Sweet initial spark: Boosting sales with personalized email marketing

Case Study: Digital transformation

A single successful email campaign can change everything – and even revolutionize traditional methods. In the case of VOGEL'S Süsse-Werbe-Ideen, it was gummy bears that provided the initial spark for the digital transformation. The company's first purely digital marketing measure revolved around the sweet fruit gums – with outstanding results: 200 percent more leads. Highly personalized email marketing was the key to success. However, the software used for this purpose played a crucial role.

[Translate to English:] Tablet-Ansicht einer Werbeanzeige von Vogel's Süße Werbe-Ideen. Beworben werden individuell bedruckte Gummibärchen-Tüten für Firmenveranstaltungen. Die Aktion wird als 'Bärenstark, fruchtig und super preiswert' beschrieben, mit einem Bestell-Button, der zum Bestellen aufruft.

Sweet initial spark: the realignment of marketing began with the purely digital campaign for advertising gummy bears.

Challenge

Expanding traditional marketing methods

VOGEL'S Süsse-Werbe-Ideen has been producing promotional sweets since 1989. Until a few years ago, the company primarily used print marketing materials, as is typical for the industry. In 2018, managing director Sandro Fiorilli decided on a new approach: instead of relying on print-only marketing measures, an existing customer campaign for promotional gummy bears was to be carried out exclusively digitally via email marketing. To do this, the company wanted to send personalized, visually appealing mailings to existing customers. The aim was to automate the filling of the mailings. VOGEL'S Süsse-Werbe-Ideen wanted to achieve all this with the email marketing software from Inxmail.

This is because purely digital campaigns save on the printing, shipping and postage costs of a print mailing. In addition, customers can be contacted by email at a higher frequency and in a more targeted manner. Tracking makes it easier to understand success. What's more, emails provide the opportunity to test which content performs best in order to develop follow-up campaigns. Thanks to the dynamic content within the mailings, the company hopes to be able to respond to customer requests in a very granular way. To meet these challenges, a good email marketing solution is needed that can cover precisely these aspects.

Solution

Success through data-driven personalization

[Translate to English:] Zwei Smartphone-Ansichten einer Werbeanzeige von Vogel's Süße Werbe-Ideen. Die Anzeige bewirbt personalisierte Schoko-Adventskalender und weitere weihnachtliche Werbeartikel, darunter Schokoladentafeln und Werbe-Pyramiden. Es wird auf die hohe Qualität der Schokolade hingewiesen, und die Anzeige enthält Bestellmöglichkeiten für die Artikel.

VOGEL's Süsse-Werbe-Ideen now pursues multi-channel campaigns that cleverly combine the digital and analog worlds.

VOGEL's Süsse-Werbe-Ideen was already using Inxmail. However, the newsletters initially only served as a counterpart to the print news, without taking greater advantage of the strengths of the email channel. The gummy bear campaign changed this. Perfectly tailored email templates formed the basis for the email marketing. Thanks to Inxmail's many years of expertise in the industry, the templates were designed to perform as well as possible as a newsletter. By integrating the Inxmail software, all data from the leading CRM system of VOGEL'S Süsse-Werbe-Ideen was incorporated into the mailings. This made it possible to send personalized newsletters to existing customers.

Success was not long in coming: in contrast to previous print campaigns, the gummy bear campaign achieved a 200 percent higher conversion rate. For VOGEL'S Süsse-Werbe-Ideen, this was the initial spark to focus more on email marketing. The company has now integrated its marketing measures across multiple media and is constantly driving forward its digital transformation. For example, physical samples are sent out and referred to digitally by email shortly afterwards. This creates many points of contact with customers. The mailings that VOGEL'S Süsse-Werbe-Ideen sends via Inxmail are enriched with data from other systems. This ensures that readers receive exactly the content that interests them – and that is precisely what email marketing is all about if you want to be successful.

“Thanks to the intensified collaboration and strong, intensive support from the Inxmail team, we have been able to expand the email channel into our top-selling distribution channel and develop significant cost advantages compared to our traditional print campaigns. By closely integrating email campaigns with our catalogs, the VOGEL'S Group has become a cross-media player thanks to Inxmail technology and has even been able to further strengthen its leading role in B2B direct sales in the D/A/CH region.”

[Translate to English:] Porträt von Sandro Fiorill, Geschäftsführer bei Vogel's Süße Werbe-Ideen, der im Anzug mit verschränkten Armen freundlich in die Kamera blickt.

Sandro Fiorilli

Managing Director, VOGEL'S Süsse-Werbe-Ideen GmbH & Co.KG

About VOGEL'S Süsse-Werbe-Ideen GmbH & Co. KG

The VOGEL'S Group is one of the leading suppliers of sweet promotional items in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France. The combination of in-house confectionery production and the use of the most modern and innovative printing technologies is unique. The company was founded in 1989 and is based in Endingen am Kaiserstuhl.

www.vogels.de