THE PARTICIPANTS
The nation’s leading window manufacturer pioneered the U.S. impact-resistant window and door industry and today is the nation’s leading manufacturer and supplier of residential impact-resistant windows and doors. This manufacturer deploys its products to a distributor network throughout all coastal states that are affected by hurricanes and has the highest density of distributors within their network in the state of Florida. The distributor network then sells the manufacturer’s products to commercial consumers, much like the automotive industry. One of the main drivers of sales is through a co-op advertising program where investment is split between the manufacturer and each individual distributor that participates in the program.
CHALLENGE
Before 81 & Sunny partnered with America’s largest impact window manufacturer, the ability to understand how or if consumer leads being driven from digital advertising were actually leading to sales or what type of ROI the leads were producing did not exist. This was apparent at both the corporate level and through the distributor co-op program. In addition, the distributors that had participated in the manufacturer’s advertising co-op program were equally in the dark about whether their investments into the program were positively impacting their bottom line’s or not, which left them fairly jaded on the entire program as a whole and the agencies that formerly managed the co-op programs for the manufacturer.
SOLUTION
First, 81 & Sunny was hired by the manufacturer to manage all digital media investments at the corporate level and to also manage the digital advertising co-op program. Basically, 81 reengineered on both fronts and started everything over from scratch because past procedures and data were of little to no value. Second, 81 built a custom CRM platform for the manufacturer that would allow leads driven from the distributor co-op program to be tracked through the entire sales process. Third, 81 worked with all 30 distributors that participated in the program on an individual basis to make sure all campaigns were built to each of their specific business goals and to implement proper performance tracking so that each distributor would have full understanding of the performance associated with their investments. Finally, after the program launched and the data began pouring in, 81 developed ROI equations based on each of the distributor’s individual sales numbers.
A few data points included in the ROI equation were lead to sale conversion rate, margins, average order values, etc. This was key because each distributor operates differently, so a uniformed approach would be impossible to determine overall program success. In the end, the program has been running successfully for over 2 years with many distributors expanding their businesses into other ventures or opening up second locations afforded by the profits of the co-op program.