Canvis a "Automated event communication for Home Tours at WeberHaus, managed from a single form"

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  Title

  Automated event communication for Home Tours at WeberHaus, managed from a single form

  Overview

  For WeberHaus GmbH & Co. KG, we worked with the company and another service provider to build a comprehensive event communication system in which Mautic handles the segmentation, construction, and distribution of all invitations. The goal was a workflow that over 60 sales representatives could operate in their familiar sales portal without having to work in Mautic themselves.

  A Home Tour is created exactly once. From this, the event and the campaign are automatically created in SugarCRM, along with target group lists separated by contact status, and in Mautic, the fully constructed, personalized emails including the registration workflow, ticket assignment, and PDF ticket.

  This was made possible by Mautic's extensibility. A custom plugin provides the home contact status as a segmentation criterion, a custom MJML template handles text, images, and event data, and the dispatch status flows back via a dedicated interface to the CRM and on to the sales portal.

  Across this workflow, 1,130,000 emails were sent within one year, 512,000 of which were opened. This corresponds to an open rate of around 45 percent. A process that was previously distributed across three systems has become a guided input workflow.

  Background and context

  WeberHaus GmbH & Co. KG is a family-owned prefab house manufacturer based in Rheinau-Linx and Wenden-Hünsborn. Home Tours and other events are among the company's most important sales instruments. They are aimed at both new and existing prospects as well as "home contacts"—people who have already built with WeberHaus or are currently doing so.

  For each event, the target group, regional radius, registration type, email content, and dispatch date must be defined. The necessary contact and status data are stored in SugarCRM, while segmentation and dispatch take place in Mautic. Before the project, this workflow was spread across multiple systems and multiple people. Anyone wanting to promote a tour was dependent on input from others and had to enter the same information multiple times.

  Compounding this is the fact that the events differ structurally. For appointments without registration, the email is purely an invitation; there is no feedback and no participant list. For open registrations, all contacted persons can register themselves and receive a confirmation with ticket information. For closed invitations, the number of participants is limited, and each selected contact receives an individual registration link, through which each registration can be uniquely assigned to the event and the person. A single standard process would not have covered these three cases.

  Therefore, a workflow was required that the sales team could operate independently in their familiar portal, while SugarCRM and Mautic handled the technical steps in the background. Recurring work was to be automated without giving up control over sensitive mailings. This exact combination of automation and control required a marketing automation system that could be deeply customized.

  Implementation

  Step 1, Data entry in the sales portal: The sales team creates the Home Tour via a guided workflow in the internal sales portal. There, the radius or a prepared target group, the registration type, a possible participant limit, the dispatch date, and the email template are selected. The texts are created directly in the portal.

  For the preview, the portal accesses Mautic's preview function. The employees see their content in the finished template before anything is triggered, and all within their familiar interface.

  Step 2, Creation of data records in SugarCRM: After confirmation, the portal transfers the entire configuration to SugarCRM via a specially developed Custom REST API interface. The event, the associated campaign, and separate target group lists per contact status are automatically created there. A job populates the lists. The header image and campaign ID are provided for Mautic so that the emails can be built and later assigned to the correct campaign.

  Step 3, Synchronization to Mautic: The transfer takes place via a connector developed by the OPEN Digitalgruppe, which synchronizes prospects, companies, contacts, and segments between SugarCRM and Mautic.

  Step 4, Execution in Mautic: From here, Mautic takes over segmentation, construction, and distribution:
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• A custom-developed plugin provides the home contact status as a criterion for segmentation and for selecting the appropriate email.

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• A custom MJML template takes text, images, and event data from the synchronization and builds the finished email from them.

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• Prospects and home contacts receive different variants, regardless of whether a house has already been built or not. Special rules such as "Construction Forum" (Bauforum) affiliation are taken into account.

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• The dispatch date selected in the portal controls scheduling.

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• For events with registration, Mautic processes individual registration links, participant limits, and ticket data. For closed events, each selected contact receives their own link so that each registration can be uniquely assigned to the event and the person.

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• After registration, Mautic sends the confirmation with event date, individual ticket information, and PDF ticket.

