Informa Engage
How MASS Engines Implemented An Award Winning Marketing Automation Solution.
The marketing team at Informa Engage was tasked with developing a plan and identifying a platform for moving to a modern marketing model. They were looking to shift from batch-and-blast communications to an approach that would enable targeting and drive engagement for over 150 brands. This included 16 million contacts across 17 markets who were being sent millions of emails a month. MASS Engines was brought in to:
- Advise and lead the overall strategy
- Serve as project manager
- Provide Eloqua implementation expertise
Challenges
At the start of the project, Informa Engage had 11 market groups set up on a batch-and-blast email system. They wanted to move to a marketing automation platform where all the relevant data sources would be centralized. Although a few market groups had previously migrated to Eloqua, the project required a new approach: an architecture that would scale across multiple brands and markets. To meet the company’s objectives, 82 brands would need to be migrated to 11 Eloqua instances in less than a year.
Solutions
1. Strategy First
“Despite the aggressive timeline, MASS Engines insisted that we take the time up front to think through the strategic objectives for the project. They also made sure that we considered all details of how a market group was set up, which was very important as it would have far-reaching impacts as we rolled out multiple groups,”said Christy Martin, senior director, marketing operations. MASS Engines established a plan that detailed what needed to be done, market by market, to ensure that the core structure would work across the different groups. The Informa Engage team identified the unique requirements for specific groups and worked with MASS Engines to ensure that those were accommodated.
2. Large Distributed Implementation Team
As project lead, MASS Engines managed both the internal team members, consisting of about 20 people who represented the brands, IT and data, as well as another consultancy that focused on data architecture and migration. “MASS Engines was able to work with everyone on the extended project team to keep all of the parts organized and aligned with objectives as well as troubleshoot the variety of issues that are inevitable in a project of this scale and complexity,” said Ben Senig, marketing automation manager. In addition to project management, the MASS Engines team focused on the design and implementation of the new Eloqua instances. MASS Engines’ implementation team took care of everything related to configuring the new Eloqua instances — from setting up users with permissions and security groups, to creating templates for emails, forms and landing pages. One of the key reasons MASS Engines was brought in to lead this project was their approach to client engagement. “We knew that this was going to be a highly-complex project… MASS Engines understood this… and was very accommodating. The relationship felt like a true partnership,” said Christy.
3. Final Evaluation and Handoff
Before concluding the project, MASS Engines developed documentation and walked the data and marketing teams through all parts of each new Eloqua instance. This helped the core team fully understand the implementation, and made it easy for them to hand off operations to each market, because all the groups are set up the same way, which has streamlined operations and maintenance. Heidi explains, “Mass Engines structured everything with the end in mind. They built us something that would be easy to use moving forward in multiple operational scenarios. And MASS Engine’s process-focused approach delivered long-term benefits, because all of the groups are set up the same way, which has streamlined operations and maintenance.”
Results
Informa Engage’s goal was to plan and execute this Eloqua project in less than one year, which was an incredibly aggressive goal considering the scope and scale. MASS Engines completed the project in just 10 months. Working as partners the project team designed and architected a new Eloqua solution for Informa marketers migrating 82 brands, configuring 11 Eloqua instances, 592 email groups, 92 microsites, 168 forms, 99 opt-out programs, and over 600 landing pages.
In recognition of this effort, Informa Engage netted two of the most prestigious marketing awards in the industry: CMO’s (Chief Marketing Officer) Marketing Team of the Year and Modern Marketing Leader of the Year – Rhonda Wunderlin, Vice President, Performance Marketing.
MASS Engines’ strategic thinking about the groups and overall system was like a highly-sophisticated architect working on a complex development project. They thought of everything.
Heidi Johnson, Senior Project Manager At Informa Engage