A look at the localization strategy for PTC’s Onshape product offering

Conrado Lamas is Senior Marketing Programs Manager for Onshape, EMEA at PTC. Based in Spain, Conrado helps the company expand its Onshape product into new markets in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa).

According to Conrado, Onshape is the first and only CAD (computer aided design) solution that’s cloud-native and provided as SaaS (software as a service). The Onshape product unites CAD, data management, collaboration tools, and real-time analytics.

Criteria for market expansion

When planning for global growth, it’s important for organizations to define criteria to evaluate each new region. Conrado and team evaluate the following:

• Local population
• Product market share or adoption in that region
• Language and country demographics from website analytics
• Email marketing metrics

Testing the local market

Conrado’s approach is to run small-scale campaigns with localized content. Based on the results of those campaigns, he and his team assess whether to invest further and expand the scope of campaigns in that region.

He uses A/B testing to compare the effectiveness of English-language campaigns with campaigns run in the area’s local language. The tests involve landing pages and emails, and include an assessment of these metrics:

• Conversion rates
• Clickthrough rates
• Website bounce rates
• Email opens

As a rule, the A/B testing shows that campaigns with localized content perform better.

How Acclaro helps Onshape

Onshape partners with Acclaro to provide localization for the numerous elements of marketing campaigns for Onshape: emails, web pages, eBooks, tip sheets, banners, checklists, infographics and landing pages.

Acclaro helps to translate content from English to the following languages:

• Chinese (Simplified)
• Dutch (Netherlands)
• French (France)
• German (Germany)
• Italian
• Japanese
• Spanish (LATAM)
• Spanish (Spain)
• Spanish (Universal)

Our localization efforts help Onshape establish the initial go-to-market activities in a region. Once positive returns have been established, Onshape can expand and further grow business in that region by localizing a wider set of marketing content.

As the senior marketing programs manager, Conrado serves the role of a quarterback, coordinating between Acclaro teams and the internal teams across Onshape. The internal teams are asked to review translated content, including salespeople, technical writers and subject matter experts.

For Conrado, it’s essential to find a localization partner you can trust. “As you scale and grow your business, time is extremely valuable. Finding a trusted localization partner saves you time, because you’re not having to manage them or worry about the quality of their work”, concluded Conrado.