Product Documents

By: Jamie Lewis Posted: April 14, 2016 | Marketing Automation Today’s buyers have unlimited choices, access to a wealth of research, and are being bombarded with countless marketing messages each day. So it’s no wonder that many marketers are finding it difficult to break through the noise. In my experience working with clients as a Solution Consultant, I see marketing teams do a lot of guesswork when it comes to their campaigns, hoping that their message will be heard. Instead of building a sound strategy based on a few proven fundamentals, they continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. But, that’s avoidable. Let’s take a look at 4 pitfalls you need to avoid to ensure your marketing automation efforts are a resounding success: 1. Not treating your target audience as individuals. From my experience, many marketing teams still operate in batch and blast mode, sending out a one size fits all message. This is problematic because, according to a study by eMarketer, more than 85% of internet users specifically expect and accept personalization as a part of their online retail experience. In fact, CMO Council reports that more than half of senior marketers say that using enriched or personalized content and digital interactions yield higher response and engagement rates. Your customers want you to know them and remember them every time they interact with your brand. So to get started on the right foot, make sure that your messages are targeted at a specific segment of your database based on known preferences. Secondly, always personalize your content so your audience feels like they are having a conversation. One of my customers is realizing a 28% increase in lead generation through their email marketing activities based in large part to personalization and behavior-based triggers. This brings me to my next point. 2. User behavior is not being used to target the audience. This is another case where companies are blasting out unspecialized messages to heterogeneous audiences with limited results. The best way to avoid this pitfall is to trigger your messages based on what an individual person is doing and respond with relevant information. The fact is that a message sent based on customer actions gets more opens, clicks, and conversions because it is contextual. When David Daniels, co-founder of The Relevancy Group, was an analyst at Jupiter Research, he reported that targeting emails based on web click-stream data increased open rates by more than 50% and increased conversion rates by more than 350%. To get started, you should first make sure you are listening to user behavior: pages they are visiting, emails they are opening, and links they are clicking. Secondly, set up a scoring model to help gauge overall interest. With this information, you can set up triggered responses to user behavior and start engaging in meaningful conversation. 3. Marketing efforts are not designed to meet key business objectives. In my opinion, the biggest mistake marketers today make is not tracking key performance indicators back to corporate business objectives. If you continue to collect traditional marketing metrics such as opens and clicks to support your decision-making, you may very well be setting yourself up to be excluded from a seat at the revenue table. While they can be an important measure of progress for a specific marketing activity for the marketer, most of these metrics are meaningless to key stakeholders because they don’t tie directly to revenue. Focusing on driving revenue is the best way to align with your executive leadership and even your revenue teams. To put this in another way, ask yourself, “How are my efforts contributing directly to the company’s bottom line?” This is easier than you think. For example, for your campaigns, you can track metrics such as cost per program success, new names per program, cost per opportunity, pipeline generated, and pipeline to investment. 4. Not being on the channel your buyer is on. People don’t think in terms of what channel they’re going to be on. As Ashley Johnston, SVP, Global Marketing at Experian Marketing Services put it, “Consumers don’t wake up and say, ‘I’m going to be a mobile consumer today.’ They just use the channel that best fits the moment or task.” Engagement marketing is about more than being on as many channels as possible; it’s also about understanding how your buyers prefer to engage and using those channels to communicate with them. This cross-channel approach is known by some as opti-channel marketing, in which you use the optimum channel your buyer prefers. A great example is that most millennials communicate using mobile, while retirees prefer to use email or direct mail. You have to know your audience and communicate with them where they are. At Marketo, avoiding these pitfalls are some of the fundamentals of effective marketing. The key is to remember who’s ultimately receiving your marketing messages on the other side of that computer, mobile device, or direct mail: individuals. Don’t let these marketing automation fails happen to you. To learn how you can empower your team with marketing automation, check out our ebook How Marketing Automation Can Help Small Teams Succeed. What other pitfalls should marketers be on the lookout for as they’re planning their marketing automation campaigns? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

By: Elaine Ip Posted: April 12, 2016 | Modern Marketing If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that nothing comes free. That free trial of Netflix you signed up for? They didn’t offer you it to support your binge watching habit. Ultimately, they wanted you to get a taste of what they’re offering so that you stay a customer. Or what about the newsletter you signed up for from your favorite retailer to receive a 15% discount in your inbox? Soon, those promotional emails on new items and sales will start flooding in. Even the stray kitten I decided to adopt last year wasn’t free. His cute little face didn’t just bring endless cuddles; it came with vet bills and sleepless nights filled with meows and yowls. Why does this matter to you as marketer? We’re all familiar with the idea of give-to-get. To gain something you want, such as new clothes, knowledge, or relationships, you need to be willing to give something up—money, time, effort, etc. As a consumer, it’s likely that you know this already and have given up pieces of your personal information for something in return. On the flip side, as a marketer, your goal is to give your buyers something valuable enough to earn their interest, business, loyalty, and advocacy. So what might these incentives look like? According to eMarketer, when US internet users were asked what would motivate them to share personal information with brands: 100% of respondents would share personal information for cash rewards 77% of respondents would share personal information for significant discounts 68% of respondents would share personal information for fewer steps to get things done 63% of respondents would share personal information for something that inspires something new based on people like them 63% of respondents would share personal information for reminders at the right time on the right device The incentives above aren’t all encompassing, and the best marketers know how to create engaging campaigns that offer their audience something they want for a price that’s well worth the exchange. Let’s take a look at a few recent marketing campaigns that have gotten this down, offering valuable (or just purely entertaining) content for a small price the audience is happy to pay: 1. Powerpuff Yourself There’s a lot I don’t remember from my childhood, but one thing I do recall is the television programs on Cartoon Network. Dexter’s Laboratory, Cow and Chicken, Johnny Bravo, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Ed, Edd n Eddy, and Powerpuff Girls pretty much took over my afterschool life. To promote their Powerpuff Girls reboot, Cartoon Network recently launched “Powerpuff Yourself,” an avatar generator that allows you to become a Powerpuff Girl or Boy. Jill King, SVP of Consumer and Sponsorship Marketing for Turner Broadcasting, parent company of Cartoon Network, told Digiday that “Powerpuff Yourself” was created for fans to “engage and identify with the brand.” Their goal is clear: to revive the legion of Powerpuff Girls fans and boost their program ratings. As I began “Powerpuffing” myself (which I enjoyed way too much), a familiar marketing tool appeared before I could save my avatar: a gated page with a form fill-out. This particular one asked for my birthdate: What can we assume from this clever tactic? Perhaps Cartoon Network is interested in learning about their audience demographics so that they can make sure their programs appeal to the right audience and keep their ratings high. I’m all for supporting the Powerpuff Girl franchise, so I didn’t even hesitate to fill it in. In fact, it helped me fulfill a bucket list goal that I never realized I had. Powerpuff Girls avatar or not, you need to give your audience something worth what they’re giving up. I didn’t even hesitate to fill in my birthday for this fun avatar generator. Now, if they were asking for my full name and address, it might be a different story. If you’re offering educational content, don’t ask your visitors for too much information or don’t even gate it. And with marketing automation technology, you still stand to gain something by tracking the behavior of anonymous website visitors and converting them down the road with web personalization tools. 2. Snapchat Filters Snapchat filters have been all the craze lately. You may have seen screenshots or videos floating around on social media of your friends or family with fun overlays of dog faces, animations, and even face swaps (some that are downright horrifying). The filters are a great way for Snapchat to increase app usage and engagement, with this fun feature exclusive to their app. It might even result in more app downloads from new users, as Snapchat users share pictures with these filters on their other social networks. But this isn’t all that they gain. In fact, these filters are bringing in some major revenue for them. Snapchat’s filters are open to brands through sponsored geofilters, which is really quite genius for “free” product placement that personally incorporates your audience (similar to when consumers wear clothing with a retailer’s logo splashed on top but an instant, digital version). Snapchat geofilters place users directly into a brand’s filter, not only showing their support for the brand, but also influencing their networks to feel positively about it and participate too. Both Snapchat and brands are cashing out on this. In fact, more than 60% of U.S. 13 to 34 year-old smartphone users (Snapchat’s target audience) are Snapchatters, according to Snapchat. And their user base is at 100 million daily active Snapchatters and growing. Being that Snapchat is a mobile app, these sponsored geofilters not only follow users wherever they go, but they are relevant to that particular user’s location. While Snapchat might not be the right channel for every brand, the key message here is to be where your audience is and find ways to interact with them personally and build advocates. There’s nothing more personal than placing a brand’s geofilter on your face. 3. #TacoEmojiEngine Emojis are a popular form of self-expression. 92% of the online population uses emojis. People use them to help communicate their thoughts and build personal relationships, according to the 2015 Emoji Report by Emogi. It’s also a universal language that translates well across languages and regions. Brands have caught on to the emoji phenomenon using them more and more in their advertising, emails, even billboards, and fast food chain Taco Bell is no exception. In fact, they led a movement to add a taco emoji through a Change.org petition, one that garnered 32,797 supporters. When the Unicode Consortium finally approved the taco emoji for iOS 9.1, Taco Bell celebrated with the launch of the #TacoEmojiEngine on Twitter. Just tweet at Taco Bell with a taco emoji along with another emoji, and you’ll receive an instant, personalized response—one of 600 pieces of unique taco-inspired content. Here’s the #TacoEmojiEngine in action: So what’s behind these 600 bits of pure pleasure? Rob Poetsch, Director of Public Affairs and Engagement at Taco Bell, told TechCrunch that they launched the #TacoEmojiEngine to celebrate the long-awaited arrival of the taco emoji and to thank taco lovers everywhere for their support of the emoji, which they had been campaigning for more than a year. But there must be more to this to justify all the time, money, and effort they put into creating this viral campaign, not to mention maintain it. What other objectives might be driving this effort? Let’s taco ’bout it (sorry, I couldn’t resist). Hashtags are a great way to build brand awareness and generate awareness. The #TacoEmojiEngine campaign lives on Twitter, where trends are a way for users to gauge which topics are going viral that they are most likely to care about based on their interests, network, and location. With all the traction #TacoEmojiEngine generated, it successfully became a trending topic, meaning it became something “worthy” of your interest. You might be among the few that first discovered it and if not, then you were likely among the many that jumped on as @tacobell and #TacoEmojiEngine started popping up all over your feed and on the “Trends” sidebar. The impact continues to spread to this day as users still interact with the campaign. There are quite a few things we can learn from Taco Bell, and it’s not just that tacos go with almost anything. As you’re planning your marketing campaign, find something that aligns with your mission and resonates with your audience, and then actively join the movement. REI demonstrated this on Black Friday with their “Opt Outside” campaign that closed their stores and paid its employees to go outside. Also—no surprise here—personalization played a critical factor in the success of this campaign. Taco Bell responds to each tweet with literally the same exact combination the user asked for. Emojis might not be the right way to personalize your content to your audience, but the idea is the same: find what your buyers are interested in and respond with curated content that resonates with them, promptly. Seconds (or maybe even milliseconds) after sending out my tweet, I received a response from Taco Bell. Cartoon Network, Snapchat, and Taco Bell are brands with significantly different business models and audiences, but they’ve got their marketing down to a T (or in Taco Bell’s case, an emoji). These brands have all successfully influenced their audience to want to become part of their marketing campaign, with buyers disclosing their information, engaging with the brand, and sharing on their networks—all on their own terms. So find what resonates with your audience the most and think of creative ways to successfully do the same. What other creative marketing campaigns have you seen that were worth the catch? I’d love to hear about them in the comments below!

