International Ambitions

A key aspect of the collaboration is international expansion. Together with its parent company Acknowledge, Comaxx already employs more than 350 experts. Sam explains: “Referro is the exclusive Dutch partner of BBN International and gives us access to over 1,300 experts in 66 cities, spread across 33 countries worldwide. This allows us to reach and serve a broader market.”

“This collaboration is not just a strategic move, but also an opportunity to learn from each other and grow together,” notes Gerard van den Bogaart. “We believe that our joint efforts will result in increased value for our clients.”

Agencies and businesses worldwide trust the tool to generate leads, enhance conversion rates, and maximize returns on marketing investments. Renowned for innovation, open architecture, and exceptional customer support, it is offered at a fraction of the cost compared to its competitors.

Why Choose Constant Contact / SharpSpring? 

As said earlier, one of the major advantages of the software is its affordability. Licenses are three to four times cheaper than those of competitors. It serves as a comprehensive marketing automation tool, allowing you to configure, monitor, and analyze both the marketing and sales processes. Integration is seamless with your website or various platforms, including Facebook, Google Ads, and popular CRMs like SalesForce. Through its own CRM, all incoming leads can be segmented. Additionally, you can connect your email to the software to track communication history with leads. Other features include lead scoring, A/B testing, and direct contact via a chatbot.

Referro: Your Constant Contact Gold Partner

Referro has been a partner of SharpSpring for more than 10 years, and the last 5 years as a Gold Partner. Our trained experts meet all gold level requirements of the certification program. With this certification, Referro is well-equipped to help clients to generate qualified leads, convert more leads into sales, and optimize the ROI of marketing campaigns.

BBN: A Strategic Partner of Constant Contact

BBN International is a strategic partner of Constant Contact since a couple of years, providing added value specialist support. As a strategic partner, BBN contributes specific specialisms and knowledge in B2B marketing, serving as an additional resource for clients and agencies globally.

Park & Battery, named B2B 2023 Agency of the Year by the Association of National Advertisers and B2B Marketing and listed among the Chief Marketer 200, is also ranked among the five fastest-growing agencies by the 2023 B2B Marketing US Agencies Benchmarking Report. 

Park & Battery takes its name from the perspectives their team have gained in companies and agencies “on the streets” of New York and San Francisco, bringing together hustle and innovation to create value for brands and businesses. Headquartered in Oakland, California, they consider themselves a B2B Launch Agency. They specialize in creating brands, campaigns, and experiences that deliver impact, from strategy and messaging to creative/design, content, and media/go-to-market. The agency has expertise in several areas, including Technology, Financial Services, Life Sciences, Freight and Logistics, AI, Automation and IoT, Professional Services, Education, and Media.

BBN will leverage its network of partner agencies and specialist teams across the globe to provide Amogy with a seamless and hassle-free experience as it brings its vision of using ammonia as a clean energy solution to life.

“Our team looks forward to a great working relationship with BBN, all its partner agencies, and our work together to share Amogy’s vision of accelerating the global journey to net zero with our ammonia-to-power solution,” said Red Drummond, Amogy marketing manager. “BBN provides the features and attributes of a global marketing agency, combined with localized regional support as we need it. The ability to work with a diverse Partnership is a great way for us to have one source of contact and management in all areas of our engagement.”

BBN’s approach combined with our partner’s industry expertise, creative ability, and global reach demonstrates our commitment to advancing a sustainable future. Our collective efforts are aimed at encouraging a transition towards a more environmentally-friendly and sustainable planet.

About Sabia

This is our fifth new agency partner this year; Sabia is a fully remote-working agency based in Sao Paulo, Brazil. They build their client’s marketing support from the brand up by means of carefully designed content, creatives and digital solutions. Certified as ‘A Great Place to Work’ since 2017, they are also a proud member of Pledge 1% supporting Brazilian social and cultural initiatives pro-bono.

About Ulled

Founded in 1964, Ulled is a communication consultancy with a well-connected multidisciplinary team located in offices in Lisbon and Barcelona. They have over 50 years of experience managing brand perceptions and are looking to expand their B2B portfolio. They have experience in a wide variety of business sectors and offer communication and public relations strategies to build trust and credibility among different stakeholders.

It could be that your marketing strategy doesn’t translate well from one territory to another; your competitors use completely different strategies in different marketplaces; your SEO campaign isn’t international in nature; or your messaging isn’t right for the diverse cultures, languages, and business practices that you must now embrace.
 
Here at Referro, we’ve built a local gateway through which our clients are currently achieving global success. But before you step into it and disappear in a puff of smoke, we’ve put together a few ideas on what to pack to help on your cross-border B2B journey.

A concise world atlas

You probably have a good idea of the sales territories you’d like to explore, but it always helps if someone’s really familiar with the terrain. Referro belongs in the atlas of BBN, the world’s B2B agency, with 66 office on the ground in 32 countries. We say it’s a concise atlas because there’s no red tape separating our operations: every member agency is entrepreneurial; agile; trained in the same B2B approaches; and focused on delivering joined up logistics and results for our clients when they step out internationally. You can find a map of our partners here.

Currency

Data, analytics, and content building are some of the most important currencies to ensure cross-border B2B marketing is a success. These marketing components work together, with data and analytics helping you to find ‘micro-markets’ for your products and services; and the right content enabling you to deliver more personalised, targeted international communications.

