CONSUMER PRODUCT MANUFACTURERS
Build a stronger online brand and drive sales across channels
Every day your current and future customers are online looking for your products and related information. Industry research says they're starting on your Web site -- a great chance for you to build direct relationships and loyalty, whether or not your customers buy directly from you. So how can you make sure your site motivates them to try and buy your products? How can you turn first time buyers into loyal customers?
Why consumer product manufacturers [CPMs] choose ATG
ATG's advanced personalization and dynamic targeting abilities will help you:
» Build a strong online brand and strengthen customer loyalty
ATG offers the most flexible platform on which to manage your brand. A rich, engaging, personalized experience attracts customers to your site, keeps them there longer, and entices them to return. You'll establish stronger direct relationships with your customers, even if you don't sell directly to them.
» Help visitors find, discover, and research products quickly
ATG offers many capabilities (affinity selling, commerce search, searchandising, product comparisons) to direct customers to the answers and information they need, and to expose relevant new products that customers may not have known about before. You can also guide consumers to relevant partners, retailers, and other sales channels.
» Easily manage multiple sites and brands
ATG offers one integrated platform that lets you share product catalogs and content across multiple sites and brands. You can also share customer information across sites, allowing for easy cross-brand promotion.
» Dynamically target content
ATG's renowned personalization platform gives manufacturers the power to dynamically assign customers to market segments based on their demographics, Web behavior, advanced segmentation; and any other data in your organization; and then target content to meet their needs.
» Empower your business users
ATG empowers brand managers, marketing managers, e-commerce managers, and merchandisers to directly control Web site content, the product catalog, e-commerce, promotions, coupons, and online marketing campaigns in a straightforward, easy to understand environment.
» Take the burden off of IT
ATG helps you lower IT overhead by empowering business users and integrating multi-site management from a single platform.
Key Business Models
Direct to Consumer e-Commerce
Whether you're selling direct from your Web site for the first time, or you're ready to expand your existing e-commerce presence, you need scalability and the power to personalize for your customer segments.
- Trust the industry's leading B2C commerce solution: ATG's capabilities are 15 years in the making, ranked number one by both leading industry analysts, and power more of the top direct-to-consumer retail sites than any other platform.
- Personalize your customer experience: Marketers and merchandisers can target the right content and products to the right customer with the right messages at just the right time.
- Empower your marketers and merchandisers: With ATG, one intuitive environment gives business users full control over your catalog and site content.
- Simplify site management: Multiple sites can be managed from a single ATG platform.
ATG in Action:
ATG has a long history of powering many B2C manufacturer Web sites. We continue to support their evolution and growth, and to help others prepare their online selling debuts.
- Appliance manufacturer Viking Range sells its small appliances and accessories online, while distributors still sell its large appliances directly.
- Apparel manufacturer Diane Von Furstenberg recently opened a new online store on ATG.
- Athletic manufacturer Nike sells personalized shoes online.
B2B e-Commerce and Channel Management
ATG's B2B capabilities include all the rich direct-to-consumer e-commerce functionality, with added solutions for managing relationships and transacting with indirect channels including distributors, retailers, and online marketplaces. Leading manufacturers use ATG to power distributor portals that deliver key channel management capabilities including:
- Ordering online: Contract/account buying, approvals/workflows, PO's, custom pricebooks and discounts, custom catalogs, order status reports, delivery notes
- Communicating product information: Product availability, product catalogs
- Delivering marketing/sales information and tools: Marketing materials, sales training, sales merchandise, contact lists / national account processing
- Presenting invoice and billing information: Invoice statements, remittance processing
By creating a satisfying online ordering environment and improving channel collaboration, you'll improve efficiencies, please your distribution network, and decrease direct sales costs.
- Manage multiple price lists and catalogs: Maintain separate catalogs and price lists based on different business customer segments, but manage them in one central environment.
- Provide role-based information and access: Individuals across customer organizations can be assigned recurring roles while still having individualized information access and permissions.
- Lower your total cost of ownership: Use one common platform to support your B2C, B2B, and brand marketing sites.
Personalization in B2B
ATG uses customer, account, contract, and history information to improve the online user experience for business customers. This includes delivering:
- Personalized home page based on role, location, contract, buying pattern, etc.
- Customized catalogs based on entitlements and contracts
- Personalized alerts, reminders, and email messages about new products, maintenance offers, specials, quotes, orders, invoices, etc.
- Automated ordering process with pre-saved information for order-entry
- Automated advice based on order / account status
- Pre-filled PO, shipping and billing forms
- Access to personal account information such as order status, transaction history/ reports, billing information, etc.
- Segment-specific marketing support to target the right marketing materials to the right distributors
- Targeted communications between product managers or account managers and buyers of those products
- Targeted brand- or product-related news and promotions for more effective branding
ATG in Action:
- Beverage manufacturer Coca-Cola personalizes B2B promotions based on the segment a customer is in; and hosts ratings/reviews in its online consumer store.
- Nutrition and weight management company Herbalife makes it easy for its more than 100,000 distributors to place orders and buy loyalty products online.
- Appliance manufacturer Viking Range also uses ATG to power its distributor sales.
Brand Marketing
Even if you're not selling your products online, your current and future customers are on your site doing product research and looking for purchase information. Here is your chance to educate, guide, and promote your key products.
- Boost brand loyalty: Use ATG's personalization capabilities to guide customers through the product discovery and selection process.
- Dynamically segment customers and target specific promotions to different segments.
- Use faceted navigation to guide customers to new discoveries
- Control the presentation of search results based on your brand strategy
- Recognize and give priority treatment to loyalty program members
- Anticipate when customers are having trouble and selectively offer live agent help
- Drive traffic to your retail partners: Offer targeted coupons on your brand site that consumers can redeem at retail sites or stores. Re-direct consumers immediately to retailers' Web sites when they're ready to purchase.
