Product Documents

MARKETO IN THE NEWS U.S. Marketers: Stop, drop and build a digital hub Marketing Land What's a digital hub, and what can it do for your organization? Sanjay Dholakia explains why having a central nervous system for marketing is a no-brainer. 5 things need to know about account-based marketing CIO From a reporter who attended Summit, the article leads with a mention of Summit and Phil’s keynote. DemandBase and Engagio are also quoted. Marketo and 250ok Partner Destination CRM 250ok strengthens partner integration with Marketo with addition of Email Informant and Reputation Powerpack. ·       Press release: 250ok and Marketo Breathe New Life Into Email Cozad Asset Management joins the Marketo marketing nation Finextra Investment advisory firm Cozad to grow market awareness with Marketo's engagement marketing platform. ·       Press release: Cozad Asset Management, Inc., Joins the Marketo Marketing Nation® Marketo Inspires Student Success Through Second Annual Global Volunteer Month My Social Good News Pick-up of our Global Volunteer Month release. To Increase Sales, Get Customers to Commit a Little at a Time Harvard Business Review Buyers work their way through parallel streams (rather than a funnel) as they explore, evaluate, and engage in purchase decisions via web sites, white papers, social media, and contact with other buyers through sites like Marketo, and so on. Facebook and Google Are Marching Directly Into the Physical World. Carriers Hold the Key to Breaking the Duopoly Mobile Marketing Watch Contributed post by the CEO of Placecast mentions Marketo and Facebook's Offline Conversion API. EMEA A 2020 Vision of Marketing AdWorld (Ireland) Additional coverage from our EIU report. Why it can’t be the CDO Alone (translated) LEAD Digital (Germany) Byline article on the CDO by Thomas Weyand. ·       Additional Pick-Up: Werben & Verkaufen Content, data and personalization: is marketing up to the task? (translated) INfluencia (France) In this piece, the reporter writes about customer experience and compares the findings of a few studies recently led by some marketing key players - Marketo, but also eMarketer or Forbes Inisghts. Benjamin also mentions and quotes Adobe. ANZ The Three Trends Driving Ad And Martech Together (& What It Means For Adland) B&T (Australia) Marketo’s Phil Fernandez argues that adtech as a sector will shrink to just a handful of participants by 2020. ·       Additional Pick-up: Which-50 JAPAN ·       Bita JP: Event Recap CUSTOMERS & PARTNERS IN THE NEWS Customers Uber Inks Software Deal With Concur to Ease Business Trips Bloomberg Expanding on a two-year-old partnership, Uber will integrate its technology within Bellevue, Washington-based Concur’s platform, making it easier for clients to use the ride-hailing service, especially large corporate customers with a lot of travel expenses, according to a blog post by Uber Monday. Workday buys Silicon Valley Big Data startup that raised $95M Silicon Valley Business Journal Workday on Thursday said it has agreed to buy Platfora, a San Mateo Big Data discovery startup that had raised about $95 million since it launched five years ago. GE's energy startup has a new marketing chief Boston Business Journal Current, powered by GE, announced this week that Bruce Stewart will be its CMO and his responsibilities will include increasing the demand for Current's products while also helping to generate revenue. CMO of Steward Health Care to retire The Lowell Sun Chief Medical Officer of the Steward Health Care System, Dr. Justine Carr, recently announced her retirement. She is said to leave a legacy of improvements in patient care across area community hospitals, including Nashoba Valley Medical Center. Startup Terminus to add 100 jobs in HQ expansion Atlanta Business Chronicle Marketing software firm Terminus will invest $1.5 million in an expansion that will create more than 100 jobs over the next few years. Terminus helps marketers target, engage and grow the marketing and sales pipeline. Spectra by Comcast Spectacor Extends Partnership With the University of California, Irvine Press release UC Irvine adds Marketing Automation and Salesforce CRM, Continues to Utilize Ticketing, Fundraising and Marketing Services to Engage Fans and Donors, Enhance Customer Service and Drive Revenue PubMatic Expands Video Business via Partnership with Media 122 Press release Media 122 Recognizes 47 Percent Increase in Programmatic Revenue throughPubMatic partnership. Workflows Improve with Agile Marketing eMarketer Project management software provider Wrike surveyed US marketers about their adoption of Agile marketing approaches in February 2016 and found most respondents used at least some of these methods. Inspirational Woman: Katy Keim | CMO, Lithium We Are the City Katy Keim is the Chief Marketing Officer and GM of Lithium Reach and Response, Katy is responsible for all strategic marketing activities for the company including branding, positioning, communications, go-to-market strategy and customer acquisition programs. She also leads Lithium’s overall product marketing group and product strategy for Lithium’s Reach and Response business. Kymm (Pollack) Martinez Named St. Thomas University’s Chief Marketing Officer Press release St. Thomas University appoints first-ever CMO. F5 Networks beats its own quarterly goals, sets CEO search and hires CMO Geekwire F5 Networks, the Seattle-based network infrastructure and security technology company, reported revenue of $496.5 million for the third quarter of its fiscal 2016 ended June 30 —up 3 percent from the year-ago period. If I Knew Then: Graham Weston, CO-FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN, RACKSPACE Crain's Silicon Valley Interview with co-founder and chair of Rackspace. Smartphones Overtake Computers as Top E-Commerce Traffic Source Bloomberg Technology Smartphones accounted for 45.1 percent of web-shopping traffic in the first quarter of this year, edging out computers at 45 percent, according to a study fromDemandware, an e-commerce software provider. The firm, which was acquired bySalesforce.com Inc. this month, projects that number will continue to increase, with phones accounting for 60 percent of e-commerce visits by the end of next year. CMO Today: Verizon Confirms $4.8 Billion Acquisition of Yahoo Wall Street Journal Yahoo is snagged by Verizon. Customers/Partners Wal-Mart’s Venkat Achanta Joins Neustar as Chief Data and Analytics Officer Wall Street Journal Mr. Achanta is taking on a newly created role at data and analytics companyNeustar. Rocket Fuel Names Advertising and Digital Media Veteran Rick Song as Chief Revenue Officer Press release Song joins Rocket Fuel to oversee sales and build out its go-to-market plans in an effort to drive further awareness and adoption of its industry-leading technology. How to tap into data with predictive analytics Marketing Dive Software company New Relic used predictive analytics to boost its top lead conversion rate by almost 10x. Interview with Adam Berke, President and CMO, AdRoll MarTech Ad Roll is a big believer in interoperability. It goes to show in our partnerships with platforms like Facebook, Marketo, MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, and others. Huh, Really? Accenture Claims Its Digital Services Unit Is Worth About $7 Billion Adexchanger Accenture’s digital services group Accenture Interactive “never set out to disrupt the agency relationship,” said Bob Barr, its managing director and global B2B commerce lead, but that’s pretty much what’s happening. FunnelWise Integrates with Marketo to Provide Full Funnel Visibility Press release FunnelWise enables marketing and sales professionals to gain real-time visibility into their organization's revenue funnels. Today the company announced its software is fully integrated with Marketo New Report Highlights the Creative and Programmatic Ad Gap Turn A new survey from Turn finds there’s a gap in the flow of information – creatives aren’t getting what they need, and as a result, brands are suffering. Facebook Messenger now has one billion active users Recode Messenger is the third Facebook app to hit that benchmark. Scribe Software Named a Leader in Independent Research Firm's iPaaS Report Press release The Forrester Wave™ iPaaS for Dynamic Integration, Q3 2016 evaluated the eight "most significant" vendors offering an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) based on 32 criteria, including the strength of its current offering, product strategy, cost, management functions and revenue growth. Google Uses AI to Lure New Cloud Customers Wall Street Journal Google offering clients software to analyze customer reviews, social-media posts or customer-service calls Study: Understanding martech is critically important to marketing success Marketing Dive Recent research by programmatic marketing and analytics platform DataXu found that 78% of U.S. marketers believe that understanding martech is critically important to success. 37% of U.S. marketers said they believes their greatest marketing challenge is "creating the most efficient marketing mix possible across channels to drive results." Marketing Startup Sprinklr Now Valued at $1.8 Billion Fortune Marketing software startup Sprinklr, which last year declared it had topped $100 million in revenue, has raised another $105 million to fuel international growth and, if the occasion arises, to make more acquisitions. Google Mobilizes With AMP Ads And Programmatic Native AdExchanger Google wants to improve the mobile ad experience, which is too slow and reliant on desktop ad formats. Its solution? AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) ads and the expansion of programmatic native, both of which Google VP Paul Muret introduced Tuesday at the company’s DoubleClick Leadership Summit. Google Japan CMO explains her approach to humanising tech Campaign Asia Google's Miki Iwamura talks experience, evaluation, and why low-tech branding still has a place. Facebook launches new app install ad format that targets users likely to take action Marketing Dive Facebook has launched a new ad format, App Event Optimization, that helps advertisers target users who are likely to take specific actions within apps, according to a Facebook blog post. The format allows advertisers to bid more for app install ads to target users that are likely to take specific actions, such as buying a product or rating the app. Facebook: 80% of holiday shopping season posts are on mobile Marketing Dive People share more on Facebook during the holiday season, and most of that sharing comes on mobile, according to new research using Facebook and Instagram data from the 2015 holiday season. Performance Horizon and LiveRamp Integrate to Help Brands Connect Online Partnership Initiatives to Offline Sales Press release Integration provides first platform for brands to measure, optimize, and reward digital marketing partners that drive offline sales Contently Launches Document Analytics For Tracking Downloadable Content MediaPost Contently’s available metrics include page-by-page engagement analytics and heat maps displaying where readers click, hover or share content. Additional product features include version control, A/B testing and pre-populated text for sharing on social media. Deloitte promotes Redhill from Australian CMO to global consulting marketing chief CMO Magazine (Australia) Well-respected marketing leader tells CMO how he plans to lead the Deloitte global consulting business as CMO and why culture is so important Frost & Sullivan Applauds Vidyard for a Rich Customer Experience Made Possible by its Innovative, Complete Video Analytics Solution Press release Vidyard's solution helps pack sales and marketing tools into clients' videos for better customer engagement and ROI Hootsuite adds integration for Dropbox, OneDrive CMO Innovation Social media manager Hootsuite this week announced that it has integratedDropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Box, Google Drive into its publishing platform. Partners Is Video the Next Big Thing For LinkedIn? Social Media Today LinkedIn now has its very own seat at the "big kids" table when it comes to social media networks and tech companies. Leading Social Business Software Tracx Hires Prominent DC-Based CMO, Jenifer Kern Press release    Tracx, a leading social media management platform, has announced that Jenifer Kern will join the company as its new Chief Marketing Officer. What Can Ad Agencies Learn From The Software Industry? AdExchanger Byline from the SVP of Experience Design at DigitasLBi. Is Twitter's turnaround working? Marketing Dive Study predicts Twitter's user base to grow 11% in 2016. Twitter CMO reveals 'See What's Happening' campaign to cement the social network as home of breaking news The Drum Twitter's chief marketing officer Leslie Berland has unveiled the social network's latest advertising push, saying the company wants to clear up misconceptions around what it is actually used for.

