If you run a business, a chamber of commerce provides unique and essential support, from understanding laws and regulations to offering opportunities to network and grow your business. The Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland (CCIQ), operates as the peak business body for the Australian state, where it’s operated for over 150 years to promote and protect the interests of its members, meeting with institutions, government agencies and businesses to advocate critical issues. It’s not a small task: From the Great Barrier Reef to the Gold Coast, Queensland is seven times the size of Great Britain, has a population of 4 million people (plus 28 million tourists annually) and encompasses 445,000 small businesses.

CCIQ embarked on a digital transformation to improve their service offering to members, which included consolidating legacy systems and centralising service delivery across the organisation’s business units. Each unit used a different, unintegrated system, causing a fragmented experience that significantly limited marketing capability to execute strategic campaigns. Courtney Scales, Customer Experience Manager at CCIQ, explains that “there was no holistic view of the customer. We couldn’t see what products or services a particular account or customer used. That prohibited us from scaling our marketing automation as well as our service and sales management.”

OBJECTIVES.

Delivering more services with relevance and value.

A critical goal for the digital transformation project was to create a new tech stack that could integrate data and foster a customer-focused approach across all business units. CCIQ recognised its responsibility to pave the way for digital transformation and innovation for the SMEs they service across Queensland. “As a not-for-profit, it is paramount that we leverage technology to improve operational efficiencies. We need to communicate and sell to a diverse market of business owners, leaders and experts, which supports the need for a marketing solution that can help us deliver excellent service to our audiences,” says Courtney. To accomplish these objectives, the organisation sought a marketing platform that could provide visibility into customer lifecycles, scale-up campaigns and introduce nurturing programs to improve lead conversion as well as the cross-selling of products and services.

The digital transformation enabled the service and sales teams to join Salesforce CRM. However, it lacked a complete view of customer and prospect engagements. CCIQ decided to try Salesforce Marketing Cloud, in the hopes it would offer higher productivity with its native Salesforce CRM. “Unfortunately, what was promised was not delivered. We were back at square one again, and we lost many subscribers,” says Courtney. CCIQ found that the new marketing automation platform required developer resources to build and roll-out campaigns: they didn’t gain visibility over their audience and couldn’t effectively function.

After some lobbying, Courtney replaced Salesforce Marketing Cloud and implemented Marketo Engage as their foundation marketing platform. With the support of the team from Adobe, within one week they were able to integrate with their Salesforce CRM and quickly gain traction, much to Courtney’s relief. “It was a matter of switching Marketo back on, uploading our subscriber data and updating the information. We then tested to make sure everything worked on both sides of the Marketo and CRM sides of the fence. It was a really smooth process without any hiccups, which was exciting.”

Quick wins grow alignment.

Since implementing Marketo Engage, the marketing, sales and service teams can monitor customer engagements across all channels and business units, from web pages visited, content downloaded, emails opened, webinars attended and beyond. “The most unique and amazing thing about Marketo is the ability to target, segment, personalise and perform advanced segmentation,” says Courtney. She also found that Marketo didn’t require high levels of training or developer skills. “That’s a huge reason why we moved back to Marketo. Just the ease of use and the power that is within Marketo to be able to create hyper-targeted communications.”

Helping businesses when they need it most.

The timing was serendipitous, as the move to Marketo Engage paralleled the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This proved critical in CCIQ’s ability to scale-up and roll-out communications in response to COVID-19. As the government introduced restrictions and lockdowns, Marketo Engage empowered

CCIQ’s marketing, service and sales teams to pro-actively support Queensland businesses in a targeted, timely and relevant manner. Courtney’s team introduced daily communications for their diverse audiences designed to provide updates on legislation changes and the operating environment while also promoting resources, done as simple batch campaigns.

The flexibility to adapt and work quickly meant the team could show CCIQ’s value to their audience. For example, the marketing team created web pages devoted to COVID: They have received more visits in four weeks than their entire website usually receives in three months. Through Marketo Engage’s integration with GoToWebinar, CCIQ delivered a substantial number of webinars providing advice and updates. “The ability to scale-up and quickly develop landing pages, webinars and downloads to different segments has empowered us,” says Courtney.

The value of tailoring content for diversified audiences.

Queensland’s massive geographic span encompasses an impressive number of segments: from rural to urban, industrial to tourism, and everything between. Those in the state’s tropical far north live different lives to the urbanites in the south-east region. The marketing team at CCIQ can deliver hyper-targeted communications through Dynamic Content and Snippets, while tracking customers through lifecycle models.

The challenge of bringing multiple teams into the same ecosystem can get bumpy, particularly for sales and marketing. But CCIQ’s experience has been smooth, due in part to the introduction of Marketo Sales Insights that gives more power over how sales and service engage with members and prospects. They introduced lead scoring to identify when an opportunity moves from marketing into the sales team for follow-up. This transparency carries over into reporting, where CCIQ can now identify tactics that work effectively. “We have much more control and visibility over campaign success with the integration of Salesforce Campaigns and Marketo Engage – allowing us to attribute and report on campaign success in a streamlined and visual way,” says Courtney.

RESULTS.

Double the membership and a thriving pipeline.

The fast-thinking action of CCIQ to scale up through Marketo Engage helped small to medium businesses across Queensland respond to ever-changing conditions through improved resources and service across all business units. The integration with their CRM transformed the delivery of customer service, aligning the different business units under the one CCIQ umbrella. Since re-implementing Marketo Engage, they’ve doubled their membership base and grew subscribers by 20 per cent, independent of new customers. Their email open rates jumped from 26 per cent to 41 per cent and click through rates have more than doubled to 4.7 per cent, compared to the previous year. “The higher engagement has delivered a flow-on effect. Our empowered teams feel we are making a difference for small businesses in our community,” Courtney concludes.

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