Case Study: Coverly
Objective: Recently launched InsurTech start-up backed by Bibby Financial Services. When Sarah joined, they had 4 months left to achieve their ambitious acquisition targets in order to secure £4.3m for the next phase of their growth.
The Challenge/Solution: They did not feel they were getting the most out of their agency & were not confident that they would achieve the target volumes, cost of acquisition or average policy value Targets. Jodi brought Sarah on initially on a consultancy basis. Providing strategic and implementation advice & supporting the small marketing team to ensure they achieved their aggressive targets. 12 days a month over a 3 month period. Once Coverly achieved its targets and secured the next round of investment, Sarah continued in a fractional CMO capacity for the next 6 months and then was later persuaded to join them as an employee.
Key highlights:
She hit the ground running, make a number of immediate changes to achieve quick wins and instant results. In multiple areas:
Get more out of the small growth hacking / media agency - Audit & refine marketing strategy, plan & budget. Initial focus on optimising the paid - Social & PPC media plan. To reduce the cost of acquisition & increase conversion to quote & purchase. Sarah introduced weekly acquisition targets, a test & learn process, a move to more targeted trade specific messaging to increase intent, optimised when paid advertising was ON v OFF based data analytics e.g on on lower/higher converting days/times.
Optimise conversion within the funnel - By reducing friction within the funnel. Sarah developed a basic analytics framework to track key steps in the quote process & identifying pages & trades/products with the greatest drop off. By implementing simple UX and copy changes on certain pages we achieved massive increases in conversion.
Product pivots- To achieve business plan targets of acquisition numbers, target average policy value and 5 star trust pilot rating, it’s wasn’t just about creating great advertising campaigns. It involved driving the product development team & underwriting to add/adjust the product detail to that which the customers expected. By deeply knowing the SME customers & getting into the product detail, we were able to deliver a clearer buying experience, backed up by product detail and great customer service. In the first 12 months we used data to help us focus marketing budget and efforts on the highest converting customer segments.
Target customer pivots - to achieve acquisition within the first 6 months. Sarah used data insights to identify prospects/trades that were converting faster (e.g needed immediate insurance e.g. 1st time stall holders and contract/freelance consultants compared to Electricians/Accountants renewing an exsisting policy.
Automation - Implemented Hubspot inbound marketing content strategy to increase organic lead acquisition.
Case study Results:
We exceeded acquisition targets on time & on budget (with changes in targets) & got £4.3m investment round approved. Way in which this was done included achieving
30% reduction in cost of acquisition (CPA) in 1st 3 months & 72% reduction in 1st year.
57% increase in homepage to purchase conversion - 45% higher than competitors. achieving a 5 start trustpilot rating.
78% increase in data capture - intent/enter email from paid advertising to begining the quote process due to better-targeted ads & trade-specific copy/product features.
184% increase in conversion from homepage to policy purchase - due to generating increased intent & reducing the friction within the quote process.
🏅Brand of the Year Award finalist 2020 - Insurance Post. 🏅InsurTech of the Year award finalist 2019 - British Insurance Awards in 1st 12 months.
“Sarah delivered some exceptional results”
/JOdi Cartwright, managing director, coverly/
“Sarah initially joined as a consultant & quickly understood the business and delivered results. She did such a great job I convinced her to go perm. She delivered exceptional results throughout her time at Coverly and was a core part of why we hit all our targets.
What I love about Sarah is her willingness to just roll her sleeves up, figure out where the biggest problems are evaluating where she can add most value, and then she just gets on and sorts them out!
Sarah has a rare and wonderful combination of both a strong visually creative side, and a detailed, data analytics side which are both so valuable in marketing. She tirelessly focused on refining the plan to achieve changing targets and maximise the efficiency of budget and activity. Even if the areas are not her core expertise, she uses her network to find out what she needs to know.
I would not hesitate recommending Sarah.”
see Full recommendation on LinkedIn
Case Study: Social Value Portal (SaaS B2B scale-up)
Objective: Social Value Portal secured £3m series A funding. They needed a marketing strategy to achieve 100% YoY growth over the next 5 years. The Sales cycle had increase during Covid and they wanted to increase conversion from initial Demo to sale before scaling.
Testimonials: .
“Post-funding, we chose Sarah to help us develop our scale-up marketing strategy and implementation roadmap because of her extensive expertise with scaling up, reducing the sales cycle, increasing conversion throughout the funnel, and reducing the cost of acquisition.
Sarah’s strategy and the transformations she led enabled the sales teams to be more effective by identifying leads with greater intent and giving the sales team the tools, automation and insights to:
- Be more effective with their time and focus only on the hotter leads that met our ideal customer profile, letting marketing nurture ones not yet in-market. Data enrichment reducing the research required by sales.
- Reduce our cost of acquisition and the need to buy leads/data by shifting to acquiring inbound Marketing Qualified leads and increasing our SEO ranking.
- transform our data and KPI reporting so I could better monitor my growing team, improve reporting of marketing in board meetings board meetings and support with data requests for funding rounds.
Sarah is easy to work with. She asks the right questions, listens, and quickly finds achievable solutions. Her mix of quick wins and longer-term solutions enabled us to achieve quick incremental gains while balancing the long-term transformations needed.”
Leyoh Goodal, VP of Sales, Social Value Portal, Nov 2024
“It’s rare you come across a talent like Sarah who’s so focused on enabling scale-ups achieve growth.
Initially, we brought Sarah on to develop our 5 year marketing strategy and roadmap post funding and quickly asked her to lead on a number of key initiatives. Having Sarah leading our marketing team was the perfect bridge until we needed a full time version of her 18mths later.
Highlights we will continue to reap the benefits from include the implementation of HubSpot lead scoring, integration with Salesforce, CRM clean-up and an SEO optimised website to generate inbound leads long into the future.
Scale-ups specifically need someone like Sarah as she is so focused on transforming the business by getting the infrastructure in place ready for the exponential growth phase.
I would recommend Sarah to any business looking for strategic guidance on which marketing strategy and activity to focus on to achieve both short and long term growth goals. She has made a significant contribution towards us being able to exceed our YoY growth targets.”
Andrew Low, CRO, Social Value Portal, Sept 2023
Social Value Portal Case study Results:
Achieved growth targets to satisfied investors & secured series B £7.8m within 2 years.
68% YoY growth, 108% target, ARR 62% increase, Business doubled in value in 1 yr.
Identification of 7,000+ MQLs, generation of Av. 63 new inbound MQLs/mth within first 3mths,
Paid media budget reduced by 91% and replaced with 401% increase in Organic Traffic (& higher converting lead generation) in 2 years. Google rank increase from 5th to 2nd position in 18 months.
see Full recommendation on LinkedIn