The partnership between Taguchi and National Optical Care (NOC) is proof that early investment in technology can be a key facet of business success.

“I’m proud to say we got it right the first time. The Taguchi platform truly helps organisations of all sizes, from all industries to create & support marketing automation journeys. Investing in a trusted technology partner who delivers results has been hugely beneficial to our business.”

Paula Sadler
GM Marketing and Managed Services, NOC

Background

From the start-up phase, National Optical Care (NOC) turned the typical technology partnership approach on its head. Their choice was to integrate with Taguchi’s Marketing Automation capabilities, typically an enterprise solution, from day one. History shows that small businesses often choose basic, off the shelf type email marketing tools that are inexpensive and don’t have high quality support, sophisticated technology features or extensive customisation options. Taguchi has experienced this firsthand, onboarding dozens of clients who started with this basic strategy but now seek more from their technology partner. 

In a refreshing contrast, Paula Sadler, GM of Marketing at NOC, clearly saw the benefit in investing in Taguchi’s technology right from the beginning. Like many marketers, she has worked with clunky systems & legacy technology that didn’t suit her business unit’s needs. In recent years, whilst at a previous organisation, Paula was introduced to the Taguchi platform and immediately recognised it’s value. It was the combination of these experiences which shaped her focus when she joined NOC and in Paula’s mind it was integral to partner with Taguchi. The most valuable elements Paula and her peers see in the Taguchi partnership is the integration capabilities, time saving features and local customer support. 

Now live, it’s exciting to see the momentum already created having built out a communications strategy on the Taguchi platform that can grow with them. An admirable and some might say courageous approach that NOC is confident will pay dividends in the long run. It’s already proving rewarding only 6 months in, that’s including 6 weeks of implementation.

Approach

Goal

NOC believed their key to success was to partner with the same technology partners they hope to be working with many years down the track. As their business needs grow, they seek to have all the behavioural & profile data on hand to be able to build out a sophisticated (which doesn’t necessarily mean complex!) communications strategy. Email marketing is the main communication channel for this business and it was important to them to invest in a platform that could provide the support, insights and development opportunities to aid engagement, conversion, retention and loyalty.

Results

Integration

NOC describe the integration as wonderfully detailed whilst still being fast and efficient. The Taguchi team not only understood the requirements but also considered well ahead of time what obstacles may come up if they didn’t cater to them in in the initial requirements & scope. It’s this type of value adding which Taguchi take pride in.

One of the integration requirements was to feed a well-structured and rich database into NOC’s data warehouse. This data feed, updated daily, populates an internal dashboard that provides executives an insight into email performance at a glance.

“I don’t have to dig around for results. Myself and my colleague can view email performance alongside other key performance metrics in our own PowerBI dashboard. It’s a quick decision to determine if there are any concerns or wins we should recognise or react to.”

Paula Sadler
GM Marketing & Managed Services, NOC

“We understand that our clients need to be able to partner with vendors that can tailor software to meet the specific needs of their business. The National Optical care team had a clear vision on what they hoped to achieve. The Taguchi implementation & onboarding team enjoyed the challenge to develop and deliver on this wish list.”

Dean Maidment
Managing Director, Taguchi

Time saving

The platform permits an unlimited number of email templates to be created, which not only provides important branding consistency, but also significantly reduces the email build time. NOC took full advantage of this, briefing multiple templates including various campaigns per brand and investor comms to name a few.

There are just under a dozen trigger-based campaign journeys in motion; such as welcome, birthday, appointment reminders, retention & win-back which can be swiftly rolled out across new brands as they come on board.

“Being scalable is key. If a new practice is onboarded, it would only take days to set their marketing automation program up. It’s a clever and user-friendly platform.”

Paula Sadler
GM Marketing & Managed Services, NOC

Customer support & development

Having an Australian based customer support team was critical to this partnership. Not only was it an important ingredient in the speedy integration, but it is valuable for day-to-day query handling.

“The support team is amazing. They’re so fast to attend to urgent enquiries and spend the time to train & educate us.”

Paula Sadler
GM Marketing & Managed Services, NOC

With an expansion to partnering with 45 optical practices by the end of 2021, NOC can attribute some of this success to the marketing automation capabilities of its email database.