How Kärcher automated the campaigns

Post Purchase Workflows Email Marketing: How Kärcher automates campaigns

13.08.2024 Responsible editor: Stefan Girschner 4 min reading time

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The Kärcher Group has set itself the goal of setting up and scaling email marketing more efficiently by integrating automated post-purchase workflows. To achieve this, the cleaning equipment manufacturer has opted for the Adobe Experience Cloud.

(Image: Kärcher)

Die Alfred Kärcher SE & Co. KG is a manufacturer of cleaning equipment and systems with headquarters in Winnenden, Baden-Württemberg. The family-run company is a global market leader and generated around 86 percent of its own sales outside of Germany in 2023. By establishing new branches, including in Uzbekistan and Vietnam, Kärcher has also invested in developing new markets and in being close to its customers. In order to strengthen email marketing in particular using post-purchase workflows, Kärcher relies on the performance of the Adobe Experience Cloud. The aim is to be able to make individual offers to the company’s customers automatically and in real time in order to strengthen customer loyalty and deepen customer relationships.

Since 2019, the Kärcher Group has been using the Adobe Experience Cloud the email marketing solution Adobe Campaign and the analysis tool Adobe Analytics – which helps to collect and analyze data from every digital touchpoint along the entire customer journey and to provide cumulatively meaningful insights about the target group. The Kärcher Adobe Campaign as an integrated system with links to the website, the company’s own data lake, the Kärcher Home&Garden app and Adobe Analytics, among others. Kärcher uses a standardized data model that enables both the global integration of channels and individual segmentation of campaigns depending on the target country.

Email marketing supports customer journey analysis

In addition, there are workflow and content templates that are rolled out worldwide, allowing all national companies to use the same campaigns and comprehensive analyses of the customer journey. In addition, it is possible to enrich the centrally offered and managed data and templates with your own local data or campaign approaches, for example from the customer’s purchase history, in order to be able to carry out region-specific marketing and sales activities.

To strengthen post-purchase workflows, Kärcher relies on the Adobe Experience Cloud.

(Image: Adobe)

With the motto “Think Global, Act Local”, Kärcher has set itself the goal of quickly rolling out email marketing and post-purchase workflows worldwide and implementing centrally prepared campaigns with a local focus. “We see the global data model via the Adobe Campaign Standard instance as the key to creating global email marketing standards at Kärcher and scaling automation success stories. The technical focus is central and the outbound marketing focus is on the countries,” explains Raphaëlle Périé, CRM and email marketing manager at Kärcher.

We see the global data model via the Adobe Campaign Standard instance as the key to creating worldwide email marketing standards at Kärcher.

Best possible offers for customers

In the case of post-purchase workflows, Kärcher initially uses the purchase date to automatically provide customers with further information immediately after the purchase and to be able to make additional, service or cross-selling offers based on the purchase. Kärcher also uses local data and filtering options to be able to make the best possible offers to its customers locally.

This decentralization in email marketing campaigns is accompanied by a centralization in service and support, which Kärcher’s national companies need in view of the complexity of Adobe Campaign. “Our post-purchase workflows are clearly one of the advanced features of Adobe Campaign, so the support is very welcome,” explains Lars Keßler, CRM and email marketing manager at Kärcher.

Through automated, optimally adapted, personalized mailings, we achieved a 28 percent increase in newsletter opening rates.

On the other hand, the central service also gives the country companies the freedom they need to adapt the templates to their local needs and requirements. “Adobe Campaign gives our marketers at Kärcher the flexibility we need for our campaigns and the way we roll out, test and scale these measures worldwide,” adds Raphaëlle Périé.

Email marketing: success speaks for Adobe Campaign

“Through automated, optimally adapted, personalized mailings, we have achieved a 28 percent increase in newsletter opening rates. The click rate is also significantly up, with growth of nine percent compared to standardized standalone mailings. This shows how important it is to be able to reach our customers with new offers at the right moment – when they already have a positive connection with the brand and our products,” explains Lars Keßler.

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Success is not just a question of the right tools, but also the right strategy. Only when technology and strategy come together in the right place and at the right time can real success in global email marketing be achieved. This is especially evident in the shared history of Kärcher and Adobe.