Business

An Inside Look Into Camden’s Newest Startup: Penji

Published

8 years ago

June 27, 2017

Within the developing City of Camden, there are gems popping up in their business district. We sat down with Penji’s co-founder, Johnathan Grzybowski. In this conversation, we learned about the problem with design and what Penji is doing to resolve it.

Penji is a dependable on-demand design service that helps marketing teams receive custom design at an affordable monthly cost.

How did you come up with the idea of Penji?

It’s the culmination of our journey as a design agency and our desire provide jobs for students in Camden. Penji is a product we built from the ground up to give our customers a better experience working with a designer, meanwhile we focus on training and hiring students in Camden.

We believe our platform can give customers high quality design at a set monthly cost while giving internships, jobs, and opportunities to students within our community.

What does Penji mean?

Let’s just say that there are a lot of hints out there in the digital universe and we will leave it up to you to decide what you think Penji means.

What is the problem with design today?

The main problem with design is the “pick two” stigma in business. Typically, clients want affordability, quality, and speed, but never have all three.

For example, if you’re a startup looking to expand your marketing strategies, you’re stuck scouring the internet to find a high quality and affordable designer. So then you hire that designer, but you get your affordable and quality design delivered…late. In this instance, the problem is speed.

If you’re an established company, you’ll likely hire an expensive agency to deliver high quality design on time, however you’ll be paying an arm and a leg for it. The problem here is cost.

We believe that we are in an age where we can build just about anything we put our minds to, but the greatest differentiator we have in business is design. We shatter the pick two stigma by helping marketing teams to obtain cost-effective, quality design, on time – every time.

What is your mission?

We strive to be a community-conscious design platform that delivers an exceptional service while providing learning and job opportunities for students in underprivileged communities.

We’ve been in Camden for almost three years and have seen a complete transformation throughout the city. New businesses are coming into the city and are now opening their headquarters here in Camden. We want to set the precedent as one of the first community-conscious tech startups to relocate to the city and pave the way for others to follow.

We also believe greatly in the entrepreneurship and business community as a whole. We set out to develop a product that entrepreneurs, business professionals, and marketing teams want to use.

Finding a quality designer is hard, but at Penji, we believe there are great designers hidden within our community. That’s why we provide design internships, workshops, and learning opportunities to help students learn about design and further hone their design skills.

We are allocating our resources by focusing on the future of design and it begins here in Camden. By giving resources to educate students and professionals about design, it will allow for a smarter workforce, paid internship opportunities, and help grow the local economy.

Can you describe your team?

One of the hardest things to do in a business is to find a reliable team that sees our vision and believes in our mission.

It starts with our core team:

Jie is the glue that brings everyone together. She’s that fiery outgoing personality that is an absolute joy to be around. She’s the person you first want to meet at a networking event, because she will set the tone of incredible people you’ll meet during the rest of your event.

Then there’s Liam, we call him our “Damn Good Designer.” Well, actually, he calls himself that, but that’s a different story. Liam first started as a young and talented designer, now he’s head of design, and sets the tone for everything that’s delivered to our clients. Liam has thorough process and focus on our quality control to make sure that when we design an item for a client, it’s met with the highest quality.

Our dark horse is Steven. The quietest person in the room and the individual with the biggest brain. He’s our problem solver and is dedicated to providing a memorable experience to our customers. What makes Steven so amazing is his ability to do all of his tasks, with little involvement from the founders.

One of the hardest workers on our team is our sales manager, Andria. If you’ve received a phone call, a cold email, or an ask for a guest post or podcast interview, it more than likely came from the focused mind of Andria. With her efforts, we’ve had the opportunity to grow as quickly as we have.

I would be remissed if I didn’t mention the efforts of our outreach specialists, Thomas. He’s the slider of all sliders of DM’s. He’s handling an exceptional campaign for cold outreach and has the ability to execute the most difficulty of tasks. Our interns are also a major asset to our success. The willingness of our team to take these individuals in as our own, and have the ability to constantly teach, is the foundation to who we are today, and the community conscious platform Penji is.

Lastly, my cofounder is the ying to my yang. We are the perfect balance and level each other out. During the entire process of creating Penji, we stuck to each other’s strengths and maintained focus. I couldn’t have done it without him.

