IHM Business School: 20 000 new leads thanks to personalised marketing

IHM Business School offers education for companies and individual students. It has since 1966 been the go-to school for those who want to further their knowledge of leadership, sales or marketing. The school’s mission is to provide education and collaborations that are useful now and in the future. And that requires a marketing team with a digital mindset and the right tech.

“To ensure that our target groups receive relevant messages in all channels, we needed to take our marketing automation to the next level,” says Linda Thyrén, CMO at IHM.

“Previously, we had access to data, but the problem was that we did not use it fully. At the same time, we needed help collecting more and the right data to learn about our customers and what they need at different stages of the customer journey.”

Four facts about IHM Business School

• Founded: 1966
• Revenue: 227 MSEK
• Headquarters: Gothenburg, Sweden
• Locations: Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, Luleå & Umeå, Kalmar & Vimmerby, besides long-distance learning options.

Cross-functional team using live proof of concept

Linda Thyrén and her colleague Leo Pignon, CDO at IHM, joined a cross-functional team set up by Fluido, who contributed a project manager and a senior developer. The team came to work closely together for an entire year.

”A key ingredient in the success of this project was to transform our goals into a specification for the martech stack together with Fluido”, Leo Pignon says.

“The next step was to structure an implementation plan with continuous value delivery as a principle, using live proof of concept for every area. This allowed us to quickly get tooling in place and start using our new capabilities as they were being developed.”

Automated audience creation

The team started off working with the data that IHM had already been collecting.

“We created target groups that, nowadays, automatically receive different targeted and relevant messages, depending on behaviour”, Leo Pignon explains.

Leo Pignon, CDO at IHM

“As soon as a person buys something and becomes a customer, they are moved in real time to another target group and this is automatically updated in Facebook’s target groups. We also created more of an omnichannel marketing system that’s automated and more streamlined, making sure that the same messages are being sent to one customer, regardless of channel.”

The next step was to start collecting new and important data – and implementing tracking on the website. Based on customers’ behaviour on the web, they today receive customised messages in emails and on social media. Web personalisation has also been implemented. This means that a person who has previously visited IHM.se, whose behavior has been tracked, receives personalised options on the start page.

“We have managed to get a few more really cool functions. For example, an abandoned cart: Our classes can be bought online, and if someone has put a class in their cart, but not completed the purchase, we send a personalised email asking if they need more advice,” says Linda Thyrén.

Solution for IHM Business School

• Implemented new tech: Salesforce Marketing Automation (Advertising, Personalisation).
• Automated audience creation in Marketing Cloud and syncing to SoMe channels via Advertising Studio.
• Always-on marketing automation and campaign audience strategy.
• Advanced email personalisation.
• Website personalisation.

Results far above expectations 

“Thanks to all new tech, and Fluido’s great work, we have a much better understanding of how our customers behave and what they need. We’ve been able to build comprehensive customer journeys, drastically expand our viable audience to 60,000 people and increase our communication timespan exponentially,” Leo Pignon says.

A long-term goal with personalised marketing was an increased inflow to the site and more high-quality leads into the CRM system. And the results didn’t take long to appear.

Traffic to the website has increased by 130 percent, there’s a 300-400 percent larger marketable audience, and 20 000 new contacts in the CRM system are ready to be processed. Additionally, the marketing team saves a lot of time and money – for example, they save 45 minutes per week without having to manually import audiences to Facebook.

Linda Thyrén, CMO at IHM

“These are volumes we didn’t even dare to dream about,” says Linda Thyrén. A key to our success, I think, is that we have done so much more than implement new technology. We have set up completely new processes and got all co-workers on track.”

The upskilled marketing team at IHM now has the digital knowledge to further take this way of working. And this is just the start of what they want to achieve. Linda Thyrén concludes: “We want to digitise and grow even more. Now we have the opportunity to build the IHM of the future!”

“We have seen more and more education institutions taking advantage of powerful modern tools to drive student recruitment, engagement and the digital experience. You need to reach the right audiences, with the right message, at the right time. IHM has done a fantastic job of using Salesforce to excel at doing just that; the numbers speak for themselves,” says Kari Poutanen, Industry Lead for Education. 

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