Babbage Case Study: From manual work to smart marketing automation

About Babbage

Babbage specializes in recruitment within marketing, communications, and content. The agency places both interim professionals and candidates in permanent positions, working with government bodies, semi-public organizations, and commercial companies. Babbage also has its own communications agency, offering clients communications advice and project-based support.

Within Babbage, the marketing and communications strategy is managed by a small team responsible for everything that makes the brand visible—from branding and lead generation to content, PR, events, and campaigns.

The challenge

Switching to ActiveCampaign opened up many new possibilities, but without an integration with Otys, much of the work would still have to be done manually. Gioia explains: "I didn't want to go back to manually transferring and maintaining everything. We needed automation for that."

The solution

Through Otys, Babbage was introduced to Harmonizer. Together, we set up the integration between ActiveCampaign and Otys step by step. First for candidates, then for clients, and finally to write data back into the recruitment system.

During the project, it became clear that the technology itself wasn't the biggest challenge—the quality of the data required the most attention.

"Our database was quite outdated. Morris really thought along with us. He didn't just flag problems; he also came up with solutions straight away," says Gioia.

For example, we set up automated notifications for invalid email addresses and duplicate contacts. This allowed Babbage to continuously clean up and improve its database along the way.

A partnership where thinking along really matters

What made the biggest difference for Babbage was the way we worked together. Gioia says: "You understand our organization, ask the right questions, and challenge us to think things through. Are we actually achieving what we want with this? That kind of advice is incredibly valuable."

Babbage also appreciated Harmonizer's accessibility and responsiveness. "Morris was incredibly proactive. When something wasn't working properly, he didn't just let us know—he came up with a solution straight away. And he would simply pick up the phone. That's much faster than going back and forth over email."

"You also have a great ability to explain technical processes to non-technical people. That made working together really easy and enjoyable for us."

More opportunities for marketing and sales

The new integration doesn't just save time—it has also made Babbage's marketing much smarter.

Where a lot of work used to be done manually, campaigns can now be much more targeted. Contacts are automatically available in ActiveCampaign, including relevant information such as industry, job title, and seniority level. This allows Babbage to communicate much more specifically with its audience.

"For example, we can now target people in a specific industry. That simply wasn't possible before because the data wasn't available." According to Gioia, the automation saves around half an hour of manual work every week. But more importantly, it has made Babbage's marketing strategy much easier to execute.

"It has made our entire marketing toolkit much more extensive. Not only more efficient, but commercially much stronger as well."

The collaboration between marketing and sales has also become easier. Marketing campaigns now automatically generate leads that sales can follow up on.

The first results are already visible, with new meetings being scheduled with prospective clients.

Ready for the next step

The first project is complete, but for Babbage, this is only the beginning.

Together with Harmonizer, Babbage is already working on a follow-up project in which website forms will automatically be processed as leads and vacancies will automatically be included in newsletters.

"That alone will save my colleague an entire day of work!"

Would Babbage recommend Harmonizer?

Gioia doesn't have to think twice.

"Absolutely. We've already started another project together. You think along with us, move quickly, and are incredibly proactive. That really makes all the difference."