Preparing for the launch of a new collection involves a multitude of projects. From developing emails in Marketo to creating assets and website maintenance, announcing a new collection is no easy feat.
When our client, James Hardie, a global building materials company, was preparing for the launch of the Magnolia Home | James Hardie Collection, they wanted to ensure they were meeting deadlines and operating according to best practices in Marketo. That’s why they called in support from Perkuto + MERGE.
The Search
James Hardie was looking for a new Marketo partner and already had a close relationship with our Sales team, so the partnership fell into place. Ironically enough, James Hardie’s development partner is MERGE (our parent company), so this relationship was a natural fit from the start.
The Problem
One of the biggest overarching problems the James Hardie team faced was ongoing issues with their Marketo instance, specifically with Salesforce sync errors. They were spending more time fixing things in Marketo than progressing, which is oftentimes a tell-tale sign that it’s time for an audit.
James Hardie was looking for assistance in the following areas:
Magnolia Home | James Hardie Collection
There were several action items to prepare for the launch of the Magnolia Home | James Hardie Collection:
- Deploy announcement email: Promote the launch of the Magnolia Home | James Hardie Collection to the database.
- Redesign/update the existing Sample Request drip program in Marketo: Add the new siding options offered with the Magnolia Home | James Hardie Collection.
- Build brochure download program: Embed a Marketo form on the Magnolia Home | James Hardie web page to offer a new brochure depicting the collection.
Marketo Audit
The James Hardie team partnered with Perkuto + MERGE to ensure their instance was as optimized as possible before the Magnolia Home | James Hardie Collection. Not to mention, this would also lay a stable groundwork for the future and ensure scalability.
💡 How do you know if your Marketo instance is ready for an audit, and what does the audit process look like? We’ve got answers. Read more here.
The Solution
We called in the support of seven team members: one project manager, one client director/solution architect, one senior technical consultant, two senior consultants, and two consultants. Our team developed solutions for the following areas of work:
Magnolia Home | James Hardie Collection
Announcement email
Executed the announcement email that was sent to 60,000+ homeowners.
Magnolia Home | James Hardie Collection announcement email
Brochure download program
Our team partnered with MERGE’s EEP (Experience, Engineering, and Platforms) Development team who owns all of James Hardie’s website development work to create the brochure download page and embed a Marketo form. From here, we built an ongoing program in Marketo to capture form fills and send emails with the brochure asset.
Marketo form embedded on the brochure download page
Redesign/update the existing Sample Request drip program in Marketo
When a user filled out the Sample Request form, they had the option to choose from a wide range of siding samples. Upon launch, MERGE’s EEP Development team added the Magnolia Home | James Hardie Collection to the sample request form.
Our team set up velocity scripting in Marketo to ensure their email included details on which Magnolia Home | James Hardie Collection samples they ordered. We also included the new emails (which our team hardcoded) into the existing sample request program in Marketo. From here, we created a new drip specific to the Magnolia Home | James Hardie Collection sample selections.
Request for sample confirmation email
Marketo Audit
“We’re maturing our Marketo confidence, and Perkuto + MERGE has been a crucial component to our growth.” Click To TweetPerkuto + MERGE also executed a Marketo audit to ensure there was structure to their instance. These were the four goals of the Marketo audit:
- Marketo governance and organization: Implement governance policies to monitor users, permissions, security risks, and general instance enhancements, as well as implement a standardized folder structure, naming convention, and archive strategy.
- Improve data management and integrity: Establish best practice guidelines around data management and governance as well as diagnose and implement a solution for Salesforce sync errors.
- Increase efficiency and scalability: Create program and email templates in Marketo to streamline builds and scale, in addition to enhancing program design for nurture and drip campaigns.
- Improve data enrichment and reporting insights: Implement lifecycle and lead scoring strategy, as well as increase data reliability to enhance segmentation and reporting.
Perkuto + MERGE also provided documentation so that in the event something broke, it doesn’t take as long to fix. The post-audit worksheet also serves as a roadmap to gain alignment and work toward the four goals outlined as our primary objectives over the next 12 months.
A closer look at our post-audit recommendations spreadsheet
“We were the most impressed with the dedication to documentation – Perkuto + MERGE provided a high level of detail in the technical design document.”
The Results
Although it’s only been a couple of months since the collection was launched, James Hardie has already experienced several noteworthy metrics:
- The Magnolia Home | James Hardie Collection landing page is the fourth most visited page on the James Hardie website
- 300,000+ landing page views
- Several thousand sample requests for the Magnolia Home | James Hardie Collection
In addition to a successful launch of the Magnolia Home | James Hardie Collection, the James Hardie team also increased confidence in their Marketo instance. Now, their instance is set up according to best practices and there’s an enforced structure. They are no longer running into issues around things breaking in Marketo, which has already saved their team plenty of time.
“Perkuto + MERGE has influenced our thinking – now, we do things the right way the first time around.”
The Final Takeaway
“Perkuto + MERGE has demonstrated an ability to understand our business.” Click To Tweet
The most influential impact that Perkuto + MERGE had on James Hardie was documentation. Providing more standardization and discipline in their Marketo instance was crucial in driving efficiency, and they no longer had to spend time fixing problems with their instance.
“It’s been valuable that Perkuto + MERGE has such deep relationships with Adobe and Marketo, that if we need to pull in those partners and make sure that we’re connecting the dots, they can really help us do that.”
