Download HD Supply

Adobe Customer Story
HD Supply Facilities Maintenance:
orchestrating cross-channel marketing.
Leading supplier of maintenance, repair, and operations products
improves marketing efficiency and effectiveness with Adobe Campaign.
“Since moving to Adobe Campaign, our
response rates have increased because
of our targeted communications across
channels. We’re far more productive
and efficient as a marketing team.”
Kevin Jacobson, Marketing Manager,
HD Supply Facilities Maintenance
SOLUTION
RESULTS
Adobe Campaign and Adobe Analytics
solutions within Adobe Marketing Cloud
CROSS CHANNEL
Coordinated campaigns
among online and offline
channels, personalized
every interaction
RICH SEGMENTATION
Generated and revised
customer segments to
allow targeting based on
broad array of variables,
boosting returns
RELEVANT OUTREACH
Delivered personalized,
channel-appropriate
communications and offers
ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS
Reporting based on central
data source drove integrated
marketing, continuous
improvement
Adobe Customer Story
HD Supply Facilities Maintenance
Customized interactions
Established in 1974
HD Supply Facilities Maintenance prides itself on providing maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO)
products on time, on-site. The company strives to deliver the highest quality products, support, services,
and fulfillment in the industry. Just as HD Supply Facilities Maintenance provides customized solutions
for customers’ MRO needs, the company seeks to tailor every marketing interaction to meet and even
anticipate those needs. To personalize marketing campaigns across online and offline channels, HD
Supply chose the Adobe Campaign and Adobe Analytics solutions in Adobe Marketing Cloud.
Single-source supplier for 27,000+
products
San Diego, California
www.hdsupply.com/facilities-maintenance/
CHALLENGES
•Coordinate cross-channel marketing
campaigns
•Consolidate diverse systems and data
sets to improve marketing productivity
•Enable robust segmentation to power
personalization
•Streamline and automate reporting for
continuous campaign improvement
“Using Adobe Campaign, we
have coordinated our different
marketing processes and have a
centralized customer data source
for cross-channel marketing.”
Kevin Jacobson, Marketing Manager, HD
Supply Facilities Maintenance
“Previously, we had disconnected marketing processes and multiple sources of information for email
marketing, direct marketing, and reporting,” says Kevin Jacobson, Marketing Manager, HD Supply Facilities
Maintenance. “Using Adobe Campaign, we have coordinated our different marketing processes and have a
centralized customer data source for cross-channel marketing.”
Gaining a comprehensive customer view
HD Supply Facilities Maintenance is a leading business-to-business provider of MRO products to
multiple industries—multifamily, hospitality, educational and commercial properties, healthcare
providers, and municipal and government facilities. With more than 27,000 items in stock, strategically
positioned distribution centers, and a fleet of more than 700 vehicles, HD Supply Facilities Maintenance
provides everything from signage and paint to plumbing repair parts—all necessary for customers to
maintain their facilities.
The company reaches customers through a 1,200-person field sales team, a comprehensive website, and
an expert staff taking phone orders to help customers get the products they need. Additionally, HD Supply
Facilities Maintenance distributes 6.5 million email marketing messages to customers and executes roughly
100 direct-mail campaigns a year, each involving thousands or even hundreds of thousands of pieces of mail.
Disconnects in campaign management
Over the years, as the company marketed to customers through a wide variety of channels, campaign
management increasingly became a challenge. Several factors led to long lead times, lack of control,
and limited coordination and flexibility in managing cross-channel marketing efforts.
The company relied on several disconnected processes, systems, and channel-specific third-party marketing
vendors. Direct-mail and email marketing campaigns were managed using different tools and data input sources.
Customer segmentation, accomplished using yet another tool created by a third party, lacked flexibility.
Segments were largely defined by single parameters such as industry, product category, or past purchases. HD
Supply Facilities Maintenance wanted to be able to segment customers on an unlimited set of variables to
improve marketing outcomes through personalization.
Adobe Customer Story
“We use Adobe Campaign
every hour of the day. It is our
go-to segmentation, campaign
management, and reporting tool.”
Kevin Jacobson, Marketing Manager, HD
Supply Facilities Maintenance
For reporting, HD Supply Facilities Maintenance had used Microsoft Access databases—yet another
siloed source of data. Reporting had become more like a reactive activity, rather than a proactive part of the
company’s marketing success. Without a consolidated, cross-channel marketing platform, marketers could
not customize reports and design campaigns for complete, coordinated customer experiences.
“Because marketing processes and systems were siloed, we couldn’t get a comprehensive view of each
customer,” says Jacobson. “If we sent them an email on Monday and a direct-mail piece later that same
week, we couldn’t connect these two activities to be sure we presented relevant, cross-channel messages
and offers.”