By: Sanjay Dholakia, Marketo - CMO The traditional marketing funnel may be as dated as bell bottom pants, but that hasn’t held back Charlie Metzger, the chief marketing and communications officer for the Detroit Pistons and its parent company, Palace Sports & Entertainment, from turning in spectacular results. Metzger has deployed marketing technology in the company’s operations to help drive a 90% season-ticket renewal ratehttp://cmo.marketo.com/conversations-and-interviews/what-its-like-to-be-head-marketer-for-the-detroit-pistons/. The secret? Metzger has traded in the funnel for what he calls “the circle.” Read this excerpt from an interview Harvard Business Review Analytic Services (HBR-AS) did with Metzger during the development of our whitepaper, “Designing a Marketing Organization for the Digital Age.” HBR-AS: Are you seeing the traditional sales funnel itself changing? Metzger: I think it changed eight to ten years ago. HBR-AS: What is its equivalent now? Metzger: It’s social, search, sale. You’re building a community, and it’s not a funnel anymore; it’s a circle, and at the beginning of that circle is the fact that we’re looking for advocates. So you’ve got to put yourself in a position where people are recommending your product and talking about you. That is really where it starts. It doesn’t start with you driving awareness. It starts with working on creating advocates for your product or service and, hopefully, they are telling others. HBR-AS: What sort of pressures or opportunities is the marketing organization under and how are you dealing with them at the moment? Metzger: It starts with the ability to have access to data and also to have access to data in real-time. Then you need to be sure that you’ve got the ability to move fast. The pressure is far greater than it used to be because you could be missing opportunities staring you right in the face. HBR-AS: Your situation is probably unique because there is a product on the field. It’s a team and you’re not necessarily able to change these rules. Metzger: Yes and no. Certainly, our product is on the court; it’s the Detroit Pistons and we also have outdoor music that we do. But whether you're at P&G, IBM, or the NBA, all organizations have the ability to use technology and gather intelligence on their customers. Not only what their customers are buying, but what they’re thinking, what they’re saying, and what they’re sharing with other people. You just have much more of a window into what people are thinking and, more importantly, sharing about you with others. HBR-AS: How is that changing the role of marketing?  Metzger: If we’re learning things about our existing customers or future customers, we’ve got to be able to translate that easily and simply to our sales team. If they want to follow up and get smarter, or hopefully make a sale, or influence a sale going into the future, that data and information has to get transferred to them as quickly as possible but also in a user-friendly way. HBR-AS: In terms of the innovation between marketing and sales, how does that relationship work? Metzger: At the end of the day, business hasn’t changed really. We still want to build brands and drive ROI and sell a product or a service and create loyalty.   HBR-AS: How is your marketing organization itself changing?  Metzger: I see marketing groups insourcing more than outsourcing. Marketers always will outsource certain things to partners, but I think you’re going to see skillsets, particularly in content creation, social and digital, probably being insourced a little bit more. You’ll probably see more of that in the future. HBR-AS: That’s because of speed? Metzger: Speed and technology, and also because of the way that people are used to consuming technology. So instead of viewing an offer again, going way back, through television or through a direct mail piece, or even a Sunday paper, people are communicating all the time on their phones. You’ve got to be able to create content that can work there.  It’s democratization of the ability to be able to create some of that yourself now. I think it allows marketers to potentially be able to take that on, whereas historically they might have had to outsource that to an agency. HBR-AS: So you’re saying that by and large agencies aren’t able to move as quickly around all those different media platforms, from television to mobile? Metzger: I spent 12 years in an agency so I see the huge value in agencies.  I just think that agencies will be different, too. Technology is going to change the speed and the pace at which everybody has to move. If you build the community the right way, and you’re building your social network the right way, and they’re searching for products or services or ideas or whatever it is that you’re offering, we believe that will translate and then lead to sales. It’s so much different than the old purchase funnel where it was pending consideration and awareness. We now know that the first place anyone shopping for anything will go is online and look at what others are recommending. You don’t influence them at all the way you used to so now you’ve got to be part of those communities.  

By: Sanjay Dholakia Posted: April 6, 2016 | Modern Marketing Historians of digital marketing will be hard-pressed to find another era when marketers faced so many challenges or so many opportunities to affect dramatic change. Like I always say, marketing has changed more in the last five years than it has in the last 500 and will change more in the next five than ever before. A report out today from The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), sponsored by Marketo, shows just how much our world is shifting. In the past five years, marketers have been grappling with the emergence of new technologies, but the challenge–and perhaps opportunity–is about to go into overdrive over the next five years. Now, we’ll have to grapple with the added complication and explosion of Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, and virtual reality technologies–technologies that will dramatically transform how your customers engage with your brand. If you lose their interest, buyers can switch brands or cut the cord with a keystroke. Marketers need to be listening and responding not just in every channel, but in every place and every moment. So what does this mean in practice? The Path to 2020: Marketers Seize the Customer Experience Marketo turned to the EIU to help with the answer. EIU surveyed nearly 500 CMOs and senior marketing executives around the world to learn what these experts thought about the technologies and customer trends that are most likely to change marketing over the next five years. The findings describe how marketers are taking advantage of the rapid-fire innovations in digital technology to reshape their brand’s relationship with customers. Here are the top six that I found most interesting: 86% of CMOs and senior marketing executives surveyed believe they will own the end-to-end customer experience by 2020. More than half of respondents believe the accelerating pace of technological change, mobile lifestyles, and an explosion of potential marketing channels via IoT will change the field the most by 2020. This will be driven by billions of possible interactions between a company and its customers, forcing CMOs to manage staggering amounts of complexity. Marketing leaders *must* have a single view of the customer that allows them to engage in two-way, personalized conversations across technologies, locations, and physical objects at mass scale. It will be impossible for CMOs to build and manage a customer experience without one. New media will continue to trump old media, and the top channels for reaching customers in 2020 will be social media, internet websites, mobile apps, and the mobile web. More traditional publishing-centric channels, like television, radio, and print, rank far lower. Brand equity will depend more than ever before on fostering consistent and personalized experiences that leave customers satisfied. The biggest technology-specific trends that will most impact marketing organizations by 2020 feature small screens or no screens–mobile devices and networks, personalization technologies, and IoT. Smart marketers will need to use these new tools to learn customer buying patterns and the context of where someone is in their decision journey. What’s more, they’ll need to be able to predict what customers are most likely primed to do next and be ready to influence them at the proper moment. So how do these findings directly impact you, the marketer? If we all believed that the advent of social, mobile, and digital changed our world, then you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Sorting through the data, several emerging trends will occupy the attention of CMOs and, by default–their teams–throughout the remainder of the decade. The explosion of IoT and the ability to connect and interact with customers everywhere–literally everywhere–will fundamentally transform where and how we expect marketing to be in the very near future. This promises that the marketing we used to know is gone. Marketing is now the very essence of a company. Marketing is the brand. Marketing is the customer experience. And in the words of JPMorgan Chase CMO Kristin Lemkau, who was interviewed for the report, “the experience is the marketing and the experience is what drives performance.” I encourage you to take a look at the report and find out for yourself what’s on the horizon. Get ready for what’s next.

