Customer Spotlight: How WEX uses Marketing Cloud for Brand Scalability

Speaker 1: Welcome to the In the Clouds podcast. In the Clouds is a marketing cloud podcast powered by Lev, the most influential marketing- focused Salesforce consultancy in the world. Lev is customer experience- obsessed, and podcast host Bobby Tichy and Cole Fisher have partnered with some of the world's most well- known brands to help them master meaningful one- on- one connection with their customers. In this podcast, they'll combine strategy and deep technical expertise to share best practices, how-to's, and real- life use cases and solutions for the world's top brands using Salesforce products today.

Bobby Tichy: Welcome to In the Clouds podcast. This is Bobby Tichy along with Cole Fisher. We've got a couple of special guests joining us today. A couple of folks from a Lev customer, Chad Creelman and Tom inaudible from WEX, and WEX has been a Lev customer for just over two years now. And we're really excited to have them join us today to talk through on their experience with Salesforce Marketing Cloud, on how they've been able to utilize it and to accomplish the business goals and objectives that their team has set forth for them, and really dive into some of those key points of what they like about Salesforce Marketing Cloud, how it's worked for them, and how partnering with Lev throughout that time has helped them and helped achieve those different business goals and objectives that we'll talk through. So, Chad, Tom, if you guys don't mind, just start off with a quick introduction of yourself. Chad, if you wouldn't mind going first.

Chad Creelman: Yeah, sure. Good morning or good afternoon. So yeah, Chad Creelman, I've been at WEX for about eight years now. Originally joined WEX in an IT function, but many years ago I switched to marketing analytics. And so I manage our marketing analytics department, supporting all things data related to acquisition, engagement, product, and even sales. Love what I do and thrilled to be here talking to you guys today.

Bobby Tichy: Awesome. Thanks. Tom?

Tom: Yeah, it's great to be here today. Thanks a lot for having us. I head up what we call the Lifecycle Marketing team for WEX fleet. My team builds and executes campaigns that both drive new customer acquisition as well as customer engagement, adoption, loyalty, and cross- sell. Basically, any time that we engage a customer or prospect across the lifecycle, my team is building and executing the campaigns that execute.

Chad Creelman: I think it's important to note that Tom and I obviously work super closely together. So my team is the front end of the flow, if you will, helping identify his populations and this team is executing on all our great marketing ideas.

Bobby Tichy: Now, is that a good thing? Do you enjoy working together? You seem really can't stand crosstalk.

Tom: We love working together, and I'll jump in and say that Chad, before you can say something else. We even adopted a couple of trailblazer characters to represent us in our internal company communication. Because if you could see me you'd know the reason why I picked the bear as mine. Chad, who are you?

Chad Creelman: I think a little Astral character. I'm 6'1". So I'm not a little guy, but it works out well for us.

Bobby Tichy: I love how you threw that in there," I picked Astral, but I'm not small." crosstalk.

Chad Creelman: No, I just want to make sure.

Cole Fisher: We're on Zoom. I can barely tell.

Chad Creelman: Can you zoom in on your camera? crosstalk.

Bobby Tichy: Thanks again for joining us. Cole, go ahead.

Cole Fisher: Yeah, no. Why don't you guys kick us off with a little bit of filling us in on what WEX does precisely and what's specifically your guys' roles beyond the introductory phases, specific to WEX. So, tell us a little more about WEX and life at WEX.

Tom: Sure. I think the easiest way to describe WEX is that we're a publicly- traded global payments company or a FinTech company with a focus on health, travel, corporate payments, and fleets, fleets being about 60% of the business. And that's the division that Chad and I are from, is the Global Fleet Division, and fleets meaning businesses that have commercial vehicles. That would be our client base. So ultimately, we enable businesses to purchase fuel and service and other fleet- related items, and we not only have our own credit card, but we also manage and market the credit cards of every major brand that you can think of. So if you're a business fleet and you have a commercial credit card to fuel your vehicles, there's a high likelihood that you're working with us.

Chad Creelman: Yeah, that's pretty good, Tom. I don't think I have anything to add there, except recently that we've continued to diversify into mobile apps and to an e- commerce platform called EDGE, and so obviously, cross- selling everything we do into our customer base, moving beyond fuel. But that was a pretty amazing summary of what our line of business does.

