Abcam, owner of one of the world’s largest catalogs of antibodies, engages Neolane’s conversational marketing technology to conduct high-response, one-to-one personalized B2B campaigns

1. Abcam implements Neolane to win healthy B2B
marketing results
Customer name: Abcam
Abcam, owner of one of the world’s largest catalogs of antibodies, engages Industry: Life Sciences/Pharma/
Bio-tech/B2B eCommerce
Neolane’s conversational marketing technology to conduct high-response, Business Need: Create effective B2B
marketing communications in ten languages.
one-to-one personalized B2B campaigns Engage with a rapidly growing number
of bio-tech scientists worldwide, while
promoting a catalog of 67,000+ products
Abcam is a producer and distributor of research- and deliverability could at best only be “We needed a smarter, more
grade antibodies with offices located in the roughly estimated, making it hard to direct user-friendly and scalable
UK, U.S., Japan and Hong Kong. The company improvements.
solution to meet our
produces and distributes its own and third-
party produced antibodies to academic and Additionally, the email application couldn’t requirement for delivering
commercial users in over 70 countries. With support the marketing best practices Abcam personalized content to our
an online catalogue of over 67 ,000 products, wanted to introduce, such as highly refined rapidly expanding customer
Abcam covers hundreds of disciplines including content personalization, campaign testing and base. We evaluated a
cancer, immunology and neuroscience. The event-triggered emails. number of tools, but were
company’s vision is to build the largest online
at first disappointed by
antibody resource in the world while also Seeking a scalable solution
ensuring that the antibodies are of high quality their inflexibility and lack
“We needed a smarter, more user-friendly and
and commercially viable. Some 600-800 new scalable solution to meet our requirement for of sophistication. Then we
products are added to the catalog every month. delivering personalized content to our rapidly discovered Neolane.”
expanding customer base, said Warwick. “We
”
Challenging customer communications Jim Warwick, Chief Operating
evaluated a number of tools, but were at first
Officer at Abcam
“Each of our customers is a specialist and disappointed by their inflexibility and lack of
our challenge is to generate timely content sophistication. Then we discovered Neolane. ”
that’s specific to their field of activity, said Jim
” TECHNOLOGY ENVIRONMENT
Warwick, chief operating officer at Abcam. “Only “Neolane was the only platform to meet • Custom ERP and CRM system
by seeing the subject matter as directly relevant our needs on functionality and scalability • SQL Server
to them, will an individual open it, read it and and it offers impressive one-to-one
• On-site licence
perhaps click-through to the Abcam website. ” personalization capabilities rather than just
simple segmentation, said Warwick. “Neolane
” OBJECTIVES
Abcam’s main channel of outbound customer is highly configurable and while very
• Increase campaign deliverability,
communication is email. Customers can opt-in via sophisticated, it’s user friendly for marketers.
” relevancy, reactivity and sales
the website to receive newsletters on their area
• Reduce complexity, timeframes and
of research, product updates and other marketing For Abcam, there was also its data management cost
content such as regional news, promotions and policy to consider. The company maintains a • Improve adherence to preferred
invitations to Abcam scientific conferences. central database offering a high quality and techniques and procedures
very detailed single customer view serving
In its early days, the company developed multiple enterprise applications. Abcam RESULTS
a proprietary email marketing application, wanted its marketing automation solution • Reduced new campaign creation time
which allowed marketers to semi-automate to draw upon that existing data source for by approximately 35 percent, saving 48
rudimentary segmented campaigns. Requiring advanced segmentation of its customer base. staff days/year
SQL database query skills for any advanced • Achieved email open rates of 18.4
segmentation and the ability to write html code, “We found that most marketing automation percent and click-throughs of about 3.6
percent
IT support was often required. As the company tools mandate use of their own proprietary
• Email deliverability rates now typically
grew its product range, customer base and the datamart, which would have meant
exceed 96 percent
number of campaigns it needed to run, it began undertaking a complex integration exercise, ”
to reach the limits of its in-house tool. said Warwick. “Neolane offered us the freedom
to couple directly with our existing customer
Reporting was limited, too. Although click- database, saving considerable expense and
throughs were measurable, open rates the potential risks of data integration.
”

2. “The accessibility and ease-of-use of campaign reports has enabled us
to analyze overall campaign performance and trends guiding continual
improvement. We’ve also used it to test the effect on deliverability and
reactivity of using different variables for the same email.
”
Phased implementation Considered essential by Abcam, campaign
Implementation was phased over twelve reporting is another Neolane strength.
months starting with the UK and progressing
across the company’s worldwide operations. “The accessibility and ease-of-use of
Abcam engaged Neolane Professional Services campaign reports has enabled us to analyze
to help optimize more complex processes such overall campaign performance and trends
as automated one-to-one content personalized guiding continual improvement, said Warwick.
”
product updates. Abcam also committed to “We’ve also used it to test the effect on
develop a senior eCommerce employee skilled deliverability and reactivity of using different
in campaign process design towards becoming variables for the same email. ”
a ‘Neolane super-user’ entrusted with building
workflows and supporting the team. Exciting benefits
Abcam is enjoying many benefits from its
Campaign optimization Neolane investment:
Captured as workflow elements, Abcam’s
marketers can now simply build a performance- • Email deliverability rates typically exceed
optimized, one-to-one campaign by selecting 96 percent. Abcam’s deliverability rates
the relevant workflow items. No input from IT with several very large organizations
is required. employing thousands of customer contacts
are up by 400 percent through using a
“We now have a central point of control over technique known as ‘throttling’ to control
campaigns, said Warwick. “Neolane enables
” the number of emails sent hourly to any
us to define, capture and enforce best-practice one domain name.
process workflows including for proper
• Improved targeting and one-to-one
proofing and authorizations.“
personalization of subject titles and content,
All of Abcam’s campaigns now run on Neolane and better formatting is also stimulating
including: campaign opening rates of 18.4 percent .
Click-through rates now average 3.6 percent.
• Automated one-to-one personalized product • The manual input to prepare one-off
updates to enable customers to keep-up with campaigns such as the regional, product
products that are relevant to their research and research field updates has fallen by
some 35 percent. While it took perhaps 3
• Research field updates: 20-25 different
hours to create a campaign before, it takes
newsletters per month, with personalized,
around 2 hours now; saving 48 staff days
relevant news and offers
per year.
• Monthly regional updates
Neolane, Inc.
• Specific promotions targeted to key accounts In the near future, Abcam will improve One Gateway Center - 7th Floor
• Event-triggered messages: e.g. new marketing return on investment further. For 300-334 Washington Street
example, finer personalization and ‘next-best- Newton, MA 02458
customer welcomes and purchase follow-ups
offer’ features will be enabled by utilizing Office: +1 617 467 6760
• Event invites: Abcam seminar and conference Fax: +1 617 467 6701
alerts to the specific customers that would further degrees of intelligence gleaned
info@neolane.com
find them relevant from very recent interactions. More event-
www.neolane.com
triggered campaigns will be run too, linked to
At Abcam, high-level personalization variables interaction behavior. United States
include the individual’s discipline, specific area United Kingdom
of expertise and their geography. Abcam’s Warwick concluded: “We are confident that France
international offices and audiences are with Neolane we can continue to improve the Scandinavia
supported by ten language options and reflect quality of our customer marketing campaigns,
cultural preferences. Much finer personalization supporting our continued growth.” Neolane and the Neolane logo are trademarks or registered
trademarks of Neolane Inc. in the United States and other
is achieved through analysis of each customer’s countries. All other trademarks contained herein are the
property of their respective owners.
click-throughs and purchases.
© 2011 Neolane, Inc.