By: Mike Burton Posted: April 5, 2016 | Lead Management The cult classic movie, Glengarry Glen Ross paints a harsh reality of the world of sales. At the bottom line, the movie is all about a salesman’s ability to close and the endless battle for a quality set of leads. And while perhaps exaggerated in its delivery, these two core messages ring true for marketing and sales teams alike. The ever foreboding challenge is finding and closing the ‘Glengarry’ leads, the ones that will guarantee conversions and revenue. So how do you ensure that, as a marketer, you do your part in finding those Glengarry leads for sales to close? Achieving AIDA to ABC In the B2B world, the notion of AIDA is key: Attention Interest Decision Action Predictive lead scoring, personalization engines, and segment builders have evolved to help marketers find qualified leads and salespeople pursue them, but they can sometimes fall short on accurately delivering on the “Attention” and “Interest” areas of target audiences, making the success of “Decision” and “Action” at best an educated guess. And marketers are only as good as the tools they are equipped with. Enter external intent data. Much like a FICO score provides a holistic view of a customer’s credit history by using collectively shared information from different banks, external intent data provides a business with an understanding of what an individual, a department, or a company in a specific location is most interested in. Through a large cooperative of B2B media companies, external intent data companies monitor a range of audience interactions with your company such as collateral downloads, tradeshow booth visits, articles read, webinar and video views, social engagement, etc.). This external intent data is consolidated and categorized into a range of different topics and then benchmarks are created against each, allowing you to identify when certain topics are experiencing a surge of interest. The result is moving beyond the traditional batch and blast approach to understanding when you have the attention of your target audience and knowing exactly what they are interested in. And when this data is integrated with your marketing automation and CRM systems, you’re armed with key indicators of when marketing or sales should engage with each individual at an optimal time during the decision-making process, thus improving the ability toAlways Be Closing (ABC). No More Weak Leads In the movie, sales are won through slick coaxing and by playing on a prospect’s insecurities; in the age of information, relevance and authenticity are quickly becoming the new norm. So what does this mean? Often, demand for your product or service already exists, but it’s all about finding the right behaviors that indicate this and using it to inform your marketing campaigns. While an email respondent is valuable, an email respondent that is in a relevant research surge, as informed by external intent data, is much more likely to net an immediate sales opportunity. This added layer of data allows marketers and salespeople to understand the difference between the curious content junkies and those that are accessing content based on a current initiatives–ultimately weeding out the weak leads. Take for example a recent VM Turbo campaign promoting an ebook download on their hybrid cloud. When reaching out to surging contacts who responded to an email campaign, they saw a 51% lift in open rates when compared to a control group that was non-surging. Further validating the correlation between intent and engagement, their sales team reported that when they followed up with customers by phone, the individuals from the surge group were more engaged and their conversations much more in-depth. Overall, 80% of all of the opportunities created from the campaign originated from the surge group. Making the Most of Glengarry Leads Integrating behavioral intent data into your marketing automation instance requires a few foundational steps. First, it’s critical to have an understanding of your sales team’s strategy and align your topics. Once your topics are agreed upon and selected, an external intent data provider will be able to append these relevant topics to contacts inside of your marketing automation system. After you create your campaign and run it, you will need to close the loop back with your sales team, ensuring that they follow up on any interactions, especially with individuals in the surge group. The key to success is not only through delivering targeted content to an already interested group, but also in the follow-up conversations, which result in new opportunities. External intent data allows you to take a customer-centric approach, means that your prospects are getting content that they are interested in at a timely point in their decision-making process and it allows you to plan and distribute your content more strategically. Ultimately it opens up a way to uncover your Glengarry leads. Have you already integrated external intent data into your marketing campaigns? I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments below.

FYI: This article originally appeared in the Harvard Business Review​ When business leaders talk about going digital, many are uncertain about what that means beyond buying the latest IT system. Companies do need assets like computers, servers, networks, and software, but those purchases are just the start. Digital leaders stand out from their competitors in two ways: how they put digital to work, especially in engaging with clients and suppliers, and how intensively their employees use digital tools in every aspect of their daily activities. Recent research from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) looked at the state of digitization in sectors across the U.S. economy and found a large and growing gap between sectors, and between companies within those sectors. The most digital companies see outsized growth in productivity and profit margins. But what are the key attributes of a digital leader? And how can companies benchmark themselves against competitors? We looked at 27 indicators that fall into three broad categories: digital assets, digital usage, and digital workers. Our research shows that the latter two categories make the crucial difference. Digital assets across the entire economy doubled over the past 15 years, as firms invested not just in IT but in digitizing their physical assets. Digital usage in the form of transactions, customer and supplier interactions, and internal business processes, grew almost fivefold — and over the entire period, the leading sectors maintained an enormous lead in usage over everyone else. But the biggest differentiator of all comes from having a digitally empowered workforce. Over the past two decades, the leading sectors’ performance on various digital labor metrics — such as the share of tasks involving digital tools and the number of new digital occupations — rose eightfold, while the rest of the economy barely ran in place. It is becoming clear that some parts of the economy are playing in an entirely different league. Our research included a new Industry Digitization Index, the first major attempt to measure digital progress and adoption in each sector. The results show uneven progress: The technology sector comes out on top — no surprise there. Right behind it are media, finance, and professional services, all of which have far more sophisticated digital capabilities than the rest of the economy. On top of these macro-level differences, we see that even lagging sectors may have standout firms that are pushing the frontier forward for everyone else. Let us look at each of our three broad index categories in turn. First, digital assets. To benchmark them, the index measures how much companies invest in hardware, software, data, and IT services (whether through outright purchases or contracting with third parties to fill in gaps). We also look at the extent to which companies are digitizing their physical assets — that is, whether they have smart buildings, connected vehicle fleets, and big data or IoT systems that get maximum performance out of equipment, systems, and supply chains. To some extent, digital assets are a story that has been playing out since the 1960s. Retail and financial firms were among the first movers, while today we see mining and manufacturing firms adopting digital technology in a purposeful way, with mobile-enabled tools and IoT-powered devices. One example is Caterpillar’s new S60 smartphone, which comes with built-in thermal imaging capability and is useful for builders, electricians, and utility workers. The focus has also shifted from making long-term capital investments to flexible usage-based operating systems, which explains the rapid growth in cloud-service offerings launched by the likes of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Our second category, digital usage, measures the extent to which companies engage digitally with customers and suppliers. Companies in the leading sectors make more extensive use of digital payments, digital marketing, and design-led product development. They are more likely to use software to manage their back-office operations and customer relationships. They take advantage of e-commerce platforms — and may even operate their own. Their underlying business processes make use of social technologies to interact with customers and partners. Burberry, for example, has set the bar among retailers by seamlessly integrating social media and immersive experiences into its physical stores. These usage-related innovations are likely to have profound implications on business models and economics across the value chain in the coming years. What really sets the leaders apart, however, is the third category: the degree to which they put digital tools in the hands of their employees to ramp up productivity. To get an accurate picture, we evaluated more than 12,000 detailed task descriptions to identify those associated with digital technologies. We also estimated the share of workers in each sector in technology-related occupations that did not exist 25 years ago and looked at digital spending and assets on a per-worker basis. The gaps are huge: companies in leading sectors have workforces that are 13 times more digitally engaged than the rest of the economy. In lagging sectors, the digital engagement of the workforce can be erratic; some organizations have made progress in certain areas but have not yet addressed foundational tasks their workers perform. Many health care organizations, for instance, use incredibly sophisticated technology in diagnostics and treatment but substantial parts of their workforce use only rudimentary or no technology. Fewer than 20% of payments to health care providers and their suppliers are done digitally, for example. The striking gaps in digital labor at the sector level, revealed by the Industry Digital Index, are playing out every day at the company level as well. Technology still hasn’t penetrated much of the everyday work performed by many Americans, which means that most businesses are missing opportunities for greater efficiency and better customer experience. Many still need to break out of their old habit of housing “digital talent” in a separate department. Companies increasingly need each employee to bring greater digital skills to bear on every activity. That’s the only way to unleash innovation and capture efficiencies at an institutional level. In some cases, new hires may be necessary, but investing in ongoing employee capability building and cultural change could pay real dividends. For executives, the first step is to identify digital priorities, keeping in mind the overall business transformation needed to maintain a competitive advantage. This requires a renewed external focus to understand more deeply how peers in the industry are digitizing, how customer expectations are changing, and which companies from within or outside the industry can best meet those expectations. Once the gaps are identified, management teams can design strategies to deliver near-term financial impact while starting the process of renewing the digital core. Such a renewal is only possible when leaders take a holistic approach to their companies’ digital assets, usage, and labor. Prashant Gandhi is the global chief operating officer of McKinsey Digital. Somesh Khanna is a director at McKinsey and leads McKinsey Digital in financial services. Sree Ramaswamy is a senior fellow at the McKinsey Global Institute.

