Looking for topics for upcoming KreweChats

Geoff_Krajeski1 · ‎09-12-2016

To the Community at large,

The members behind KreweChats are curious to know what you want to hear us talk about next!

What topics are you stumped on?

Where could you use help?

What do you yearn to know about Marketo and how others use it?

We are extremely open to topics as submitted by the community and welcome any and all feedback!

Lauren_Beth · ‎09-12-2016

Very interested in bench-marking where instances should be amongst other Marketo users and industry peers. It's hard to tell where we should be.

Geoff_Krajeski1 · ‎09-12-2016

Hi Lauren Beth

Thanks for your comment!

To help us with your topic above, could you elaborate a bit on your meaning?

Are you referring to DB size, cleanliness/marketable size, or other factors?

Hoping to provide the most value possible!

Thanks,

-Geoff

Anonymous · ‎09-12-2016

Hi Lauren,

I'd be happy to set up some time this week so LeadMD can deliver you a customized benchmark for you. We've worked with over half of the entire Marketo user base and have a TON of data to benchmark your data against. I'll send you an email.

Brent - LeadMD

Joe_Reitz · ‎09-12-2016

Hey Lauren Beth - always a tricky question to answer. Having seen tons of instances, and understanding different business decisions driving each use case, the one consistent truth any Marketo shop will tell you is that there is no one consistent truth! Instead, I tend to view it like dancing: to a certain extent, the "norm" doesn't matter, and it's more about how confident you feel about what you're doing.

Thankfully, with Marketing Automation, there are actually things to measure (unlike the arbitrary best guess that is- as the youths call it- swagger). So while there's no normal, at Fathom we talk about the "Marketing Automation Maturity Curve." I know, it's a super-creative name . To grossly oversimplify it, it starts with the basics of implementation, where we all batch and blasted our databases to sweet oblivion. Next, it grows on through the point where we got right with the deliverability deities of CAN-SPAM compliance and graduated on to completely integrated nurture strategies and triggered campaigns that show progress at all stages of the buying process. So while there is no normal, there aren't really rare snowflakes either if you take my meaning... the whole story of the MA Maturity Curve is consistent across many different industries and types of business, from B2B to B2C and back again.

What are some of the key indicators of a mature instance?

Oh, lawd, now you dunnit . It would definitely require a longer discussion, but here are a few non-comprehensive things that immediately come to mind:

Is there a measurable buyer journey in play, with progression statuses and a dependency on some kind of scoring/qualification model?
- Is Sales engaged with and on-board with that model (as in, do they believe in it?)? <- major point of order for any org doing lead scoring.
Within that journey, how many leads are progressing down-funnel?
- How fast? Is there a seasonal trend or some other factor driving activity? Marketing needs to know how it's involved and what's working and what's not. If you can answer that, you win
What data currently gets reported/measured? Please don't say just vanity metrics, please don't say just vanity metrics, please don't...
How does nurture fit in to your overall MA strategy? (Hint: it should be the proverbial gas thrown onto the raging inferno that is the buying process)

***

You start to see how it snowballs really quickly.

Still, I think it'd be great over the next few months for us to conduct a survey with a few of those probing questions included. *cough* Summit Panel, Liz (Courter) Oseguera *cough*

Joe_Reitz · ‎09-12-2016

Only other thing I'd like to add to the original thread is that the ultimate vision for #KreweChats is to be a community dialog. We don't mean to be presumptuous, we just want to stir the pot and get some good conversation going.

Jenn_DiMaria2 · ‎09-13-2016

Piggybacking off Joe's vanity metrics comment, I think a clear sign of a mature instance is when you know how to measure more than vanity metrics. Are you tracking actual engagements? There's a lot more to email campaign success than open rates and clicks, which tell you more about how to optimize an email than whether or not your offer is valuable. A more mature instance will be looking at conversions and tracking those conversions back to a specific investment, possibly with multiple fields for various lead sources (an original source vs a conversion source, etc).

Joe_Reitz · ‎09-13-2016

glad to know someone reads the small print... and laughs at my jokes

Geoff_Krajeski1 · ‎09-13-2016

That wasn't a bunch of periods?

Rachel_Egan · ‎09-13-2016

I know there are some threads on Community about this (see here, for example) but I wonder if it would be helpful to cover the types of reports that are most helpful for different teams. We all have different companies and objectives, which means that we are all probably looking at different metrics. For example, an SMB just starting out with lead gen is going to report very different success metrics than an enterprise company focused on ABM.

That's more of a "best practices" or "what I find helpful" chat rather than "benchmarks". I know I always like to hear how other people measure their own success!

Lauren_Beth · ‎09-14-2016

Thanks, Joe! Nice meeting you yesterday. My company is on a good path but only after having to go through many trial and error moments the past few years. I still find little things here and there that would make our jobs easier if laid out in a bit more detail in the Marketo docs or within the community. I'm hoping that if this topic is addressed in an upcoming chat that it would assist other companies and if the discussion starts looking at far more mature instances, my company could benefit as well. Thanks again!