Success Story
Engineering Efficiency Into Arup's B2B Marketing Operations
Tap’s tech expertise and CXM consulting have been instrumental in enabling Arup to consolidate its marcomms systems and mature its B2B marketing operations globally.
Industry
Global engineering-led consultancy
Date delivered
Ongoing
Length of project
Since 2021
Solution provided
B2B Marketing automation
Technology
Marketo Engage
The Project
When we met the built environment firm Arup, they were consolidating a disjointed marketing automation landscape into a single, global Marketo Engage implementation. The mission was to “harness technology to improve engagement with marketing activities and data-driven decision-making.” We’ve enabled meaningful, measurable progress toward those goals.
The Challenge
Arup’s legacy marketing automation stack was split across 5 systems. That might not sound like much for a business with 18k people in 34 countries. But it was disjointed enough to cause gaps in client data, planning, measurement, reporting and analysis.
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- Five databases: Siloed customer intelligence made CRM integration and data-driven decision-making almost impossible.
- Five delivery platforms: Brand messaging was inconsistent across regional marketing, causing friction in customer experiences.
- Five measurement and analysis processes: It’s hard to experiment and improve without a reliable benchmark or cohesive reporting.
- Five ways of doing things: Operational inefficiencies and a lack of collaboration amplified the inconsistencies that customers experienced.
The Solution
Arup worked with our friends at Adobe to implement Marketo Engage. The consolidated instance established a structure for a global, centrally managed solution. But implementation was just phase 1. To achieve Arup’s vision, Marketo Engage needed to enable consistent, compliant, data-driven B2B customer experiences.
That’s where Tap CXM came in. To get real, scalable value from the newly minted Marketo instance, we:
- Trained key users, enabling a Centre for Excellence and ensuring consistent across the diverse user base
- Improved reporting, giving Arup better insights to inform decision-making
- Integrated the CRM and data management protocols, ensuring stability and compliance
- Built a new preference centre to give clients more control over their data and communications (including 30 custom-built assets, set-up, and maintenance)
We also helped to:
- Design, model, and develop a data warehouse solution to realise the objectives of the Digital Marketing Vision project. It brings in data from various sources (Marketo, CRM, website and LinkedIn) to create dashboards that give Arup a better understanding of marketing channel performance
- Provide data management assistance, supporting the development of a custom Marketo/Microsoft Dynamics sync package
- Design multiple email and event templates across six workspaces
- Provide a framework for instance reporting
Tap CXM has been a great partner for Arup. Their customer-first approach was evident from day one. James and the team truly invested the time to understand how our business works, which meant solutions and recommendations were aligned to our structure and processes. This really helped to set us up for success and provide a solid foundation for growth.
Sarah Dilernia, Global Marketing Automation Lead, Arup
The Results
Arup’s B2B single, segmented Marketo Engage instance has improved deliverability and engagement – and supported significant database growth. But the real value comes from enabling consistent customer experiences, clarity in reporting and measurement, and collaborative processes.
- Consistent and coherent: Regional administrators and Tap-trained power users head up a Centre of Excellence that ensures experiences are customer-centric and on-brand.
- Global governance: Carefully engineered data management structures and a robust governance framework ensure compliance across borders.
- Success at scale: Consolidating audience intelligence enables Arup to understand customer engagement and make data-driven decisions that drive better value.
- Repeatable innovation: With clear KPIs, Digital Marketing Vision, and annual benchmarking and global reporting programmes, Arup can continue to build on success.