By: Marissa Lyman Posted: March 31, 2016 | Content Marketing Did you know that grammatical errors are the number one cause of work-related aggression? Okay, that’s a lie–but if everyone cared as much about grammar as I did, I can guarantee that misplaced commas, subject-verb disagreement, and improper use of “your” would top the HR incident list. A degree in journalism, numerous media internships, and nearly two years editing the homepage for America’s most-watched cable news network inadvertently turned me into what I recently told a colleague was “The Grammar Hammer” (copyright pending). To me, editing is like a treasure hunt, and finding each error brings a degree of satisfaction or–if it’s published– immense and somewhat irrational rage. The fact of the matter is that, at their core, typos in collateral undermine a marketer’s credibility with customers and prospects. If your company doesn’t know the difference between “there,” “their,” and “they’re,” how are you supposed to be trusted with the hard stuff, like–I don’t know–revenue generation? (For the record, “there” refers to a place or the existence of something, “their” is possessive–like, “Have you seen their new nap room? I am filled with envy.” and “they’re” should be used any time you can substitute it with “they are”–like, “They are going to be so well-rested! I hate them!”) Yes, typos happen. But if you follow the steps outlined below, you can significantly reduce the number of errors in your work, leading to fame, fortune, and marketing glory: 1. See If It Passes the Jargon Test You basically invented marketing–that’s how good you are. In fact, there is no industry term, TLA (three-letter acronym), or obscure marketing reference that you’re not familiar with. Well done, you! Yet not everyone is an expert like you are, so pumping copy full of jargon runs the risk of alienating those in your target audience who aren’t as technologically savvy as you are. You want to sound smart, not pretentious. Your external communications should be engaging and informative, and a major part of this is using appealing vocabulary. There is a time and a place for all of these “inside baseball” terms–like an in-depth how-to guide. But err on the side of general terms that are easy to read through, especially if it’s on an initial call-to-action. When in doubt, have someone in a different department or job function take a gander at your work. If it leaves them scratching their heads, it’s worth an edit. 2. Let It Sit You just wrote the copy for what, in your opinion, is the world’s most beautiful nurture campaign, and you’re getting ready to set it up for deployment. Your quest to finesse your language means that you’ve been staring at the same two paragraphs for the better part of the last two hours. What should you do? Save the copy and walk away. Do it. Tear yourself away. I know you’ve been itching to get this off your plate, but there’s a high probability that if you set it up for distribution now, you’re going to discover once it sends that it’s riddled with errors. The more familiar you are with text, the less likely your brain will pick up on any subtle inconsistencies. That’s why it’s important to give yourself a break, let your brain focus on something else (maybe this is a good time for a walk or a nap), and come back to the text with fresh eyes. You’ll be shocked by what you catch the second time around. 3. Print, Read Out Loud, Repeat You’ve just awoken from your nap–now what? Reread your work on your computer? You could, but–environmentalists, cover your ears!–I recommend printing out what you’re working on. Whether you’re reviewing plain text or the layout of a new ebook, without all that blue light hitting your eyeballs, you’ll be able to focus better. Errors will jump out of the page as obviously as that whale at the end of “Free Willy.” And once you’ve printed your work (or even if you haven’t–shame on you!), read it out loud. Hearing the words instead of reading them will give your brain a different perspective and help it to catch additional errors. These can range from typos and misspellings to sentence constructions that just don’t sound right. Try it the next time you write an email–this is the type of exercise that helps you walk that fine line between “The webinar is public” and “The webinar is …” You get it. 4. Ask the Experts I’ve lauded the power of Google in previous posts, but it’s worth a mention here too. Google is a wonderful source for your grammar needs and can also help to end any editing debates you might be having. It may take some digging, but you’ll usually walk away with knowing what the most common and widely accepted approach is for spelling or punctuation. Just make sure you’re getting your insight from a reputable site and one that is reflective of the grammar in your geographic region. And think about your internal experts as well, often on your Communications or Content team. Does your company prefer the Oxford comma? What solution names are capitalized? Smart marketing departments will implement a set of brand style guides for everyone to adhere to. WHAT. You don’t have one? Congratulations, you’ve just identified an important, proactive opportunity to make your mark. It’s like I always say, quality control is everyone’s problem. 5. Practice Makes Perfect I have literally spent days of my life editing things. DAYS. Do I wish I had been spending this time on a beach somewhere? Maybe. Would my written words benefit from a rich mahogany glow? Absolutely not. The tips above will help and should become standard practice whenever you’re developing external content. However, the only way you’re really going to step up your error-free game is through practice. How do you do that? Edit everything you can get your hands on. Your stuff, your coworkers’ stuff, your competitors’ stuff–everything. You can even search for practice tests as a fun and informative alternative to Sudoku or Candy Crush. There is no limit to how much practice you can do. Now go forth and conquer typos, you smart marketer, you. Are you a spelling and grammar connoisseur? Share your tips for writing spotless marketing copy in the comments below!

Author: Matt Zilli The marketing organization has been in a renaissance, moving from a model where every type of marketing is handled in a silo toward a more holistic model that’s structured around the customer lifecycle. It’s about time. Traditionally, customers have come to us with marketing departments organized in every which way. In the long run, the model that’s proves itself time after time is a marketing department structured around the customer experience, one that makes sure that customers get consistent and progressive messaging from their first touch all the way through their entire journey—no matter where that journey takes them. In other words, marketing organizations have to be nimble enough to allow for a panoply of customer experiences—sort of like those “make your own ending” storybooks where every choice reveals a new plotline, which is essentially what each buyer experiences with your brand. Making this a reality involves ensuring that you have the right strategy in place and dollars to back it up. Point-to-Point Engagement? Or One Hub to Rule Them All? The hub-and-spoke system used by many airlines today was one of the greatest innovations in the airline industry. However, when airlines like Southwest successfully implemented point-to-point systems at lower costs, it put pressure on hub-and-spoke airlines to adapt. A similar story is unfolding in how marketing organizations handle the rapid explosion of marketing channels. If you’re in marketing, you know how overwhelming the sheer number of channel choices can be these days. The pressure to have an effective, dynamic presence on every single digital platform can be crippling to busy marketers who can barely keep up with just social media posts. And let’s not get started on the responsive, personalized website you need to have if you want to appeal to your audience. According to Content Marketing Institute’s annual B2C Content Marketing: 2016 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America report, of the 12 tactics consumer marketers consider most effective, a healthy nine of them are digital marketing approaches: email newsletters, social media, mobile apps, videos, online presentations, microsites, website articles, webinars and webcasts, and blogs—with the rest being in-person events and creatives (photos/illustrations and infographics). And their B2B report echoes similar results, with the most effective digital marketing tactics being webinars/webcasts, email newsletters, blogs, videos, and online presentations. Their other tactics, aside from in-person events, involve different forms of content that can be hosted online: case studies, whitepapers, research reports, and infographic. Unfortunately, a lot of traditional organizations are stuck in hub-and-spoke mode, with email marketing, social media marketing and mobile marketing arms simply tacked onto their traditional core marketing department—which is often most adept at legacy mass marketing that’s becoming ever less relevant. Some organizations with this old-school approach refuse to see the marketing experience through the modern customer’s eyes. What Exactly Is Your Customer Looking For? Customers don’t think of themselves as “email customers” or “Facebook customers” or “mobile customers.” They expect and deserve open access to the same information on any platform, a unified, omni-channel experience that unfolds organically wherever they are. If they see a post on Facebook about a great deal on a product, but didn’t have time to click “buy” before they walked out the door, they want to be able to go right to your website from their smartphone while they’re standing in line at the post office and get the same deal without having to go back and scroll through their Facebook timeline (in fact, this happened to me recently). But when marketing organizations are siloed, the customer experience becomes disjointed. The social media department can’t always coordinate with the website department to ensure that your customer sees the same information on every channel. Customers are apt to receive duplicate or even conflicting messages, and once they’re stuck in the quagmire of your duplicate marketing messages, they quickly lose faith. To give your entire team insight into the whole customer experience, you need a marketing organization devoted to that experience—and you need the tools to support it. Both your internal organization and your technology must allow you to read/listen and respond to customer behavior in the moment. Why You Need to Spend Even More on Digital Marketing Of course, to reorganize your marketing team, you need the budget. Less dollars are going into traditional offline marketing channels, and are instead going into digital marketing. And unless your company has been hiding under a rock for most of the last decade, you’ve probably already increased your digital marketing budget pretty substantially to accommodate the need for a website, social media presence, and email marketing campaigns (at the very least). In fact, Gartner’s CMO Spend Survey 2015-2016: Digital Marketing Comes of Age, published November 2015, reports that digital marketing budgets increased 10% from 2014 to 2015, and this amount will continue to increase this year, primarily going to social marketing, digital commerce, marketing analytics, customer experience, and advertising operations. These days, digital marketing is marketing. In fact, 98% of marketers acknowledge that the online and offline channels are merging and a third of marketers already have their digital techniques fully incorporated into their marketing operations, according to Gartner. And here’s why: Your customers are online, so that’s the natural place to talk to them. Pew Research Center reports that 84% of American adults use the internet, with adoption increasing over the years across all age groups, and a fifth of Americans go online almost constantly. Digital marketing is faster than offline channels. In a world where buyers demand immediate, relevant information, it’s infinitely easier to fulfill those demands via digital channels because we can listen to the requests and automatically respond. Even the best direct mail piece still takes a few days to arrive. Besides putting money where it counts, spending on digital marketing makes for better tracking of marketing ROI. Finally, marketers can justify where, how, and why they are spending their money. The bottom line? Even companies that don’t think of themselves as “digital businesses” are taking their marketing efforts online. You have to meet your customers where they are. Digital is no longer a marketing niche—in fact, the phrase “digital marketing” will soon be considered redundant. We’ll all just say “marketing,” and that will be that. If your organization hasn’t gone digital, you can lobby for change and be the marketing hero. Begin your campaign for change by defining what customer engagement means to you. Is it all about customer retention? Repeat purchases? Social advocacy? Perhaps it’s all, which for many it should be. Next, hone in on a set of customers you can identify as a prime engagement target and then engage them with that content, while measuring how their response is impacting your goal. Just think—it will be dawn of a new day for your marketing organization.

