Education Company Moves From Word-of-Mouth to Data-Driven Marketing

The challenge: outdated data and no marketing infrastructure

This specialized training provider had been delivering blended programs in Lean, Six Sigma, and process improvement for more than 15 years. With only 2–10 employees, they had long relied on word-of-mouth referrals. But when the company decided to pivot from serving corporate audiences to reaching individual learners, they faced two big hurdles:

• Disorganized contact data: Thousands of email addresses existed, but many were outdated, unsegmented, and effectively unusable.
• No marketing infrastructure: Beyond a basic website, they had no forms, funnels, or content plan to convert interest into engagement.

On top of that, migrating existing content and domains into HubSpot without disrupting training operations was a significant technical challenge.

The approach: start small, build steadily

Rather than rushing into a full-scale rollout, the team piloted HubSpot with a phased approach, focusing first on a few core functions—forms, contact properties, and email segmentation—before expanding into larger campaigns.

The process included:

• Cleaning and segmenting the contact list.
• Creating custom fields such as “Book Buyer” to support upcoming product launches.
• Running a “coming soon” campaign to validate the system.
• Designing and delivering a webinar campaign to re-engage past learners.

On the technical side, they set up a new WordPress site and integrated it with HubSpot forms and workflows. Tracking codes, deliverability safeguards, and performance dashboards were also established.

Early results: signs of momentum

Within weeks, the company moved from having no digital presence to running real campaigns. Their team built and tested:

• A newsletter signup form.
• Automated welcome emails.
• A webinar registration flow linked to Wistia.

Even when challenges arose—like an email deliverability failure that initially derailed the webinar campaign—the system proved resilient. By emailing the registration link directly, they generated approximately 70 sign-ups. This validated that structured digital marketing could deliver results, even for a very small team.

Key measurable outcomes

Why it mattered

For a lean team, every system had to work hard. This phased implementation not only delivered a functional marketing backbone but also built internal confidence in using HubSpot. By the end of the engagement, they had:

• A WordPress site integrated with HubSpot.
• Segmented and organized contact data.
• Proven campaigns they could repeat and scale.

The transformation moved them from reactive, referral-only growth to proactive, data-driven marketing—positioning them to expand into direct-to-consumer offerings tied to a new book launch.