Challenges
After significant organic growth and acquisitions, Swiss Post made a decision to amalgamate 30 plus global brands into one single brand – Swiss Post Solutions (SPS). Historically, SPS was known for superior operational delivery. As an operations-led organisation, marketing played more of a sales support than a strategic function with departments located worldwide. This meant that regional marketing departments operated rather autonomously using different marketing tools, managing their own databases and creative.
An example of this siloed data and marketing approach was how SPS sent emails to customers and prospects. Each region had an email blast system but they did not integrate with the CRM system. SPS could not close the loop on marketing campaign ROI. The sales team did not have information about what prospects and customers were receiving from marketing. Sales and marketing did not have the single view into their customers and prospects they needed to provide the best customer service and grow sales. This decentralised model eventually led to a lack of coordination, standardisation, and consistency in go-to market activities around the world.
Solution
SPS needed a solution that would: 1) Allow them to drive greater sales and marketing alignment through the definition of a standard lead and opportunity management process at a global level. 2) Enable consistency in Swiss Post Solutions brand through the design and adoption of standard campaigns; 3) improve the coordination between countries, business units, and corporate marketing with regard to planned activities, resource usage and budgets to improve overall performance. 4) Introduce a measurement model to be able to measure marketing performance. 5) Manage both their B2B and B2C marketing programmes.
As well as meeting all the basic requirements, Eloqua scored high on its ability to manage high volumes of international data and supported the privacy and confidentiality of that data with a scalable solution that allowed SPS to grow their sales and marketing aligned initiatives as the organisation expanded into new markets.
Results
Eloqua was initially rolled out in four countries: Switzerland, Germany, UK, and US. The first campaign was rolled out in four languages in just two months. The goal of this first campaign was to promote the offers for the holiday season and was deemed a success. With this campaign, marketing and sales teams were able to glean valuable insight into their customers and prospects on a global scale for the first time. They were able to measure the success of the campaign from sales and marketing funnel response through to additional sales pipeline in the CRM system.
SPS is now able to integrate its inbound marketing channels, has started work on a multi-profile, global lead scoring model as well as building out a nurture programme and a global ‘demand creation centre of excellence.’
One of the unexpected benefits of implementing Eloqua is the alignment that has grown between sales and marketing functions. As David Dorling, Head global marketing at Swiss Post Solutions says: “The implementation of Eloqua served as a catalyst for conversations to take place around internal processes and capabilities, which hadn’t been taking place before. Implementing Eloqua has allowed us to begin agreeing on a practical strategy towards managing not only our global marketing data but also managing our internal sales and marketing processes effectively.”
