Meet Brendan
See how fast-growing FinTech unicorn (Airwallex – with $231m ARR and $920m in funding) was able to generate more “ideal” B2B leads and clients
SUCCESS STORY QUICK WINS:
About Airwallex
Airwallex is an Australian technology company that lets businesses more easily manage cross-border transactions, revenue and financing.
How Growth Labz helped Airwallex:
Airwallex had Growth Labz create tailored outreach campaigns
supported by carefully targeted paid marketing.
Growth Labz also helped with hiring, outsourcing, lead management, and sales.
Results
Airwallex enjoyed 60%+ open rates from its direct email outreach campaigns with good replies and demo bookings. During the campaign their marketing team grew from 2 to 15, and their sales team from 2 to 80.
“There aren’t a lot of agencies and marketers in general that have a lot of deep expertise with B2B. We needed to build out our outbound sales expertise, and the automation and platforms - and put it together quickly”
Airwallex is an Australian technology company that has simplified the process for businesses to transfer funds across global borders. Its clever, cost-effective solution uses inter-bank exchanges to transfer foreign exchange at mid-market rates, which means companies can move revenue and make payments around the world without the usual heavy foreign exchange costs.
Airwallex is a huge business success. It’s delivered incredible results for its customers since its start-up days in Melbourne, Australia in 2015. Along the way, it’s attracted enormous investor interest.
After securing the latest round of funding from investors, the management team at Airwallex knew that the focus had shifted to growing, and growing FAST.
Not only did they need to build their internal team to drive sustained, long term growth, but they also needed to kickstart their growth and get results as quickly as possible.
But with such a heavy B2B focus, this wasn’t going to be easy.
“There aren’t a lot of agencies and marketers in general that have a lot of deep expertise with B2B in Australia,” he said. “And we needed to build out our outbound sales expertise, and the automation and the platforms – and put it together quickly.”
Key Risks For Airwallex
There were several key risks for Airwallex at this stage, including:
- Team capacity – and needing to grow their teams out to sustain long term growth. This meant however that what worked today might not work the same way tomorrow.
- Time sensitive – Airwallex needed strategies that had been proven to work before, but also that were “outside the box” enough to get the attention of their leads and future clients.
- Key knowledge – they also needed partners who had deep expertise and knowledge of not just B2B lead generation, but also B2B sales (after all, leads are useless they convert into clients)
Brendan said:
“We wanted to avoid the slew of B2C marketing agencies who were pretending to be B2B specialists.
Also, our business moves so quickly because of the speed of execution and growth, and that’s something we need to demand from our partners.”
Airwallex Growth Strategy
“We built an initial strategy to help the Airwallex team quickly, but we also developed it to be flexible and agile enough to change and scale as needed” said William Wang, Chief Marketing Strategist at Growth Labz.
The Growth Labz team created a tailored, multi-touch campaign that worked across emails, physical mail, and online advertising.
The emphasis was on getting the right message in front of the right target market.
Speaking on the strategy, William says “When we do email outreach, we make sure it’s not just scalable, but it’s also personable and it won’t have a negative impact on the brand or product.”
The strategy itself included:
- Direct email outreach to potential clients, referral partners, and channel partners
- Direct/physical mail sent to key accounts, used for lead generation, retention, and user activation
- These efforts were supported by marketing funnels, and digital advertising across
Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn.
To further ensure the success of their strategy, the Growth Labz team also consulted and advised on hiring, outsourcing, lead management, and sales.
The Results
Growth Labz’ direct outreach campaign achieved open rates of more than 70%, with lots of positive replies coming in (lots of product demos booked directly from emails)
All of the campaigns produced consistent high-quality leads for the Airwallex team.
Along with the email leads, digital advertising also became more effective, with the cost of leads dropping by more than 50% (and the conversion of leads to demo increasing as well)
“Making sure the messaging spoke directly to the person was critical,” said Will. “Because, as Brendan said to us from the start, ‘if we can get to the right stakeholder in the business, who manages the finances, we can save them from day one. We can make their lives easier in terms of payments coming in and out.’”
Underlining that was the fact some of Airwallex’s customers save $12,000 a month using their innovative solution.
And there were other great results.
One of the biggest outcomes for the Airwallex team was the growth in their team during the campaign.
“Before all this started, a colleague of mine and I were doing the prospecting, we were automating and sending out the campaigns, and doing the ad copy,” said Brendan.
That’s now changed. The Airwallex marketing team has now grown from just Brendan and one colleague to more than 15, opening the door for more focus on specialist tasks.
“By specialising, people are able to move faster and there’s less double handling. We can be more effective.”
And it’s not just the team growth that’s been a highlight for Breandan. It’s the growth in Airwallex’s individual marketing capabilities that’s another sign of the campaign’s success.
“From working with Will and Growth Labz, we’ve been able to grow these capabilities such that we need to hire someone else entirely to manage it full-time. That’s an awesome win.”
What’s more, the success of the Growth Labz strategy helped drive sales to the extent that the Airwallex sales team also swelled, from just two sales people to over 80.
So, when Will asked Brendan how he found working with the Growth Labz team, what did he say?
“You felt like an extension to our team.”
He’s quick to add that much of the campaign’s results were achieved in a tight timeframe, which was critical from the outset.
“Adding Will and Growth Labz to the team meant we were able to shortcut a lot of that success.”
“I think it’s been a great experience working with Will. If anyone’s considering Growth Labz, feel free to reach out to me,” he said.