Marketing Automation Case Study: Saison Information Systems

Enterprise Software Vendor Improves Marketing Performance

USER PROFILE

Saison Information System Co., Ltd. (herein, "Saison") was established in 1970 to integrate the information processing functions of the Seibu Distribution Group (currently the Saison Group) and create a new information service business. Presently involved in the development of systems for credit card business, and providing a variety of solutions such as ASP services, central management services, and packaged products including HULFT, which has a high market share in file transfer software.

Saison uses the DataSpider Servista (herein, "DataSpider") platform for data integration to streamline its marketing operations. DataSpider features numerous adapters that connect different systems to automate business processes.

Eriko Ogawa
Marketing Dept.
HULFT BU

Masaaki Takayama
Marketing Dept.
HULFT BU

Background: Urgent Need to Streamline Marketing Activities

Saison Information Systems provides IT solutions for industries ranging from finance to retail. Following its vision to establish a dominant presence in specialized areas, the company is raising its profile by offering middleware products, and offering system development and integration services.

Thanks to its proactive approach to marketing, the company's managed file transfer (MFT) middleware product, HULFT is used by over 8,900 companies in 43 countries.

To expand sales, the HULFT division adopted Salesforce CRM and constructed a system to enable leads acquired through marketing activities to be efficiently delivered to the sales department.

However, the data on acquired leads lacked segment information such as industry type, which was necessary to narrow down marketing initiatives. Without this, targeted emails could not be composed, and optimal content could not be delivered to potential customers.

Before it was usable, the data had to be cleaned up. The process took about four hours per week to perform manually. Furthermore, creating a report on marketing activities took a full day. The needed a way to increase efficiency and free up time for more strategic tasks.

Results: Increased Efficiency of Marketing Operations

The interface enabled them to flexibly integrate external data sources such as marketing automation (MA) tools and Salesforce and set up process automation without coding.

The HULFT Marketing Department now uses DataSpider to perform data cleansing on leads obtained online via their website and offline via events. The result is higher consistency in the formatting of information such as company names. High-quality leads can immediately be converted into sales activities through the use of the Salesforce adapter.

DataSpider enabled the integration of indispensable marketing solutions. After information is deployed in Salesforce, the MA solution Oracle Eloqua expands data for leads that need to be developed, and by nurturing and other marketing initiatives, the quality of leads is increased.

The time required for preparing leads to be passed to the sales department was reduced from one week to one day. This enabled hot leads to be immediately turned into opportunities.

Segment information for leads that used to be lacking, such as industry type or business scale, can now be obtained from external databases via REST API. This makes it possible to deliver the optimal content for each segment.

As a result, the marketing qualified leads (MQLs) that can be converted into sales exceed 11%, and the rate at which prospect negotiations are held has jumped to around 5%. Because it is possible to provide the optimal content per segment, the open ratio of email newsletters has increased by 13%, and the click-through-rate (CTR) almost doubled.

It used to take a day to create a report on free trial applications. By integrating Tableau via DataSpider, a report can be produced in an hour. This has freed up time for activities such as improving lead quality and reviewing surveys.

The workflow included extraction of required information, conversion into the Tableau format, and the insertion of the information. The setup was completed in under ten days (net time). In reality, the work was undertaken part-time over two months by marketing department staff in parallel with their primary jobs.

As a next step, the market team plans to feed the results of sales activities from Salesforce back to the marketing department to be used in new initiatives. They also want to use DataSpider to integrate customer support systems for a 360-degree view of the customer relationship.

Additionally, the department is considering extending its marketing activities on a global scale. However, the systems and data sources used by overseas offices are likely to differ. DataSpider can be used to enable efficient integration.

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