By: Ashika Balani Posted: July 25, 2016 | Mobile Marketing With rapidly evolving digital marketing and the proliferation of devices, marketers are faced with the challenge of staying ahead, or simply keeping up, when it comes to capturing and keeping their audience’s attention. How can they do it? Take a page from Hollywood, which understands that they need to be on top of the latest trends in order to create compelling content that captivates their audience. Looking at the pictures below from popular films and television shows over the past decades, what do they all have in common? You go it—the use of a mobile device. Over the decades, the telephone has evolved from car phone to cellphone to smartphone, and as consumers adapt to these changes, marketers should too. In fact, in the U.S. alone, 75% of citizens over the age of 13 have a smartphone, and there are more mobile devices in the world (7.8 billion) than people (7.1 billion), due largely in part to our voracious appetite for “new.” That’s a huge audience you’re missing out on if you don’t have a mobile marketing strategy in place. Mobile phones have progressed from being used as a way to communicate with our friends and families and coordinate destinations, to a comprehensive tool for messaging, emailing, web browsing, time management, and everything in between. They’ve changed the way we live and communicate, not to mention they have reinvented our language (emojis, anyone?). Mobile devices are now the key entry point to the digital world and it’s up to marketers to understand how to stay ahead of the game to keep their buyers engaged. As you’re building, or improving, your mobile marketing strategy, here are three things to keep in mind: 1. Think About the Big Picture As you’re planning your mobile marketing strategy, consider how it fits in with your initiatives on other channels and how each channel will inform the other. Identifying this information will inform how you should adapt your message to each channel and individual. Mobile devices give you access to billions of users on their most personal device, and with that comes billions of different data points from their interactions. Because of this, it’s critical to integrate mobile interactions within a unified, single view that spans the channels where your audience engages. Even mobile-only companies, like Uber, can benefit from a multi-channel strategy. For example, Uber uses app engagement to inform their email communications, sending disengaged users new offers to reactive them. For your own strategy, consider how a buyer’s actions on your website or email can be used to trigger a relevant response on their mobile device, and vice versa. After all, as modern marketers, we’re increasingly the stewards of the customer journey and therefore responsible for meeting users’ expectations of a personalized and seamless experience—wherever they are. 2. Acquire the Right Users It’s expensive to acquire new users in a highly competitive mobile atmosphere—the number of new users has gone up more than 84% over the last year, according to research from Fiksu. So, it’s important to have a plan in place to ensure your acquisition efforts are not wasted on users who will not remain loyal or engaged. To avoid wasting your effort, dollars, and resources, conduct research upfront to build a solid profile of the right user. Understand what makes your current users loyal and profile their unique demographics and interests. This insight allows you to more quickly and effectively target the right people—those likely engage with your app and stay loyal over time—bringing in higher levels of engagement, lower cost per install, stronger reviews and referrals, and new user growth. Once you’ve identified the right audience, leverage your different channels to drive acquisition. You can run an install campaign to your existing marketable email database to drive awareness of your mobile app among contacts that haven’t downloaded it yet. You can even offer exclusive information or a particular motivation to download. Another option is to detect users coming to your website from mobile devices and encourage them to download your app. For example, while Bank of America’s website is mobile optimized, a CTA appears to download the app, with the incentive to be able to connect directly to a customer service rep by downloading and using it. 3. Focus on Long-Term Growth A growth mindset goes beyond a narrow focus on acquisition. A solid mobile marketing strategy engages users from the second they’re aware of your brand to long after they’ve converted into users or customers. For example, in the case of mobile app marketing, this would entail the key mobile customer lifecycle stages of acquisition, engagement, retention, and reactivation (for those who stray). By understanding where a user is in the mobile app lifecycle, it provides you with the opportunity to automate and trigger relevant activities to encourage lasting user engagement. You can do this by tapping into mobile signals and insights to deliver relevant responses, which include: Timing: Deliver messages at the moment a user interacts with your brand, whether that’s in a mobile browser or your app or on your mobile site Behavior: Present content and messaging based on a user’s actions or inactions on a device Proximity and location: Leverage technologies like GPS, iBeacon, and geo-fencing to deliver relevant messages or offers Stage/sequence: Track specific actions to deliver messages that are meant to accelerate conversion or drive a specific behavior Even if mobile is not the primary way your brand interacts with your buyers, it’s a key component within a holistic customer journey, one that each of your buyers will go through. An effective mobile marketing strategy boils down to understanding how it fits into your overall marketing strategy, understanding who your target audience is, and engaging them long after acquiring them. Ready to take your mobile marketing to the next level? Download our ebook on Best Practices for Mobile Marketing: How to Acquire, Engage, and Retain Users.

By: Kevin George Posted: July 22, 2016 | Email Marketing As an email marketer, subscriber engagement is undeniably one of the most critical factors that makes or breaks your efforts in converting your subscribers into lifetime customers. Considering that 54% of US and Canadian consumers consider ending their brand loyalty if they are sent irrelevant content and offers, according to CMO Council, what’s the way forward? Repeated surveys have proven that transactional emails are more effective at engaging subscribers and result in greater ROI than bulk emails. In fact, Experian reports that the average revenue per transactional email is two to five times greater than standard bulk emails and that they have almost eight times the open and click rates. Yet, out of all marketers, only 40% are using transactional emails. The Components of a Transactional Email A transactional email, otherwise known as an operational email, is essentially a personalized email that’s system-triggered by a subscriber’s unique behavior during an online transaction (registration, form-fill, purchase, etc.). Here are a few best practices to consider as you’re developing your transactional email campaign: Send it from a recognized ‘From’ address. No one likes seeing emails from do-not-reply@xyzdomain.com. Use a subject line that clearly summarizes the purpose of the email. Avoid adding promotional language in the subject line or your email could be flagged as spam. Write copy that acknowledges and thanks the subscriber for their activity and conveys excellent customer service. While the CAN-SPAM act allows a transactional email to be used for promotions, the message of the email should primarily be transactional in nature. Include a recognizable and clickable brand logo and incorporate your brand colors to boost brand recognition. Use links that serve a specific purpose. Be friendly, informative, and timely. If you aspire to join the 40% marketers who are sending transactional emails and seeing serious results, then sending friendly, timely, and informative emails is a must. Here are six types of transactional emails you can send your subscribers based on their behavior: 1. Email Address Confirmation/Registration Emails If a buyer subscribes to your newsletter, fills out a form, or registers for an event or webinar on your website, send them an email to confirm their action. This enhances the customer experience and sets the tone for building a trusting relationship. You can also use these emails as a double opt-in for subscribers to confirm their email address. Some businesses do this to confirm that subscribers enter valid email addressed, which is a great way to keep your database clean. Email address confirmation and registration emails are also a great way to provide your subscribers with additional information they may need like your contact email, phone number, or social media profiles, and it opens the door for them to connect with you in different ways. For example, Best Buy’s welcome email contains various calls-to-action (CTAs) to help subscribers learn more about their different services. 2. Password Resets If your website has a portal for visitors to log into, make sure that when your subscribers request a password change, they receive timely, personalized, and clear instructions regarding the password reset procedure. Moreover, with the prevalence of phishing activities, adding a link or email where they can report unauthorized password requests strengthens your credibility. This email from Treehouse has clear instructions on how to perform a password reset, an alternate link, and a contact email for any issues that come up. 3. Order Confirmation Emails and Purchase Receipts After subscribers make a purchase or register for a conference, follow up with an email that confirms their order and includes their shipping information and tracking links when applicable. Buyers are often eager to view their order confirmation because it provides reassurance that their purchase was processed and gives them information on when they’ll receive their order. This order confirmation email from Fitbit includes a receipt and link to check the order status in real-time. Take advantage of your subscriber’s high level of engagement by showcasing customer testimonials or cross-selling relevant products, services, or events. In fact, Experian reports that transactional emails that include cross-sell items have 20% higher transaction rates than those without.asking for referrals within the email. You can also use order confirmation emails to ask your subscribers for referrals. For example, Skillshare includes a referral code at the bottom of their receipts to encourage their subscribers to refer their friends. 4. Feedback Emails There is always room for improvement, and one of the best ways to improve the customer experience is to understand how your buyers feel. Ask your subscribers for feedback directly based on the proper context (e.g. after they book a trip from your website or 3-months into their software subscription). Since their feedback can be extensive, you may want to provide a CTA to a landing page to collect it. For example, after a game, the Arkansas Razerbacks send attendees an email thanking them for attending, recapping the scorecard, and directing them to click a link to take a survey about their experience. 5. Reactivation Emails Reactivation emails are sent to subscribers who have previously interacted with brand, but haven’t continued to engage. This could include consumers who abandon their shopping cart before making a purchase, email subscribers who haven’t been opening your emails, or existing customers whose subscriptions are expiring soon. Target your offers based on each subscriber’s behavior and lifecycle stage (e.g. send more aggressive offers to subscribers with lower engagement or existing customers who are likely to churn). Reactivation emails are a great way to keep your brand top-of-mind and remind your subscribers about the value your brand provides. You can take a humorous approach like Bonobos or send a clear-cut email that gets to the point like Apple Music. 6. Website/App Extension Emails Increase engagement by bridging the divide between your different channels. By providing in-email functionality that connects to your website or app, subscribers have the freedom to interact with you on their preferred device. For example, LinkedIn sends a CTA email when you receive a new LinkedIn invitation that is personalized and prompts the user to confirm the invitation. No matter what industry you’re in, transactional emails can help you generate more revenue, build brand loyalty, and improve your email deliverability. Are you ready to take them on? Trigger away! Are you currently sending transactional emails in your campaigns? Share your tips and tricks below!

