How Bustle Grows Revenue With Boostr’s Next-Level Forecasting

GOAL

Consistently meet or exceed revenue goals through accurate forecasting, efficient workflows, and insight into new opportunities.

Bustle Digital Group is a leading global media group with an expansive portfolio of digital and experiential brands that reaches over 223 million monthly readers and represents some of the world’s largest advertisers. As Bustle’s President and Chief Revenue Officer, Jason Wagenheim manages a Rev Ops team of more than 200 and 1,300 client accounts. When he stepped into the position nearly seven years ago, his objective was the same as it is today: revenue generation.

To do that, Wagenheim needed to increase forecast accuracy, and free up his team to be more strategic. He knew robust, realtime performance data could help Bustle better serve its clients, and saw an immediate need for an advanced CRM that would help its Sales team stay a step ahead managing deals and inventory.

Boostr is without a doubt the most important day-to-day application we have in running our business.”

PROBLEM

Legacy systems and disconnected services resulted in inaccurate reporting—and lost dollars.

“When I came to the company in November 2016, they were running the company on spreadsheets,” Wagenheim said. “Lots of startups do it that way. But we’ve grown into a very large organization, and I knew we needed a real CRM.”

Mired in spreadsheets with dozens of tabs, teams couldn’t make sense of the data and forecasting suffered. With lagging insights, Bustle couldn’t make proactive decisions to prevent “slippage,” or the delay of a campaign, altering revenue projections by millions of dollars.

“I didn’t trust the forecast,” Wagenheim explained. “Because the OMS and the CRM weren’t talking to one another, there was no real-time data in it.” Rev Ops needed more granular data and automated workflows that could flag costly errors before they became problematic.

STRATEGY

Invest in a connected CRM + OMS to improve data accuracy and delivery—and empower sellers to pitch better deals.

• Unify all data in a single, user-friendly platform.
• Empower sellers through real-time, accurate data for performance, forecasting, and yield management.
• Use accessible insights to improve delivery to the benefit of advertisers and publishers alike.

“I’ve always been a big fan of Boostr,” Wagenheim explained. “As soon as I stepped into this role, I knew I wanted to bring them in.”

Boostr was designed with simplicity in mind, ensuring that sellers and leadership can easily navigate the platform, access information quickly, and build the smartest plans. “It’s very seller-friendly,” Wagenheim said. “It’s easy to see and pull data. It’s not a complex platform, but you can still extract complex insights from it.” These insights help sellers and planners tune into pacing and delivery to get better results for their partners.

After using Boostr’s CRM for several years, the company integrated Boostr’s OMS, too. “All of our data now lives in Boostr,” Wagenheim said. “Every single thing we do with every single account—it’s a big repository of data that we can spin very quickly to get the information we need to run the day to day of the sales team. Boostr is without a doubt the most important application we have in running our business.”

With the connectivity of the CRM and OMS, we can make sense of the data in a way we never could before. I know where we are in terms of delivery every single day… It’s made us a stronger, smarter sales organization.”

RESULTS

Better selling, faster billing, saved time, and more reliable data.

• Improved client relationships and more consultative selling.
• Precise forecasting that powers resource allocation and revenue generation.
• Billing and payouts have been accelerated by 7-10 days.
• Focused, empowered teams with an extra 4 hours a week to dedicate to strategy.

Since bringing Boostr’s CRM and OMS into Bustle’s daily operations, client-seller relationships have taken on a more robust, consultative tone, driven by accessible, accurate data. With busywork and spreadsheets eliminated by Boostr’s streamlined automations, sellers are saving time, and even billing is completed up to 10 days faster thanks to Boostr’s OMS.

“Boostr has become indispensable,” Wagenheim said. “With partner performance data in the system, we have more opportunities to do better and to win more work. We’re having more intelligent conversations with our partners.” In addition to on-the-ground revenue generation, forecasting has leveled up. “I can use Boostr like a crystal ball,” Wagenheim explained. “I didn’t trust the forecasts before, and now I do. And they are more useful because they reflect real-time changes, so we catch anything going wrong early enough to get in front of it.”

Real-time data has eliminated the slippage problem. “With the connectivity of the CRM and OMS, we can make sense of the data in a way we never could before,” Wagenheim said. “I know where we are in terms of delivery every single day.”

All in all, “it’s made us a stronger, smarter sales organization,” said Wagenheim. This supports his team’s ultimate goal: revenue generation.