Marketup: How We Helped a Billion-Crown Marketing Agency Save 20% of Their Time and Transition from Excel to Pipedrive
Sales built on relationships, premium clients, and hundreds of valuable contacts kept in messy spreadsheets. Read how we revived an unused Pipedrive for the Marketup agency, set up automations, and unified their processes into one efficient tool.
About the Client: Global Reach with a Micro Team
Marketup is a full-service marketing agency focused on larger clients and market leaders (e.g., XXXLutz, Decathlon, or Škoda Auto). They handle everything from strategy setup to campaign management, social media, SEO, and AI. With a team of 60 to 70 people, the agency's managed turnover is currently approaching 1 billion CZK.
From Prague, they manage activities for more than 40 countries worldwide, but their sales team is intentionally kept very small—at its core, it consists of only 3 to 4 people. They do not acquire clients through cold calling; instead, they believe in consultative selling, personal brand building, and community networking (for example, through regular business breakfasts for CMOs).
The Challenge: The End of Prehistoric Spreadsheets and the Threat of Forgotten Promises
Just a few years ago, sales at Marketup operated primarily in Google Sheets and Excel. With hundreds of networking contacts and a massive volume of data, spreadsheets were simply no longer enough. The biggest pain point was that Excel cannot send notifications or reminders.
"Our sales are based on relationships and client service. We cannot afford to forget a promised contact or activity. With such a volume, it became unmanageable in Excel because it doesn't remind you that you have something to do. You have to keep it all in your head, and that was a massive pain," describes Milan Kubát, Head of Sales at Marketup.
Historically, the company owned several "half-dead" and unused licenses for the Pipedrive CRM system, which still held 6 years of valuable past data. The decision was clear: the system needed to be revived, cleaned up, and utilized to its fullest.
The Solution: Pipedrive's Rebirth and a Helping Hand from Dáváme
Although the sales team decided to implement the CRM and management led by example, they soon hit technological and process limits. While the environment was intuitive, they lacked the know-how to clean the system of duplicates and properly set up automations so the tool would genuinely make their work easier.
That is why they turned to us at Dáváme. We helped them with a comprehensive audit and setup:
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Orientation and Data Cleanup: We showed them what to focus on and helped them build their first functional pipeline.
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Automation Setup: The sales reps knew what they needed for the business; we provided the technological brains and set up the automations for them.
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Tool Unification: We moved newsletter distribution and event invitation management from external tools (Mailchimp) directly into Pipedrive.
Although the sales team decided to implement the CRM and management led by example, they soon hit technological and process limits. While the environment was intuitive, they lacked the know-how to clean the system of duplicates and properly set up automations so the tool would genuinely make their work easier.
That is why they turned to us at Dáváme. We helped them with a comprehensive audit and setup:
-
Orientation and Data Cleanup: We showed them what to focus on and helped them build their first functional pipeline.
-
Automation Setup: The sales reps knew what they needed for the business; we provided the technological brains and set up the automations for them.
-
Tool Unification: We moved newsletter distribution and event invitation management from external tools (Mailchimp) directly into Pipedrive.
The Results: 20% More Time and CRM as a Modern Business Card Holder
The transition from spreadsheets to Pipedrive was exceptionally fast thanks to close collaboration. The team members fell in love with the system because it immediately started streamlining their daily routines.
Key benefits of the implementation:
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20% time savings: All contacts, mailing, and event management (business breakfasts for 70–80 people) are now in one place. The chaotic search for information has vanished.
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Perfect overview via To-Do lists: Today, salespeople open Pipedrive while on the bus commuting to work. They see a clear list of tasks, ensuring they forget nothing and fulfill their promises to clients on time—or even ahead of schedule.
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The end of paper business cards: Thanks to the Pipedrive mobile app, the system acts as a digital business card holder. When an unknown number calls Milan, the CRM immediately identifies the caller and displays the entire communication history.
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Data for Account Management and Production: The system helps keep all essential information centralized for the rest of the agency.
"Overall, I would say Pipedrive has saved us 20% of our time because we have everything in one place and under control. The worst thing is to be in chaos and have to look for things all over the place," praises Milan Kubát.
Future Plans: AI Assistant and Advanced Reporting
The Marketup team views Pipedrive as an extremely dynamic platform and estimates they have only discovered about 50% of its potential so far. In the next phase, in collaboration with us, they want to focus on advanced daily reporting directly within the CRM (until now, they export data to their own dashboards).
They also have high expectations for integrating artificial intelligence. They are especially looking forward to automatic transcriptions of meetings and video calls with clients, where Pipedrive's AI will autonomously understand key data from the call (e.g., budgets for Google or Meta campaigns) and automatically fill out custom fields in the system. This will completely eliminate administrative work for the salespeople, giving them even more time for what matters most—building client relationships.
Podcast: How is Sales Managed in an Agency Working with Clients like Škoda Auto, E.ON, or Decathlon?
Tomáš Wiesner invited Milan Kubát from Marketup into the guest chair. The result is a packed interview that every sales director should listen to. Milan truly went into detail—revealing what their entire sales process looks like for the biggest players, how Pipedrive fits into it all, and what is behind their successful growth. Looking for inspiration for your own company? You are guaranteed to find it here.
reduction in time spent on administration thanks to unifying emailing and contacts into a single tool.
deep history of valuable data that was successfully salvaged and revived from old, unused licenses.
Interested in a custom solution?
We’ll get in touch with you, review your processes, and show you how successful companies do things. If you're interested, we'll guide you through the next steps and help you with the entire process of your digital transformation.
