IAB Australia: Replacing a legacy CRM with Attio to strengthen member engagement
IAB Australia is the peak trade association for online advertising in Australia, one of 46 Interactive Advertising Bureau offices globally. A registered not-for-profit based in Sydney, IAB Australia works with around 200 paying member organisations and engages thousands of professionals across the digital advertising industry. The team produces research, runs events, manages industry councils, and advocates for best practice across the sector.
The challenge
When IAB Australia connected with Crawl Walk Run, the organisation was dealing with frustrations that will be familiar to many small teams trying to do big things.
Their CRM at the time was Microsoft Dynamics. In practice it had become a source of friction rather than efficiency. Creating newsletters was far more complicated than it should have been. Segmenting event attendees for follow-up communications required painstaking manual effort. The integration between Dynamics and their WordPress website was unreliable, with plugins needing to be manually triggered and data frequently falling out of sync.
Beyond the CRM, the team was juggling a patchwork of disconnected tools: Typeform for data capture, Humanitix for events, Xero for accounting, and various platforms for social media and communications. Key information lived in spreadsheets, in email inboxes, or simply in people's heads. Sales pipelines were managed in Excel. There was no centralised view of member engagement, and the team had limited visibility into which organisations were actively participating and which were at risk of disengaging.
The organisation had also been through painful CRM transitions before, moving from Joomla to Mautic and then to Dynamics, each time encountering blown-out timelines and unfulfilled promises. There was understandable caution about making another change, but equally a strong desire to get it right this time.
The solution
Crawl Walk Run designed and delivered an Attio implementation across several workstreams, taking a phased approach that allowed the team to start realising value quickly.
Centralised member data and relationship visibility
All member data was migrated from Dynamics into Attio, giving the team a single, clean source of truth. Attio's enrichment capabilities automatically populated company profiles with details such as industry, employee count, annual revenue and social links, dramatically reducing manual data entry. Connection strength indicators now show at a glance how recently and frequently the team has been in contact with key stakeholders, with emails, meetings and call recordings all tracked automatically.
Membership pipeline
A structured membership pipeline replaced the spreadsheets and informal tracking used previously. New enquiries flow into the system via integrated Typeform submissions, automatically creating records and triggering task notifications. The team can track prospects through stages from initial enquiry to active membership, with full visibility for everyone involved.
Event management
Event management was streamlined through a Humanitix integration via Zapier, automatically pulling registrations and attendance data into Attio so the team can see who is engaging with events at both a company and individual level.
Mentor programme
IAB Australia's mentor programme, which connects experienced industry professionals with emerging talent, is now managed entirely within Attio. This includes mentor requests, pairings, and templated bulk communications with merge fields for personalised outreach. The team is also actively experimenting with the AI capabilities found within Attio for mentor/mentee matchmaking.
AI and reporting
The implementation included Attio's AI capabilities: Ask Attio for conversational queries against CRM data, AI-powered research fields for prospect profiling, and automated call recording with transcription. Custom dashboards were created covering membership expiry dates, pipeline activity, council attendance rates, event participation and content downloads.
Training and ongoing support
Crawl Walk Run delivered hands-on training for the IAB Australia team and established an ongoing support arrangement to ensure the team has continued access to guidance as they build on the platform.
The results
The team now has a centralised, enriched view of their entire member base, replacing the fragmented collection of spreadsheets and disconnected tools that previously made it difficult to understand the health of member relationships. Information that used to require manual research is now at their fingertips.
Council attendance, event participation, program engagement and communication history are all visible in one place, enabling more informed and proactive engagement with member organisations. The membership pipeline provides structure and accountability to the sales process, and automated workflows have reduced the administrative burden on a small team.
During the training session, Tiffany Hill from the IAB Australia team summed up the reaction: "It's awesome. I can't wait to start using it. It's going to change my life."
“Working with Crawl Walk Run on integrating and fully leveraging Attio into our organisation has been an absolute joy. First class product knowledge, excellent service and clear communication has truly enabled our team to make the most of an excellent CRM solution and feel comfortable and well supported throughout the process and any related training. Highly recommended.”
Looking ahead
With the foundation in place, IAB Australia is well positioned to continue building on Attio. Future plans include deeper analytics around member engagement, expanded use of AI for prospect research and communication, Xero integration, and further integration between the CRM and website.
The partnership demonstrates what is possible when a small, mission-driven organisation is matched with the right technology. By taking a considered, phased approach and focusing on the fundamentals first, IAB Australia has moved from a world of disconnected tools and manual processes to a modern, integrated CRM that supports the team in delivering real value to their members.
