Kirby Distribution Services: HubSpot Marketing Hub Migration
Kirby Distribution Services is a leading nationwide service provider and distributor of diesel engines, transmissions, parts, industrial equipment, and oilfield service equipment. Their team needed a partner who could quickly move them from Salesforce Marketing Cloud and into HubSpot with minimal disruptions to their transactional processes for their eCommerce site, DieselDash.
Challenges
Technology License Expiration
Facing an imminent Salesforce Marketing Cloud deadline, the Kirby team sought a swift, effective solution to move away from their challenging platform. They needed to transfer multiple email assets to HubSpot Marketing, requiring front-end developer skills, coordination between HubSpot and Salesforce partners, and a focus on numerous transactional emails.
Difficulty Managing & Updating Content
Many of the email modules were hard-coded, requiring a developer to make even the most minor adjustments to content. This led to segmented messaging and inconsistencies throughout their onboarding and transactional emails.
Lack of Visibility into Performance
Struggling with significant challenges, Kirby couldn't access essential data on email deliverability or gain insights on their marketing emails' performance. This absence of key metrics like engagement, open rates, and click-through rates clouded their campaign effectiveness, impeding informed decision-making and strategy optimization.
Connecting Multiple Platforms
The Kirby team relied heavily on Salesforce CRM for managing their consumer’s order data. However, they were uncertain about the logistics and best practices for integrating and synchronizing this data between HubSpot and Salesforce. This uncertainty included concerns about maintaining data integrity, ensuring seamless data flow, and avoiding potential disruptions during the migration process.
Solutions
Project goal
Prioritize migrating transactional emails
To limit disruption to their processes around order communication, we prioritized migrating their operational emails from SFMC to HubSpot. Utilizing the transactional email add-on, we re-created 8 transactional emails in HubSpot that pulled in data from Salesforce ecommerce objects.
Our solution
- Identified the top operational emails and measured their impact on consumer satisfaction if they were to go down, or not be delivered in a timely manner
- Mapped the consumer journey and object relationships using an ERD and transactional journey diagram. It was crucial to identify and map all trigger points to lay the groundwork for future marketing endeavors
- Utilized the transactional email add-on to develop emails that would be sent using Single Send API
- Developed custom modules that were built to dynamically feed data from the Salesforce order record via the API into the transactional emails.
Project goal
Seamless transition and integration between HubSpot & Salesforce
Minimizing disruption between transactional email sends was a priority. Through teamwork and working sessions, the launch and subsequent weeks went off without a hitch.
Our solution
- Deep analysis of existing data in Salesforce, how that should be mapped to HubSpot, and how it will impact the team's ability to build segmentation
- Creation of two custom objects: Orders and Carts. These objects where used to sync related consumer data that would allow marketing to send abandoned cart emails, shipment SMS and target consumers based on recent order history
- Consultation, training and configuration of the HubSpot <> Salesforce integration. Required setting up and testing selective sync rules for contacts and order objects
Project goal
Flexibility and usability in tools
Our team built custom, flexible email templates with the end user in mind, complemented by hands-on training for their marketing team to ensure confidence in tool usage.
Our solution
- Created short, personalized SMS messages that are automated to send to consumers when order was shipped or ready for in store pick up
- Developed editable programmable text in rich text modules
- Set up saved email modules that the marketing team could quickly and more efficiently pull into email templates, while still having the option to edit or make necessary adjustments to the content
- During the QA process, we utilized the email builder comment features to gather real-time feedback
- Customized training on the email builder, SMS features, automation, and social media tools within HubSpot, allowing their team to learn the tool so they can stand-up campaigns with minimal assistance
Project goal
Visibility into data and marketing performance
In their current marketing platform, the Kirby team struggled to easily track SMS, and transactional and onboarding email performance. Insights into key metrics was crucial for their team.
Our solution
- Used automation to copy Order fields to Contact fields to use as personalization tokens and set the various opt-ins from Salesforce to set subscription status for email and SMS
- Created Customer Journey reports that showed the various touchpoints of contacts through the onboarding, abandoned cart, and order purchased paths
- Created a dashboard, that is emailed to the team daily, that contained email & SMS metrics, workflow errors, website trends and recently converted contacts to show daily marketing trends
Results
Email Performance Questions Answered
The Onboarding Customer Journey report shows the path of contacts who opened an onboarding email and then tracks the number of those that convert to completing an order. In the last 90 days, 70 contacts who opened Onboarding Email #1, completed their first purchase within an average of 4.7 days. Of the 74 contacts who did not open an onboarding email until email #2, only 8 completed an order in an average of 2.9 days. If a contact waits to open email #3 in the onboarding series, they have either already completed an order, or do not at all.
The Abandoned Cart Customer Journey report shares insights into the effectiveness of the Abandoned Cart email. During the discovery phase there were discussions around the number of abandoned cart emails that should be created. Due to time limitations, as a team, we decided to optimize the existing abandoned cart email and measure its performance. This report represents two paths: if a contact opens the email and places an order (36% conversion rate) verse the contacts who complete an order without opening the email (29% conversion rate).
Impact
Since switching from Salesforce Marketing Cloud to HubSpot Marketing, the Kirby team has seen significant improvements in visibility, flexibility, and confidence in their marketing strategy. The initial phase centered on system migration, setting the stage for new, data-driven campaigns that were previously unattainable due to inadequate tools and data.
Ability to Transform Strategy Using Data
By migrating to HubSpot Marketing, our client experienced significant improvements in visibility and flexibility. They can now track the effectiveness of their email, SMS, and paid campaigns.
The gained insights into which paid campaigns are leading to conversions and go in-depth on the paths their consumers are taking which assists in created more targeted ads.
Additionally, they have unlocked the potential for new, data-driven campaigns that were previously unattainable. The integration between HubSpot and Salesforce enables Kirby's team to create target audiences effortlessly. This seamless connection has provided them with the tools needed to reach the right people at the right time, increasing their marketing success.
Unlocked Marketing Potential
The migration also allowed the Kirby team to combine multiple brands in one CRM. This eliminated the need for duplicate tools and apps. This streamlined approach will allow for better organization and efficiency, crucial as their company continues to grow and add new brands. In addition, they now have the ability to track the performance of their campaigns and emails across the various brands.
By switching to HubSpot Marketing, our client has gained more confidence in their marketing strategy. They now have a clearer picture of their performance metrics and can make data-driven decisions with ease.