By: Gareth Goh Posted: March 29, 2016 | Modern Marketing Marketers have a well-deserved reputation of being creative types, thinking outside the box and experimenting with new ideas that build brands, reach audiences, and engage customers. However, there is a critical component to marketing –and it’s one that can feel unintuitive to marketers—Data. And I don’t mean just random numbers and records, but accurate, high-quality, and actionable data that informs marketers how they should execute their growth plans. Marketing responsibilities are becoming increasingly technical in nature, and the task of collecting, analyzing, and making sense of all that data is moving away from the realm of a dedicated operations manager to the entire marketing team. The typical modern-day marketer works with a full stack of different technology platforms on a daily basis. At the very least, they are working with a marketing automation system and a customer database/CRM as the most basic must-haves. But the average digital marketer likely has several other systems at their disposal, from content management platforms and business intelligence to social media and lead nurturing tools. Needless to say, each of these individual platforms contains reams of valuable marketing data, but none of this data is very helpful if it exists in a silo. The best marketers rely on pieces of this data (from the various platforms) to successfully pull together and execute their marketing campaigns. But how can you pull together disparate data? This is where “marketing middleware,” one of the fastest-growing aspects of marketing operations, comes in. Middleware serves as the glue that connects all these different applications, greasing the wheels so they can work together to enable the back-and-forth sharing of data and, subsequently, strategy, insights, and execution. While marketing middleware has gotten a bad rap over the years, due to its (earned) reputation as being an archaic and complex system to set up and use, there are simply too many benefits that come from having your marketing data fully integrated to be daunted by the admittedly technical aspects of a marketing platforms integration. With middleware, you can drive more effective campaigns using sales team data, more efficiently distribute leads to your sales team, and create a hierarchy of systems to serve as a “single source of truth”, and more. There are certainly some back-end technical nuances and wiring for marketers to wrap their heads around, but don’t be deterred! There’s a great deal of legwork that marketers can undertake by laying the foundation for a successfuldata integration before looping in IT or an outsourced data integrations specialist. Follow these three steps to integrate your data and achieve a marketing operations peace of mind: 1. Figure Out Which of Your Platforms Should Be Integrated, and Why This is a natural place to start your data integration–figuring out what data you want to integrate in the first place. A common place to begin is between your marketing automation system and your customer database/CRM, to further align your sales and marketing data and processes. But consider whether it also make sense to integrate your customer support client with your marketing automation as well. How about your finance and e-commerce platforms too? It ultimately boils down to asking yourself one simple question: How will it benefit you, as a marketer, if this data and these platforms were synched and consistent? Does the answer to that question help you achieve your marketing or organization’s goals? To look at it from another point of view, ask yourself if the inconsistent data currently living across your multiple platforms is preventing you from working effectively. 2. Sort Out Your Field Mappings Field mappings are probably the most critical part of any data integration project. Different platforms collect data and information through different fields, some of which might not translate across disparate systems. For instance, your marketing automation might ask for “Name” while your CRM might ask for “First Name” and “Last Name” as two distinct fields. When synching this data, you need to make sure those fields with different names, but containing the same information, are mapped to each other. Go through your key fields to look for any inconsistencies (such as in the above example) and note them down for each platform. Additionally, determine a hierarchy of your systems to figure out which system should “own” certain fields in the case of an inconsistency. When data is overwritten, it should be done so to your specifications. Let’s say a customer named Robert Owen is entered into your CRM as “Bob,” but entered your marketing automation platform as “Robert,” and you have determined that your marketing automation is at the top of your hierarchy. In this case, all Bob Owen’s in this context would be overwritten as Robert Owen. 3. Understand and Plan for Risks One huge obstacle holding marketers back from diving whole-hog into a data integration project is the crippling fear that their data may get screwed up if they “mess with it.” This can be even more daunting if you decide that you want all your existing data to be synced, rather than having your data synced on a “go forward” basis, with just new data. This is a totally valid and justifiable concern, but there are ways to ensure that your data remains safe and sound. Whether you’re attempting such a technically challenging project on your own or reaching out to data integration specialists, make sure that you have a master record created before, during, and long after the initial sync. Most data integration platforms should create such a master record for you as a fail-safe anyways, but be sure to clarify this. Typically, your marketing automation system, customer database/CRM, or ERP should be your “System of Record”–the parent database to which all data questions should ultimately be referred to. This should be your single source of truth. Your various other platforms–be it sales, marketing, support, finance, etc.–will be your child records. Integrating your platforms and the valuable data contained within them is a daunting, but essential element of successful marketing operations. So lay the foundation by determining why your platforms should be integrated, how significant the volume of existing data to be integrated is, which fields should be mapped over and how, what the ensuing workflow will look like, and what the hierarchical structure will be following integration–and you’ll be well on your way to achieving a marketing operations peace of mind. Have any data integration nightmares? I’d love to hear about your experiences and how you overcame them in the comments below!

By: Heidi Bullock Posted: March 24, 2016 | Modern Marketing Earlier this week, the big marketing technology (MarTech) conference swept through San Francisco, giving marketers and technologists a sense of new and upcoming solutions, and what technologies are truly standing the test of time. Every year when this time rolls around, I personally really look forward to Scott Brinker’s updated Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic. And every year, as I look at the graphic and sift through the landscape, I go through a series of emotions (and this year was no exception, with the number of MarTech solutions now reaching 3,874): Excitement: Wow, this is a beautiful visualization of tech geek nirvana. I love it! Look at all of these new companies with interesting new offerings. And Scott has done a great job of categorizing the thousands of companies in a very elegant and organized way. Pride: MarTech is real. Marketing has come a long way and I’m so proud that this area of business is getting the investment and attention it deserves. Several years ago, this would have looked like a few green peas on a big white plate, but today, it’s a satisfying meal–complete with mints when you are done eating. Panic: Dear God, do I really need to know about all of these companies? Am I an incompetent marketer if I am not using all of the “latest and greatest”? How is my budget going to support another tool–and who on my team is going to run this thing? These concerns are real. It’s hard enough to come into the office every day and work on your day-to-day tasks, but more and more, marketers are challenged with being a technical landscape aficionado on top of it–and this is coming from someone who loves it! Calm, Cool and Collected: Okay, stay cool. I have got this and I need to chill out. It’s easy to get stuck in any one stage of the emotional journey, it’s critical to keep moving forward. While an entire book could be written on how to make sense of all of the MarTech solutions, let’s keep things simple for the purpose of this blog. Follow these three steps to navigate the ever-evolving MarTech landscape: 1. Build a Solid Foundation It’s critical to have a few core solutions that represent the foundation of your ‘house’. A good way to think about this is to understand what will be your source of truth or system of record for your key functions. For many companies, this is often your marketing automation systems, customer database/CRM and content management system (CMS) . This is an obvious point, but make sure you put energy and thought into this blueprint. The tools you put in place here are critical to getting set up correctly. For example, understand your data flow, rules, and data hygiene processes. Understand APIs and what is truly out-of-the box versus needing to bring in a team to complete your integration. It’s also helpful to connect with other companies similar to your own to see what they have done right and wrong–essentially, learn from their successes and mistakes. 2. Understand Where You Are and Where You’re Going You need to know what the current state of your business is and where you plan to go. The majority of businesses are trying to grow–so make sure you consider this as you evaluate new solutions. It’s critical to think about tools that will grow with you, so you don’t have to rip-and-replace every other year. Some solutions are excellent for a small businesses, but then reach real limitations quickly. Another important lens is understanding needs versus wants. What is mission-critical for your business? If customer marketing and referrals are important, you may need software to drive advocacy. Or, if this is in your future, build your stack knowing this could be an addition for next year. 3. Avoid a ‘Frankenstack’ Some of you might have seen what’s commonly referred to as a “Frankenstack”, a set of individual siloed tools that an organization tries to get to work together and ultimately results in a hot mess. It can happen to the best marketers, and it often happens because of rapid growth and a lack of planning or impulsive decisions (“Hey we can use it here!”). It is painful for IT, and it is painful for marketers. When this occurs, it is often more time consuming and expensive to fix. The key here is to have a plan, involve IT, and be honest about the resources you need to maintain and manage the solutions. This thoughtfulness will save a lot of grief in the future. The ever-evolving sea of MarTech solutions can be overwhelming, but with the right plan in place, you can understand how to evaluate new solutions and avoid being swept away by “shiny new objects”. Have you checked out the new Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic? What other tips do you have for evaluating these solutions for the best fit for your business?

