Hunter Engineering's evolution in content and digital Commerce boosts leads by 88%, traffic by 72%, and monthly order volume by 20%

Challenge

Hunter Engineering, a leading automobile service equipment manufacturer, wanted to rethink digital growth. It was 2019 and Hunter had just partnered with Optimizely to utilize its market-leading CMS solution. Hunter was no longer investing in MarTech headaches, but real outcomes.

However, what laid on the horizon for Hunter as they launched their revamped site in Q1 2020, would shift priorities at the top of every executive’s list.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced buyers to turn to digital purchasing. Pandemic-induced social restrictions meant buyers turned to digital channels to conduct business, and in the world of B2B, where reliable purchasing and fulfillment is business-critical, Hunter found themselves needing to make a chess move. Their customers, who conducted business online, over-the-phone, and in-person, now required trusted online purchasing. Instead of pulling back and cutting costs, Hunter invested in customer experiences and satisfaction – launching commerce to come out stronger and more reliable to customers throughout the pandemic.

Furthermore, with their legacy CMS solution previously limiting how employees could create and manage content online, and now running on Optimizely, Hunter was equipped with the technology and strategy to take their business into the digital age.

Yet, what became quickly apparent with a new, scalable CMS solution was a more deep-rooted challenge: their team was not digitally enabled to generate content at a rapid pace, minimizing their potential for digital transformation and continued industry leadership.  

Recognizing the multi-faceted challenge amid a global pandemic, Hunter put faith into their new partner, Optimizely, to support their growth through content, marketing, and e-commerce challenges using a single, unified platform: Optimizely One.  

Solution

From 2019 to 2023, Hunter Engineering, with Optimizely as their e-commerce and marketing software partner, achieved total digital transformation across their e-commerce site and internal marketing workflows. 

This outcome was based on two key initiatives: 

• Launch an intuitive content management system and robust commerce backend built for scale 
• Modernize content production, collaboration, and workflows 

By partnering with Optimizely, Hunter Engineering took a targeted approach to solving marketing challenges across the entire marketing lifecycle, helping Hunter respond to market volatility with growth and customer satisfaction. 
 
This strategic transformation required key capabilities and support from Optimizely to bring the vision to life. Now, let’s uncover how Optimizely was best positioned in technology and strategy to help Hunter Engineering win.

Building for Scale: Using a trusted Content Management System to grow the bottom line

What launched Hunter Engineering from industry leader to global champion of automobile service equipment was their investment in Optimizely’s Content Management System. As Hunter peered into the 2020s, they identified a few key areas their CMS needed to support their strategy. 1) They need a CMS solution to integrate without blowing up costs 2) They want to provide exceptional customer experiences 3) They want to scale that exceptional customer experience globally.

Choosing Optimizely, Hunter Engineering coordinated with implementation partners who accelerated integration and customization processes of the Optimizely-driven site. Optimizely’s PaaS CMS solution offers organizations the ability to develop truly bespoke and brand-driven experiences that delight customers and improve engagement while increasing conversions. Wanting to take full advantage of Optimizely’s CMS capabilities, and being pleased with early results, Hunter added six new in-house developers to ensure they were continually developing and improving their site.

Secondly, Hunter placed an intense focus on personalization. Hunter creates a personalized experience based on zip codes and location for customers to connect with local representatives who can have a face-to-face conversation with buyers to help guide them through a purchase.

Lastly, being built for scale, Hunter used improved admin roles, permissions, and workflows to enable their marketing team to create without restrictions. Goodbye to the days fighting for licensing during new hire onboarding.

Optimizely is a catalyst for international growth, working with over 1,000 organizations across the globe. Optimizely's CMS solution enables organizations to deliver multi-site, language, and regional experiences that make it easy for anyone, just about anywhere, to complete a purchase online. Now adding their 9th(!) language translation of their site, Hunter Engineering is growing their global footprint and helping lead the market in automobile service equipment manufacturing. 

Boosting sales, permanently: Optimizely’s Commerce Connect 

During the second half of 2020, Hunter Engineering felt the impact of global consumer trends shift to more online purchasing. With Optimizely’s Commerce Connect, Hunter launched their customer portal, allowing customers to connect with local salespeople, purchase replacement parts, and execute due diligence on purchasing new Hunter products. Having a trusted digital presence where customers could execute purchases enabled Hunter to remain competitive during greater economic headwinds.  

As a PaaS deployment, Hunter first relied on partners’ developers to craft a compelling site, later on, taking advantage of Optimizely’s ability to scale, they employed an in-house team to create engaging content and product experiences that generate interest, guide customers to purchase, and give them a reason to come back.  

Globalization, integrating homegrown solutions, and optimizing commerce experiences is where Hunter is focused now, and with Commerce Connect, they are able to grow without risking frustrating their employees with a less than ideal commerce platform.

Creating a modern marketing team: Optimizely’s Content Marketing Platform.

Hunter Engineering realized they needed change but lacked the partner to help initiate it. After three years working with Optimizely to launch their CMS and Commerce solution, a more human challenge awaited them: Now equipped with a modern CMS and commerce solution, how can Hunter Engineering create content that is worth delivering to customers at a global scale? 

“We were printing out brochures and web pages, handwriting notes, scanning it in, emailing it to another, and rinse and repeating – it was chaos.” Tommy Maitz, Director of Marketing, Hunter Engineering 

Instead of continuing to build content through outdated and siloed methods and channels, Hunter, from top-to-bottom, committed to digital, injecting real-time collaboration and transparency into workstreams to produce high quality work at scale.  

“Using a free version of the platform (CMP), we showed our executive team how it would be used for project and campaign management... they clearly saw the value.” 

In CMP, Hunter can centralize campaign planning with total visibility into everything teams are creating and who’s creating it – boosting collaboration and improving content quality. Also, integrating with solutions like Microsoft Teams and Jira empowers their entire organization to deliver expert insight into content and marketing.  

Without CMP, you’re looking at emails, teams' messages, notes and more. Using CMP is Hunter committing to the digital age and wanting to do it in a better way.

Tommy Maitz

Director of Marketing, Hunter Engineering

Hosting several major trade shows, launching multiple new products, and running dozens of campaigns a year and entering the arena of content-first marketing, Hunter uses Optimizely’s Content Marketing platform to keep teams organized, informed, and empowered to create meaningful work. 

Results

Hunter Engineering’s partnership with Optimizely was nothing short of a success. After implementing Optimizely’s CMS, Hunter has seen a 72% increase in website traffic. 

From November 2020 to May 2022, Hunter saw, on average, a 20% MoM increase in order volume — solidifying digital as a strong customer engagement  channel for Hunter. 

And finally, CMP has empowered employees to become more efficient, improve feedback, and help foster a culture of high-quality collaboration. 

I don’t know that I can place a value on CMP...when you don’t have a centralized solution like CMP, it’s chaos.

Tommy Maitz

Director of Marketing, Hunter Engineering

Now, Hunter Engineering is poised for further success. They launched a customized and trusted CMS solution to increase content production and improve delivery. They launched a digital commerce channel where buyers can complete purchases without human assistance, improving revenue growth, and releasing a knot in employee collaboration and communication needed for growth. 

Looking forward, Hunter is investing in their shift to digital. Focusing on global rollout of their website, Hunter is forging their path as a digital leader in manufacturing.

“One of the biggest benefits of Optimizely has been the ability to scale - to take on challenges we’ve known we’ve wanted to take on but have never had the right partner. We’re all in on Optimizely.”