Bobby Tichy: And isn't inaudible really the Salesforce? And we think about this migration and project you guys have gone through the last couple of years. You migrated the Marketing Cloud a little over two years ago. Can you tell us a little bit about what you migrated from, really what your end goal was in migrating to Marketing Cloud, and what other Salesforce products you have as part of your overall tech stack?

Chad Creelman: Yeah, sure. I'll start Tom. We were originally on a rather bespoke product that was built for us to help us manage... We're a B2B business, and so the big thing for us is, out of the 26 million businesses out there, which ones would resonate with a fleet card offering? And believe it or not, on the typical list when you go out and you hunt for prospects, number of vehicles is not something that's readily available. And so we built a customer data platform to mine all of the various businesses to model them to figure out who would likely respond really well to one of our products. We built lists and then push them out into different tools, and Tom can talk about those, but one of the reasons why we chose Marketing Cloud is that that ecosystem had everything in one place. So it unified our customer with the Salesforce subscriber key across all the different ways that we want to engage with our customers, and what we really value about Salesforce, and it's a term that you'll hear Marc Benioff use over. So, obviously, I'm drinking the Kool- Aid when I go to inaudible and whatnot, but the notion of future proofing to engage with a customer product like Salesforce, they're thinking two steps ahead. And once we watch the digital marketing landscape constantly evolve with regulations, and new technologies, and what you can do, and what you can't do, we, quite frankly, are sleeping really well at night, knowing that we're partnered with the group that's investing the most, and actually, might in fact check up, but if an R& D and to take our products and our platforms to the next level so that when we're thinking about where we want to be in five years, we know that our multi- platform will be there with us. That's a really amazing thing for us and one of the key reasons why we wanted to move to Marketing Cloud in addition to scaling and growing what we do.

Tom: Yeah. I think that's a really great description, Chad. And I'll say, just as a marketer, one of the things that you really want to be able to do is be able to move at the speed of thought. As your ideas come into your brain, how quickly can you then move that into execution? And speed to market, ability to scale, all of these things are things that we think about and that we struggled with before moving into Marketing Cloud. We had a bunch of different tools that were not connected. So there's no way to deliver a connected customer experience if your tools aren't connected, if your data isn't connected, and if they aren't supporting each other and curating that customer experience. So that was obviously a key goal of ours, was to deliver that seamless customer experience so that they're always in a conversation with us, no matter what stage of the lifecycle they're in. But on top of that, we have the interesting puzzle of representing not only our own brand, but dozens of other brands that are all competing against each other. As we look to be able to elevate that customer experience, we need to be able to do that in dimension. Every campaign that we think of, we think of it in a Rubik's cube versus a matrix

Cole Fisher: Yeah, I really like that. And one thing that I think both of you guys are touching on a different dynamic of, is the concept of what it means to be in partnership. Chad, you mentioned that you elected Salesforce to partner as technology and the R& D that goes into that, and Tom, you mentioned all these brands and this really unique relationship that you have to the brands themselves, even though they're all in competition. It seems you guys have a lot of dimensions on your perspective of what it means to be in partnership. So, from that perspective, how were you evaluating Marketing Cloud, the process, obviously with all the technologies and things you guys have built, what you've had to put into this in the past, you probably had a pretty realistic expectation of what it's like having a technology partner during implementation, during migration, everything that's going to be set up. So, how are you guys defining what you look for in a partner, how are you going to navigate that relationship, and what that's going to look like?