By: Graham Gallivan Posted: July 20, 2016 | Modern Marketing As a marketer, it’s important to have all the tools and resources you need to build, measure, and optimize your campaigns. But just as important, it can be a tall order for IT to keep your marketing team equipped with all of the tools you need to be successful. Traditionally, marketing and IT departments operated in silos, but these boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred in the digital marketplace. As Accenture Interactive reports, “The ripple effect of digital disruption is giving rise to a more integrated enterprise center on the customer experience.” Marketers who recognize the potential this presents will see the value in working with their IT colleagues to find technology solutions that allow them to seize the customer experience and benefit the entire business. Buyers are increasingly driving their own journeys, so the scope of the tools you need in order to reach and engage them is expanding. These days, 87% of people demand a meaningful brand experience, according to Edelman Consulting. Add this to the fact that as much as 90% of a buyer’s journey being self-directed, as reported in the Forrester Research report “Don’t Let Muddled Messaging Compromise Customer Experience,” published 2015, and the stakes have never been higher. To drive value across the organization, marketing and IT need to team up to adopt a marketing automation platform that’s a partner for growth—listening and responding, collecting data, and automating processes to make millions of customer connections measurable. To connect and build meaningful relationships with buyers, marketers need a way to get personal at scale, with a platform that delivers in these three key areas: 1. Ease of Use It’s critical, for both your marketing team and your organization, to work with IT to find a marketing solution that’s easy to use at implementation and beyond. Ease of use also results in no loss in productivity or system abandonment when key users leave. Look for a robust, complete solution, rather than a “good enough” solution, that offers a high level of functionality without making things complicated. For example, most solutions in the market support basic workflows, like creating email campaigns and landing pages. But after you’ve built a flow once or twice, you’ll soon wish you could do more—and more easily, with a comprehensive platform. Complete solutions will support marketers in a number of ways, helping them build out different parts of programs and processes at different times, clone forms across multiple campaigns (and still track separate conversions), trigger workflows based on just about any criteria, and listen and immediately react to key buyer interactions. 2. Low Burden to IT With many solutions out there, IT may be needed to build or adapt campaigns, monitor and troubleshoot integrations, oversee maintenance issues, and provide technical support. But this isn’t scalable, is it? In an ideal partnership, marketing and IT will team up to evaluate technologies and oversee the integration together, both on the front-end and back-end. But from that point forward, IT’s involvement should be minimal, freeing them to focus on strategy, not support. Your marketing automation platform will also provide the foundation for other marketing technology integrations (companies’ MarTech stacks continue to grow in size, with the landscape of solutions currently estimated at 3,874 and growing), so it’s important to find a solid platform that will support multiple integrations, without the need for heavy IT involvement. 3. Vision Partner with IT to choose a superior marketing platform with a long-term marketing vision and a deeply integrated partner cloud, bringing you peace of mind that your future needs will be met in a reliable and scalable, yet timely way by building on the current solution. It’s incumbent on marketers to share their current and projected needs with IT to identify a solution that will grow with the organization, so there’s no need to rip and replace over the years. In an ideal partnership, marketing will invest time in establishing a vision and collaborate with IT to bring it to life. Want to learn more about how IT and Marketing can partner to find a solution that will scale to meet the needs of the organization? Tune into our webinar with our resident scalability expert, Chris Pooley, Principal Solutions Architect at Marketo, to learn the ins and outs of Selecting a Marketing Automation Solution that Scales.

Inga and Jason are leaders of the New York and Silicon Valley Marketo User Groups for a hip-hop themed look at how you can use Marketo to grow your expertise, influence and ultimately your career. We’ll put the East Coast-West Coast rap feud to bed and share three tangible ways you can immediately step up your game. You'll learn: How to quickly deepen your Marketo experience - “(I) Get Around” (2Pac) How to easily get plugged into the Marketo Community - “Get Involved” (Q-Tip) How to simply understand your worth in the market and maximize it “Get Money” (Biggie) You can find the video recording here  The Essentials of Account-Based Marketing

The original press release can be found here. 250ok and Marketo Breathe New Life Into Email 250ok strengthens partner integration with Marketo with addition of Email Informant and Reputation Powerpack to take email campaigns to the next level SAN MATEO, Calif. – July 20, 2016 – Marketo, Inc. (NASDAQ: MKTO), the leading provider of engagement marketing software and solutions, today announced that 250ok, a leading provider of deliverability services, has strengthened its partner integration to make email deliverability smarter. As part of this enhanced collaboration, 250ok will offer its full product suite, including Email Informant and Reputation Powerpack, to make email more engaging, intelligent, and effective for Marketo customers. "We are extremely excited to continue to expand our relationship with Marketo,” said Tim Moore, vice president of Customer Solutions, 250ok. "With Marketo’s partnership to offer our full product suite, including Email Informant and Reputation Powerpack, customers will possess unparalleled visibility into the data driving the success of their email programs." According to a study by Deloitte, Americans collectively check their smartphones upwards of 8 billion times per day and continuously check email. Despite the volume of emails people read and send daily, the vast majority of messages get lost in filters. Up to 85 percent of incoming email is considered abusive, and mailbox providers often apply aggressive measures to deter spam and protect customers. As a result, senders need more sophisticated tools to understand when emails deliver and when they do not. Addressing this challenge, the enhanced partner integration between 250ok and Marketo will allow proactive management and insights that will help optimize future email campaigns. “250ok has been at the forefront of innovation for one of the oldest forms of digital communications. Its ability to continually reinvent the medium is testament to its years of experience and dedication to combining scalable technology with intelligent solutions,” said Kiersti Esparza, director, cloud platform technologies, Marketo. “This partnership with 250ok exemplifies how Marketo works closely with partners to continue to innovate and offer the best, integrated products and services to our customers.” Americans spend up to 6.5 hours a day on email; here’s how 250ok and Marketo are improving the experience: Email Informant – Responsible for delivering more seamless emails, this offering provides: Engagement Analysis: Offers insights into who read your email campaign and for how long, drilling down to the individual recipient, device, and platform. Trend Discovery: Highlights which links or calls-to-action perform the best. Allows companies to optimize emails around peak hours for recipients and utilize 250ok’s data to gain insights on the best and most engaged subscribers. Device & Browser Tracking: Provides data on which devices and clients matter most by tracking devices, clients, and browser usage across an entire mailing list so companies can optimize future campaigns. Reputation Powerpack – An industry first in the world of communications, this offering provides: Unprecedented Granularity: Upon analyzing billions of messages, this offers the analytics required to identify issues while providing the level of detail marketers need to take corrective action. Enhanced with SNDS & Signal Spam: Companies can automate SNDS & Signal Spam reporting to track spam traps and complaint rates at Hotmail, Outlook.com, Laposte, Sfr, and Orange. Comprehensive Analytics: Quickly detect fraudulent mailing activity and identify which IPs, email addresses, and domains are sending the most unauthorized mail. To learn more about Marketo products and solutions that can help you build personalized, long-term relationships with your customers, visit https://www.marketo.com/solutions/. To learn more about the company, visit https://www.marketo.com/company/. About Marketo Marketo provides the leading engagement marketing software and solutions designed to help marketers develop long-term relationships with their customers - from acquisition to advocacy. Marketo is built for marketers, by marketers and is setting the innovation agenda for marketing technology. Marketo puts Marketing First. Headquartered in San Mateo, CA, with offices around the world, Marketo serves as a strategic partner to large enterprise and fast-growing small companies across a wide variety of industries. To learn more about Marketo's Engagement Marketing Platform, LaunchPoint® partner ecosystem, and the vast community that is the Marketo Marketing Nation®, visit www.marketo.com. About 250ok 250ok is the preferred choice for email deliverability services and analytics by forward-thinking brands. Trusted by some of the world’s largest senders, we cut through big data noise and provide actionable, real-time email intelligence. Fortune 100 companies to small businesses use 250ok to monitor deliverability, sender reputation, DMARC, and customer engagement. Follow @250ok on Twitter or visit www.250ok.com. ### Media contact: Stefanie Gordish, sgordish@marketo.com

By: Nick Westergaard Posted: July 19, 2016 | Content Marketing Content is king! Content rules! No one is going to tell you in this day and age that you need to create less content. In fact, according to the Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs, 80% of marketers across all sectors (B2B, consumer, nonprofit) are using content in some form. Of those same marketers, 74% have plans to produce even morecontent in the year ahead. And yet, 57% of marketers report that creating content consistently is a top challenge. As very few organizations claim content creation as a core competency, many are wondering how they should go about developing all of these new ebooks, newsletters, blog posts, videos, and images required to engage today’s buyer. Content creation can get real complex, real fast. In my new book Get Scrappy: Smarter Digital Marketing for Businesses Big and Small, I outline several frameworks, strategies, tactics, and hacks for helping today’s frustrated marketers do more with less. Let’s take a look at four content creation hacks that should be in every marketer’s toolbox, including yours: Hack #1: Relentlessly Repurpose Content In Content Rules, Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman encourage brands to be a “content chop-shop” by always looking for ways to get multiple uses out of a particular piece of content. You should strive to relentlessly repurpose all of the content you create. You can start small by combining smaller pieces like photos, cheatsheets, and blog posts into something larger like an ebook or whitepaper. You can also take a larger piece of content apart and create blog posts, videos, infographics, and social media updates. The possibilities are endless, so get creative! Pew Research Center does this by sharing individual data points on Instagram, which point to a longer article about the research, which then invites you to download the entire report. As expensive as formal research is, it makes sense to repurpose it as much as possible. This also provides an opportunity for you to reach your audience across multiple channels and get your team involved. For example, you can make re-imagining your content an internal challenge by encouraging others to offer ideas on additional forms of content you can create. Hack #2: Utilize Historical Content If your business has been around for a while, chances are there are old photos laying around in some closet or storage facility, or stored digitally. One of the scrappiest things you can do is to digitize this old-school content so that you can give it new life online. Whether it’s #ThrowbackThursday on Instagram or populating Facebook’s timeline feature, these content classics can be a tremendous asset. For examples, check out what Herman Miller is doing on Pinterest with their history board “107 Years and Counting.” Even your old marketing collateral and advertisements offer some nice history. Southwest Airlines has a Pinterest board dedicated entirely to their old photos and ads. Hack #3: Curate Content Beyond finding ways to repurpose as much of your brand’s internal content as possible, there are other sources you can leverage outside of your organization through content curation. With budgets spread thin, curation is a viable part of the mix for many. Some examples include a blog post or email newsletter that rounds up the best articles on a particular subject important to your buyers or industry. There are several tools that can help you streamline the task of finding good content. Some are free or low-cost—like Feedly, Scoop.it, Newsle—and some are geared more toward the mid-market or enterprise level with more functionality and features, such as Curata and TrapIt. One word of caution: Avoid thinking of curation as simply a low-cost alternative to content creation. Bothshould be viewed as complementary approaches to the same overall strategy—providing your community with useful content. Hack #4: Encourage User-Generated Content The final external source for content is from your own community. User-generated content is valuable in more ways than one. First, it’s content you don’t have to create that you can turnaround and share again, which brings me to my second point. User-generated content is powerful as it demonstrates in a very public and authentic way that your audience is engaged. A common misconception is that user-generated content just “appears.” Like all things involving others, it starts with a request from you. Remember, no one (your buyers and community included) will know what to do unless you ask them. More often than not your community will participate if you ask them. For instance, after seeing their fans share photos showing their love and happiness around their product, Ben & Jerry’s put out a call for fans to share their best euphoric photos by using the hashtag #CaptureEuphoria, with favorites featured in print and digital ads for the brand. As you work to do more with less when it comes to your content marketing, these four scrappy content marketing hacks—relentlessly repurposing content, utilizing historical content, content curation, and user-generated-content—deliver big results. Looking to get scrappy with your other marketing initiatives? Register for my upcoming webinar Get Scrappy: Smarter Digital Marketing for Businesses Big and Small to learn how to create a scrappy marketing strategy to win in today’s complex digital world.

