From founder-led sales to a cost-effective GTM engine in 2 quarters with Tracey

Smart software to tackle e-commerce frustrations

The shipping process is a headache for many companies, especially in the world of e-commerce. As soon as a package leaves the warehouse, it is in the hands of the carrier. 

Shipping companies process thousands of packages a day, so inevitably some packages get delayed, damaged, or lost. And that leads to great frustration for end-customers and the company that sent it. 

Tracey was founded to address exactly this pain point. 

Tracey firmly believes that being wholly dependent on carriers creates unnecessary frustration and costs in e-commerce. It believes that e-commerce companies need to take back control of shipping data for their packages. 

And so Tracey is committed to making shipping insights fully accessible to fulfillment parties, e-commerce websites and retail brands.

Thanks to Tracey, e-commerce companies can improve their delivery performance and customer experiences while also reducing their shipping costs.

The background: Tracey was ready to accelerate its growth, following its acquisition by Sendcloud 

The market leader in e-commerce shipping software, Sendcloud, noticed how valuable Tracey’s solution was, and decided to acquire Tracey in 2023. 

With Tracey, Sendcloud could expand its portfolio of data tools to include greater insights into parcel delivery, carrier performance and delivery predictions. 

But with the acquisition came even greater growth targets for Tracey. 

Before it was acquired, Tracey’s Marketing was fully managed by its founders Huib, Sander and Bart. But that was simply not scalable. It was time to accelerate growth and so Tracey decided to call in Unmuted to support its Marketing. 

“To speed up the development and execution of our GTM, we needed extra support. We had spoken to Max in the past and had continued to follow him on LinkedIn, so we quickly ended up at Unmuted’s door. After positive initial conversations and a strong reference, we decided to get started right away!" — Huib Adriaans, Founder, Tracey

The strategy: cost-effective demand generation 

During the kick-off session, it quickly became clear that Tracey needed a go-to-market strategy that would generate demand, but was also cost-effective. After all, there had been limited testing and validation of Tracey's value proposition by that point. 

And of course we also needed to help implement Sendcloud’s rebranding of Tracey. 

Focus on cost-effective organic growth 

We prioritized reaching accounts that had a strong ICP-fit, and used retargeting to maximize conversions. At this stage, the focus was on organic growth. 

We regularly checked what was working and what we needed to improve. This meant we could build a strong foundation, without wasting money on messaging or marketing tactics that weren’t effective. 

Refining the value proposition

Before starting to execute playbooks, we had to first refine Tracey’s value proposition. In a collaborative workshop we brainstormed the pain points and challenges of Tracey’s ideal customer, and aligned on the specific USPs and benefits of the product. 

This gave us a well-defined value proposition to test and validate with the target audience. 

Based on this, we crafted the strategic messaging foundation which would act as the basis for writing high quality copy for the website, blogs, social posts etc. 

Playbooks for LinkedIn activities, retargeting, organic BOFU content and a new website 

With the GTM strategy set and the positioning clear, it was time to choose which playbooks would help deliver the intended results. 

Generating needs via LinkedIn

The power of LinkedIn for B2B companies like Tracey is unparalleled. That’s why we kicked off the GTM strategy by helping Tracey’s founders, Huib Adriaans and Sander Hak, to elevate their personal brand and reach target accounts with their content. 

In fact, almost all of Tracey’s deals so far had come directly via personal outreach by the founders. 

We helped to create messaging frameworks for Huib and Sander to use in InMail messages on LinkedIn, without sounding like a sales pitch. They shared their knowledge and unique perspective through the InMails, while staying aligned with Tracey’s core messages.  

We also developed a list of target accounts and the people in the decision-making unit (DMU) at those companies, that the founders could connect with on LinkedIn to increase their organic reach. 

Short form video to strengthen personal brands

To strengthen their personal brands on LinkedIn, we put both Huib and Sander in front of the camera. We recorded these founder videos in the Sendcloud studio where they discussed their customers’ pain points and shared their own experiences, expertise, and developments within Tracey. Everything from frustration for e-commerce companies during Black Friday to AI in shipping intelligence. 

This gave them an interactive way to share Tracey’s core messages on LinkedIn, alternating between static text, visuals, memes and videos. 

Converting market interest through the Ultimate B2B SaaS Website

When prospects visit your website, they need to be able to easily understand your value proposition and access the information they’re looking for. 

Tracey’s existing website content hadn’t been updated in a year and it also needed to be redesigned to align with Sendcloud’s branding. It was time for a new website.

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Tracey's former website

We purchased a new domain and launched the new website in phases. Within 4 weeks, the V1 was live with new pages, images and new copy in line with the revised value proposition. 

For V2, we designed additional pages, including solution and jobs to be done pages, aimed at converting website traffic into demo requests. 

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Tracey's new website with solutions pages

BOFU content to improve SEO 

In parallel with the new website launch, we rolled out a content strategy that was fully focused on bottom of the funnel (BOFU) content. This means that we took a reverse funnel approach, converting pain points and commercial search behavior by the target audience into titles and outlines for content. 

With Tracey's newly refined value proposition, both Sendcloud and Tracey were able to position themselves as complementary solutions to each other. We focused on search terms with a high purchase intent which made it easier to target and achieve top 10 rankings in Google with our content.

Tracey’s website now achieves top 5 rankings for relevant search terms, despite having a low domain authority. Since its launch, the website has achieved over 16,500 impressions and almost 400 visitors directly from Google searches.

The  BOFU content also generated multiple demo requests from Tier 1 accounts. 

Retargeting 

We set up a retargeting campaign on LinkedIn to support our organic LinkedIn efforts and generate additional demand that we could then capture. 

For example, we created LinkedIn ads focused on the product itself, new features, benefits, and existing customers and the results that they’re achieving using Tracey. 

These ads helped educate the target audience about Tracey before we then retargeted them with ads focusing on converting them into leads e.g. requesting a demo.

Monitoring signals  

We set up LeadInfo to track if the website was getting visits from the right target group, and thus whether the GTM strategy was working. Accounts that fit the ICP were automatically tagged and forwarded to Tracey’s sales team for follow-up. 

Sendcloud gives us a study budget every year. Thanks to the collaboration with Unmuted, my study budget seemed much higher. — Nemanja Jovančić, Enterprise Marketing Specialist

Now that we're warmed up: Tracey as an integrated part of Sendcloud

In just 5 months we have successfully set up and rolled out a cost-effective GTM strategy for Tracey. This has contributed to new signed deals for Tracey, in combination with Sendcloud.

In the coming period, we will continue to support Tracey's team in scaling up the GTM strategy and executing the chosen playbooks effectively.