Company: Siemens Industry, Inc., Alpharetta, GA
Company Division/Group: Drive Technologies
Company Description: Siemens Industry Sector is the world’s leading supplier of innovative and environmentally friendly products, solutions and services for industrial customers. With end-to-end automation technology and industrial software, solid vertical-market expertise, and technology-based services, the sector enhances its customers’ productivity, efficiency and flexibility.
Nomination Category: Marketing Campaign Categories - Industry
Nomination Sub Category: Marketing Campaign of the Year - Manufacturing

Nomination Title: Energy Efficiency Estimator Campaign

Tell the story of this nominated marketing campaign for the judges (up to 500 words). Describe the genesis, planning, execution, and results to date of your campaign. If applicable, remember to describe what's unique or innovative about your campaign:

Energy efficiency is a very hot topic in the manufacturing space. A significant opportunity to improve industrial energy efficiency exists through the implementation of drive technologies. According to the Department of Energy, the industrial sector consumes 70% of all energy consumed in the U.S. With energy efficiency initiatives, U.S. manufacturers could reduce energy consumption by as much as 30 percent, also resulting in operational efficiencies, improved productivity, better sustainability, and a strong return on investment.

Unfortunately, the topic of industrial energy efficiency is extremely nebulous and is becoming an overused buzzword. Most Plant Managers have received goals from their management to reduce energy usage, but don’t know the best way to achieve them. People are familiar with finding ways to save energy in their homes, but we found that Plant Managers needed to be educated on where and how to save energy in their plants.

Our mission was to find a unique way to stand out in this crowded marketplace on the topic of industrial energy efficiency, with a focus on education and adding value to our target audience.

The project was initiated by gathering all our energy efficiency experts for a strategic workshop, where we captured our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and our competitors’ positions. We discovered that there were lots of individual tools available, focusing on singular components, but not an integrated, holistic tool that addresses a customer’s entire system.

This discovery allowed us to develop a holistic, easy-to-use tool for the market. The result is our Energy Savings Estimator. This industry first became the cornerstone of our campaign, providing customers with an easy and fun method of understanding the potential savings that upgrades may offer to their existing systems – all through one website.

We also completed an analysis of our target audience, and developed an integrated marketing communications plan to promote the tool, our experts, and our expertise. The robust integrated marketing communications campaign included, PR, webinars, brochures, flyers, white papers, tradeshow material, case histories, nurturing email campaign, micro-site, paid search, and social media.

What made this campaign unique and innovative is that we focused on our potential customers’ experience, ensuring the right audience got the right message, at the right time. This allowed us to help Plant Managers understand where and how they can save energy in their plants, without compromising productivity. We enabled our target audience to become green without going into the red.

Results:

• From January 1st, 2012 to April 24th, 2012, we have had 1,902 page views of the tool. 80.41% are new visits, generating several sales leads.
• Our first webinar has generated 269 live views and 218 on-demand views.
o 94% of the survey respondents rated both the event and its quality at a 3 or 4, with 4 being the highest.
• In March alone, our lead nurturing program generated
o 13,459 qualified impressions
o 468 leads
• The press release announcing the tool received:
• Clips:104
• Impressions: 39,603,016
• Publicity Value: $366,327.90

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Provide a brief biography of the leader of the team that planned and executed this marketing campaign (up to 100 words):

Michael Young is the Marketing Programs Manager for Siemens Drive Technologies, part of Siemens Industry, Inc. Michael has been in various sales and marketing roles, focused on energy efficiency in several industries for over 10 years. He is currently responsible for developing and implementing new growth strategies within the industrial manufacturing and energy infrastructure markets. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering with Mathematics minor from Colorado State University, and a Master of Business Administration, specializing in Strategy, from Emory University. He currently resides in Atlanta, GA.