We use Eventbrite for smaller, local events (such as regional happy hours or lunch & learns) that our non-Marketo team members set up and run. The integration between Eventbrite and Salesforce was not allowing us to capture the data the way we wanted to, so we looked for a way to feed the data from Eventbrite into Marketo, prior to sending it into Salesforce. The solution for us was adjusting our data flow process to utilize “zaps” via Zapier. This step-by-step guide will show you how we were able to integrate our systems to capture the data we need. Side Note: Zapier offers a 14-day free trial which will allow you to test this functionality to see if it will work for your organization. WHAT YOU NEED TO GET SET UP: Admin access to Marketo, Eventbrite and Zapier Unique email address to create Zapier/Marketo connection (ex: zapierapi@yourcompany.com) Custom Field: Eventbrite ID (this may or may not already be available – just check ) PROCESS TO GET SET UP: Step 1: Add Eventbrite and Marketo to your “Connected Accounts” within Zapier Connect Eventbrite account to Zapier account Connect Marketo account to Zapier account Follow the instructions found here to obtain your Client ID, Secret and Domain Please note: You will need to create an alias email address to connect the Zapier API to your Marketo instance (ex: zapierapi@yourcompany.com) Step 2: Create Zap to capture event “registration” in EventBrite and feed the data into Marketo EVENTBRITE: Create the event in Eventbrite. Make adjustments to the “order form” as needed to ensure that the appropriate fields are being captured upon registration. If certain fields are necessary to add to your database, make sure that they are “required” fields on the order form (ex. First Name, Last Name, Company Name, Email Address, etc.). Make your event “live” and submit a test registration (you’ll be able to remove the test later). MARKETO: Create a list in your Marketo Lead Database to capture registrants. For scalability, it’s recommended that you create a “Zap Lists” folder under your “Group Lists” folder. Use a naming convention that will clearly identify which list should be associated with which event. We use the date of the event as the unique identifier (ex: 160629 NE Happy Hour - Registered) MARKETO: Create an Event program in Marketo. If you would like to use the Marketo Events app to check people in at the event, be sure that you use the appropriate channel for your program. In the “Setup” tab, be sure to add your period costs, appropriate tags, and analytics behavior. Also, be sure to “schedule” your event if you plan to use the Marketo Events App for attendee check-in. MARKETO: Create a smart campaign to add the appropriate registrants to the event program. SMART LIST: Trigger: Added to List > List Name is [insert the list name you created in Lead Database to capture registrants] Filter: Eventbrite Id > Eventbrite Id is [leave blank until you obtain the id from Zapier] FLOW: Change Program Status > Program [the program you created] New Status: [channel > registered] Please note: You can create whatever additional flow steps or smart campaigns you need to facilitate your program. The above are just the basics needed to associate the lead with the program for the Zapier dataflow process described here. ZAPIER: Once you’ve completed the items listed below, select the “Make a Zap!” button. Be sure to clearly name your Zap, so you know what event and action the Zap represents: The Eventbrite and Marketo accounts are connected The event has been created in Eventbrite The event registration list has been created in the Lead Database (Marketo) The event program has been created in Marketing Activities (Marketo) Create Step 1 of the Zap. Follow the document titled “Use Zapier for Registration” for visual guide of the following steps: Select Eventbrite for your trigger app Select “New Attendee” for your Eventbrite Trigger Select the appropriate Eventbrite account Select Event Status is “live” Select Event is [the event you created in Eventbrite] Review the details of the attendee registration to obtain the “Eventbrite ID”. MARKETO: Copy that “Event ID” and insert it into your event program smart campaign in Marketo. This will ensure that the appropriate registrants are being associated with the appropriate events. Please note: event_id = Eventbrite id Create Step 2 of the Zap. Follow the document titled “Use Zapier for Registration” for visual guide of the following steps: Select Marketo for your action app Select “Create or Update Lead” as your Marketo action Select the appropriate Marketo account Associate the fields captured via the Eventbrite order form with the appropriate fields in the Marketo database. Not all fields need to be associated. This step is unique to your organization. Email is the only “required” field and you must populate the “Eventbrite Id” field with the appropriate information. Create Step 3 of the Zap. Follow the document titled “Use Zapier for Registration” for visual guide of the following steps: Select Marketo for your action app Select “Add Lead to List” as your Marketo action Select the appropriate Marketo account To Set up Marketo Lead to List, select List = [the list you created in the Lead Database for registrants]; select Lead = Use a custom value, Custom Value for Lead ID = Step 2 ID You will be able to verify that the registration process fired appropriately by reviewing your list in the Lead Database and the event program in your Marketing Activities section within your Marketo instance. Step 3: Create Zap to capture event “check-in” in EventBrite and feed the data into Marketo The hang up we’ve run into with the Marketo Events app is that you have to use a tablet to “check in” event attendees. With Eventbrite, our reps have the ability to use their phones to check people in, which tends to be easier for our organization. This is why we set up a Zap to push “check in” data from Eventbrite into Marketo. Please note: if you’re using the Marketo Events app to track attendees, you do not need to set up a Zap to push attendee data from EventBrite into Marketo. This is only needed if you will be “checking in” attendees via the EventBrite app/platform. MARKETO: Create a List in your Marketo Lead Database section to capture event attendees. Use a naming convention that will clearly identify which list should be associated with which event. We use the date of the event as the unique identifier (ex: 160629 NE Happy Hour - Attended) MARKETO: Add a smart campaign to your event program that will listen for registrants to “check-in” to the event. SMART LIST: Trigger: Added to List > List Name is [insert the list name you created in Lead Database to capture attendees] Filter Eventbrite Id > Eventbrite Id is [same id from the “add to program” smart list created in previous steps] FLOW: Change Program Status > Program [the program you created] New Status: [channel > attended] You can create whatever additional flow steps or smart campaigns you need to facilitate your program. The above are just the basics needed to associate the lead status change with the program. EVENTBRITE: Go into your event in Eventbrite and mark your test registrant as “check-in” to update the status ZAPIER: Create Step 1 of the Zap. Follow the document titled “Use Zapier for Attendees” for visual guide of the following steps: Select the “Make a Zap!” button Select Eventbrite for your trigger app Select “New Attendee Check-In” for your Eventbrite trigger (this option may appear under “show less common options”) Select the appropriate Eventbrite account Select the correct event associated with the “check-in” for the Eventbrite Attendee Create Step 2 of the Zap. Follow the document titled “Use Zapier for Attendees” for visual guide of the following steps: Select Marketo for your action app Select “Create or Update Lead” as your Marketo action Select the appropriate Marketo account Associate the appropriate fields in Eventbrite with the fields in Marketo. For this step you only need to associate the “email address (profile email)” and the “Eventbrite id (event id)”. This lead (if new to your database) was already created in your registration zap. Create Step 3 of the Zap. Follow the document titled “Use Zapier for Attendees” for visual guide of the following steps: Select Marketo for your action app Select “Add Lead to List” as your Marketo action Select the appropriate Marketo account To Set up Marketo Lead to List, select List = [the list you created in the Lead Database for attendees]; select Lead = Use a custom value, Custom Value for Lead ID = Step 2 ID You will be able to verify that the check in process fired appropriately by reviewing your list in the Lead Database and the event program in your Marketing Activities section within your Marketo instance. Congratulations! You’re all set up. Remember to remove your test registrants/attendees from the Marketo program. You’ll also want to be sure to turn your zaps “on” before collecting registrants/attendees. Another thing to consider is that Zapier charges based on the amount of zaps being used. You may want to consider deleting the zaps once the event is completed, so you will not be charged.