I am grateful and honored to have such an inspiring team.

Who is your ideal customer?

Our ideal customers are marketing teams seeking to improve the overall quality of their marketing materials, having designs done on time – every time, and to lower their overhead.

Our clients consist of Rutgers University here in Camden, Camden County College, Cooper’s Ferry, Hardenbergh Insurance Group, Boomerang Office Furniture, just to name a few. These are organizations with large marketing/sales teams that have integrated Penji into their business with ease to better their digital products.

Then you have startups and other small businesses like Only Good Things that just started their business and need help to brand their digital imprint. Level5Wealth that has been in business for years. They are absolutely killing it, but their previous designer left a lot to be desired. Waterfront Lab that’s doing incredibly awesome things for the city of Camden. They have an event every week that needs a graphic for promotion on their social and email channels. These organizations are using Penji to help get their time back, so they can spend more time on their business.

Finally you have non-profits and other economic development organizations like Cathedral Kitchen, Kingsway Learning Center, and Waterfront Ventures. We are so proud to have these organizations as clients because we are artistically telling their story through our digital design efforts.

What differentiates Penji from your competitors?

We’re a monthly subscription service that starts at $349/m for 15 hours of design. Penji is a project management service that allows you and your entire marketing team to work seamlessly and efficiently with our designers and project managers. Gone are the days of going back and forth with emails and poorly marked revisions.

We wanted to make a product that is so simple and easy for our customers to use. Every piece to our backend was done with purpose. Khai, our internal design team, and our development team did a brilliant job.

As soon as you sign up you are met with a screen that allows us to understand your brand. It takes less than five minutes to complete. As soon as you’re complete with that task, you’re set to begin submitting your projects.

Once projects are submitted, your project manager and design team begins working. In under 24-48 hours you will receive the first draft of your design. If a revision is needed, Penji’s project management service is intuitive enough for you to easily communicate your changes. A simple click of the mouse will unlock an edit section on that design for you to submit your request.

We also transparent to our clients. We bill on recurring monthly basis, which makes using Penji predictable. You’ll never have to wonder if a design is going to go over your budget. Our clients will always know the status of their project, which team member approved what, or who on their team submitted which revisions. Penji provides both transparency and control for marketing teams of all sizes.

What are some challenges that you faced with Penji?

Well, our first challenge was to prove that we have a viable product with a good product/market fit. We introduced the idea to our closest friends, networking groups, and cold called close to 400 local businesses to see if what we were building is a product that marketing teams want. We received a ton of feedback making it difficult at first to understand what each person wanted from the product. We continued this process for about three to four months before designing a single aspect of Penji.

Although this challenge was rather tedious, it did two things for our business:

It allowed us to get feedback to create a better product.
It allowed us the opportunity to get initial interest and beta users before the product launched.

Having general interests in our product was a huge lifesaver because we didn’t have to go far to get our first initial customers. We brought our contacts into our sales process. We told them what we were doing, how we were doing it, and what they needed to know about the product itself. We used things like email newsletter, blogging techniques, and even vlogging to document our process and the production of what Penji is today.

How do you plan on scaling?

In the beginning we needed to solve two huge issues within our business; sales and delivering design in a cost efficient and timely manner. To scale design, i’ll leave that up to my cofounder to discuss in more detail. What has made us so successful is sticking to our roles and not straying away or butting into one another’s process.

So then, how were you able to scale sales and get your first 100 customers?

We’re not at 100 yet, but we’re getting there! It started with documenting every single process, number, and interaction that we had with a prospect (Cold lead). We became a numbers and analytics company. Salesforce and other CRM were not cutting it for us, so we developed an internal CRM that allowed our sales team to be more efficient while allowing us to see the data in real time.

Our cold call and cold email strategies are not revolutionary by any means. We did the work that others didn’t want to do and continued to refine the process over time. If you’re curious how we are doing it, we’ve documented every single strategy and step on my personal vlog/blog. All of our scripts, templates, and internal processes are all there for the taking.

