Advertising agency work is retainer heavy, campaign calendared, and client service intensive. Strkr ships a CRM shaped around retainers, campaigns, media plans, and creative deliverables with AI drafting that sounds like a seasoned account director.
A general purpose CRM assumes a linear sales funnel from prospect to closed won. An advertising agency does not work that way. The client lifecycle is a loop: pitch, win, onboard, launch, optimize, renew, with campaign deliverables and media plans woven through the middle. The pain points below are what Strkr onboarding hears on every intake call with an agency from the eight-person boutique to the 180-staff holding-company subsidiary.
A retainer client is not a deal that closes once. It is a monthly or quarterly commitment that renews. A generic CRM pipeline that treats every renewal as a fresh opportunity gives the agency a false sense of pipeline health and a brutal admin burden. Strkr models retainer as a first-class object with renewal cadence, scope commitment, and billable-hours allocation, separate from the new-business deal pipeline.
A performance campaign has 40 to 80 deliverables across creative, media buying, trafficking, QA, and launch. Most agencies run the deliverable list in a Google Doc or a Smartsheet that nobody keeps current. Strkr tracks campaign deliverables as a first-class object tied to the retainer, with status, owner, due date, and client review state. The account director sees the full campaign plate in one view.
Media plans change weekly. The plan sent to the client on Monday is not the plan the media buyer is pacing on Wednesday. The result is a client review conversation that starts with 20 minutes of version reconciliation. Strkr tracks media plan versions as a first-class object with change log, approval state, and client view URL, so the plan the client sees is the plan in flight.
Creative review runs across the account team, the creative director, the client contact, and the client review committee. Feedback on round three usually lands in a Slack thread that two of the five reviewers are not in. Strkr captures creative review as a workflow with reviewer role, round number, approval state, and feedback thread tied to the deliverable record, so round three feedback lands on the deliverable.
Agencies run time trackers (Harvest, Toggl, Everhour, TSheets) that know the hours per client per project. The CRM usually does not. The result is an account review conversation where the account director cannot see that this client has absorbed 142 billable hours this month against a 90-hour retainer. Strkr exposes the time-tracker tie through a standard webhook spec with HMAC signing and prints hours used versus budget on the client card.
New business pitches draw from past wins, past losses, and current case studies. Most agencies rebuild the pitch deck from scratch for each new RFP because the win-loss history, past case studies, and past client wins live in a shared drive nobody can find. Strkr tracks pitches as a dedicated pipeline with case study tagging, past wins reference, and AI-drafted scope paragraphs that pull from the firm history.
The default CRM schema (account, contact, deal, opportunity) does not map cleanly to agency work. Strkr ships a tunable agency schema with Retainer, Campaign, Deliverable, Media Plan, Creative Round, and Pitch as first-class objects. The account director can rename or extend anything. The default lands close to where most agencies eventually settle.
A client in Strkr is a full account with brand portfolio (multi-brand clients get sub-accounts), decision chain (CMO, brand manager, procurement contact, legal contact), industry tag, and relationship status (retainer, project, pitch). The schema drives the correct workflow template and the correct AI retrieval scope automatically.
A retainer ties to the client and defines scope (always-on creative, media buying, performance optimization, strategy, full service), cadence (monthly, quarterly, annual), hours bucket, fee structure, and renewal date. The retainer drives the deliverable template, the billable-hours allocation, and the renewal reminder cadence.
A campaign ties to the retainer and defines launch date, channel mix (paid social, paid search, display, video, OOH, print, podcast), media budget, KPI targets, and status. The campaign drives the deliverable list, the media plan version history, and the performance report cadence.
A deliverable ties to the campaign and defines type (creative asset, media plan, trafficking spec, QA checklist, launch report), owner, due date, review state, and client approval state. The deliverable drives the creative review workflow, the account director visibility, and the client approval cadence.
A media plan carries a version number, change log, approval state (draft, submitted, approved, in flight), and a client-shareable URL. The media buyer updates the plan in flight. The client sees the approved version at the shareable URL. The two never drift because the version object enforces the handshake.
A creative round ties to the deliverable and defines round number (1, 2, 3, final), reviewer role (account director, creative director, client CMO, client brand manager, legal), approval state, and feedback thread. The round object drives the review workflow and ends the round-three Slack thread chaos.
A pitch is a dedicated pipeline object for new business. The pitch tracks RFP timeline (deck due, oral presentation, decision), decision chain, scope, estimated fee, and the past wins and case studies that feed the pitch deck. Strkr AI drafts the scope paragraph from the firm history and past wins tagged by relevance.