By: Marissa Lyman Posted: July 15, 2016 | Modern Marketing Okay, I’ll be honest—I should have written this blog post three days ago, but every time I sat down to write about Pokémon GO, I would just play Pokémon GO. I’ve been in over 20 hours of professional development training this week, dropping digital “incense” so I could attract and catch Rattata from my conference room seat. Last night, I decided that cruising by PokéStops would be more fulfilling than a first-date conversation. Not to mention, I used the phrase “OMG, a Jigglypuff!” in a non-ironic manner while I was out in public on Tuesday. And I’m not alone. Pokémon GO–the new mobile app that lets you catch “pocket monsters” around you through GPS and augmented reality–has more daily engagement than Facebook Messenger and Instagram combined, according to data from SimilarWeb. It was installed on 10.8% of all Android devices in the U.S. as of July 11 (with those numbers rising to 15.1% and 16% in Australia and New Zealand, respectively). And, Pokémon GO has more users than Tinder, which means you are officially more likely to find your soulmate while hunting down Charizard than you are by swiping right. With fictitious, (often) adorable creatures from a popular ‘90s card and video game, Pokémon GO has rapidly changed the game on engagement, and curious marketers everywhere are asking three things: What can I learn from the game that’s applicable to my day-to-day marketing activities? How can I take advantage of Pokémon GO in my marketing? Should I spend all these Zubat candies leveling up to a Golbat or just try to catch an evolved Pokémon in the wild? Valid questions. I won’t pretend I have all the answers, but read on for a few of my insights and tips on how Pokémon GO fits into your marketing strategy: 1. Develop a Laser Focus The stats above and my activities over the past week are proof enough that Pokémon GO is addicting, with users laser-focused on their objectives. I mean, why else would I prioritize catching these creatures over writing this blog?For your marketing campaigns, use the same type of focus to assess your goals, establish a set of metrics to measure them by, and identify which activities will help you achieve them. Why purchase an ad in a business publication when its readership doesn’t consist of your target audience? Why pour all of your money into pricey acquisition campaigns when you know that retention is your team’s top priority at the moment? Why acquire new Pokémon when you should really be focusing on leveling up the ones you have so you can fight and take over a gym? 2. Incentivize and Provide Value to Your Buyers As a Pokémon GO player, I’m attracted to PokéStops, places where you can load up on sweet virtual Pokémon swag that will help you in the game. The draw of these places is so strong that on my lunch break Monday, I swung by the local church just to load up on Poké Balls and potions.To get your potential and current customers to interact with your brand, you need to provide them with incentives to do so. This can be as basic as providing engaging content that adds value to their business or lives or more complex, like customer advocacy programs. The key is to keep your audience in mind first understand how you can help them–things like revenue will follow.At a practical level, if your business is lucky enough to be labelled as a PokéStop in the game, I recommend capitalizing on that. We’ve seen businesses go in a few different direct with this. This can go both ways–some diehard players will fork out cash in order to reap Pokémon GO rewards, while others may just move onto the next PokéStop. So, it might be a good idea to welcome Pokémon GO players into your business with open arms, rather than drive them away. It’s likely that you’ll still benefit from the foot traffic, especially if you come up with some creative ads.Even if your business isn’t a PokéStop, there are four ways you can still get your foot in the game: Ads will be available in the app very soon in the form of sponsored locations, according to TechCrunch. You can drop an in-app “Lure Module,” which will attract Pokémon to your business and make them accessible to others for 30 minutes. It’s like a flash sale…with cartoon animals. While the example below shows a storefront and the potential for retail locations, for B2B marketers, you can consider adding a Lure Model to your location at a tradeshow to generate leads. Find out what kind of Pokémon can be found around your business and let people know, just like this business below did. The ultimate goal of Pokémon is to catch as many as you can (gotta catch ’em all!), so it’s likely to lure in players who haven’t caught that character yet or are trying to catch more of it trade in for candy and evolve their existing ones Reward players with some free perks. Remember, it’s not about what you gain from acquiring a new customer–it’s about their lifetime value, which includes repeat business and recommendations to their networks. 61% of consumers say they’d tell their friend and family about a positive experience and 27% reported they’d sign up for a loyalty program, according to a Teradata survey. 3. Be Contextually Relevant You don’t honestly think you can catch Articuno during a Southern California summer, do you? The folks over at Niantic, the makers of Pokémon GO, have done a decent job of making Pokémon appear in environments that reflect their origin (sea creatures by bodies of water, plant creatures near parks, etc.). Marketers should follow suit–there’s no use advertising ice cream in the middle of a Scandinavian winter. Similarly, if your target audience is millennials, then yes—you should absolutely consider working Pokémon into some fun marketing copy. The average age of the user is in the late 20s, meaning it’s a mecca for hard-to-catch millennial buyers. Case in point: Just yesterday, I fell for opening the below email because I was intrigued by what strategies could possibly be used to capture Pokémon on a dance floor (spoiler alert: there were no tips). Now Go Catch ‘Em All! A week from now, maybe everyone will have stopped playing Pokémon GO. Perhaps we all will have moved on with our lives and jumped onto the next bandwagon. It’s hard to know, which means if you want to jump on this trend–act FAST, as fast as you would going after a CP 142 Raticate. For now, enjoy this rare chance to integrate adorable cartoon creatures into your marketing and focus on what insights you can glean from what may be the most viral game of all-time. And if all else fails, run around throwing red and white Poké Balls at people. It’ll definitely get you some attention. Are you a fellow Pokémon Go player? What else have you learned from the game that you can apply to your own marketing strategy? Share your ideas in the comments below!

By: Heidi Bullock Posted: July 18, 2016 | Targeting and Personalization Okay, so maybe account-based marketing (ABM) isn’t quite as viral as Pokémon Go, but I would say that ABM is a close second in the B2B marketing world! But what does this mean for you as a marketer? What do you need to know about ABM? Why does it matter? How do you know if it’s right for your business? So many questions, and now’s the time for answers. Here’s a simple way of looking at how to make sense of ABM. In demand generation, it ultimately boils down to two key strategies: Traditional B2B marketing is often done through broad-reaching campaigns. Most marketers try to get their word out—as far and as wide as possible—by leveraging different marketing channels: owned, earned, and paid. The objective is to cast a wide net and put out as much content as possible, in order to act as a marketing magnet and draw a large number of leads into your funnel. On the other hand, account-based marketing (ABM) is in many ways the exact opposite. It’s about getting all your resources— your program dollars AND your people (including your sales and marketing teams)—working together in a coordinated way to pursue and convert very specific accounts. But is ABM right for you? Both strategies have their benefits, so it depends on your objectives, the market you sell to, and your product/price point. Generally, ABM is the way to go when you have a large target market with hundreds and thousands of prospects, and need to narrow down your focus to high-value accounts. With ABM, you can focus your time and efforts on running campaigns that are personalized to target accounts. Deciding on whether to do account-based marketing is just the start. Once you’ve decided whether it aligns with your objectives, there are a few considerations to take into account. Here are five simple steps to walk you through the essentials of account-based marketing: 1. Identify Your Target Accounts While this is fairly obvious, you can’t do full blown account-based marketing if you don’t even know what accounts you’re targeting. To get this right, you need to work in close conjunction with sales. ABM will not work if sales isn’t onboard, since it requires both marketing and sales to focus their resources on the defined set of target accounts. Once you work with sales to build an initial list, you can use lead scoring to help stack rank the accounts to make sure everyone is focused on the ones with the highest propensity to close. Tip: There are many options for predictive scoring, so take the time to research them. With the right solution, it can add another helpful lens to prioritizing your account list. 2. Develop Personas Next, you’ll want to map those accounts to marketing personas better understand which divisions are the right ones to target. You need to understand what challenges the account faces as a business, how decisions are made in the organization, and who makes those decisions. This sort of information is critical to an effective ABM initiative. There are different approaches to building out white space, so this should be an ongoing effort. Tip: Agree on a timeframe to lock in the target account selection. Target account programs, in many cases, take time to work–so you don’t want to switch out the accounts too frequently. 3. Find the Right Content Targeted customers are more likely to engage with content that is tailored specifically to them. According to MarketingSherpa, 82% of prospects value content made for their specific industries, and 67% say the same of content created for their specific job functions. And because ABM is inherently more personalized, you’ll have a great opportunity to provide prospects from target accounts with content and messaging that resonates with them and is relevant to their business and stage in the buyer journey. Tip: Try to leverage the content you already have and make small adjustments as needed so that the content or offer really speaks to your audience. For example, if you’re targeting accounts in a specific industry, you can repurpose a more general ebook and add in more examples and case studies from other companies in the same space. 4. Integrate ABM into Your Multi-Channel Strategy At the end of the day, your target accounts are similar to your other buyers in that they’re on a multitude of different channels every day. To effectively reach and engage them, you will need to execute cross-channel campaigns, targeting the right people in your target accounts on different channels and leveraging the personalized content you pulled together in the previous step. And remember, you’ll need to do this in tight coordination with sales so that they can understand how each target account prospect has engaged with your company. Tip: Set up an entitlement framework so it’s clear what certain accounts (top tier) receive from a program perspective and others (e.g. tier 1 or tier 2) do not. For example, at Marketo, some of our top tier accounts receive direct mail from us while our tier 2 accounts do not. 5. Measure and Optimize I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again– as with any good marketing initiative, you’ll want to measure and analyze your results over time so that you can continually optimize your campaigns. It’s not about ONE metric either, but which set of metrics matter to your business objectives. Tip: It is ideal to look at success throughout different time points so you can make adjustments as needed. Some metrics, like pipeline and revenue, take more time to mature, so measuring your campaigns throughout time allows you to get a holistic view of its impact. Measure as you first launch a campaign, while it’s running, when it ends, and three to six months down the line. Interested in learning more? Check out our webinar tomorrow on The Essentials of Account-Based Marketing as we go through how to get started with ABM and focus on what really matters.