Inefficiencies and delays
HD Supply Facilities Maintenance marketers were pulling data from several sources and working with
separate systems, making workflows increasingly time-consuming. Setting up email marketing campaigns
required multiple rounds of requesting lists, having analysts combine and scrub data, and further manipulating
lists—all before a campaign could be launched.
Executing real-time email campaigns based on customer behavior or recent purchases was not possible,
because even the first step—establishing a clean distribution list—could take up to a week. Direct-mail
campaigns were equally delayed, and not as informed and effective as they could be. “Our marketing
processes were manual,” says Jacobson. “We wanted to reduce marketing lead times, gain control of
campaigns, and become more agile and proactive in marketing to customers.
Comprehensive, cross-channel marketing management
Recognizing the need to improve marketing returns, HD Supply Facilities Maintenance began looking for a
multichannel campaign management solution. In the short term, the solution needed to be able to pull data
from SAP to fuel marketing campaigns and reporting. Longer term, the company wanted to integrate with
Salesforce.com, as well as call center and marketing resource management (MRM) solutions to be able to
personalize campaigns across more online and offline channels.
HD Supply Facilities Maintenance also wanted to empower non-technical staff to make changes and manage
reporting. HD Supply Facilities Maintenance selected Adobe Campaign. “Adobe Campaign was a great fit for us
due to its ease of integration with multiple systems, endlessly flexible segmentation capabilities, and intuitive
reporting,” says Jacobson.
The company engaged Adobe Consulting to help with implementation. Today, transactional information from
SAP is loaded into Adobe Campaign nightly. Master customer information is loaded weekly. The data serves
as the basis for coordinated cross-channel direct-mail and email campaigns, as well as integrated reporting
with Adobe Analytics. Marketers have immediate access to the common pool of information to create new
segments and gain insights.
Adobe Customer Story
SOLUTION AT A GLANCE
Marketing in real time
•Adobe Marketing Cloud, including the
Adobe Campaign and Adobe Analytics
solutions. Capabilities used include:
HD Supply Facilities Maintenance can now send out highly targeted email campaigns to customer segments
based on a rich combination of customer master data, transactions, and other variables. Marketers can readily
define and redefine customer segments on their own to improve control over campaigns.
•Visual campaign orchestration
•Integrated customer profile
•Cross-channel execution
•Targeted segmentation
•Ad hoc analysis
•Adobe Consulting
Efficiency is on the rise as well, with marketers saving an average of 400 hours of work for every direct-mail
campaign, freeing time for other strategic tasks. Direct marketing has now been brought in-house, resulting in
further savings and efficiencies. Email campaigns that used to take a week to deploy can now be implemented
in real time or automatically, resulting in additional savings in time and money.
“We use Adobe Campaign every hour of the day,” says Jacobson. “It is our go-to segmentation, campaign
management, and reporting tool. Today, for email marketing, we just set up a workflow and distribute
the emails in real time to desktop users and mobile customers. There are no more long lead times or
cumbersome hand-offs.”
The marketing team also can use Adobe Campaign to send out automated campaigns that are completely
hands off and fully coordinated among channels. HD Supply Facilities Maintenance might discover
through analytics that a customer has ordered four times through the call center, but never from the website.
Adobe Campaign can send a promotional offer to convert the customer to purchase via the lower-cost
e-commerce channel.
Adobe Campaign is also used to convert new customers. As soon as data loads from SAP to Adobe
Campaign, the system can kick off an activation campaign. When a new account loads, Adobe Campaign can
check to see if the customer has made a purchase and has opted in to receive emails. If so, the Adobe solution
can send an email to prompt a purchase. If not, it can initiate distribution of a direct-mail piece automatically.
Looking to the future, HD Supply plans to integrate with Salesforce.com for lead management, as well as call
center and MRM systems to further orchestrate cross-channel customer interactions.
Returns through productivity and personalization
For more information
www.adobe.com/marketing-cloud/campaignmanagement.html
www.adobe.com/marketing-cloud/web-analytics.html
www.adobe.com/solutions/digital-marketing.html
Adobe Systems Incorporated
345 Park Avenue
San Jose, CA 95110-2704
USA
www.adobe.com
“With Adobe Campaign, we get a complete view of every customer—promotions, communications sent and
received, and more. That picture continues to get more comprehensive,” says Jacobson. “Since moving to Adobe
Campaign, our response rates have increased because of our targeted communications across channels. We’re
far more productive and efficient as a marketing team.”
Adobe and the Adobe logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
© 2015 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. 7/15