Who is Black Crow AI?
Black Crow AI’s Shopify app brings the power of Fortune 500-grade machine learning to businesses of every size, so challengers and disruptors can compete on an even data playing field. Their platform predicts shopper behavior and automates different actions that will compel them to subscribe, purchase, and repurchase at the right time. Black Crow AI uses predictive models to optimize for better business outcomes across brands’ email, SMS, websites, and paid ads.
Situation
With Black Crow’s investments in an expansion of products and capabilities taking off, the team needed to (1) create compelling messaging and materials that would resonate with customers and (2) operationalize the related launches to make sure they had the right impact. As a fast-moving startup, the desire and excitement was in place, but many of the foundational assets, customer insights, and processes were not.
Solution
Fluvio brought a two-pronged approach to address Black Crow’s needs by adding a Product Marketing Consultant and Principal into the organization's Marketing function. First, the team quickly defined a Voice of Customer research project, consisting of interviews across segments and ICPs, an accompanying survey, and competitive messaging analysis. Simultaneously, Fluvio embedded itself into in-flight launch teams, providing strategic advice and hands-on support.
Whereas GTM support and process design would last throughout Fluvio’s time with Black Crow, the research elements quickly informed positioning and marketecture workshops with leadership. Inputs from all of these elements were used to build Black Crow’s first comprehensive buyer journeys, messaging framework, ICP definitions, and detailed personas that were immediately adopted by other in-house and agency teams. This helped streamline the market message and accelerated how quickly the Black Crow team could create impactful activations.
CLIENT INTERVIEW
We sat down and interviewed JoAnn Martin, Chief Revenue Officer, to get her thoughts on Black Crow AI’s product marketing consulting engagement with Fluvio.
JoAnn Martin
Chief Revenue Officer
What problems were you encountering that led you to believe a product marketing consultant could help?
While there were a few versions of informal personas and a decent idea of our ICPs, our foundational product marketing assets were not clearly documented or tested with customers. In light of the new capabilities we were bringing to market, we were at an inflection point of needing verified voice of customer insights, and we needed to be confident they would resonate.
We simply didn’t have the bandwidth to do this in-house, and Black Crow needed to properly support these launches, which represented big strategic bets for our organization. When we’re in similar situations for other aspects of marketing, we look for outside help. In this case, we turned to Fluvio.
Why was Fluvio the right fit for Black Crow AI?
We appreciated that Fluvio could dive into what we had in-flight, without delaying their work to get our messaging and foundations in place. From day one, they were able to consistently contribute to our go-to-market efforts. All this happened while they were designing an effective research motion to capture Voice of Customer insights.
There was no delay or debate about this-then-that; they dove in and didn’t look back. As we built these items, they also stayed flexible to our immediate needs and were ready to jump on projects from refining our trial motion messaging to improving our proposal decks. They also helped take our team through a related thought exercise on our marketecture, which helped crystallize the ways we approach packaging. I appreciated that they could deliver major, foundational resources and general strategic support, as well as knocking out tactical quick wins like sales enablement, compelling slideware, and case studies.
“Fluvio’s work created force multipliers for our team. Their approach gave us the messaging building blocks we needed to work faster and sharpen our value proposition.” JoAnn Martin, Chief Revenue Officer, Black Crow AI
“Fluvio’s work created force multipliers for our team. Their approach gave us the messaging building blocks we needed to work faster and sharpen our value proposition. ”
What does Fluvio offer that is unique?
We didn’t just need assets and messaging; we needed a comprehensive look at our customers and what matters to them, presented in a way that our entire team could leverage. That’s exactly what Fluvio brought to the table. Buyer’s journeys they designed helped inform our sales strategy – as well as highlighting targeted sales enablement needs that we quickly addressed. Compelling frameworks made solution pages and paid ad landing pages far simpler to create. And buyer interviews drove usable ICPs and personas that helped us better target our marketing efforts.
Critically, they continually made these assets better using feedback from our team and buyers. Fluvio made continual refinements, rather than treating these foundational assets as one-and-done. We couldn’t have moved as quickly on creating compelling marketing and launch campaigns without the work Fluvio put in place.