- Reduce total cost of ownership: Launch special interest or theme-driven sites quickly. Use a single platform, whether you are managing one brand in one country, or multiple brands and multiple sites in multiple geographies.
ATG in Action:
- ATG powers the brand marketing sites for manufacturers including Newell Rubbermaid, Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Daimler Chrysler, and many more.
- Procter and Gamble's Tide detergent site invites customers to post laundry tips, questions, articles, and comments about their experience with the product.
- Lawn and garden company Scotts is using ATG to build a non-transactional site that will present a product catalog and other promotional content.
- Baby food manufacturer Gerber uses eStara Click to Call on its Parents Resource Center, which gives site visitors the ability to speak with an infant care specialist 24/7.
- Auto manufacturer Chrysler found that twice as many people buy cars after using eStara Click to Call than after contacting the company through standard inbound calls.
Key Capabilities for CPM
Personalization and Rich Experience
Consumers need all the help they can get sorting through the massive quantity of product choices available to them on the Web. ATG helps you target content, to get the right information in front of your customers as quickly as possible. And ATG helps you give your customers the richest and most engaging experience possible to keep them on your site and make sure they come back. With ATG, you can:
- Communicate with similar customers based on interest: Dynamically segment customers based on their online behavior and profile information
- Target content based on a choice of factors: browse behavior, buying cycle stage, search terms used, loyalty status, purchase history, geography, segment, etc.
- Lead customers to priority products: Help them weed through extraneous content by providing intelligent recommendations with advanced searchandising and product comparisons.
- Choreograph pre-planned multi-stage interactions: Create personalized ongoing dialogues with your customers designed to meet them where they are and guide them to the next step - whether it's providing follow-up information, motivating a purchase, providing support, or driving a follow-up purchase.
- Integrate the latest Web 2.0 capabilities: ATG's flexible integration framework and extensive partner ecosystem (Bazaarvoice, PowerReviews, Scene7,) lets you easily add rich media, ratings, reviews to your site.
- Personalize your display of consumer generated content: With ATG, you can help your customers cut through the glut of ratings and reviews available on your site in a way that lets you target customer generated content to other customers based on shared characteristics ("people like you say...").
- Work with the best interactive agencies: ATG has strong partnerships with the best creative interactive agencies in the industry.
ATG in Action:
- Beverage manufacturer Coca-Cola personalizes B2B promotions based on the segment a customer is in; and hosts ratings/reviews in its online consumer store.
- Hunting and fishing manufacturer Cabela's hosts an online trophy room where customers can post pictures of their latest successes.
- Procter and Gamble's Tide detergent site invites customers to post laundry tips, questions, articles, and comments about their experience with the product.
- The Web site of labeling supplies maker Dymo (a Newell Rubbermaid brand) boosted sales by recognizing product owners on the site and personalizing showcased products and promotions for them.
Loyalty Program ManagementThe Second Box
ATG helps manufacturers reap maximum value from their loyalty programs to strengthen repeat business and its resulting customer lifetime value.
- Loyalty program management: Manage and merchandise your loyalty rewards catalogs and all loyalty program information.
- Personalized interactions with your most valued customers: ATG not only provides loyalty program status information to members; it also integrates that information into the customer profile, so you can use this information to offer personalized, exclusive content, pricing, and offers to your most valued customers.
ATG in Action:
- College savings program Upromise targets content to over six million members.
- Sports apparel provider Road Runner Sports offers a custom catalog and pricing to VIP members.
- Loyalty Management Group manages loyalty catalog items from more than 150 retailers. It counts 50 percent of Canadian consumers in its program.
Multi-brands/multi-sites/microsites
For companies that manage many brands and/or many Web sites, ATG's e-commerce platform offers great economy of scale.
- Manage and maintain all your sites and brands in one environment: A single instance of ATG's business user interface can support multiple brands, multiple catalogs, and multiple price lists.
- Maintain product flexibility across sites: Easily promote the same products across your different Web sites, since the product catalog can be shared across sites and managed in one place.
- Leverage customer data across brands: Multiple sites can have common access to customer profiles and tracked Web behavior, so all your sites can target content based on a common set of data.
- Easily manage special purpose sites (microsites): With a single instance of ATG's user interface, you can create short-term, unique sites that market special events, themes, or particular products.
ATG in Action:
- Consumer manufacturer Newell Rubbermaid maintains more than 30 brand sites on ATG.
- Consumer product goods company Procter & Gamble manages nine sites and counting.
- Neiman Marcus hosts dedicated sites for Juicy Couture, David Yurman, and Baccarat, all on one ATG platform.
Multi-national support
Many world class brands span the world's geographies online, and ATG supports them. ATG's flexible approach lets you create a multi-national presence in either of two ways: by maintaining a single site that adjusts language and content for the locale of the user; or by implementing a multi-site model that establishes unique URL's for different countries but is managed in one place. ATG's multi-national capabilities include:
- International character sets: You can create, accept, process, store, retrieve, and display content in the appropriate character sets.
- Local languages: ATG's search function indexes, searches for, retrieves, and displays content in languages including English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Portuguese.
- Multi-national transactions and fulfillment: ATG has partner relationships that support European fulfillment and provide access to payment processing services in over 190 countries.
- Multi-site support: One instance of the ATG platform will support multiple localized versions of catalogs and price lists; and multiple page templates so you can display your content in the way that best meets the needs of each geography.
ATG in Action:
- Consumer electronics manufacturer Philips supports content for 23 countries in 26 languages.
- Photographic provider Kodak supports content for 24 countries in 26 languages.
- Other multi-national ATG sites include: Premier Farnell and Intuit.
