Executive summary:
In the ever-evolving landscape of marketing, the direct-to-consumer (DTC) model has emerged as a powerful strategy for businesses to connect with their customers. To excel in this space, companies must navigate a complex web of technology, data, and privacy concerns.
h23 helps companies achieve operational excellence in DTC marketing, harnessing the right technology and tools, handling privacy sensitively, and linking business objectives with the expertise of data marketing professionals. Our partners oversaw marketing and data experts, servicing global customers and handling +25 000 e-mailing campaigns, reaching over 50 Million consumers globally in the past 10 years. They’ve been developing successful DTC strategies (from consumer profiling, through content creation and targeting), designing operational models and setting-up bullet proof processes for ad-hoc and ongoing marketing activities, including marketing automation.
Our partners focus on privacy compliance and continuous performance improvement in acquiring, nurturing and retaining customers on behalf of clients.
Generated business impact
Business case
Business Challenge
In fast changing universe, especially accelerated after Covid, the direct to consumer marketing has shifted to online. Many companies which before were using traditional sales channels for consumer packaged goods (both retailers and producers) realised that they are not optimizing their performance and that having a direct e-communication channel with their target audience is critical in driving their brand awareness and brand loyalty.
With that in mind, the companies started to acquire their consumers data and setting up marketing campaigns to reach those consumers over e-channels, especially over email and social media. This brought them to many challenges, both from operational point of view as well as privacy compliance. Hiring experts internally to manage that became a big hussle.
Direct-to-consumer marketing has transformed the way businesses interact with their customers. By bypassing intermediaries and selling directly to consumers, companies can establish a stronger brand presence, gather valuable customer data, and create more personalized experiences. However, to succeed in this space, operational excellence is paramount.
This has been exactly the challenge of a global CPG company working with one of our Partners and driving a business transformation project to accelerate their shift to excellent e-mailing practices across 25+ market. Similar project has been also managed for Automotive customer.
Our approach
To achieve operational excellence in DTC marketing, it’s crucial to align business objectives with technology investments and optimal set-op of operations, minimizing potential privacy risk and maximizing commercial value of each consumer for the company.
Partners worked together with the customer, defining objectives for their online marketing program. The main focus was put on expanding consumer base and driving engagement of those with ultimate focus on increasing shopping basket size across all product categories. These objective guided technology choices for the customer. Our partner assisted customer in selecting best technology that could directly support the objective. The investment has been directed to purchaising and implementing tools which enable personalized email marketing at scale.
For customers like this one our Partners:
- Help selecting Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System as well as lead implementation of selected CRM system as essential DTC marketing tool. All of it to enable managing customer data, tracking interactions with consumers, and personalizing marketing activities. We help understanding customer behavior, preferences, and purchase patterns, enabling more targeted campaigns.
- Implement marketing automation platforms which streamline repetitive tasks, such as email marketing and social media posting. We leverage platforms that save time and ensure consistent messaging while nurturing leads throughout smart customer journey.
- Set-up analytics and data visualization as data is the lifeblood of DTC marketing, enabling businesses derivering actionable insights from their data, tracking KPIs, and making data-driven decisions. That helps also understanding customer behavior and optimizing marketing strategies.
Execution
To avoid complexity internally, as well as to reduce the risk, our Partners developed best-in-class operating model for data marketing activites, offering outsouring in handling all processes. External data marketing experts with expertise to analyze customer data, identify trends, develop effective tactics and operate sophisticated marketing tools were hired and trained to work in full business continuity framework. The customer could focus on their product, innovation and high-level go-to-market, rather than execution.
One of the big benefits of the set-up was continuous optimization. The experts assessed the effectiveness of the technology stack, marketing strategies and all processes on ongoing basis, focusing on business results. Data-driven insights enable improvements and adaptation to changing market conditions.This approached helped to maximize value for the customer.
As DTC marketing relies heavily on customer data, respecting privacy is paramount. To maintain trust and comply with regulations (like GDPR and CCPA) our Partners set up also:
- Consent Management tools, which ensure that customers provide informed consent for data collection and processing, focusing on clear communication how the data will be used and offer opt-in and opt-out choices.
- Data Security measures to protect customer data from breaches, as well as perform adhoc and regular audit of data handling processes, identifing vulnerabilities and addressing them promptly.
- Compliance processes, staying up-to-date with privacy regulations and ensuring all marketing practices align with them.
Operational excellence in direct-to-consumer marketing hinges on the strategic use of technology, a commitment to privacy, and smooth data marketing activities. This is what our Partners secure for our customers.
Results
As soon as operating model had been deployed, our Partners run the operations for the first 12 months to identify gaps/challenges and polish the operating model. After that period, the work was released to Ops Managers, just overseeing the performance of the service for the customer, covering +2500 email campaigns deployed to +50 million consumers globally.
