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FrieslandCampina: A unified lead generation process for deeper customer insights
Lead generation is becoming increasingly challenging, especially for large companies with a diverse customer base. This process requires a deep understanding of the target market and the ability to collect, analyse, and process massive data sets. Moreover, sales and marketing teams must work together to identify qualified leads and optimise the customer journey at every touchpoint.
Analytics tools can take the guesswork out of lead generation, turning data into actionable insights. Marketing automation, on the other hand, can streamline workflows and personalise the customer experience. These tools are used together to identify, nurture, and engage buyers as they move through the sales funnel.
FrieslandCampina, one of the largest dairy cooperatives in the world, reached out to Fluido to support its efforts in these areas. The organisation already had a lead generation strategy in place, but its resources were dispersed across multiple business units, making it difficult to gain a 360-degree customer view.
The challenge of achieving a cohesive, unified digital experience
Founded in 1871, FrieslandCampina has over 22,900 employees and operates in over 100 countries. Its branch offices are in 32 countries, including the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Italy, Indonesia, Morocco, and others. Achieving this level of growth comes with significant challenges, such as unifying data across different systems, teams, and customer touchpoints.
FrieslandCampina Professional, one of its main business units, targets direct customers, such as large food manufacturers, and indirect customers, like bakeries, cafes, restaurants, and other small businesses. Its product line includes dairy foods and milk derivatives ranging from cheese and butter to milk powder.
Before reaching out to Fluido, FrieslandCampina had three websites — one for each product group aimed at large food manufacturers. The organisation was already using Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (MCAE, formerly Pardot) for marketing automation, Salesforce Sales Cloud for customer relationship management (CRM), and other tools, but it didn’t have a unified view of the customer journey.
For example, some customers were filling out a contact form on one website, whereas others were filling out the forms on another website. As a result, it was difficult to put all the pieces together and build a complete customer profile.
However, FrieslandCampina didn’t require a complete overhaul of its current systems and processes. Therefore, Fluido focused on improving the infrastructure they already had.
Fluido is a leading Salesforce Platinum Consulting Partner in Europe. Since 2013, the company has completed over 600 marketing automation projects for 100+ global brands like Volvo, Telia, Finnair, and the Dennemeyer Gruppe. Its team consists of more than 500 experts capable of tackling complex industry challenges through bespoke solutions, with a strong focus on customer data.
Connecting the dots for a full customer view
FrieslandCampina knew that Fluido had a team with multifaceted expertise, so they contacted Fluido to guide their marketing efforts. The solution was to integrate Account Engagement to close the gaps in the customer journey, align their sales and marketing efforts, and streamline marketing automation.
“Initially, we chose Fluido for their in-depth technical knowledge of Account Engagement, but as journeys and requirements increase in complexity, we realized the advantage of working with a partner that can design and build solutions that work across domains from the web to Account Engagement to Sales Cloud to fully leverage what is possible in the Salesforce ecosystem,” explains Courtenay Spry, a Global Product Owner Salesforce at FrieslandCampina Professional.
First, the Fluido team developed one optimised lead funnel for all products. As part of this process, Fluido created an automated workflow revolving around one email master template and a universal, widely applicable form, among other marketing assets.
Next, Fluido used FrieslandCampina’s existing Account Engagement license to track customer interactions across the company’s website, quote forms, and other touchpoints while maintaining compliance with the latest consumer privacy and security standards.
Everything is trackable on the website, and all data is stored in Account Engagement and then synced to the CRM through the native Salesforce Account Engagement connector. This allows for a good marketing and sales alignment, leading to a complete customer profile and fresh insights into buyer behaviour.
“One of Account Engagement’s strengths compared to other marketing automation platforms is the native integration with Salesforce CRM, which allows for out-of-the-box functionality from real-time customer insights and engagement to reporting and analytics,” explains Rudi Beijnen, a Salesforce Business Consultant at Fluido.
But customer data comes from multiple channels, not just websites and contact forms.
For example, FrieslandCampina also uses surveys to gain further insights into customer satisfaction, buying behaviour, and other aspects. These surveys are built on third-party platforms like GetFeedback and Qualtrics. Similarly, the company collects data from virtual events, such as live webinars, via ON24, and leverages email analytics to enrich the customer profile.
With that in mind, the Fluido team connected FrieslandCampina’s CRM to these platforms to sync customer data. As a result, FrieslandCampina is now using Account Engagement as a centralised hub where the data flows from all the different platforms and sources.
Think of it as a closed loop where every touchpoint can be tracked, ensuring that new data is continuously added. This approach helps reduce outdated or inaccurate data, allowing for more targeted marketing. At the same time, it enables more personalised interactions with customers and potential leads.
The result? Higher conversion rates, lower marketing costs, and increased engagement.
It’s also worth mentioning that the lines between micro- and macro-conversions are sometimes blurred, especially in B2B scenarios. For this reason, Fluido worked alongside FrieslandCampina’s web development team to implement a system allowing the company to track these conversions more accurately.
The outcome of an integrated, holistic approach to lead generation
Fluido’s holistic approach to lead generation resulted in a unified view of the customer journey. At the same time, it simplified the lead generation and qualification process by using one umbrella website and automated email workflows.
By collecting all marketing and sales data in one place, FrieslandCampina can operate more efficiently and gain better insights into its target audience. Plus, it can leverage this data to reach the right audience in the right context at the right time, resulting in higher customer satisfaction and lower marketing costs.
Additionally, this approach allows for more accurate reporting and analytics, making it easier to measure relevant KPIs. For example, marketing teams can accurately track Campaign Influence, a metric that assesses the return on campaign investment.
“One of the hardest KPIs to calculate within marketing is the return on investment (ROI) because it requires identifying and quantifying the commercial results of specific marketing efforts. Fluido has achieved this outcome with a feature called Campaign Influence, and it’s actually not that difficult when you integrate these two Salesforce products: Sales Cloud CRM and Account Engagement marketing automation,” says Rudi Beijnen.
“Our collaboration with Fluido allowed us to quickly deliver a solid foundation for Marketing Automation that supports our customer journeys and is helping us to gain better insights into our target audience so that we can improve the experience,” says Courtenay Spry.
FrieslandCampina has always been committed to innovation, but it also knew that an outside perspective could bring fresh insight and ideas. By bringing Fluido on board, the company took another step towards customer centricity, unveiling new business growth and development opportunities.
