Alabama Sawyer mills and dries urban lumber to design and create beautiful, one-of-a-kind furniture and wood products. When HubSpot proved to be an ill-fit solution, they began their search for a small business marketing automation tool that was just right. Enter: BenchmarkONE.
BenchmarkONE provides Alabama Sawyer with a simple, intuitive email marketing and CRM tool without unnecessary features to fit their budget.
BenchmarkONE serves as an educational resource on nurturing B2B prospects and gives Leigh the push she needs to capitalize on new opportunities.
Automation is her secret weapon for passive income.
As head of operations, Leigh has her hands in both the business and design sides of Alabama Sawyer. She doesn’t have extra time to learn complicated software features, read tutorials, or watch lengthy videos on marketing processes.
She was using Hubspot’s free tools but found that even with a robust feature set, she was still unable to find the tools she needed to accelerate her marketing efforts with her B2B audience of interior designers. And if she were to increase her plan, she would be spending far beyond her budget. It was just too much for her small operation to invest without immediate, substantial return.
Leigh was looking to find something that wouldn’t require excess money and time to get up to speed. And she needed a solution that offered more than just a newsletter to engage her prospects. This is what led her to try BenchmarkONE.
Leigh loves BenchmarkONE because it is easy to follow up on deals and facilitate communication with important contacts outside of traditional email newsletters. BenchmarkONE essentially tells her what to do to better engage her leads, which takes out a lot of the guesswork that she doesn’t have the time for. “It’s helped me break the seal,” Leigh says. All she needed was that small push in the right direction.
Putting on her sales hat, Leigh appreciates the ability to “automate and build my sales pipeline for cold and warm leads.” BenchmarkONE has given her that initial process she needed to keep cultivating those relationships. Before, she wasn’t using software that empowered her to focus on lead building. Now, she has an ongoing task on her to-do list in BenchmarkONE that holds her accountable by reminding her to find five new people to add to her outreach campaigns.
She creates and sends B2B newsletters and email campaigns that provide her important contacts with ongoing nurturing and information.
When a contact indicates that they’re interested in engaging with Alabama Sawyer, a deal is created in BenchmarkONE’s sales pipeline.
She regularly checks the deals feature to keep a close eye on how her sales pipeline is looking.
She creates and automates tasks to stay on top of follow-up, lead generation, and remind herself to follow new prospects on Instagram.
She tags her contacts based on who they are and the industry they’re in. If they’re trade but not in her trade program, she’s able to send them a personalized email dedicated to her trade contacts.
Leigh sees more traffic on her website, and website sales are up as a direct result. There’s also been an increase in proposals, which is always nice, especially in typically slower months. A more indirect indication of success is that some of the prospects she contacts through her BenchmarkONE outreach end up making purchases, they just do so through another channel.
Leigh’s biggest “aha!” moment? Seeing wholesale orders come in from a campaign that she otherwise never would have sent had she not had BenchmarkONE.
As of late, Alabama Sawyer’s business has shifted from big projects, like office space and restaurant projects, to smaller, more residential orders. Leigh saw this trend and realized that if Alabama Sawyer’s products are popular among residential customers, she could probably engage wholesalers for bulk-selling opportunities. She designed a campaign geared towards her list of sixty-five wholesale prospects and made three sales. She would never have solicited these prospects without BenchmarkONE.
Leigh loves that with BenchmarkONE, you have the opportunity to work one-on-one with a CRM expert to help you get acclimated. Other tools are far too expensive, and there’s a ton of confusion that comes with learning how and what you’ll end up using. BenchmarkONE is simple to use, cost-effective, and straightforward. Our integrations with various tools she uses, like Shopify and Xero, make operating other important functions within her business that much simpler.
Leigh Spencer, co-founder with her husband, Cliff, was a graphic designer for years and always interested in the environmental aspect of design. By taking discarded trees, they give them a second life and turn them into unique and functional home pieces.
From a design perspective, working with discarded urban wood is challenging. No piece is perfect or similar, but the results are distinctive and set Alabama Sawyer apart from other traditional furniture and home goods builders.
Meet Alabama Sawyer
About Leigh Spencer
In a Nutshell
A Better Small Solution
Tools That Empower Small Business
The Results
Why Other Small Businesses Should Consider BenchmarkONE