Upcraft.io offers web development and creative services for Marketo, WordPress, Hubspot, Pardot, and more.
In the 2000s, co-founders Steve and Jon both started their careers with front-end development for a handful of web dev shops.
It wasn’t until the 2010’s that Steve and Jon learned the ropes of Marketo, Pardot, and Hubspot while working for a busy B2B demand gen agency in the Bay Area.
Then, in 2019, they formed Upcraft as a MarTech-savvy web development agency. Featured services include designing and developing email and landing page templates for Marketo, Pardot, and Hubspot, along with full WordPress site redesigns and maintenance.
Upcraft’s Niche
The web development agency knows Marketo, Pardot, and Hubspot like the back of their hand. This is the niche market they serve.
When their clients hire them for a site redesign, template, or other web development project, Upcraft provides them access to their 20+ years of knowledge and best practices within their marketing automation platform and CRM tools.
Upcraft’s Biggest Achievements As an Agency
In 2021, Upcraft grew its revenue 53% YOY. This has been their biggest achievement so far, and they take pride in how they have been able to grow their agency with their hardwork and dedication.
Figma vs. Sketch: The Best Collaborative Design Tool for Web Design Agencies
Upcraft’s Greatest Challenges and How It Overcame Them
In the wake of a global pandemic, marketing budgets were tightening and the web development industry saw large projects such as full website rebuilds being put on hold.
The focus shifted to webinars where a workforce increasingly stuck at home could continue to network, learn, and move their businesses forward.
Upcraft’s template development niche was an invaluable resource to marketing organizations needing professional, bulletproof landing pages and emails that can be spun up and edited by marketers without coding skills.
Upcraft’s Recipe for Success and Three Strategies That Have Proved to Be Most Fruitful for Their Agency’s Growth
Here is a list of the three strategies they implemented to achieve success:
- Partnerships have helped them grow by serving industry needs with exceptional quality and building trust for future referrals.
- Hiring experienced developers who know and understand Marketo, Hubspot, and Pardot has allowed them to offer not only coding excellence but best practices and big picture strategy.
- Finally, they have chosen to remain an all US-based team, enabling themselves to work quickly and efficiently within the same US timezones as their clients. Their turnaround times are typically 12-24 hours, and they strive to be an extension of their clients’ marketing teams.
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The Most Challenging Project for Their Agency and Their Learnings
They had a website redesign and build for a large software company last year that had a ton of content to migrate into WordPress from other various CMS platforms.
Importing/exporting large amounts of content in WordPress can be challenging to say the least. They learned the most efficient ways to get content from non-WordPress platforms into a fresh WordPress instance while retaining all the taxonomies and infrastructure needed to keep things organized and presented in the same way.
They successfully finished the project and the client was very happy but this was their most challenging project in recent months for sure!
The Three Software Tools/Apps They Use at Their Agency
Some great tools that they use daily are Hubspot for sales management, Asana for project management, Slack for day-to-day communications, 1Password for safely storing client logins, EmailonAcid for email render testing, and Cacher for code and snippet organization.
Prepare to Grow Your Agency with Agency Partnership Program
Join Cloudways Agency Partnership Program for a suite of benefits to help your agency grow. Enjoy discounts, hosting credits, co-marketing opportunities, and more!
How Has Cloudways Contributed to Upcraft’s Growth? What Features Do They Find the Most Helpful for Their Business?
“We provide hosting services to our clients. We’ve tried the self-managed options out there and the managed “WordPress-specific” competitor options and neither have fit our needs.
WordPress-specific hosting providers throttle performance with very expensive pricing models that agencies can’t mark up effectively. And the self-managed approach yields the most profits but at the sake of risk and time for management.
Cloudways has landed in the middle — and while managed — has allowed us to have full control of the server’s functionality which is the best of both worlds. Server performance blows the competition away. Pricing is fair as well which builds trust in the agency partnership. We’re big fans of Cloudways and plan to stick around for the long haul!”
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Some Tips That Upcraft Has for People Who Wish to Work in Their Niche or Start a New Agency
“For all would-be agency founders, be prepared to get your hands dirty. Stay attentive to your clients needs and make sure you understand their pain points and how to solve them before you hire your replacements.
Also, be prepared that maintaining a healthy niche and bootstrapping your own revenue early on will often feel like two opposing forces. Learn to only accept those projects that provide momentum to your niche without getting sidetracked for the sake of short-term profits.”
