World’s Leading Records Management and Information Services Company Turns to Extraprise for Customer Intelligence-based Lead Generation and Nurturing Campaigns

Client

Extraprise’s client is the worldwide leader in records management and information services. The company’s objective to was transform its marketing data into customer intelligence-based lead generation and nurturing campaigns to accelerate growth.

Situation

The client had invested almost all of its marketing resources on acquiring new customers. Although it had been successful in building a base of over 90,000 corporate customers, many of its operations struggled to meet its aggressive expansion targets. The complexity of operating in 23 countries at almost 1,000 sites and, at the same time, acquiring and integrating new companies with additional, complimentary services created difficulty in focusing on incremental opportunities.

Despite 40-60% growth per year for international businesses, the growth of its US operation had slowed to less than 10% per year. In addition, attempts to create new customer relationships did not produce expected results. Market share, holding at about 15%, was supported by acquisitions rather than by finding new customers organically or by penetrating existing accounts.

Challenges

Having already engaged Extraprise in an extensive deployment of a sales force automation system, Extraprise was ideally suited to address the next stage of marketing challenges. These included:

• No central place to store critical marketing data, e.g., customer information, past purchasing information, product and service information, history of marketing transactions, opt-in and opt-out preferences, etc.
• Poor data quality, e.g. duplicates, lack of email addresses, inability to understand relationships between corporate entities, etc.
• Complete lack of response and lead management processes , and technology did not exist to support the activity
• No way to measure the effectiveness of marketing programs and campaigns or to evaluate the efficacy of sales processes

In summary, there was no closed-loop, marketing and sales environment to support end-to-end execution and visibility of marketing programs through opportunity pursuit. Furthermore, there was no way to explore comprehensive data, develop insights into key areas such as account penetration, distribute products and services within accounts, and size of revenue opportunities by sales territories, etc.

The client needed a database marketing application with strong analytic capabilities integrated with its sales force automation environment to accomplish its revenue growth goals. Marketing leadership visualized the opportunity; it just needed to find the right partner to execute the marketing plan. Extraprise, in turn, sought to address multiple issues and use customer intelligence to create resulting initiatives to:

• Understand the revenue opportunity for account penetration
• Determine the most appropriate mix of marketing spend on new customer acquisition and on cross selling and up selling activities into the existing base
• Be able to target prospects and customers with the right messages and offers based upon who the prospect and customer is
• Have the ability to handle campaign responses quickly, quantitatively qualify leads, direct the leads into the most appropriate channel, and track the lead through the pipeline to resolution
• Be able to measure and evaluate the return on marketing programs and campaigns

Solution

Extraprise’s i2i database marketing and demand generation service environment was perfect for this client. The strength of the i2i platform is its data management capabilities and its data exploration and real-time analytic functionality. Extraprise’s marketing services were also a good fit because the client did not have the personnel with the right capabilities to utilize a database marketing system.

With its knowledge of marketing and the client’s data, Extraprise was able to immediately bring operational expertise and value to explore the data for insight, work with their marketing managers to create and execute programs, and to operate the environment on their behalf. Extraprise implemented and deployed the solution, with key components to the initiative:

• Preparation of the infrastructure environment, which included:
• Setup and installation of all hardware
• Installation of all operating system, database, and application software
• The complete security of the application and the privacy of the client’s data
• Deployment of the networking and communication environment to access it both interactively and to import and export data
• Construction of the marketing database
• Creation of the processes to operate the marketing application
• Development of the required conversions, integrations, and ongoing feeds

Since the client is, in essence, a security provider for its customers, Extraprise needed to comply with stringent security and privacy requirements. Therefore, Extraprise created an architecture that met the client’s immediate requirements, was adaptable to meet new security and privacy issues as they were discovered and contemplated, and was completely auditable.

Concurrently with the preparation of the infrastructure, Extraprise developed the conceptual, logical, and physical design of the client’s marketing database. The database needed to support both the operational execution of campaigns and the ongoing, but ad hoc, nature of data mining analytics. The database was designed to store customer, sales, service, marketing interaction, asset, and financial data. Extraprise used a conceptual and logical model that it had already designed to customize the database architecture to support client requirements. In order to design and build the database, Extraprise needed to understand how the client intended to use the data for campaigns and analysis. To acquire that understanding, Extraprise analyzed the programs, program flows, campaign processes, and analytic needs. Extraprise also conducted strategic visioning services to determine what it wanted to do in the future. Based upon the information acquired in this process, Extraprise made recommendations to the client on issues ranging from data, data acquisition, campaign processes, and future direction.

In addition, Extraprise was able to build a data mart that allowed the client to execute the campaigns it needed to better up sell its products and services and to cross sell across business units. Extraprise and the client were able to agree on an interaction and operational support model to make sure that the services Extraprise was providing were efficient and effective. The database now contains over two million unique contacts to which the client is now able to send emails and direct mail pieces. Campaign responses are processed from a myriad of sources including landing pages, microsites, company Web page hits, email, and return cards. The responses are algorithmically qualified by the i2i system and then moved into the right channel for additional qualification. Outbound telesales staff set appointments for field sales personnel, and the lead, now turned into an opportunity, can be tracked through the sales pipeline to allow the measurement of campaign performance.

Results

Results for the client have been profound, and the impact has been both strategic and operational. The work Extraprise had done has:

• Convinced the client that its most substantial revenue opportunities lie in its existing client base, and not in new customer acquisition
• Helped redirect marketing resources and spend to up selling and cross selling activities
• Assisted the client to restructure its sales territory assignments and quota philosophies to focus on customer penetration. Operationally, Extraprise has significantly expanded the capabilities of the client’s marketing organization. The most significant results have occurred as a result of its targeted, trigger-based campaigns.

By targeting specific segments of existing customers and by ensuring that leads are processed quickly and correctly, the client has been able significantly lift the response rates to campaigns and significantly increase the number of appointments that are set for sales representatives.

For example, a sales campaign that sent approximately 15,000 emails to existing customers, who were profiled to be similar to existing customers, achieved over 600 responses, which resulted in 70 face-to-face meetings with client sales representatives.

The client has been able to achieve the goal of every B2B company—a completely closed-loop marketing and sales environment.