Canvis a "Enterprise-Grade B2B Marketing at Scale: How Deutsche Bahn Runs All Direct B2B Communication on Mautic"
Títol (English)
- +Enterprise-Grade B2B Marketing at Scale: How Deutsche Bahn Runs All Direct B2B Communication on Mautic
Cos (English)
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Overview
At Deutsche Bahn, Mautic powers all direct B2B marketing communication - from small business customers to very large enterprise accounts - managing contacts in the seven-digit range across companies in the six-digit range.Mautic was chosen chiefly for the data sovereignty and GDPR compliance that a self-hosted, open-source platform enables, a critical requirement for a state-owned critical infrastructure operator.
The platform underpins personalized, segmented campaigns across the full customer lifecycle, directly supporting ticket sales and BahnCard subscriptions. The implementation combines standard Mautic capabilities (email and landing pages, with personalization, Dynamic Content etc.) with the Account-Based Marketing plugin suite as well as a lot of custom plugins.
Running at this scale, and in a demanding enterprise context, required deep integration work: custom connectors to Siebel CRM, a migration from Docker to Kubernetes, Active Directory Single Sign-On via LDAP, and alignment with Deutsche Bahn's existing system management standards and tooling. The result is a platform that meets enterprise GDPR and security requirements while still enabling fast-moving, personalized campaign work.Quotation (can be used for Case Study):
"Mautic has given us a robust and cost effective solution for years,
and also the control and compliance that is absolutely required for us!"
- Sebastian Selch, Marketing Manager B2B, Deutsche Bahn
Background and context
Deutsche Bahn is Germany's national railway operator, serving a B2B customer base that spans the full spectrum - from small businesses booking occasional group travel to large enterprise accounts with dedicated corporate travel program, as well as government or other public and private organizations. All direct B2B marketing communication for this customer base runs on Mautic, managing contacts in the seven-digit range across companies in the six-digit range.
Mautic was chosen primarily for data sovereignty and GDPR compliance - as a state-owned critical infrastructure operator, Deutsche Bahn needs full control over where and how customer data is stored and processed, which a self-hosted, open-source platform like Mautic makes possible in a way that commercial SaaS marketing clouds do not.
That same status as critical infrastructure is also the project's core ongoing challenge: integrations and infrastructure changes generally go through security review and compliance sign-off, on top of the strict internal build pipelines described below. Making Mautic work within that governance model - without slowing personalized, fast-moving campaign work to a crawl - has been the central balancing act of the implementation.
Implementation
Mautic is used as the central platform for all direct B2B customer communication, combining core channels with a set of advanced, custom-built capabilities: - +
Email campaigns as the primary communication channel across the B2B customer lifecycle
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Sophisticated Mautic landing pages, including dynamic, token-driven content
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Dynamic Web Content (DWC) used extensively to personalize content by contact and company attributes
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Account-Based Marketing plugin suite to segment and target at the company level, not just the individual contact - enabling coordinated messaging across multiple stakeholders within the same account
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Custom integrations, notably a bespoke connector to Siebel CRM, keeping Mautic and the core CRM in sync
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Infrastructure modernization: migrated the Mautic deployment from Docker to Kubernetes
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Enterprise system integration: deep alignment with Deutsche Bahn's existing system management standards and tooling
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Active Directory Single Sign-On via LDAP for secure, centrally managed access
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One example for a smart use of all the above was a very nice campaign that provided personalized animated charts in Landing Pages, populated dynamically based on contact and company tokens.
Impact and results
The Mautic implementation directly supports revenue-generating activity, including ticket sales and BahnCard subscriptions, through:
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Reactivation campaigns
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Churn prevention campaigns
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A broad portfolio of additional lifecycle and segment-specific campaigns
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Operationally, the platform meets high security and GDPR/privacy standards required of a critical infrastructure operator, while still enabling strong, segmented, and personalized customer communication at scale, managing contacts in the seven-digit range across companies in the six-digit range.
Quotation (can be used for Case Study):
"Mautic has given us a robust and cost effective solution for years,
and also the control and compliance that is absolutely required for us!"
- Sebastian Selch, Marketing Manager B2B, Deutsche Bahn
Lessons learned
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Data complexity at scale: managing a large and evolving set of contact and company properties and other data integration
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Performance analysis and optimization: addressed partly through code improvements (also resulting in core PRs), and partly through aggressive but carefully fine-tuned housekeeping (database cleanup routines)
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Build pipeline discipline: adapting to and mastering Deutsche Bahn's strict internal build/deployment pipelines while keeping Mautic development agile
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Future plans
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Upgrade to Mautic 7 - scheduled for Q4/2026
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Introduce automated Codeception tests as part of CI, running within the Kubernetes environment
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More sophisticated company-level scoring
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No further roadmap items to disclose at this time - this section may be expanded before final submission.
Community contributions
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Multiple bug fixes contributed upstream
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Significant performance optimization contributions e.g.
https://github.com/mautic/mautic/pull/17175
https://github.com/mautic/mautic/pull/15950
https://github.com/mautic/mautic/pull/15716 (with https://github.com/mautic/mautic/pull/15031)- +
Mailjet adapter https://github.com/Leuchtfeuer/mautic-MailjetAdapter-bundle/tree/mautic5
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Much of the Housekeeping bundle https://github.com/Leuchtfeuer/mautic-housekeeping-bundle
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Supporting materials
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see Community contributions (above)
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Personalized email example: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/qo4ran12ultuzn2szf4pj/personalized-email.jpg?rlkey=ckqy10kz8rqy2m5nm16oyg9o9&dl=0
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Inclusion as a Case Study
Yes - happy for this to be included as a case study on mautic.org and in the Pitch Deck.
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