Case: How marketing automation helped Walraven improve sales and marketing approaches

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While having secured a robust customer base, Walraven sought to gain traction within the wholesaler market by connecting directly to their end customers. By offering more value in the pre-sales process, Walraven wanted to boost the demand for their products and generate more marketing sourced leads for sales.

However, Walraven lacked sufficient buyer insights throughout that drove their customers towards making a purchase. This lead to misunderstandings that prevented Walraven from reaching their target audience and driving them towards a sale online.

In addition, the lack of customer insight resulted in inefficient and ineffective sales tactics that obstructed their growth and threatened their expansion into the wholesale market. The fact that Walraven operated across multiple countries with unique marketing requirements and challenges only complicated the issue. If Walraven wanted to tap into the potential of the wholesale market, they needed to manage complex sales cycles and make informed, data-driven decisions to align their company towards specific goals.

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Objectives.

To overcome their challenges, Walraven had to achieve the following objectives:

*Increase buyer insights *Implement a plan for lead management *Gain customer decision insights *Boost sales and marketing effectiveness *Manage complex sales cycles across different regions *Increase buyer insights

Walraven wanted to expand their wholesale market potential but in order to do so, they needed to understand what drives this new market. The only way to understand a new market is through increasing buyer insights and customer data.

Implement a plan for lead management

Part of Walraven’s challenges involved their customer experience and their general sales approach. Walraven felt that their sales success rate in the wholesale marketplace was not ideal and thus needed a standardised plan for lead management success.

Gain customer decision insights

To better understand their new target market, Walraven needed to gain insight into their customers’ decision-making process. By identifying what triggered interest, engagement, and purchase, they could modify their own behaviour and marketing for optimal results.

Boost sales and marketing effectiveness

Walraven was not satisfied with their sales and marketing performance and thus needed to identify any potential bottlenecks and solution opportunities. Walraven speculated that new tools or approaches for sale and marketing would boost their effectiveness, worldwide.

Manage complex sales cycles across different regions

With different counties come different markets and challenges. As an international company, Walraven had to contend with various cultures, expectations, and branch capabilities and effectively manage the entire process.

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Solution

Walraven approached Engagement Factory to assess their current sales and marketing approaches, identify solutions and implement those solutions for long term success. After extensive quantitative and qualitative research of the company, Engagement Factory set out to find solutions for Walraven through a three-step approach.

Deliverables

*Marketing automation implementation
*Lead Management Process Blueprint
*CRM Integration
*Buyer Persona Research
*Customer Insights Workshop and training
*Internal and external market analysis

Step 1 - Buyer Insights

Engagement Factory set to work with extensive Buyer Persona Research on Walraven’s wholesale market. We identified ideal prospects and what messaging and marketing they would likely respond well to. The research consisted of in-depth, qualitative interviews with industry experts and current end-customers, as well as an internal analysis with main stakeholders within Walraven to gain a better understanding of their audience and they are perceived.

The Buyer Persona Research enabled us to map out an extensive persona profile as well as a practical buyer journey mapped to each stage of customer development. It culminated into a report that detailed a full description of different buyer personas and their journey for three unique markets, and a Customer Insights workshop to ensure Walraven’s team was prepared and up to speed.

Step 2 - Lead Management and CRM Integration

In the next phase, we addressed Walraven’s objective to implement a more efficient funnel management approach for their prospective customers. Due to the number of customers and desired improvement, it was established that the process should be semi-automated with proper lead nurturing and lead scoring in place.

After analysing Walraven’s business objectives, market, and capabilities, Marketo was identified as an ideal marketing automation solution. However, for the implementation of Marketo to be successful, Engagement Factory defined a solid lead management strategy as part of the integration with Walraven’s current CRM, Microsoft Dynamics.

To accomplish this, we initiated discovery interviews across the organisation to understand the current processes in place for each geographic region. This included the CRM usage, lead definitions, and critical stages in the buyer’s journey. The result of the research was a fully functional lead scoring model, lead evaluation assignment matrix, and lead management blueprint.

Finally, Engagement Factory hosted a Lead Management Blueprint workshop to help the company adapt to this new approach to business.

Step 3 - Marketing Automation Implementation

Engagement Factory supported the implementation, set up, integration, and onboarding process into the usage of Marketo Marketing Automation, based on Walraven’s requirements and needs. Through our Quick Launch Methodology, we used a step-by-step approach designed to accelerate Walraven’s marketing success.

We began by provisioning Marketo’s capabilities and matching them to include Walraven’s desired implementation approach, project roles, and responsibilities. After this was established, we hosted a Marketo Foundation Workshop to familiarise Walraven with the capabilities offered by Marketo. Engagement Factory used this opportunity to assist in creating forms, email templates, subscriptions, contact management, and lead mapping assets. Once this strategic phase was completed, we began to implement Marketo, configuring the platform, templates, and data mapping ready to be used by Walraven.

Finally, once the platform was installed with ready-to-go data capture forms, Engagement Factory guided and educated Walraven’s workforce in preparation for go-live.

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Results

KPIs

*Enhanced content marketing
*Increased demand from wholesale end-customers
*Boosted lead management and conversion
*Marketing automation implementation
*Boosted sales and marketing efficiency
*CRM implementation
*Expanded internal capabilities and experience

Since working with Engagement Factory, Walraven has noticed a considerable difference in its sales and marketing results. By using a streamlined, standardised solution powered by marketing automation, Walraven has enhanced its customer experience and increased its presence in the wholesale market.

Thanks to Engagement Factory’s knowledge and expertise, Walraven now has a fully functional marketing automation system that works with their CRM to generate customer insights. Today, Walraven uses these insights to improve their customer interactions and better understand what drives value for their company and their clients.

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How marketing automation helped Walraven improve sales and marketing approaches.