Chad Creelman: Tom, I'll take a crack at this one. It's hard to say. You want to work with somebody who you enjoy working with, that you trust, and it's going to help you deliver on your vision. And speaking to you guys, specifically Lev, you guys and Bobby weren't, obviously, part of our implementation team early on. Salesforce recommended you to us as one of the best of what Marketing Cloud does. And to be honest, you earned our trust. At first, I don't know if you want to share this on your own podcast, but you did not deliver the vision for what we wanted in the first round. We asked you guys to come in and look at what we think is a really complex problem, and we had some serious stumbling blocks out of the gate. And why we've continued to have this really great relationship with Lev is the way you guys responded. Went back to the drawing boards, asked more questions, and dug in even deeper, and you ended up coming up with the solution that we did implement, and it's been proven to be very successful. Much like any relationship you build in life, it all comes down to trust. Everybody looks great on paper, on your profile, yada yada yada. But once you're in the thick of it, how does your partner in whatever you're doing respond to your needs, to listen, to think, and to be mindful of achieving the same goals. I think that's more important than just picking the right partners, is actually being able to execute on our vision together. And so that's, definitely, a success story and sure one of the reasons why we're chatting with you guys today. We've been super happy with the way it's gone.

Tom: Yeah, I would add to that. I described some of our challenges as having dimension like a Rubik's cube. You need to really think like an architect on every puzzle that we tried to solve. And we work with a lot of different partners in a lot of different areas of our business, and we put a lot of strain on those businesses because of this challenge of the Rubik's cube of the complexity that we have. And what I really appreciate about Lev is a steady and pragmatic approach to making sure that they really get to the bottom of what our goals are and what our challenges are, and establish a very deep level of domain knowledge very quickly. And as such, they were able to guide us in ways that were very helpful to us and ended up setting us up for success down the road. And it might not have been so easy for just anybody to step in and do that. I think Lev was exceptional in uncovering our needs and really figuring out how to build a roadmap for us.

Cole Fisher: Yeah, that's really helpful to hear. And one thing I'll add, and I guess this probably speaks to the natural conversation and the fact that we're definitely not paying you guys off, is I love the honesty that you have. Like round one, wasn't super easy. There was a couple of things to learn about, there's a lot of going back inaudible. So anybody that tells you in a partnership that it's going to be all rainbows and fairy dust is probably not being completely forthcoming with you. No, I love that feedback. So, thank you.

Bobby Tichy: And just piggybacking off of that, I equate it a little bit in terms of building a house. You go through the process of designing it, and then one of the things that you'll often hear from architects or designers when you're putting your house out to bid, similar to what you would do if you were implementing Marketing Cloud... Not to say that everybody's equal, but everyone that you're probably considering has built a house before, or has implemented Salesforce Marketing Cloud before, but who do you want to spend that much time with over the course of the next year to have along? inaudible. It's really a trust scenario, and I think what was really cool about that is, you guys obviously trust us enough to say, " Let's give them another shot because they've identified where they may have fell flat or where they didn't do enough discovery, and then let them come back in." I think that's really cool and something a lot of folks should consider as they're going through the partner evaluation process.

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Bobby Tichy: Going back to the work you're doing using Salesforce and the unique business model that you guys had mentioned earlier, one thing we wanted to focus on today was around brand scalability and how you've been able to have a huge improvement, and that way you support your brands, especially since you guys work with so many of them. Can you talk a little bit about what this looks like for you and how the way you support these multiple brands has changed?

Tom: Chad, I would encourage you to start from the security or the architecture side, and then I'll inaudible how we execute campaigns.

Chad Creelman: No, that makes sense. Without going too deep either, but I think it's important to note that, obviously in marketing, we're the upstream of a really robust, mature, and fantastic sales organization that's nationwide made up of our own brands and also all of our strategic partner brands. And so when we think about platforms like Salesforce, where we don't want to have 50 different instances of it for each brand because we lose scalability and we lose the ability to reuse digital assets and things like that, we had to come up with really creative ways to bifurcate the data, to make sure that leads that are being brought in, not through marketing, but through sales, don't just get put directly into the marketing engine, so that if they're owned by a brand or they continue to be worked by that brand, do not become part of the larger marketing pool. So when we think about contacts, it's a very simple level. We start with basically a parent contact that can be marketed to, and then we think about building contacts that are specific to the brands once they're engaged with. And so that has really worked for us to make sure that, again, sales organization can't see up into other people's contacts and other people's opportunities. And then we've managed our data flow with some really great boolean indicators that you guys actually advise us on, in terms of, should we sync it from Salesforce into Marketing Cloud? A simple yes or no, which when we programmatically influence how that boolean is set, we're able to keep our contacts within the right range because we don't need to sync over those that are not marketable and things like that. So, a lot of thought went into how we set up contact, how we set up security, again, to make sure that that integrity of the opportunity stays with the brand that we're representing for that opportunity, and it's worked really, really well.

