A DAY IN THE LIFE: NETTL OF MANCHESTER

Jason Groves, Studio Manager, Nettl of Manchester

Hi there! I’m going to take you through a typical day here at Nettl of Manchester and how we use the Nettl System to automate a lot of our studio tasks. We’re a full service agency specialising in print, signage, website design, SEO, branding and social media. Making the Nettl platform work as hard as possible for us is essential in maximising studio output, especially in the run up to Christmas when clients are more demanding than ever. There are three of us in the team and, at a time when all margins are being squeezed and costs are going up, the System has been integral in ensuring we are as streamlined and as profitable as possible. 

(Estimated reading time: 8 mins)

Morning

First thing I do is to take a look at what content is being pushed onto our social media  pages that day. As a Nettl partner, we benefit from having various teams who create, centralise and deploy marketing campaigns, social media assets and social media posts, on our behalf. We opted into something called AutoSocial – one of the Nettl teams publish at least 20 posts per month across Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter. The posts cover things like new product and services launches, portfolio examples, marketing tips and advice. I like to check what’s being posted so when clients ring, and say they’ve seen the post and want a chat, I know what to discuss! 

Whilst I’m in a marketing mood, I check what this month’s centralised campaign is. Every month, or season, the Nettl teams put together the content, digital assets and offline collateral that forms part of a marketing campaign. As we’re less than 70 days away from Christmas, this month’s campaign is titled Festive Gifting. It features branded gifting ideas for loyal clients and customers, key suppliers and colleagues.

There are always four parts to any campaign, website landing pages, e-shots and social media assets (online) and physical mailers (offline). The Nettl System automatically sends e-shots to recipients who we choose to receive them. This saves my team and I hours and hours of work. It would take us at least 10 working days to come up with a campaign strategy, put together the online and offline artwork, schedule the e-shots in some kind of system and pull together the results. The Nettl System does all of this, for us, without me having to think about it. I’m confident outreach is happening and our clients keep our business at the forefront of their minds. 

We can choose to send physical mailers that promote the campaign. The Festive Gifting mailer features products like decorations, gift wrap, and merch, as well as Christmas cards, calendars, fabric displays and cosy workwear outfits. We update a recipient list within the Nettl System, which takes a few minutes, and then the rest of the process happens for us. The central team print and post our mailers, which are personalised to us, for less than the cost of a second class stamp. I think this saves us up to 46% off the cost if we were to do it ourselves. The hassle of having to do that with a small team, every month . . . it doesn’t bear thinking about!

The campaign also includes 10% off various seasonal products which is great as we can really use that to push people to order now. These products are linked to the Nettl System – it’s our own integrated print, product and signage supply chain. Having a load of products (I think there are around 7,000!) at our disposal that link to ready made quotes, workflow tools and invoices, means we maximise profit on even the tiniest of orders as the System streamlines the entire ordering process. It takes a member of my team just a couple of minutes to place an order for a client, pre-flight their file, send an online proof, take payment and send it to the manufacturing hub in Manchester. The Nettl System also comes with online e-commerce channels so we often find clients placing orders, themselves, online. Since Covid, we’ve found more and more orders are placed between 6pm and 9pm. Having somewhere for customers to go to, with a great UX, to action things like orders, quotes, payments and even choose stock images, is massive to us. It makes us look bigger and more reputable. It also keeps clients sticky to us. It’s great to start the day with a bunch of notifications that relate to client orders, approvals and payments. And because these channels are part of the central Nettl infrastructure, I don’t have to worry about maintaining them 🙂

Afternoon

I dip back into the AutoEmail part of the System to check the open and click rates for the most recent campaign that was sent out. As well as the monthly / seasonal campaigns, the Nettl System is filled with an ever expanding library of campaigns from the past 5 years. Each campaign is made up of an e-shot and social media assets – some also have artwork for offline collateral. We’ve seen an increase in demand for social media and SEO recently so the last online campaign we deployed, via the System, was about our range of social media packages. The beauty with this offering is that we sell it but Nettl’s central team of experts do it. I’m able to say yes to the things that clients want, without having to allocate my team’s resources to them. And in a time where costs are being squeezed everywhere, it means I can really maximise my team’s cost per hour. We earn passive, recurring revenue whilst keeping customers happy. 

I allocate a task to members of my team to make calls to those who clicked on the social media e-shot. I also ask them to run a report, from the Nettl System, which shows any ‘Lost and Dormant’ customers. It brings up clients who haven’t ordered with us for 3-6 months. It’s so handy to identify who is falling off the radar and might need some extra TLC. If there are any Lost and Dormant clients, who clicked the e-shot, I highlight them as a priority for the team to call. It’s an easy way to re-start a conversation and the System gives us all the data we need, within minutes. 

The Nettl System also includes online training for staff. It’s been incredibly useful in up-skilling the existing team so they can confidently pitch new products and services. I’ve delegated one of the guys here to send out an e-shot, to a select group of clients, about SEO Console. It’s a DIY solution aimed at clients, with small budgets, who can master SEO fundamentals to get their businesses found online. There are three parts to the solution: listings, optimiser and reviews. Clients can pay for each part separately, for around £20 each, per month,  or as a bundle, for £49 per month. New products and solutions like this, to help us target different client demographics, are released by Nettl regularly. It’s one of my favourite parts about the partnership – I don’t have to spend time thinking about new ways to engage clients. And then building the processes around them. And testing them. And maintaining them. I’m able to pick and choose what I want to offer my clients, in a way that works for my business and my tone of voice. 

I schedule some calls for my staff member to make and the idea is that he’ll pitch the concept and then use the Proposal Tool, within the System, to send a detailed overview of the offering, why we think it’s beneficial to them as client and costs. For every centralised, Nettl offering, there’s a ready-made proposal with pre-written content. They act as sophisticated quotes and manage customer expectations. It only takes a few minutes to personalise one, email it to the client, direct from the System, and add the Proposal to our online Pipeline board.

Clients can approve proposals online and the System automatically updates us when this happens. Then my team will set a subscription against a client, save it and the Nettl platform automatically takes payment, via Stripe, and the central team get to work.

One of the last things we do, before we leave, is to look at the Pipeline board. It represents every enquiry, opportunity and possible project that comes in. Each one is linked to a card which can be dragged and dropped, kanban style, across the board. Reasons can be assigned to moving the card which helps me to understand, at a glance, where a project is up to. We all see the same Pipeline which makes it easy to visualise what’s in the pot. With values. I can assign cards to team members and receive status update notifications. The Pipeline has meant we can remove the old project white-board from the studio, which was constantly falling down. I’m happy because all of the project knowledge is safe within the Nettl System, which is cloud-based, unlike on the white-board, which became a nightmare when someone worked from home or was off sick.

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