How Holistiplan generated 2.7x more leads at 90% lower cost with Expertise AI

Overview

Holistiplan is a niche SaaS platform helping financial advisors deliver tax planning services more effectively. As the company began scaling from a product-led growth phase into a demand-generation motion, the marketing team needed new ways to capture and convert website visitors without disrupting sales workflows or introducing operational risk.

By implementing Expertise AI, Holistiplan introduced an AI-powered website assistant focused on qualified engagement and visitor identification, generating new trials and subscriptions while complementing existing marketing efforts.

Background

Holistiplan serves financial advisors across the United States with specialized tax-planning software.

When Lifecycle Marketing Manager Renan Ronchi joined the company, the team was expanding rapidly:

• ~90-person organization
• Strong product-market fit
• Moving from a single product toward a broader platform
• New emphasis on demand generation and scalable growth

The challenge: their marketing operations were still early-stage, with limited attribution visibility and reliance on events and webinars for lead generation.

The Challenge

Before Expertise AI, Holistiplan faced several growth constraints:

1. Limited lead capture outside high-intent actions

Their existing chatbot (HubSpot chat flow) mainly captured users ready to speak with sales or support, missing visitors earlier in the buyer journey.

"We have the HubSpot chat flow into our website… they always have two branches that work on our site like talk to sales or talk to support."

— Renan Ronchi, Lifecycle Marketing Manager

2. High reliance on expensive events

Events and webinars worked, but:

• Average cost: ~$15,000 per event
• ~200 leads per event
• Time-intensive and difficult to scale

The team wanted additional inbound lead sources without increasing operational overhead.

3. Internal adoption & risk concerns

Introducing AI created internal considerations:

• Avoid replacing or threatening SDR workflows
• Maintain strong "human support" brand positioning
• Ensure compliance-safe messaging in a regulated industry
• Prevent hallucinations or inaccurate responses

Why Expertise AI

During vendor research, Holistiplan discovered Expertise AI at exactly the right moment, after actively evaluating AI chatbot solutions.

Key reasons the team chose Expertise AI:

• Fast onboarding and implementation
• Strong tracking and data visibility
• Ability to tightly control AI behavior and messaging
• Visitor identification capability (lead enrichment)

"The visitor identification is the gold mine for us."

— Renan Ronchi, Lifecycle Marketing Manager

The Solution

Holistiplan deployed Expertise AI primarily on marketing landing pages, carefully positioning it as a marketing enhancement, not a sales replacement.

Core use cases:

• Answer pricing questions instantly
• Share example tax report PDFs and resources
• Capture visitor contact details via visitor identification
• Provide 24/7 campaign coverage outside SDR hours
• Route support-related questions back to human teams

The team also customized AI guardrails to:

• Avoid compliance-sensitive advice
• Redirect regulatory or complex questions safely
• Reinforce human support messaging

Implementation Experience

Deployment focused on minimizing organizational friction:

• Integrated with HubSpot workflows
• AI personality and restrictions configured quickly
• Internal stakeholders aligned through controlled rollout
• Marketing-led implementation with RevOps collaboration

According to the team, setup was straightforward:

"The implementation was very good… creating the personality of the bot was really easy to do."

A standout moment came when users experienced Expertise AI's micro-pages and guided conversational flows, a clear "wow moment" compared to traditional chatbots.

Results

Lead Generation & Conversion

Within early rollout:

• 543 visitor leads captured
• 67% trial → subscriber conversion

These were incremental opportunities, leads the team believes would not have existed otherwise.

Cost Efficiency vs Events

Compared with Holistiplan's primary lead source (events/webinars):

• AI-generated leads came at ~30% of webinar cost
• Delivered roughly 2× more leads than equivalent spend scenarios

"We captured so many leads that we otherwise wouldn't have without the bot."

— Renan Ronchi, Lifecycle Marketing Manager

While lead qualification differed, the AI assistant created a scalable, always-on acquisition channel.

Marketing Impact

The biggest shift wasn't just chatbot automation, it was data visibility:

• Visitor identification created a new outbound and lifecycle marketing input
• Marketing gained access to previously anonymous website traffic
• Enabled follow-up campaigns without relying solely on form fills

Why It Worked (Customer Perspective)

For Holistiplan, the biggest value came from visitor identification and controlled AI engagement, not just having a chatbot on the site.

Instead of waiting for form fills, the marketing team could identify engaged visitors, capture contact information (with consent), and run follow-up campaigns that generated incremental pipeline.

"The main value proposition of the AI bot… is the lead capture."

— Renan Ronchi, Lifecycle Marketing Manager

Just as important, the rollout succeeded because the AI fit naturally into existing workflows:

• Operated within clear compliance boundaries
• Avoided hallucinations or risky responses
• Supported, rather than replaced, SDR and human support teams
• Was easy to implement and manage internally

Expertise AI acted as a complement to Holistiplan's demand generation efforts, adding new opportunities without disrupting established processes.

What's Next

After validating the proof of concept, Holistiplan is expanding exploration of Expertise AI across sales and RevOps workflows.

The next phase focuses on:

• Deeper tracking and attribution
• Faster meeting booking within conversations
• Stronger alignment between marketing and sales teams
• Connecting AI engagement more directly to pipeline and revenue outcomes

As the company scales demand generation, the AI assistant is expected to evolve from a marketing experiment into a larger part of their revenue strategy.

Try it on your site

Ready to generate more leads at lower cost like Holistiplan? Get started with Expertise AI today.