Tom: Yeah. Yeah, that's true. And all the great work that was done to build that data model then enabled us to leverage personalization to scale. And one really great piece of advice that we got at the beginning of our journey, pun intended, is that journeys actually are like... It's a piece of software. It's like an app. And so, you're managing a live piece of software. Every journey that you create becomes a live piece of software that then needs to be managed over time. So when you're looking at potentially building or curating customer experiences for multiple dozens of brands, to build unique journey sets for each brand would be unscalable. So, we learned very early on that our route would need to be a deep personalization, and especially the use of content blocks to be able to deliver unique experiences for each brand, but within a single framework. And that made a huge difference for us. And if you think about it, each one of these brands, at a very high level, a gas station is a gas station. They have fuel pumps and they have stores, and you can go inside and buy lottery tickets and food. But each one of these brands, as you dig a little bit deeper, puts in an enormous amount of effort into differentiation and into creating their own culture, within their employees but also within their customer base too. For anybody that's in a Wawa region is very familiar with the term," Gotta have a WAWA," and people take pictures of themselves and post in social media, them at Wawa Station. They're so beloved. And a lot of these different brands are deeply beloved. And so, how do you curate and deliver their unique and differentiated customer experiences at scale? And it really did require us to really start off right away with having a really good personalization strategy, leveraging content blocks, and really thinking about how we build one to many, but allow all the if/ then statements within our journeys to be able to deliver unique experiences for each brand. Another really great piece of advice that we got too was not to make massive journeys. I thought this was a really good Lev recommendation too. Is to really think in terms of microservices, that each journey is a component of little journeys. Each experience that you want to create can be a component of little journeys, and that enables you to be able to make edits and changes without having to unravel yourself in a really big piece of software, if you will.

Cole Fisher: Yeah, I like that. And we've mentioned this before. In fact, we actually had a segment of the podcast of some of the nightmares and journey builder where we've seen just end- to- end life cycles. And it sounded like you guys got a handle on that really early. So that's great to hear.

Bobby Tichy: So to your point about the recommendation from Lev and really focusing on more micro journeys, rather than having one large customer lifecycle journey and partnering with all the companies and brands that you do, how have you been able to manage these subscribers, and more specifically, the journeys?

Tom: Chad, do you want to take the subscriber piece? And I'm happy to crosstalk.

Chad Creelman: Yeah. The subscriber piece, it's pretty easy. So we're using both automation studio, audience studio, we're writing sequel. We partnered with the channel marketing team ahead of time to think about, obviously the segment that we want to enter into the journey. For the most part, once we've created the data extension with the right attributes tied to our subscriber keys. So what is the partner? What is the product? What is the timeframe? What is the other firmographic information? Those data extensions get populated with irregularity rather than automatically, and then obviously, can be plugged into the journeys that Tom's going to dive into.

Tom: Yeah, from a strategy, I think that one of the key things that we look to do is to identify key inflection points and identify what behavior we want to drive at those inflection points and then rapid journey around it, and then connect one journey to another. And so, it may be something like, once somebody's got a credit card in hand, the next goal is to activate them, to get them actually using the credit card. So what types of experiences can we deliver to get them over that hump? And then once they've activated, then we're on to another series of journeys. So by looking at each minute behavior that we want to drive along the way, or each inflection point and then building journeys around them helps us maintain and test too, because we do a ton of A/ B testing in our work as well to drive continuous improvement. And so when you're testing and driving continuous improvement on a small object versus a longer object, it's a lot easier to manage and update.

Chad Creelman: It's certainly to measure too, right? The results, I think you can pin them to the action pretty easily. So this is great.

Tom: So it starts at the tippy- top of the sales funnel, and each step along the way we have journeys to drive nurture, we have journeys to drive the application process, journeys to drive adoption of our different products and services. And so each step of the way, we're thinking about, what data do we have on those subscribers? How can we leverage that data? And for each brand, how we bring in what's unique to that brand to differentiate that experience for that brand? Typically, again, through content blocks, but also one brand might peel off one way in a journey and another brand might peel off in a different direction in a journey, and then they group back up when the desired behavior is achieved.

