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How do you strengthen your international brand experience through one central email platform?
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For over seven years, iO has been working with Stage Entertainment, Europe's largest musical producer. What began as a User Experience project has grown into a broad strategic partnership. In this case study, you'll learn how we elevated international email marketing to a higher level.
Stage Entertainment wanted to make the brand experience more consistent across 7 countries through personalised communication. To meet these growth objectives, it was essential that all countries not only used the same systems but also learned from each other's successes.
By testing in multiple countries, they could expand their test group, enabling faster, cross-country rollout of positive results and leading to cost savings through uniformity.
iO developed a strategic approach, implementing HubSpot as a central CRM platform. This enabled Stage Entertainment to make data-driven decisions, personalise customer communications, and reduce marketing costs. How did we approach this? Read on to find out.
Central HubSpot platform for data-driven marketing decisions
Uniform customer communication across 4 countries for a consistent brand experience
Improved personalisation through integration with ticket data
Self-service platform for marketing teams with limited external assistance
Scalable platform for future omnichannel strategy
Stage Entertainment and iO: partners for musical and digital success stories
Stage Entertainment has been working with iO for more than 7 years. This long-standing collaboration provided a strong foundation for the email marketing project. What began as a User Experience inquiry has, over the years, blossomed into a broad strategic partnership. Currently, iO provides Stage Entertainment with a range of services, including UX, CXO, web development, and CloudOps. We also take care of CRM and marketing automation with HubSpot as the central platform.
Developing a central platform that not only increases operational efficiency but also contributes to a stronger brand experience, better customer experience, and ultimately, more ticket sales.
A strategic implementation of HubSpot as a central CRM platform that enables knowledge sharing between countries, reduces marketing costs, and lays the foundation for personalised customer communication.
HubSpot: the all-in-one platform for customer-focused growth
HubSpot transforms how companies communicate with their customers. The platform brings together marketing, sales, and service in one powerful environment. With tools for content management, lead generation, pipeline management, and customer service, HubSpot helps organisations strengthen their digital presence. As a Diamond Partner, iO implements and optimises this platform for clients like Stage Entertainment, replacing all separate systems with one integrated solution that connects teams and streamlines processes.
At iO, we use HubSpot to provide our partners, such as Stage Entertainment, with a platform offering complete support. From start-ups to large enterprises, HubSpot scales with every growth phase, and iO ensures seamless integration with existing systems. The user-friendly dashboard provides real-time insights into results, while automations handle time-consuming tasks. With iO's HubSpot expertise, organisations like Stage Entertainment gain the tools to build genuine customer relationships and achieve measurable growth.
Data-driven customer communication as a growth accelerator
For Stage Entertainment, having a central database with all the building blocks for email campaigns was essential. These needed to be easy to implement and customise for all target markets. iO implemented HubSpot as a centralised marketing automation platform for Stage Entertainment in the Netherlands, France, Spain, and Germany. This required a deeper understanding of customer behaviour.
Jolien Struyf, Teamlead Automation Antwerp at iO, explains: "HubSpot offers more than just email automation. By implementing tracking codes on websites and making connections with social media, we create a complete picture of the customer. This allows Stage Entertainment to communicate in a much more targeted way, directly helping them to achieve their goal of getting visitors to return more often."
The platform equips the marketing teams with the tools to develop campaigns themselves, based on data insights. This allows them to respond more quickly to trends and insights from different countries.
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Simplified system integration
One key advantage of the new setup was the simplified integration between HubSpot and BigQuery, the system where all ticket sales data is stored. Instead of multiple connections per country, we now have one central integration. This reduces technical complexity and increases the reliability of data flows. Additionally, countries previously used two separate systems for email marketing: one for automation and one for creating emails. With HubSpot, we've integrated these two systems as well.
"With HubSpot, we've not only implemented an email marketing platform, but also laid the foundation for a broader digital strategy. Marketing teams can now learn from each other and grow together towards an omnichannel approach," clarifies Struyf.
Furthermore, this integration ensures that ticket purchasing behaviour can be linked to marketing communications. We now understand better which approach works best for different target audiences.
This centralised approach allows us to invest once in development and optimisation, rather than making the same effort multiple times. As a result, Stage Entertainment saves costs and ensure a consistent brand experience across all countries.
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The power of a unified marketing approach
Struyf explains: "HubSpot has more functionalities than just automating emails. Think about tracking website activity, scheduling social media posts and ads, and linking these interactions to a contact. Beyond marketing, you can also use HubSpot for service and sales."
HubSpot enables marketing teams to look beyond just email campaigns. By tracking website interactions and using this data for personalised communication, they enrich the customer experience and improve results.
Benefits of the new platform
The HubSpot platform offers Stage Entertainment several concrete benefits:
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The Result: a single strong platform for all Stage Entertainment markets
The implementation of HubSpot has led to demonstrable improvements in customer interaction and conversion:
The introduction of personalised birthday emails has significantly increased interaction with contacts, showing an average open rate of 30% and a click-through rate of 25%.
The new 'abandoned browser' emails help convert potential customers who are hesitant about a purchase, directly contributing to higher conversion rates.
By tailoring communication to show preferences of visitors, we increase message relevance, leading to better engagement.
HubSpot rates the platform's performance as follows:
Open rate: Very good
Click-through rate: Excellent
Hard bounces: Excellent
Unsubscribes: Very good
These results confirm that the integrated, data-driven approach via HubSpot effectively contributes to Stage Entertainment's objectives.
From technical implementation to strategic advantage
The implementation of HubSpot goes beyond just a technical solution. By strategically using the platform, Stage Entertainment has built a competitive advantage. HubSpot offers opportunities to optimise email performance and to expand to social media and other marketing channels in the future.
The result is a marketing approach that is not only more efficient but also directly contributes to Stage Entertainment's growth objectives: more visitors, a better customer experience, and a stronger international brand experience.
This project forms the basis for further innovation at Stage Entertainment with HubSpot, with iO as a strategic partner.
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