CRM and customer communication:
building from scratch in an acquired SME
A French digital services company with thousands of clients, no customer communication infrastructure, and three disconnected internal systems. What was found, what was built, and what changed.
The situation at acquisition
The new CEO acquired this French company through a search fund, taking over as operator after a multi-year search process. The business had thousands of active clients on monthly subscriptions, a sound model, and an established sales operation. Recurring revenue, national coverage, proprietary technology delivered by an in-house team.
What was not visible in due diligence was the complete absence of customer communication infrastructure. The existing operations system had no capability to send mass emails. There were no sequences, no automation, no onboarding flow, no newsletter. The two systems in place — a basic lead CRM and an operations platform — had no connection to each other and no communication capability beyond individual emails.
Zero mass communication
The operations system could not send emails to multiple clients at once. No newsletter, no onboarding sequence, no automated touchpoint of any kind existed.
~20% early churn
Nearly one in five clients cancelled within two weeks of signing. The legal retraction window was being used because expectations had never been set after signature.
What the diagnosis revealed
We conducted a full marketing stack and customer journey audit in the first weeks. The operations system managed client records and ticketing but had no communication capability beyond individual emails. No tool existed to reach the client base at scale. Everything needed to be built.
The sales team closed a deal, the delivery team built the product, and the client heard nothing structured until a courtesy call two months later. In that gap, expectations drifted, early doubts went unaddressed, and a significant share of clients exercised their legal right to cancel. The problem was not the product. It was the silence.
Clients who had received personal follow-up from an attentive advisor retained at higher rates. The answer was not to rely on individual advisors to fill the gap. It was to build a communication system that reached every client, consistently, without depending on anyone remembering to send something.
What was built
We started with a manual send to prove the channel worked, then built the architecture to make it run automatically. Each phase was handed over to the internal team before the next began.
Manual database upload and first sends
The client database was exported from the operations system, cleaned, and uploaded manually into the marketing platform. The first welcome email and the first monthly newsletter were sent this way, with us managing the process directly. The 38.5% open rate on those initial sends confirmed the channel was worth building properly.
CRM architecture and custom field definition
We selected HubSpot as the marketing and CRM platform and set it up from scratch. Custom fields were defined to reflect the specific client lifecycle: contract type, delivery date, coaching session status, renewal stage. This field architecture was the prerequisite for every automation that followed. Without it, triggers had nothing reliable to work from.
Two communication tracks built in parallel
Once the field architecture was in place, the communication infrastructure was built as two distinct tracks.
A recurring newsletter covering product features and updates, sent to the full client base. Templates were created and the internal communications team was trained to prepare and send each issue independently, without external support.
Event-driven emails connected via API to the operations system: a welcome series triggered on signature, and a satisfaction email triggered on product delivery. Each sequence was designed to run without manual intervention once a client event occurred.
Full handover to internal team
A step-by-step send procedure was documented for the newsletter. The API connection was tested and stable. Training was completed. By month six, both tracks were running internally with no dependency on our team.
What changed
Structured client touchpoints per month, from zero at acquisition to a monthly newsletter plus automated welcome and satisfaction sequences
Open rate on client newsletters from the first manual sends, sustained after full automation
From first manual send to a fully automated system running independently inside the company
Before the work began, a client could sign a contract, have their product delivered, and reach their two-week retraction window without having received a single structured communication from the company. The newsletter, welcome sequence, and satisfaction email changed that entirely. Every new client now moves through a defined communication journey from day one. The company went from invisible to its own client base to having a consistent, branded presence in their inbox each month.
The client base you inherit is your most valuable and most vulnerable asset.
In the weeks after taking over, your clients are watching to see whether the service they are paying for is still in good hands. If you arrive and say nothing, they will draw their own conclusions. A structured communication programme, even a simple one, signals that the company is stable, that someone is in charge, and that good things are coming. If you send that signal consistently from day one, it is worth more than any product improvement you make in the same period. Marketing automation is not a growth tool in this context. It is how you make sure no client falls through the silence while you are still finding your feet.