Cole Fisher: You talked about the inflection points and the journeys that connect inflection point to inflection point, and how you're honing in on customer data specifically when it comes to personalization. What's been the importance of that in the focus of personalization? And as well, how do you scale that from brand to brand across your entire network? What does that look like?

Tom: Sure. I would say that we have a very much a crawl- walk- run approach to how we get into personalization. So at first, it was just, how do we show different colors and logos and pictures? So that's crawl personalization. Then walk was bringing in content blocks that allowed us to have the if/ then statements of, do they want us to have that paragraph about the about us section? Or highlighting a special promotion at their stations, or something else that can come in that's unique to them. And then the run for us was the actual if/ then statements in the journey. Some brands wanted to have more frequency of touch with their prospects and customers while others don't. But how do you do that within the same architecture so that ultimately you're not, again, building all these different unique journey sets for each brand. So that was really our crawl- walk- run approach. It was first, start really simple and just make sure that their brand is reflected visually and in language, and then the next step was really bringing in components of the brand through content blocks, and then the third again was adding in unique experiences for each brand within a journey.

Bobby Tichy: Pivoting a little bit to how you guys manage Salesforce Marketing Cloud internally, and it obviously seems like you guys are very hands- on. But curious what your overall Salesforce working team looks like internally, and then what your team looks like at Lev or other agencies that you might work with to support the overall platform.

Chad Creelman: Sure. The cheeky answer is, it's everybody. Salesforce Marketing Cloud is pervasive into arguably what everybody in the marketing department does, whether they're writing code or just looking at the results that drive a strategy. We've got core people, my team specifically. I've got a woman named Sue. She's our data mastermind of all the data extensions, and she's been running with that right in it. And Tom's team has got marketing engineers, really. Tom loves talking. I hear him talk about how marketing is more engineering these days than anything. So, it's great technical minds, again, writing code and building these really complex digital assets. And so, does touch everybody. I don't know how many people specifically we have that are... Maybe you do Tom on your team, but a handful. And then I think that are specifically building these really complex journeys every day. And then on your side, we're only partnered with Lev for what it's worth. In fact, Lev's reach is branching out into other lines of business as well. And Erik Gustafsson and Don cliff, I want to use them by name because they've become family and friends to us, and Shantelle. Really it's a small, but incredibly mighty team. Jeremy joined us as Eric had his baby recently, but what these guys can do is really incredible. And so we've been able to achieve our goals with a pretty lean but mean team.

Bobby Tichy: That's awesome. Well, we obviously appreciate the business and kind words, just to reiterate what Cole said earlier. These guys are not getting paid for this podcast. crosstalk. We definitely appreciate the kind words, so thank you. Really appreciate you guys being on the podcast today. As you might know, in every episode at the end, we move to a completely unrelated, which has nothing to do with anything. And this is basically what Cole and I off- the- cuff conversations are. So today, we had, if you could see one band or artist live, current or in the past, so historically it could be anybody, who would it be? So Chad, I'll let you start.

Chad Creelman: That's a loaded question. Without giving some mindblowing answer, I got to go with Pearl Jam. Eddie Vedder, from what I can tell, I've never seen him, puts his heart into his music, and I spent countless hours playing air guitar to their Alive, just some guitar solo, all through high school. And so I feel like I would lose my mind and just melt in place if I got the opportunity to see those guys perform live.

Bobby Tichy: Did you ever see them perform live?

Chad Creelman: I did not. No. You know it's funny, I never was a big concert goer. I think part of me is just, I love music and it's always on in my house, but they're just a pain in the ass, can I say that? To see somebody like Pearl Jam, for us we'd have to go to Gillette Stadium, and I have no patience for sitting in a traffic queue for an hour and a half to get a parking spot. I love live music, but I've been mostly enjoying up here in Maine, the little L. L. Bean concerts in the park where my kids and I can go and just relax, and we don't have to deal with all the shenanigans. That's the long and short of it.

