Universally applicable tools with engineering expertise.
How Walter Tools automates the individual lead approach using Adobe Marketo Engage.
Objectives
Data-based personalisation of the B2B customer approach
Software-supported analysis for targeted campaign planning
Easy integration into IT landscape of international organisation
Results
Adobe Marketo Engage combines and updates customer profiles in real time
Intelligent automation facilitates the selection of contacts, campaigns and content
Intuitive operation and multi-language support enable a fast global roll-out
A digital spin on personalised customer experiences
What are high-tech industries using to shape the future? Tools from Walter AG are a great place to start. With precision tools for turning, drilling, milling and threading metal as well as digital manufacturing processes, the company is helping the aerospace industry to achieve its lofty goals, automotive manufacturers to gain momentum and wind turbine manufacturers to move forward with new energy. To identify and communicate the tailored solutions Walter AG can provide its many industrial customers, the company relies on B2B marketing that is both personalised and automated. Walter’s tool of choice for this purpose is Adobe Marketo Engage, part of Adobe Experience Cloud.
The marketing woes of today’s lead generation
Connecting and staying connected with B2B contacts today means keeping an eye on numerous channels. Just like consumers, potential B2B customers use not only their email inbox or trade fair visits but the entire spectrum of modern digital information sources on the web and via app. The effort required by the marketing team at Walter AG to convert these interested parties into ready-to-buy leads with a targeted approach has therefore significantly increased.
“As a global company with a wide variety of customers in 80 countries, we needed to completely rethink our marketing process for the digital age,” recalls Claudia Kley, Demand Marketing Manager at Walter AG.
She has driven the strategic implementation of personalised and automated marketing at the tool manufacturer. Her clear aim was to centralise the sharp rise in the volume of customer data and make the work involved in the individual customer approach as part of account-based marketing on all channels much more efficient through automatic processes.
This was not possible with the existing solutions. “We had lots of data silos in many individual applications that couldn’t be reconciled,” says Kley. “All customers have different touchpoint preferences. Without complete information, there was no way to map the entire digital customer journey.” Walter AG therefore set out to find a solution that would be able to intelligently combine customer data and derive automatic recommendations for campaign content and timing.
The requirements for this solution were strict. Walter AG was looking for precise personalisation options, powerful assistance functions for cross-selling recommendations and the ability to automatically prepare, implement and measure the performance of marketing campaigns. To ensure that the solution could be implemented in Walter AG’s global marketing organisation in one go, intuitive operation in different languages was also required.
In addition, the solution needed to enable a clear B2B focus, by taking into account both digital marketing and traditional trade fair appearances when generating leads, for example. “The ability to combine real life and the digital world was very important to us, because as a traditional B2B company we still place great value on personal sales contacts,” says Kley.
Tough requirements need tough tools. Adobe Marketo Engage, part of Adobe Experience Cloud, has proven itself to be a tool that meets all of Walter AG’s requirements.
“Adobe Marketo Engage changed everything for us. The solution enables our B2B marketing team to map the entire customer journey and to create personalised customer experiences automatically.”
Claudia Kley
Demand Marketing Manager, Walter AG
Multi-functional tool for experience-orientated marketing automation
In January 2021, the tool manufacturer began working with Adobe Marketo Engage and, after a short implementation period, has been shaping personalised customer communication exactly according to its specifications since April of the same year. Nothing stood in the way of a global roll-out in all national subsidiaries, thanks to the system’s accessibility in multiple languages. “The launch went swiftly. We just needed to install a few templates in order to get started with Adobe Marketo Engage,” says Kley.
Adobe Marketo Engage provides Walter AG with a platform for marketing automation that can be easily connected with their customer data platform. It brings together information from various IT systems, such as customer relationship management from the sales department, merchandise management from the logistics department and enterprise resource planning from the entire company.
With the help of the Adobe Marketo Engage application, the marketeers at Walter AG are enriching this data pool and thus creating the foundation for orchestrated customer communications. Thanks to the marketing automation opportunities offered by Adobe Marketo Engage, Walter AG is able to use software-supported analyses to deliver content on all relevant digital channels. This content is adapted precisely to the customer’s stage in the decision-making cycle in terms of topic and timing. Resulting leads are transmitted by the software to the sales team, who can then provide additional targeted advice to prospective buyers.
Through this interplay of data and campaign management as well as sales and marketing, Walter AG succeeds in providing cutting-edge communications that focus on creating experiences and promoting sales. “Adobe Marketo Engage changed everything for us. The solution enables our B2B marketing team to map the entire customer journey and to create personalised customer experiences automatically,” emphasises Kley.
“Whether for large-scale digital events, account-based marketing or traditional methods such as newsletter campaigns, Adobe Marketo Engage has significantly increased our interaction rate thanks to reliably accurate customer experiences that require much less effort to create.”
Claudia Kley
Demand Marketing Manager, Walter AG
Tangible added value for global lead generation
The use of Adobe Marketo Engage has given the tool manufacturer tangible added value. Kley is enthusiastic about how the application’s versatility simplifies marketing across Walter AG. “Whether for large-scale digital events, account-based marketing or traditional methods such as newsletter campaigns, Adobe Marketo Engage has significantly increased our interaction rate thanks to reliably accurate customer experiences that require much less effort to create,” sums up Kley.
Adobe’s solution is also proving to be a welcome help for events that are important in the B2B sector. “The questions of who took part and who needs additional information after the event can be answered very easily thanks to the Adobe solution. The tracking function is particularly easy and useful,” reports Kley. But that’s not all: the sales department has also already benefited from marketing automation.
Future-proof marketing tool unlocks potential
The goal of implementing a comprehensive solution that eliminates data silos and creates the best possible database for a personalised customer approach has already been achieved by the use of Adobe Marketo Engage at Walter AG. But Claudia Kley sees many more possibilities: “We’re still not exploiting its full potential. Especially when it comes to campaign automation, we’ve by no means exhausted everything. We’re also just starting when it comes to things like automatic lead scoring. It’s good to feel there’s still a lot for us to discover.”
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