Transcript:
Monica Evans:
This is the Marketing Hero Podcast by ClearPivot, turning marketers into heroes. Welcome to The Marketing Hero Podcast. I'm your host, Monica Evans. I am on the call today with Arttu Haho from Trustmary. He is the CEO of the American company. Hi, Arttu. How are you doing today?
Arttu Haho:
Hi, Monica. I'm doing great. Thank you very much for inviting me to this podcast. Yeah. I'm really excited to see what are we going to talk today.
Monica Evans:
Yeah, definitely. Why don't you tell the audience a little bit about yourself and Trustmary?
Arttu Haho:
Absolutely. I'll start with Trustmary, so we are a business to business software company for marketers. Our customers can their main site conversions typically by 20 to 50% with the social proof they have collected in our platform or in other channels. We are a software company. Yeah. My background, I may have been doing this thing for four and a half years, pretty much. Before this, I was working for Global ID Corporation as a sourcing manager. Then, before that, I was studying industrial engineering and management in Aalto University in Helsinki. Then, also in Canada for one semester. Yeah. That's my background. I'm a dad of two boys, one wife. I have one [inaudible 00:01:57] wife, and all of us enjoy a lot of outdoors and different kinds of sports going outside. Yeah. Enjoying our time in Minnesota at the moment.
Monica Evans:
Yeah. Perfect. You mentioned that the headquarters are in Finland and you are in the US. Are you in any other countries?
Arttu Haho:
Yeah. We have offices. As you say, we started from Finland and we have a few offices in Finland and then also in Sweden and then here in the US, but basically, we are serving the whole European market and then the US and Canada. Those are markets where we are at the moment.
Monica Evans:
Oh, perfect. What makes Trustmary so powerful? At what point did you know you had achieved momentum with new sales?
Arttu Haho:
Actually, that's a good question. Yeah. Maybe I need to open a little bit our story before going that since we... Actually, four years ago, we were not the software company. We have been transforming and changing quite a lot during these four years, but we solely started with the idea that, "Okay. We noticed that what customers are saying about your product or service, that's pretty much the best selling point you can have and the most effective way of doing your marketing." Then, we came up with the idea of, "Okay. Let's create a business that you can very easily, effortlessly and at a reasonable price, you can get that authentic customer stories and what they are thinking about your product or service. You get all of that easily, and then use that as a part of your sales and marketing." That has been the idea from the beginning. That's still the idea, but then what we are doing around that has changed a lot.
Then, we started with the media testimonials four and a half years ago, and photos and text articles. Then, we have been transforming to software company during the recent years. What makes us powerful at the moment is basically that after you have started using our software, you can actually find out pretty easily and only with, let's say 30 minutes time in estimate, you can find out what is exactly the result of the social proof you are getting from your website? The facts that, "Okay. The social proof I'm using in our website is resulting exactly this amount of money to our business." That's maybe the powerful thing at the moment. Yeah. [inaudible 00:05:25].
Monica Evans:
Are you able to track your ROI based off of your social proof?
Arttu Haho:
Exactly.
Monica Evans:
Oh, wow. That's awesome. How did you get your first customers? Is it the way that you are growing now different than how you grew in the beginning?
Arttu Haho:
Yeah. It's actually pretty different. There are several reasons, but in the beginning when we started four and a half years ago, we were very, very active with sales. Okay. We still are. That's part of a culture in our company, but we started from Finland and for example... Okay. I'll give you the practical example. If you can still find almost the phone number almost any person from the public resources, so it's pretty easy to find those phone numbers and then just make a call and people actually are still answering those calls.
Yeah. We really do a lot of prospecting, cold calling, then having meetings and then actually closing deals from diverse meetings. We really got to a very quick start to our business and we're able to sell. During the first six months, I think we broke the milestone of 500K in sales. Yeah. We still have the active sales attitude, but at the same time, when we have been transforming to a software company, it's a different merge. Now, we are putting life efforts on digital channels and our online and digital presence, and we are trying to make the sales. We tried to do it scientific way. There is a lot of different actions we are doing to generate leads and free trials and then converting those to paying customers.
