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Seizing new opportunities
When npower Business Solutions was acquired by E.ON, the marketing team was presented with an opportunity.
In the past, the company website had belonged to a different team. “Anytime we wanted to make an update to the website, we had to get in touch with somebody in the npower domestic digital marketing team,” explains Head of Marketing Michael Byrne. The process caused delays and frustrations.
Now, the website was going to be handed over to them. They would have full control over the CMS, the design, and the content.
The first order of business was finding a more cost-efficient and less complicated hosting solution. “We didn't want to keep the incumbent because it was overly complicated,” Michael says. “For what we wanted, it was over-engineered.”
The catch? They only had 6 months before contract renewal. Six months to find, evaluate, choose, and implement a new website before they would lose their existing content and data forever. “We needed to move quickly,” Michael says.
Searching for a CRM
Searching for a new CMS gave the marketing team the opportunity to tackle another long-standing challenge they’d been facing as a team: a lack of CRM for marketing functions. “There was no central CRM, and all of our data was scattered across a collection of different applications and databases. There was no point in trying to clean the data either, because it would be overwritten by another database.”
Instead of a centralised tool to manage marketing functions, the marketing team had to cobble together a solution from several different softwares. It was disjointed and expensive. “We were paying for a social media management platform. We were paying for an email tool. We were paying to host a microsite. It was all of these different costs for applications that didn’t communicate well,” Michael says.
No single view of the customer
Working without a CRM—and the previous lack of access to their website—meant that the marketing team was missing one of the most crucial elements for success: a single view of the customer. Everything was decentralised.
“There was a database for invoicing. There were multiple versions of other CRM platforms, as well as different applications for our products. And if that wasn’t complex enough, when we were bought by E.ON, we had to merge E.ON’s data and products with our own and migrate those customers. It became extremely difficult to navigate and know which was the version of truth for customers,” Michael says.
All of this also made attribution difficult, and it was hard to tie marketing campaigns to sales. “We were trying to use campaign codes, and have the sales teams input the right campaign code manually during their call with a customer,” Michael says. “They were pulling from a list of 10 live campaigns at any one time, and of course they never did it. It felt impossible to tie marketing efforts to actual sales that were made.”
Building a new website
The npower Business Solutions marketing team first discovered HubSpot through CMS Hub. They were able to successfully map out their new website, transfer and update existing copy, build and test their website in time for their six-month deadline.
“All of a sudden, we had the power to add our own pages very quickly, to amend pages, to delete pages, and to implement the tracking we had been missing,” Michael says. “It was really exciting and empowering to not only be able to make changes, but to get better reporting and more opportunities for personalisation.”
CMS Hub’s flexibility gives marketing complete control of the website—without stifling other teams who need to make updates. “We can allow people to suggest changes, but only certain people have publishing rights. So we’ve got nice controls over what goes live and when it goes live, while still letting people who want to enrich the website do so, without stopping innovation,” Michael says.
Consolidating costs and data
Through CMS Hub, Michael and his team realised that adding Marketing Hub to their tech stack would solve their previous lack of CRM and help them consolidate marketing tools onto a single platform. Since implementing Marketing Hub, they’ve been able to consolidate at least five previous tools into one, saving at least £50,000 per year while also streamlining their tech stack.
“Through one platform and one payment, we’re able to gain access to all these really smart tools to schedule our social media, to create automated journeys, to have an email function,” Michael says. “And all that data of those prospects and customers that are interacting and engaging with us goes into one central source.”
HubSpot also gives the marketing team access to all of the data that they couldn’t see before. “Previously, there would have been one team that writes the comms and another that selects the data. Now that we’ve got HubSpot, we’ve got the data. A single person can write the comms and send out the email. We had two different teams that we were able to absorb within the marketing team,” Michael adds.
Proactive communication
Using Marketing Hub has allowed npower Business Solutions to create customer journeys and implement lead scoring, which in turn allows them to fast track high-scoring leads to their sales colleagues so they can close more deals, faster.
They’ve also connected their main billing and SLA customer database to HubSpot, which gives them the opportunity to contact customers for renewal proactively, instead of waiting for their contracts to expire. “We can work backwards from the contract end date. Thirty, sixty, and ninety days before, the customers receive automated renewal correspondence. We make sure we’re really pushing renewal rates and offering them value,” Michael says.
Combined with lead scoring, this allows them to contact highly-engaged customers for renewal conversations more effectively. “We can fast track highly-engaged customers and have an early renewal conversation with them,” Michael says. “We're now passing those opportunities through to the sales team in a consistent, more measured way.”
Improving customer experience
Having all of their marketing efforts and website function consolidated onto a single platform is not just better for the company—it’s better for their customers, too.
With Marketing Hub, the messaging customers receive is consistent across all channels. Communication timelines with customers have also decreased from weeks down to days.
On the website, integrations with apps like Hotjar allow npower Business Solutions to get real-time feedback on customer experience and use that data to make improvements.
“It’s very intuitive for us now to work with that data as we receive it,” Michael says. “We can update and enrich the website as needed, creating a better experience for our customers.”
Results and internal recognition
Now that the marketing team can properly attribute sales and marketing successes to corresponding campaigns, they’ve been able to show the value of what they do and get internal recognition for their work. “We’re able to tell a story consistently every single month about which individuals are doing which part and adding value to our company,” Michael says. “It’s very important for internal PR.”
The team has also seen a steady increase in nearly all metrics they track: between website visits, conversions, and closed deals, Michael estimates there’s been a 5-10% increase across the board.
“We’re attracting more of the right prospects to the website. We’re able to convert them more, and we’re able to close more of those deals,” Michael says. “Thanks to HubSpot, we can attribute marketing efforts and marketing sales within the business.”
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