CASE STUDY

$100k impact!
How AkzoNobel achieved
employee advocacy success

A quadrupled LinkedIn audience size, and $100,000 in earned media value. All with just 272 employees using the DSMN8 platform.

AkzoNobel Case Study Logo

Client

AkzoNobel

Headquarters

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Industry

Chemical Manufacturing

Company Size

30,000 employees

Summary 👇

AkzoNobel’s MPY business decided to leverage a previously untapped audience for the company – their employees’ networks.

By empowering employees to build personal brands on social media, AkzoNobel quadrupled the size of their LinkedIn audience and reached 35,000 website visits, generating a comparative media spend of almost $100,000.

This was all achieved in just over a year, by 272 employees using DSMN8. AkzoNobel successfully leveraged employee advocacy in a totally risk-free way by using the best tools to keep every employee “on brand”.

The People 👋

Let’s get to know the marine, protective and yacht (MPY) business of AkzoNobel!

Honestly, you’re probably more aware of these guys than you might think…

As experts in the manufacture of paints and coatings, there’s a good chance you’re only ever a few meters away from something coated with one of their products.

The International brand of AkzoNobel is one of the global industry leaders and has very recently celebrated its 140th anniversary.

“Inventing the future for well over 100 years.”

Having worked closely with the team for over a year, it’s hard to argue with this!

The Challenge? 🤔

While a good chunk of the AkzoNobel team were already familiar with social media and the importance of having a social media presence, many employees were not.

Like most companies, a sizable portion of them didn’t join the workforce using social media, and so they certainly hadn’t used it as a tool for work either.

AkzoNobel had already used an employee advocacy tool, but they were on the hunt for something bigger that would accommodate every users’ needs so that they could get more people involved.

The team quickly realized that to get more employees involved, they would need to get their less active employees up to speed and educated on the benefits of social media “for work”.

But this would be only half of the challenge.

Once employees were educated on the importance of social media, it would then be a case of keeping employees on brand to ensure that sharing could be encouraged while being totally risk-free for the company.

How would they activate an otherwise underutilized asset for marketing – their employees – on social media to amplify their messaging, all while minimizing risk and keeping everyone on brand?

Stephen Farrell | AkzoNobel

We realized early that getting in-active employees using social media would be just the beginning. Ensuring that this activity was consistent and kept in line with our brand messaging would be essential to the program’s success. DSMN8’s automation tool was a massive help!

Stephen FarrellSenior Digital Communications Specialist

The Solution 💪

In order to get more of their employees active on social media, they realized that they would need a more time-effective and easy-to-use solution than what they previously had. They needed something with the potential to automate and regulate employees’ activity, too.

And so, they began researching various employee advocacy platforms. After learning that another segment of the business was already using DSMN8, they did their own research and quickly realized that this would be the perfect solution to achieve their own goals too.

From our first conversations with the team at AkzoNobel, we realized that getting those inactive employees using social media would be just the beginning.

Ensuring that this activity was consistent and kept in line with the brand’s messaging would be essential to the program’s continued success.

Step in DSMN8’s automation tool!

The automation features allow posts to be automatically shared to users’ LinkedIn feeds without them having to lift a finger.

Posts are pre-curated by the company’s admin users, and our innovative ‘Smart Scheduling’ technology ensures that each automated post is shared at a time when each employee is most likely to generate engagement.

Plus, because each piece of content is pre-curated by AkzoNobel’s admin users, it guarantees that each employee’s post complies with the brand’s message. This alleviates any risk of employees saying the wrong thing.

DSMN8's Automation Function

Time efficiency? Check ✅

Risk-free sharing? Double-check ✅

Facts: Typically, less than 2% of employees share company content on social media. Automation removes the need for staff to shift their focus from their key duties.

DSMN8 Dynamic Display Multiple Social Media Captions Feature

Of course though, the last thing they wanted was for more employees to start sharing company content only to appear spammy in the feeds of their key audiences.

It had to be authentic.

DSMN8’s Dynamic Display had a key role to play here.

When admin users curate content for their colleagues to share, they’re able to add multiple preview images, titles, and post captions.

This means that different employees can post the same content to social media, but shown and said differently each time.

It all sounds like techy stuff, right? Not to worry, this is all handled by the DSMN8 platform and requires no additional editing from the employee.

The use of the automation tool was encouraged but not essential.

Many AkzoNobel employees shared simply because the company had done an exemplary job of communicating the benefits from the start.

Around 55% of users use automation, but over 45% of users share because they care and understand the benefits. These guys get it!

At the heart of AkzoNobel’s goals was a desire to amplify their messaging by leveraging their employees’ networks.

So, they needed to track the impact of their employees’ activity to measure the program’s success.

DSMN8’s analytics suite provides the organization with performance data such as reach, cost per click, clicks per share and comparative media spend.

Tracking these metrics enabled them to demonstrate the financial impact of the program as well as adjust their content strategy based on employee engagement.

DSMN8 reporting analytics dashboard

Key Features Used:

Auto-Scheduling

Save time with automated content sharing.

Dynamic Display

Multiple captions and images for every post.

Analytics Suite

Monitor performance & demonstrate ROI.

Stephen Farrell | AkzoNobel

The analytics suite allowed us to measure the financial success of the initiative, and also allowed us to monitor metrics like active users, shares, and audience size. Allowing us to tweak our strategy based on employees’ sharing habits.

Stephen FarrellSenior Digital Communications Specialist

The Impact? 👊

Since they launched their employee advocacy program with DSMN8, AkzoNobel MPY employees have generated over 35,000 website visits worth almost $100,000 in comparative media spend.

Not to mention a cost-per-click of just $1.35 and nearly tripling the return on investment in just over 12 months! 👏

In this time, they have been able to quadruple the size of their audience on LinkedIn through their employees’ networks, to a whopping 6.7 million.

DSMN8 offered employees an opportunity to use social media in a way that benefits both them and the organization in an authentic and risk-free way.

AkzoNobel was also able to enhance their content by experimenting with DSMN8’s ‘Dynamic Display’ feature.

By using multiple images, captions, and preview titles for each post they uploaded for sharing, they were able to analyze which types of content performed better and why in the analytics suite. The team used this data to tweak their overall content output.

DSMN8 turned out to be just the thing AkzoNobel had been searching for to level up their employee advocacy program.

Not only were they able to truly amplify their messaging via employees on LinkedIn, but with DSMN8, they were able to maximize this by making it accessible and intuitive for all employees.

That’s what we call an employee advocacy masterclass!

1.35

Cost per Click

100,000

Earned Media Value

3

Return on Investment

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