Client Overview
Company: SeriesX Marketing
Industry: B2B Content Marketing
Location: Virginia, United States and Bengaluru, India
Tools Used: Jira, Google Workspace, Slack, Mria CRM
Website: www.seriesxmarketing.com
SeriesX Marketing is a B2B content marketing agency that runs the full content function for marketing and sales leaders at growing B2B technology, SaaS, and IT services companies. Its content marketing services cover strategy, production, design, and optimization for lean marketing teams serving buyer audiences across the United States, Canada, Europe, and India.
The agency operates with a small, fully remote core team supported by an extended network of specialist writers and designers. Tara Sundaram, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, leads client strategy and delivery across projects and retainers, sets the quality standard for every engagement, and runs sales and business development.
In this operating model, winning new work and planning its delivery are closely connected. SeriesX already had a disciplined Jira workflow for client delivery and needed a sales process with the same consistency and visibility, without introducing a second system for the team to maintain
Customer Perspective
“Most CRMs stop at closed-won. For a services business, that’s where the work starts. The Deal and the delivery tasks are records in the same Jira, so when a client asks for a new scope, I can see what we’re already delivering for them before I answer.”
Tara Sundaram
Co-Founder and Managing Partner, SeriesX Marketing
Before Mria CRM
Client Delivery Already Had a Clear System in Jira
SeriesX had been managing client delivery in Jira for years.
Each client account has its own Jira project. Content calendars, briefs, drafts, review rounds, and publishing move through that project as Jira work items. This gives the team a structured view of what is planned, in progress, under review, and ready to publish.
Google Workspace holds the documents themselves, including briefs, drafts, comments, and designs. Jira holds the workflow, ownership, and status.
The agency also uses separate Jira projects for its own website, marketing, sales, and other internal work. Slack supports communication within the team and with clients and partners.
This gave SeriesX a reliable operational system for delivery. Sales did not yet have an equivalent structure.
Previous Attempts to Manage Sales
SeriesX first managed its pipeline in a spreadsheet. Sales information and follow-ups also moved through Slack before the team built a dedicated sales pipeline inside a standard Jira project.
In that Jira project:
- Opportunities were represented as Jira work items
- Pipeline stages were managed through the project workflow
- Follow-ups were created as Jira tasks
- Sales activity remained close to the team’s other work
This approach worked for several months, but the pipeline gradually stopped reflecting the current state of sales.
Challenge
A Jira Project Could Track Work, but Not Customer Relationships
Moving the pipeline into Jira addressed the location problem, but it did not provide the structure of a CRM.
A standard Jira project could hold opportunities and follow-up tasks, but it did not naturally represent:
- Companies and their relationship history
- Contacts associated with each account
- Multiple Deals connected to the same client
- Deal stages, values, and commercial context
- Activities connected to a specific Lead, Deal, Contact, or Company
- New scopes and expansion opportunities across the lifetime of an account
The team was adapting an issue-tracking structure to manage information it had not been designed to model.
Follow-Ups Still Required Manual Control
Without a consistent CRM activity workflow, the next step for an opportunity was not always clearly recorded and surfaced.
Follow-ups depended heavily on manual tracking. When the pipeline was not updated regularly, it became harder to see which Deals required attention and which conversations needed a response.
Pipeline Context Was Difficult to Share
Tara led sales and business development, so she naturally held most of the context around active opportunities.
The rest of the team had limited visibility into:
- which opportunities might become new delivery work;
- which existing accounts might expand;
- when new work could begin;
- what upcoming Deals could mean for writer and designer availability.
This also made it harder to plan delivery capacity around the pipeline.
Client History Was Fragmented Across Opportunities
For SeriesX, one client can generate multiple pieces of work over several years. A relationship may include a retainer, a website project, a new scope, or additional work after the client’s internal team changes.
Managing each opportunity separately made it difficult to see the full account relationship and connect new commercial conversations with previous and current delivery.
Why SeriesX Needed a CRM in Jira
For SeriesX, adoption was a core requirement.
The team already opened Jira every day to manage client delivery. A CRM in a separate platform would introduce another system that people had to remember to open, update, and maintain.
The agency’s previous experience with spreadsheets had already demonstrated how quickly a system could lose value when it sat outside the team’s daily workflow.
SeriesX also wanted the CRM to work natively inside Jira rather than exchange selected information with Jira through an external integration. This meant avoiding:
- a separate CRM platform;
- duplicate records across systems;
- an additional synchronization layer;
- a separate integration account;
- commercial and delivery information living in different products.
Because client delivery was already managed in Jira, keeping the CRM there would allow the commercial record and the delivery record to remain directly connected.
Why SeriesX Chose Mria CRM
Mria CRM met the agency’s primary requirement by providing a dedicated CRM inside Jira.
It gave SeriesX the entities needed to manage customer relationships properly:
- Leads
- Contacts
- Companies
- Deals
- Pipeline stages
- Tasks and other sales activities
- Custom fields and tags
This gave the team more structure than a custom Jira project without introducing the complexity of a CRM designed for large sales organizations with multiple managers, sales representatives, quotas, and extensive administration.
Mria CRM also fit the practical requirements of a growing agency:
- Pricing that was manageable at its size
- No separate CRM vendor relationship
- Atlassian user management and billing
- No external integration to configure and monitor
- Configuration that the team could manage independently
Implementation
Setup and Data Import
The initial setup took a few hours.
