Case Studies
Turning Strategy into scalable systems
Turning smart strategy into systems that drive revenue clarity.
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Growth isn’t about having more ideas. It’s about having the systems to execute them at scale. Our case studies highlight how LaunchWave bridges strategy and operations, turning big-picture GTM plans into data-driven infrastructure that actually works.
Case Study 1
Cutting HubSpot Costs Without Cutting Capability
The Starting Point
A SaaS company was scaling fast and so was their HubSpot bill. With tens of thousands of contacts in their database, every single one was marked as a Marketing Contact. That meant HubSpot was charging them to send newsletters, feature announcements, and nurture emails to their entire database, whether the contact was actively in-market or not.
The result? A $6,000 monthly HubSpot bill that had ballooned far beyond reason.
The Challenges
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Everyone = Marketing Contact
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No segmentation. Every record in the CRM was flagged as “marketing eligible.”
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HubSpot treated all sends as premium, regardless of buyer stage.
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Transactional vs. Nurture Emails Blended
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Free trial onboarding and enterprise nurturing ran through the same expensive system as broad newsletters.
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HubSpot was being used for every type of communication, whether time-sensitive or not.
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Misaligned Spend
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Thousands of dollars wasted each month sending low-priority comms through a high-cost tool.
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Leadership had no plan to optimize and feared costs would continue to skyrocket as the database grew.
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Our Solution
We separated mission-critical communications from general marketing nurture and optimized the tech stack:
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HubSpot Reserved for Transactional & High-Intent Stages:
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Trial onboarding
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Warm MQL nurturing
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Customer success/account POC emails
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Mailchimp for Cost-Effective Nurture:
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Newsletters
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Feature launches
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Blog announcements
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Broad marketing campaigns
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We cleaned up the Marketing Contact list in HubSpot, integrated Mailchimp with automated imports, and built preference-based segmentation for email audiences.
The Results
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>$5,000 in Monthly HubSpot Savings
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HubSpot costs dropped from $6,000 → <$800/month.
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Mailchimp cost only $800/month for nurture campaigns.
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Annual ROI: ~$63,000 in HubSpot savings.
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Smarter Marketing Operations:
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High-intent communications stay inside HubSpot for real-time impact.
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Newsletters and nurture flows run efficiently through Mailchimp.
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Scalable Setup:
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Contact growth no longer automatically means higher HubSpot bills.
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Case Study 2
Scaling a Dual-Product SaaS with HubSpot GTM Ops
The Starting Point
A fast-growing SaaS company had invested in HubSpot, but the platform was being used more like an email list and contact bucket than a true CRM. Their sales pipeline wasn’t even in HubSpot, it lived in Trello, a project management tool. Reporting came from a Frankenstein Google Sheets workbook that relied on multiple team members entering data correctly (and hoping no one broke a formula).
Every inbound form fill, from newsletter subscriptions to demo requests, was treated as a “lead” and automatically sent to Sales. With no lead data governance in place, reps were chasing down low-quality contacts while high-value opportunities slipped through the cracks.
To complicate matters further, the company had two distinct go-to-market motions:
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Self-serve product: low-touch, fast volume.
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Enterprise product: sales-led, requiring full pipeline management.
Their existing HubSpot setup couldn’t handle both.
The Challenges
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No Lead Data Flow or Governance
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All form fills = leads. No qualification or routing rules.
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No optimized event tracking in Google Tag Manager to distinguish buyer intent.
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Pipeline Outside of the CRM
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Sales pipeline managed in Trello, leaving HubSpot blind to deal progression.
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No ability to measure lead → demo → deal creation → closed-won conversions.
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Zero Visibility into Revenue Impact
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Sales KPIs and pipeline health were impossible to track.
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Leadership relied on manual spreadsheets with high error risk.
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Dual GTM Motions, One Broken System
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CRM not equipped to manage both self-serve and sales-led enterprise processes.
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No automation, no segmentation, no scalable infrastructure.
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Our Solution
After running a full GTM Ops Health Check, we delivered a roadmap and executed a complete rebuild in less than 3 months:
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Lead Data Flow + Governance: Established event-based tracking in GTM, implemented qualification logic, and built routing rules so only sales-ready leads hit the pipeline.
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Pipeline Architecture: Designed and launched two distinct pipelines in HubSpot—one optimized for self-serve, one for enterprise. Defined lifecycle stages and forecasting models.
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CRM Optimization: Cleaned data, built workflows, and implemented automation to remove manual tasks and errors.
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TrueFunnel Integration: Connected HubSpot and key ad platforms into their own TrueFunnel instance, creating end-to-end visibility from click to close.
The Results
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Revenue Visibility: Leadership now has real-time reporting on lead quality, conversion rates, and pipeline health.
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Sales Efficiency: Reps stopped wasting hours chasing unqualified contacts. Enterprise opportunities are prioritized and worked systematically.
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Dual GTM Clarity: Both product motions run in a single HubSpot instance with workflows tailored to each.
