The Internet was opened to the public back in 1991, after the invention of the World Wide Web. This opened the Pandora box: online shopping! By 1999 global e-commerce reaches $150 billion.
But behind great e-commerce lays great e-commerce software.
Divante is aiming to be just that: great e-commerce software house, by providing top-notch e-commerce solutions and products for both B2B and B2C segments.
And with a revenue that increases annually by 30%, we think they’re kinda there, what do you think?
And take a look at that: a Deloitte Technology Fast 500 nomination in 2017, with a 4-year revenue growth of 259%.
So, what’s the recipe behind the growth?
Definitely the product should be top notch. But without the right sales and marketing strategies, a great product just ain’t enough.
So, in this blog post we’ll decipher Divante’s marketing strategies, from the inbound perspective, social media, but also we’ll sneak inside their team and employer branding
TABLE OF CONTENT
- Divante E-commerce Software House - Short Overview
- Brand Awareness at Divante
- Divante’s Social Presence
- Employer branding and hiring
- Divante’s Website and Conversion Rate Optimization
- Divante’s Traffic Acquisition
- Content Marketing
- Wrap Up
From banking, telekom, fashion, Divante knows it all. Just look at their clients.
Impressive, right?
But how? That is the question.
Let’s find out.
Divante E-commerce Software House- Short Overview
Some Divante facts: 10 years on the market, 150+ global clients, 200+ team members, 1000+ projects delivered, own products developed for the e-commerce market and 2 e-commerce open-source solutions (Open Loyalty and Vue Storefront).
The feedback on Github, Capterra and g2crowd looks really good for Vue Storefront, which is acclaimed as No. 1 open source progressive web app for e-Commerce:
So, 10 years of steady growth and business expansion.
And let's not forget they've recently opened an office in Amsterdam and Berlin, and they're expanding to Singapore as well.
The purpose of this new office was being closer to their clients from the DACH countries.
Next, let's look a bit at what the Divante clients have to say about them:
- Deep knowledge, commitment and full support
- Managed to increase traffic and income
- Go the extra-mile
- Delivery with tight deadlines
- Expertise and professionalism
“Our income has doubled”, “reduced our time to market”, “increase website traffic” - that’s what I call results oriented.
But how did Divante get here: a top player in the e-commerce software industry?
Follow me to find out:
- How developing open source products can pave your way to success
- How the proper branding efforts can get you first-rate clients
- How inbound marketing can portrait you as an expert in the field and build trust around you
Divante’s Marketing Strategies Reverse Engineered
After so much pain and struggle for a former communist country, it’s time for a rebirth.
Poland is reinventing itself and reshaping the IT outsourcing environment.
“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade” - this came to life in Wroclaw.
Divante, the e-commerce software house is leading the way.
T-Mobile, Ringier Axel, Continental, Tchibo, Intersport are just a few of Divante’s global clients.
But what lays behind the lemonade?
Strategic marketing.
And we’ll reverse engineer it.
Brand Awareness at Divante
A brand vision should attempt to go beyond functional benefits to consider organizational values; a higher purpose; brand personality; and emotional, social, and self-expressive benefits. ― David Aaker (the father of modern branding)
Every step a business makes, in relationship with each and every stakeholder, will translate itself in branding.
A satisfied customer, an unhappy employee, an empowered student at a hackathon, a comment on social media, everything will generate word-of-mouth and brand awareness.
So, what does the market have to say about Divante?
First of all, we’ve mentioned the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 nomination in 2017 and the Clutch reviews.
Further on, in our article, we’ll see how community and social media engagements are handled.
Because, in the end, with all the tech development, the human touch will get you fans, employees and customers.
Divante’s Social Presence
Social media is a great channel for a business to include the community in the communication, help build trust and develop long-lasting relationships.
Divante clearly understands this, just look at these numbers:
- 7500+ Facebook followers
- 1700+ Twitter followers
- 2700+ Linkedin followers
Looking good for an e-commerce software house.
