“Our Customers Need to Feel That We Understand Their Needs”
The Union of Professional Engineers in Finland (Insinööriliitto) has around 70 000 members and act as a working life insurance and a key to professional development. The union was founded in 1919 and employs around 80 people.
Clear Goals
The union had clear goals with what they wanted to accomplish with marketing automation. Once the goals were set, it was time to choose the right partner.
The union has been an APSIS customer since 2011, using email and event tools. As their demand grew and the need for marketing automation was unveiled, the union conducted a comparison of viable suppliers. The decision fell on APSIS Marketing Automation, as the solution was considered comprehensive enough for their needs.
The Importance of Setting Targets to Reach Your Goals
The union set three main targets for marketing automation: to deliver a greater customer experience, alleviate internal processes and to boost their lead generation. Saara Eriksson, Marketing Planner at the Union of Professional Engineers in Finland explains:
– We recognised parts in our processes that needed optimisation or were left entirely
undone due to a lack of resources. So, marketing automation felt like the right solution
to address our pain points.
Saara continues:
– We defined that serving our members better means that the content needs to be
personalised, relevant and sent at right time. Even though the recipient might not act
on it or convert straight away, they need to feel that we understand, and are
considerate towards, their situation and their needs. In addition, we’re novices when
it comes to lead generation, so we wanted marketing automation to aid in supporting
and developing our sales operations.
Marketing Automation: A New Organisational Mindset
Saara Eriksson explains that even though most companies claim to utilise marketing automation, few actually do. She continues by stating that the tool should be implemented to develop the customer experience, not as an arms race:
– The fact that your neighbour has deployed marketing automation shouldn’t be the
reason you do it. Rather, you need to start with your own goals and get crystal clear
if you want the results," says Eriksson.
The most important thing when it comes to implementing marketing automation is to understand that it’s not an IT project – but a new way of thinking and carrying out daily operations. This presses upon the importance of internal cross-departmental collaboration:
– It was important for us to listen and learn from our knowledgeable employees in all
teams throughout our entire organisation. Furthermore, we wanted to make sure that
everyone working in our union knows what marketing automation entails.
Eriksson elaborates:
– Marketing automation isn’t just for marketing purposes and it’s not a robot that does
all the work for us. We need to build the flows and the content ourselves, and the
teams - from customer service to legal services - recognised parts in the customer
journey that should be automated. They bought excellent insight and skills to the
project.
Open rates grew by 69% with marketing automation
Basic email marketing has been an efficient tool for the union, delivering open rates above 40%, but the marketing automation endeavour made their KPIs soar. The timely relevance that marketing automation creates made their open rate grow by 69% and their click-to-open rate with 258%.
Even though open and click rates are decent points of measurement, Saara Eriksson is looking forward to seeing the long-term results; such as customer satisfaction and engagement. Furthermore, they want to measure and optimise manual resources in order to reallocate the effort – and maximise their budget.
There’s no denying that The Union of Professional Engineers in Finland (Insinööriliitto) achieved – and continues to achieve – great results with marketing automation. But how can other organisations follow suit? Saara Eriksson wraps up the case by sharing her top four tips:
- Reflect and map out the needs and demands of your organisation.
- There’s wisdom throughout the organisation – use it.
- Find a technology partner that can help you throughout your marketing automation journey.
- Once you’ve set the targets, just start working - you will learn and optimise your processes along the way.