Mobile automotive service operating system accelerates growth with Kalungi

A marketing agency specifically designed for B2B SaaS companies

A full-service marketing agency for B2B SaaS companies, Kalungi lets CEOs and entrepreneurs choose from a wide range of services, everything from simple diagnostics to complete branding and go-to-market campaigns to short-term engagements as an entire marketing department.

“When we engaged Kalungi, we had a really robust software solution,” said Ed Warren, Zippity’s CEO, “but no marketing operation was in place to actually start selling it.

“I didn’t think there would be a full-service agency like Kalungi to help us out. But when I found them, it was really fascinating because we went from zero to 60 in a very short period of time: building a website, creating a list of contacts, developing sequences to reach those contacts, creating an entire white label marketing department within our company.

Full-service, fractional engagements

“Two dynamics really stood out for me. The first was Kalungi’s full-service element. I didn’t want to have different agencies doing different parts of the whole and allowing things to fall through the cracks. I wanted one agency that was singularly responsible for hitting our targets. Having a real thought partner to own marketing was important.

“The second element, within that holistic dynamic, was having a single point of contact who could be the liaison for the different functional areas. I wanted someone to help create a cogent path forward through a number of options, to help corral the cats.

“It was important to me to have a strategic partner and collaborator so that I wasn't the one having to play air traffic controller. Having the fractional CMO dynamic to guide all elements of the engagement was equally important.

“The power of the Kalungi model is that you’re getting all of the different elements of a successful marketing team coming together virtually under your own roof for as long as you might need them.”

Starting from scratch

Zippity allows mobile automotive services to maximize bookings with a 24/7 online customer self-scheduler, cluster appointments automatically so techs work more and drive less, and more. The company actually started as a B2C company but pivoted to B2B in the spring of 2020, a move that showed great potential but was not without growing pains.

“We had to figure out our true ideal customer profile,” explained Ed. “Who we were going to say no to, how we were going to define our market, what the implications of that were. That shifted back and forth as we fine-tuned our offering in the early days.

“Kalungi was flexible enough to change strategy or tweak objectives. They accommodated our changes and I never felt like we were on opposing teams. They felt like an in-house marketing team that was aligned with the ultimate objective of helping Zippity grow.”

The benefits of a fractional marketing department

What makes the Kalungi offering so attractive to B2B SaaS companies is that they can engage the agency in any number of ways. Kalungi has helped companies do everything from strategic planning to developing fully integrated inbound and outbound campaigns to even helping hire marketing teams.

“My impression of fractional marketing leadership was pretty negative,” Ed admitted. “I had interacted with a few fractional marketing individuals who positioned themselves as big-picture thinkers. They might help you shape a brand, maybe create some blog articles or slide decks, but they didn’t have nearly enough tactical deliverables for what we needed to do.

“We needed to be revenue- and metrics-focused. The Kalungi model enabled us to have a single point of contact so the big-picture strategy could be sorted out and managed in a really fast, nimble, and effective way. Our fractional CMO was dedicated to hitting data-driven targets and growing revenue.

Helping Zippity go from zero SaaS revenue to exceeding sales goals

“Kalungi has been instrumental to our entire SaaS revenue growth. Basically, all of our deals originate through marketing qualified leads that are initiated and curated by Kalungi. Our salespeople close those deals, but they’re all leads that Kalungi helps us find.

“In terms of contacts, the backend technology to support such an increased ramp up, and then actual revenue coming into the company, Kalungi has been the motor behind it.

“They’ve been critical to our success to date. We did not have a single dollar in SaaS revenue when we first engaged with Kalungi. They took us from defining our ICP to initial SaaS sales and through our continued growth to this point.

“We’ve exceeded our sales goals in each of the first three months of our operation and seem to be on a very exciting trajectory going forward.

“That momentum has been built up through a very collaborative process between the Zippity in-house team of sales folks, product technology, and the Kalungi team that helped us frame our narrative.

“They put that messaging out there to the world and helped us deliver contacts that fit our ICP. We covered a lot of ground in a very short amount of time. That’s what’s helped us get to this point. It’s been exciting to see this transformation come to fruition in such a successful way.

“For me personally, my biggest gain is narrowing what I have to focus on day-to-day. Kalungi has allowed me to delegate with confidence, and that’s such an important thing in a world in which you have limited bandwidth to solve problems. So that was a huge win for us.

“I would recommend Kalungi 100%, without a doubt.”