Cakes & Sh!t

Sweetening the Deal with Cakes & Sh!t

Integrations Award
2021 Impact Awards
Bitmap
Cakes-and-Shit-Logo
Solution
Sales Automation
Project Location
Brisbane, Australia
Project Goals

In the heart of Fortitude Valley, Cakes & Sh!t is a bakery that's changing the game when it comes to avant-garde baking. Famous for their decadent and downright dirty, sugary creations, Cakes & Sh!t came to Neighbourhood eager to fully automate their operational processes to allow them to put their energy into what really matters ... baking ridiculously tasty and devilishly rude treats.

Tools Used
HubSpot logo woo commerce Sakari Zapier_logo.svg WordPress-Logo

Their wants

01

Internal visibility on new leads entering the system and their progression through the sales process

02

To help their team work more effectively on the tasks that would produce the biggest impact for the business, in less time and with less manual input

03

Reduce human reach-out/admin work as much as possible

Their needs

01

To get set up with a CRM platform that would allow them to house and report on customer data, as well as give them the opportunity to update past customers on future promotions

02

An automated system that would schedule out orders in their Google Calendar

03

An SMS service that alerts customers of order progression

Identifying the problem

Long-term neighbours at our former abode in Bakery Lane, Neighbourhood’s Director Trav and Cakes & Sh!t’s Owner Sam met through a shared obsession with French bulldogs and got talking about their respective businesses soon after. Airing her frustrations over a cupcake, Sam expressed concern at her business's inability to effectively manage its growing number of orders. She explained that her current operational processes were disproportionately manual; she was having to make phone calls to update customers as to order progression, was hand-jamming appointments into her calendar on the fly, and was trying to interpret reams of disconnected data to figure out how the business was performing.

This lack of structure in the operational process was gradually leading to reduced capacity across the board, as well as inadequate customer engagement and a disheartening rate of customer re-buy. Recognising the problem, Sam went in search of a solution not only to ensure her customers were kept fully abreast of order status, but that would also keep her team fully across the day-to-day tasking.

Having heard this story many times before, and in fact, having experienced these exact difficulties managing enquiries for his own eCommerce store in the past, Trav left the meeting in equal parts full of cake and determined to craft an automation plan to get Cakes & Sh!t humming like a well-oiled machine.

Scope of works

HubSpot Onboarding & Support

HubSpot CRM set-up/onboarding

Sales & CRM

eCommerce pipeline build 

Bakery pipeline build

Auto SMS sending in deal stages

Websites & Integrations

Integration of WooCommerce and HubSpot 

Integration of Sakari and HubSpot 

Integration of Google Calendar and HubSpot 

Integration of Databox and HubSpot 

The Plan

  • Starting from scratch
  • Sales Pipeline Workshop
  • Mapping the journey
  • Housing a suite of integrations

Starting from scratch

  • The extent of the challenge presented – the standalone WooCommerce site, the absence of any CRM, disconnected and manual internal processes, and no order automation – effectively allowed us to rewrite the operational process from scratch.
  • Sam's goal for all-department synergy demanded a fresh approach and was the perfect opportunity to introduce a new platform – HubSpot. This would give Cakes & Sh!t exactly the CRM capability they needed to store their customers’ contact details, and allow automation of their internal processes while maintaining a distinctly human, personable level of customer service.

Sales Pipeline Workshop

  • To hit the ground running, we conducted a sales pipeline workshop with the Cakes & Sh!t team to get a detailed understanding of the existing sales process. Each of the stages in use until now, however vaguely worded, was broken down to determine exactly what it represented to them, and what the goals were for movement between stages.

Mapping the journey

  • Based on this insight, we mapped two pipelines in our wireframing software, Miro, to enable the necessary integrations that would bring Sam's wishlist to life. Firstly, an 'eCommerce pipeline' that tracks deal movement through the website and secondly, a 'Bakery pipeline' that tracks individual order progression in-house. 

