Consumables

Iggesund.com succeeds in reaching designers and brand owners

Wednesday 03. July 2013 - "Iggesund Paperboard's website iggesund.com is unique in that it both succeeds in attracting its target group - designers - and is also greatly appreciated by that target group," says Ulf Smedberg, Senior Consultant with the Swedish website evaluation firm E-space Communication.

E-space is an industry veteran with 15 years’ experience of assessing websites. Over the years it has collected data from more than seven million respondents who have answered questions about the websites they have visited. All these respondents come from more than 1,000 customer cases spanning all business sectors. Most customers are in manufacturing, public administration, travel/tourism, bank/finance/insurance, and associations/organisations. There are no limits with regard to the language or alphabet of the websites.
“The measurements we do are fairly revealing,” Smedberg explains. “Companies that believe they are targeting their customers are disappointed when they find that seventy per cent of the traffic to their site is actually generated by young job seekers.”
It was when E-space was commissioned to assess the websites of the Holmen Group, to which Iggesund belongs, that it discovered how well Iggesund has succeeded. Iggesund Paperboard is a materials manufacturer that produces paperboard for advanced packaging and graphical applications. There is a long chain of intermediaries between Iggesund and companies that want to package or print something. Communications are further complicated because Iggesund’s customers are printers or packaging manufacturers, but the decision on what material will be used is made by the brand owners or designers employed by them. Although designers and brand owners are exceptions on Iggesund’s customer list, the Swedish paperboard manufacturer wants to use its website to learn more about these influencers and communicate with them.
“We began back in the 1990s to publish a magazine, Inspire, which is an important channel to these target groups – designers, brand owners and design students,” explains Marie Westh, who is in charge of Iggesund’s online presence. “We’ve gradually developed our website along the same lines.” With the relaunch in 2008 of its flagship product Invercote, Iggesund decided consciously to reinforce the emotional appeal of its communications with these target groups.
“Because Holmen has a group website that takes care of investor relations, recruitment and much more, we have been able to have a tighter focus and keep our own website very target oriented rather than having to provide a hard-to-navigate smorgasbord,” she continues.
One important aspect of Iggesund’s market communications is to make it easy to order swatches, examples of techniques, and documentation. The company has therefore invested in an e-commerce platform to simplify this service.
Data analysis by E-space reveals that Iggesund stands out from average manufacturing companies in two decisive ways. The paperboard manufacturer has succeeded in capturing its target group and is also greatly appreciated by that group.
“When we compare Iggesund’s performance with the results from our database of industrial manufacturers, Iggesund is top of its class for this measurement period and is definitely one of the top sites we’ve encountered in the years we’ve been doing these studies,” Smedberg says.
Over the past two years Iggesund has implemented “The Black Box Project”, in which the company challenged designers to produce spectacular creations by using its flagship product Invercote. Part of the project involved systematically communicating with the design profession via emailed reports about the project and its progress.
“Designers are a sensitive group to target using mass communications,” explains Carlo Einarsson, Director Market Communications for Iggesund Paperboard. “Our communications with them must be extremely relevant or we can have the exact opposite effect to the one we want to achieve. But we are now applying this experience of communicating the Black Box Project to additional communication steps that are driving traffic to our website.”