SmartBug Media Named HubSpot 2020 Impact Award Winner

Recognized in the “Grow Better: Marketing” Category, SmartBug Demonstrates Ability To Implement Growth-Oriented Campaigns That Incorporate Strategies Beyond Standard Inbound Marketing Techniques

SmartBug Media—a leading Intelligent Inbound marketing agency that assists businesses in generating leads, increasing awareness, and building brand loyalty through inbound marketing, digital strategy, design, marketing automation, revenue operations, and public relations—announced that it was named a winner in the Grow Better: Marketing category in HubSpot’s Q4 2020 Impact Awards. HubSpot, a leading growth platform, uses the award to recognize members of its Solutions Partner Program that go above and beyond to help their customers grow better.

SmartBug, one of HubSpot’s few elite partners and the agency with the most five-star HubSpot reviews worldwide, received this Impact Award for its work with Southern Nazarene University (SNU). With a mission to revitalize the digital marketing strategy of SNU’s College of Professional and Graduate Studies, SmartBug implemented a robust, full-service inbound marketing program that included premium content, lead nurturing, paid search and paid social, website development, and public relations. The result has been a true digital transformation fueled by the HubSpot platform.

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“The SmartBug team is a part of our team, and we are now stacked with specialists instead of generalists,” said Carrie Hopkins, Executive Director of Marketing for SNU’s College of Professional and Graduate Studies. “The level of talent and expertise is far above what I could create with a small internal team. Our partnership with SmartBug allowed us to scale quickly at the beginning, while still being forward-thinking to long-term goals.”

The new digital strategy implemented by SNU and SmartBug delivered impressive results almost immediately and has proven especially beneficial throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. As the higher education industry has struggled with uncertainty and restrictions generated by the pandemic, SNU has maintained its application rates. Additional notable achievements, which can be viewed in more detail in SmartBug’s SNU case study, have included:

• A 29 percent year-over-year increase in applications for the College of Professional and Graduate Studies
• A 110 percent increase in web traffic between October 2019 and October 2020
• A 368 percent year-over-year increase in organic traffic
• 6.22 times more “request for information” submissions after its new webpage launch
• A dramatic change in overall visitor-to-lead (VTL) conversion rates from 0.92 percent to 3.4 percent after the new webpage launch

“I’m exceedingly proud of our team’s work while partnering with SNU,” said SmartBug Founder and CEO Ryan Malone. “This award validates our model of assigning seasoned professionals to every account. This ensures that our clients receive a high level of knowledge, strategic thinking, and expert execution, which generates quality work and growth-centric results such as those seen with SNU.”

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“I love to see companies go the extra mile to make sure their customers are successful,” said Katie Ng-Mak, VP Solutions Partner Program at HubSpot. “SmartBug is one of the standouts of the HubSpot’s Solutions Partner network, consistently showing an unwavering commitment to helping businesses grow better. On behalf of everyone at HubSpot, I congratulate SmartBug and the other Impact Award winners on this exciting achievement.”

SmartBug’s recognition by HubSpot follows recent announcements that it was named to the prestigious Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing private companies in America for the fourth year in a row and that it was recently named to the Adweek 100: Fastest Growing list for the second consecutive year. The company has also earned hundreds of Marcom Awards and dozens of Comparably awards.

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