Elliptic, a cyber security FinTech company, has set the global standard for blockchain intelligence. Because of their anonymity, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can provide a haven for criminal activity. Elliptic traces cryptocurrency transactions to identify sources of illicit activity, empowering financial institutions to maintain compliance and law enforcement agencies to solve crimes.

As a relatively new business that had only just begun its U.S. expansion, Elliptic found itself without a dedicated marketing team. Although they were being ably led by their COO Simone Maini, they needed a partner to translate their brand identity into the digital realm. They turned to Beacon Digital Marketing for guidance and support.

Client
Elliptic enables financial institutions and cryptocurrency businesses to manage risk on the blockchain through technology-enabled crypto AML compliance.
Deliverables

CRM Implementation, Website Redesign, CMS Migration from Wordpress to HubSpot, Marketing Automation, Lead Generation, Collateral Design

More challenges than standing out in a crowded marketplace

Bitcoin is a word we’ve all heard a lot over the last year, with everyone from Kodak to Long Island Iced Tea trying to cash in on the boom. A quick glance at AngelList shows there are nearly 2,500 blockchain-adjacent companies currently active, and that number will continue to increase along with Bitcoin’s growing popularity. In such a crowded and competitive environment, how can any company stand out?

The crowded marketplace would present challenges for any company, but Elliptic also faced several additional issues:

  • Challenges with internal adoption of the Salesforce CRM
  • A lack of email or marketing automation tools
  • A WordPress website that was barely marketing-oriented
  • A large number of new service offerings and inbound leads to handle

Elliptic’s COO was naturally juggling a large number of plates in addition to marketing and growth. There was no time for her to learn multiple marketing platforms – she needed to control and monitor Elliptic’s marketing operations from a single pane of glass. Her problem was symptomatic of the entire company – for literally every employee, marketing represented a secondary role. The leadership was also hesitant to hire full-time marketing support until they had properly understood their marketing needs, and the best skills for which to hire.

How did Beacon Digital approach the problem?

Elliptic employees did not have the time to invest in multiple large-scale marketing solutions. Therefore, Beacon’s approach was to tackle one problem holistically.

STEP 1: Create a website that generated increased web traffic

Increasing relevant web traffic that could convert into leads was paramount to measuring our success. As stated, Elliptic wanted to be able to stand out from other blockchain companies and at the same time, as a UK-based company, it was important to comply with the GDPR.

STEP 2: Implement HubSpot Marketing Automation

Having a successful Marketing Automation system setup would help Elliptic nurture their leads, get better intelligence on their marketing channels, and do so in an efficient, low-effort manner. In other words, they needed maximum impact from minimal investment.

STEP 3: Implement the HubSpot CRM

Implementing the HubSpot CRM will help the Elliptic sales team achieve a higher CRM adoption rate. HubSpot has a superior user experience, integrated sales tools like Sequences and Call Tracking, as well as visual drag-and-drop deal pipelines. Which resulted in a fourth, often overlooked, but just as important, step:

STEP 4: Align marketing and sales

To make sure that both marketing and sales were aligned and had access to the same intelligence.

With Beacon Digital’s track record, we were a natural fit for Elliptic – we specialize in working with cyber security and risk management companies. With our extensive experience in HubSpot’s CRM, Automation, and CMS platforms, we could also devise a solution that would let Elliptic make the most of their limited bandwidth.

Implementing "growth-driven design" to achieve outstanding inbound success

Growth-Driven Design is a method of rapidly iterating a customer website until it attracts more qualified leads. Beacon Digital helps clients identify and describe their ideal customers, why they are searching for the client’s product or services online, how to convert new website prospects to a lead on their website, and how to keep them on the website to add additional value.

Growth-Driven-Design also focuses on achieving quick wins first. While a wish list for a website might include 100 or more pages, we start with the core pages, and, as users begin visiting the site, we use the data to refine what they liked and drop what they did not. This process of continuous improvement lets us refine the website for more success than traditional design initiatives, while also generating valuable data for sales, marketing, and service.

For Elliptic, we created new copy to articulate their solution and attract their core customers, with embedded contact forms to facilitate bottom-funnel lead collection. These forms were connected directly with HubSpot workflows for immediate triage/routing based on their responses.

In addition, we were able to:

  • Implement an on- and off-page keyword strategy.
  • Create an improved blog, which showcased more content to improve time-on-site. We also allowed customers to subscribe with just an email address.
  • Place HubSpot Lead Flows – simple calls to action with only a few form fields – throughout the blog to help drive visitors further down the buyer journey.
  • Create an analysis section of the website to host gated research reports and capture mid- and top-funnel contacts.

For the marketing automation and CRM implementation, we laid out a three-month timeline of implementation projects, including email template designs, landing page designs, form implementation, list and segmentation building, GDPR compliance, and team training sessions to ensure the Elliptic team gained full understanding of the systems. We started the design and development process in February 2018 and went live with the site in April 2018 – with the majority of HubSpot onboarding completed by then as well.

Reaping the rewards of iterative design

Beacon Digital’s work with Elliptic had both immediate and long-term effects. Right away, we saw more adoption and uptake of the HubSpot CRM system than we’d ever seen with Salesforce. The management team could look at revenue attribution within a single dashboard that highlighted the most important interactions within a given opportunity.

In addition, the Elliptic website experienced impressive growth. Organic site visits increased 30% since the three month time-frame just prior to launch. The team went from having 3-5 website form inquiries per month to over 100 – and about 50% represent inbound client inquiries.

Lastly, we saw that organic search traffic generated 10 new opportunities in the month of May, and 9 in the first half of June. Previously, Elliptic saw an average of only one opportunity generated from website traffic per month.

Before working with Beacon Digital, Elliptic found themselves without the bandwidth to enforce CRM adoption, analyze customer data, or refine their website. With Beacon Digital’s help, they were able to transform their website into a machine that generates opportunities from organic search traffic. In the meantime, they were able to gain the team’s confidence to adopt the new CRM, gain valuable insights on their sales and marketing interactions, and even improve their search rankings.

Although it’s difficult to stand out in a crowded marketplace full of blockchain startups, Beacon Digital was able to leverage Elliptic’s distinctiveness in order to help them create high-quality, high-converting content.