Cinch: New Positioning Framework
Updated: Sep 4
Capture, Convert, Retain: Winning 92% of a National Franchise Network
How a new positioning framework — built from industry research and sharpened under a tight deadline — helped Cinch win 92% of Jiffy Lube's national footprint, franchise by franchise.
The Headline
92% of Jiffy Lube's entire national footprint now runs on Cinch: ~1,910 of a possible 2,075 locations (~1,140 in-house, ~770 via reseller)
The corporate migration alone moved 417 stores across 59 entities off a 20-year-legacy CRM
90%+ win rate across individually-negotiated franchise contracts
$1M+ in new annual recurring revenue
Phase 0: Becoming the Specialist Before the Opportunity Existed
Before Jiffy Lube International (JLI) was ever in play, I had already spent significant time building a specialist's view of the quick-lube and broader automotive service industry — research that had nothing to do with any single client and everything to do with understanding a category.
That work included:
Cross-industry analysis synthesizing patterns across quick lube, tire/service, and full-service auto operators
Oilstop (30 quick-lube locations + 6 car washes) — case study on migrating from Throttle/Klaviyo to a unified platform, collecting 100K+ leads
VIP Tires & Service (70+ locations) — case study on data hygiene and reputation management driving a 62% email open rate and 273% increase in reviews
Earlier Jiffy Lube-specific work, including ACE Jiffy Lube (HubSpot migration, $120K/year saved) and a three-company omnichannel retention study across 132,000+ customer interactions
The pattern that emerged across all of it was consistent: multi-location and franchise operators don't struggle to attract customers — they struggle with fragmented data, inconsistent follow-up, and retention that depends entirely on discounting. That insight became the seed of what would later become Capture, Convert, Retain.
Why this matters: when the Jiffy Lube opportunity broke open with only a few months to prepare, I wasn't starting from zero. I was sharpening a thesis I'd already tested across a dozen brands.
The Trigger
JLI had signed a master agreement naming Cinch as their official CRM — but the deal wasn't actually won. Because of Jiffy Lube's franchise structure, each of hundreds of independently-owned franchise groups still had to be individually convinced to sign on.
At the same time, Cinch's existing positioning — built around the category term "CDXP" — wasn't resonating. Sales conversations were turning into feature lists ("feature soup") instead of a narrative buyers could follow.
I had a matter of months to fix that before the company's flagship JLI conference in the Bahamas, where the new positioning would need to carry the entire in-person sales motion.
The Inflection Point: A Promotion Mid-Project
Partway through developing the new framework, I was promoted from Senior Content Strategist to Director of Product Marketing. The timing mattered: the new role gave me direct access to product and customer success in a way I hadn't had before, and the positioning work shifted in scope as a result — from marketing positioning to full platform positioning, grounded in what the product actually did at a feature level rather than how it was being marketed.
This project became the proof point for that transition: the same case study that won Jiffy Lube is also the clearest evidence of why the role expanded.
The Framework: Capture, Convert, Retain
Rather than continuing to lead with an abstract category label, I reframed Cinch's positioning around jobs to be done — the concrete things a shop owner or multi-unit manager needs to accomplish every day — and organized those jobs into three pillars:
Capture — identify demand (missed calls, lead capture, customer records)
Convert — turn intent into booked revenue (scheduling, follow-up, reminders)
Retain — drive lifetime value (loyalty, churn prediction, reputation)
This wasn't just a tagline. I built it into:
An internal positioning memo resolving a real strategic debate about whether pillars or feature-led selling should lead — landing on a three-layer model (Outcomes → Jobs to Be Done → Features) that kept the framework from becoming just another abstraction
A 16-job catalog, each mapped to a primary feature, what it replaced, and its natural expansion signal — used by sales, marketing, and product as a shared operating reference
Homepage copy carrying the same "What are you trying to fix?" job-first structure to the company's primary web presence
A trade show booth messaging guide segmenting buyer conversations into five phases (from casual browsing to executive decision-making), with phase-specific scripts, diagnostic questions, and CTAs — designed so an entire booth staff could sell consistently without leading with features
The Launch: Jiffy Lube Convention, Bahamas
The framework launched in market at JLI's national convention, where I led the messaging and contributed to the full in-booth experience:
Backdrop: distilled the framework into three lines: "More visits. Higher tickets. Less churn."
Banner: led with hard numbers to make the value prop concrete (a single SMS campaign generating $368K in incremental revenue; 52% increase in repeat customers)
Two-stage handout funnel: an Essentials Plan overview (low-friction entry point, cost covered by JLI through 2026) paired with an "Expand Your Cinch Bundle" upsell path (SMS, direct mail, loyalty, AI voice) — designed for franchise-by-franchise land-and-expand
Swag: (conference hat, towel) extending the positioning into experiential brand touchpoints
The Result
~1,910 of 2,075 possible locations: roughly 92% of Jiffy Lube's entire national footprint (~1,140 in-house, ~770 via reseller channel)
The corporate rollout alone migrated 417 stores across 59 entities off a 20-year-legacy CRM
90%+ win rate across individually-negotiated franchise contracts
$1M+ in new annual recurring revenue
Validation: Closing the Loop with the Customer
Winning wasn't the end of the process — I built a structured win-interview practice to convert the outcome into ongoing product and GTM intelligence.
In a formal interview with JLI corporate's Marketing Project Lead, I confirmed how Jiffy Lube evaluated Cinch against several competing platforms across a structured, weighted RFQ — and validated that the Capture/Convert/Retain framing matched how the buyer itself thought about the decision (functional fit, strategic fit, performance, and value).
That single interview also generated six tracked action items across Product, Customer Success, and Sales/Partnerships — two of them owned directly by me, including scoping a repeatable ideal-customer-profile pattern ("corporate franchisor + independently owned operators") now being used to target similar accounts.
Why This Case Study Matters
This project traces a complete strategist's loop: research → insight → framework → execution → validation → iteration. It also marks the exact inflection point in my career — from content strategist to product marketing director — and the case study doubles as evidence for why that expansion happened.