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How Loop Marketing Group Stays One Step Ahead of Ad Payments, Powered By Aspire Cards
Published on
March 26, 2024
Loop Marketing Group
— Aspire Journey
320hrs
saved per year
$8,600
saved per year
Before Aspire
  • Difficult to keep track of budgets for each client in real time
  • No segmentation of spends per client by merchants/vendors
  • Lack of sophisticated features that help to keep spending under control
  • Employees didn't feel empowered to make spending decisions
  • No comprehensive solution to manage company and client spends. Make necessary interventions in time.
After Aspire
  • Loop Marketing now creates budgets at a client or project level. Card spends and bank transfers are both tracked under these budgets, to get real-time visibility on project spends.
  • Can get a clear idea of where a spend was made, to which vendor/merchant
  • Can control spending using merchant locks or assigning spend limits. Allows them to delegate spending with confidence. At the same time, they retain complete control
  • Teams and employees feel empowered to make wise business decisions, while the finance team maintains control
  • Could manage company spend via a single dashboard. See insights in real-time.
🚀
Company
Loop Marketing Group
📆
Founded
2018
🦄
Company Size
2-10
😎
Founder
Christine Lim and Marxk Madhavan
💼
Industry
Professional Services
🖥
Case study focus
Expense Management
🌏
Country
Singapore
🕸
Website
https://loopmarketing.com.sg/

The Company: Agency That Helps Drive ROI for Small Business Owners 

Established in 2018 by co-founders Christine Lim and Marxk Madhavan, Loop Marketing Group is an agency that’s passionate about helping small business owners, coaches and consultants to maximise their ROI. Loop Marketing’s solutions effectively nurture their client’s network of contacts via powerful digital marketing strategies and their very own SaaS platform. To date, their portfolio consists of entrepreneurs and small businesses from all walks of life. 

The Challenges: A finance solution that helped them track spends at client and project level

#1 Rigid nature of their traditional corporate card

As an agency that focuses on digital marketing, the team relied on a slew of marketing SaaS tools to launch ad campaigns for their clients. This meant having to deliver paid ads based on preset budgets and multiple subscriptions in various currencies. However, with more clients in their pipeline, the rigid nature of their traditional corporate cards only grew increasingly apparent.

Firstly, they had to make do with sharing one card across teams servicing multiple clients. Not only was this a security concern, it also gave them no visibility of spend on a client/ project level. Access to more cards required them to go through time consuming processes that involved extensive paperwork and additional sign-up fees. Conventional banks also required maintaining a minimum balance in order to get access to additional cards. This did not seem like a viable option for the Loop Marketing team.

#2 No real-time spend insights

In addition, the team found that relying on a traditional corporate card to facilitate ad payments was difficult due to its lack of real-time spend tracking. While one card was sufficient during the agency’s early days, it got much harder to keep track of how much was being spent:

  1. Per client
  2. Per project
  3. Per merchant
  4. Per team

Expenses were manually reconciled to each client/ team/ project at the end of each month. There was always room for surprises in the month end expense audit. What they wanted was a Spen that provided crucial ad spend insights whenever they needed it, especially during busy periods where preventive tweaks could make or break the goals of the campaign. 

#3 Lack of sophisticated control features

Over time, the Loop marketing team realized that they needed more sophisticated controls in place to ensure that ad and marketing spend does not go awry. This means having spending limits that keep budgets intact. As their volume of clients grew, they also wanted a security feature that only allows for certain merchants to be eligible for payments to avoid wrongfully charged transactions. Basically, they wanted a comprehensive expense management suite.

“In marketing, we work with large budgets and multiple subscriptions on a daily basis. Keeping these figures in check is important for us to achieve our client’s goals. Using Aspire has been such a game-changer for us! Embracing automation in our payment processes amped up our speed, allowing us to launch more campaigns in less time. We even gained savings via Aspire’s cashback feature!”
Christine Lim
Co-founder of Loop Marketing Group

The Solution: Maximize control & visibility of account level spends with Aspire Expense Management

Faced with the struggles of a booming agency that has fast outgrown the rigid processes of a traditional corporate card, the team knew they needed an upgrade. One that’s designed with modern businesses like Loop Marketing in mind. 

This was where they turned to Aspire to modernize their business finance. As a result, they found a more flexible solution that would not only allow them to issue multiple cards assigned to each client, they could also leverage Aspire’s real-time spend insights, merchant locks and cashback perks. 

Here’s how.

#1 Issue multiple cards, assigned to each client

With the power of Aspire, the team was able to enjoy the flexibility of issuing as many cards as they wanted一without the extra costs or waiting period of a typical corporate card. This means they could now assign an Aspire card to each client or project instantly, making it easier to categorize payments and prepare billing whenever they needed to and at a much faster pace. 

For Loop Marketing Group, this was crucial in making sure that they remain on top of ad payments.

#2 A robust expense management solution

In the past, issuing multiple cards might seem daunting. However, Aspire provides the necessary features that do not compromise on control一no matter how many cards they’re currently using. One of which was Aspire’s spend limit feature. Setting a spend limit on each card according to the client’s budget or needs would mean that they would no longer have to worry about going over budget. 

What they also liked about the Aspire dashboard is the access to real-time spend insights, simply by logging in. They no longer had to wait until the end of the month to view their transaction history. This was a gamechanger as they could now make timely decisions to boost certain client projects without waiting till it was too late. 

#3 Comprehensive control over spending

For added peace of mind, the team also used Aspire’s merchant locks that only allow payments for a specific list of eligible merchants, customizable via Aspire’s all-in-one dashboard. This way, they would never have to face hiccups whereby a payment has been made that was later found to be an unauthorized purchase. By preventing this sort of misuse before it even happens, Aspire was able to help the team save more by keeping them one step ahead at all times.

“Preparing for what’s next for Loop Marketing Group is no longer a daunting task as we have modern solutions that support our growing agency. The flexibility of Aspire cards as well as the crucial spend insights that we now have at our disposal could inform us on how we can better serve our clients as we continue to take on bigger and more exciting projects.”
Christine Lim
Co-founder of Loop Marketing Group