Emplate
Named one of Denmark’s most innovative IoT companies and a finalist in the 2017 EY Entrepreneur of the Year, Emplate provides an efficient mobile communication channel for shopping malls to increase foot traffic. Emplate has developed an end-to-end marketing platform that enables retailers to bridge the gap between the offline, physical retail store and the online personalized shopping experience that customers have become used to.
Results at a glance
- In 6 months, order size increased 9x
- Average order size has grown 10x YOY
- Solutions sold rose from 1 to 10
The Challenge
Emplate was often invited to “inspire” prospects with the future of its iBeacon-enabled technology, but those presentations led nowhere.
As with any start-up, there was plenty of blood, sweat and tears. After all, it’s uncommon to have five co-founders, all of whom have stuck together for the past three years. It’s uncommon to build all the software in-house, while also pursuing engineering and computer science degrees on the weekends. And it’s uncommon to grow a company without any funding.
At the start, Emplate had been continually invited to inspire leaders in the industry—both shopping center management and retail chains—by educating them on iBeacon technology. The conversations were focused on how the technology worked and meetings led nowhere.
Without significant sales, the co-founders could raise money through investors or they could take existing funds and invest in themselves.
Business issues
- Grow revenue without PE backing
- Align the sales process around customer value
- Improve demo-to-close conversion rates
By using the ValuePrompter® we have been able to identify, engage and maintain access to the real decision makers. This has enabled us to win bigger deals faster.
The Solution
Emplate decided that the entire sales and leadership team would adopt the ValueSelling Framework®.
Tailoring the Conversation
Emplate has penetrated the Danish market by focusing the sales conversations on value. Along the way, they discovered how to best tailor the conversations mall-to-mall based on detecting the underlying business issue. For example, city malls are trying to increase basket size. Experience malls are trying to increase annual visitors. In both cases, the mall tenants seek higher customer engagement and greater customer lifetime sales.
And by helping mall management sell through to the mall owners, Emplate has been able to start value-based discussions that impact dozens of malls at once rather than approaching each mall separately.
The Results
That proved to be a good idea because what Emplate could have raised two years ago, they’ve more than exceeded in revenue.
- In 6 months, order size increased 9x
- Average order size grew 10x YOY
- Solutions sold rose from 1 to 10
The Emplate software is installed in major Danish shopping malls with hundreds of retail stores, interacting with thousands of users daily. The customer nurturing program has proven a success. Malls with the Emplate app have increased the number of annual visitors and increased basket size. With its meteoric success and recognition, the company is expanding throughout northern Europe, integrating into existing apps and creating spin-off products for retail chains. The entrepreneurial Millennials at Emplate are ready to scale the business internationally.
