Simple campaigns with MailChimp or Excel no longer enough

Act-On met all these requirements and more. The platform enabled Microlise to easily develop brand consistent emails, run, assess, and optimize their campaigns, dramatically reduce their bounce rate, and reap the rewards of closed loop marketing.

Microlise is a fleet management solutions company that’s been helping commercial vehicle operators maximize efficiency, economy and performance for over 30 years. Microlise was a fast growing company with a marketing vision that was bigger than the tools they were using to implement it.

Act-On was simple to implement, with the system pretty much all set up within hours and ready to use. The onboarding process was good and gave us plenty of support.

Jonathan Dolby

Marketing Director

Challenge

They had a vast, internal knowledgebase they could leverage to create the kind of educational marketing campaigns that would build their brand and generate demand, but they knew their existing marketing tools didn’t support their ambitions. 

“Tools like MailChimp and Excel simply couldn’t handle the company’s evolving needs,” said Jonathan Dolby, Marketing Director for Microlise. 

“If we were going to grow sales, raise brand awareness, and establish ourselves as leaders, we needed to replace our rudimentary and unwieldy systems with a marketing automation platform that provided greater insight into web traffic and email performance, and that better aligned sales and marketing.”

Solution

Microlise’s search for a platform that met all these requirements led them straight to Act-On. But Microlise was also concerned about the cost of implementation, as well as onboarding of users. 

As first time marketing automation users, we needed a platform that was simple to put in place, with a quick return on investment, that also included excellent training opportunities. Act-On was simple to implement, with the system pretty much all set up within hours and ready to use. The onboarding process was good and gave us plenty of support,” Jonathan said. 

We were also looking at Pardot, but that would have meant additional costs being incurred, which was prohibitive when looking to quickly demonstrate value and ROI.

Implementation was quick and went smoothly, and Jonathan’s team got up to speed in no time. They were soon delivering meaningful content their buyers valued, and benefiting from the full range of Act-On’s capabilities. Microlise is an innovative fleet telematics and management services provider who wanted to challenge their industry’s stereotype of “sell, install, leave,” and position themselves as trusted thought leaders.

Act-On’s segmentation tools are powerful. Now we can manage subscriptions effectively, personalize communication, maintain clean lists with minimal effort.

Jonathan Dolby

Marketing Director

Highlights

When I joined the business, and we first started using Act-On, our bounce rate was around 20%. Now we’re down to 2 percent.

Jonathan Dolby

Marketing Director

Microlise has a bright future, and I know Act-On will help get us there.

Jonathan Dolby

Marketing Director

Results

Act-On has allowed Microlise’s marketing team to reach full velocity. They can quickly set up email campaigns and monitor and optimize their website – all with less effort.  For example, after successfully using Act-On to deliver their internal newsletter, they leveraged the Act-On’s email templates to quickly scale-up to a broad range of external campaigns.  Now they no longer have to build their emails in HTML first. They can create, run, and analyze campaigns – all within Act-On.

Act-On’s native integration with Salesforce has enabled Marketing to manage their lists with greater sophistication. “Act-On’s segmentation tools are powerful,” Jonathan said. “Now we can manage subscriptions effectively, easily personalize communications, and maintain clean lists with minimal effort.” The insight Marketing has gained from Act-On, and their greater ability to segment their audience, has led to very positive results, including an email campaign that over the past three years has helped increase attendance at the company’s annual conference from around 600 in 2014 to over 1,200 in 2017.

When I joined the business, and we first started using Act-On, our bounce rate was around 20 percent. Now we’re down to 2 percent. Act-On gives us easy visibility into this, and the tools built into the system ensure failing addresses can be professionally and effectively managed.

Jonathan Dolby

Marketing Director