During the development of our whitepaper “Designing a Marketing Organization for the Digital Age,” published by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services (HBR-AS), Eduardo Conrado, executive vice president, Strategy & Innovation Officer (and former chief marketing officer), Motorola Solutions, was interviewed. He spoke about how marketing and sales work together at Motorola Solutions to create meaningful customer experiences. Below is an excerpt from his interview. HBR-AS: What are the pressures you see falling on the marketing organization and how is it responding? Conrado: Marketing has to assume the role of engaging with customers and employees. At the same time, as you drive communications channels outside and inside of the company, they tend to be more digital in nature. So by default, marketing has a duality of the traditional communications engagement role along with a technology role. HBR-AS: So how is that affecting the structure of the marketing organization? Conrado: In some companies you see marketing and IT combined, as we did at Motorola Solutions. In other cases, you see marketing and IT working together. If there is a lack of leadership or knowledge-sharing between the CIO and CMO (in terms of CIOs being more customer-facing and CMOs being digitally savvy), and if you see the Chief Digital Officer role being created, it means the CMO or CIO is not stepping up to his/her role. HBR-AS: Can you tell me the story about how you assumed both the IT and marketing roles and how that came to pass? Conrado: When I was CMO, we had digital marketing teams, but the digital implementations ran through an IT development team. It made more sense if we had thoseteams tightly linked. So during conversations with the CIO, we decided to combine the teams into one, reporting into my organization. The strategy and the actual implementation go hand-in-hand. In order to make the IT department more customer-facing, it would need to go through marketing or sales. I already had a passion for and knowledge of the IT component, so I picked it up. HBR-AS: What was the customer experience before you made this combination and what is it like now? Conrado: We’re in the process of building it out. I will tell you that investments are being made based upon functional priorities. Before the teams were combined, we had websites for each of the customer transaction types. Now we have a more holistic view of the customer as the information flows across the organization. That allows us to break down what the customer is trying to accomplish by customer type. Then we can identify and repair any broken systems within the company to improve their experience. HBR-AS: Is it a single experience because it’s all online in one website? Conrado: What we’re building is a way to define what the customer is trying to accomplish and how to make it easier to do it digitally. Going back to your earlier question, the CMO role is evolving from being marketing communications to actually heading up technology-enabled customer interactions. The role of the CMO should morph, depending on the company. It could morph into impacting the way that technology gets deployed. It could morph into playing that role in terms of how the company shifts and defines user experience beyond just website design, reflecting a holistic view of design thinking. HBR-AS: More of the selling process is done online through content, which is more of a marketing role than a sales role. How is that changing things? Conrado: It really didn’t change that much. I think we got the teams to work a little bit closer together. As you bring in conversations that take place between sales, marketing, and IT around the customer, then those pieces have to work closer together by default. HBR-AS: So they’re just working closer together or how does it reflect that more of the customer journey is managed by marketing? Conrado: No, marketing is just one part of it. Sales also has a big role to play. It doesn’t change the relationship between marketing and sales in terms of what the teams do, rather it broadens the conversations that marketing and sales can have together. HBR-AS: There is a lot of discussion around the traditional marketing role of creativity versus one now which is much more focused on predictive analytics. How do you see that skillset changing going forward? Conrado: If you go back three decades, marketing was actually advertising, and creativity plays a big part in that. I still think there is a big creative element in terms of what marketing does to get the right message out. But now, with the complexity of the roles and the fact that you’re also adding technology to it, you’re adding data, and you’re adding insights based on that data, which is what analytics provides. So the role of the CMO itself has become much more complex, along with the skills and the types of teams they oversee. When you look at the marketing department, you might still have a brand team and an advertising team, but then you also have a digital team as well as an insights team that has analytics within it. In the future, CMOs are going to have to be comfortable with technology and with the use of data for insight. HBR-AS: So how is the marketing organization currently measured and how do you think that is going to change in the future? Conrado: I think that companies measure customer engagement based on revenue growth. It is part of the sales organization, but ultimately, what are the programs marketing is putting in place to support that? There are some programs that you can attribute direct revenue to, but there are a lot of them where that’s not the case. If the marketing and sales teams work together with common goals, they will produce revenue growth.

By: Elaine Ip Posted: March 23, 2016 | Content Marketing Anywhere you look, it’s likely that you’ll see an ad—whether it’s on your computer, on a mobile app, or on TV. In fact, digital ad spending alone is expected to pass $68 billion in the U.S. this year, according to eMarketer. But you can break through the clutter by providing valuable content that effectively attracts, reaches, and engages your audience—educating them rather than advertising to them. Technology leaders, including the likes of Google, Facebook, and Apple, are empowering publishers to reach even more of their audience, faster, with new product capabilities for content delivery. And who is better positioned to take advantage of these innovations than content marketers—the marketers who publish content in all forms? It seems like a not-too-distant past that content marketing started gaining traction among marketers as they began to recognize that batch-and-blast, pitchy messages weren’t the way to go. Instead, we started understanding the need to communicate without selling, to build relationships with our prospects and customers, and to personalize these messages based on each unique buyer. And we learned that all this could be done through content, by publishing pieces that provide practical tips, advice, and insight, rather than by promoting our brand or product. But what changed in recent years that has made content both a marketing and company initiative, with tech giants jumping on board? Here are a few reasons why content is continuing to gain momentum among publishers and the masses, and you should continue to invest in it as a marketer: People Are Consuming Content More Than Ever Before Buyers today are more informed, as they can easily access and compare product information and pricing, form opinions, and draw conclusions well before they choose to interact with your company. The majority of a buyer’s journey is self-directed before they interact with you and they’re doing this research everywhere, even on the go. In fact, according to Google, smartphones account for more than half of searches in 10 countries. And with all the technological innovations that have emerged, people can now consume and engage with your content wherever they are without sacrificing speed or the user experience. And tech-giants have gotten savvy to this, adding publishing capabilities aimed at capitalizing and capturing the traffic and attention that today’s content achieves on their platforms. For news outlets or content marketers, this shift doesn’t indicate a huge change and so the goal remains the same: keep your audience coming back for more by publishing relevant and personal information, messages, and offers—now, you just have more places to do it. There’s Data Behind It Content comes in all shapes and sizes: datasheets, whitepapers, videos, ebooks, infographics, and blogs, to name a few. And each asset serves as a different touchpoint for collecting data on who your buyers are and what they’re interested in. In fact, with the proliferation of distribution and publication channels, you may have more robust information than ever before. For example, Apple News provides its publishers with both channel-based data and article-based data for metrics like unique viewers, total views, average active time, shares, and likes (Disclaimer: Currently, this data is for usage in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia and is limited to 30 days). Ultimately, successful publishers want to not only get people to engage with the content on their platform, but understand how to replicate their success and iterate for continued improvement. And as a content marketer, this process is essential for optimizing your inbound marketing efforts to drive more traffic and conversions. Content Can Be Measured As the saying goes, data without insight is just a set of numbers.  Publishers can make data meaningful by using it to measure how effective each piece of content is at bringing in new customers, engaging with your audience, building relationships over time, and driving ROI. As new publishing platforms emerge, it will be interesting to see how effectively these platforms deliver metrics that offer a clear understanding of content performance to content marketers. Content marketers in particular are now, more than ever, able to demonstrate the ROI and overall business impact of their efforts and will be looking for it in each new place that they publish their content. For example, if your goal for a piece of content is to convert prospects into customers, you would create that content with the intention and ability to track mid and late-stage metrics that tie into pipeline, opportunity, and revenue contribution. Technology Advancements Are Paving the Way As a content marketer at Marketo, I admit that I am a little biased when it comes to preaching the value of content, but don’t just take my word for it. Take the word of technology giants Google, Facebook, and Apple, each of whom have rolled out new capabilities that enable publishers to provide content to their audiences faster than ever before. Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) allows publishers to create instant-loading, mobile optimized content on the web by using their open source framework AMP HTML. Facebook’s Instant Articles allows publishers to deliver content on their platform—at a speed they report to be as much as 10 times faster. And recently, Apple announced that it’s opening up Apple News Format to all publishers—major news organizations, magazines, blogs, and more–to deliver their content through the iOS News app (pending approval, of course). These recent changes empower content marketers to do what they do best, but more quickly and at scale. With major technology leaders optimizing their content delivery, I think it’s safe to say that leading companies recognize the value of not just content, but more importantly, the consumption of it. Consumers want content, and these innovations allow them to digest it faster than ever with fast-loading, mobile optimized articles. Sounds like a win-win situation for us all. Today, the question isn’t whether you’ve started content marketing in your organization; it’s how you’re improving your content marketing. With everything going your way and tech giants backing up your efforts, it’s time for you to step up your content and offer your buyers real value in more places. These recent innovations have given you an even louder voice, so use it for good—to engage and deliver value to your audience wherever they are. How have you shaped your content to deliver value to your buyers rather than pitching to them? I’d love to hear in the comments section below!

