Customer-focused consulting ensures better data flows and more leads

For the media company Heise, individual, personalized communication with readers is extremely important - and therefore email marketing has to perform optimally. Heise Medien thus wanted an easy-to-use email marketing solution that would enable editors to create professional mailings quickly and efficiently. In addition, this solution should be integrated into the existing IT landscape in such a way that data can flow automatically between the systems. In this way, a 360-degree customer view is created, which leads to an increasingly precise targeting of interested parties and subscribers.

the word is out about data-driven personalization for stronger customer loyalty. This should improve key figures and increase sales. But that's not all: In addition, Heise Medien wanted efficient measures to generate new leads. The company already has ideas, but lacks the technical know-how. This project therefore requires a strong partner who can provide Heise Medien with technical and specialist support at any time: Together with Inxmail, Heise Medien tackled this project to meet the highest customer demands.

With magazines such as c't and iX, Heise Medien addresses a sophisticated IT audience. Customer communication via newsletters must therefore be professional - both in terms of content and technology. Mailings must be optimally displayed on every device and also delivered securely to the readers' inboxes. In addition, the emails should be visually appealing and at the same time take little time to create. Heise Medien therefore wanted an email marketing solution that was easy and intuitive to use. This includes not only a quick training of the editors, but also the possibility that several people can work on different mailings at the same time. This speeds up processes and allows creative ideas to be implemented as a team.

In addition, Heise Medien was faced with the challenge of a comprehensive view on its own customers. Readers can receive newsletters from different brands. This requires a sure instinct for good advertising pressure. Specifically, the questions were "What are customers interested in? What can you send them and when is the right time?" For this reason, the media company needed email marketing to be linked to all the systems it uses.

In addition to an optimized workflow for creating mailings, Heise Medien also wanted to improve the customer lifecycle. By means of efficient campaigns, the processes from lead generation to customer loyalty were to be further developed. Heise Medien had many good ideas for this, which required complex technical know-how. Heise Medien therefore turned to Inxmail for support and advice on the entire project.

The first step was a technical consulting. Heise Medien uses PIA DYMATRIX DynaCampaign as a campaign management tool and Microsoft Dynamics as a central CRM system. Heise Medien was therefore faced with the challenge of connecting the data from the different systems in order to use it efficiently for email marketing and, at the same time, to obtain a 360-degree customer view. Inxmail analyzed the data flows within Heise Medien's entire IT landscape. Inxmail then presented the company with some possible solutions to their challenges. Heise Medien decided to continuously adapt the email marketing tool to its own system landscape. Thus, the Inxmail software was integrated piece by piece into all systems to guarantee optimal data flows. Thanks to the versatile integrations, Heise Medien benefits from automated processes that make duplicate data maintenance obsolete.

In the second step, Heise Medien took advantage of specialist consulting including training. Here, the latest email editor from Inxmail was used: after a short period of training in Inxmail New Xperience, editors can now create highly personalized mailings in just a few steps using the modern web interface. To improve customer loyalty, Heise Medien had the previous mailings analyzed by Inxmail. Important key figures, such as click-through rate or bounce rate, were examined as well as the layout in general. This was followed by a template design for all mailing formats in order to achieve the best possible performance. The Inxmail software ensured that the corporate design was reproduced with pixel accuracy. In its dynamic work in email marketing, Inxmail supports Heise Medien with an annually fixed consulting volume. As a result, many processes within the company are further developed and the expansion of email marketing is continuously driven forward from a technical and specialist perspective.

The third step involved concrete measures to generate leads. After intensive conceptual consulting, Inxmail successfully implemented an Advent calendar for Heise Medien. The resulting daily contact with readers generated many new addresses in the long term. In addition, the click rate within the newsletter was even increased. With the entire consultancy package, Heise Medien is ideally equipped for the email marketing of the future.