Once we had our process down, we then created a workflow and then hired accordingly. We knew who to hire and how to hire based off of our numbers. We knew that if we wanted to grow by 25% we needed to increase our efforts by hiring two additional people doing x. Because of the numbers we knew what they needed to do, how they needed to do it, and were plugged into the process.

Along the same lines of documenting, we also put an emphasis on content marketing. The vlog did an incredible job bringing more people together. It’s funny, sometimes you may not get the comments or the “likes” directly within a social media post, but people are always watching. Get your information and message out to your audience, whatever way that works best for you. Stop thinking, stop waiting, stop believing that you need this huge and expensive set up, because you don’t. I recorded every vlog on my iPhone 7 Plus. I edited on my Macbook Pro using Final Cut and occasionally used my DJI Mavic Pro for b-roll. Other than that, that’s about it. I focused all of my energy on the story.

Where do you see Penji five 5 years from now?

I’ll revert back to our mission, we strive to be a community conscious design platform that delivers while providing learning and job opportunities for students in underprivileged communities.

It starts right here in Camden. In five years, as our organization grows, we will expand our efforts to other cities. For us, success means that we are able to give back to our community, provide learning opportunities for others to succeed, and allow businesses to differentiate themselves through quality design from Penji.

Business

How Marketing Optimization Tools Level Up Your Marketing Game

Published

1 day ago

December 12, 2025

Skylar Lee

While many companies and small businesses struggle to capture their target audience’s attention amidst competition from giant brands, it’s clear that marketing needs to be taken up a notch. To do this, it requires marketing optimization tools to not only achieve marketing objectives but also generate leads. But how do you go about optimizing your marketing efforts and what tools can help?

1. Make Use of Data

According to Hubspot, marketing in 2025 will heavily focus on data. That said, data will give you insights into your target audience. Plus, you can better understand how your business works better through data. Fortunately, many marketing optimization tools have data and analytics to help you reach targets.

If your strategy is understanding your audience better through data, Google Analytics is your best free option. With Google Analytics, you’ll know where your users are coming from and how many of them are visiting your website.

Another data-heavy strategy is social media marketing. After all, you don’t want your social media marketing efforts to go in vain. Although MeetEdgar is primarily a social media scheduler, it will help you understand which of your posts are doing great in engagement. Plus, you can make decisions regarding your other non-performing posts.

2. Focus on SEO

Data isn’t enough when optimizing your marketing campaigns or strategies. Marketing strategies are best served with the help of SEO. You shouldn’t overlook or underestimate the impact of what SEO can do for your business. After all, you want to drive customers to your website, right? SEO is your best bet in getting more clicks and visits. Plus, you can earn your place on the coveted first page of search engines.

With SEO, you don’t have to overcomplicate it. Plus, you don’t want to skimp on SEO, especially if you want visitors to flock to your site. You can use one simple tool to help you research keywords, explore your competitors, and track your progress. Ahrefs is one of the tools you should have in your arsenal. They have an all-in-one tool ready to help you learn about your content, links, competitors, and more!

3. Stay Active on Social Media

Social media platforms are the best places to reach your target audience. You can post on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok to engage with your audience and promote your products or services. But posting on social media requires constant efforts and well-thought-out strategies. You need to post regularly with the right content, copy, and visuals to attract your target audience. Content creation tools like graphic design software and video editors will help you meet your social media marketing goals.

Canva is the go-to for many marketers because of its ease of use and UI. Plus, you can make graphics in minutes. Meanwhile, Clipchamp is a trusted name in video editing. Marketers can use templates to create videos in a snap. Plus, they can make compelling videos by adding filters and AI voiceovers.

4. Keep Content Consistent

During the planning stages, it’s important that your content should also be ready before it’s published. If you are launching a marketing campaign, you need your visual assets and marketing copy prepared. But you don’t create for creation’s sake. You need to keep your messaging and visuals consistent on every platform.

You want to ensure that people across various channels view and interact with your campaign assets while getting your main message out.

There are a couple of marketing optimization tools for this strategy:

Hubspot is the popular choice for content marketing since you can publish and schedule your blogs on this platform.
Like with social media marketing, you need content creation tools. However, an alternative to content creation tools is unlimited graphic design and video editing services. For graphic design, you can rely on Penji. You can request your graphics in one place while you work on your company. Meanwhile, Video Husky is a trusted video editing service helping you with short-form and long-form videos.
Email marketing is another content strategy you should consider when reaching your audiences. Mailerlite is your best bet in achieving your email marketing goals.

