Launching a new e-commerce & marketing platform for Marler Haley

Marler Haley is a UK leader in the supply of banners, displays and exhibition stands for trade shows, conferences, job fairs and other events. Since their inception, Marler Haley has established themselves in the ecommerce space, offering a platform that allows customers to upload artwork and order bespoke branded banner stands for their upcoming events.

Due to ambitious growth plans, the company was looking to develop a new website, one which would allow them to not only stand out with a slick design but improve lead generation via increased marketing functionality. The existing website, built on WordPress CMS, had basic ecommerce functionality but lacked enterprise-level marketing functionality and integration with their other technology platforms.

Moving to Kentico EMS

Following an initial review of their current CMS platform and marketing capabilities, GRM proposed a move to Kentico EMS. As an experienced Kentico development agency and Kentico Gold Partner with the Xperience Quality Expert status, the team determined that this move would provide Marler Haley with a robust ecommerce platform for future growth and equip their marketing team with enterprise-level marketing functionality including A/B testing, content personalisation, marketing automation and email marketing, all under one integrated platform.

CMS & CRM integration

As part of the project, GRM also identified areas in which Kentico could be integrated with Marler Haley’s existing CRM platform (Microsoft Dynamics NAV). Historically, Marler Haley had been manually moving customer and order data from their ecommerce platform into Microsoft Dynamics. This was proving to be an arduous task for members of the team and one which could be reduced with a bespoke integration. The GRM team got to work addressing the following areas:

• Investigating how Microsoft Dynamics NAV works and find the best and most cost-effective solution for the integration with Kentico CMS
• Detecting all areas that can be integrated to reduce manual work and create solutions for these areas
• Writing a code that will work as effectively with Microsoft Dynamics NAV as it does with Kentico

The end result

Marler Haley is now equipped with a robust, easy-to-edit ecommerce platform that significantly enhances their online presence. The marketing team has a host of tools available to them, all integrated within the CMS and enabling intuitive campaigns to be launched as and when required. The Kentico CMS platform is seamlessly integrated with Marler Haley’s CRM platform, Microsoft Dynamics NAV. All registered users and orders are passed directly from Kentico to the CRM platform, eliminating the need for manual entry. In under 6 months following go-live, Marler Haley has experienced a 26% increase in cart/contact us conversions, demonstrating that users are responding to the improved user journey and enhanced cross-sell/up-sell opportunities presented through Kentico.