By: Dave Chaffey Posted: July 7, 2016 | Email Marketing I recently participated in a Marketo webinar on Key Email Trends European Marketers Need to Know (that really all marketers need to know). We left some time for questions, and we received plenty of interesting questions on email marketing—from basic to advanced. It was interesting to see how similar these questions were and the common themes that arose, despite the different topics we covered. Because we couldn’t address all the questions in the session, I’ll answer some of the most frequently asked questions in this blog. I’ve grouped them into the categories of evaluation, growing and profiling your list, segmentation and targeting, and email frequency: Email Marketing Evaluation Q: What responses should I be receiving for my emails? A: Although most marketers measure their email success with open and click-through rates, a practical tip is to combine these measures to look at the click-to-open rate (CTOR%). This shows you how effective your creatives and offers are for different types of campaigns. To evaluate your email marketing campaigns in a more realistic way and identify ways to improve them, I recommend breaking out your overall responses by: Type of email: Categorize your responses by the types of emails you send. For example, personalized, event triggered emails tend to perform better than untargeted newsletters or 3 rd party email advertising (sometimes known as a solus emails), which can make the average meaningless if you group them together. Lifecycle stage: Emails sent to recipients who are in an earlier stage of the customer lifecycle, like welcome emails, usually work better than emails to long-term subscribers, so you need to break these out accordingly. Segment: Your response will naturally vary by how it resonates with different audiences, so break out your response by the different audience types. Subscriber type: Determine how your responses vary by the subscriber type, such as between Gmail, Live Mail, and iCloud addresses and company addresses. This can help you identify delivery or rendering issues between each type. Evaluating your emails with these factors in mind will give you a much better idea of the engagement your email campaigns are getting and how you can optimize them (if your email provider supports it). Q: Given the increasing number of email clients that download images automatically, how important are open rates as a metric now? A: Email open rates have always been potentially misleading since some email clients may block or download images by default or some users will change their preferences to automatically download them. Today, Gmail and Apple Mail on iOS tend to download images by default, so this doesn’t necessarily suggest interest in your emails, but more so that a reader has clicked on the subject line. However, I believe that open rates are still relevant for comparing email effectiveness between recent email sends. Comparing open and click rates helps you measure the different types of email sends (outlined in the previous answer) to reveal which perform the best. Ultimately, what really matters is whether the emails you send are helping you reach your goals. For some marketers, one of the best measures of effectiveness is sales value generated per 1000 emails sent. How to Grow and Profile Your List Q: What are the best ways to encourage opt-in? A: I recommend brainstorming alternative techniques for capturing e-mail addresses. Map out all the opportunities available for capturing a buyer’s information between your different channels and audience segments (shown in the matrix below) and use this to generate new ideas. Take a look at what you and competitors are currently doing and then do a ‘gap analysis’ to select options you aren’t currently used Here are a few  examples you could start with:  Q: Should I be using pop-ups? A: Pop-ups are increasingly being used in many industry sectors, particularly retail, publishing, and travel. This is because, when well-defined and tested, they will almost always give you significantly more new contacts in your database. We discussed this in depth in the webinar, when I described how well they have worked for Smart Insights, increasing the conversion of visitors to leads by 35% on a site where we already use a range of prompts to encourage subscription. Q: What about the quality of the people from pop-ups? A: If you use pop-ups to boost your subscriber numbers, it’s inevitable that there may be some decline in quality—but from my experience, they are still very worthwhile. To maintain the quality, it’s important to be able to profile visitors efficiently. Also, follow best practices to be sensitive to the user experience and don’t display a pop-up too quickly. You can address this by adding a time delay or detecting exit intent (e.g. when movement of the mouse to the navigation bar suggests users are about to leave the page). Q: How much do I need to profile subscribers? A: There’s a balance between asking for too much profile information and thus reducing the number of new contacts added to your database and not asking for enough. Identify two or three ‘killer question’ profile fields to ask subscribers that are most important for enabling your business to send more relevant emails. For example, at Smart Insights, we ask about the subscriber’s role, sector, and the number of people in the marketing team and then tailor our welcome emails based on the responses. Q: How can I target better without asking too many questions? A: A good rule of thumb for this is to ‘watch, don’t ask’ or ‘sense and respond.’ Instead of asking interruptive questions, monitor your recipients’ clicks to better profile them and understand their needs. Then, trigger follow-up communications accordingly. Some examples include: Monitoring click-throughs to different types of content or offers within your emails. Recording which content or offers are browsed on your website and then adding them to the individual’s profile. Recording products or categories searched for and then following up with relevant information. Over time, you should continue to add details about your buyers to gain a better picture of them by asking additional questions or tracking their behavior. For a B2B organization, I recommend defining a common customer profile (CCP), which includes all the data you could potentially collect in addition to the data you already have on a subscriber. I worked with one B2B organization that had three levels of profile and separate goals for each: level 1–basic contact information, level 2–position, market sector, and application and level 3–detailed information about standards and preferences. Segmentation and Targeting In the webinar, we looked at results from different research studies which revealed that detailed segmentation and targeting for email is still surprisingly rare. We also did a poll which showed that around 40% of the hundreds of marketers that attended the webinar didn’t target their audience. So, we received some interesting questions about how to get started. Q: Where can I begin to improve email targeting? A: Ideally, you want to start your targeting with a quick-win technique that is simple, but achieves the best results. Some options you could consider include: Creating two (or more) alternative versions of your standard newsletter. For example, you could create different versions for larger or smaller businesses, staff in different sectors, or male or female subscribers. Changing your welcome email content to be relevant for different audience segments. Sending post-purchase emails to promote similar products or related products in different categories (cross-sell and upsell). You can send these variations by creating distinct rules in your marketing automation or email system. This is a relatively quick win, and while it is efficient, it may not scale to multiple content types. This is where I recommend ‘dynamic content’ insertion (which I’ll cover next). Q: How can I get started with dynamic content insertion? A: With dynamic content insertion, you can add different content to a single section or block within your emails. For example, many emails have a ‘hero’ section at the top email, which often have the biggest impact because they are seen first. Dynamic content insertion will enable you to tailor images and text in this block to appeal to different audiences.Once you roll this out, you can develop a dynamic content marketing model that gives better results. In the webinar, we looked at this personalized B2B email example in which a series of dynamic content blocks were displayed: Hero block content varied based on lifecycle stage (new subscriber vs. engaged subscriber vs. lapsed subscriber) Secondary block content tailored by product category interest Tertiary block content varied by discounts and offers relevant for the audience Frequency for Email Marketing Take a look at this data gathered from UK email marketers that shows a huge variation in the number of emails they send every month. Accordingly, if you send just one email a month to your subscribers, you might be under-mailing and missing out on opportunities. But, if you’re emailing your subscribers more than eight times a month, you’re probably sending too many emails and are in danger of being seen as a spammer. The next question will explore how to get the balance right. Q: What is the best frequency to send emails? A: This is one of those ‘it depends’ questions since email frequency depends on the industry, audience, and what you’re looking to achieve. In retail, it’s common to email more frequently to prompt sales—at least weekly; whereas, in many business sectors, this may be considered too much.Here are three techniques you can use to determine the ideal frequency for your business: Test varying frequencies for different groups. This method will only be practical for larger businesses since it’s far more involved than A/B testing a subject line. You can classify a control or ‘hold-out’ group which has the original frequency and then create different segments for varying frequencies. For one financial services company we worked with, we originally set the frequency to be monthly and then increased it to weekly and fortnightly. In this case, we found that the increased frequency resulted in more product sales without causing a big issue with engagement or unsubscribes. Vary frequency by individuals depending on activity. One of the biggest challenges of email marketing is inactive subscribers. For many businesses, a large proportion of their subscribers haven’t engaged with their emails in the last six months or even a year. While some would argue that you should still regularly email these subscribers to stay top-of-mind and increase the potential of sale, I would argue against this since you could be identified as a spammer, negatively impacting your email deliverability. Instead, if an email subscriber becomes inactive, you can try to win them back to start regularly engaging with you again, and then add them to a different email group that you mail less frequently, but hopefully, with more impact! Vary frequencies throughout time using automation. This is a more sophisticated approach where individual frequency is controlled by the rules in your prospect or nurturing campaign. The emails you send to your subscribers depends on where they are in the lifecycle (new or older subscriber) and their behavior as they interact with different products and offers across your channels. Using this approach, you can increase email frequency (and offer a personalized message) when a subscriber shows more intent or engagement with your product. As you can see, we received a lot of great email marketing questions during the webinar. I hope these insights help you assess your current methods, try new approaches, and improve your email marketing. If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask them in the comments below!

By: Heidi Bullock Posted: July 5, 2016 | Demand Generation Often in life, more can be wonderful. For example, I like more tacos. If possible, I would like seven, not two. I would also like more Amazon Prime boxes and more NBA playoffs. Historically in B2B demand generation, more has been better too. More leads? You bet! But wait, let’s go back to college for one second. Remember the law of diminishing returns? There becomes a point when more is not more and the level of profits or benefits gained becomes less than the amount of money or energy invested. This is a very important concept to understand in marketing, especially for demand generation. More is not more, and here are three reasons why you should be wary of focusing solely on volume in demand generation: 1. 20,000 Names Is Not Winning If you bring in 20,000 names from a tradeshow or inbound marketing tactics, but the leads do not convert–so what? It’s important to remember that a name is not a lead. A name is just someone who enters your database (e.g. a student doing research or a candidate looking into your company), but a lead is someone with the right profile–specifically the right demographics and behavior, and ideally even the right account type. It is very important to have a method for making the distinction between what a name and a true lead is. So how can you distinguish the two? Define a revenue model with business rules that determine a prospect’s movement from one stage to the next and at which point a prospect should be handed from marketing to sales. At Marketo, a lead has to meet three criteria to become a lead: right demographics, right behavior, and right account profile. You can score your leads to understand their unique demographics and behaviors so that you can deliver high quality leads to your sales team. 2. Focus on the Right People and Accounts, Not Just Volume Even if you bring in leads who buy your product or service, if they ultimately churn, that is not an optimal outcome. All leads are NOT the same. Some buyers will make better customers and are more ideal for your business. These might include customers who buy additional products or upgrade their current ones, refer your company to their peers, and advocate on your behalf. So how do you determine the right leads to focus on to maximize their customer lifetime value? It’s critical to analyze your customer base to understand what attributes make up the ideal prospect. Is there a buyer persona that is more successful for your business? It may be a specific company size, vertical, buyer type, or all of these combined. You can use predictive scoring to help you identify the profile of an account or individual that is more likely to be a profitable and account-based marketing tactics to market to them in a focused, stream-lined manner. 3. Think About the Lifecycle, Not Just Acquisition Acquisition is really important, but it’s only part of the picture. Yet, many marketers are still primarily focusing their investment and activities into driving acquisition. In fact, according to a 2014 Forrester Content Marketing Benchmark online survey, only 12% ofcontent marketers are focusing on retention, cross-sell, and upsell. That means marketers are missing out on revenue that they could generate from growth opportunities that are much more affordable. By spending the majority of their efforts on costly acquisition techniques, marketers are leaving money on the table (data from Bain & Company shows that a 5% increase in retention yields between 25%-95% increase in profits). The action here? Don’t get tunnel vision with the number of leads you acquire and spend time thinking about the right customers for your business and the programs you have in place to continue to engage, retain, and delight them. How have you tweaked your marketing strategy to focus on obtaining quality over quantity? Share your experience in the comments below!