An agency cannot ship AI-drafted client communication that sounds like a chatbot. Strkr AI drafts in the creative, confident tone a seasoned account director would use, with no vendor-brand chrome in the output. The jobs below are what shows up in every agency deployment inside the first two weeks.
Strkr AI drafts the pitch scope paragraph from the RFP brief, the past wins tagged by relevance, and the current case study library. The strategy director reviews and tunes two paragraphs on average before sending. The draft lands in the firm voice because Strkr AI learns the tone from the first 20 approved pitch submissions.
After a client kickoff call Strkr AI drafts the internal campaign brief with objective, audience, message, channels, budget, and KPI targets. The account director reviews, tunes, and routes to the creative and media teams. The draft shaves about three hours off the brief-writing step.
When a creative round closes Strkr AI drafts a consolidated feedback summary across all reviewer threads. The summary pulls key themes, conflicting feedback, open questions, and next-round scope. The creative director reviews and sends to the account team instead of parsing five Slack threads.
Every Monday Strkr AI drafts a weekly status email per retainer client. The email summarizes what shipped, what is in flight, what is at risk, and the key decisions needed this week. The account director reviews, tunes, and sends. The client knows where every deliverable stands.
A media plan without a strategy narrative is a spreadsheet with ambiguous intent. Strkr AI drafts the strategy paragraph from the campaign brief, the past performance history, and the KPI targets. The media director reviews and tunes before the plan goes to the client review committee.
The weekly or monthly performance report ships with numbers from the ad platforms (via standard webhook spec). Strkr AI drafts the commentary that explains what the numbers mean, what shifted, what the recommended next action is. The account director reviews and sends. The client reads a story, not a spreadsheet.
Sixty days before a retainer renewal Strkr AI drafts a renewal recommendation with scope adjustments based on the past-year delivery, fee adjustment benchmarks from the agency history, and a scope-expansion opportunity list from the client relationship. The account director tunes and presents.
During a campaign launch week the pipeline view flips from retainer management to launch triage. The cards below are what the launch-triage view surfaces and how the account team acts on each.
The triage view ranks every campaign by launch date, with the next 14 days surfaced on top. Each campaign card shows the deliverable completeness percentage, the open blocker count, and the client approval state. The account director scans the top of the list for the campaigns needing intervention this week.
Each campaign shows deliverable readiness (red for less than 60 percent, yellow for 60 to 90 percent, green for 90 percent or more). The red cards are campaigns that need daily attention. The yellow cards need one more creative round. The green cards are ready for trafficking and launch.
A dedicated queue shows deliverables waiting on reviewer action. Filter by reviewer role (creative director, account director, client contact) to see the queue the person logged in cares about. The creative director scans their queue first thing Monday morning.
Media plans sit in a dedicated approval view with submission date, days-waiting, and client contact. Plans that have been waiting more than three days surface with a yellow flag. Plans waiting more than seven days surface red, with an AI-drafted follow-up email ready to send.
Retainers show hours used versus budget as a percentage with a projected over-run flag. A retainer at 92 percent of hours in week two of a four-week month triggers an alert to the account director. The account director decides to scope back, request additional hours, or absorb.
After a campaign launches Strkr runs a post-launch retrospective that captures delivery against plan, performance against KPI, client sentiment on the review calls, and operational notes. The retrospective feeds the next campaign brief and the renewal recommendation.
Most agencies try a general CRM once (HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce) and bounce because the schema does not fit agency work. The comparison below is Strkr agency posture versus a generic sales CRM applied to the same shop.
| Feature | Strkr | Generic sales CRM for an agency |
|---|---|---|
| Retainer as first-class object | Yes with scope, cadence, hours bucket, renewal. | Deal with manual renewal workaround. |
| Campaign deliverable tracking | Deliverable object with reviewer workflow. | Task list with no reviewer logic. |
| Media plan version history | Versioned object with client-shareable URL. | None. |
| Creative review rounds | Round object with reviewer roles. | Comment threads in a shared doc. |
| Pitch pipeline separate from retainer | Dedicated pitch pipeline with case study tagging. | Same pipeline, pollutes forecast. |
| AI drafting in agency voice | Pitch scope, campaign brief, status email, retro. | Generic chatbot tone. |
| Time tracker tie | Harvest, Toggl, Everhour via webhooks. | Manual CSV import. |
| Ad platform data tie | Standard webhook spec with HMAC signing. | None, or paid connector add-on. |
| Multi-brand sub-account structure | Yes for holding-company clients. | Flat account with manual tagging. |
The playbooks below are the patterns Strkr onboarding sees across agency deployments, from boutique shops to holding-company subsidiaries.
