FedEx grows delivering revenue with unified B2B data in one view.

Data Cloud brings web, delivery and account data together for more effective sales follow-up.

Products Used

Data Cloud

Sales Cloud

Marketing Cloud

Salesforce Professional Services

FedEx uses Data Cloud to connect sales, marketing, and shipment data to re-engage inactive B2B customers and promote international shipping services with personalised follow-up, increasing shipping conversions and revenue.

About FedEx

FedEx is an $88 billion global supply chain that provides rapid, reliable, time-definite delivery of more than 15 million packages per day to more than 220 countries and territories around the world.

The Challenge for FedEx

Siloed data sources presented an opportunity to streamline follow-up with inactive customers.

FedEx works with small business customers to discount bulk delivery rates based on their projected delivery volume. However, few of them will start delivering on their own. To encourage deliveries, FedEx’s sales reps needed to keep in touch to inactive customers across hundreds of accounts manually.

But identifying these accounts took IT three or more weeks across up to ten separate systems. By the time they gathered a targeted list, it might be outdated and inaccurate. FedEx sought the ability to bring customer sales interactions, deliveries and web browsing data into one view to quickly orchestrate customer engagement.

FedEx sales wanted to quickly and efficiently connect with small business customers browsing fedex.com for information on international delivery. The company needed a way to pair real-time web data with its sales, marketing and Databricks data to identify customers who were interested in international delivery but had never completed a delivery. Without these insights, proactive outreach to interested customers was cumbersome.

FedEx couldn’t track customers who abandoned delivery rate quotes online.

Before signing a contract for a discounted rate, companies often request a delivery quote online. But they sometimes abandon their delivery rate quotes, similar to how consumers abandon an online shopping basket. FedEx needed a system for tracking the abandonment rates and providing sales with an accurate list of interested accounts. As a result, potential customers moved on before sales could engage with them.

How Salesforce Helps

Data Cloud connects data sources so sales can re-engage inactive customers and generate new business.

After retiring many of the systems that took weeks to gather targeted lists, FedEx chose Data Cloud to bridge opportunity data in Sales Cloud, web browsing data in Marketing Cloud and delivering data in Databricks. Now, a unified view of all customer data allows FedEx to pinpoint inactive customers in a matter of hours, not weeks and efficiently re-engage them.

Bring Your Own Lake (BYOL) data shares allow FedEx to access the external data with Salesforce data in a unified view, enabling reps to see who signed an agreement but hasn’t begun delivery. And with zero copy integration, FedEx can act on the external data directly within Salesforce without duplication, streamlining the process and enhancing conversion opportunities.

“The power is in Data Cloud’s ability to bring data together and let us funnel it into Marketing Cloud and Sales Cloud in near-real-time,” said Carlos Gonzalez, Senior Programmer Advisor. “Zero copy is very attractive to us because it’s easier and less expensive than ingesting the data again and landing it in multiple spots.”

Data Cloud fuels Marketing Cloud with segmented lists to automatically orchestrate personalised journeys that include sales calls, marketing emails or both, motivating customers to start delivery. This strengthens the company’s existing Marketing Cloud instance, which FedEx previously used to send one-off emails. FedEx can also drive customers to learn about fdx, its new data-driven commerce platform, which connects the entire customer supply chain, making it easier for companies to grow demand, increase conversion, optimise fulfilment and streamline returns.

With the ability to design, automate and orchestrate multi-touch campaigns using connected data, reps can keep in touch to inactive accounts faster, increasing account reactivations and generating new business.

"Data Cloud enables us to know our customers better so we can partner with them to build their businesses,” said Angela Straub, Director of Solutions, Enterprise Customer, Platform and MDM. “We can be more efficient through automation, capitalise on the robust data we have and serve it up to improve experiences for customers, reps and sales alike, ultimately driving top line revenue.

Our business customers expect us to know everything about their needs and relationship with us. We work really effectively now across sales and marketing and Data Cloud has enabled us to do that.

Mark Colombo

Senior Vice President, Solutions and Sales, FedEx

Data Cloud improves customer engagement and reduces quote abandonment.

With Data Cloud, FedEx sales reps can also see web browsing and quote creation data alongside contract data to identify prospective customers who are just browsing and haven’t yet signed a bulk rate agreement. Reps can then easily follow up or send the contact on an automated journey to continue nurturing their interest.

Together, Data Cloud and Marketing Cloud help sales follow up fast to upsell international delivery.

Together, Data Cloud and Marketing Cloud also help FedEx increase international delivery. Data Cloud assesses if someone browsing the international delivery page could be a target customer by bringing together web browsing data from Marketing Cloud Personalisation and delivery data from Databricks. If Databricks shows the customer has not yet delivered, FedEx can choose how to orchestrate follow-up engagement in Salesforce, whether through an automated email journey, a sales campaign or targeted banner ads on the international delivery page.

When customers engage in the automated journey (for example, opening an email), they progress to the next step and the rep is notified to follow up with a call to address their questions, boosting the chances of conversion. Thisdata-driven approach enables reps to deliver timely, relevant communications, enhancing engagement with prospects and optimising how reps spend their time.

FedEx makes the most of Data Cloud with the Salesforce Professional Services and Signature Success Plan.

To connect all of FedEx’s Salesforce solutions and ensure maximum value from Data Cloud, Fedex worked with Salesforce Professional Services’ leading experts to design and implement the platform. This enabled FedEx to pull in relevant data from Sales Cloud, strengthen its data architecture and segment for cross-cloud journeys.

In less than two weeks, Professional Services successfully configured an end-to-end Data Cloud implementation that helped FedEx increase the lead qualification audience for those interested in international delivery. Professional Services also implemented a post-abandonment journey including personalised web banners and emails, which has improved both delivery label creation and account sign-ups after requesting a rate.

FedEx also relies on the Signature Success Plan to ensure continuous alignment between Data Cloud’s configuration and the company’s current objectives. The engagement provides resources like Architect Engagements, guidance from bi-weekly meetings and support from a Customer Success Manager. And with instructor-led training courses, best practices and relevant product education growing the team's technical expertise, FedEx can innovate faster and increase product adoption.

The Salesforce Difference

Trust and reliability are imperative in any technology decision. After more than 16 years of partnership, FedEx trusts Salesforce’s end-to-end data platform to seamlessly integrate with its existing data lakes — without duplicating data, thanks to zero copy. With Salesforce, the company can act on its data in real time, orchestrating engagement journeys in Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud to motivate customers toward continual business with FedEx..

As a “customer obsessed” brand, FedEx can now take action on data like never before to connect with customers at the greatest moment of impact. Now FedEx approaches each customer at a global scale but with localised understanding of who they are.

How Salesforce Helps

Data Cloud connects data sources so sales can re-engage inactive customers and generate new business.