How Magnolia DXP rebranded, attracted $10.3M in new sales pipeline

Feb 12, 2025 | 15:23 PM

Magnolia is a digital experience platform. So when the time came to rebrand, the pressure was on. “We can’t tell our customers all the cool things our product can do if we can’t execute them ourselves, using our own product,” Anthony Poliseno, Chief Marketing Officer, Magnolia.

Here’s how they did it, and what they learned. To make this (already long) article manageable, we’ll focus on the homepage header update. But note that the same approach was used across all aspects of the website.

Here’s a look at the company’s homepage before the rebrand.

The team analyzed the homepage, and noted these problems:

• Customers couldn’t immediately see the value in the product when compared to other options in the market.

• While the three bullets originally present in copy were meant to showcase value, they didn’t get to the point succinctly enough.

• There were two primary CTA buttons, and they were both dull visually (one was black, the other was white). There was a third green CTA button in the upper right, but it wasn’t getting many clicks.

• The header had a sterile, tech feeling to it, which didn’t spark an emotional response.

• The video received very few clicks and the heat map showed most users scrolling right by it. Even if people started the video, they backed out after a few seconds.

The team had three months to execute the rebrand, with six months to show compelling benchmarks to the board. The execution team consisted of five employees across brand, development, and demand generation, and one external graphic designer for support. Over a period of 85 days, they rolled out the new brand design on all digital assets and deployed a targeted SEO strategy to match.

Here is the homepage after the rebrand.

The homepage’s original headline focused on a pain point – ‘Take “complicated” out of digital experience platforms.’ “By focusing on generic pain points, we weren't able to stand out,” said Jamie Bolland, VP of Product Marketing, Magnolia. The new headlines focused on the outcome – “Turn complex content into incredible digital experiences.”

The original body copy was:
Managing digital experiences across brands, markets, and channels is complicated. Our platform makes it simple with a power combo of:

• Enterprise headless content management software

• Tied-in personalization and analytics

• Modular architecture and powerful integrations

The team reduced the bulleted text in favor of a simple, one-sentence tagline – ‘With Magnolia you can unify your content, customer data and legacy tech to build engaging websites, portals and apps at scale.’

Several tests showed that concise body copy performed better, but it still needed enough key terms and insights to attract attention. “Body copy that's too long will bore and overwhelm people, but body copy that's too short and doesn't include the key terms won't attract people's attention,” advised Vanessa Dietz, Marketing Manager, Magnolia.

The original homepage had two CTAs – ‘See our platform’ and ‘Schedule your demo.’ One button was black, the other white. “Whilst it can be tempting to give customers options with their CTAs, more is not always better,” said Lara Vermont, VP of Demand Generation, Magnolia.

The team went with a single CTA for the new homepage – ‘Get a demo with one of our Experts.’ Research into their target ICP showed a strong preference for blue in those business' own brands, so the team went with a bright blue CTA button.

The team also believes that button clicks were supported better by the new color palette that housed them. Every major CTA button not only changed to blue but had specific colors and textures in the section it lived in, which probably encouraged more action.

Before redesigning the header, the team tested images on LinkedIn and found that people alongside technology performed better than product shots alone. So, the new header design prominently featured faces alongside simple product artifacts to humanize the technology.

“It's tough to sell a software interface because it’s so complicated for the eye and brain to process. But also, tech (as cool as it is) will never compare to the humans that use it. So we stripped our product down to single portraits of users, graphic elements, and simple text boxes so when visitors come to our site, they see themselves in the story of our technology,” said Andrew Conlon, Creative Director, Magnolia

Results: $10.3 million increase in sales pipeline

This wasn’t just a homepage tweak – it was a revenue engine overhaul. With a 68,567% ROI and a $10.3M sales pipeline increase, Magnolia proved that clarity in messaging isn’t just branding – it’s business strategy

The bounce rate and average engagement time held relatively steady

• 17.87% bounce rate before and 17.82% after

• 1:33 average engagement time before versus 1:40 after

But returning users increased from 26,389 over the previous six months to 38,000, a 44% increase.

Contact sales requests increased from 124 to 210, a 70% increase. Magnolia’s typical client is a global enterprise with an average contract value of $120,000, so the team estimates a $10.3 million increase in sales pipeline.

Given that they spent $15,000 (of their $50,000 budget) on the rebrand, the team calculated a 68,567% ROI.

Read the full story here:

https://marketingsherpa.com/article/case-study/relevance