By: Chris Gillespie Posted: March 22, 2016 | Sales It’s an easy mistake to make, and most of us are guilty of it: we make decisions based off our emotions, which sometimes steer us in the wrong way. And as a sales rep, who could blame you? You’re juggling conflicting priorities that pull you in all sorts of different directions. Some days you’re focused on sharpening your product knowledge and other days you’re learning to listen better and uncover compelling events. Support teams want you to set better expectations, marketing wants you drive people to a conference, and your boss needs you to forecast more accurately. With all of these moving parts, your productivity is constantly rising and falling, and if you don’t pay attention to the health of your funnel, your income and job security will always be in flux. But with some driver-awareness, you can learn to steer things towards success. Sales Is Like Driving a Car The analogy I always like to draw is that sales is like driving a car. As you’re driving, you pay attention to the road, speedometer, and mirrors for helpful feedback that keeps you on track. In sales, you also have constant feedback from the people who ignore your emails, the pitches that backfire, and the deals you don’t win. The problem here is that we sometimes start ignoring this feedback because it can be uncomfortable. So instead, we stick to talking about our wins. But the consequences for ignoring this feedback in both selling and driving are the same: after a while, you’ll drive yourself off the road. The first step towards staying on course is learning to accept feedback and resisting the urge to defend yourself. It’s important not to see it as criticism because feedback is the only way you can get better. Once you’ve done this, the best place to start looking for feedback is within your sales pipeline, which in many ways is the quantitative accumulation of all of your sales feedback. Based on what’s not going well, you can steer yourself out of a ditch and onto the performance highway. So, check your mirrors for these three common pipeline problems and learn how to address them to get back on track: 1. Not Enough Leads Coming In While this is a top-of-the-funnel problem, the issue may not be with your marketing or sales process, but with your perspective. If you’re starting from scratch in a new territory, you’re in a good spot. The best thing to do here is identify what makes a “good target” from other successful reps and start going through the list of companies you have. Spend your time narrowing them down into a few manageable lists, then determine youroutreach strategy and get cracking. But if you have a module of set accounts that you’ve been at for a while, you may be suffering from a bias against familiar companies that you refer to as “dead territory”. Your deep knowledge on prospects in the territory might actually be holding you back. Approach these accounts with a fresh mindset, and make a point of going after the ones that are hard to get and challenging yourself to call everyone in that account or ask to be referred in. Flip things on their head and you’ll start seeing results. As motivational speaker, Jim Rohn said “If you truly want something, you’ll find a way. If not, you’ll find an excuse.” So find a way. If you feel that you have already reached out to every possible company, consider that whatever list you’re working with is like looking at your territory through a straw. You start to think that you’re seeing the whole world when it’s really just a fraction. I know this from vast experience and I’ve often found myself crying “I’ve called everyone in the state of New York!” before suddenly getting a fantastic inbound lead. Take a break and get some outside perspective. Tell your peers what you’re running into and get their feedback on new ideas. There are always more approaches, lists, data providers, and strategies. 2. Leads Aren’t Moving Forward Are your prospects getting excited or setting up next steps, but then nothing follows through? Perhaps you need to work on your delivery. Work on your pain discovery process and how you apply your product to solve a prospect’s specific problem. Without getting to the pain point plus a commitment, you’re going to just keep having conversations that go nowhere. So, don’t let your discovery calls end until you have discovered their pain. If there’s no pain, then there’s no commitment to move forward in the process and buy. What does pain sound like? It involves emotionally charged words like fear, worried, serious, terrible, embarrassing, awful, etc. You can discover it through repeated questioning and genuine curiosity, and when you hear those words, dive into them with more questions. Once you have identified a specific pain, demonstrate how your product solves it and secure a commitment to buy. Use a line like, “Great, so if we can help you improve [insert pain point here], is there any reason you wouldn’t be able to sign today?” and repeat back to them what you just heard. This invokes what Psychologist Robert Cialdini calls the “consistency principle” and drastically increases compliance. 3. Full Pipeline, but Nobody Is Ready to Buy Most people have a hard time telling anyone “no”. The natural reaction is to say “maybe” and then try to avoid you. You can fix this by directly telling people that you want them to feel comfortable telling you they’re not interested, and politely explain that you’ll end up wasting a lot of their time chasing them if they can’t. Once you have identified that your prospects are indeed interested and you understand their pain points, you need to figure out why they are not acting immediately. Ask questions to see if they’re seriously committed to solving things. When you do finally get to the bottom of things, their reason for not acting may be something like lack of authority, lack of budget, internal politics, need to make a hire, etc. In this case, you’ve finally reached a concrete core-objection that you can work with them to build a mutual close plan. Feedback is tough, and no one ever said it would be easy to hear. But it’s only through admitting that we’re fallible and listening to our critics that we can identify our blind spots and course correct. Like a driver on the road, if you aren’t constantly checking your mirrors and listening for the honks of other drivers, you’re putting yourself in peril. And the same goes in sales—you need to be able to look at your funnel, see what’s blocking you from merging onto the performance highway, and realize that it might be something that you’re doing. So, it’s time to course correct!

MARKETO IN THE NEWS Marketo hires Adobe/Salesforce vet to lead business development Seeking Alpha Robin Ritenour, formerly Adobe's VP of partner strategy and alliances and Salesforce's VP of strategic alliances and go-to-market, has been named Marketo's (MKTO +0.9%) SVP of business development. Additional Pick-Up: MarTech Advisor ]ress release: Robin Ritenour Joins Marketo as Senior Vice President of Business Development Mass Marketing Doesn’t Work Anymore: Marketo CEO B&T (Australia) Phil is quoted in this piece on engagement marketing from his recent Australia trip. Biz Break: Adobe shines and Zuckerberg jogs in the smog Mercury News Smith will be on stage with Marketo CEO Phil Fernandez during the conference’s May 10 kickoff at the MGM Grand Las Vegas Hotel and Casino. We assume Smith knows at least something about what San Mateo-based Marketo does. At the very least, maybe the MGM is comping him a breakfast buffet and some blackjack chips? [if !supportLists]·       [endif]Press Release: Marketo Announces Additional Keynote Speaker for 2016 Marketing Nation® Summit Act-On vs. Hubspot vs. Marketo: 3 top marketing automation tools compared CIO This piece aggregated reviews from IT Central Station. Interestingly enough, the quotes pulled for Marketo are very brief and from an SMB user (1-100 employees). Notably, in the “Room for Improvement” section, this user calls out the need for easier creation/modification of graphic-driven templates. Template improvements are already included in our product roadmap. And no Eloqua. Improve Your Email Marketing With These 5 Tips from Marketo CMS Wire In an era of ad-blockers and spam filters, marketers need relevant, innovative email marketing strategies and tactics to keep subscribers informed and engaged with your brand. That was the key message Marketo's Mike Madden shared in a recent CMSWire webinar, 5 Tips to Master Email Marketing. Sixty Seconds With Greg Taylor (Attached) AdNews (Australia) Greg Taylor’s profile is in the latest issue of AdNews. Overcoming the Barriers to Automation (Attached) Marketing Week (UK) Marketing Week, the UK’s leading marketing publication, interviewed several well-known brands for this piece on ‘overcoming the barriers to marketing automation’ including one of Marketo’s customers, Nokia. Its head of marcomms and campaign packing, Bareld Meijering said that ‘working with Marketo, the brand takes note of customer interactions and research before any contact from the sales function so it can target buyers and key stakeholders in the decision making process at the most appropriate time.’ Marketo is the "keeper" of new leads (Translated) Marconomy (Germany) Marconomy, the most influential B2B-Marketing publication in Germany, picked up our Citrix release. The readers of Marconomy are company leaders, marketing and communication experts as well as scientists coming both from Marketing as well as Sales departments. Mobile Marketing LEAD Digital (Germany) Conor Shaw is quoted in the attached piece on mobile marketing. LEAD digital is an online (and print) magazine for digital professionals and online marketing professionals. It provides information on the digital industry and covers topics such as mobile, social media, SEM/SEO, online marketing and e-commerce. From "A" as automated to "P" as personalized: Six Benefits of Marketing Automation Swiss CRM A byline article from Conor Shaw was published in Swiss CRM, which is aimed at marketing executives as well as IT decision makers, dealing with all topics related to Marketing – especially Customer Relationship Management and Marketing Automation. Drum Roll, Please...Akamai, Cisco, Leidos, Lloyds Banking Group, Marketo, PwC, Spectrum Health, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Virgin Media Recognized as 2016 Jive Award Winners Press Release Jive customers were honored at JiveWorld16 for best-in-class deployments of Jive WorkHub solutions that drive competitive advantage and build sustainable cultures. Marketo won the category of “Transforming Customer Engagement for Marketing.” How a DMP can Transform Your Customer-Centric Marketing Customer Think Marketo estimates that up to 98% of all internet traffic is anonymous. Startup Usermind Comes Out Of Stealth With $14.5 Million And Ambitious Plan For 'BizOps' Software Forbes Marketo was mentioned in articles about BizOps startup Usermind. Usermind wants to do for business operations what Marketo did for marketing and Salesforce did for sales. [if !supportLists]·       [endif]VentureBeat: Stealth startup Usermind fetches $14.5 million to usher in the BizOps revolution CUSTOMERS & PARTNERS IN THE NEWS Google Creates Analytics 360, Introduces DMP For A Multiscreen World MediaPost Google's mission to increase the accuracy of the search and display advertisements served to consumers on desktop, mobile and other Internet-connected devices led the company to build out a suite of applications that puts it on par with those offered by Adobe, IBM, Oracle, Salesforce, and SAP. This is being described as competition for marketing clouds. Why Facebook prefers native over 'valueless' banner ads Marketing Dive Facebook said native and video ads offer more value, and has a plan to reduce waste. PR Newswire Named Finalist for Marketing Team of the Year, Enterprise in 2016 Marketo Revvie Awards Press Release PR Newswire is proud to announce that they have been named a finalist for Marketing Team of the Year, Enterprise in the 2016 Marketo Revvie Awards. The Marketo Revvie Awards celebrate those who have significantly impacted company revenue and built engaging, long-lasting relationships with customers by leveraging Marketo marketing automation software. Building Blocks: Brian Hansford, Director Client Services and Marketing Technology Practice at Heinz Marketing Talks Marketing Tech MarTech Advisor Marketo customer and partner speaks about Heinz Marketing’s marketing journey. Take these Quick Checks Before You Invest in New Marketing Technologies MarTech Advisor Digital marketing nerd Justin Dunham – Urban Airship – lists down key questions every marketing unit needs to ask before buying software in terms of ROI, resource allocation, and usefulness. Interview with Yaron Zakai-Or, Founder and CEO - SalesPredict MarTech Advisor Partner SalesPredict says that predictive analytics is no longer the domain of just data scientists and business analysts. Vibes Included as a Vendor in Three Mobile Categories Press Release A new report from Forrester Research, Inc. released today includes Vibes, one of our mobile marketing partners, as a vendor in three mobile marketing technology categories: Mobile Engagement Automation, Mobile Messaging and Messaging Aggregators. A new metric for CMOs: The Magic Growth Number VentureBeat The CEO of Captora posits that to gauge the efficiency of a company’s go-to-market model, CMOs are increasingly using a metric called the ‘Magic Number.’ New Cloudwords OneReview Capabilities Further Accelerate Go-To-Market Timelines for Marketing to Global Audiences Press Release Partner Cloudwords new capabilities deliver translation workflow enhancements for improved speed and quality of multilingual content, further modernizing the localization process. Lattice Engines Launches Lead Enrichment MediaPost Predictive marketing company and partner Lattice Engines announced the launch of Lead Enrichment on Wednesday, a new tool that allows marketers to incorporate predictive lead scores into their marketing automation platform or CRM system. Psst! When It Comes To Multi-Channel Marketing, Mobile Makes Everything And Everyone Smarter Adotas An Adotas Q&A with Julie Ginches, CMO, Kahuna, explores the power of mobile to direct multi-channel marketing efforts. INDUSTRY NEWS MTA Spendscape 2016: The Hottest Marketing Software Categories for Marketers in 2016 MarTech Advisor We asked over 300 marketing leaders mainly representing small and medium businesses, to prioritize the most important marketing categories for making technology investments in 2016. The analysis of the marketing spend survey reveals the vendors and technologies where marketers wish to spend more in 2016. These 8 Brands and 3 Tech Topics Dominated the Social Buzz at SXSW Adweek Snapchat, Esurance and VR blew up. 76% of marketers expect to increase digital spending this year: Study Marketing Dive Research from Strata of U.S. agency professionals found 76% expect to increase digital spending this year. Separate research from RSW/US found 91% of agency executives plan on spending more on digital channels over last year and 79.6% of senior expect the same. Marketing, HR leaders need to collaborate, study says Marketing Dive Chief marketing officers and chief human resource officers need to collaborate more often, according to a new paper by experts at Rice University and Kent State University. App install spend up 150 percent, yet costs down, push-enabled users 2X more engaged [reports] Marketing Land Three-fourths of app users will be gone by the third month, says data from Localytics. This Software Could Persuade More People to Open Your Marketing Emails Fortune Persado’s software uses machine learning—and a huge database of campaign performance information about millions of messages—to identify language that is most likely to strike a chord with specific demographic groups. Do marketers now have more IT purchasing power than IT managers? Information Age Research claims two-thirds of marketing managers now call the shots ahead of IT managers when it comes to purchasing new marketing software. Succeeding In The Healthcare Industry As A Marketer Forbes Five years ago, you wouldn’t have seen a healthcare Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) that came from another industry. Today, with reimbursements decreasing and risk shifting, hospitals and health systems have to act like other businesses (see the new model of healthcare marketing): engaging their consumers and prospects, communicating with them, and having relationships with them. They also have to generate demand for their profitable and high-value services. Because this is new territory, the healthcare industry has begun bringing CMOs (and other marketing leaders) in from outside the industry. Why context is king when delivering the marketing message CMO Australia oOh! Media's CMO, Michaela Chan, reports back from SXSW on the key themes influencing modern marketing strategy. Marketers debate what word of mouth marketing means in the digital age CMO (Australia) Experts discuss new influencer marketing strategies that brands are implementing to boost customer engagement. What Instagram's New Algorithm Could Mean for Agencies and Brands Adweek Marketers weigh in on the changes. CMOs Fail to Go Beyond Brand Awareness on LinkedIn & Prove a Clear Social Media ROI Customer Think Recent studies show 87% of B2B sales and marketing leaders are using LinkedIn and other social media platforms but less than 1 in 5 can clearly prove and demonstrate social media ROI. I believe it’s because the attention and efforts are on the top of the funnel instead of thinking about the complete buyer’s journey. Ads on news sites gobble up as much as 79% of users' mobile data Business Insider One of the reasons consumers download mobile ad blockers is the impact ads have on their data plans. Shine, the company that provides that ad blocking technology, claims mobile ads use 10-50% of user's data plans. Forrester Incorporates Fresh Executive Program for Chief Marketing Officers MarTech Advisor Forrester, a leading independent market research company that help clients understand the potential and existing impact of technologies, has launched a new executive program for CMOs. The program expands on an already existing curriculum for CIOs. The aim is to help CMOs in the implementation of operational changes that are focused on digital transformation and customer experience in the present dynamic technology space. B2B Marketing Automation Budgets Grow Alongside Integration and Strategic Challenges KoMarketing Marketing automation systems’ revenue totaled $1.8 billion in 2015, up 50 percent from 2014, according to Raab Associates’ research. Additionally, 65 percent of marketers are increasing their marketing automation budgets for 2016. ARF: Brands Should Be Spending $31 Billion More This Year Than They Are Advertising Age Biggest study in quarter century finds brands need to diversify media. Aussie marketers target automation Warc Marketers in Australia are stepping up their investment in marketing automation software despite half of them struggling to fully understand what it actually entails, according to a new survey. CMO Vs. CIO – Is There Room For Both In The Boardroom? Tech Week Europe Avanade’s Julian Tomison discusses how and why CIOs and CMOs should be working together to move towards the ‘Digital Workplace.' Tumblr looks to repair ad biz with blogless ads, sales team’s return Marketing Land Yahoo has bungled its Tumblr deal, per agency execs, but now Tumblr is tweaking its ad sales strategy to repair its business. Why March Madness is such a massive marketing event: 11.3M average viewers Marketing Dive March Madness has become a major marketing opportunity. According to Koeppel Direct data, last year 126 brands spent $1.163 billion on 30-second TV spots and average viewership for games was 11.3 million. For cross-channel marketing purposes, 2015 also set an all-time record of live video streams at 80.7 million. Agency And Ad Tech Expertise Create A New Breed Of Marketing Talent AdExchanger A handful of ad tech employees who started out at agencies are now returning to senior-level agency roles. And they’re bringing a particularly valuable blend of skills with them. Report: Spending on corporate websites exceeds TV, mobile growing fastest Marketing Land Roughly 49 percent of the more than $470 billion in annual marketing or ad spending in the US is now going to digital channels.

