Driving Visibility into the Customer Journey: How Smurfit Westrock Transformed its Lead Management

Smurfit Westrock, which operates in 40 countries with 100,000+ employees, is a global leader in sustainable paper and packaging solutions. The B2B company has grown over the years both organically and by acquisition.

While Sojourn Solutions has been helping Smurfit Westrock transform its marketing operations since 2017, a primary focus of the last 3 years has been on lead management. We recently spoke with Hee Suk Ko, Director of Enterprise Marketing for Smurfit Westrock, about the company’s lead management challenges, and how they were tackled. What follows is an excerpted version of that conversation: 

What were the biggest challenges Smurfit Westrock faced around lead management?

Ko: Our primary challenge was limited visibility into lead progression through the funnel. Previously, leads would be handed off to sales without a unified process for follow-up or optimization of the lead-to-conversion process. While certain divisions and teams may have had more mature processes, holisitically, we lacked comprehensive visibility to share learnings and improve our lead quality, lead velocity and closed/won deals. 

What was the impact of that previous lead management process on (1) the relationship between marketing and sales, and (2) the customer experience? 

Ko: The lack of visibility resulted in inconsistency in both the relationship between marketing and sales and in the customer experience. Some sales team members were eager to receive leads regardless of quality, while others might disregard leads they deemed insufficient. This disparity created misalignment in the customer experience where marketing communications often failed to align with the actual buyer journey and sales interactions.

What needed to change? 

Ko: We needed to standardize our approach and definitions regarding lead quality and scoring across the organization. Despite having a unified CRM, its usage and data quality were inconsistent. We had to develop a formal framework for lead quality and scoring and streamline the process for sales to follow up on leads, ensuring we – both marketing and sales – could track whether leads were accepted or not as well as their dispositions. 

How did you go about working with Sojourn to gain more visibility into the customer journey?

Ko: We began by consolidating data from our CRM and marketing automation platform to create initial enterprise marketing attribution dashboards. We then focused on standardizing the definition of a marketing qualified lead (MQL) and tracking key metrics such as MQL acceptance rates, contact rates, and conversion opportunities with each business unit and corresponding sales leaders. 

This process evolved into a more holistic approach, incorporating data from additional sources like our web analytics platform and internal financial systems to enrich our understanding of our prospects and customers. 

Note from Sojourn: 

1. Smurfit Westrock’s Eloqua-Salesforce integration was updated to match its current business needs (each campaign response would create a new Lead (MQL) in Salesforce.). 

   
   

2. The work included changing the lead model, lead assignments, and adding new fields for Lead/Opportunity objects to the integration, and adjusting the sync'd campaign fields. 

   
   

3. Overall, these changes meant giving Sales greater context into Leads, and more rich data being available for Marketing to use in segmentation and scoring. 

   
   

How did these changes impact how marketing and sales worked together?

Ko: The improved visibility has fostered a more collaborative approach between marketing and sales. We’re now more intentional and data-driven in our resource allocation for external activities such as trade shows and campaigns. Collectively, we have a better understanding of our customers’ buying journeys, which allows us to identify gaps, improve channel performance, and optimize our targeting. This improved visibility ultimately drives better orchestration, engagement, and conversion rates. 

What changes were made with your technology infrastructure and data?

Ko: We enhanced our existing CRM-marketing automation platform integration to provide sales with more comprehensive and up-to-date lead information relevant to their division and end market segments. We implemented a contact validation tool and a thorough data cleanup process. Additionally, we optimized our form fields to ensure sales had sufficient information to effectively evaluate and follow up on leads. While we have made great improvements, we recognize that this is an iterative process as we introduce new data sources, technologies, and teams. 

Note from Sojourn: 

1. We created dashboards to analyze marketing's influence on revenue, while allowing analysis of channel, buyer role, and buyer journey.  All analysis is split by division giving insight into regional/solution and product differences.

   
   

2. Sojourn's recommendations have covered:  (1) optimization of targeting by buyer role in the buying group, (2) optimization of segmentation, including earlier identification of contacts and increasing use of automation to manage contacts across the buying group, (3) optimization of channels, including which channels to prioritize because of their impact on pipeline and revenue.

What have been the main benefits of the transformation?

Ko: Tangibly, we’ve achieved significant cost and time savings that will compound over time. We now have greater visibility into the buyer journey and marketing influence, all while tracking conversion rates by division to have more informed decision-making conversations with our sales leaders. This improved visibility has also built trust in our data as well as within marketing and sales relationships, both of which were previously lacking and/or inconsistent across teams. 

Marketing and sales teams now engage in data-informed conversations about lead prioritization and lead allocation. There’s been a cultural shift, with a heightened appreciation for lead management and tracking capabilities. The ability to have a 360-degree view of customers has become increasingly valuable, especially as we continue our focus on first-party data and consider factors beyond just closing deals, such as payment behavior and cross-selling opportunities.

Note from Sojourn:

1. $250K cost savings in FY24 when compared to implementing a

   productized attribution tool.

   
   

2. 85% reduction in event data processing time (7 days reduced to 24 hours), thus speeding up follow-up emails and sending more timely, relevant communications.

   
   

3. Open and click through rates improved 14.78% and 17.80% respectively, showing a positive trend in email engagement.

What capabilities has Sojourn contributed to Smurfit Westrock?

Ko: Sojourn brings two critical areas of expertise: 1. technical knowledge of our tools, integrations, and backend systems and 2. a strategic partnership that understands the nuances of our organization. Our day-to-day partners at Sojourn have been able to adapt to our needs, provide best practices, and offer insights from their consultative experiences while recognizing our unique challenges and requirements at Smurfit Westrock to build authentic relationships internally with sales and externally with our customers. 

Learn more about how Sojourn Solutions can help improve your Marketing Operations - or feel free to reach out to us today.