EFI Takes a Big Picture View of Marketing Automation

As businesses wade further into the digital age, the need to manage campaigns, content and media has grown exponentially. What’s more, the task is becoming increasingly complex and challenging. Electronics for Imaging (EFI) is at the center of this revolution. The Fremont, Calif., firm, which was established in 1989, provides digital imaging and print management solutions for many of the largest names in the business world. The company handles everything from direct mail pieces to specialized printing on ceramic tiles and sophisticated cross-channel digital solutions.

As a result, the 1,800 employee firm has turned to Adobe Campaign to manage its marketing and business interactions more effectively. The system connects to Salesforce CRM.

“Supporting users is a huge challenge,” said Naomi Liu, senior manager of marketing operations for EFI. “There was a need for a more sophisticated approach than simply using one-off e-mail clients. In the past, we found ourselves hitting a threshold in terms of the types of things we could do, including handling lead scoring, lead nurturing and other tasks that are required to run more complex campaigns.”

The company, which has established alliances with imaging giants such as Canon, Konica Minolta and Xerox, as well as small design studios and local print businesses, has constructed a global hub for its e-marketing operations group. This allows the company to take a more centralized and strategic approach. “We track every single lead and every activity through our system,” Liu said. “This includes tradeshow attendance, webinar registrations and other sources. We do data cleanup and data matching. We support our lead generation organization, sales organization, portal support team and others.”

The environment provides a holistic view of contacts, prospects, partners and others, Liu noted. An integrated dashboard displays data in real-time. All of this has greatly improved the company’s ability to navigate lead cleansing, scoring and routing. Among other things, the system can determine where the lead came from, subsequent contact points, including calls or clicking links for additional collateral, and use the score to determine next steps. This, in turn, has allowed EFI to develop more targeted campaigns with higher volumes of contacts while sharing best practices and approaches. The firm can break campaigns into regional segments and other criteria.

“People have the information they need to act rather than dealing with a giant bucket of data and attempting to sort through everything. They can focus their energy in the most effective way,” Liu said.

The results have been nothing short of spectacular. EFI now runs about 10 times the number of campaigns compared to the past, while achieving far better results. The firm generates about 7 percent more leads and 10 percent more business opportunities than in the past, with higher conversion rates as well. The biggest challenges, Liu said, was ensuring that data was clean.

“It’s wise to embark on a massive data cleanup project up front. Once the data is in the system it’s a lot harder to clean up.”

Nevertheless, she deems the project a big win. “We have gained a level of speed and flexibility that gives us a strategic edge.”