“I hope that the Export Score will result in more companies realizing the potential they might get from working with EKF.”
Minister for Industry and Growth, Troels Lund Poulsen
EKF is the Danish Credit Agency – and helps danish export by making it possible and more attractive for customers abroad to buy from danish companies. EKF does that by help getting export projects financed and by insuring companies and banks against the financial and political risk, which might be associated with doing business with other countries. EKF is therefore important to the export succes of Denmark, which the quote from Troels Lund Poulsen clearly states.
Objective
The focus of EKF in the recent years has been to build up brand recognition. Measurements shows that they have succeeded.
The next step is to build up new business relations, nurture leads and create more sales among the 2000 or so export companies within the target group of EKF
Strategy
Not everyone in the target audience is ready to talk to EKF about export financing. Very often they have not yet realized the need for funding or do not understand the possibilities with EKF. This might results in loss of potential business and generally lead to companies not realizing their full export potential.
The target audience, which consists of export companies in Denmark, are consequently in very different stages of readiness with regards to considering EKF. The strategy was therefore to create a campaign that would help them realize their own needs and opportunities in relation to export – and nurture them further so that they would understand and demand the finance solutions from EKF.
The communication concept was: The Export Score. It is a test that measures the export strength of a company and provides an indication of how financially prepared it is to achieve export succes abroad. The campaign evolved around an interactive website – a Demand Generator – and the message: “The most successful companies have an Export Score above 70. Take the test and find yours”
Demand Generator: www.eksportscore.dk
Participants would provide contact information and e-mail permission – and answer 20 questions relating to their challenges with export financing. Especially with regards to financing needs, customer credits and loss on export orders. Tuborg Research Centre at Aarhus University helped out on questions and feedback on productivity and experience.
Part of the personalized result was an Export Score and individualized product recommendations and good expert advice. All based on their individual answers. For some it was quite evident that they would benefit considerably from talking directly to EKF. Many of them asked for a phone call.
Campaign elements
The campaign ran in a number of different media. All with the same goal of driving online traffic to www.eksportscore.dk
- Display advertising: Banners – both media specific, retargeting and programmatic
- Direct Mail: A letter with a gimmick that would let the participants calculate a partial Export Score by answering 2 of the 20 questions
- InMail: A personalized invitation sent via LinkedIn for selected accounts and roles
Nurturing
All participants gave their permission to participate in the nurturing program, which was segmented into to 3 tracks based on based on key challenges and needs. 7 days after the test participants would receive the first of series of nurturing e-mails with high value content like e-books, online quizzes, Case videos and similar. All depending on their profile.
Content marketing
The campaign revolved around good content. The Export Score itself is interactive content with the ability to uncover needs and based on this provide the relevant insight that will enable the participant to move on with Export projects. The same goes for the e-mail program, which consisted of a series of e-mails with thought leader ship inspiration, followed up by experiences from other Export companies and concluded with product information and a clear call-to-action.
Content consisted of:
- Eksportscore.dk
- e-books
- Eksportens Danmarkskort – an interactive game about Export knowledge
- Cases
- Brochures
- Product selector – interactive product recommendations based on profiles and needs
- Product sheets
- Call-to-action: get a credit assessment or credit guarantee
Results
The campaign was an always on strategy and ran for almost two years non-stop ending only in may 2018. It created a lot permissions and leads and more than 1300 people took the test and entered the nurturing program. After running for just 2 months the first major client was signed.
Both the display and especially the LinkedIn campaigns had very high respons rates. In particular the InMail performed at index 200+ compared to the average. Also the nurturing e-mauils had click and open rates way above the normal benchmark for B2B e-mails in the financial sector.
