’ve seen growth both in audience engagement and sales. I have no doubt this is down to our new way of thinking and working.
Pippa Van Praagh, Product & Strategy Enablement Director at Reward Gateway

June 27, 2023 Sian Heaphy

Securing new pipeline and over £125k investment within 6 weeks for community platform Zapnito

Securing pipeline and over £125,000 in investment

The challenge

Zapnito needed to build a pipeline of investors to pursue for its seed-round funding while also raising interest and awareness of the company within the investor community. It was also key to build the CEO’s personal network for future brand-building and sales opportunities.

Method

A 6 week agile-lead demand generation campaign established across the UK, US and Europe.
Rapid, iterative approach to optimise key messages and nurture investors towards conversion.
Established audience motivations and analysed the data to curate highly engaging and targeted communications.

Results

28 qualified, opted-in leads who were actively investing
16 new meetings with prospective investors
12 new angel investment groups
£125,000 in confirmed investment after 6 weeks
320 warm contacts within the target criteria
Over 100 positive responses

£125,000

in confirmed investment within 6 weeks

July 8, 2021 Alexandra Jefferies

205 C-suite leaders downloading whitepaper thanks to agile marketing support from Bright

Virtual marketing team for next-level growth

Overview

ECS Digital is a leader in automation and digital transformation. They’ve helped clients such as Walmart, RBS, and Vodafone to deliver software and services faster and at lower cost through the adoption of DevOps and Continuous Delivery practices. We were engaged by ECS Digital for our technological B2B marketing expertise and agile marketing expertise.

ECS Digital are a mid sized consultancy, based near London Bridge. Initially they had no in-house marketing resource. They realised that building credibility and increasing demand around their brand, to achieve their ambitious growth objectives, would require a marketing team with greater knowledge of the technology and B2B environment and the ability to get off to a fast start.

Agile virtual marketing at pace

Bright worked as the virtual marketing team for ECS Digital. This approach gives companies that do not want to invest in headcount nor have the time to wait to complete the recruitment and set up process for an in-house team or want to extend their existing team. Our service provides clients with their own core team supported by other Bright team resources as and when needed.

We like to really get to know our clients, so that we can add as much value as possible to their organisation, through appropriate marketing efforts. As the virtual marketing team for ECS Digital, we became engrained as a part of the team. The core team spent at least a day a week working in the ECS Digital offices. Through this (and a good number of nights out!) we became well-known faces in the ECS Digital offices, and the go-to for marketing needs.

For a business in a fast moving area, marketing is key. With Bright we get a virtual marketing team that brings the right skills at the right time time. The Bright team are part of our team, couldn’t recommend them highly enough!
Andy Cureton, Managing Director

Scaleable outsourced marketing expertise

The early months of working together focused upon lead generation and building credibility amongst senior decision makers. Clear marketing objectives were put in place aligned to the business targets and growth ambitions. The foundations of the ECS Digital marketing managed service are built upon using agile marketing to test, learn and build on success. Blending content creation, social media, email marketing, PPC, website optimisation, with the addition of quarterly campaigns to achieve specific goals.

Website and blog visits hit an all-time high; social portfolio following tripled; and the ECS Digital contact base grew exponentially with top-level business contacts setting the scene for further campaigning and nurture to build pipeline. Since this early engagement Bright has supported ECS Digital set up and transition its marketing function in-house transferring the agile ways of working which have allowed it to adapt and evolve as the business grows.

Senior audience engagement success
Campaign whitepaper downloads by CIOs and CTOs

July 9, 2019 Sian Heaphy