Cucumber, Trustpower takedigital marketing award top gongs

Cucumber and Trustpower take top gongs in Australia and New Zealand digital marketing awards

6 November 2014

Cucumber, the fast-growing digital services agency, and energy and telecommunications company Trustpower were the big winners at the 2014 Sitecore Experience Awards for Australia and New Zealand, taking the prestigious ROI Award and the Retail, Wholesale and Consumer Goods Award.

The awards are given annually to organisations using Sitecore to deliver outstanding experiences for both customers and their own business. This year Sitecore awarded only 19 organisations across Australia and New Zealand, with Trustpower and Cucumber the only New Zealand recipients.

Wayne Ramshaw, Trustpower’s Digital Channel Manager, says that the company has ambitious goals to become New Zealand’s leading multi-utility provider and its new website is a significant channel to market for the company for new customer acquisition and to better serve existing customers.

“We recently repositioned from an electricity company to a true multi-product service provider, with products across power, gas, phone and internet,” says Wayne. “Our new website allows us to personalise the customer experience and drive one-on-one engagement with every customer at every online touchpoint, at any time and on any device.”

“We believe that it’s also a first for New Zealand by giving customers the ability to see all their electricity, reticulated gas, LPG bottled gas, phone and broadband services in a single view,” adds Wayne.

The results have exceeded the targets Trustpower set prior to going live, with significant increases in the number of new customers acquired online and number of services used by each customer, as well as decreases in customer churn and the cost of customer acquisition.

“The responsive design also works well,” says Wayne. “Our old site was not optimised for mobile devices but now over 20 percent of site visitors are using mobiles, and a significant portion of all new customer acquisitions are via mobile.”

“Together with Cucumber we have come up with an innovative solution that has reduced the complexity of marketing while providing a better, more personalised experience for each customer,” adds Wayne. “We have a significant roadmap of online enhancements planned so that we can continue to grow our total number of customers, the number of services used by each customer and overall profitability.”

Clare Swallow, Cucumber’s General Manager for Digital and the recent winner of a Westpac Millennial Women of Influence award, says that the awards reinforce Cucumber’s reputation for redefining how companies deliver personalised and seamless experiences through sophisticated websites that connect with customers in powerful ways.

“As consumers shift their attention from buying products to buying experiences, the focus of business is also shifting,” says Clare. “It’s no longer enough for a company to offer great products or services – now it must also offer great online experiences.

“We’ve had strong demand for our online solutions that allow consumers to make stronger brand connections in their always-on world. We’re committed to the success of Trustpower and our team worked closely with them to develop a solution that could support their transformation to a digital business.

“We’re particularly proud to win the coveted ROI Award,” adds Clare. “This is the pinnacle of awards, with ROI the ultimate measure of success for any digital solution.”

About Trustpower’s solution

Trustpower’s site is hosted in the cloud using Microsoft Azure to allow Trustpower to respond to surges in demand, easily and quickly. The site was built on Sitecore 6.6 and integrates with TP’s Gentrack Velocity (CIS), the Trustpower product catalogue and Salesforce CRM.

Using Sitecore, Trustpower has been able to deliver an outstanding experience for customers by making it easy to explore and select relevant services, view account data across all service lines in one place, access useful and relevant content for selecting services and managing each utility account, and providing access to online tools for adding and changing services.

At the same time, Trustpower’s marketers can easily create and personalise content, as well as establish and run targeted campaigns, and optimise content while reacting to market changes much faster.

About Cucumber

Cucumber, the digital services agency, is redefining how companies deliver personalised and seamless experiences by creating sophisticated websites that connect with customers in powerful ways. With offices in Tauranga and Auckland, it provides clients with a full suite of digital services spanning strategy, digital marketing, design, content, analytics, mobile, social and web services. Cucumber’s unique combination of strategy, design and technology services results in game-changing integrated digital solutions for clients such as Bayer Crop Science, Trustpower and Bayleys Real Estate. For more information, visit www.cucumber.co.nz

About Trustpower

Trustpower is a publicly-owned company, listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZX). In New Zealand, we’re a generator of electricity, a retailer of energy and telecommunication services. In Australia, we’re an emerging generator of electricity. Across all our operations, we are committed to sound, responsible innovation and service excellence. In New Zealand, we own and operate 34 generation sites. Thirty three are sustainable and generate over 99% of our electricity production from hydroelectric schemes and wind farms. In Australia, we are now generating from the second stage of our Snowtown wind farm. For more information, visit www.trustpower.co.nz

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