The Dow Chemical Company Automates Sample Process Challenges

MARKETING AUTOMATION
The Dow Chemical Company
Automates Sample Process
Challenges
® Trademark of The Dow Chemical Company
 Thousands of sample requests received monthly.
 Manual and resource intensive sample follow-up
process.

Industry: Manufacturing

Revenue: $57 billion

Employees: 53,000
 Inability to effectively measure sample program value.
Solutions
 Eloqua Campaign Management
 Eloqua Reporting
“We are a very complex company
with many different portfolios that
touch many points in the value
chain. So we need a very agile and
Results
 Campaign response rates of 40-50%.
 Insight into sample performance metrics.
 Immediate return on investment.
 Program rolled out to all business units globally.
flexible solution that can be
continuously adjusted. Eloqua is a
great platform that gives you that
freedom—even in a $57 billion
company like Dow.”
Hubertus Devroye
Director of Global Marketing
The Dow Chemical Company
As a diversified, global corporation with more than 6,000
products, manufactured at more than 200 sites in 36
countries throughout the world, Dow receives thousands
of requests for product samples per month. Sample
management has historically not only been an interesting
challenge for this complex company, but was also an
important one which has a direct—and potentially
significant—impact on sales and revenue growth.
“We tried to solve this problem in the past manually, using
many people and resources,” says Hubertus Devroye,
Director of Global Marketing at The Dow Chemical
Company. “It was always a bit of a challenge and very
resource intensive, so when we started using Eloqua last
year, we thought ‘what if we were to do this in a totally
After seeing the success of the pilot program in Europe,
different way by using technology?’.”
divisions across the entire Dow portfolio wanted to use
the solution as well. The program is now being rolled out
Rather than try to transform the sample management
to all Dow’s business units globally to help maximize
process, Dow decided to tackle the problem by first
efficiencies throughout the company. “It’s a great
streamlining the sample follow-up process. They started
example of how a simple solution can have a huge
by launching small test programs in Europe. When a
impact in a company like ours,” says Hubertus.
sample was requested, it was shipped and an Eloqua
email campaign was triggered to follow up with the
customer. The email campaign included basic questions
to check that the sample was received and enabled Dow
to gather additional information on the customer’s needs.
In the pilot trial, customers who responded to the sample
follow-up campaign were then routed to the sales team.
Responses that the pilot trial was not successful triggered
an alert to the Dow technical team for further follow up, as
it was an indication that there may be a technical problem.
“When we started looking for a marketing automation
solution, we looked at many different solutions,” says
Hubertus. “We are a very complex company with many
different portfolios that touch many points in the value
chain, so we need a very agile and flexible solution that
can be continuously adjusted,” says Hubertus. “Eloqua
is a great platform that gives you that freedom—even in
a $57 billion company like Dow.”
2013 Markie Award Winner in the category of
Automation Outside the Box
“This allows us to be much more proactive,” says
Hubertus. “We are a very big company and it makes us
much more agile than we ever were in this space.”
Final results of Dow’s sample follow-up test program in
Europe showed very high response rates in the 40-50%
range. “People told us this would never work,” says
Hubertus. “And to our surprise—and to our colleagues
surprise—this actually worked very fast and showed
immediate return on investment.”
In addition to generating high response rates, using
Eloqua to automate the follow-up program gave the
company tremendous insight into the performance of
samples, through the use of campaign reporting.
“We can now show in clear tangible dollar terms what the
return on investment of any given sample shipment is in
any given business unit in the company,” says Hubertus.
“That’s the biggest gain. At the same time we gain an
enormous amount of insight. Customers like to have this
channel back to us to give us input about our products.”
About The Dow Chemical Company
Dow (NYSE: DOW) combines the power of science and technology to
passionately innovate what is essential to human progress. The
Company is driving innovations that extract value from the intersection of
chemical, physical and biological sciences to help address many of the
world's most challenging problems such as the need for clean water,
clean energy generation and conservation, and increasing agricultural
productivity. Dow's integrated, market-driven, industry-leading portfolio of
specialty chemical, advanced materials, agrosciences and plastics
businesses delivers a broad range of technology-based products and
solutions to customers in approximately 180 countries and in high growth
sectors such as packaging, electronics, water, coatings and agriculture.
In 2013, Dow had annual sales of more than $57 billion and employed
approximately 53,000 people worldwide. The Company's more than
6,000 products are manufactured at 201 sites in 36 countries across the
globe. References to "Dow" or the "Company" mean The Dow Chemical
Company and its consolidated subsidiaries unless otherwise expressly
noted. More information about Dow can be found at www.dow.com.
About Oracle Eloqua
Oracle Eloqua is the leading provider of modern marketing automation
and revenue performance management software that helps ensure every
component of marketing works harder and more efficiently to drive
revenue. Eloqua software is now the centerpiece of the Oracle Marketing
Cloud. Companies across a wide range of industries rely on Eloqua’s
cloud-based software, professional services and education programs to
help them automate marketing processes across multiple channels,
target and nurture prospects and deliver highly qualified leads at a lower
cost to sales teams.
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