Versatile is Canada’s only agricultural tractor manufacturer. With industry leading power, economy and reliability, Versatile’s product lineup has been at the forefront of four-wheel drive and front-wheel assist development and production since 1966.
Farm equipment purchases are business decisions, with growers making strategic choices that look at a variety of factors, from price to serviceability. When it comes to marketing to them, timing is key. There’s no time in most operations for communications from manufacturers that don’t provide the information they want, when they want it.
Tasked with creating an automated marketing strategy for Versatile, our insights team set to work building Versatile’s customer journey, which mapped the steps each generated lead takes from initial awareness of the brand to shaking hands over their purchase agreement. This journey also took into consideration the transition time between receiving marketing communications from Versatile and a visit to their local Versatile dealer.
The campaign started in Canada on February 15, 2017 and the U.S. on December 22, 2017. The initial goals set by WS were optimistic. In both countries, we predicted we would attract 5% of unique web visitors to join the sales funnel.
From there, 50% would move to the consideration stage, 10% would move to the hot lead stage and 5% would convert to a sale.
Using the customer journey, we planned, created and executed a data-informed marketing automation strategy that included lead generation, content rich emails and landing pages, search engine marketing and retargeting. Lead scoring based on buyer behaviour enabled us to ensure that Versatile’s customers received information about the products we knew they were most interested in. This in turn enabled us to provide Versatile with consistent, high quality leads.
| Western Canada | |
|---|---|
| Goal | Actuals |
| 5% of unique web visitors will join funnel | 0.40% joined funnel |
| 50% will move to consideration stage | 54% have moved to consideration stage |
| 10% will move to hot lead stage and receive the incentive | 60% have moved to hot lead stage |
| 5% convert to sale | 6% converted to sale |
| U.S. | |
|---|---|
| Goal | Actuals |
| 5% of unique web visitors will join funnel | 0.72% joined funnel |
| 50% will move to consideration stage | 49% have moved to consideration stage |
| 10% will move to hot lead stage and receive the incentive | 60% have moved to hot lead stage |
| 5% convert to sale | 1% converted to sale |
“Although lead generation underperformed, once growers were in the funnel and received the right message at the right time, they were engaged, and their behaviour indicated they were interested in learning more. Optimization of lead generation will be an area of focus moving forward, but with more data, we’ll see if this year was the norm or it was an anomaly.
Using marketing technology and data to understand buyers allowed us to deliver high-quality leads to the sales team. The sales team now has a better understanding of the prospect’s history, which helps with the next step. Feedback from the sales team is an important step moving forward. More data allows us to optimize and increases the odds of moving the buyer closer to a sale.” – Graham Kahl, Executive VP, Insights & Analytics
