HR-Focused Campaign Secures Local Partnerships and Increases Employee Engagement

Client’s Challenges

Brightwheel approached Leadium to tackle a key issue in expanding its new corporate childcare benefit offering into the B2B market. The company’s mission is to make high-quality early education accessible to every child. However, as they developed a new product aimed at corporate HR departments, they faced several hurdles. Brightwheel's core SaaS product had traditionally served childcare providers, like preschools and daycares, but moving into the corporate space required a strategic pivot.

The challenge was convincing HR leaders to invest in Brightwheel’s backup care benefits, which directly address the problem of employee absenteeism due to childcare disruptions. Childcare gaps force working parents to miss work hours—around 70 hours annually per employee in many cases—resulting in revenue loss for businesses. HR departments needed to see the ROI clearly, as most benefits typically function as cost centers without direct financial return. This made entering the HR-focused B2B market particularly difficult since competitors like Bright Horizons already dominated the space with well-established but costly and rigid offerings​

Challenges addressed included:
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• Childcare Disruptions: Preschools often close for holidays or emergencies, causing workers to miss essential work hours.
• High Costs & Prepayment Models: Competitors in the backup care space demanded large, non-refundable upfront payments.
• Low Utilization Rates: Major competitors, such as Bright Horizons, had notoriously low usage rates for backup care, which limited employer returns on investment.

Leadium Solution

To help Brightwheel navigate these challenges, Leadium crafted a highly strategic outbound SDR campaign, emphasizing targeted messaging, geo-specific outreach, and clear differentiation from competitors. The Leadium team focused on building a personalized, geo-limited campaign aimed specifically at HR leaders and benefits managers within the Austin metro area. This tight geographic focus was crucial since Brightwheel's new childcare benefit was limited to local availability, requiring Leadium to drive highly personalized campaigns for each target company.

The SDR campaign prioritized Brightwheel’s unique value proposition, including its no-prepayment model, free trials, and pay-per-use structure. Leadium worked closely with Brightwheel to develop tailored messaging that showcased how the backup care benefit could result in a 5X to 10X ROI, helping HR departments solve absenteeism issues while supporting working parents. Cold-calling scripts and email sequences focused on how the product differed from existing solutions, using competitive research to highlight Brightwheel’s cost savings and flexibility​.

Through strategic outreach, Leadium not only generated new leads but also helped Brightwheel establish itself as a viable alternative to industry incumbents, improving pipeline growth and engagement with local companies.

Key Solutions:

• Personalized Outreach: The SDR team conducted highly targeted email and cold-calling efforts, tailored to specific employee benefits each company offered.
• Value Proposition Emphasis: Messaging emphasized Brightwheel’s pay-per-use model and free trial offering (30 free backup care hours), highlighting its ability to reduce absenteeism and improve productivity.
• Localized Campaign: With Brightwheel initially limited to the Austin area, the Leadium team ensured campaigns were highly geo-focused and personalized to resonate with local businesses.

Results:

• 40% increase in response rate for HR-focused outbound messaging.
• 25% pipeline growth within the first quarter of Leadium’s engagement.
• 10X engagement rate in comparison to traditional childcare benefit providers.

Tangible Outcomes Provided by Leadium:

• Expanded Brightwheel’s B2B outreach with increased lead generation within targeted geo markets.
• Boosted brand visibility in the HR benefits space, with HR decision-makers identifying Brightwheel as a competitive alternative to established players.
• Helped optimize Brightwheel’s SDR process, creating a scalable model for future campaigns.
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