Unifying Paulig’s marketing automation and B2B ecommerce to turn fragmented markets into scalable growth

Paulig is a global food and beverage company, with a broad portfolio of well-known brands, from Juhla Mokka to Santa Maria and numerous local favourites across Europe. When marketing operations are spread across countries, brands and tools, consistency and scalability become a real challenge. Together with Paulig, Columbia Road set out to unify marketing automation, strengthen cross-market collaboration and turn ecommerce data into continuous, measurable growth.

Starting point: A decentralised marketing automation setup across brands, countries and tools

As a global business with dozens of brands and business units, Paulig’s marketing automation landscape had evolved locally over time. Different countries were using different tools, practices and campaign models, reflecting their specific needs and priorities.

In Finland alone, Paulig manages several well-known coffee and food brands, while other markets focus on categories such as spices, snacks and other FMCG products, highlighting the opportunity to align marketing automation practices and strengthen consistency across markets.

Paulig set out to build a shared marketing automation foundation: aligning tools, data and ways of working, while enabling countries to run both local campaigns and scalable, group-level initiatives.

Our approach: Implementing HubSpot and connecting ecommerce data to drive automation at scale

We started by assessing Paulig’s existing platforms and ways of working. HubSpot was selected as the shared marketing automation platform, and we supported its rollout across more than 10 countries, bringing multiple teams and businesses into a single system.

The initial focus was on solid foundations:

• Shared setups for emails, landing pages and core campaigns
• Common ways of working across markets
• Enabling countries to move beyond one-off newsletters towards structured automation

We designed and built clear, nurturing, and automation models, with shared segmentation and modular structures. This made it easy for countries to run their own campaigns while following the same principles and brand guidelines.

At the heart of the work was integrating Paulig’s Magento-based B2B ecommerce platform and HubSpot automation in a way that could actually scale. As a result, deals, customer behaviour and transaction data now flow reliably into HubSpot. Getting this right laid the foundation for advanced automations that are already generating significant revenue and clearly paying back the initial investment.

Impact: Turning ecommerce data into activating existing customers and increasing repeat sales

By combining ecommerce data with marketing automation, Paulig was able to activate previously passive customers who had ordered but were no longer engaged.

Within the first months, a new nurturing automation targeting these customers began generating significant incremental sales, demonstrating how quickly well-designed automation can translate into tangible business results and pay for itself.

Not every campaign delivers the same results, and that's expected. But even the less effective ones have delivered valuable learnings. Crucially, the best-performing campaigns are now always on. They continue to run continuously in the background, without requiring constant manual input from local teams, while learnings from earlier campaigns help shape what works best over time.

Beyond direct revenue impact, Paulig has gained much greater visibility across countries and teams. Marketing efforts are more transparent, collaboration has improved, and customers experience a more consistent brand across markets.

Project highlights: Consistency, collaboration and always-on growth

• Stronger and more unified collaboration between countries and teams
• A more consistent brand look, feel and way of working across markets
• Always-on campaigns and automations that continuously generate revenue
• Clear proof that ecommerce data and marketing automation together can deliver measurable business value

Way forward: Continuous development and smarter automation

The partnership continues with ongoing development and maintenance of HubSpot, building new automations and further expanding data-driven marketing across markets. 
By continuously refining segmentation, automation and ecommerce-driven campaigns, Paulig is well positioned to keep turning data into sustainable growth across its international brand portfolio.

Ready to turn complex marketing operations into a scalable growth engine of your own? Get in touch and let’s collaborate!