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Board-Ready Reporting: Instead of Frankensteined spreadsheets, the team has a single source of truth in HubSpot and TrueFunnel.
Case Study 3
Enabling PLG with a Scalable GTM Data Infrastructure
The Starting Point
A SaaS company wanted to lean into product-led growth (PLG), but their systems weren’t ready. Product behavior data was siloed, messy, and flooding into HubSpot with no filters. Marketing couldn’t segment based on intent. Sales had no way to identify expansion-ready accounts hiding in the self-serve database. And leadership couldn’t see how product usage translated into revenue opportunities.
The Challenges
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Messy Product Data
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Everything was syncing into HubSpot, overwhelming the CRM.
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No hygiene or filters to determine which events actually mattered.
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No Intent Segmentation
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Marketing couldn’t personalize nurtures by usage behavior.
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Every customer got the same experience, whether they were power users or drop-offs.
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Missed Expansion Opportunities
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Sales had no visibility into which self-serve users looked like enterprise buyers.
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High-value upsell chances were buried inside the product database.
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No Path to PLG
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The company wanted to run PLG motions, but lacked the data infrastructure to support it.
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Our Solution
We built a GTM data infrastructure anchored in clean product data and HubSpot:
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Segment Integration & Data Hygiene
Connected product data to Segment and applied filters to sync only high-value usage events into HubSpot.
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Intent-Based Segmentation
Built HubSpot workflows that grouped users by behavior (adoption milestones, drop-off risk, power usage).
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Personalized Nurture Journeys
Designed lifecycle journeys to drive specific product actions, encouraging users to repeat the behaviors of top-performing customers.
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Sales Fishing Grounds
Created visibility for Sales to identify “enterprise lookalikes” in the self-serve base and target them for upsell.
The Results
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PLG Ready Infrastructure: Product data now powers marketing, sales, and CS instead of overwhelming them.
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Smarter Nurturing: Users get relevant product journeys, improving adoption and retention.
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Upsell Opportunities: Sales can hunt for enterprise-ready accounts hiding in the self-serve pool.
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Revenue Alignment: HubSpot and Segment now serve as a clean, unified system for PLG motions.
âš¡ In under 90 days, the client went from “no PLG visibility” to a fully operational product-led motion inside HubSpot.
Case Study 4
Cutting a $50K Salesforce Bill with a Smarter GTM Stack
The Starting Point
A fast-growing SaaS company was staring down a brutal renewal from Salesforce.
They’d enjoyed a 75% discount for years, but it was expiring and their data usage had exploded.
Over 10 million lead, contact, and activity records were clogging their instance. Salesforce had been surprisingly chill about it, but that grace period was ending. The renewal quote? Eye-watering.
Meanwhile, the company also had HubSpot. Just not using it for anything beyond email campaigns. Salesforce was treated as a separate, siloed CRM full of:
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Duplicate records
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Rogue automations left behind by past ops teams
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Integrations auto-creating contacts by the thousands
The result: a chaotic data swamp driving costs through the roof.
The Challenges
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10 Million+ Records Over API Limits
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Out-of-the-box cleanup tools would’ve taken over a year to complete.
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API limits made mass deletion nearly impossible on deadline.
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Disconnected Tech Stack
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HubSpot and Salesforce operated as two separate CRMs.
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No governance on what data flowed where—or why.
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Rogue Automation & Integrations
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Old processes were duplicating data daily.
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Multiple systems were creating contacts automatically, no validation logic.
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Cost Spiral Ahead
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Salesforce renewal skyrocketing.
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Future HubSpot marketing contact fees looming.
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Our Solution
With three weeks on the clock, we re-engineered the company’s entire GTM infrastructure:
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1. Data Detox: The Great Purge
We bypassed Salesforce’s built-in tools and went full rogue. Using Data Loader to batch delete and clean at scale. (After a few “fun” hours getting the right version to run on MacOS.)
10 million records → 9,000. In five days.
2. New System Hierarchy
We made HubSpot the source of truth for all lead data flow:
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Introduced lead scoring and MQL logic to control what synced to Salesforce.
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Only sales-ready records made the jump.
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Salesforce became the closer, not the catch-all.
3. Smart Cost Governance
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HubSpot was reserved for transactional, high-intent communications.
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Mailchimp handled newsletters, webinars, and broad nurture campaigns.
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This dual-system setup kept marketing flexible and the bill sane.
4. Long-Term Infrastructure Fix
Cleaned, rebuilt, and documented the entire integration ecosystem:
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Every automation mapped and audited.
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Sync rules defined.
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Governance framework implemented to prevent future bloat.
The Results
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Data footprint reduced by 99.9%
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Clean, connected GTM architecture: HubSpot (source of truth) → Salesforce (closer) → Mailchimp (messenger)
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Scalable, compliant, cost-efficient system with clear governance and automation control
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New Annual Bills:
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HubSpot – $9K
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Mailchimp – $7.5K
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Salesforce – $5.5K (down to 10% of renewal cost!)