Written by Sanjay, our CMO It’s been just over a month since I spent four days in Las Vegas for our annual Marketing Nation Summit, and I’m still excited about the time I had with more than 5,000 attendees and some of the best minds in the business. The chatter in the halls was infectious and often lasted well past my bedtime as attendees swapped ideas and traded war stories about what they were doing to stay ahead of the curve in a rapidly changing digital world. I was fortunate to have an opportunity to offer my own ideas about the challenges to tomorrow’s marketers in the Day 2 keynote address, where several marketing icons joined me on stage. The program captured the theme of “Tomorrow’s Marketer.” The future of “what” As Phil Fernandez, CEO of Marketo (my employer), said during the Summit’s opening keynote, marketers now play on a bigger stage, so the expectations for both content and success are high. As Ken Wincko, the CMO of PR Newswire, noted during his Day 2 talk, credibility follows only when your customers trust you. That means marketing to moments that matter and delivering exceptional customer experiences take on increased importance. Consider the following: Trust equals credibility. Credibility is shaped by the accumulated expertise of every person in an organization who interacts with current or prospective customers. By the end of this decade, most boards will be asking their organizations to create metrics that measure how well they fare when it comes to customer trust. Great marketing is about serving, not selling. The question will be how well you know your customers’ wants and desires. Invest to foster customer advocacy. Great customer experiences will need to be contextual, empathetic and inclusive. In tomorrow’s marketing world, it’s vital to adopt a holistic approach that can engage your customers no matter the channel they choose. The future of “how” When Gary Briggs started his career in 1985, marketing had little idea of what worked and what didn’t. In 2016 we’re awash with data on our every campaign.Briggs, now the CMO at Facebook, rightly noted that consumers nowadays spend more time than ever on multiple devices, and while their interactions may be more fragmented than before, they are also more measurable than ever. A couple of points to keep in mind: We’re at the dawn of the era “of people-based marketing.” Use this measurable information to bolster your ability to tell a great story and get people to interact with your business. Marketers now have an opportunity to understand consumers at a level they never could previously. Take advantage of the ability to communicate with them like never before. The future of “who” If the chatter today is around decoding millennials, Wunderman CMO Jamie Gutfreund offered an astute reminder that the next generation is coming — Generation Z. This group, she noted, has become a proxy for all consumers. By 2020, it will make up 40 percent of the global population, and it is a picky bunch. (I should know — I have two of them at home right now!)Generation Z doesn’t like the way the world is going and has little confidence or trust in brands, governments or politicians. Consider this when marketing to these unconventional consumers: Trust is the new currency. It is a challenge to capture this generation’s attention, loyalty and confidence. They don’t only judge individual products but also take a broader look at the companies behind the brands. These digital natives, who are growing up with technology, are the ones who will decide whether or not to engage with you. And they will immediately head elsewhere if they believe you’re lying to them. This is the “optimization generation.” Gutfreund told us that Generation Z prefers to rely upon themselves and wants things to work well. If you want to cultivate a relationship with them, you’ll first need to understand their passions, values, issues and needs to communicate that you really get them and aren’t just interested in trying to sell a new widget or service. They have higher expectations, so disappoint them at your own risk. The future of “you” That leaves me with the fun stuff: the future of YOU in tomorrow’s world of marketing. What is the organization and talent profile required to succeed? You need special types of marketers to navigate this new world, and you can’t narrow your criteria to the same old experiences and personas. We’ve seen some of the most successful marketers come from backgrounds as diverse as zoo keeping and biology and teaching. These are not people who are classically trained four-P marketers, but these are people who had the right intrinsics for this new world. Marketers need to be intellectually curious and possess the grit and determination to power through whatever challenges you throw at them. Look instead for intrinsic traits to find the people with the right stuff. In a world where data drives everything that we do, marketers need to adapt and be analytical. Find these people and bring them into the profession — they will soar. At the same time, look for people who love customers and have a gift for storytelling. After all, this is marketing. You’ve heard me refer to them as the “Da Vincis” — the unique individuals who are talented across a variety of interconnected disciplines. They are in short supply, so don’t let the opportunity slip when you find one, and also strive to cultivate these traits within yourself. There’s no single marketing playbook anymore, and you and your people will need to be creative, analytical and strategic. Straitjackets and narrow specialties don’t work anymore. And finally, take no sh*t How should future Da Vincis behave in this marketing world of tomorrow? Very simply: Take no sh*t. Our Day 2 keynote ended with an inspiring performance by singer-songwriter Rachel Platten. Her inspirational hit “Fight Song” became popular after she had already been demonstrating grit, determination and passion…for 14 years. She faced a lot of naysayers and a lot of challenges, but kept at it until her talent and commitment paid off tenfold. It’s a life lesson to keep in mind. The fact is that tomorrow’s marketers will never get all the recognition, credit and popularity they deserve — at least not at first. So count on resistance from entrenched thinking — you’ll be in pretty good company. But remain determined and persistent, and you’ll overcome any and all obstacles. You will soar. This post originally appeared on Marketing Land on June 30, 2016.

By: Nate Dame Posted: June 30, 2016 | Search Engine Marketing One concern I hear over and over from marketing managers and executives is about accurately and objectively measuring SEO progress and ROI. The team members in the trenches are monitoring rankings, bounce rates, engagement, etc., but eventually, you have to know what’s actually driving revenue—and the C-suite wants numbers to prove it. But modern SEO hasn’t been the easiest thing to confine to a static set of metrics. Traditionally, SEO efforts that could rely on more technical strategies were easier to measure. Today, effective SEO is much less technical, so we need to adapt our methods. While search engines are always improving (which means that your content must always be improving), they’re always focused on the same end goal, which means good, modern SEO really is a long-term strategy. How do you measure your efforts for improvements and what do you show the C-suite in the meantime? The need for some kind of concrete answer has sent marketers after a lot of vanity metrics that look good (or not) on paper, but don’t really tell the brand’s true SEO story on their own. Bounce rate, time-on-site, clicks, and even—to an extent—an isolated view of search rankings don’t relate directly to revenue and don’t give an accurate view of an SEO campaign’s value. Maximizing your SEO opportunities, and providing reports that executives actually care about, means focusing on the right metrics: 1. Keyword Ranking Are Helpful, Sometimes “Where do we rank for our top keywords?” It’s every CMO and business owner’s first (and sometimes last) SEO thought, and usually the primary metric by which SEO efforts are measured. When we consider the big picture of SEO, it’s a good consideration, but—especially in the day-to-day business of SEO work keyword ranking shouldn’t get too much of your time and attention. There are several reasons for this: Search results are personalized. Google considers factors like browsing history, physical location, demographics, and personal preferences when dishing up search results. When you Google your key terms, you are probably not seeing the same results that your target audience is seeing when they search those same words. All keywords are not created equal. Reporting that your brand now ranks on page 1 for six of your top 10 keywords can be a good excuse to buy the marketing team lunch on Friday, but that’s about it. The importance of each individual keyword depends on search volume and its relevance to your business. Resources should be focused on the keywords that actually impact the bottom line. Ranking changes are not measured by a universal standard. If I told you that your brand dropped eight places for one of your keywords and two places for another, which would be more important to address? The answer: you don’t know yet. Dropping eight places on page 4 of search results isn’t going to impact your organic traffic, but dropping two places on page 1 probably will. The truth is, effective SEO—the work that drives real, lasting ranking changes and leads to increased revenue—is long-term work. Marketers that make a daily habit of checking their rankings tend to fall into reactive, instead of proactive, SEO habits. Most ranking changes don’t require immediate SEO attention. Search engines are always testing new algorithms, and competitors are always publishing new content. SEO that is constantly responding to ranking changes misuses resources that should be spent on the real job of building influence. And SEO reports that over-emphasize keyword rankings tend to lead executives astray on the health of their SEO efforts.How to monitor keyword ranking appropriately: If you must Google, at least use a depersonalized search to strip (most of) the personalization out of your search results. If you are using another SEO tool to monitor ranking, choose one and stick with it. Every tool uses a slightly different process to determine your “real” ranking, so stay consistent with one tool to get results you can use.As you monitor rankings and track changes, remember to look at the big picture. Resist the temptation to scramble after every tiny ranking change by creating one report that looks at high-value keywords and a separate one for low-value keywords, so you can more easily focus on the keywords that actually drive conversions. Similarly, be sure to note the page and/or position numbers of rankings that change so you can emphasize smaller changes on page one over big changes on page four. 2. Organic Traffic is a Better SEO Metric than Ranking Search traffic is the real goal behind improving search engine rankings, so a greater emphasis should be put on your efforts here. Any improvement in keyword ranking could be the result of a standard search engine fluctuation, but increases in organic traffic are concrete evidence that SEO work is paying off.How to monitor traffic from organic search: First, make sure you are set up with Google Analytics. It’s a free tool, with a Premium feature that is priced for enterprise-level organizations. The Premium version mostly offers greater support and service, and more specific numbers—whereas the free version “samples” data to provide more rounded numbers. The data you get, however, is enough for your purposes here.In Google Analytics, use the left-hand column to navigate to Acquisition > Overview > All Traffic > Channels. The table at the bottom of the page breaks down where your site traffic came from, and there’s one row for “Organic Search.” Of course, the organic traffic number includes branded and non-branded traffic. (Branded traffic is from keywords that use you brand name—e.g. ”Marketo marketing software”—whereas non-branded traffic is from keywords that do not—e.g. ”marketing automation software.”)Ever since Google took away keyword data, it’s incredibly difficult to break organic traffic data into branded and non-branded categories (although there are some great tools that can help). The best way, within Google Analytics, is to click into Organic Search from the first column in the above table, and then select Landing Page from the Secondary Dimension drop-down option above the table. The keywords are, surprise, “(not provided),” but we can gather some clues from the landing pages they point to. For home pages and login pages (rows 1-3 above), we can assume most of that traffic came from branded searches because there is no keyword focus for those pages other than the brand name. Traffic to blog posts and resource content (rows 4-8 above) probably mostly came from non-branded search traffic because they focus on a solution or on information that Google would have delivered in result to a more generic query. Rough estimates to be sure, but we’re at Google’s mercy concerning what data they choose to share. 3. The Bottom Line: SEO Conversions and ROI The goal of high search rankings is traffic, but the goal of traffic—to push the process all the way to the bottom line—is sales. Every website visitor does not convert to sales, so it’s important to monitor the conversion rate of your SEO efforts.Every conversion point, which will vary based on your industry and business model, should be considered: from ebook downloads to online purchases. Multi-touch attribution also needs to be considered, since every visit won’t convert—but every visit may lead to a conversion later. How to monitor conversions and ROI from SEO efforts:This process can start in Google Analytics, by setting up goals. Analytics has three options for setting up goals: Goal templates: These templates are organized by categories (revenue, acquisition, inquiry, and engagement). If your account is associated with a specific industry in Google, you will also see templates for specific industries. Every template can be edited. Custom goals If you prefer, you can create a custom goal from scratch. You just need to decide whether you want to create a goal based on which pages the user views, how long the user stays on a page, how a user interacts with your site, or how many pages a user views per session. Smart goals: If you’re using Google AdWords, you can take advantage of their machine learning programs to create smart goals. Turning on smart goals allows the program to monitor website visits, track which become conversions, use those insights to score visits, and automatically translate the best ones into goals. Your goals then become those actions that usually lead to conversions, and Analytics monitors them for you. Goal completions from organic traffic can tie SEO efforts back into the revenue stream. When you start using modern SEO strategies to drive traffic to a specific landing page (one with a good conversion rate), you can watch the views and time on that page increase. Modern SEO Strategies Need New Metrics I like metrics. Ask any of my staff: when we launch a new campaign, I put the Google Analytics Real-Time view on the flatscreen TV in our office. I like to gather data and try to extrapolate what it all means, but the truth is that most of what are commonly considered “SEO metrics” don’t mean anything to a brand’s bottom line. These three metrics—keyword ranking (with huge caveats), traffic from organic search, and conversions/ROI from organic search—can give you the insights you need to drive improvement and growth in your SEO strategy. They will also give you meaningful numbers to report to the C-suite, because they are rooted in a modern understanding of SEO.

