Fun, exciting, scary, frustrating, rewarding. It’s been full of pivots and hacks and new features and tests and things thrown in the bin. Not all of these things apply to a rollercoaster ride but I can’t think of another metaphor. From first realising from our call-tracking deployments five years ago that WhatsApp leads were a thing, to building a beta version of WhatsApp lead tracking using WhatsApp Groups.

To the Groups endpoint being deprecated.

To a production-ready solution for property and car portals.

To realising that real estate agencies and car dealerships were as good a fit for this solution as the portals are.

To building advanced reporting tools. To the emergence of competitors and copycats.

To integrating with portals. And CRMs. To scrapping/changing/tweaking commercial models.

To introducing automated qualifying and follow-up questions.

To triggering WhatsApp conversations for contact form leads.

To tracking a user journey prior to the click on the WhatsApp button.

To processing leads easily from Google Ad campaigns and social media.

Through all of this, we have grown our client base rapidly and have managed upwards of 95% client retention. Sometimes it’s hard to see from the trenches, but when I take a step back and look, I humbly believe we are building something of value. And the exciting part is that we have a bunch more stuff, beyond WhatsApp lead tracking, in our pipeline that will hopefully make our clients’ lives even better. This is not a victory cry. There are loads of risks and threats both known and unknown. The path has been strewn with challenges—technical, product-related, commercial, legal. And will continue to be so. But once in a while, it’s nice to look back and take stock. I for one, am super proud of what the incredible team at Sudonum has done so far.