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How Cecure Intelligence Reached UK Councils with a Structured Outbound Engine | Webcite.ai
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Case Study · Public Sector · HubSpot

How Cecure Intelligence reached UK councils with a structured outbound engine built on HubSpot

A UK public sector software company needed to generate qualified conversations with council decision-makers — without building a full outbound team from scratch. Webcite.ai implemented HubSpot and ran a 12-week outbound pilot entirely inside their portal.

Cecure Intelligence
Public Sector Software · UK
HubSpot CRM
Democratic WebsiteParish & Town CouncilsUK Public Sector
12
Week structured outbound pilot run entirely inside HubSpot
2
Connected phases — CRM implementation then live outbound execution
Reusable outbound framework handed back for the team to run independently
The Challenge

A strong product. A clear market. No structured way to reach it.

Cecure Intelligence is a UK-based technology company that builds specialist platforms for public services. Their product Democratic Website is a modern committee and meeting management platform designed specifically for UK parish and town councils — helping Democratic Services Officers, Parish Clerks, and committee teams manage agendas, minutes, decisions, and publication duties in one place.

The market opportunity is significant. Approximately 300 of the 380 UK local authorities currently rely on a single legacy committee management system — a near-monopoly that has left much of the sector using ageing, expensive software with no modern alternative until now. New digital compliance requirements under SAPPP 2025 are also creating genuine urgency for councils to modernise their governance infrastructure.

Cecure Intelligence had the product, the value proposition, and existing networks in the public sector. What they lacked was a structured, repeatable way to generate qualified conversations with the right decision-makers at scale — without the cost and overhead of building a full outbound team from scratch.

01

Prospect data was fragmented with no central system of record

Council contacts, outreach history, and responses were spread across inboxes and spreadsheets. There was no single place to see who had been contacted, what had been said, or which councils were showing interest in Democratic Website.

02

No structured outbound process — activity was ad hoc and untracked

Without a defined process, outreach was dependent on individuals rather than a repeatable system. There was no consistent cadence, no standardised messaging by persona, and no way to know which approaches were generating responses.

03

No visibility for leadership into what was working

Leadership had no reliable dashboard to see outreach activity, reply rates, meetings booked, or pipeline generated. Decision-making around go-to-market investment relied on anecdote rather than data.

04

Selling into the public sector requires precision — not volume blasting

UK councils are cautious buyers with strict procurement requirements and limited resources. Generic outreach doesn't work. Reaching the right person — the Town Clerk, the Democratic Services Officer, the Senior Operations Manager — with the right message at the right time requires a structured, segmented approach that the team didn't yet have in place.

The Solution

Two connected phases — implement the system, then run the outbound

Webcite.ai's engagement with Cecure Intelligence happened in two deliberate phases. First, implementing HubSpot as the central system of record for all public sector go-to-market activity. Second, using that same HubSpot portal to design and run a tightly controlled 12-week outbound pilot — directly targeting parish and town councils on behalf of Democratic Website.

Our approach: Before writing a single email, we worked with Cecure Intelligence to map the public sector buyer landscape — identifying which council tiers and roles were most likely to be early adopters of Democratic Website, and what "a good conversation" looked like at this stage. Every sequence, every message, and every targeting decision was built around those insights.

Phase 1Implementing HubSpot as the go-to-market system of record
Data modelBuilt for public sector — council type, region, role, service area

HubSpot's contact and company properties were configured specifically for UK councils and public bodies — capturing organisation type, tier, region, service area, and the specific roles relevant to Democratic Website procurement. Lifecycle and deal stages were defined for early-stage outbound and pilot opportunities, reflecting how public sector decisions actually move rather than a standard B2B sales model.

Data migrationExisting council contacts imported, cleaned, and normalised

Cecure Intelligence's existing council and public sector contact data was imported into HubSpot, cleaned, and normalised so that segmentation and reporting would be reliable from day one. Filtered views were built so the team could immediately see "all UK councils in pipeline," "active outbound contacts," and "meetings booked this month" without manual searching.

DashboardsLeadership visibility from day one

Simple, clean dashboards were configured covering meetings booked, open deals, outbound activity, and email performance. Leadership could log into HubSpot at any point and immediately see what was happening across the outbound motion — no spreadsheet summaries, no manual reporting required.

Phase 2Running the 12-week public sector outbound pilot
Target segments & personasPrecision targeting for a cautious public sector market

Target segments were defined around parish and town councils for Democratic Website, with key personas identified as Democratic Services Officers, Town Clerks, and Parish Clerks. For each persona, the team defined what a qualified conversation looked like at this stage — not a closed deal, but a validated interest and a meeting with the right decision-maker. This precision targeting was essential given how differently public sector buyers engage compared to commercial organisations.

Sequence design & buildConcise, direct emails written for council audiences

Multiple outbound email sequences were written and built inside HubSpot, tailored specifically to Democratic Website for parish and town councils. Copy was concise and direct — focused on modernising committee and meeting management, reducing admin overhead, and improving transparency for residents. HubSpot personalisation and scheduling was used to adapt messaging by council type and role, and to spread outreach sensibly to avoid overloading any single council.

Inbox management & meeting bookingEvery response handled and progressed to a qualified meeting

Webcite.ai monitored replies directly from the configured outbound mailbox, handling responses and progressing conversations to the point where a qualified meeting made sense. Meetings were booked directly into Cecure Intelligence's calendars and logged in HubSpot against the right contacts and companies — so leadership could open HubSpot at any time and see exactly which councils had responded, what conversations had taken place, and which meetings were scheduled.

Continuous optimisationReal-world performance data fed back throughout the pilot

Throughout the 12 weeks, Webcite.ai reviewed sequence and email performance data — open rates, click rates, reply rates, and meeting conversion — and adjusted subject lines, body copy, timing, and follow-up structure accordingly. Findings about which roles were most responsive, which council tiers showed strongest interest, and how best to position Democratic Website were fed back to Cecure Intelligence as the pilot progressed.

The Result

A structured outbound motion into UK councils — measurable, repeatable, and owned by the business.

Important context: This was an early-stage outbound pilot designed to validate messaging and generate initial pipeline — not a full-scale commercial rollout. The outcomes below reflect what was achieved within a controlled 12-week window with a new product entering a market dominated by a single legacy incumbent.

Within the pilot window, Cecure Intelligence established a structured, measurable outbound motion into UK councils — fully contained within their own HubSpot portal and trackable from leadership dashboards in real time.

12
Week pilot generating qualified conversations with council decision-makers
100%
Activity tracked, auditable and visible in HubSpot from day one
1
Reusable outbound framework ready to scale, hand over, or expand to new segments
Clear visibility over contacts enrolled, reply rates by persona and council tier, meetings booked, and early-stage pipeline linked to Democratic Website
Validated positioning for Democratic Website in the context of modern governance, committee management, and SAPPP 2025 digital compliance requirements
Qualitative insight into which council tiers and roles showed strongest interest — informing future go-to-market prioritisation
A fully built, reusable outbound framework that can be re-run by Webcite.ai, expanded to new council segments, or handed to Cecure Intelligence's internal team to operate independently
Cecure Intelligence retained full ownership of all data, configurations, and sequences throughout — able to continue the outbound motion independently at any point