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How the HubSpot Marketing Hub and CRM platform transformed a heritage business' marketing strategy

3 mins read

South Retford. A place famed for its industrial past and a town once home to numerous furniture manufacturers, working mostly with pine. You’d never guess the factory - where the expert craftsmen have used time-honoured techniques to handcraft bespoke, high-quality beds and furniture since 1983 - is tucked away in a tight, terraced street.

Not much has changed, except there aren’t many furniture manufacturers left in the area. Yet Revival Beds still stands tall in a world that continues to become more digital. Why? The dedication and products speak for themselves. Everything that leaves the factory is built to last the test of time.

And now, their inbound marketing strategy is too.

The challenge

Revival Beds’ Director, Adrian Leary, knew almost three years ago it was time for a change. The business understood the way customers do research now and make up their minds because of the internet. Adrian was convinced by a talk from Rikki that HubSpot was the CRM they needed and Digital 22 was the perfect agency to manage it all.

But they’re also not an eCommerce website. Unlike many businesses, they couldn’t shut up shop and switch everything online to survive when the pandemic hit. The majority of their marketing was reliant on inviting customers to the showroom to see the craftsmanship first-hand.

But all of that changed when the world went into lockdown and visitors couldn’t experience the coveted Revival bed in person.

They also had to find the balance of staying true to their values while becoming more modern, adopting inbound marketing, and letting customers come to them.

Their marketing efforts were also very traditional. If the business was to go all-in on inbound, it also meant utilising the Marketing Hub and accelerating marketing efforts across several channels.

""What I wanted was a leading CRM and a leading marketing agency who could manage that for me"

However, this meant the company had to combine new digital methods with their traditional efforts without compromising its heritage.

The solutions

Adopting HubSpot several years ago meant the coronavirus pandemic didn’t impact Revival Beds as much as it did other businesses, despite not being an eCommerce business. With most people staying home, consumers were flocking online to make their next home improvement purchase. If they were to remain at home for an unknown period, they wanted to make sure it was in comfort. 

March 2021 has seen an excellent Year on Year performance (vs Mar 2020).

  • Organic traffic up +113.4% from 4069 in Mar 2020 to 8686 in Mar 2021
  • Request brochure successes up +147% from 53 in March 2020
  • Enquiries up +361.5% from 52 in March 2020

pasted image 0-1-1You can see the dip in March 2020 when the UK went into lockdown. But Revival Beds have bounced back and gained more sessions than ever before.

In fact, without HubSpot, they admit the business would have had to cease trading during lockdown, as with no CRM and relevant Hubs, there would have been no way for staff to work remotely.

All the content pieces you’ve been doing and the downloads, it’s given people all this information that we didn’t have before so it makes them confident to say, “I’ll place an order with a deposit.” So we’ve seen no negatives.

Utilising traditional aspects such as brochures and samples playing a big role, they’ve maintained the aspects that hold great value. From the product aspect, they also continue to innovate with new technology and equipment.

They’re now in a place where they’ve combined traditional and digital methods, providing people with tangible brochures but also an online version.

But what really transformed Revival Beds’ marketing efforts were the addition of regular, creative blogs, an effective email marketing strategy and following a well-crafted social media plan. For the blogs, it was never about constantly pushing Revival Beds’ products and trying to force sales.

Instead, it’s all been educational and offering readers genuine value in the form of inspiration. It’s the educational content that has proven to be most successful in delivering success for Revival.

revival beds blog post viewsInbound traffic in action.

revival beds blog growthRevival Beds' best-performing content is all educational.

The success is down to keyword research - being tactical about what we target for and maintaining consistency across all content. There isn’t a sales approach to any content. Instead, it’s all highly visual and offers value, providing actionable advice and tips which readers can utilise right away.

With nearly 10 campaigns in the bag, we’ve managed to create content for all stages of the buyer’s journey, which helps nurture leads and builds the brand as an industry leader. They’re now at a stage where they can effectively lead gen organically. This also means they no longer need to advertise in magazines and as the content is evergreen, they’ve managed to maintain a high level of leads throughout lockdown.

During the shift to inbound marketing, a big win was they could switch off their PPC as the organic traffic is carrying everything, meaning PPC no longer needs a budget, saving £15,000-£20,000 per month.

With a lack of insight into their PPC campaign success, it impacted organic traffic, especially since there was no strategy behind the campaigns set by their PPC agency. Thanks to our insights, they could be more targeted in the future if they were to revisit PPC. You can see below this has been successful as the small amount of PPC they did at the end of 2020/start of 2021 complemented the other channels, rather than competing with them

revival beds ppc sessionsSession by source to date shows us switching off PPC

Email marketing has also been a powerful tool. The stats below from their most recent campaign show nearly a 40% open rate and a CTR close to 12%.

Screenshot 2021-03-26 at 09.46.34Revival Beds’ open and CTR rates.

Engagement has also been on the rise. We managed to generate 265 downloads and counting on one content piece through email alone. The success was down to regular A/B testing that was trialled. We put a big emphasis on email templates, subject lines and CTA placement. 

We also made the emails more visual for Revival Beds, cutting down on copy and putting the beds and furniture’s aesthetics under the microscope. You can see below the effect this has had over the past year.

revival beds email statsRevival Beds’ previous year stats

What’s great to see is Revival’s figures are much higher than industry averages.

Retail open rate: 12.6%

Retail CTR: 1.10%

Revival open rate: 39.2%

Revival CTR: 11.8%

With the use of HubSpot’s Marketing Hub, Revival Beds not only have a robust strategy in place now, but our combined efforts and expertise means they will continue to grow better in the future. HubSpot_ImpactAwards_2021_GBMarketing2

We managed to score another Impact Award too, with our client success story securing the Marketing Enablement 2021 top spot for EMEA!

Revival Beds’ marketing efforts aren't all we’ve transformed for them…

Going all-in on inbound several years ago meant we could utilise the full HubSpot CRM to help Revival Beds grow. Their marketing strategy is now built to last, and so is their sales process. Hit the button below to see how we’ve modernised Revival Beds’ entire sales process using HubSpot.