30% revenue growth thanks to a 15-20% increase in high-quality clients - not too good to be true with a software partner that gets to know you and plays to your strengths.
Read more about how Turn, an Oregon-based design and brand agency, gives their clients the cloud-nine treatment with Umbraco Cloud, what the agency appreciates about the Umbraco Partner community, and what the secret is behind their profitable client referrals from Umbraco!
Who is Turn?
Turn is an Oregon-based design and brand agency. They offer services ranging from digital experience design and brand development to technical strategy and strategy workshops. The agency was founded in 2017 and they have used Umbraco since the beginning. Turn became a Gold Partner in 2018.
Why Umbraco?
In their previous agency experience, Turn’s team had done a lot of work in other CMS platforms as well. However, they often found themselves having to adjust the way they work to match the CMS and tell the clients to rein in their ideas because they would be expensive to develop. “With Umbraco, we found that the platform gets out of our way and lets us do work that is catered to our individual clients,” says Damian Vander Wilt, the Development Manager of Turn.
With the freedom it provides, Umbraco has been a huge part of Turn since the start of the agency. “We’ve kind of built Turn with Umbraco first and foremost in our minds. We do work with other CMS platforms but Umbraco is by far our preferred one,” says Jeremiah Bascue, the founder of Turn.
Turn continues to choose Umbraco because it allows them to design an authoring experience that clients of any technical level or aptitude can readily adopt. “They’re enabled to completely customize their website without developer assistance. They are not locked into templates, they don’t have to call a developer to change the footer, or the layout of a complex component, for example,” says Bascue.
If I were to characterize our relationship with Umbraco, I’d say it’s been really helpful. It’s been caring, informative, and even fun.
Apart from its ease of use, Turn likes the scalability of Umbraco’s backoffice, which allows for an equally seamless workflow for small and large content management teams.
Their developer team also appreciates and embraces Umbraco’s accessibility and adaptability. The workflow between frontend and backend is seamless and the CMS adapts however they write their code. They can also easily reuse existing codebases for new projects.
How did Turn grow with Umbraco?
Already in their first year of business, Turn’s growth trajectory was stellar. For the first month, the team took on smaller, four-digit budget projects that allowed them to open the door. By the end of the year, the agency reached $1 million in revenue.
The agency did not stop growing after this milestone. Ever since becoming an Umbraco Gold Partner in 2018, Turn saw a 15-20% increase in the number of clients they took on which correlates to a 30% increase in revenue.
Because Umbraco has taken the time to get to know us, our capabilities and strengths, and what we excel at, we’ve received fantastic leads that are a good fit and resulted in long-standing relationships.
However, Turn appreciated the quality of the clients more than the mere quantity. “The people that were referred to us by Umbraco were qualified leads who knew what they wanted. They were suggested to Turn because we were uniquely equipped to work with them and the projects catered to our strengths,” Bascue explains.
Turn and Umbraco Cloud
Umbraco Cloud has played a big part in Turn’s successful growth as it lets the agency and their clients focus on aspects that truly add value to their business.
The cloud-hosted solution allows Turn to put clients on Umbraco that they could not otherwise - clients without their own firm, IT staff, technical infrastructure, or technical aptitude within their organization. “With Umbraco Cloud, clients don’t have to deal with hosting and managing that level of complexity - and they can still reap the benefits of Umbraco.”
That was, for example, the case of Serán Bioscience, a bioscience company. After Turn put them on Umbraco Cloud, this client can now solely focus on their messaging and site content.
On the other hand, MindClick, an environmental health product intelligence company, has a full IT staff. But Umbraco Cloud gave them peace of mind that their multi-site web presence was always up-to-date and secure thanks to the twice-yearly security audits. This also enabled them to focus their time and resources on other initiatives.
When Turn took on the project of creating the website for Louisa Foods, a family-owned food production business, they had two sectors to their company managed under two distinct websites. “We were able to unify that experience using Umbraco into a single multisite entity that really simplified our client’s life,” says Bascue.
Turn in the Umbraco ecosystem
The team behind Turn already had aspirations to become an Umbraco partner in their previous workplace. When they started their own agency, they became a Registered Partner in their first year - and progressed to the Gold Partner tier the year after. “We didn’t traverse the levels. We just got in the door, let Umbraco get to know us a little bit, and then immediately went gold.”
With Umbraco, we found that the platform gets out of our way and lets us do work that is catered to our individual clients.
Turn values the relationship Umbraco HQ cultivated by getting to know their capabilities, strengths, and projects they would excel at. “Thanks to this, we’ve received fantastic leads from Umbraco that are a good fit and resulted in long-standing relationships.” The agency also appreciates easy contact with their Partner Manager and great access to experts at support who are ready to sit down with them and help them find anomalies.
“If I were to characterize our relationship with Umbraco, I’d say it’s been really helpful. It’s been caring, informative, and even fun,” concludes Bascue.
Turn’s founder emphasizes one more advantage of being a part of Umbraco’s ecosystem - the Umbraco Partner community. He appreciates its spirit of collaboration rather than competition. “We have a relationship with several other agencies we’re in regular contact with. If we don’t have the bandwidth to take on a new client, we’ll pass them onto another Gold Partner. We’ve actually pitched clients together with other agencies or helped each other solve technical issues, ” Bascue says about the sense of camaraderie among the community.
With Umbraco Cloud, clients don’t have to deal with hosting and managing that level of complexity - and they can still reap the benefits of Umbraco.
Key takeaways: What did taking Umbraco to market mean for Turn?
- Since they became a Gold Partner in 2018, Turn saw a 15-20% increase in the number of clients they took on, which correlates to a 30% increase in revenue.
- With Umbraco, Turn has a flexible CMS that lets them create work catered to individual clients - and gives the team a seamless workflow between frontend and backend.
- The CMS allows Turn to design an authoring experience that clients can easily adopt and customize their website without developer assistance.
- Their work on Umbraco Cloud allows all clients access to the benefits of Umbraco - no matter the level of technical infrastructure.
- Being a Gold Partner brought Turn a strong relationship with Umbraco HQ leading to beneficial client referrals tailored to their strengths, and direct access to technical support.
- Turn appreciates the collaborative spirit of the Umbraco Gold Partner community.