Marketing agency work runs on three parallel engines: new business pipeline, active client projects, retainer renewals. Strkr pulls each engine onto one account record so account directors can see pipeline, project health, and retainer renewal context without stitching Monday, HubSpot, and QuickBooks.
Marketing agencies have specific pains that generic CRMs rarely address. The pitch-to-production handoff, the retainer renewal cycle, the billable utilization visibility, and the account-expansion playbook. The five pain points below are what Strkr sees from agency owners and CROs on intake calls.
Pitch team sold a 10-channel integrated campaign. Production team sees "paid social and SEO" because that is what the SOW template defaulted to. Strkr ties pitch deck, signed SOW, and project brief to one account record so the handoff cannot drop scope. The account director sees mismatches before they become reasons for client churn.
A retainer at 42 percent utilization in month 10 of 12 is a renewal risk. A retainer at 110 percent utilization is a scope expansion opportunity. Most agencies see neither signal until the quarterly review. Strkr's retainer object surfaces utilization and renewal risk weekly on the owner dashboard.
A SaaS CRM assumes a seven-stage funnel from lead to closed-won. Agency new-business runs through inquiry, qualification, chemistry meeting, RFP, pitch, contract. Strkr ships an agency pipeline template that reflects how pitches actually move.
A client on a SEO retainer wants content work next quarter but has not asked. The agency misses the signal and the client goes to a different agency for content. Strkr's account view shows active services, service gaps relative to industry comparables, and Strkr AI drafts an expansion conversation grounded in the account relationship history.
Agency margin lives in billable utilization. The time tracker knows but the CRM does not. Strkr pulls time-tracker data through the webhook API so billable utilization shows on the person record and the account record. The partner sees who is underutilized and who is burning out.
The account view is designed to answer the three morning questions: what is open with this client, what is at risk, what is up for renewal. The cards below are the pieces of that answer.
Each active project shows budgeted hours, actual hours (from the time tracker), burn rate, and target delivery. Projects over 90 percent burn with under 85 percent completion show a red chip. The account director sees overbudget risks before they become client conversations.
Agencies pitching new engagements to existing clients see every open pitch on the account record alongside active projects. The context lets the account director understand how a struggling delivery might affect the pending pitch.
The retainer card shows monthly commitment, utilization against the commitment, carry-over hours, renewal date, and auto-renew flag. 60 and 30 day pre-renewal alerts route to the account director so renewal conversations start from reality.
Service inventory lists services the client has purchased (SEO, paid media, content, creative, strategy, email, website). The admin can see service gaps for the expansion conversation. The client-success manager tracks service penetration over the account lifetime.
Chronological thread of email, SMS, call notes, meetings across every contact on the account. The account director skims the past 30 days in two minutes. Strkr AI drafts one-line summaries so the skim is actually useful.
Lifetime value chip shows total billings from the account across every engagement. For agencies running multi-year relationships the number drives renewal conversations and strategic account planning.
The agency pitch workflow has six distinct stages with specific exit criteria. The cards below are the stages with their Strkr-shipped templates.
Inquiries land through the website form, email forwarding, or manual entry. The brief and attached RFP document attach to the record. Strkr AI drafts a qualifying reply tailored to the inquiry type.
The qualification call captures budget range, timeline, decision-maker, decision process, and competitive context. Strkr AI drafts the recap email from the call summary. The output drives whether the opportunity moves to chemistry or politely declines.
The chemistry meeting captures stakeholder names, personality notes, aesthetic preferences, and the words the prospect used to describe their brand or challenge. The output grounds the pitch work in the client's language.
For RFP opportunities Strkr tracks response status, assigned writer, due date, and competitive context. The playbook is "produce the strongest two sections and the required rest." Strkr AI drafts the executive summary and competitive-differentiator sections grounded in account history.
The pitch stage holds the deck, the team roster, prep notes, and follow-up list. Strkr AI drafts a prep brief the morning of the pitch and a follow-up email the afternoon of the pitch grounded in the live meeting notes.
Contract stage captures the signed SOW, final scope, payment schedule, kickoff date. On close the opportunity closes-won, the project record creates with the SOW as ground truth, and the production team gets the handoff with every artifact in place.
Post-sold work is where margin gets made or lost. Strkr's project and retainer tooling tracks the surfaces that matter: scope, burn, utilization, renewal.
A project in Strkr ties to the account, carries the signed SOW, lists the assigned team, holds the timeline with milestones, and tracks budget versus actual. Gantt and Kanban layouts available per project type.
Deliverables (campaign plan, creative concept, media buy, content asset, report) track status (brief, in production, in review, approved, delivered) with the client-facing review tool linked. Scope-creep requests surface as new deliverables tied to a change-order record.
Time tracker tie through the webhook API syncs hours per person per project daily. The project record shows actual hours against budget. Utilization report shows billable percentage per team member against target.