Divante’s Facebook Page
Divante’s Facebook profile has a client approach. Through consistently publishing posts, Divante wants to prove expertise in the field, hence build trust around the brand.
The posts are merely about:
- Promoting long form content - ebooks, guides, reports
- Successful integrations of their Vue Storefront product or PWA
- New strategies and partnerships for Divante
- Company culture and employer branding
- Events they organize or attend to
The interactions are a bit scarce.
But this isn’t a surprise. From what we’ve analyzed so far, the most popular posts for software houses posting on Facebook, are people related, such as team events, introducing team members etc.
The LinkedIn profile content is also client-aimed. The posts refer to:
- latest articles they've published
- news from the e-commerce world
- their latest ebooks
- events they've attended
- their latest knowledge project: interviews with influencers in the field, in a series called "E-commerce Talks by Divante", hosted on Youtube, Soundcloud and other podcast apps.
- their services
- posts that refer to the company culture (internal events, celebrations) and employer branding
- hiring opportunities
Divante almost replicates the Facebook and LinkedIn content within its tweets.
Events are in the spotlight here: speaking gigs, attending conferences and summits, but also sharing content they build.
Curiously, this is the first software house I’ve encountered that does not rely much on social media to build employer branding.
The communication is mostly oriented towards gaining new clients.
Divante’s Community Involvement
Whenever you would see a Magento event, for sure Divante is there.
They don’t usually miss making an appearance, as attendees or speakers.
Now, take a look at their roadmap, pretty busy!
On the employer branding side, they're busy as well: meetups, hackathons you name it.
But these are just a drop in the ocean.
Take a look at the community built around Vue Storefront!
Employer branding and hiring
One single Glassdoor review for Divante, a positive one, but, statistically speaking, not significant.
As we’ve mentioned before, through community networking, Divante is opening communication doors to future employees.
Speaking of, they have 15 ONGOING open positions, mostly for developers. The head of content position is standing out from the busy crowd of developers and engineers.
The “ongoing” status of the jobs explains a lot, especially when you look at this data: 600+ developers wanted in Wroclaw.
Divante has growth plans: opening new offices and hiring people.
But this thing goes even bigger: they want to build the Vue A-team, the best in Europe.
Another thing that struck me is the company's structure.
By now we've already heard about flat structures and holacracy, Divante is experimenting with something else: the Tribe Model inspired by Spotify.
This model is trying to split the organization into smaller organizations. We've got squads, guilds, and other types of teams. These teams are autonomous, self-organizing and self-managing.
So far so good, or so it seems for Divante's new structure.
Divante’s Website and Conversion Rate Optimization
The website has a intuitive and user friendly interface. It’s easy for the buyer persona to find an answer to its questions:
What does Divante do?
"We’re experts in providing top-notch eCommerce solutions and products for both B2B and B2C segments."
What technologies do you use?
Vue, Pimcore, Magento, SAP...
What services do you offer?
The menu is well organized, with clearly stated submenus in terms of products and services.
Besides services, Divante has built its own products for e-commerce:
This only comes natural for a software house, after gaining so much knowledge, moving towards a SaaS approach has long term benefits.
How can I trust you?
Case studies backed by data, testimonials, client listing, awards.
How can I contact you?
- “Contact us” button
- “Estimate a project” button in the homepage, above the fold
- Contact form
If you want more data, Divante has prepared a top-notch info pack.
In terms of conversion rate optimization, they seem to be using Hotjar (according to SimilarTech). Also they are using Hubspot chat and forms for marketing automation purposes. In the end, it's all for the sake of improving the sales cycle and conversion rates.
Divante’s Traffic Acquisition
The main website traffic sources for June 2019 were:
What could account as direct website traffic?
- offline events: conferences, meetups and hackathons
- referral traffic not tagged
- sales reps activities
Content Marketing
Like for our Netguru growth story, the approach for the content marketing analysis is based on the RACE framework.