Bobby Tichy: So quick sidebar, so you're obviously in the Boston Area, are you a Patriots fan?

Chad Creelman: I'm not. No, I'm not. I moved to California after college, and became a very passionate Chargers fan because the first place where we lived was right near Qualcomm Stadium. And being in different AFC division, you spend that long hating Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. I came back and all my friends here... I want a Patriot tan, I want a Patriot shirt, but it feels weird putting it back on. I don't know, I'm a man without a team right now. Honestly, with Chargers move to LA, I'm trying hard to get into the past, but I can't say I'm a huge fan yet. So, we'll see.

Bobby Tichy: Awesome. Tom, how about you?

Tom: Yeah, I would say I'm a Tom Brady fan, although it's hard to get used to the Buccaneers. crosstalk.

Bobby Tichy: Me too. We shouldn't have a whole new podcast just about Tom.

Tom: He's the coach. He's the best. I'll defend him till the day I die.

Bobby Tichy: crosstalk Cole is having a coronary right now crosstalk by Peyton Manning's-

Cole Fisher: inaudible podcast you guys.

Tom: I would say from a music standpoint, I'm the opposite, Chad. I go to live music. I probably go to about 20 concerts a year. I just love it. And I have an 18- year- old son now, so I've got a partner in crime, which is a blast. And I actually did see Eddie Vedder, and it was funny. For some reason, there was a kid in the audience that was throwing quarters at Eddy Vedder, and he literally stopped in the middle of the concert and threatened to leave if the people didn't stop throwing quarters. It was just a really funky moment, but it was incredible, Chad. You should definitely go if you can. I bought tickets actually on hope that this band is actually going to be able to make it in July and things aren't going to be shut down. It's a band called Blackberry Smoke. You should check them out. They're a mix between say Tom Petty and Southern Fried Rock. It's such a really interesting band. I absolutely love them.

Chad Creelman: That sounds cool.

Tom: Yeah.

Chad Creelman: inaudible something like that.

Bobby Tichy: I'm looking at them right now. The front man has a Tom Petty vibe to him.

Tom: Yeah. It's really good stuff. Really good stuff.

Cole Fisher: Does that mean he has long blonde hair and wears a hat? Because when I think of Tom Petty that's who I see.

Bobby Tichy: inaudible long black hair or brown hair.

Cole Fisher: Okay.

Bobby Tichy: All right. Cole, how about you?

Cole Fisher: Because it's a loaded question in being historically like anything, I'm trying to avoid the cliche like saying Beatles. Everybody would want to see Led Zeppelin or Backstreet Boys live. Am I right? I've always had a weird thing for doo- wop. It'd be something to see like Dion or The Belmonts live. I guess I would go cliche with it, just if I saw one single most politically and musically influential figure. I'd probably want to see Bob Marley live.

Chad Creelman: Yeah. I would love to see that too.

Cole Fisher: That would be wild. Plus he was just such a high energy, a little inaudible. I would love to have seen that. So yeah, I would probably have to go with Bob, but there's a lot of good... Queen. It's hard to narrow that one down, but I'd go with Bob Marley.

Chad Creelman: That's a still good answer, Cole. I like it. His message reigns true, man.

Cole Fisher: Yeah. Positive vibes, right? Bobby, what about you? And you can't say Backstreet inaudible.

Bobby Tichy: That that was going to be one of them, for sure. I have the musical taste of a 14- year- old girl.

Cole Fisher: Taylor Swift.

Bobby Tichy: I just said this to my wife, like two days ago. I said as soon as the pandemic is over and we can start going to concerts again, I want to go see Justin Bieber and the Jonas Brothers.

Chad Creelman: Wow.

Bobby Tichy: All of your historical great music requests are great, but when I need a little pick- me- up or if I just want to have a little jam session in the car, it's one of those two. I never said that my musical tastes were good, but one of those two, for sure.

Chad Creelman: I was going to say, did you end the podcast already? Or inaudible.

Cole Fisher: On that note.

Bobby Tichy: Yep. Awesome. Well, thanks guys a bunch. This is a ton of fun, we really appreciate it. Hope to have you on again in the future. And we'll talk to you soon. inaudible

Cole Fisher: Thank you.