Informa's Seatrade Maritime | Case study
Seatrade Maritime expands its customer base, product portfolio, and editorial insights
Seatrade Maritime is a niche online publication of Informa Markets, a B2B digital services provider and the world’s leading exhibition organizer. Through over 450 international B2B brands, it provides opportunities to engage, experience, and do business via live and virtual experiences, specialist digital content, and actionable data solutions.
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Challenge
Since its launch in 2005, Seatrade Maritime’s platforms have delivered exhibitions, virtual events, online marketplaces, specialized content, and data services for varied industries — from beauty to construction.
But the marketing team needed deeper insights to improve its programmatic campaign performance and build a more robust pipeline of leads that were best suited for their publication.
“It was hard to make sense of our audiences,” said Dan Chapman, Group Content and Digital Marketing Manager. “Our goal was to confirm which maritime prospects were interested, and to what extent.”
Seatrade Maritime wanted to explore potential solutions powered by secure, reliable Intent data. But a complex legacy footprint made strong integration essential for any potential Intent data solution.
Chapman and his publishing team also wondered if the right Intent data provider could enable new commercial product offerings to maritime businesses, who are historically late adopters of new tech and programmatic strategies.
Solution
“Immediately on that initial discovery call with Bombora, we could see the benefits,” Chapman said, “both for our programmatic marketing campaigns and the opportunity to package the capabilities to the ‘old-school’ maritime sector market.”
Seatrade Maritime enrolled in Bombora’s Data Co-op, gaining access to the most comprehensive, privacy-compliant Data Co-op in the industry.
In addition to ‘data-driven’ account targeting, Chapman and team used Bombora’s co-op insights for its content marketing strategy, specifically to gauge the resonance of articles with readers.
The co-op powers Company Surge® and Bombora’s Planning & Measurement Suite
Publishers are able to benefit from data visualization, audience identification, and easy criteria-based monitoring to see actionable insights into leads’ buying readiness.
“With the scoring model, we could finally prioritize who we reached with our programmatic ad campaigns, which get expensive quickly. And our ABM would reach more leads with actual intent to buy — more people worthy of our marketing budget.”
Dan Chapman Group Content and Digital Marketing Manager
Results
The niche publication was able to know exactly how many contacts a programmatic ad approach could reach — and if it was worth it.
“Bombora’s Intent data allows us to create our own segments, rather than trusting an agency using various data services,” Chapman said. “Our team’s time is better spent because we have the confidence that the audience we’re selecting is the one we actually want to reach.”
These benefits extended to Seatrade Maritime’s editorial strategy, which was vital to its inbound marketing strategy.
“We’d always thought that digitalization was really cool and people loved that topic, but Bombora’s data proved it was 'regulation' they were interested in, so we could pivot messaging and content production toward that.”
Dan Chapman Group Content and Digital Marketing Manager
“Armed with Bombora Intent data, results improved dramatically, and we saw 3.3% click-through rates for our clients,” Chapman said. “Bombora’s Data Co-op was the driving force for their campaigns’ success.”
New commercial revenue streams also helped Seatrade Maritime land a deal with a large ship management company they had been pursuing for six months.
“We closed $50,000 on the deal that includes two programmatic campaigns and became a recurring client for every quarter,” Chapman shared.
The winning of key accounts has opened up the South American publishing market for Seatrade Maritime, with ample recurring revenue already attached.
How can you get results like Informa's Seatrade Maritime?
Reach out to Bombora’s Co-op Success Team to learn how you can bring the most relevant audiences to your customers using Intent data.