5. Research Your Competitors

Aside from learning about your audience, you should also keep an eye out for your competitors. After all, you want to see how your target audience responds to their posts. Plus, you want to compare how different your websites could be. This will give you an idea of how to improve your posts and websites.

Although Ahrefs has a competitor research tool, an alternative to this is SpyFu. They specialize in analyzing competitor keywords, traffic, ads, and domains.

Other Marketing Optimization Tools to Use:

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation tools have been the go-to applications for most marketers. After all, marketing automation streamlines your work. Plus, you can leave it to the AI or other automated sequences to do your job for you. That said, there are tons of marketing automation tools.

One stands out from the rest, and that is MailChimp. Although known as an email marketing tool, they have a marketing automation feature by building relationships with your customers and ad retargeting.

Customer Relationship Management

Customer relationship management (CRM) software is one tool you need to reach more customers. This works best if you have an email marketing strategy. And if you need a CRM tool, Salesforce is the highly recommended one. You can run your marketing campaigns on their software. Plus, you can nurture leads and provide the best customer experience.

Project Management

One overlooked marketing optimization tool is project management. You should use a project management tool to help you get on track with your campaigns. Asana is a must-subscribe project management tool for marketing. You can collaborate with your teammates, assign them various projects, and organize them for each strategy.

Final Thoughts

In the competitive landscape of 2026, optimizing your marketing strategy is no longer optional, it’s essential. It can be challenging to entice your target audience digitally nowadays, especially if you’re hesitant to use optimization tools. That’s why it’s essential to use them to help you achieve your marketing goals. And with the tools above, you can be on your way to reaching your audience and increasing your sales.

Business

The Top CRM Platforms for Small Agencies & Service Businesses

Published

3 days ago

December 11, 2025

Kelli Hugh

TL;DR: Managing client relationships shouldn’t feel like herding cats. The top CRM platforms for small agencies and service businesses help you track leads, manage projects, and keep client communication organized without needing a degree in software engineering. HubSpot offers the best free option, Salesforce works for growing teams, Zoho gives you affordability, and Pipedrive keeps sales simple.

The top CRM platforms for small agencies include HubSpot (best free option), Salesforce (scalable for growth), Zoho CRM (budget-friendly), and Pipedrive (sales-focused). These platforms help manage client relationships, track leads, and automate workflows starting from free to $25+ per user monthly.

Top CRM Platforms for Small Agencies and Service Businesses

Running a small agency means wearing twenty different hats, and somewhere between managing projects and chasing invoices, client relationships start falling through the cracks. You’ve got sticky notes everywhere, emails buried in your inbox, and that one lead who asked for a proposal three weeks ago that you completely forgot about.

The top CRM platforms solve this chaos by putting all your client information, communication history, and sales pipeline in one place that actually makes sense. After testing various options and talking to other agency owners, here’s what actually works when you’re running a lean operation.

HubSpot CRM

HubSpot offers the best free CRM option for small agencies just getting started with client management systems. The free version gives you contact management, email tracking, meeting scheduling, and basic pipeline management without paying a dime, which matters when you’re bootstrapping and every dollar counts.

The interface makes sense from day one, so you’re not spending three days watching tutorial videos just to figure out how to add a contact. You can track every email conversation with clients, log calls automatically, and see exactly where each prospect sits in your sales process. HubSpot works with Gmail and Outlook, which means you’re not constantly switching between different tools just to check if someone responded.

The paid tiers starting at $45 per month unlock marketing automation, custom reporting, and workflow tools that grow with your agency. Companies like Penji use strong systems to manage thousands of client relationships, and HubSpot scales from solo operations to full teams.
Best For: Agencies wanting room to grow

Salesforce

Salesforce remains one of the top CRM platforms for agencies planning serious growth, though it comes with a steeper learning curve and higher price tag. The system handles complex sales processes and detailed reporting.

