B2B brand engages with 52% more customers thanks to smart marketing automation

About Essentra Components

For more than 70 years Essentra Components has been manufacturing precision metal and plastic products to support projects across the globe.

When Essentra’s customers get in touch, they’re often building something big – and they need the right part, fast. Keeping Essentra top‑of‑mind with buyers and engineers has been Simon Wade’s mission since he joined as E‑CRM Manager in 2020.

Back then, the list of challenges was long:

• No CRM integration or email editor meant building emails, segmentation and automation was only possible with knowledge of coding. Looking to scale his team, Simon needed a platform where non-technical marketers could be self-sufficient.
• Management of multiple brands, teams and languages was difficult – slowing down campaign roll-outs with lots of duplicated work
• Revenue opportunities missed as more B2B buyers moved online but left without making a purchase and couldn’t easily be retargeted.

On top of that, Essentra’s setup with their previous ESP was clunky and hard to scale and the support was poor, with a revolving door of account managers. “We needed a platform that works for an international B2B business without slowing us down,” says Simon.

After demoing various B2B marketing platforms, Dotdigital ticked every box, and became the foundation for a smarter, faster, more connected marketing operation.

Talking to 1.25 million contacts — in 17 languages

Five years on, Simon’s small-but-mighty team of three now speaks to 1.25 million contacts across 30 countries, in 17 different languages. That adds up to around 25 million targeted emails every year.

Here’s how…

1. Connected data for easier, smarter segmentation

Before Dotdigital, Essentra could only segment customers by location. Now, thanks to Dotdigital’s integration with its Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM, the team can target by industry, product type, buying stage, whatever’s relevant.

“Dotdigital and Dynamics talk to each other,” says Simon. “It means we can send the right product to the right person, at exactly the right time.”

With 45,000 products in the catalogue, that matters. An alert about the right add‑on can turn a small order into a big one, and makes life easier for the customer.

2. Automation that saves days

Gone are the days of batch-and-blast campaigns. Now, data passes from its CRM and website to Dotdigital in real-time. This means Essentra is able to run over 1,900 automated campaigns across its multiple accounts, including 1,500+ one-off transactional emails and 400+ automated journeys.

Now the team runs fully automated customer journeys, from abandoned cart nudges and prospect follow‑ups to retention emails, all without touching a line of code.

3. Child accounts that make scaling simple

With child accounts set up for each region, (EMEA, Asia-Pacific, US and Canada, Brazil and Mexico) plus separate accounts for internal comms and other Essentra brands like Wixroyd and Reid Supply, the team can quickly replicate winning campaigns across markets and see what’s working with cross-account analytics.

Simon comments, “This is another reason of why Dotdigital has been really good for us, it’s allowed me to add additional accounts for reasonable cost”. This is particularly important when dealing with multiple market and languages.

“We build the master in English, send it for translation, get approval from the teams, and we’re ready to go,” Simon explains.

The next step? Using Dotdigital’s Winston AI tool not just for subject line ideas but to automatically translate and localise content. That’s going to make the team even faster.

4. A partnership built on consistency and trust

Simon’s experience with Dotdigital stands in sharp contrast to his time with their old supplier, where he had four different account managers in just over a year and “no real connection.”

With Dotdigital, he’s had the same dedicated Customer Success Manager, for the entire four years since joining. That consistency has built trust and deep understanding of Essentra’s unique needs.

“It’s hugely valuable to work with someone who knows our setup inside out,” Simon says. “I’ve also been able to feed ideas into the product roadmap and I’ve seen a lot of improvements to the platform over the years”.

Results that speak for themselves

Essentra’s email click‑throughs have surged by 52%, rising from around 57,000 to almost 87,000 unique clicks – thanks to always‑on, automated campaigns. That’s tens of thousands more customers visiting product pages, exploring the catalogue, and moving closer to purchase.

Word also got around internally. Dotdigital is now used for employee communications too.

After five years with Dotdigital, Simon’s advice to any B2B or B2C marketer is clear: “Hook Dotdigital up to your CRM, add product and order data, and watch your campaigns fly.”

Start with abandoned carts, he says. “It’s so easy to set up, and even in B2B the response surprised us. Remind people about what’s left in their cart and they come back to buy.”

Deeper integrations

The next step is to integrate their websites directly with Dotdigital to further enhance personalization, targeting and programs. After experiencing the benefits of Dotdigital’s integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365, the Essentra team is also exploring using other integrations with platforms like Trustpilot, Bynder and LinkedIn to automate more of its marketing processes and provide more personalized experiences.

“When we went looking for a marketing automation partner, yes, we wanted great features. But more than that, we wanted a team willing to work with us, give advice, and help a small Email marketing team with big ambitions,” he says. “We found that in Dotdigital.”