Monica Evans:
Oh, perfect. Was it a challenge breaking into the US?
Arttu Haho:
At most... Actually, it still is, but that's quite the challenge. Coming from a different country with different culture, I've actually... To be honest, I've never felt to be so like starting from zero as I felt when we come here. So 2019, I moved my family here. Basically, no network, no local customers, a totally different way of doing basic things, like starting from opening the bank account and paying bills and all the stuff, how the things work here. It's a big challenge, but at the same time, very interesting journey and the potential in this market is huge. The challenge was pretty much what we expected. Yeah. Very big challenge, but now it's looking good.
Monica Evans:
Yeah. You mentioned at the start, you were doing a lot of heavy sales, cold calling, just trying to break into companies that way. Then, you've changed more to the digital side of things. Have you broken up your marketing teams in a country-focused? Finland versus Canada versus US, or how is your marketing structure set up within your company?
Arttu Haho:
Yeah. There are a lot of same things you need to do similarly in different countries, but there are also differences. All the things [inaudible 00:09:59] are leading the structure, what kind of structure we have in different countries, but the one big difference is the... For example, the market here in the US is way more competitive compared to... For example, the minority of countries in Europe. We can notice it from the numbers that, "Okay. If we get a certain open rate from our email campaigns in Sweden, then it's a very big difference when it's operating here in the US, so it's less and significantly less actually here in the US. Basically, coming here to US has forced us to improve our way of work and to really do the things as good as we can.
Then, that actually a little bit helps working into the European markets as well. But at the moment, our structure is that we have certain things what we are doing on the global level. We have a head of marketing who is responsible for those things and like a CEO and our website, our landing pages or actually the website being turned off. But then we have, for example, here in the US, we are actively recruiting more marketing people at the moment. They are focusing only to marketing here in this market. Then, we are doing local campaigns and that landing pages maybe, and then designing and implementing... Having the local design for the campaigns we are having here and they're implementing those. Then, it goes the same way that they are having own campaigns in Finland, own campaigns in Sweden. Yeah. Then, that's the structure. We have the local marketing people, and then the head of marketing who is looking after the different countries and then doing some things in the global level.
Monica Evans:
In terms of digital marketing campaigns that you've done, I've heard you say that you do email campaigns and you track what those open rates are, click rates are and stuff like that. I heard that you also do the users from a free trial to a paid account. Are those the type of campaigns you are typically running? Do you do any PPC ads or anything like that to try to get audiences and prospects to your website?
Arttu Haho:
We do a lot of stuff. Basically, the email and Linkedin are the ones we're using a lot. Then, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn ads, those are what we are doing as well. It changes. Sometimes we are putting more effort to certain things, and then maybe a little bit more effort to some other things, but basically on general level, we are doing all of those at the same time. Then, let's say there is a lot of... At least we believe that you need to be doing a lot of little things, and then all those will give you a big or a good result.
Monica Evans:
Yeah. Definitely. Who is your ideal customer? Do you do a lot of persona research within the organization? Is it broken out into different industries or the different job titles? Who would you say is your ideal customer profile?
Arttu Haho:
At the moment, the one common factor is that all the businesses who put a lot of effort on their website, they really try to generate either leads or sales or there were meetings for example, they're trying to generate something like that from their website. That's a common criterion with our customers. Mostly, it's small and medium-sized businesses at the moment who we are targeting. Then, it's usually the head of growth team or a growth hacker, or maybe head of media buying team or the head of marketing, or someone who is really interested to improve the website conversions. Yeah. Marketers generally, but then those people in the marketing organization who really would effort on... Or who are interested to improve the conversions.
Monica Evans:
We talked a little bit earlier about being able to figure out your ROI based off of your customer social proof. Can you explain that a little bit? How is that set up within the software and how are people able to track that?
Arttu Haho:
Yeah. Absolutely. Usually, you can do a lot of different things on our software, but all of those aim for the improvements at conversion. The typical way for our customers, so how they use the software. The first thing is that, "Okay. Do they have social proof?" With the social proof, we mean a lot of different things that, "Okay. It can be the customer feedback, or a customer score, or customer reviews, media reviews, or it can be the website traffic or actions customers are doing on your website or all of that." Do they already have some like that in place? If they don't, they usually start polluting that data with our platform and some customers, or actually quite many customers, they already have, let's say a review using Google, for example.
