Chemical Manufacturer & Distributor Orders Up New Consumer Revenue Stream With Marketing Cloud
Ravago wanted to sell directly to consumers for the first time, supplying independent soap makers and home business owners. The company had Marketing Cloud already, but the instance behind it was built for a different job and could not segment that audience or communicate with them across a customer journey. We delivered a Salesforce Marketing Cloud optimization, overhauling the instance, reengineering the data architecture and automations, and building journeys, cloud pages, a loyalty program, and an SMS program around the new model. The channel recorded $500K in new revenue in its first 3 months.
A Chemical Distributor Selling to Consumers for the First Time
Ravago manufactures and distributes chemicals, a business that runs on large accounts, contracts, and long relationships. The company set out to build a direct-to-consumer model alongside it, supplying independent soap makers and home business owners buying for themselves rather than for a company.
Those two businesses have almost nothing in common operationally. A distribution customer places planned orders against an agreement. A home soap maker buys when a project starts, responds to what arrives in their inbox, and leaves a cart behind when something interrupts them. Reaching that second group takes segmentation, timing, and a reason to come back, none of which a B2B distribution motion is built to provide.
The Challenge: A New Business Model on a Marketing Cloud Instance Built for the Old One
The new direct-to-consumer model required three things:
• Methods to engage existing customers and attract new ones
• The ability to segment customers appropriately
• Tools to communicate dynamically with customers throughout the entire customer journey
All three run into the same wall. Segmentation is a property of the data model, not the campaign, and dynamic communication depends on knowing where a customer sits in their journey at the moment you contact them. Ravago’s existing Marketing Cloud instance held neither, so every campaign was a broadcast to a list rather than a message to a person.
Our Approach: Salesforce Marketing Cloud Optimization, Starting With the Data
We overhauled the client’s existing Salesforce Marketing Cloud instance completely. Reworking what was there rather than layering the new model on top of it was the right call, because the constraints Ravago kept hitting were structural, and no amount of campaign work gets past a data model that cannot answer who a customer is.
So we reengineered the data architecture and the automations underneath it. That is where segmentation actually comes from. Once the attributes that distinguish a first-time buyer from a repeat one, or a soap maker from a home business owner, exist in a usable structure, segmentation stops being a manual exercise and becomes something the platform does on its own.
We then reordered the existing customer journey and added new ones. Anniversary journeys give a reason to make contact that the customer welcomes. Abandoned cart journeys recover purchases that were already close to done. Other dynamic communications fill the space between, so the customer hears from Ravago at points connected to their own behavior rather than to a campaign calendar. This is the part of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud optimization that produced revenue fastest, because abandoned carts are demand that already exists.
We created custom landing pages and cloud pages to receive that traffic. A journey is only as good as where it sends people, and a message tuned to a specific segment landing on a generic page loses most of what the targeting bought. Cloud pages kept the message and the destination consistent.
We developed a customer loyalty program to hold onto the buyers the journeys brought in. Repeat purchase is what makes a direct-to-consumer channel worth running, and for an audience that buys supplies for an ongoing craft, a reason to come back to the same supplier compounds over time.
The last piece was a text messaging program to engage Ravago’s online community. This audience talks to each other, shares what they make, and reads messages on their phones. SMS gave Ravago a channel suited to how those customers already behave, working alongside email rather than repeating it.
Tools and Products Used
This build ran entirely inside Marketing Cloud:
• Salesforce Marketing Cloud: the platform for the whole direct-to-consumer program, overhauled from the existing instance
• Data architecture and automations: reengineered to support segmentation and dynamic communication
• Journeys: the existing customer journey reordered, plus anniversary journeys, abandoned cart journeys, and other dynamic communications
• Cloud pages and landing pages: custom pages built to receive traffic from the journeys
• Loyalty program: developed to drive repeat purchase from new direct-to-consumer customers
• SMS: a text messaging program to engage the online community
The data work is what makes the rest function. Journeys, pages, loyalty, and SMS all depend on knowing who a customer is and where they are, which is why the architecture came before the campaigns.
The Results: $500K in New Revenue in the First 3 Months
Ravago recorded $500K in new revenue in the first 3 months of the program. That revenue came from a channel that did not exist before, sold to an audience the company had never marketed to directly.
Three months is a short window for a new business model, and the speed points to where the revenue came from. Abandoned cart journeys and the reordered customer journey work on demand that is already present, so they return money early. The loyalty program and SMS are the pieces built for what comes after the first quarter.
The structural result is that Ravago can now segment and reach a consumer audience at all. The data architecture and automations that make segmentation possible carry forward to every campaign the company runs from here, which is worth more over time than the launch quarter itself.
| Area | Outcome |
| Revenue | $500K in new revenue recorded in the first 3 months |
| Marketing Cloud instance | Existing instance completely overhauled, with data architecture and automations reengineered |
| Customer journeys | Existing journey reordered, with anniversary and abandoned cart journeys added |
| Retention | Customer loyalty program developed for repeat purchase |
| Channels | Custom landing pages and cloud pages, plus a text messaging program for the online community |
A New Business Model Needs a New Data Model
Companies moving into direct-to-consumer usually start with the campaigns, because campaigns are visible and the data model is not. The campaigns then underperform, and the reason sits two layers down in a structure built for a different kind of customer.
Ravago went the other way and rebuilt the foundation first. The journeys, pages, loyalty program, and SMS all worked because the platform underneath them could tell one customer from another, which is what a consumer business runs on.
If your Marketing Cloud instance was built for a business you no longer run, our team can help. Get in touch to talk through what Salesforce Marketing Cloud optimization would look like for your programs.
