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Nutshell Creative Marketing

Nutshell capitalizes on cross media marketing opportunity to drive growth

Find out how Nutshell Creative differentiates its creative marketing agency from the crowd, with MarketDirect Cross Media.

Print ePS - Nutshell (1)
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“In the U.K. there are in excess of 25,000 design agencies of all shapes and sizes. For us it’s key to have a differentiator. We looked at what we could do as an agency whilst retaining what we are good at and passionate about. Graphic design for print has been the lifeblood of our agency. We didn’t want to change that, but wanted to add value to it.” 

Lucy Swanston,
Managing Director, Nutshell Creative

About the company

Nutshell is a creative agency that caters to high-profile brand names, and provides clients with a complete marketing communications service - from campaign strategy and creative development through to implementation and analysis across digital and traditional media platforms.

The challenge

In the UK alone, there are over 25,000 creative agencies, and Nutshell Creative were looking for ways to differentiate itself from that competition. 

They needed a partner that could help them differentiate themselves by focussing on three key areas: personalization, customization and measurabilty. 

Key requirements
circle-check Icon - eProductivity Software Growth through new business
circle-check Icon - eProductivity Software Differentiate their offering
circle-check Icon - eProductivity Software Flexibility from a single system

The solution

Nutshell Creative has been using MarketDirect Cross Media to create highly personalized, automated, multi-channel campaigns for its big-brand client base. MarketDirect Cross Media is an all-in-one solution for cross-media marketing and monitoring, allowing creatives to set up sophisticated personalized campaigns with real-time response and analysis.

Working entirely through a browser interface, users can create and personalize printed and digital media campaigns without programming skills. The Cross Media system then manages campaigns, launches websites, sends e-mails and personalized and responsive landing pages, integrates with social media, and creates production-ready print files.

The software’s Data Relations feature allows data to read from databases and CRM systems, which can then automatically be updated with the results as the recipients respond. For example, an employee in sales can be informed immediately when a potential customer visits his or her personalized website.

 

Differentiation

Adopting MarketDirect Cross Media has allowed Nutshell to stand out in a crowded market, says Swanston.

“In the U.K. there are in excess of 20,000 design agencies of all shapes and sizes. For us it’s key to have a differentiator. We looked at what we could do as an agency whilst retaining what we are good at and passionate about. Graphic design for print has been the lifeblood of our agency. We didn’t want to change that, but wanted to add value to it.” 

“We wanted to focus on 3 things for marketing: personalization, customization, and measurability for marketers. After extensive research when we looked at several cross media system suppliers and also at extending our Web-to-print platform we chose MarketDirect, as it gives us flexibility,” says Swanston.

Strong partnerships

Nutshell has been working with Anton Group, one of the largest print and direct marketing service providers in Europe. “They wanted to move into marketing services, so they asked us to work with them. They wanted to be able to deliver cross-media services as well as print. We collaborate on new clients, coupled with their huge infrastructure.”

“As we are a small agency, MarketDirect was a big investment for us,” says Swanston. “I bought into the people with eProductivity Software MarketDirect – going to Berlin and meeting them at a customer event, it’s like a small family.

We could have got lost in the flurry of providers – Moonpig, Funky Pigeon and so on, but no, they were very attentive when we went there.” Nutshell’s Cross Media system was sold and is supported by Transeo Media, the MarketDirect distributor in the UK. “MarketDirect Cross Media very effectively bridges the gap between print and marketing and is equally effective in a creative marketing agency as in a digital print environment,” says Transeo Media’s commercial director, Alex Granat.

“You can create corporate websites that are responsive, and they can work in mobile phone or tablet form. It is all created through the same interface. As entire campaigns are easily produced without writing code. Furthermore, MarketDirect can aggregate and mine data from multiple sources, and also write back to them. This makes it easy to integrate with client systems.”

 

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“It’s won us significant new business that’s enabling us to grow,” says Managing Director Lucy Swanston. Cross media marketing is still very new and there are very few agencies in the UK offering this service.” 

Lucy Swanston,
Managing Director, Nutshell Creative

MarketDirect Platform

The MarketDirect customer engagement platform is designed to enable your business to sell,  market and procure online. The first of its kind, MarketDirect combines eProductivity Software’s legendary ecommerce, marketing, fulfillment, and personalization tools into one powerful platform. 

With an intuitive and integrated user experience, it’s easier than ever to build featurerich online stores, create integrated marketing programs, and generate and publish personalized content anywhere. MarketDirect empowers your customers to evolve their business by improving customer retention and driving stronger engagement—all with tighter brand and asset control.

 

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Developing campaigns

Tony Marks is Nutshell’s senior designer, and he uses MarketDirect in campaign development. “We build the framework in MarketDirect, and then if we need images we’ll import those, and if we need special fonts we’ll import them too,” he says. “In the end you have what’s essentially an HTML website, it’s just a different way of building it that gives you more control and allows you to tie it in through a database and gather more information to personalize content so it is relevant to every customer.”

Elements used to set up a campaign in MarketDirect come from standard design programs, he says. “We use InDesign, Photoshop or Illustrator, and create the look and the feel of the campaign. We take the assets from those various programs and then into MarketDirect from there. The software itself is web-based at both the campaign building & delivery stages. You can access it from anywhere and continue working on it.

MarketDirect can drive the website, email and mobile device campaigns and run analytics on the responses. “We can run it as a sub-domain to a customer’s website, and that’s where the campaign sits, or we can add elements of MarketDirect into the website,” Marks says.

“For instance even if it’s just a form element on the website, that captures all the data into MarketDirect and that data drives the campaign further.” It also generates PDFs for variable data personalized print, and automatically exports the to printers. “It’s all about tying in with personalized direct mail, and not just sending an e-mail and hoping you get something back,” says Marks. “You’ve got something the recipients are familiar with first and that is reflected in subsequent media.

“The way it is structured and built is very simple,” he adds. “Everything is based on an area called the Tree, which is where you build the pages and define how you want them to look.” Once designed, explains Marks, “Everything ties directly into the database at every point, so you’re always capturing information and that’s very easy to plug in to. It’s just a case of saying where you want to capture the information from and where you want to send it. It’s very simple and very intuitive.”

  • Sync marketing data 

    Aggregate, mine and sync data from multiple sources.

  • All-in-one solution

    Highly personalized, automated, multi-channel campaigns with real-time response and analysis.

  • Web based

    Access the platform anytime, anywhere, and on any device.

  • Easy to use & intuitive interface

    Create, launch and manage campaigns without any programing experience.