This blog was written ​ By: Mike Nierengarten Posted: June 23, 2016 | Targeting and Personalization As marketers, we work hard to acquire and retain new customers, but not enough of us spend much time thinking about what type of new customers we want to acquire by looking at our existing customer base. The best customers are those that last a lifetime, and by segmenting your current customers and identifying which are the most profitable, stay the longest, expand service, and refer new customers, you can allocate more of your marketing dollars to acquiring similar prospects. Segmentation also highlights which of your customers are leaving, helping you understand what causes them to churn and therefore make a conscious effort to fix it. If you’re a B2B organization, your company likely markets to large enterprise customers with large budgets differently than more price-conscious small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) whose needs may be different. You might separate your enterprise sales teams from SMB sales teams, and you may have different cost per new customer targets for enterprise and SMB. If you’re a Consumer organization, your marketing understands that marketing to pre-teens is different than marketing to a new mom—your whole approach may be different, including your revenue goals. Go beyond just segmenting your customers into large buckets and distinguish sub-segments for each of your customer segments. Here are four steps to segment your existing customers to target the right prospects: 1. Identify Your Best Customers to Find Your Best Prospects If you want to acquire the right prospects, it starts with knowing who your core customers are. Your best customers are going stay with you for a long time, refer you, and extend your marketing and sales efforts. So, prospects who have the same personas, or attributes as your core customers are your best prospects. Every company is going to have different ways of defining their best customers and prospects. As an example, Dialpad understands the key attributes that make up their customer personas: industry, number of employees, company revenue, job roles, product interests, etc. But they also realize that their best customers share their positive experiences on social media, so they target prospects who have the same persona as their core customers and are more likely to publicly advocate. Specifically, they look for prospects who have shared positive experiences on social media profiles and technology review sites in the past. Then, they pair this knowledge with data from exploratory questions, onboarding information, and third party tools. They know their best customers use Google Apps, for example, and this factors into their prospect vetting process. 2. Calculate the Customer Value In creating a list of your best customers, take into account the value that each customer brings your business. Calculate their profit margin, customer lifetime value, and retention rate and consider added value such as client referrals, joint marketing, case studies, and reference. While profit margin and lifetime value are significant, do not underestimate the value of advocacy. A past study by Zuberance revealed that brand advocates are worth five typical customers, significantly multiplying the overall customer value. Understanding common attributes in your customers advocating your brand will help you easily identify future brand advocates. 3. Increase Spend on Campaigns Targeting Core Prospects Once you have put together a profile of your best customers, you can use those same attributes to identify your top prospects. Since long-term, highly profitable customers who advocate are worth more than a standard customer, you should spend more to acquire them. Picture a campaign budget of $100,000. Let’s assume a core customer costs twice as much to acquire, but profit margin is 15% compared to 10% for a standard customer and their lifetime revenue is five times a typical customer. If historically, half of your budget was spent on acquiring standard customers and half was spent on acquiring core customers, you could increase profitability by 35% just by shifting your media spend to 80/20, targeting more core prospects. Despite spending more on targeting core customers, these buyers will provide more value to your business due to their advocacy, retention, service expansion, and overall spend. 4. Run More Campaigns Targeting Core Prospects By knowing who your best prospects are from evaluating your best customers, you can optimize your current campaigns and determine which are most effective at acquiring these target buyers. You can go a step further and establish different cost per opportunity targets for core prospects and then optimize campaigns to drive future long-term customers and advocates. For example, if your general customer target is IT decision-makers and you determine that IT companies who use Hadoop with 100-1,000 employees are more profitable and advocate more often, you can increase your cost per opportunity target for the sub-segment of Hadoop users at mid-size companies. Ideally, you’ll know just how much more you can pay. And if in your analysis of your best customer you determine that your best customers are worth 8x a standard customer, you should be able to increase your target cost per opportunity by 8x. Long-term revenue goes beyond just acquiring customers. If you have a good grasp on the correlation between your best customers and what you are willing to pay for those customers, you may end up paying a little more per customer in the short-term, but your long-term profitability will skyrocket. On the flip side, it’s just as important to proactively identify which customer segments are more likely to churn and work hard to continuously provide value to them to retain them. Have you started segmenting your customer base to find the best prospects to target? Share your experience in the comments below!

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By: Aleece Germano Posted: June 21, 2016 | Marketing Metrics As a digital marketer, you might be asking yourself this question: “Where’s my (social) ROI?” Your boss is asking you for it. You see ads following you on the web trying to help you calculate it. Your peers tell you it’s impossible: “You want to attribute revenue dollars to social? Good luck with that.” So what’s a data-driven marketer to do? When it comes to attributing ROI to a top-of-funnel social media strategy, the challenge is often in having access to enough data points to correctly understand its impact on revenue. While a sale may not result directly from a social engagement, social may have served as the initial entry point (discovery) or a point of reference (consideration) multiple times along the buyer’s journey. In this case, attribution requires analysis across multiple touchpoints, using multi-touch (MT) attribution, rather than only looking at first-touch (FT) attribution or last-touch (LT) attribution. Let’s start by looking at an example: Marketing is creating approved content for the sales team to distribute across social networks in order to start and nurture conversations as part of their social selling strategy. On some teams, sales uses Twitter to search for buzzwords and chat with potential leads. How can you track a conversation on Twitter all the way through to a closed-won deal? Before we get started, let’s take a look as some assumptions I’ve made about your marketing and sales technology: Your sales team is using a customer relationship management (CRM) system and your marketing team is using a complete marketing automation platform. Your sales or marketing team is using a social relationship platform (SRP) such as Hootsuite, Synthesio, or Sprinklr for social publishing and/or listening on social networks. Now, let’s explore how to measure the ROI of B2B social campaigns with multi-touch attribution: 1. Connect Your CRM and SRP to Your Marketing Automation Platform First, you need to integrate your solutions so that data can flow in and out properly. Some marketing automation solutions may offer a native integration with your CRM that syncs the data on a regular schedule. Or you might build your own connector via open APIs and/or middleware partners. Check to see what integrations may be available for the SRP you are using. If you’re using Marketo, you’ll need to configure an easy, out-of-the box integration with your CRM and SRP. (Details in our LaunchPoint ecosystem.) Now, when your sales team publishes content via the SRP and it ignites a conversation on social, they can send that data into your marketing automation system. Here’s a peek at what that looks like using the Hootsuite integration for Marketo (of course, your exact solutions may differ): 2. Identify a Match or Create a New Lead Next, a complete marketing automation solution can check to see if there’s a match in the database. If not, as you can see below, it will identify whether that person is a new lead. Awesome! You just created a lead from social. 3. Measure Your ROI Now, as you run campaigns with your marketing automation platform, your lead may convert, and her email address and other form data will be appended to her record in your database. From here on, your marketing automation system will track every interaction along the funnel to a closed-won opportunity. In the meantime, you will want to track the program costs simultaneously as part of campaign creation.Time to run some reports. A solid marketing automation platform will allow you to measure multi-touch attribution, so that you can understand which programs are most influential in moving people forward in the sales cycle over time. In Marketo, you can run the Program Analyzer to see which channel drove the highest ROI. From a first-touch perspective, you can see that social as an acquisition channel brought in 1,367 new names (leads) and produced an ROI of 108%. That’s not bad, but what if you look at this from a multi-touch perspective? From a multi-touch perspective, you can see a different story emerge which helps you understand how social impacts middle-of-the funnel activity, as reps continue to nurture and engage leads on social. Here we see the true ROI as 142%–a higher ROI for a much lower cost than other marketing programs. Now that you’ve proven your social ROI, you can confidently ask for more investment. Let’s take an even closer look at social so that we can understand the ROI of paid vs. organic. By drilling into the Social Media channel (below), we can view our ROI at a more granular level—in this case, organic posts and conversations on Twitter drove an ROI of 106%. Before you celebrate your victory and go on to optimize your social campaigns, here’s a quick recap of how you can consistently measure your social programs: Use multi-touch (MT) attribution to understand the revenue impact of your top-of-funnel strategy. Connect your CRM to a complete marketing automation platform, and connect your marketing automation platform to your SRP. Track your program/campaign costs in your marketing automation platform. Use multi-channel analytics in your marketing automation platform to compare the ROI of one marketing channel or program over another. Budgeting is easy when you have marketing ROI data at your fingertips! Marketers can show the revenue impact of their efforts on social, and across other channels. Stay tuned for my next post, where I’ll cover a new attribution use case to solve. What are your marketing attribution challenges? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

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Contains a list of all of the world's countries with 2-letter and 3-letter ISO and UN country code abbreviations, phone dialing codes (prefixes), in English, Chinese and German with columns of translated Chinese and German countries and corresponding English versions for stored database values. Countries-Regions-EN-ZH-DE - Google Sheets