A Little About Me

My name is Zach Gilbert, and I am the Director of Marketing at Aysling. Before Aysling I worked at a variety of digital marketing agencies, that used a wide portfolio of tools: from Salesforce to HubSpot; Mailchimp to Constant Contact. All previous roles allowed me to get my hands dirty creating workflows, automation campaigns, drip campaigns, and create custom workflows that might have been outside the intended scope of the platform. That was my favorite part of working with new tool services, it allowed me to be a technical creative problem solver.

What I Do in Aysling

Making the switch from Salesforce and HubSpot, to Aysling was a different endeavor. Over the years at Aysling, I have been fortunate to provide input, advice, and feedback about how some of our core modules should operate, that’s something I (as a user) never had the ability to do with past platforms (neat fact, all Aysling clients have this same ability to provide feedback, suggest changes, and crowdfund development of the platform). Primarily, I work with the CRM, Automation, and Timesheets modules. Here is a brief synopsis of what I do in each:

CRM: In the CRM I spend most of my time viewing new leads, qualifying them, and passing them along to our sales team, while also connecting with our current clients through phone, email, and SMS text.

Automation: Within automation we have a variety of workflows aimed at retaining leads that might have gone silent, passing leads from the marketing department to the sales department, informing our current clients of events, newsletters, classes, etc., and launching drip campaigns for webinars, podcasts, and other marketing measures I have going on at the time.

Timesheets: Every day I input my hours into the various buckets our company manages; I also do this for projects that I manage. Aysling offers marketing services to groups who want to tie our cloud-based software services with our marketing expertise, so I will often find myself on multiple client projects at a time, logging hours as needed.

Why I Use Aysling

Each module that I use in Aysling has made my day(s) easier than using the previous platforms I was tasked with in the past. It might seem that as a provider of Aysling, our team would be required to use Aysling; however, that is not entirely true. Another small perk of Aysling is the amount of integrations it has; therefore, time is still spent in Mailchimp, BEEPro, and a few other platforms from time to time; however, here is why I use Aysling:

CRM: This is by far the biggest time saving/convenience providing benefit for me. Coming from Salesforce, anyone who uses the platform, understands the mentality of “always be logging”, it is often overwhelming, and neglected at the same time. Made a call? Type up the notes and log it. Sent an email? Copy and paste it, and so on. With Aysling, I can make a call directly from the site using our Twilio integration. It then creates an activity with an attached recording of the call in MP3 format. I never have to even pull out my phone, which is helpful on the go. Sending an email? That is the easiest part. I can either just type up a one-off email, or send an email template; both are options available directly within the platform. What is cool about emails, is that it logs the activity (with attachments), and it provides the analytics of when someone opens/clicks my email; that way I know if they have gotten it successfully. Last little tidbit of our CRM, it has endless reports and custom dashboards. It is easy to jump in my account and see what new leads I have gotten, and where and who they need to go to.

Automation: As an avid automation user, this module has made it easy to keep clients and prospects in the loop; without needing to constantly watch over every action. Our team has easy to develop automation workflow campaigns that assign new leads to our sales team, prompting changes to the Lead Status, and sending Slack notifications that they have a new lead (another handy integration). This alone has made it impossible for a lead to fall through the cracks, and keeps our sales team actively pursuing prospects, 24/7. Beyond the sales department, I use drip campaigns for upcoming webinars, releases, and other vital marketing measures. I can track opens, clicks, unsubscribes, etc. and have multiple triggers to make sure our clients are getting the messages they need, at appropriate times.

Timesheets: This one is the easiest for me. Every week I start a new timesheet, add the projects and tasks that I am assigned, then simply place my hours in each bucket at the end of the day. Some individuals do it at the end of the week, it is a simple/flexible platform. However, once Friday comes around (or Saturday if it has been one of those types of weeks), I can just click Submit my Timesheet for Approval, and our Finance Director is immediately provided my timesheet, from which she can record company hours, or bill clients on the hours that I designated for their group.

Final Thoughts

The reason I appreciate Aysling as a company and a product, is that it just works. All our team members from developers to sales reps, use Aysling. Our vendors and freelancers use Aysling. From a lead on our website, to onboarding a client, it all resides in one platform. Any Professional Services company (marketing agencies, software developers, engineers, etc.) can all benefit from all actions residing in our All-in-One Professional Services ERP, Aysling.

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