Challenge

The short-term rental business model is relatively new, and Uplisting saw an opportunity to provide entrepreneurs juggling multiple properties with vital organisational resources to manage bookings, communicate with guests, and more. As with any new market, this space is evolving, and Uplisting’s aim was to not only keep up with but exceed customers’ expectations to make it even easier to manage their properties.

This required that the team establish a single source of truth for managing its customer data by connecting its internal database and Stripe. To that end, the company used a no-code workflow automation tool. “The tool was great, but we had to maintain it. We’re a ‘test and iterate’ kind of business, so our processes change really fast. Having automations that we had to regularly change on multiple levels wasn’t scalable,” said Dan Kavanagh, head of operations at Uplisting. Since Uplisting already supported so much of its business on Stripe, the team set out to connect its other software solutions into its financial source of truth using Stripe Apps instead of workflow automation tools that were difficult to manage.

Solution

Uplisting wanted to integrate its tech stack, which included HubSpot, Rewardful, and ProfitWell, with Stripe to better connect customer accounts across databases. With Stripe Apps, the team was able to integrate quickly and start testing its new setup immediately. “We knew that Stripe Apps is stable, reliable, and just does what it needs to do,” said Kavanagh. “Everything was built in and ready. HubSpot was up and running in minutes. ProfitWell had a direct integration and was ready in seconds. It was super quick.”

The variety of apps available on the Stripe App Marketplace gave the business all the tools it needed to connect its suite of software platforms together. This started with HubSpot, its source of truth for everything from sales to support, reporting, and marketing. With the HubSpot Data Sync app, Uplisting was able to connect Stripe Payments directly to HubSpot to help automate customers’ interactions as they moved from a quote to a purchase.

Rewardful gives existing Uplisting customers access to an affiliate referral program. With the Rewardful app, Uplisting can more easily help compensate those customers. “We pay our affiliates a commission when they refer somebody to us. With the Rewardful app, once someone clicks on a referral link, that information communicates directly with Stripe metadata. Then Rewardful calculates the commission automatically. We then don’t need to change anything manually,” said Kavanagh.

With the Profitwell Health Scores app, Uplisting gets instant alerts on which customers are at risk of churning, and which customers are likely to purchase more, based on engagement data. The team uses this data to improve retention and support and create a smoother customer experience. More connected systems result in Uplisting gaining better insights into customer trends and opportunities to improve its internal management processes.

Results

10-day average onboarding time reduced to three days with HubSpot Data Sync app

Since integrating with HubSpot using Stripe Apps, Uplisting has been able to ease the customer onboarding process and do away with its previous document management tool. “With HubSpot quotes, we have a more hands-on sales experience. Customers know exactly what they’re getting, how long they’re getting it for, and the purchasing process is frictionless because it’s connected directly to Stripe,” added Kavanagh.

Customers can sign contracts directly through HubSpot and make a purchase, and Uplisting can use its Stripe Connect account to get a new customer onboarded faster than ever. It now takes the company two fewer days to onboard large customers and seven fewer days for customers managing one or two properties. The HubSpot app has also helped speed up the process for renewing customer accounts. Reducing friction during the renewal process has helped retain more customers and has driven more than $10K in MRR in just five weeks.

$700K in sales brought in through the Rewardful app

Uplisting’s customers are its most vocal evangelists, and the company is constantly working with them to improve the platform and meet new market needs. To reward that collaboration, it adopted Rewardful. Prior to the Rewardful app, calculating commissions for customers would take up to two days. Now, Uplisting is able to process the payouts within an hour.

By connecting Rewardful directly to Stripe, the company is also able to distribute these payments to customers on a monthly basis rather than quarterly. This slight increase in cash flow goes a long way for small businesses, and this additional support from Uplisting has led to an uptick in organic word-of-mouth referrals and more than $700K in sales.

81% customer recovery rate with the ProfitWell Health Scores app

For a bootstrapped startup, every dollar matters. That’s why Uplisting uses ProfitWell to improve customer retention. Overdue or failed subscriptions are already managed by Stripe Payments’ Adaptive Acceptance, but if a second payment attempt doesn’t work, ProfitWell sends Uplisting’s customer an email notifying them of the failed charge. Connecting these workflows with the ProfitWell Stripe App has helped retain $5K in monthly subscriptions.

Gaining access to new solutions through the Stripe App Marketplace to scale quickly

Meanwhile, Uplisting continues to explore other ways Stripe Apps can accelerate its business goals. Through the Stripe App Marketplace, the team has discovered new apps to potentially meet existing business needs and help the company grow. “We want to find new ways to improve our cancellation flow. We’re not getting much information as to why people are cancelling. So we’re currently looking at a Stripe App called Churnkey to find new ways to analyse and improve our business,” said Kavanagh. “We’re a team of coders, but it’s nice not needing to build, because the solutions we need are already available from the Stripe App Marketplace.”