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This case study demonstrates how the HubSpot Hubs, a connected CRM and innovative integrations with other business systems, can drive change and growth.
About iKhokha
iKhokha is a leading South African fintech company that provides over 90,000 South African business owners with payment and innovative access to growth capital.
The brief
iKhokha approached MO Agency to assist with marketing automation implementation. During our initial consultation sessions, we discovered that iKhokha was using multiple pieces of software to run the acquisition and support part of their business. Although they were growing, the team described their problems with this patchwork.
Some systems were semi-integrated but mostly was held together by some rockstar iKhokha team members.
iKhokha immediately understood what integrated HubSpot Hubs could do beyond marketing automation. And we kicked off the project to integrate a full-stack HubSpot portal into their business.
The acquisition and support tech stack at the start of the project:
The simplified tech stack at the end:
The challenge
Part One:
The first challenge was no central CRM. The teams at iKhokha had to work hard to keep track of each new customer and their signup journey.
The second challenge was to integrate iKhokha’s custom-built Merchant Server with HubSpot so that iKhokha salespeople could easily transition a lead into an active customer.
Our next challenge was to set up and integrate Shopify eCommerce to start moving to a touchless acquisition process.
Third, the sales team used WhatApp as one of the primary tools to communicate with prospects, and they couldn't centrally record these comms.
Finally, iKhokha wanted to engage existing customers with product updates and relevant news.
Part Two:
After a few months break in which iKhokha grooved in the new systems, they reached out again.
The first challenge was to integrate data points from the iKhokha Merchant Server so customers' financial milestones could trigger personalised HubSpot nurturing. E.g. A revenue milestone.
The next was migrating the blog from WordPress to HubSpot CMS, migrating the Shopify website into HubSpot CMS, and technical SEO for www.ikhokha.com.
The solution
We set up a full stack HubSpot portal that uses all the HubSpot Hubs to solve iKhokha's unique challenges.
Simplifying the tech-stack and data flow
Below is an early example of the high-level acquisition flow we designed with iKhokha during the onboarding phase. The system has since evolved with iKhokha fine-tuning the system using Agile methodologies.
Migration to HubSpot
Our first challenge was migrating the sales and support teams from Freshsales and Freshdesk to HubSpot Sales and Support Hubs. We migrated 30 salespeople and 30 support staff by building a series of custom-built HubSpot Apps utilising the HubSpot API and webhooks to integrate Freshsales/Freshdesk and HubSpot.
A support or sales agent could sit in a Freshsales/Freshdesk one day and a HubSpot the next, and then go back to Freshsales/Freshdesk the next day. This perfect data sync allowed us to migrate the 60 sales and support users with minimal impact on the business.
No longer did a support agent have to walk over to a sales agent to get context for a support call. They could see the entire sales record from inside Service Hub.
Lead acquisition and management
Using HubSpot forms on the WebFlow website replaced a Zapier integration to push leads from Webflow to FreshSales CRM. Using strong qualifying criteria on the form, we prioritise leads and rotate into the sales team of 30.
Shopify: Moving towards touchless sales
HubSpot Marketing Hub enabled us to automate the Shopify eCommerce process. New clients who bought a credit card machine on the eComm website were now seamlessly passed onto support to complete the signup and Know Your Customer (KYC) process in record time.
Shopify products and functionality embedded in HubSpot CMS are shown below.
Abandoned carts are easily nurtured. If automated nurturing is unsuccessful, the lead is automatically rotated to the sales team.
Integrating the sales process for less friction
Enabling the sales team to complete a client's application over the telephone removed another layer of friction. The workflow below created a custom link inside each deal object.
The link takes salespeople to a HubSpot CMS page pre-populated with all the contact/deal information already captured. The salesperson captures any missing information, and on clicking submit, the data payload is passed to the Merchant server. The data is used to populate a digital agreement for signature - the last step to open up their account to begin transacting.
Since their Merchant Server was custom-built and highly secure, we needed to make use of HubSpot API and Amazon S3 to pass data safely between HubSpot and the Merchant Server.
Current acquisition and support tech stack:
Overall results
More than 500% increase in website sessions since starting the project 24 months ago.
3 x Separate websites at the start of the project
- shop.ikhokha.com (Shopify eCommerce)
- www.ikhokha.com (Webflow, website & landing pages)
- blog.ikhokha.com (WordPress, blog)
These sites required complicated interdomain tracking in Google Analytics.
1 x Integrated HubSpot CMS website at the end
- www.ikhokha.com (Website, Landing pages, e-commerce and blog)
One website made tracking the data and conversions in HubSpot and Google Analytics easy.
Other impressive business metrics since implementing HubSpot:
Our impact
Our major impact was recommending and implementing a full-stack HubSpot portal, integrating it at a handful of critical data flow junctures and bottlenecks.
Our most significant impact was empowering the iKhokha team to take over and evolve the system for optimum performance. This is their tech stack, and they are best poised to run and develop it.
The final step of migrating all websites and subdomains to HubSpot CMS was a massive vote of confidence in the full stack HubSpot portal experience. Today the entire online experience is built on HubSpot CMS. And website health and organic traffic have taken off post-migration.
What did iKhokha have to say?
A quick word from one of iKhokha's founders coming soon...