Many small agencies find it overkill when managing 20 clients instead of 2,000. But if you’re planning to scale quickly or already have multiple team members managing different client accounts, Salesforce prevents the chaos that happens when everyone’s using different systems.
Best For: Growing agencies with complex sales processes

Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM offers serious functionality at prices that don’t make you wince when the monthly bill arrives. You get contact management, pipeline tracking, email integration, and workflow automation starting at just $14 per user monthly.

The interface isn’t quite as polished as HubSpot, and the mobile app can be clunky, but when you’re choosing between a CRM that works and paying rent, Zoho delivers the basics without the premium pricing. It connects with other Zoho products if you’re already using their suite for invoicing or project management.

Best For: Budget-conscious agencies needing core features

Pipedrive

Pipedrive focuses on sales pipeline management, which makes it perfect for agencies where closing new clients is the top priority. The visual pipeline shows exactly where every prospect sits, what actions you need to take next, and which deals are about to close versus which ones have gone cold.

Setting up is refreshingly simple compared to enterprise systems that require consultant help just to configure basic fields. You can start using Pipedrive the same day you sign up.
Best For: Sales-focused agencies

Making Your Choice

The right CRM depends on your specific situation. If you’re just starting and budget is tight, HubSpot’s free tier gives you everything needed to stop losing track of leads. If you’re already managing steady client flow and need better organization, Zoho or Pipedrive deliver solid functionality at reasonable prices.

Pick one that matches how your agency actually works instead of trying to force your processes into whatever system has the fanciest marketing website.

Stop Losing Leads, Start Growing

Ready to get your client relationships organized? Pick a CRM from this list and actually implement it this week. Your future self will thank you when you’re not frantically searching through email threads trying to remember what you promised that client six months ago.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do small agencies really need a CRM?
If you’re managing more than five active clients or prospects, yes. CRMs prevent leads from falling through the cracks and keep all client communication in one searchable place instead of scattered across emails and sticky notes.

What’s the difference between free and paid CRM plans?
Free plans typically limit users, contacts, and advanced features like automation and custom reporting. Paid plans unlock team collaboration tools and detailed analytics that become crucial as you grow.

How long does CRM implementation take?
Basic setup takes a few hours. You can start tracking contacts and deals immediately. Full setup with custom fields and team training might take a few weeks depending on complexity.

Can I switch CRMs later if I outgrow my choice?
Yes, though migrating data takes effort. Most CRMs allow CSV exports to transfer contact information. Starting with scalable options like HubSpot can prevent the need to switch as you grow.

Business

What’s the Best Unlimited Graphic Design Subscription Platform?

Published

3 days ago

December 10, 2025

Margaret Zander

For your business to gain traction in today’s digital-first world, it needs to have amazing graphic design assets. However, if you’re on a tight budget, resorting to DIY design tools or online templates may seem the next best thing to working with an agency or freelancer. Fortunately for us, there are unlimited graphic design subscriptions that offer affordability and high-quality creative work. Here is our list of the best:

Penji

With a team of professional designers from the world’s top 2% of designers, Penji is the best unlimited graphic design subscription. You can request from any of its over 120 design categories in as little as 24 to 48 hours, without signing any contract. Its affordable plans also include unlimited revisions, assuring you of the best ever designs for your brand.

Kimp

If you need videos in addition to unlimited graphic design services, Kimp is the design solution you need. Its premium pricing plans allow you to request website, app, landing page designs, custom illustrations, print and digital design, GIFs, and animations, among others. You can try out its graphic design services for seven days free!

Design Pickle

Another subscription-based creative platform, Design Pickle, lets you get all the designs you need for a fixed monthly rate. A premium plan also gets you unlimited revisions, assuring you of the best designs possible. Its team of design experts will work on your branding, marketing, print, videos, motion graphics, and even eBooks and digital reports.

Superside

Also taking your unlimited design requests and revisions is Superside. For a flat monthly fee, you can request ad creatives, social media graphics, illustrations, print designs, branding services, and more. It also offers specialized services, including video production, motion design, immersive design, and email creation, to name a few.

DotYeti

Promising “monster” unlimited graphic design services, DotYeti is another design-as-a-service platform you can consider. Having worked with over 300 startups, SMEs, and enterprises, it has achieved a 98% client satisfaction rating across over 15,000 designs.