Outokumpu welds together a stronger marketing approach with Oracle Eloqua

With more than 100 years of experience in mining and metal production, Outokumpu is a global leader in sustainable stainless steel. Founded in 1910 in Finland, the company is renowned for its high quality and boasts the widest product portfolio in the market. It also has the lowest carbon footprint and highest levels of recycled content in the global steel industry.

To identify new business opportunities and to increase profitability across the globe, Outokumpu needed a digital overhaul of its marketing and sales operations. Initially, digital channels and processes played practically no part in Outokumpu’s marketing. This meant a complete lack of tools and capabilities in digital marketing, lead management, and nurturing. The marketing team did not have sufficient means to support sales in their efforts to acquire new business.

A further challenge was the diversity of stainless-steel products. Outokumpu’s portfolio includes dozens of stainless-steel grades for various applications across different industries, like automotive, transportation, energy, infrastructure, and appliance manufacturing.

Outokumpu needed to reach the right buyer personas globally and make marketing more measurable and data driven. The company also wanted to generate new leads for nurturing and create lead management processes that help unite the efforts of marketing and sales.

Outokumpu explored several marketing automation systems and shortlisted two of them, including Oracle Eloqua, which had proven capabilities for B2B companies and had a skilled integrator partner in Finland. The company ultimately selected Oracle Eloqua for its better user interface and a lower overall price compared to the competition.

Outokumpu tapped Oracle Eloqua to build landing pages and lead scoring for its numerous marketing programs, with email nurturing flows triggered by gated content on landing pages or on LinkedIn. Throughout 2021 and 2022, Outokumpu had some 20 marketing automation lead programs running on Eloqua, triggered by form submissions, or based on contact behavior.

The average unique open rate for nurturing emails was 39.05%, which is 220% over the global industry benchmark, while the average unique click-through rate was 7.74%, or 419% over benchmarks. Outokumpu’s marketing programs have generated over 7,000 marketing leads and more than 3,000 sales leads in a period of 12 months. The sales pipeline volume generated by marketing increased 231% from 2020 to 2021.

Utilizing Eloqua Marketing, Outokumpu has achieved unprecedented synergy in lead management across nurturing flows, with new article downloaders or webinar registrants benefiting from expertly designed content paths tailored to their interests. These results are also an indication of the close cooperation between Outokumpu’s marketing and sales teams, with smooth, automated processes enabling the optimal use of resources.

Data-driven marketing specialist agency Luxid, formerly ID BBN, works with Outokumpu to build marketing programs across key target industries, create demand, and generate and nurture high-value leads.