Vattenfall

How digital specialists took conversions and the customer journey to the next level

So, you think you don’t need external specialists be cause you’ve come a long way on your own? Think again.

Some players, such as Vattenfall Business Sales Nordic, understand this. Despite being HubSpot veterans who have already done some impressive work using content to convert visitors to leads, they know that things can always be improved. With the help of digital growth specialists from Invise, they were able to enhance both their customer journey and their lead process – from a holistic point of view.

260% increase in generated contacts through Paid Performance Marketing
41% increase in landing page conversion rate (+636%)

About Vattenfall

Vattenfall Business Sales Nordic is part of Vattenfall – one of Europe’s biggest electricity suppliers. The company group is owned by the Swedish government, with the Nordics, Germany and the Netherlands as its main markets. The group currently employs around 20 000 professionals.

Vattenfall Business Sales Nordic contracts electricity to organizations, which, among other things, includes different levels of price protection as well as regulations relating to sustainability and climate goals.

The challenges

Conversion growing pains

For several years, Vattenfall Business Sales Nordic made substantial efforts with conversion-driven pages on their content hub ‘Energy Plaza’. However, they realized the potential for further improvement, as well as the need for efficient processes for measuring the outcome of their marketing activities. Considering the high relevance and quality of the content, the landing pages’ conversion rate was actually relatively low.

Get more "hot" leads

In addition to their conversion optimization efforts, Vattenfall Business Sales Nordic needed to ensure that they generated leads that matched their buyer persona and ICP. They wanted to increase the share of MQLs that turned into SQLs through digital channels and improve both lead scoring and management – aiming to supply their sales department with valuable, “hot” leads.

Maximize automation

Offering electricity contracts is a complicated process associated with long sales cycles. At the same time, Vattenfall Business Sales Nordic drives an exemplary operation with a vision of a more automated sales process, customer journey, and onboarding – whilst keeping their focus on personal service. Therefore, they sought a partner with meritious HubSpot expertise who could challenge them to take their efficiency to the next level.

Tying everything together

Vattenfall Business Sales Nordic had been following the inbound marketing methodology for a long time. However, they found themselves in a phase where they wanted to tie everything together and interconnect more components of marketing automation, sales, and communication to improve the effectiveness of their CRM and lead generation.

The solution

A holistic perspective on a measurable journey

Since both customer satisfaction and the customer journey were always a top priority for Vattenfall Business Sales Nordic, they were already actively working with ICPs and buyer personas. Therefore, to improve their customer experience even further, they found it essential to work with a partner who had mastered the entire concept of a customer journey. They also needed all communication and marketing activities to resonate better with their target audiences.

To establish a holistic view of their customer journey, insights and data regarding ICP and buyer personas permeated all marketing, sales, and tech activities. In conjunction with this, Invise created an inbound marketing strategy with HubSpot as the main engine and built customer journeys where content constituted the different conversion points. We also used attribution models to measure ROI for each activity.

Data-driven content hub and performance marketing

To connect all components – from lead generation and marketing automation to customer journey – Invise started a web project aimed at optimizing their content hub ‘Energy Plaza’. In the project, we implemented, among other things, auto-pdf to pillar pages in order to streamline conversion. With the help of retargeting and intelligently designed content, we were able to attract target audiences through external channels to the website for further nurturing. We also created four performance marketing campaigns in accordance with an always-on strategy to increase traffic and long-term brand awareness.

Adaptive testing and creativity for AI-generated results

During our efforts to create a new content hub, we identified the need to optimize landing pages for gated content. We chose to examine the potential of adaptive testing – the next step in the evolution of A/B testing – where the test adapts dynamically with the help of AI. Vattenfall Business Sales Nordic were already experienced A/B testers but wanted to automate the process to avoid manually choosing and reviewing concepts. Therefore, Invise’s design, copywriting, and marketing automation specialists created three new landing pages and forms to test hypotheses of how creative solutions could improve conversion rates. These were also compared to existing versions to measure their effectiveness. The landing pages were created with a growth-driven design mentality and rolled out through a 12-week campaign.

Making salespeople’s day-to-day easier

An important part of improving customer journeys and lead management processes has been supporting the sales department. The solution was, among other things, to refine the lead scoring in HubSpot and to further develop personas and ICPs. We also educated salespeople at Vattenfall Business Sales Nordic on how to maximize the potential of HubSpot, freeing up time for them to focus on what they do best: sales.

Examples of activities

Growth marketing and growth design
Conversion optimization of landing pages and forms
Reconstruction and optimization of content hub
Performance marketing campaigns (LinkedIn Ads)
The development of marketing automation in HubSpot Marketing Hub
Copywriting
Design

The results

41% conversion rate on website (+636%)
245 additional contacts through paid performance marketing (+260% September 2021 – November 2022)
21% increase in SQL per lead
16% increase in Google impressions and traffic from organic search

*Time period refers to campaign Q3 2022 compared to Q3 2021 unless stated otherwise.

Successfactors

Courage and confidence

Vattenfall Business Sales Nordic are role models in marketing where there’s existing internal competency and with all processes already in place. Despite this, they put confidence in our ability to supplement it with Invise’s specialist expertise. They’ve now realized the value of relying on an external partner’s specialized expertise to facilitate continuous improvement. They’ve had the courage to listen, be challenged, question, and see the potential for growth to establish a productive and rewarding relationship.

Concrete goals

By setting goals according to the OKR model and connecting them to tangible activities, we could ensure relevant reporting and data reliability. We accompanied this with routine briefings and tests to generate insights on where we stand in relation to our goals and to confirm continuous improvement and, subsequently, growth.

Speak the same language

Seeing as Vattenfall Business Sales Nordic had already come far in their inbound marketing efforts, they sought a partner with proven HubSpot expertise. This enabled us to be more visionary in our collaboration and conversations from the get-go. Although they were the orchestrators of the process, they gained a better understanding of more areas relating to HubSpot and digital growth.

A marketing automation agency

Instead of collaborating with several agencies for lead generation and marketing automation, Vattenfall Business Sales Nordic chose to have a dialogue with only one, which streamlined the partnership and made it more rewarding. It’s common for dissimilar visions to clash, making it challenging to involve several third parties for performance, CRM and marketing automation. This often turns into a stumbling block during collaboration. Here, we were instead given the opportunity to start collaborating – and hence deliver – more quickly.