JumpCrew is a Nashville-based vendor whose platform enables clients to drive up revenue by bringing together lead generation and sales execution. Today, they announced they are opening a Denver “tech center,” and using new investment funds to launch an ad-sales product. (They also have offices in New York, San Diego and Kentucky.) The company has also recently hired a chief technology officer, Dave Elchoness, formerly the SVP, Product and Technology at MediaNews Group.
JumpCrew’s clients include Experian and Unilever. To date, they’ve acquired a portfolio of over 200 niche digital and print titles.
JumpCrew co-founder David Pachter specializes in retooling sales operations for publishers. Over the last two years, a partnership between JumpCrew and Marcoa Media, a specialty military publisher, blossomed to the point where, due to all the progress made at the publisher, JumpCrew decided to acquire Marcoa.
According to JumpCrew’s CMO, Lavall Chichester, the game plan for digital transformation wasn’t exactly the same with Marcoa since it produces print magazines.
“David has a sales background and built and sold a local marketing company called LocalVox,” Lavall explained. “During that time he learned about the power of local marketing and built a sales team that was leveraged to acquire new clients. Fast forward to JumpCrew, this experience made transforming Marcoa a no-brainer. While the playbook was not exactly the same because Marcoa prints magazines, the integration of a sales team and a stronger digital offering helped grow the business.”
One of the main properties for Marcoa is MyBaseGuide.com, a directory and source of news for military bases throughout the U.S. armed forces.
Mike McMaster, VP of Lead Generation for Marcoa Media, says the brand voice “has changed over time and is still evolving.” Currently, the publisher is executing webinars, exclusive content and giveaways in recognition of Military Appreciation Month.
“Historically MyBaseGuide’s brand voice takes on more of a serious tone but is also motivational and empathetic, with a touch of humor at times,” said McMaster. “Our goal is to inform our readers of news from military bases, share knowledge and create educational content that informs and delights our audience. This creates a sense of trust and bonds users with the MyBaseGuide properties and community. The result is people revisiting our websites, apps, social communities and our printed publications.”
Initially, Marcoa Media came to JumpCrew to expand its sales force and update its digital marketing. Social media and email campaigns grew brand awareness, and these channels then were used to nurture tens of thousands of company prospects through the sales funnel. JumpCrew then developed landing pages, paid search campaigns and other multi-channel strategies to generate new leads.
An automated email series, or “drip series,” triggered by specific actions taken by prospects, allowed the Marcoa sales team to build a connection with fresh leads. They also used Facebook as a key platform for retargeting.
Lavall Chichester stated, “The retargeting worked in two ways. First, we generated leads from potential users similar to MyBaseGuide’s existing audience by using current customer profiles to create a look-alike audience that we put ads in front of. Second, we used retargeting to reconnect with people that visited the website to remind them about the MyBaseGuide brand and the content that they were interested in when they last visited the website. This helps people reengage with the site and our advertisers after they’ve closed out of the browser window.”
These strategies resulted in Marcoa Media seeing a 54 percent increase in lead volume in a year’s time. Efficiency also increased, bringing down the cost per lead by 59 percent. In just six months, the sales team grew from six dedicated reps up to 30. And since April 2018, over 200 new deals have been closed, per month, which equated to a 100 percent year-over-year boost.
“JumpCrew helped Marcoa streamline its operation, redesign their MyBaseGuide website, improve their digital offering and drive quality leads using Facebook marketing,” said Chichester. “This helped more than triple the company revenue and maintain a pipeline of both new and renewal business.”
Mike McMaster asserted that “everything is moving in the right direction.” He added, “all of the major KPIs have improved. People spent more time on MyBaseGuide.com and engagement with our published and social content increased. We’re data-driven people and are always looking at the numbers to improve the user experience of our on-and-offline properties. Also, during the optimization phase we launched business development campaigns to help support the Marcoa sales team [which has] contributed to bringing on thousands of new advertisers.”