Retainer object tracks monthly commitment, utilization, carry-over policy, renewal date, auto-renew flag, and historical utilization. The partner sees retainer health across every active client on one report.
Change orders record the request, estimated effort, pricing, and client approval status. The flow builder routes to the client for signature and the production team for scheduling. Scope creep becomes billable work instead of free overrun.
Project close triggers a retrospective: budget versus actual, timeline versus actual, scope-creep count, team satisfaction. The retrospective feeds pricing calibration for the next pitch to a similar client.
Most marketing agencies run four tools: a CRM for new business (HubSpot or Pipedrive), a project tool (Monday, Asana, ClickUp), a time tracker (Harvest, Toggl), and an accounting tool (QuickBooks, Xero). The comparison below is Strkr's consolidated posture versus the typical stack.
| Feature | Strkr | Agency four-tool stack |
|---|---|---|
| Pitch and project on same account | One account record. | CRM plus project tool with manual sync. |
| Retainer renewal alerts | 60 and 30 day pre-renewal. | Calendar reminder if someone sets it. |
| Billable utilization on person | Time-tracker webhook sync. | Monthly spreadsheet reconcile. |
| Service inventory per client | Native with expansion signals. | Account manager memory. |
| AI drafting for pitch follow-up | Through AI Enhancement module. | None. |
| Change-order to signature | Client approves from phone. | Email thread. |
| HIPAA BAA for healthcare clients | Available on request. | Enterprise tier typical. |
| Total two-year cost (20-person agency) | About 29,000 dollars seats, plus 1,200 AI. | 48,000 to 120,000 dollars. |
The playbooks below are deployment patterns Strkr sees on marketing agency migrations.
An eight-person growth agency in Austin ran HubSpot for sales, Monday for projects, and QuickBooks for billing. The founder spent six hours a week stitching the three. Strkr migration consolidated everything in 11 business days. The founder recovered four hours a week and new-business pipeline visibility improved as pitches and existing clients shared one account view.
A 24-person integrated agency in Chicago evaluated Strkr against HubSpot Sales Enterprise. Decision came down to the retainer object and the service inventory, both of which were custom builds on HubSpot and native on Strkr. Three-year TCO delta: about 420,000 dollars in favor of Strkr. Cutover completed in 22 business days.
A 60-person agency with creative and media buying divisions needed cross-division visibility while preserving division autonomy. Strkr's role model gave each division its own workspace with cross-division account visibility for executive leadership. The agency's first integrated-services pitch leveraging data from both divisions landed in Q2.
An 11-person agency with 90 percent of revenue in retainers needed renewal visibility and churn prediction. Strkr's retainer object and the AI utilization risk signal flagged four retainers at renewal risk in Q2. The partner intervened on three, saved all three. Net revenue retention improved by 14 points over the following year.
Book a 30 minute call. We will walk through the account view, the pitch pipeline, the project record, and the retainer workflow with your actual client list.
Strkr has native project record capability most agencies use instead of a separate project tool. For agencies that want to keep Monday, Asana, or ClickUp Strkr integrates through the webhook API with bidirectional sync on project status, task completion, and assignee changes. Teams typically find the native project record handles 80 to 90 percent of what the dedicated tool did.
Strkr does not run a native time tracker today. The team ties Strkr to Harvest, Toggl, Everhour, or Clockify through the webhook API. Time-tracker data lands on the project record and the person record so burn rate and billable utilization are visible without a monthly export. Native time tracking is on the roadmap but no committed ship date.
Yes. Multi-location setups run office location as a user tag or as separate tenants depending on brand separation needs. For agencies with acquired brands requiring strict separation each brand runs as its own tenant with cross-tenant admin access for the parent operations team. The role model scopes visibility per brand or per office.
A 24-person agency on the Pro tier at 59 dollars per seat runs 1,416 dollars per month base. The AI Enhancement module is a 49-dollar-per-month flat add-on with 5,000 Strkr AI calls included. SMS runs 2 cents per segment and MMS 5 cents, metered separately. 14-day free trial on paid plans. No per-account fee, no per-project fee, no retainer-count fee.
Each retainer has a renewal date, an auto-renew flag, and alert thresholds (60 and 30 days by default, tunable). At each threshold Strkr notifies the assigned account director with a utilization summary and a renewal conversation agenda drafted by Strkr AI. The retainer closes as renewed, expanded, or churned with the outcome logged for the quarterly review.
Yes. Strkr ships a quote and proposal workflow with templates, electronic signature, and version control. The signed proposal becomes ground truth for the project scope. For agencies with established proposal tools (Qwilr, Proposify, PandaDoc) Strkr integrates through the webhook API with bidirectional status sync.
Contractor and freelance resources run as users on Strkr with specific role scoping. The admin can grant project-level access without full tenant access. Time tracking from Harvest or Toggl ties contractor hours to project cost. Contractor invoices sync through the accounting tool integration. 1099 management runs in the accounting tool with Strkr providing the project-level cost data.
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.
