LeadMD Case Study

Stratus Payments

Start to Finish

Stratus Payments offers a payment processing software solution for billing based businesses. Stratus offers a rich integration model, exceptional functionality with no extra costs, and pricing that’s easy to understand. The problem is, they are a spin-off from a very tradoitional business. So how dis Stratus make the light-speed jump to Marketing Automation without faltering or and maintaining a small staff? LeadMD helped them build a buisness, on a foundation of great marketing.

Payment Solutions

TM

SUMMARY:

Stratus Payments offers a payment processing software solution for businesses. Stratus integrates with the popular receivables software and helps companies meet PCI compliance standards for online credit card processing. Stratus offers a rich integration model, exceptional functionality with no extra costs, and pricing that’s easy to understand. The company has been helping its clients make more money with secure payment channels, while doing less work since 1998.

CHALLENGE:

Stratus Payment is a fast-growth Web 2.0 company that emerged from parent company WSW Holding and NCAN Services. Prior to spinning off into it’s own entity, Stratus Payments did not have marketing automation in place and very little online marketing. The company knew that in order to penetrate the crowded online payments industry, a robust marketing program was needed. The company purchased Marketo’s Marketing Automation Software, and hired LeadMD to implement and manage the campaign. Change was their goal. Stratus wanted to forego the long branding cycle and mass marketing strategies they had taken with WSW/NCAN and embrace a more solution-based message. LeadMD was tasked with everything from brand creation, to placement, to marketing strategy, to execution.

“We really didn’t know where to start but we knew that nurture marketing was going to be the core of our customer acquisition. After careful review of every technology out there, we decided that Marketo was the right fit for us, and LeadMD was going to be our outsourced marketing team. Handing over this hefty piece to LeadMD allowed me and my team to focus on the product and business development relationships,” said company President, David Worton.

LeadMD Helps Stratus Build a Marketing Machine that Churns Out Results

"After careful review of every technology out there, we decided that Marketo was the right fit for us, and LeadMD was going to be our outsourced marketing team."

SOLUTION:

LeadMD started working with Stratus Payments in June 2010. LeadMD took a bottom up approach, starting with a market analysis SWOT. Then they researched competing solutions in the market place. With this competitive analysts, LeadMD was able to suggest positioning and partner strategies that allowed Stratus to leapfrog many of the typical time-to-market challenges prevalent in the merchant processing space. No one in the payments space was focusing heavily on the online channel. LeadMD decided to capitalize on that area and that meant data – segmenting the industry contacts that Stratus had acquired over 15 years through it’s sister businesses.

“There was a lot of data to comb through and prepare so that it was truly ready for a robust marketing campaign. We used an append strategy by first cleansing the Stratus database and then mashing that data up against several sources to form a more complete profile,” says LeadMD CEO, Justin Gray. “From there it was key to apply the personas we helped Stratus develop and segment again on those buyer types. It allowed Stratus to see some of the best response metrics we have seen in terms of nurture opt in. It was a big win for them.”

LeadMD built buyer personas from their findings and secured a name and URL for the company. Based around those personas, LeadMD also built the company logo and began copywriting Web text, and assembling a persuasion architecture that communicated with the buyer. In just over 60 days LeadMD had assisted Stratus in forming and implementing a consistent brand image and online marketing presence.

“Getting a new company off the ground takes more work that anyone could ever imagine going into it. Knowing that LeadMD was implementing our entire marketing automation program from start to finish, and then handling all of the execution, was a relief I can’t even describe," says Worton. "They moved at an incredibly fast but efficient pace and every piece of the project was executed on flawlessly. I knew even at this stage that once the program was underway we’d see the leads and customer acquisition we wanted”

“They moved at an incredibly fast but efficient pace

and every piece of the project was executed

on flawlessly. I knew even at this

stage that once the program was

underway we’d see the leads

and customer acquisition we

wanted”

At this point LMD began building the Stratus marketing automation infrastructure around the content they has created as part of the website build. Using Marketo as a platform to implement lead scoring, nurturing and lead management programs were integrated with salesforce.com. Bridging the gap between Stratus sales and marketing was all Phase I. Within 120 days from inception, Stratus Payments was a fully functioning business with a strong lead funnel structure.

RESULTS:

LeadMD accomplished a remarkable return on marketing automation investment in one quarter. The results are as follows.

+ 450 new leads added to the funnel each month+ More than 100 qualified leads are passed to sales each month+ 85% conversion into sales pipeline+ 30-40 deals closed per month+ Average sales deal size equals $3,400 monthly recurring revenue+ Average sales cycle is 60 days+ 35% of deals come from lead nurturing + Nurtured deals average 140 days in cycle, but produce 20% more revenue than standard cycle deals

SO WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

+ Stratus has grown by 520% since implementing the program+ Cost of Goods Sold expenses of less than 20% of Gross Revenue.+ Profitable in first year+ 320% ROI in relation to marketing automation spend in first 120 days

The most remarkable thing about this program is that all sales are being managed by a two-person sales team. LeadMD is currently helping Stratus Payments maintain their marketing automation program to ensure it keeps turning results like this. They are also helping Stratus market to new verticals.

Worton closes in saying, “Stratus Payments simply would not have seen this kind of success if it were not for LeadMD. They continue to act as our outsourced marketing team and the growth we see week over week is more than we could have hoped or anticipated. LeadMD will continue to be a part of our team for a long time.”

About Stratus PaymentsFully Integrated Billing & Payments by Stratus Payments change the way billers receive and apply payments. Because Stratus payment integrations have been designed to be as simple as possible, a very small amount of development will result in sizable benefits. You will be able to accept electronic check payments and credit card payments, greatly reducing payment-funding times. For more information on Stratus solutions, visit www.stratuspay.com

About LeadMDLeadMD is a conversational marketing services firm specializing on organic lead generation. Headquartered in Phoenix, LeadMD helps companies fix their funnel by leveraging cutting edge sales and marketing technology to produce quantifiable revenue based results www.LeadMD.com.