The €300k design
Helping Rushford teams scale their outbound marketing processes by 30% to boost their semi annual revenue 3x
Platform: Rushford CRM Web App
Industry: B2B SaaS, EdTech
Timeline: 8 Weeks
Project Summary
Objective
The Marketing Team at Rushford Business School is generating an average of 90-100 actionable leads a month that results in the inbound revenue of the institution. The results were coming in good number, however the teams were facing a lot of gaps in between their processes. My objective was to conduct a research to help identify these gaps and help the support teams increase their processes to maximize the output.
Impact
After an 8 week long research and implementation journey, we were able to increase the marketing team processes and the sales team processes by 30%. These changes resulted in the support teams being able to contact and convert more leads and thus increasing the semi-annual (Jan-Aug 2024) revenue for the School by 300%. This is an actual number that is compared to the last Semi-Annual report of July-December 2023.
Outcome
The entire project consisted of a thorough audit of the team communication and collaboration interfaces and the entire product fullfilment processes from Lead Gen to Delivery. After the end of an 8 week journey, I was able to deliver a re-designed CRM Leads section, a new Lead Process Board and a full UX report for internal information and decisions.
Introduction
Rushford Business School, headquartered in Lucerne, Switzerland, stands as an institution in the field of business education. Rushford emphasizes learning methodologies that bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and real-world business practices. The whole process of outbound marketing is handled by a dedicated team of sales and marketing associated who with their processes generate a heaping number of actionable leads and potential admissions that in conversion, provide for the revenue of this organization.
In the year 2023, Rushford was in its initial stages or gaining scaling momentum to generate maximum revenue. The teams needed to scale up their processes but there was a series of gaps within the system that needed to be identified in order to enable the whole section of marketing and sales to operate at its maximum potential.
On September 22, we had the first Scrum Meeting. The lead marketing team had a Project Manager and a Sales Executive, who managed these marketing campaigns and processes. In this 60 minute call, we went through the whole process, on how a lead is generated and how the team goes on to analyze, nurture and convert the leads.
They also showed me the features of their existing CRM system and the LMS that was the front end product.
It was eventful, because withing the first 30 minutes I was able to notice a few issues withing this whole lead journey.
Problem
Bad Lead Collection Table UI
The lead table in the CRM was something that resembled a simple columned sheet with a bad UI and low accessibility features. The interactions provided were only to sort in a linear order.
The CRM did not have a filter interaction
It was slowing down the tracking process as the teams had to manually sort through the leads to understand the next action.
The rows did not have accessible tags
The accessibility was low and there were no tags to inform the stage the leads were in.
Sales teams exclusivity
Sales teams did not have any information with respect to the stage the leads were in. There was no way of understanding if the leads had a problem in applying, or if they were bouncing off at a certain stage in the process. This step was crucial for the outreach teams to make sure they were using the right strategies.
Other affected avenues
There was a constant pattern of almost 20% leads dropping off due to late support. There was also a stagnant outreach program that needed to be started but there was not enough efficiency in the lead sorting process to populate a list of cold leads.
Problem Statement
Goals
Increase accessibility within the CRM Table
The idea was to use elements to help the teams understand the leads in the table. Accessible colors, badges, tags and visual hierarchy to improve the experience of the whole table.
Adding a process tracker
In addition to the accessibility changes, the teams needed a way to understand where the lead was, within the process. There were use cases like, applied, submitted the form, paid the fees etc.
Increase the outbound marketing overall
These changes were all in favor of one important goal, that was, to increase the outbound marketing process. This was key to make sure more leads are attended to and there after converted.
Design a process board
There needed to be a process tracker in the CRM to help the sales teams track their next process with accordance to the state of the lead in the sales process.
Early Ideation
Using the WCAG to increase Accessibility
The need to navigate through a lead table there needs to be accessible hierarchy between elements and the important or highlighted ekements need to stand out and be easy to analyze.
Adding a drop down information section to every row
There is a need for a process tracker. It will include the sales teams in the process and inform them about the stage the leads are on.
Adding interactions
Support interactions such as filters and export options would help the teams navigate the data and also utilize it for other external processes in their routine. The bulk action was also on the cards otherwise there would a lot of time lost to individually sort through each row.
Kanban Boards
The Kan-Ban board style process board to add and attend to the leads. The idea came into my head from a similar board used at Trello and Notion.
Initial Wireframes
Component Designs
Final UI
Impact by numbers
Team Efficiency up
increase in process
Increased lead conversion
increment in conversions
Outbound marketing doubled
Campaign Emails sent
Reduced lead drop off
decrease in lead opt-outs
Revenue up
revenue generated semi-annually (2024)
Increased ROI
increased ROI than the last report
Conclusion
Continue to convert leads that are collected
The next action was to After launching, we saw that our metrics still show a large increment in the conversion processes. This is due to many of our leads who were dropping off in the middle due to support issues were receiving the right responses. The share of data coming from the website is also not getting neglected at the pace that it was.
Future action
The next action was to change the LMS system to improve the front end product interface. The students need to have a better experience to ensure a positive outcome for both the end user (students) as well as the stake holders.