It’s been two years since I joined iDrive Logistics as their CMO. Here’s a quick check-in on what’s moved, fresh from the MCP server I set up for them!
The headline: 2X conversion rate
Conversion rate doubled (1.94x, went from 0.68% to 1.33%). Inbound contacts up 120% on near-flat traffic.
Comparing the six months before I joined (Dec 2023 – May 2024) to the six months ending today (Nov 2025 – May 2026):
| Metric | Pre-engagement (12/23-5/24) |
Now (11/25-4/26) |
Δ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Online visits | 13,018 | 14,029 | +7.8% |
| Online contacts | 89 | 195 | +119% |
| Visit → contact rate | 0.68% | 1.39% | +103% (roughly doubled) |
| Direct visits | 3,716 | 7,728 | +108% |
| Organic Search visits | 5,313 | 5,196 | flat |
| AI Referrals visits | 0 | 252 | new channel |
| Paid Search visits | 1,698 | 0 | retired |
Traffic didn’t grow much (I was surprised, because this wasn’t intuitive on our end, but doing a spot check on our other tools it did end up being fairly flat). However, our conversion engine got more efficient.
For context: by Feb 2025, six months into the engagement, we’d already grown the newsletter from zero to more than 1,000 subscribers, and within 40 days of the new website launch we landed iDrive’s first two inbound form fills that converted to customers. Per Brett, “since 2008, this client had never received an inbound form fill that converted to a deal.” The two-year data shows that motion compounding.
The steps we took to boost conversions
Rebuilt the website from the wireframe up
I mentioned in another article I moved us from Webflow to WordPress, but that wasn’t all. I’ve been busy building out our website to reflect how we worked. Our old website was for a single audience of eCommerce sellers, and it was a little misleading with a heavy focus on fulfillment. We don’t actually handle fulfillment – our partners do. We handle shipping and transportation.
Our old navigation was mostly flat;
- Fulfillment
- Shipping
- Advisory
- Resources
- Podcast
- Blog
- Case Studies
- About
Our homepage made it seem like our primary audience was brands of any size, and visitors were confused about what exactly we did for them. There was no technology or product positioning, and no nod to 3PLs which were some of our best customers. We were prominently displaying fulfillment on the menu for some reason.
After updating our wireframe, our website looks like this;
The current site caters to both of our audiences, makes it clear we work with enterprise brands, and puts our best technology-foot forward. The menu items on our page and their drop-downs explain what we actually do.
- Technology
- iDrive TMS
- Shipping APIs
- Integrations
- For Brands
- How it Works
- Shipping and Transportation
- eCommerce Fulfillment
- For 3PLs
- How it Works
- Key Features
- Resources
- Blog
- Podcasts
- Case Studies
- Free Resources
Each grouping does specific positioning work:
- For 3PLs declares an entirely new buyer audience. The old site treated 3PL operators as a partner or vendor relationship at most. Making them a top-level nav section, with their own How it Works and Key Features sub-pages, signals that iDrive sells to 3PL operators directly (and we have some great margin management features that were just completely invisible).
- Technology proves iDrive owns a platform; iDrive TMS, Shipping APIs, and Integrations as dedicated sub-pages signal software-backed shipping operations. Material to enterprise prospects evaluating multi-carrier vendors.
- For Brands makes the D2C/eCommerce buyer journey explicit — How it Works, eCommerce Fulfillment, and Shipping each get their own page. Same audience the old site spoke to, but with a dedicated funnel instead of a one-size-fits-all homepage.
- Resources is the SEO and lead-nurture surface. Blog for content marketing, Podcasts for thought leadership, Case Studies for proof, Free Resources for top-of-funnel lead capture.
Beyond the menu, the homepage gained a stats block ($250M client savings, $5B managed, 21% average savings) and a multi-customer testimonials carousel.
Set up attribution before scaling traffic
HubSpot + GA4 + Hotjar wired in during year one, before any of the content scale-up. You can’t read a +120% lift if the tracking layer isn’t there to read it. The HubSpot data in this case study is only legible because we set up the scaffolding before pouring traffic into the new site.
Hired the contractor team
Throughout my time, we’ve worked with a technical SEO consultant, freelance writers, multimedia agency (case studies, branding, content repurposing), PR consultant, and email infrastructure consultant. We tested each channel and hired in sequence, briefed against the editorial calendar, and initiatives were supported by iDrive’s in-house marketing manager.
Reorganized acquisition around what worked
Year one ran outbound, paid, and inbound in parallel as a deliberate test of which channels would earn their seat.
Mass cold outreach was the first to come off. By month three, we’d tested and terminated two outbound email agencies. The sales team’s feedback on the new inbound leads coming through the site was decisive: inbound leads were closing 3x faster than the outbound ones. What’s left of outbound today is highly personalized work at smaller scale, which still earns its keep.
The decommissioning shows up in another HubSpot dimension too: offline contacts (manual list uploads from the mass-outreach motion) dropped 70.8% — from 22,514 in the six months before I joined to 6,571 in the most recent six months. Fewer junk contacts entering the CRM is its own win.
Paid Search was the second. The channel didn’t produce the cost-per-acquisition iDrive needed, and we wound it down rather than keep funding an experiment that wasn’t compounding.
The HubSpot data reflects the reorganization:
- Paid Search retired (1,698 -> 0 visits) after the channel didn’t pan out
- Direct traffic doubled (3,716 -> 7,728, +108%) brand visibility from PR, partnerships, podcast appearances, and the Bloomberg placement in Jan 2025
- AI Referrals emerged as a brand-new channel (0 -> 252 visits) a channel that didn’t exist when I joined
Built the content engine
We worked hard on creating;
- Weekly blogs
- 2x/month newsletter
- Three webinars (shipping-cart optimization, understanding carrier-contract pricing, 3PL webinar for our partners)
- A case study production process that ships every customer story as a YouTube video + blog post with embedded video + standalone case study write-up + social media snippets
- Bottom-funnel content with explicit conversion paths into the sales motion
We used these assets to fill the buyer journey with interesting and frequent touchpoints and nurture leads that weren’t quite ready.
What next?
The marketing function is now running smoothly. Attribution is wired and inbound is producing. Year three, we’ll be focusing more on network effects and channel partnerships. It was one of my favorite things to get right, but takes a lot of time, organization, and follow-ups. I’m working on building something now with Claude to keep us on track.
If you’re a co-founder or C-suite operator at a build-phase B2B eCommerce ops company and you’re trying to figure out what a fractional CMO engagement should look like, especially if you’ve got an outbound machine running but no inbound motion to back it up, reach out. I keep the roster small, especially while I’m in the EMBA, but the engagement-design conversation is one I’ll always make time for.