A marketing translator

Localization is essential so that messaging which currently resonates locally, also reverberates globally. This is more than translation: it’s about adapting your content’s full meaning to a different culture. You may also have revisit your imagery and video work to ensure visual relevance. Work can be adapted of course (we’ve achieved results that way many times); but in many cases, starting with a bespoke international campaign approach can be more cost-effective, and align more closely to your business objectives in the long run.

Tech essentials

Machine learning is one such essential technology: it can make personalized marketing across geographies easier by analyzing customer data, and matching it to targeted offerings. Geo-marketing is another: enabling, for example, the creation of language-sensitive web pages or the ability to feature different products across different countries. International programmatic advertising can also be cost-effective for brand awareness. And, of course, localized marketing automation using platforms like HubSpot, Marketo, Oracle Eloqua, Salesforce etc all pack a punch. Leveraging these kind of marketing technologies and automation is a familiar role for Referro.
 
 On a final note, it can be hard enough to introduce a winning brand in your native country. However, if you can build a successful and popular B2B brand at home, you can be more confident that your product and marketing strategy will be viable abroad. Referro sits at this gateway: helping to build strong businesses for clients in The Netherlands, as well as assisting those companies – and many others – to expand and succeed in new international markets.

Custom Media is a full-service B2B agency offering marketing solutions that unite data with creativity. The agency believes in humanizing B2B brands through the power of storytelling. This means they are a perfect fit with BBN’s own philosophy! Established in Tokyo in 2007 as a publisher of business magazines, Custom Media swiftly expanded their services to include content marketing, creative and design, digital and social – which has further grown to include strategy, branding, paid media and demand generation, plus ABM.

Custom Media’s 25 full-time staff hail from 12 countries and speak 15 languages (predominately Japanese and English!). They are dedicated to supporting global businesses who want to expand in Japan and Japanese companies who seek to expand internationally. They’re looking forward to connecting and helping grow the success of BBN.

This means DMG is ready to switch to Deployteq to further optimize its marketing activities with Referro’s support. We have been a partner of DMG for many years and have assisted in the implementation of the new platform.
 
“We are very happy with this collaboration,” says Monique Bijnen, CRM and Retail Specialist at Referro who was closely involved in the implementation. “Deployteq is a powerful platform that will help DMG reach its customers even better and deliver the right message to leads at the right time. We look forward to building even more great campaigns together with DMG’s CRM team.”
 
“We have been working with Referro for many years and are very satisfied with the quality of their services,” says Erica van Esch, CRM manager at DMG. “We are convinced that with Deployteq and Referro we can achieve even more together.”

A long-term relation

The collaboration between Referro and DMG is more than just an association between two companies. The employees of both organizations work together as colleagues, with Referro providing both in- and out-house support, which will continue in the future.
 
The addition of Deployteq Certification means that Referro now has experience of a vast range of marketing automation systems including Eloqua, SharpSpring, Portrait, HubSpot and Pardot. We are also SharpSpring and Oracle-certified.
 
This makes Referro the ideal partner to support you in the short or long term to leverage marketing automation platforms. And of course, we can integrate automation consultancy with data-driven campaign development; development of personas or customer journeys; and/or content strategies.

Effectiveness in B2B marketing, however, is complex: it requires identifying the right audience, crafting compelling messages, and selecting appropriate channels to maximize impact. In a highly competitive B2B landscape, you don’t just become effective – you have to align and optimize all of your resources in order to generate a return on investment.

Then there’s the human factor: put bluntly, not every marketer always thinks big. So the marketing plan at the start of the year will consist of ‘micro-goals’ like increasing brand awareness (a notch), getting social clicks (regardless of results), and counting the number of visitors at the annual trade fair (Jim dropped by this time).

Meanwhile, in the boardroom, the focus of the decision-makers is on turnover, growth, and business expansion. It’s for the marketing plan to contribute to these goals, support the business, and define brand growth objectives. So why can’t it be more effective?

Let’s dare

These days, thanks to data and analytics, you can be daring without being dangerous. A data-driven approach using analytics will allow your businesses to refine its strategies continually, optimize campaigns, and allocate resources wisely for maximum impact. When it works – and it will with the right B2B marketing partner – it works well, and you can build repeatable results and ROI into your marketing processes. Who knows, one day you could even ditch that annual plan for good.

Along the way, marketers will gain valuable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and purchasing patterns. These are key to creating personalized customer experiences, and messaging that resonates deeply because you understand the customers’ challenges.

It’s all about creating a more daring brand that stands out in today’s competitive B2B landscape. And that goes hand in hand with daring to be different creatively – seeking out bold campaigns that get noticed and talked about by your buyers. Dare we suggest Referro is the agency that can deliver on both?

Founded in 2011 by Etienne Viellard, a former international marketer at Salesforce, Oracle, Hyperion, and Neolane, Eleius is based in Paris and provides comprehensive full-service marketing solutions to growing European companies.

The company’s expertise includes international go-to-market advisory, positioning and messaging, branding, multilingual content creation, and global digital lead generation. With a track record of helping 80+ European companies scale internationally, Eleius excels in launching businesses across Europe and North America.

Current clients of Eleius will now benefit from the collective strength of 1400+ BBN marketing specialists across all continents, ensuring impactful campaigns worldwide. And Referro and other partner agencies will benefit in return by gaining access to new French expertise through a leading full-service B2B agency.