SeriesX installed Mria CRM, imported its existing Contact and Deal history, configured its pipeline stages, and began using the system.
The implementation did not require:
- IT involvement
- An external consultant
- Integration development
- A separate data-mapping project
- A dedicated CRM administrator
The team then refined the CRM around its sales process during the first week.
An Account-First CRM Structure
SeriesX configured the CRM around Companies rather than treating every Deal as an isolated opportunity.
Each Company record brings together the account’s:
- Contacts
- Leads
- Deals
- Activities
- Jira work
This allows SeriesX to see retainers, individual projects, new scopes, and returning work as parts of the same client relationship.
Connecting Sales with Client Delivery
Each client’s Company record is connected to the Jira project where SeriesX manages delivery for that account.
This creates a persistent connection between the commercial relationship and the work being delivered.
SeriesX can also link open upsell or cross-sell Deals to the specific Jira work they would affect. When an existing client discusses a new scope, Tara can review what the agency is already delivering and consider whether the team has the capacity to take on additional work.
The connection works in both directions:
- From a commercial opportunity, SeriesX can review current delivery
- From delivery work, the team can access the relevant account and Deal context
Structuring Qualification and Follow-Ups
SeriesX added custom fields that reflect how the agency evaluates Leads and prioritizes accounts.
For Leads, the team configured:
- Score
- Monthly Budget Band
- Next Follow-Up Date
These fields help the team qualify and schedule a new inquiry when it arrives.
For Companies, SeriesX added:
- ICP Fit
- Account Tier
Tags are used to segment accounts by company type and acquisition source, helping the agency identify patterns across its pipeline.
Tasks and meetings are attached directly to the relevant Lead, Deal, Contact, or Company. Each follow-up can have an owner and due date, while notifications surface upcoming and overdue Activities.
Working with the Mria Team
Beyond the quick setup, SeriesX highlighted three aspects of its experience working with the Mria team:
Feedback influenced product development. When SeriesX shared feedback through the app, the Mria team responded directly, and the agency’s requests have since been treated as roadmap input.
Customer needs were taken seriously. When pricing changed, the Mria team considered SeriesX’s lean operating model and worked with the agency to find a practical solution. This demonstrated a willingness to understand the customer’s context rather than apply a one-size-fits-all response.
Development moves quickly. New capabilities continued to ship during the months SeriesX used the product rather than remaining on a roadmap page.
Results
More Consistent Sales Follow-Ups
Follow-ups now have a visible owner, due date, and connection to the relevant CRM record.
Upcoming and overdue Activities are surfaced through notifications, reducing the need to monitor every opportunity manually.
Shared Pipeline Visibility
The wider team can see what is happening across the pipeline instead of relying on information held by one person.
This provides earlier visibility into potential client work, expansion opportunities, and accounts that may require additional delivery capacity.
Better Coordination Between Sales and Delivery
Commercial opportunities can be reviewed alongside current client delivery.
When an existing client requests a new scope, SeriesX can see what is already being delivered, which work could be affected, and whether the team has the capacity to take on more.
Complete Account History
Multiple Deals and projects can remain connected to the same Company record.
This gives SeriesX a clearer view of how each client relationship develops over time and makes it easier to evaluate new opportunities within the context of previous and ongoing work.
A Sales Process Embedded in Daily Work
Mria CRM operates inside the same Jira environment the team already uses.
SeriesX gained a structured sales process without introducing a separate CRM platform that had to compete with Jira for the team’s attention.
Why Mria CRM Stood Out to SeriesX
Based on its experience with the product, SeriesX highlighted four differences that made Mria CRM a strong fit for the agency:
- It continues beyond Closed-Won. For a services business, Closed-Won is where delivery begins, and that work determines whether the customer renews or returns with a new scope.
- Commercial and delivery records stay in one system. There is no export, external synchronization, or uncertainty about which system is the source of truth.
- CRM data stays within the Atlassian environment. This gives the agency a simpler answer when clients ask where their information is stored.
- It is built for teams that already run on Jira. Mria CRM works as part of the Jira environment rather than as a general-purpose CRM with a Jira connector added to it.
Key Takeaways from SeriesX
Tara’s broader conclusion comes back to the adoption problem that first led SeriesX to Mria CRM:
- If your delivery already runs in Jira and your sales doesn’t really run anywhere, this is the shortest path from “we should be more disciplined about sales” to actually being disciplined.
- It’s particularly suited to small agencies and consultancies where the founder is also the salesperson. The failure mode at our size isn’t a bad CRM. It’s a CRM nobody opens. Putting it where the team already works solves that before it starts.
- Set it up with the account at the centre, not the deal. In a services business, clients come back, and the company record is what holds that history.
- Don’t come to it expecting a heavy enterprise CRM. That’s the point.
Conclusion
SeriesX Marketing already had a disciplined system for managing client delivery. With Mria CRM, the agency brought the same consistency to sales inside Jira.
The team can now manage Leads and Deals, organize follow-ups, maintain complete account histories, and connect new opportunities with the delivery work they may create.
Sales and delivery remain part of the same operating environment, without a separate CRM platform for the team to maintain.