At Intuit, we provide our application developers with innovative tools and programs designed to empower their success. In addition to offering tools to create great QuickBooks apps that meet the needs of small and medium-sized businesses, we launched the Marketing Concierge Program as a pilot to help developers maximize their marketing efforts.
During the program, participants collaborate with an Intuit Go-To-Market (GTM) team to design partner-driven marketing campaigns. They have access to Intuit assets, receive recommendations for improving their app listings in the QuickBooks App Store, and are provided insights into their:
- API usage
- Customer segmentation
- QuickBooks Online connection trends
According to app companies Syft Analytics, Rewind, and Xenett, participating in the program has helped expand their reach to prospective customers. Fellow participant Synder agrees. Today, Synder COO and co-founder Ilya Kisel shares how the Marketing Concierge Program has enhanced Synder’s marketing campaigns.
“Partnering with Intuit in the Marketing Concierge Program gives us access to valuable knowledge and resources,” he says. “This enables us to see our audience in a new light and explore untapped opportunities, ultimately helping us connect more effectively with our target audience and better serve mutual clients on a larger scale.”
Synder’s accounting automation software
Synder offers accounting automation software for small and mid-sized businesses that seamlessly synchronizes data from over 30 online platforms. Kisel explains that their app helps accounting firms with clients from retail, hospitality, non-profits, associations, and SaaS companies handle multiple payment sources from online platforms such as Stripe, Square, Amazon, and Shopify. Synder effortlessly syncs, records, and reconciles order and payment sources with QuickBooks to automatically recognize revenue.
Says Kisel, “Synder helps them close their monthly bookkeeping in style!”
Setting up Synder takes only 15 minutes. After four easy steps, customers can switch between auto and manual sync mode anytime. They can also select a daily summary posting or per transaction sync to record sales, fees, payouts, refunds, expenses, taxes, discounts, locations, shipping, and customer and product information. This results in perfect P&L, inventory, and sales reports.
Over 1,500 QuickBooks app users give a five-star rating to Synder for its agility in sync modes, multi-user mode, robust security with SOC2 compliance, and exceptional customer support. One five-star reviewer writes: “I love this app. It syncs all the invoices, payments, fees. You can create rules and it does its magic.”
Reaching new customers with the Marketing Concierge Program
According to Kisel, not everyone knows what Synder can do, and he and his team often hear, “I wish we had found you earlier.” He says this highlights that SaaS companies like theirs need to invest in awareness and education for future users. “Expanding our user acquisition channels and finding new ways to engage with potential clients is just as important as providing the highest quality service to our current users.”
Expanding user acquisition channels and finding new ways to engage with potential users is exactly what the Marketing Concierge Program is designed to do. Says Kisel, “The Intuit ecosystem offers a uniquely impressive set of programs overall, and the Marketing Concierge Program is awesome! Three standouts of the program–out of a huge list of benefits–are open communication, clear objectives and insights, and access to additional resources.”
Kisel adds, “The Intuit GTM team offers tactics that combine custom approaches with target audience insights and best practices that leverage general marketing and deep industry knowledge. This blend improves the marketing strategy and execution of the program participants.”
The Synder team has also taken advantage of the many campaign assets provided in the Intuit Marketing Portal, including marketing kits.
“Intuit marketing kits are a huge help in tailoring campaigns to specific types of audiences,” Kisel says. “They also serve as great toolkits for developing new marketing strategies or refining existing ones. We’re particularly focused on the ‘Expanding Your Business into the Mid-Market’ kit, as this segment is becoming increasingly important in our strategy.”
Finding success with the Marketing Concierge Program
While participating in the Marketing Concierge Program, Kisel and his team learned that companies—especially growing SaaS companies with thousands of subscriptions—are experiencing an education gap with complex reconciliation and revenue recognition processes. He says these companies are “missing a bit more knowledge about how to avoid common bumps in the road.”
With input from the Marketing Concierge team, Synder decided to create a series of articles by accounting professionals and business users to explain—in simple terms—how they organize and manage these processes effectively.
“We believe that real case studies are more impactful than theories and buzzwords. We appreciate that the Marketing Concierge team shared this vision and helped us use their resources to spread the word about these practical examples,” Kisel says.
He adds, “Looking ahead, we’re excited to collaborate with the QuickBooks team beyond written content. For instance, we’re looking into co-hosting a webinar where both Synder and QuickBooks can showcase best practices to simplify the daily tasks of accounting professionals.”
The Intuit team is excited to continue collaborating with Synder and to help them reach their stated goal of showing that “education, accounting, and back-office tasks can be fun, engaging, and definitely worth your time.”
We invite developers to list their apps on the QuickBooks App Store, which is the first place our team looks for future program participants. Our step-by-step guide makes it easy to publish and list your app!