Using Workflows to Scale a New Partnership Model [Customer Story]

Interactive content company Arkadium was formed in 2001 and has delivered games and other interactive content — most notably the Microsoft Solitaire Collection — that has been played hundreds of billions of times. Its flagship product, a portal of casual games called the Arena, drives a significant portion of Arkadium’s revenue.

To facilitate key components of this strategy — account creation, a regular cadence of communication, and other factors — Arkadium creatively used the HubSpot workflows tool in a meaningful way.

Here’s how they did it.

Step 1: Obtaining the Data

To create a powerful stream of partner data, Arkadium’s marketing team collaborated with its in-house analytics gurus.

Google Analytics data offers insight into where every prospective partner is in the onboarding progression, and how every existing Arena is performing. The result is a wealth of data from which Arkadium can now effectively market at scale.

But data alone can’t drive results. The team’s subsequent actions translated that data into meaningful outcomes.

Step 2: Connecting to HubSpot

With tracking fully implemented, Arkadium’s marketing team partnered with its data team to determine which types of data can be used to create helpful partner communication. Examples include emails supporting each step of the launch process, including providing their payment details.

Once those emails were written, logic was built around email timing and prioritization.

The team then built an API from its database to HubSpot that ports information on a daily basis, detailing which users should be getting which email that day.

Step 3: Creating Workflows

Each situation has a corresponding dynamic message and workflow that's used to automatically send that email when the respective situation is met.

The result is a set of powerful workflows that help Arkadium deploy several types of communication — both internal and external — based on dozens of different events and use cases.

With these workflows in place, Arkadium was able to solve a pair of long-standing goals: empower self-service, and establish unprecedented visibility into each account’s progress. 

Step 4: See Results at Scale

Full Self-Service Support

With new HubSpot workflows in place, Arkadium was able to reorganize its onboarding efforts.

It designed a landing page for prospective partners interested in adding the Arena games product to their site. The page is split down the middle with two options: one for websites with more than three million monthly unique visitors. The other option is for up-and-coming publishers. And that’s where the magic happens.

Websites with less than three million monthly uniques are onboarded in a completely automated way — with Arkadium marketers alerted at each sign of progress, and also each snag along the way.

Here’s the process:

1. A prospective partner begins the onboarding process: a several-step process that requires inputting site info, some technical specifications, entering payment info and ultimately placing code on their page to finalize the initiative. Naturally, each new step is a risk, in that the partner could abandon at any point in the process.
2. Thanks to Google Analytics data, Arkadium knows if a potential client is stalling. And HubSpot’s powerful workflows enable Arkadium to automatically send one of more than a dozen pre-written emails, based on various snags that might occur, to push the prospective partner through the launch process.

With the menu of messages already predetermined and delivery fully automated, the new self-service support is fully scalable.

The result? Before this automated process was built, only 35% of sites that requested the Arena actually launched it. With this process in place, that rate skyrocketed 71%.

Performance and Activity Monitoring for All

In addition to onboarding up-and-coming clients, Arkadium is also leveraging HubSpot’s workflows and this functionality to monitor and message to various degrees of partner activity — both small partners and the bigger fish.

Using a similar technical setup as its onboarding procedure, the company’s marketers scripted emails for several situations. For example:

• An Arena performing well
• An Arena performing poorly
• A high-CPM alert
• New game releases
• Partners using promotional assets to drive traffic to the Arena
• And dozens more

Each of these potential scenarios is recognized by Google Analytics tracking, ported into HubSpot via Arkadium’s custom API, at which point the automated emails are triggered. These messages are sent to both the partner contact and the applicable Arkadium account manager to ensure complete visibility on both sides of the partnership.

“One of my largest partners launched a paid user acquisition campaign, something that, to date, I’d have zero visibility into,” said Katelyn Stanis, Arkadium’s director of account management. “Thanks to what the marketing team has built out, I was immediately notified and empowered to speak to the partner about it and see results.”

Automated Value at Scale: From Pipedream to Reality

This automated process not only supports the company’s goal of empowering self-serve capabilities but also delivers publishers, large and small, regular cadence and messaging around opportunities to deliver additional monetization.

With a multi-team process that started as a pipedream, Arkadium has streamlined several processes in a way that’s guaranteed to scale and provide value for both the company and its partners.

“This concept was birthed at a company jam — bi-annual events where employees submit ideas and work on new products or improvements to the organization,” said Eric Bogard, Arkadium’s senior director of marketing. “It’s really great to see something that was a pipedream get built and provide real value for the company and our partners. “

Onboarding With Ease

With new HubSpot workflows in place, Arkadium was able to reorganize its onboarding efforts. They designed a landing page for prospective partners interested in adding the Arena games product to their site. The page is split down the middle, with two options: one for sites with more than three million monthly unique visitors. The other option is for up-and-coming publishers. And that’s where the magic happens.

Sites with less than three million monthly uniques are onboarded in a completely automated way – with Arkadium marketers alerted at each sign of progress, and also each snag along the way.

Here’s the process.

A prospective partner begins the onboarding process: a several-step process that requires inputting site info, some technical specifications, entering payment info and ultimately placing code on their page to finalize the initiative. Naturally, each new step is a risk, in that the partner could abandon at any point in the process.

Thanks to Google Analytics data, Arkadium knows if a partner is stalling. And HubSpot’s powerful workflows enable Arkadium to automatically send one of more than a dozen pre-written emails, based on various snags that might occur.

With the menu of messages already predetermined and delivery fully automated, the new self-service support is fully scalable.

Performance and Activity Monitoring Like Never Before

In addition to onboarding up-and-coming clients, Arkadium is also leveraging HubSpot’s workflows and this functionality to monitor and message to various degrees of partner activity – both small partners and the bigger fish.

Using a similar technical setup as its onboarding procedure, the company’s marketers scripted emails for several situations: For example, an Arena performing well, an Arena performing poorly, a high-CPM alert, new game releases, partners using promotional assets to drive traffic to the Arena, and dozens more.

Each of these potential scenarios is recognized by Google Analytics tracking, ported into HubSpot via Arkadium’s custom API, at which point the automated emails are triggered. These messages are sent to both the partner contact and the applicable Arkadium account manager to ensure complete visibility on both sides of the partnership.

“One of my largest partners launched a paid user acquisition campaign, something that, to date, I’d have zero visibility into,” said Katelyn Stanis, Arkadium’s director of account management. “Thanks to what the marketing team has built out, I was immediately notified and empowered to speak to the partner about it and see results.”