Leveraging marketing automation to create a 360-degree customer view

• Discontinued platform integration hampered sales and marketing activities
• Marketing team couldn’t target customers properly without this integration

A religious media publisher, faced an immediate challenge due to the removal of an integration between their CRM, point of sale (POS) system, and marketing platform. This integration was discontinued without warning, forcing the publisher to find a new solution quickly.

Now, with their systems disconnected, the client was unable to properly track or create movement in their marketing funnel. Their leads were being captured and managed outside of the CRM and the same data didn’t make it to the POS, which created a scenario where the marketing team couldn’t target prospects or customers effectively. This also created a disconnect between marketing and sales, as the data was housed outside of their ecommerce platform.

Not only did this scenario cause more work for the marketing and sales teams, but it was also impacting their ability to drive revenue. Initially, the publisher worked with three other vendors who were unable to find the right solution, which is when they reached out to Ciberspring.

• Switching to Salesforce for CRM and marketing automation
• Custom lead capturing solution in Salesforce

The client initially reached out to Ciberspring with the goal of finding a one-to-one replacement solution but landed on enhancements to their tech stack and processes. This was the first step towards a digital transformation that would allow them to get a 360-view of their prospect and client base.

To do this, the publisher switched from a less sophisticated CRM and marketing platform to Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud and Sales Cloud. We integrated the cloud platforms by building key relationships between data sources. This allowed them to dimension the data in a meaningful way. Next was an integration between their new CRM solution and the POS system, which created a single view of their customers. At this point, the publisher could now begin to automate some of their marketing efforts.

Marketing Cloud also fulfilled the client’s need for multi-channel marketing. Comprised primarily of B2C records, the publisher had a large customer database. Using SFMC’s Journey Builder and Advertising Studio, they could leverage their first-party data and communicate with customers through email as well as social media and digital advertising.

The final piece of the puzzle was connecting incoming leads to Salesforce: We built a custom lead capturing solution in Salesforce Cloud Pages, which connected directly to Sales Cloud. This provided the client with a single source of truth for their leads and contacts. 

• Full data integration
• Automated lead nurturing
• Enhanced customer targeting

The publisher’s new marketing tech stack has allowed them to improve their nurturing process, including automatically placing new leads into an engagement campaign. This includes data from the POS system, so when a prospect becomes a customer, they don’t see irrelevant promotions. In the past this was all done manually, taking away from other revenue-generating work.

Thanks to this digital transformation, the client can now cross-sell and up-sell automatically, positioning them to be more strategic in their efforts.