How DAW gave new color to personalized customer engagement

Deutsche Amphibolin-Werke (DAW SE) is Europe’s largest private manufacturer of building paints and thermal insulation. Founded over 130 years ago, the family-owned company from Hesse counts millions of DIY enthusiasts as well as painting contractors, architectural firms, and housing associations among its customer base.

In addition to the production of paints, varnishes, and facade and insulation technology, the group’s specialty is providing services for professional construction trades. With Alpina and the professional brand Caparol, DAW is now represented in 40 countries and operates 25 production sites across Europe with over 6,000 employees.

DAW uses a two-tier sales organization to serve both the trade and brand sectors. These two customer bases engage with various digital offers and services, including the Caparol World and the Caparol Club, a loyalty program and the website with corresponding applications. Just like these touchpoints, the customer journey was characterized by a diverse system landscape that had grown over decades. This resulted in multiple “non-touching points” and system breaks, which slowed down the customer experience.

Due to the use of two CRM systems, data was isolated and allowed little overarching insight. The consequences: inefficient reporting, contradictory measurements, and marketing campaigns that were difficult to individualize. Despite the vast data assets available, customer communication had followed the “Hello Everyone” principle for many years.

DAW’s customers include tradespeople of all ages and abilities, including owners, master crasftsmen, journeymen, and apprentices. The brand’s goal was to address customers based on their behaviors..

To move to a personalized approach, it was necessary to unify the system landscape and make data usable for all areas. The aim was to create a harmonious CX that offers more personalized, relevant experiences across all channels and purchase phases with the help of consolidated data.

To give the customer journey a custom touch, DAW set three overarching goals:  

• Build a digital customer ecosystem to pick up each customer at the right digital touchpoints at the right time.  
• Harmonize CX to achieve an intelligent 360° view of customers across all touchpoints, understanding their needs and preferences.  
• Implement future-proof technologies to deliver new, improved products and services with AI.  

Just like a painter who first prepares the surface by sanding it down, the foundation for the CX project also had to be laid first. DAW worked together with implementation partner valantic, and the first step was identifying relevant data that was important for optimizing the customer journey and for long-term customer retention. 

Then the project team focused on the groundwork, which related to five specific use cases. These use cases defined by DAW formed the basis of the project and influenced the development of the target architecture: 

1. Customer classification and churn 
2. Marketing automation 
3. Customer lifetime value 
4. Next best action or next best offer 
5. Cross-selling and upselling 

Because DAW had already been using a strong SAP ERP system for years, the technology choice ultimately fell on a corresponding best-of-suite solution: for the first time, the SAP CX portfolio was integrated and implemented via the new real-time standard connectors, consisting of three components: 

1. SAP Customer Data Cloud (CDC)

With the backend solution for Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM), a uniform customer login across various touchpoints was created. Among other things, SAP CDC is used for preference and consent management for legally compliant consent to the use of data (such as for newsletter subscriptions). Thus, the SAP CDC enables a central login for the myCaparol portal, where customers are able to log in at various touchpoints with a customer profile. 

2. SAP Customer Data Platform (CDP)

The SAP CDP brings together all the data from the various touchpoints, CRM systems, and the marketing tool. The CDP uses this data to create a 360° profile for each customer and, based on this, can perform targeted segmentation and send corresponding signals to SAP Engagement Cloud. The CDP forms the basis for close real-time integration of the systems.

3. SAP Engagement Cloud 

Supported by tracking, product, and sales data, the marketing tool SAP Engagement Cloud is a key element for automating marketing campaigns across all digital channels. To ensure personalized content is delivered to the right target groups at the right time, the platform is connected directly to the SAP CDP. An interface with the CDC is integrated for data protection-compliant newsletter sign-up and opt-out processes. 

With this technology toolset, DAW can always use the right data mix to provide its diverse customer base with targeted personalized offerings and create holistically convincing customer experiences. 

Prior to using SAP Engagement Cloud, DAW had not previously used marketing automation, but since implementation, the omnichannel engagement platform has revolutionized the brand’s approach to CX.  

SAP Engagement Cloud enables DAW to automate behavior-based, personalized communication in the most important phases of the customer journey in near real-time. Targeted segmentation has enabled the brand to efficiently and effectively communicate with different customers, from experienced construction pros to apprentices.  

Together with valantic, DAW defined and prioritized several use cases, which were set up in SAP Engagement Cloud using segmentation, automation flows, and VCE templates. The required data is collected from multiple sources and enriched via SAP CDP.  

Some of DAW’s automations include:  

• Reactivation: Caparol Club members receive a reactivation campaign after 90 days of inactivity. 

• No product purchase: Members who have had a delivery receipt for three months receive a triggered message, which may contain a special offer. 

• Club anniversary: Members celebrating their fifth club anniversary receive a personal trigger with a thank you (e.g. additional points, multiple points). 

• Cross-sell and up-sell: Customers receive cross- and up-sell product recommendations based on their recent top product purchases. 

With SAP Engagement Cloud in place, DAW has been able to effectively identify behaviors among customers, including purchasing behavior, interactions with the loyalty program, and the connection between both behaviors. Not only can the marketing team link the customer’s purchasing behavior to their behavior in the loyalty program, but they can also influence this behavior with targeted, personalized messages.  

Looking to the future, the team is working a concept for expanding existing use cases so that in order to tailor the approach and offerings even more closely to customers’ needs. 

valantic is a leading partner in digital transformation, providing end-to-end support from strategy to execution. With over 4,000 experts and deep expertise in the SAP CX portfolio, valantic develops innovative solutions for all areas of business – in e-commerce and beyond. As a certified SAP Engagement Cloud partner, valantic specializes in marketing automation and omnichannel campaigns, delivering modern solutions to enhance personalized marketing and shopping experiences. Focused on seamless customer journeys and sustainable business success, valantic helps companies excel in the digital era.