A 12-person boutique agency in Austin ran its retainer book in a shared Google Sheet with a Monday status email the account director wrote by hand. Strkr onboarding ran a 12-business-day migration (shorter than default because there was no legacy CRM). The retainer object, the deliverable workflow, and the weekly status email draft landed on day one. The account director reclaimed about seven hours per week.
A 48-staff performance marketing agency ran HubSpot for new business and a tangle of Smartsheets for campaign operations. The chief operating officer wanted a cross-firm view of campaign readiness and retainer burn rate. Strkr onboarding ran a 22-business-day migration with the campaign deliverable workflow and media plan versioning as the primary wins. The campaign operations dashboard replaced four separate Smartsheets.
A 90-person creative agency served three holding-company brand portfolios across 11 sub-brands. Managing creative review across all 11 sub-brands was consuming about 180 hours per month of creative-director time. Strkr onboarding configured the multi-brand sub-account structure and the creative round workflow. The round-three consolidation summary alone reclaimed about 40 hours per month.
A 25-person Brooklyn agency ran about 48 new business pitches per year with a 32 percent win rate. The strategy director was rebuilding the scope paragraph from scratch on each pitch. Strkr onboarding configured the pitch pipeline, the case study tagging, and the AI pitch scope draft. Scope paragraph drafting dropped from four hours to 45 minutes. Win rate held steady but pitch volume grew to 62.
A 180-staff holding-company subsidiary ran Salesforce for new business pitches and a mix of Monday, Smartsheet, and Google Docs for campaign operations. The migration focused on campaign operations while keeping Salesforce for the pitch pipeline. Strkr onboarding ran a 32-business-day migration with a bi-directional contact sync between Strkr and Salesforce. The account directors stopped jumping between four systems to run a weekly client call.
Book a 30 minute call. We will walk through the agency schema, the retainer object, and the campaign deliverable workflow with your actual client portfolio and account structure.
Strkr integrates with ad platforms through its standard webhook spec with HMAC signing and the published OpenAPI spec. For Google Ads and Meta Ads the typical setup pulls daily spend, impression, click, and conversion data into the campaign record and surfaces it on the performance report. For programmatic DSPs the pattern is the same with daily or hourly pulls. The integration lives on the agency side, which keeps the data model clean. For a 48-staff shop the full integration setup takes about one engineering sprint.
For most agencies yes. The deliverable workflow, the creative round structure, and the account director view cover 80 to 90 percent of what agencies use project management tools for. For agencies with a deep production operation (sound design, animation, video production with complex task dependencies) Strkr pairs with a specialist production tool and sits as the client-facing CRM layer on top. The webhook spec makes the two-way sync clean.
Strkr supports multi-brand clients through a sub-account structure. A parent account (for example a holding-company brand portfolio) can own 2 to 20 sub-accounts, each with its own retainer, campaign calendar, and creative review workflow. Permission scoping lets the agency team see the full parent portfolio while client stakeholders see only their sub-brand. The audit log captures every cross-brand view, which keeps the trust posture clean on competitive accounts.
Strkr prices flat per seat at $29 on Starter, $59 on Pro, and $119 on Scale per user per month. For a 40-staff agency on Pro the monthly spend runs $2,360 for seats. The AI Enhancement module adds $49 per month with 5,000 Strkr AI calls included. Monday Work Management runs about $12 to $24 per seat for a thin PM surface. Function Point and Scoro run $40 to $80 per seat for an agency-focused OS. Strkr sits in the mid range on seat price and adds a real CRM shape plus AI drafting that the agency-OS tools do not have.
Strkr attaches creative assets to the deliverable record with version history, reviewer tags, and client approval state. For teams with heavy video or 3D rendering workflows that live in a dedicated DAM (Frontify, Bynder, Dropbox DAM) Strkr integrates through the webhook spec and preserves the DAM as the source of truth, with the Strkr record carrying the link, the version number, and the review state. The AI retrieval index can read from the attached text layers (brief, review feedback) but does not re-encode the asset.
Strkr ships a secure client review surface for creative round approvals and media plan sign-off through a shareable URL per deliverable or plan. A fully branded tenant subdomain with a logged-in client view ships on the subdomain roadmap for agencies on the Scale plan. The email-plus-link pattern covers 90 percent of what agencies need, and the audit log captures every client view and approval event with 90-day default retention tunable per tenant.
No sales call, no migration consultant, no four-month implementation. Enter your card, get 14 days of the full Pro tier, cancel any time before day 14 with zero charge. Spin up a workspace, import your CSV, and have something useful before lunch.
