As technology and data access grow, manufacturers are recognizing the opportunity found in Smart Manufacturing. Smart Manufacturing relies on integrating channels within your supply chain and using the data output to make decisions on execution and set priorities. But smart manufacturing practices must extend beyond the supply chain. This is especially true when drivers behind the smart manufacturing trend include a strong customer focus, decisions supported by data, and efficient execution.
But how many manufacturers extend these smart manufacturing practices beyond operations? How many manufacturers evaluate their marketing analytics and place focus on alignment across marketing, sales, product management, and beyond?
Dow receives thousands of requests for product samples per month. Sample management had historically not only been an interesting challenge for this complex company, but was also an important one which had a direct and potentially significant impact on sales and revenue growth. Rather than try to transform the sample management process, Dow decided to exploit this bottleneck by first streamlining the sample follow-up process.
When a sample is requested, it is shipped and an email campaign is triggered to follow up with the customer. The email campaign includes basic questions to check that the sample was received and enables Dow to gather additional information on the customer’s needs. Customers who responded to the sample follow-up campaign were then routed to the sales team. Their sample program now commands anywhere from a 40-50% response rate.
You can also gain insight into the needs of your resellers.
Gain Insight into the Needs of Your Resellers
In the beginning Intel’s regional channel managers were communicating directly with Intel’s audience (partner resellers) via numerous decentralized communication platforms. This meant that Intel had a limited understanding of interests of their partners other than volume of numbers.
Through the development and integration of systems, Intel began to collect information around the Digital Body Language of its resellers. They began to understand the motivations and behaviors of their resellers by providing the ability for resellers to pre-order products. This was a component that was built, similar to a shopping cart system using data cards as the database.
They added an email inbox into their communications so resellers could view emails that were previously sent to them using the web version url served from a data card set. They provided an event calendar so resellers could view when events were taking place and register their interest in joining them. They also provided a rating system for parts of the site with new products or features. This allowed resellers to vote for elements that were more relevant to them and drive the direction of the campaigns.
This provided Intel with a 360-degree view, a universal profile, of their resellers. Intel could now enable, and be more attentive to the needs of, their resellers. And this universal profile of your contacts can be obtained beyond traditional digital channels.
Find Opportunity Outside of Traditional Digital Communications
Balluff utilizes marketing communication channels like trade shows and events, digital and print advertising, and gated content. But they also recognized the opportunity to leverage another communication source, their technical support team. Customer support calls are logged into a database. The marketing team then segments that data and sends a follow-up email with a link to a survey form. That survey data is captured against the contact record. By capturing this information, Balluff can further segment and personalize communications to improve the customer experience.
Certainly customer intimacy, sales and reseller enablement, and communication effectiveness are all key benefits of digital marketing transformation, but revenue generation and cost savings are also objectives for many manufacturing organizations.
Enhance Channels Delivering a Return
EMC Isilon found that not only did they need to improve productivity, but they also needed to increase revenue. EMC Isilon enhanced a traditional marketing channel by orchestrating the assets into a more comprehensive MCM program. They pulled together email invites, confirmations, and reminders. All of these channels were tied to an event module where marketing could pull an event dashboard.
They recognized that their events were not one-off activities, they were longitudinal programs that involved engagement from their audience before, during, and after the event. They began to grow the universal profile of their attendees by capturing their engagement against these event communications. And they finally understood the marketing return on investment.
They transformed their field event schedule from a series of disperate one-off events to an integrated multi-city roadshow built around a common quarterly theme. In two quarters time, they successfully scaled from eight events to over 50 events delivered in one quarter across North America. Since program inception, they can attribute nearly 500 marketing-sourced opportunities and have delivered mid 8-figures in closed-won revenue.
Support Your Decisions With Data
Manufacturers can finally obtain that data insight to make smarter business decisions. By capturing and analyzing an individual’s Digital Body Language across all channels, companies cannot only develop that sought after universal profile but also understand things like cost of recruitment efforts, cost of acquiring new customers and partners, and effectiveness of their communication outreach across regions.
Companies can also begin to understand sales rep and partner revenue potential. You can see which reps and partners are not only driving the most revenue, but are also the most engaged. You can also begin to understand which reps and partners have the greatest potential to grow revenue and which are generating the greatest return on investment. In short, you can identify which reps and partners to invest in.
Through the development of strong content, unification of digital channels, and focus on data forensics manufacturers can grow their book of business, recruit, retain and enable resellers, and make strategic business decisions based on fact, not opinion.