Auckland, New Zealand-based Aroa Biosurgery develops, manufactures and distributes medical and surgical products used with complex wounds and soft tissue reconstruction. On the cusp of significant international growth, Aroa knew that skilled digital marketing resources were critical to its plans but, according to digital marketing manager Marc van der Putten, its agency partner “lacked personal care and seemed to prioritise billing over meaningful engagement”. A new partner, one able to handle CRM and marketing cloud workloads and navigate the unique compliance and sales complexities of the medical world, was required.

DSS started working with Aroa in August 2023, devoting a remote team of digital marketing specialists to the relationship and investing time early on in understanding Aroa’s requirements and the regulatory environment of its major market, the United States. The DSS team’s primary responsibility is for an ongoing series of email marketing campaigns, sometimes as many as three a week, aimed at investors and at growing the customer base for Aroa’s products. The scope is broad, covering web development, including user interface (UI) design, and digital marketing campaign execution, including campaign analytics.
One of the DSS team’s strengths is its experience with Salesforce Marketing Cloud, within which it creates campaign landing pages, automates the marketing journey, and maintains Aroa’s contact database. The team uses Google Analytics to help van der Putten understand how his campaigns perform in different geographies, and WordPress for redesigning contact forms, configuring campaign logic flows and other tasks on the Aroa website.
Aroa regards DSS as its “external team” and trusts it with access to key marketing platforms. The DSS account team works New Zealand business hours and has been known to stay online well into the evening NZ time to respond to urgent requests.

Van der Putten describes the DSS partnership as a game-changer. “They’ve delivered skilled, cost-effective contracted resources who are deeply integrated and invested in understanding our unique, compliance-heavy sales funnel in the medical field,” he says “This model not only allows for budget-friendly scalability but also optimises our Salesforce functionalities and enhances our marketing strategies.