Housing a suite of integrations

  • Along with intuitive sales pipelines, HubSpot could also provide Cakes & Sh!t with a single space to house a suite of integrations, particularly WooCommerce x HubSpot, to provide the team visibility into their website performance and to support large-scale decision making.
  • As part of the WooCommerce integration, we created an API of the custom field data used in the checkout process that would not only create a deal in the eCommerce Pipeline but also specify the pick-up date and product type in the Bakery Pipeline. 

The Strategy

  • The result of integrations
  • Shaving off admin time with Zapier
  • Satisfying customers with order updates
  • Capacity Planning

The result of integrations

  • With the eCommerce and Bakery pipelines set up and the WooCommerce integration firing on all cylinders, we set about lowering Sam's own admin burden through a Deal x Google Calendar Integration, raised customers’ awareness of the progress of their orders through a Deal x Sakari Integration, and finally addressed the business performance reporting issue through a Deal x Databox Integration.

Shaving off admin time with Zapier

  • During the exploratory phase, we discovered that in order to schedule tasks for the day, the Cakes & Sh!t team were spending the first few hours in the morning reviewing recent deals to ascertain the order date and manually check the order progression.
  • We saw a clear opportunity to use the Zapier platform to automatically populate calendar entries once a new order had been placed through WooCommerce and the 'customer pick up date' property was specified. The integration essentially talks to itself, reducing overall scheduling, planning and prepping time – and allowing the team to hit the tools as soon as possible!

Satisfying customers with order updates

  • Customers love to be updated on their queue progression, so we integrated Hubspot with Sakari to send customers automatic SMS updates as deal cards progress through the 'Bakery Pipeline'. These updates alert customers after initial purchase, advise when their order had made it to the oven, and finally when the magic was complete and the order was ready for pickup.
  • We took the opportunity to use these updates as a secondary marketing touchpoint, incorporating as much personality as possible into the messaging, in an attempt to keep the brand top-of-mind after purchase and spur future re-buy.

Capacity Planning

  • Recognising the bottlenecks the team at Cakes & Sh!t was experiencing in monitoring performance and gauging capacity day-to-day, we extended Databox as a holistic, all-in-one platform solution to provide an eagle-eye view of orders currently in the pipeline and so allow the team to plan time accordingly.
  • Integrating the platform with Hubspot allowed the team to track capacity in real-time, in turn allowing them to establish meaningful KPIs to work towards and start hitting their continuous improvement goals.
Zapier x Woo Commerce
Order Update GIF
Databox x HubSpot

The Results

30%

Increased Rebuy Rate

50%

Decreased Internal Admin    Time

35%

Increased Capacity Rate

The introduction of Hubspot and our various software integration initiatives sees Cakes & Sh!t operating very differently these days.

Much less time is being spent on unproductive admin tasks. The introduction of the Hubspot Deal x Google Calendar integration has seen the hours spent setting up a daily schedule reduced by half. Establishing SMS automation has contributed to a very impressive rise in the customer rebuy rate of 30%.

And finally, as a result of the integrations and optimisations made across the board, we have increased the Cakes & Sh!t team’s capacity by 35%, and now, through the introduction of Databox, they can continue to track that capacity as they look to continually improve. Hubspot's integrative capability really takes the cake, eh?

The Impact

"[Our process] is so much different thanks to you guys. In order for us to get the level of automation and automatic communication across calendars and CRMs, you guys needed to get a bit creative and make a whole bunch of different programs talk to Hubspot - which is awesome. ... [The project] has taken all the routine information - that no one wants to do anyway - and has automated it. So good!"

Sam Fitzpatrick
Cakes & Sh!t

Conclusion

We are stoked at all we managed to achieve with Cakes & Sh!t ... as it's a true testament to the integrative capacity of Hubspot, and the infinite possibilities available to projects of any kind. While we're no longer Neighbours on Bakery Lane, Sam is now well and truly a part of our Neighbourhood - and with new processes and systems at the ready, we can't wait to see what's next for Cakes & Sh!t. 

Think we could help you out with something you see here?

Play Matters

97,000+

Searches on the Play Experience search tool

22,500

Family memberships created

42,000

Attendees created for Play Experiences through the website

National Storage

500+

Records Updated Automatically

314,284

Automated Emails Sent

42.52%

Email Click-Through-Rate