Bringing together multiple organizations can be tricky. Each organization brings a different set of tools and expectations around communications and information sharing. So how can you ensure that everyone is on the same page and united with the same vision? If you ask the team at Marigold (formerly CM Group), it’s a universal intranet with the modern tools and integrated functions that makes working together a breeze. The challenge Marigold is a family of marketing technology platforms under a single umbrella, offering solutions for every marketer, with over 70,000 customers sending 180 billion emails annually. In 2017, Marigold was formed with the bringing together of Campaign Monitor, Delivra, and Emma, but has since grown to include Liveclicker, Sailthru, Selligent, and Vuture. It was at this point of rapid growth and change that the team at Marigold started investigating a single intranet solution. With approximately 900 employees across 4 continents, Marigold needed to migrate from multiple communications systems to a single system that allowed for seamless information sharing, real-time collaboration, and a virtual place for employees to come together. Moreover, according to Megan Fletcher, Senior Director of Internal Communications and Organizational Inclusion, her team wanted to provide consistent and predictable communications, easily accessible at the moment of need. The journey to the ideal intranet After building a successful business case and getting the green light from senior leadership, Megan and her team began their research on intranet vendors. To simplify the process, she created a scorecard of desirable criteria of an ideal intranet, complete with audience segmentation, dynamic integrations, and a mobile platform. Plus, as experts in the MarTech space, the team at Marigold knew that to win over their employees, any intranet would need to be beautifully designed and highly personalized. Starting with 15 possible vendors, the team quickly narrowed the pool to a top three. Marigold inevitably decided on ThoughtFarmer, highlighting “ThoughtFarmer’s roadmap was aligned with services we hoped to add in the future, like mobile, and we loved the people we met along the way,” said Megan. While features and functionality are critical when evaluating technology, there is an absolute necessity to be able to build relationships and collaborate closely with the vendor team. “By far, ThoughtFarmer had the best team of all the vendors we talked to,” said Megan. “As we were introduced to more and more people at ThoughtFarmer, they continued to exceed our expectations and deliver results.” A strategic launch Securing a vendor was the easy part. The bigger challenge came with planning a successful launch and a meaningful change management process for user adoption. To ensure the best possible outcome, Marigold invested in the implementation package of ThoughtFarmer’s Professional Services. “To ensure high adoption, we offered training workshops, ran several educational campaigns, and designed additional resources and collateral. We also had early adopters that doubled as super-users,” said Megan. By overloading education and awareness campaigns ahead of launch, including a weekly user tip and a video library, employees had everything they needed when the Marigold intranet was launched. One immensely popular adoption strategy was a scavenger hunt across their intranet. The implementation team created fake profiles, events, comments, and content around jokes and characters from the American TV show, “The Office”. Employees raced through the site, exploring and looking for clues, including a Scranton office address, a conversation thread between Dwight and Meredith, and a faux Slack channel called “Pizza by Alfredo”. The game encouraged employees to search pages and try new features, and in turn, created monumental buzz as the intranet launched. Measuring success and planning for the future As you might imagine, migrating from multiple systems for finding information and communications to a single system has alleviated a host of challenges and improved employee collaboration and ownership of content. As heavy users of Google Drive, the Google integration has made version control and real-time updates easier than ever before. Employee feedback, while still in early phases, has been incredibly complimentary. Marigold strives to remove barriers and empower employees, allowing them to do their best work. With the addition of features from a company-wide intranet, employees have greater access to the information they need to do their jobs and thrive at work. That includes features like Shout-Outs, the Slack web hook, and FormFlow to collect information as employees volunteer within the community. Marigold enjoys all the little features and customizations that help employees get to know each other better, like the Employee Spotlight tool, which features a rotating and customizable snippet of an employee’s profile. With so many employees continuing to work remotely, the Employee Spotlight is an ideal way for employees to get to know each other (and a great incentive to encourage people to complete their profiles). “There are employees that will never meet, but now they can see the faces of their colleagues. I don’t know how to measure that, but it’s building that connection together.” Marigold has also redefined how they communicate with employees, which was especially handy during the pandemic, where information changed constantly. “We had to temporarily close our Sydney office. Thanks to the Broadcast feature in ThoughtFarmer, it was easy to push out this announcement to make sure people got the message before getting on public transportation to head to work.” The team at Marigold looks forward to ongoing growth and maturation of their intranet. In the meantime, Marigold can be confident that someone at ThoughtFarmer will be there if they require any assistance. “At every step along the way there was someone there to help us and turn our ideas into reality. Everyone at ThoughtFarmer has been very adaptable to our needs and consistently excited to share expertise and best practices,” said Megan. We can’t wait to see what they do next.