Campfire Labs uses Copper to automate and eliminate tedious, manual tasks

When Anna joined the team, she took some time to understand the current processes before introducing new solutions. But it didn’t take long to identify a few gaps. “Within a couple of months, I knew I’d really like to have a tool that could automate some of the things I was keeping track of manually, like follow-ups and visibility,” Anna says.

At the time, the company was using a free CRM solution, but it wasn’t doing enough to eliminate tedious manual tasks and track leads or follow-ups. Having used Copper while in fintech, Anna knew it had enough flexibility and multi-industry functionality to be a perfect fit here, too.

“There was a lot of flexibility with Copper, and I knew that it could be built upon. We could have a simple pipeline today and a complex pipeline or multiple pipelines in the future… It’s very scalable.”

The email integration capabilities and the fact it sits right inside Gmail using the Copper Chrome extension were also huge selling points. Both features help her save time and work more efficiently, which is crucial in a fast-paced agency environment.

Campfire Labs is a small (but mighty) team of 13 people. So, for now, just a few team members are utilizing Copper:

• Account Manager – Anna tracks all sales leads and opportunities, as well as touch-points with current customers for ongoing relationship-building.
• The General Manager – tracks his business development outreach and syncs the email correspondence in Copper.
• The CEO – Uses Copper for visibility and a birds-eye-view of the sales process
• Head of Content & Community – Keeps track of the people he interviews for stories and organizes his retouches with existing clients, using tags to differentiate between his contact types.

Of all these users, though, Anna has really leveled up her productivity using Copper’s pipeline and workflow automation features to do things like:

• Track the sales cycle – The pipeline feature is perfect for tracking leads until they become a prospect. Anna’s pipeline stages include an introductory call and preparing a proposal. She systematically moves leads from beginning to end to keep the sales cycle organized and flowing.
• Receive follow-up reminders – Anna uses several automations to ensure no one falls through the cracks, which is especially important since her sales cycles vary from prospect to prospect. Some cycles are just a couple of weeks while others can last two months or longer. Follow-up reminders help Anna stay on track over time.
• Clear her calendar for proposals – She also utilizes the Zapier integration to add time blocks to her calendar when an opportunity moves to a specific stage. She knows that once an opportunity moves to a particular part of her pipeline, they’ll need a proposal, which takes time to create. The Zapier calendar integration leaves her enough time to ensure those proposals get sent out ASAP.
• Manage renewals – Anna also uses Copper to manage the renewal process. By flagging an account as a particular type of project in Copper, it automatically duplicates and creates a new opportunity for her in the future on a separate pipeline. When it gets within 30 days of the upcoming renewal, it pops back onto her main pipeline to remind her that it’s time to reach out to the client.
• Track contacts when they move – Anna uses the LinkedIn integration to manage connections when they leave their company. “One of the things that’s really different about agency life is that marketers leave their jobs all the time, so it’s been helpful to keep track of when our point of contact leaves and where they’re going.” By keeping track of contacts on LinkedIn, Anna can see when they leave and where they go to see if there’s an opportunity to work with them at their new company. If there is, she uses the LinkedIn integration to quickly import their new information into Copper and update their status to “Keep in Touch,” then automates a follow-up reminder.
• Assign tasks and communicate internally – Anna and the Head of Content & Community also use Copper to quickly assign tasks to each other, helping them stay on the same page without wasting time chatting back and forth in Slack.

Anna and the entire Campfire Labs team have found ways to leverage Copper to make their processes more efficient, and they hope to do even more with it in the future.

For Anna, the most significant benefit of Copper is more time.

“It’s the time savings for me and being able to keep track of everything. I need to know that things aren’t slipping through the cracks, and I needed a system to help me do that.”

It makes sense that time would be a valuable commodity for Anna. She left fintech because she was seeking a new challenge — and inefficient processes are a huge contributor to burnout. By incorporating a productivity system and automations, Anna is setting herself up for a long and rewarding career free from tedious tasks and manual tracking.

She hopes to use Copper for more than managing her pipeline in the future — which is why she chose it for the long haul. “You shouldn’t pick a tool just based on what you need today. It’s important to take a multi-year approach.”

To that end, Anna has started tracking lost opportunities and the reason for loss using a field in Copper. She hopes that it will give the team more insights over time into what’s working (and what isn’t) and help them improve and grow.

We look forward to seeing how Campfire Labs continues to integrate and automate to keep driving success over time.