EMAIL AUTOMATION

HitTrax makes baseball and softball training and data tracking technology for three core audiences: at-home cage owners (HitTrax Home), facility owners & athletic programs (HitTrax Pro), and entertainment venue operators (HitTrax Suite). HitTrax operates in both Salesforce and Mailchimp, but the two weren’t fully integrated with each other. We rebuilt the program so every future email message is tied to the product a contact cares about - and where they are in their buying journey.

Challenge

HitTrax had a strong foundation: a database of roughly 40,000 contacts, a Salesforce backend full of leads, and three products built for different buyers. But as their business continues to grow, they wanted their email program to progress with it. The next step was moving from occasional campaigns to a more sophisticated, personalized experience that met each contact where they were in their journey. And to do this well, we needed to automate it. No more manual list pulls, no more manual segmentation - we wanted to create a pathway where each step was automated and accurate to where a user was in their journey.

Getting there meant a few key shifts.

Moving away from one-off campaigns, and toward planned, monthly content calendars - on a set cadence.
Moving away from manual segmentation and list pulls, and toward lead and customer statuses that updated automatically as each relationship progressed. Pro, Suite, and Home buyers all have different needs, and it was important that we matched the messaging needed to speak to each product line directly with the intended user as well.
Then once a lead filled out a contact form, that triggered a different tag (opportunity) that then passed that individual into a welcome and nurture journey that was responsive to how each person engaged with the content.

Results

HitTrax now has a working email system connected to its CRM, built to grow with the business. Here is what's in place:

A single, segmented Mailchimp audience that syncs with Salesforce, so each contact's product and lifecycle stage determine what content they receive
Automated lead and re-engagement journeys that respond to how each contact engages
A Salesforce data foundation with consistent product interest and customer status fields
A 10-email content calendar and a repeatable framework for product-specific messaging across Pro, Suite, and Home

Performance reporting will follow as the programs gather data!

HOW WE HELPED

Salesforce cleanup and field strategy: Replaced the old mailing list category field with a multi-select Product Interest field (Pro, Suite, Home, Retail, Combo) and defined lifecycle stages so each contact type gets the right emails.
Customer Status tracking: Added a Customer Status field on the Contact record so each customer's stage is visible and usable for segmentation.
Mailchimp for Salesforce integration: Mapped the fields, ran a full sync to pull existing Salesforce data into Mailchimp, and built 8 to 10 segments on top of the clean data.
Automated new lead journey: Built a five-email Pro and Suite new lead series on a weekly cadence. Contacts move to the next email when they engage. Contacts who don't engage receive a resend or a different follow-up.
Product-segmented re-engagement: Built a four-email re-engagement sequence on a monthly cadence for both Pro and Suite. Contacts who go five emails without opening enter the flow, and a single open brings them back into the nurture.
Converted-lead suppression: Used the Salesforce “IsConverted” field so people who have already bought stop receiving prospecting emails.
Content calendar: Delivered a 10-email calendar across three programs.
Meta Integration: Once Salesforce was locked down, and piping accurately into Mailchimp, we then set up another sync to pipe Mailchimp audiences directly into Meta for paid social audience targeting.

WHY IT WORKED

We cleaned the data before we automated anything. Segments and automations are only as accurate as the data behind them, so the cleanup came first.

We also planned around the platform's strengths and limits. HitTrax uses a single Mailchimp audience, with segments handling the product split. Lifecycle status lives in dropdown fields instead of tags, because tags don't always clear when a status changes. The sync schedule was set with the shared Salesforce API budget in mind.

Finally, we built the program in phases. The new lead journey and re-engagement flows came first, with the lead score and customer marketing work planned for later, so each piece could be measured before the next one goes live.