Northbound Marketing · 2026
A white-label launch that survived its first year
Before
- $0Recurring software revenue
- 11 daysClient onboarding time
- Project onlyRevenue model
After
- $41k MRRRecurring software revenue
- 45 minClient onboarding time
- 3.1%Month-9 logo churn
The challenge
Northbound had 34 retainer clients and no recurring software revenue. They had switched SaaS Mode on twice before and abandoned it both times. It was priced too low to cover SMS and email rebilling, and onboarding took eleven days per client, consuming the founder personally.
The approach
Modelled the margins before touching the platform
We built a unit-economics model first: actual SMS, email, AI and phone consumption per client segment against plan price. Their previous $197 tier was losing money on any client sending real volume. The rebuilt tiers started at $397.
Three tiers mapped to real usage, not feature checklists
Rather than gating features arbitrarily, tiers were built around consumption bands that matched how their clients actually behaved. Upgrade prompts fire automatically when usage approaches a ceiling.
A snapshot that made onboarding self-serve
We packaged their best-performing build into a versioned snapshot: pipelines, twelve workflows, six funnels, calendar and dashboard configuration. New clients now deploy in under an hour without the founder involved.
An onboarding sequence built to prevent month-three churn
Most white-label churn happens when a client never activates. We built a 21-day activation sequence with milestone tracking and an alert when an account goes quiet, so the team intervenes before cancellation, not after.
The outcome
Northbound reached $41,000 MRR in software revenue within nine months, on top of existing retainers. Logo churn settled at 3.1% monthly, well below the double-digit rate they saw on both earlier attempts. Onboarding dropped from eleven days to forty-five minutes.
The SaaS Mode launch is the reason we have predictable revenue now. They modelled the rebilling margins before we priced anything, which stopped us making the mistake nearly every agency we know has made.