Business Challenges and Campaign Objectives

The Samsung Business team aspired to use data, analytics, and technology to create a more sophisticated marketing program. This program would allow the brand to manage customer experiences across the customer journey. Samsung would design interactions to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time on the right channel.

Through this initiative Samsung could persuade customer behavior, increase engagement, and increase loyalty. Another component was to understand Samsung Business’ buyers at the individual-level, so creative could be personalized for greater relevance.

Insights and Strategy

Samsung conducted research focused on understanding the needs of IT decision-makers in regard to brand selection and purchase motivation. Through this process, Samsung identified two motivational orientations: “Aspirational” customers who are motivated by achievement and “Preventative” customers who are motivated by preserving peace of mind and stability.

Quantitative research was used to confirm key relationships, motivations, and nuances associated with the different customer groups. The agency used a proprietary neuroanalytics approach which enabled data to be appended to existing data sources.

Layers of data and research provided an in-depth understanding of prospects’ needs, expectations, and pain points. With this knowledge, Samsung could improve the positioning of its products and value propositions to align with persona mindsets.

Execution

The brand leveraged data partners to augment individual profiles and batch score to assign personas. Samsung then created multi-channel marketing programs that were tailored to individual persona type. The marketing automation nurture campaigns were both product and industry specific (smartphone, healthcare, retail, transportation, etc.).

Display and social ads were also targeted via persona through demand-side platforms. Individuals that qualified via lead scoring or completing a long form were passed through to Samsung’s inside sales team for follow-up. Technology integration helped Samsung’s inside sales team maintain a consistent tone and messaging based on previous brand interaction, engagement with content, and email leading to increased marketing-qualified lead conversion.

Results

After implementing persona-based creative, the brand saw a 64 percent increase in the click-to-open rate. Additionally, there was a 40 percent increase in the unique click-through rate. There was a 19 percent overall increase in marketing-qualified leads from 2016 to 2017 with persona implementation as a key contributor.

Overall persona implementation contributed toward the 26 percent increase in revenue from 2016 to 2017. Pre-persona sales benchmarks are not available, but the brand now has new ROI benchmarks to compare for future performance.

By shifting the creative focus from product and features to personal benefits the brand increased its relevance. Creative that tied demonstrable product attributes to deep-seated personal outcomes led to increased messaging efficacy.

Another outcome of this initiative was that traditionally siloed business units became aligned because research and data enablement has acted as a strategic foundation for Samsung Business. The program created a ‘common ground’ for all stakeholders and agency partners.

Source

“Driving Deeper Customer Engagement with Purposeful Relevance.” 2018 B2 Award Gold Winner, Data/Analytics (use of to build programs or campaigns). Brand: Samsung. Lead Agency: Merkle.