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Step 5, Feedback to the sales department: As soon as the dispatch time is reached, Mautic reports the status to SugarCRM. From there, the information flows back into the sales portal. The circle closes, and the sales team sees the current status at the place where they created the event.

Mautic features and extensions used

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• Segments and campaigns as a control layer for status-dependent mailings

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• Custom plugin for home contact status (prospect or homeowner)

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• Custom MJML email template with dynamic text, image, and event data

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• Preview function, embedded in a third-party interface

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• Time-controlled dispatch

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• Registration via individually generated links

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  API connection to SugarCRM via a specially developed connector including status feedback

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Impact and results

For Sales: An event only needs to be prepared once. This generates all necessary data records, target groups, and emails. Over 60 sales employees work with this without opening Mautic and without maintaining the same information in multiple systems.

For Communication: Segmentation from the CRM data ensures that prospects and home contacts receive the message intended for their status. The messaging is consistent across all events because it is created from a maintained template and verified status rules.

For Traceability: Campaign ID and status feedback make every process in SugarCRM searchable. Manual transfers between systems are eliminated.

In numbers

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• 1,130,000 emails sent via Mautic

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• 512,000 opens, corresponding to around a 45 percent open rate

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• 347 events in the last year

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• Preparation effort per event decreased from 30+ minutes to less than 5 minutes

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• Over 60 sales employees whose work process has changed

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  Three systems that merge into one interface for the users

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"The new solution has significantly simplified our event processes and noticeably reduced the workload. What previously had to be handled via multiple tools and manual steps is now done centrally, clearly, and with significantly fewer errors in one system. Especially when it comes to changes, we benefit from enormous time savings and significantly higher process reliability. The new solution also creates transparency across all events, simplifies cooperation between sales and the back office, and enables evaluations that were simply not possible before."

- Svenja Werner, Sales and Corporate Communications

Lessons learned

Clear division of roles beats system boundaries: SugarCRM manages contact, event, and campaign data; Mautic handles segmentation and distribution; the sales portal remains the interface for the users. Only this clean division made it possible for the sales team to use the full functionality without working in Mautic themselves.

Adaptability was the decisive selection criterion: The OPEN Digitalgruppe is a HubSpot Diamond Partner and knows closed marketing automation platforms from daily project practice. We consciously chose Mautic for WeberHaus. A custom plugin for a customer-specific contact status, a custom MJML template, and deeply integrated interfaces can be implemented cleanly in an open system. In a closed platform, the same requirements could only have been mapped via workarounds. For us, this is the central confirmation from this project: Where processes have grown and are industry-specific, an adaptable open-source system is the more viable choice technically and economically.

Case distinctions belong at the beginning: Not every event fits into the same workflow. Registration type, participant limit, and contact status had to be determined early and are treated separately as soon as they are created in the sales portal. This design decision avoided later edge cases in distribution.

Preview creates trust: Embedding the Mautic preview into the sales portal was a small building block technically, but a large one for acceptance. Those who see what is being sent are more likely to approve automation.

Future plans

A cancellation function in the sales portal was considered and consciously postponed. All involved service providers advised against it because a delayed status transmission could, in case of doubt, lead to an unwanted mailing, and the reputational damage from invitation mailings to Home Tours would outweigh the benefits. The architecture is designed in such a way that a cancellation function can be added later and would then stop the process in SugarCRM and Mautic.

The dispatch of storable calendar entries in ICS format was discussed and is not currently prioritized.

Community contributions

No contributions have flowed back to the Mautic Community from this project so far. The plugin for the home contact status, the MJML template, and the interfaces were developed for the specific requirements of WeberHaus. They contain customer-specific logic and would not be usefully usable as a general plugin without major reconstruction.

What can be shared independently of the code is the pattern behind it: the CRM as the leading system, Mautic as the adaptable execution layer, and a status feedback that closes the loop to the sales interface.

Inclusion as a Case Study

We are making this architectural pattern available to the community as a documented case study and as a presentation in the DACH region and are investigating whether the approach for segmentation via customer-specific contact status can be detached as a generic plugin.

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