Then, they can import those Google reviews to our platform, so they can use that data as well. Then, typically when we have social proof, they can start showing it on their website. For example, you can create a little notification where you can show... Let's say you have a media review from your customer. You can show that media review in that little notification, and then you can tie some calls to action if customer is watching that little video there. Then, you can tie some call to actions there. Actually, the way how we... Or you can do in page embeds as well. How we are actually showing the result is that you can easily and actually in a couple of seconds, you can set up AB testing to your website.
Then, you will start immediately getting data of... Okay. Let's say if you said 50-50 AB testing that approximately 50% of the customers who are visiting the website are not seeing those notifications and the rest of the visitors aren't seeing those, so then you can start immediately getting data that... How well those who are seeing are converting compared to those who are not seeing the notifications. Yeah. You decide what needs to go for your website, and then in a couple of seconds, you can just create the AB testing there.
Monica Evans:
Would you say the biggest pain point people have when they come to you is that they just need additional lead generation from their website?
Arttu Haho:
Yes. Yeah. That's the problem, usually the biggest problem that they are leaving... They have a traffic on their website, but they are leaving a lot of potential customers in the table, so they are not the converting them to customers.
Monica Evans:
Got you. For Trustmary, as CEO of the US company, what would you say is the biggest and most important metric that you track on a monthly, quarterly, yearly basis?
Arttu Haho:
Yeah. This is actually a little bit challenging question. It's very good though, like what is the number one metric? Maybe it's ARR, MRR. Of course, that's where we are aiming that we can grow our recurring revenue base every day. But then, that's only the result. It's not saying how well you are doing your work. Actually, I would say the most important thing at the moment is our objectives and key results. That's the method we are using to implement our strategy to everyday work. Then, we are having weekly updates and checking that how well we are doing with those key results. Are we progressing well, or are we lacking with some of those? That's the dashboard, which is giving feedback that are we doing the right things at the moment? Then, when we are achieving those key results, then those will wait to do more basements basically, but that's a difficult question. What is the number one metric?
Monica Evans:
Yeah, I bet. How do you currently track all of your metrics? Do you use a third party? Do you have an in-house? Do you have somebody dedicated to tracking those metrics?
Arttu Haho:
At the moment, we are in-house. We are actually very, very old school using Google spreadsheets for the objectives and key results. Then, we are getting data from our platform. Something like ARR and MRR and [inaudible 00:22:42], and all of that stuff from our own platform. Yeah. That's how we are doing it at the moment. Maybe considering other options somewhere in the next year.
Monica Evans:
Perfect. Well, thank you for joining our podcast today. We typically end our podcast with just a fun question since our podcast is turning marketers into heroes, and we like to ask our audience... Sorry, our guests, what a superhero they would be, if they could be one?
Arttu Haho:
Superhero? Actually, I have seen a lot of them. I have about five and... Actually, in two days, our younger is turning five and the older one is turning seven in a month. I see those superheroes every day. [inaudible 00:23:41] of different superheroes, I think The Hulk has to be one of the favorites recently. Yeah. What would I be? Actually, I would like to say that I would like to be my boys. They are my superheroes or how well they are actually, like they are living their life every day. They have no worries or anything like, so that feels like a superhero to me.
Monica Evans:
Yeah, definitely. I can see that.
Arttu Haho:
It's teaching me how should I live my life as well. I'm going to make that one.
Monica Evans:
Yeah. Enjoying the little things in life. The kids just get excited about everything. It's refreshing to see that.
Arttu Haho:
Thank you very much, Monica. It was a pleasure to talk with you and thank you very much for this nice podcast. Yeah. I'll keep listening, myself as well.
Monica Evans:
If you're looking to find out more about Trustmary, you can find them at www.trustmary.com. You've been listening to The Marketing Hero Podcast by ClearPivot. Be sure to join us next time. For more information, visit www.clearpivot.com.
