Marketing Automation: an adesso win-win-win story

The Challenge - Brigitte Duerr, Head of Marketing

My goal after starting at adesso Schweiz was quickly clear. We want to reach the "next level" of marketing automation and a meaningful and structured approach to our customers and potential customers. The "how" was also quickly clear to me: We need an agency!

But what happens when you work for an IT service provider which sells exactly these services to its customers? Exactly: Budget blocked, we do it internally. I was skeptical... very skeptical. After all, I want to be treated like a customer during the implementation and rollout of my project, but without really being able to "buy and contract" resources for it. So I set out to find and assemble my team internally. The most important component: someone who understands the technology. Since we recently implemented Microsoft CRM and Dynamics CRM at adesso, the choice of the Marketing Automation Tool was not an issue. Our newly established Microsoft Competence Center was the first point of contact and there I was able to secure the support of our specialist and senior consultant Marc Hofmann, who had already implemented various projects in the field of Dynamics Marketing and Dynamics Sales. First goal achieved.

The rest was easier as he was already in my team. I myself bring the experience of how marketing automation has to be set up in a structured manner, which customer journeys are needed, how these journeys and customer experiences should be received by the customer, and which stumbling blocks are lurking in the form of compliance, data protection, address selection, and quality. The CRM and content professional in my team, Corinna Zanoni, was immediately on board to delve deeper into these topics and develop a completely new approach and, above all, implement it in terms of content. And so we set off. Right from the start we were aware that we could only be successful as a team. All the competencies that each of us brings to the table had to flow together. The final and probably most important goal for me in my role is, of course, measurability. Through regular insights, data and analyses that we generate from campaigns, we want to understand what our customers want, learn from it, and ultimately be able to offer exactly the right solutions. To do so, we need to regularly evaluate what our campaigns achieve and our results.

Our internal adesso solution - Marc Hofmann, Senior Consultant

We have an ace up our sleeve in the form of the CRM tool Dynamics 365 CE, which has been rolled out across the adesso group; however, the implementation required close cooperation between the marketing automation experts and the CRM experts who bring the technological know-how into play. Of course, we don't just implement this successfully for the customer - we also do it for ourselves, true to the motto "walk the talk".

What we always try to make clear to our customers is this: Before the implementation and execution of automated processes, the end customer must not be lost sight of in the conception phase but rather must be at the center of our actions. The same applies to us and our goals.

In the core project team, we took care of data quality and correct segmentation in several iterations, following the initial goal setting. But architecture and process definition are only half the battle. Corinna's content strategy, with personalized messages for different target groups, was already in place when I joined the project, which greatly accelerated project implementation and benefited the technical implementation as it could also be adapted to the content. We were able to move swiftly into testing and finally plan the campaigns in the production environment.

What I enjoyed about being involved in this internal project from the very beginning was obviously the motivated team. In my experience, CRM projects often fail due to a lack of commitment of the users - with the adesso marketing team the opposite was absolutely the case. When showing the potential of the technology, it quickly became clear that the initiative will not remain a test balloon. I’m looking forward to the next marketing campaigns.

How we benefit from Marketing Automation - Corinna Zanoni, Content Marketing Manager

If I had to summarize the benefits of Marketing Automation for my work in one sentence, it would be this: Marketing Automation allows me to plan my messages efficiently, prepare them in an appealing way and play them out in an integrated customer journey for maximum effectiveness.

Here are a few benefits that I would like to highlight and that have convinced me to continue using Marketing Automation:

• Personalization: By using complex marketing automation, we are able to target our customers in an efficient and personalized way, which allows us to better pick up on their interests and increase engagement and conversion rates. This frees up valuable time that I can use for more strategic topics and, most importantly, my passion - content.
• Lead Nurturing: Thanks to the right use of lead nurturing, in the future we will help our customers find content that is relevant to them and find out how adesso can support them. In doing so, we use the data from the Dynamics Marketing Automation tool to understand the needs of our customers better and more quickly.
• By tracking and analyzing the data, we can not only perform A/B tests, but also better understand which content is well received, and in real time we tracked the progress of the campaign, which allowed us to adjust and continuously improve our marketing strategy.

As Marc did, I would like to conclude my part by saying that, apart from the content creation, I was inspired above all by the collaboration: From the very big ideas for the future to the broken-down "Oh, I have a workaround in mind, let's try it like this!", the unique adesso spirit, which I love so much about my work, was noticeable throughout. And once again it went beyond national borders. Thanks especially to you, Kevin Dege from adesso SE, for honing our implementation with your input.

Closing words - Brigitte Duerr, Head of Marketing & Communications

Was I skeptical at the beginning? Absolutely. But after completing the project, I still look upon the achievement in amazement. Not only was it implemented much faster and more efficiently than I could have ever dreamed of, but the cooperation and motivation of everyone involved was "true adesso style". If we can do this so well internally, we can also offer it to our customers with a very good conscience. That's why I always say #ilovemyjob #ilovemyteam #ONEadesso