I'm gonna look at the content strategy from the reach and act stages, where you build awareness around the brand and design the first touchpoints with the contacts.
The convert phase of the RACE framework revolves around paying customers, so this is a task for the sales team. The marketing team is responsible for generating high quality leads in the first two phases.
The engage part of the framework y the sales team in B2B, while the engage part can have different responsibles (account managers, support team, CEO...).
- REACH
Brand awareness at Divance is built mainly through offline events, social media postings, blog and website content.
Now, let's move a bit to the blog. The blog is updated about bi-weekly. Lots of categories are used.
The majority of the posts are not very technical, and, besides Agata Młodawska, the Marketing Manager and Aleksandra Kwiecien, the Content Manager, other non-marketing team members are writing content.
From time to time, some pieces of content are signed by Tom and Piotr Karwatka, the CEO and CTO of Divante.
But let’s see which are the most valuable pages on the Divante website:
It seems that the most traffic is brought to the blog pages. In the top 10 pages, there are only two pages that are not blog related: the homepage and contact page.
But let’s take a look at the keywords. The trend looks nice, slowly but surely upward.
Only one keyword cluster is standing out in terms of traffic and position: banking loyalty programs/rewards.
Moving away from the blog, Divante has created really powerful non-gated pieces of content:
- Case studies with famous brands: Reserved, ING, Intersport etc
- Slideshare content: 100+ slideshares and thousands of views
- audio content: podcast "E-Commerce Talks"
- ACT
It's time to move further down in the funnel. During the act phase users engage with Divante's gated content. In exchange for contact data they get access to original, valuable information.
The tools used here are:
- newsletter
- gated case studies
- eBooks and their lead magnets. There is a large collection of eBooks designed by Divante, the topics vary from trends and insights, various tops, market reports, "state of" type of analysis to vertical related issues (fashion, pharma...).
Divante seems to be testing various lead magnet designs, positioning the CTA and form above or below the fold.
It seems that they employ virality tools, shares in exchange for download via Pay with a Tweet.
- product demos
Backlinks to Support Content Marketing
Good original content needs backlinks in order to get some Google love. So, let's peep at Divante's backlinks a bit.
The links come from relevant e-commerce or SaaS related websites.
Guest blogging seems to be a backlink and traffic source as well, gotcha Agata:
Divante’s Paid Traffic Acquisition
In terms of paid Google search ads, Divante is promoting the Magento development service, bidding on “magento web development” related keywords, which are really bottom of the funnel keywords. They go straight for high intent keywords.
On the other hand, they also push ads that promote their reports.
The landing page is really compelling, with its clear CTA and above the fold social proof.
Spyfu estimates a budget below $1k.
While the Google search ads are Magento focused, on the sponsored Facebook posts side we see a progressive web apps approach.
Using Similar Tech I've noticed that they have the Quora, AdRoll retargeting pixels installed as well, also the Twitter and Bing pixels.
So, there's more than meets the eye with these guys when it comes to paid advertising. They don't shy away from challenges.
Social Selling
Regarding the Medium positioning, it seems that Piotr Krawatka, CTO of Divante, and other Divante colleagues are editing The Vue Storefront Journal.
Beginning with June 2018, there is an increasing Medium focus. And the engagement seems rewarding.
Wrap Up
From the B2B marketing point of view, it seems that a consistent content strategy, seasoned with some events and marketing automation, is the recipe of success for this e-commerce software house, Divante.
But let’s make a more comprehensive list of takeaways:
- Release valuable open source projects
- Don't shy away from taking a SaaS approach
- Go the extra mile in the relationship with your clients
- Have a content strategy across the entire buyer’s journey and test various format: text, imagery, audio, video
- Letting your community in on your plans for the future is great for business, it builds trust and increases brand awareness
So, this was our Divante pit stop.
But the race ain’t over yet.
And it’s not only about Wroclaw, but Poland's success story.
So, check out our Growth Marketing Secrets of Top European Software Houses - Poland Edition 2019 ebook to see below the tip of the iceberg.
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