At Smartbox, Alexandre Boniface helps build and scale their marketplace of premium experiences for its customers to discover and enjoy: boutique hotels, adventure sports, fine dining, spa services, and more. When evaluating potential business partners, his team needs precise data: locations, customer sentiment analysis, detailed business profiles, and real-time review metrics.
Getting all that data from TripAdvisor, Google My Business, and social platforms created a serious bottleneck. Team members spent hours cross-referencing platforms for each potential partner, which constrained both their market analysis and partner outreach.
Automating data collection with Apify
Alexandre turned to Apify to automate data collection. Despite not having a technical background, he found the platform easy to use. He connected Apify with Zapier and Salesforce, creating automated workflows to enrich lead information and optimize sales.
"I don't have any technical background, to be fully honest. I'm a marketing guy. Your platform is amazing because I can access dozens of different platforms, and I can really scale all the work that I'm doing with Apify."
-- Alexandre Boniface, Smartbox
When Smartbox registers a new lead in Salesforce, Apify’s Google Maps Extractor pulls location data, contact details, business categories, and rating metrics automatically. The automated data validation keeps Salesforce records complete and accurate, helping the team score and prioritize their potential partners. Through Zapier integration, data enrichment triggers automatically when new Salesforce records are created, eliminating manual data entry and smoothing out the qualification workflow.
- Read more on how to get geographical insights with Apify's Google Maps tools.
Outbound campaigns and market research
Alexandre's team at Smartbox runs outbound campaigns with Apify. By searching cities and business categories, they find and evaluate new partners based on ratings and online visibility. Sales teams working in specific regions can pull local data sets whenever they need them, whether they use the API or not.
"It's also a good way for us to have a better understanding of the market. What's the size of the market in a specific region with the quality criteria that we're looking for."
-- Alexandre Boniface, Smartbox
Smartbox partners with boutique hotels, Michelin-starred restaurants, wellness centers, and adventure tour operators. The team analyzes customer sentiment and market patterns to select the best experience providers. Next, they plan to expand their automation to include pricing data from booking platforms, adding more depth to their partner analysis.
Smartbox’s results
Since implementing Apify, Alexandre’s team has been able to:
- Automate lead enrichment, saving hours of manual research.
- Focus on high-rated businesses with strong online presence, targeting their most promising partnership opportunities.
- Use market data to help them refine their outreach strategies and identify strong potential partners.
"Honestly, I think I'm only using 2% of Apify's capabilities, but even that is making a big difference."
-- Alexandre Boniface, Smartbox
The automated data collection and integration help Smartbox make faster, more informed decisions - building and scaling its quality-verified network of premium experience providers for its customers. Are you a European experience provider looking to distribute your offers to a broader audience? Get in touch with Smartbox.