By: Kristen Kaighn Posted: March 21, 2016 | Lifecycle Marketing I have a confession. I have placed 118 Amazon Prime orders in the last 6 months. Now, judging by the amount of cardboard in my garage alone, I should have known I might have a “problem.” Everything I’ve purchased were things that I could easily buy across the street, from protein shakes to batteries, cheddar bunnies to hangers, and, of course, all the things I’ll need for my new baby that’s coming in a few weeks. But my “problem” is really the product of Amazon’s secret sauce and why they’ve been able to retain me (an admittedly extremely fickle shopper) as a loyal customer. What goes into this “secret sauce” of customer retention? Is there a recipe for taking a business model and product from good, to one that customers can’t live without? As marketers, we know that we have to keep delivering value in the form of content, entertainment, education, and services well after the initial transaction in order to keep customers engaged and our brand top-of-mind. But customer retention goes past simply staying top-of-mind. It’s about understanding your customers deeply and ensuring that no matter where they are in their purchase cycle, you’ve got their back. This is what great companies have in common: a customer culture where everyone feels ownership of the customer experience—essentially living by the quote “customer service is not a department, it’s everyone’s job.” Today’s buyers are more likely to switch (brands, vendors, providers) than ever before, regardless of whether they’re a millennial or boomer. However, taking these steps towards building a customer culture in your company can make a big impact on your customer retention and grow your loyalty base: Step 1: Develop a Process Do you have a process for dealing with the positive and negative responses you receive from customers? Step one to building a customer-centric culture is to get your house in order because if it’s messy, everyone on the Twitterverse will hear about it. Okay, so maybe it’s not necessarily Twitter, but today’s customers are not shy about sharingboth their positive and negative experiences with a brand. Your plan will be unique to your business, your product or service, and your support structure, but it’s critical that everyone in your organization fundamentally understands your policy and process for handling customer feedback. As you develop your customer response plan, keep these things in mind: Take the time to listen to your audience. Address their issue with respect and timeliness, but appropriate humor also goes a long way (you are talking to a person after all). Don’t shy away from responding where they are, especially in the social arena. Step 2: Frame Every Interaction as an Opportunity Seize every interaction with your customers as an opportunity to make them happy. The top three reasons why customers switch brands are cheaper pricing, rude staff, and too many mistakes. This means that every touchpoint with your customer is important, especially when you consider the impact that retaining that customer can have on your business. The Pareto Principle states that 80% of revenue comes from 20% of your customers.With this in mind, here are three things to remember as you work to create excellent customer interactions: Offer promotions and discounts for your most loyal customers to keep happy customers, well, happy. Build your customer culture and teams with people who share the same values. Fanatical care for the customer can be built into your culture, so think about the different ways you can build it into yours. In some cases, this means that everyone spends time working customer support as part of their training, while in others, customers are the heart of every story the brand tells. Understanding your customers before they tell you something went wrong is critical. Having a centralized view of customers and coordinating their experiences allows you to avoid spamming them and lets you speak to them personally, with relevant messages. Step 3: Nail Your Customer Service As the face of your company, your customer-facing teams are the front line in sometimes tense situations. Their response can make or break you in the eyes of your customer.Arming your service team with the right tools to resolve issues can make a huge impact on your customer retention: Create a channel for service teams to relay customer feedback. Obviously, poor product design or experience will create some unhappy customers, but having a feedback loop from your customer teams to the appropriate contact internally will allow you to actively address and log these issues. Develop an arsenal of resolution tactics. A representative that can’t solve a problem can just make a bad situation worse, so make sure that your service teams have a robust arsenal of resolution tactics. Be prompt. No one likes hold music, so don’t torture your customers with lengthy wait times. Your customers are people and most people don’t love wasting their time on hold, so make their service experience as seamless as possible. Want to learn more about how to bottle your own secret customer retention sauce? Check out our slide deck,Customers Are Your Prospects, Too to discover how retention, loyalty, and advocacy drive revenue and should be every marketer’s biggest focus.

By: Linda Russheim  (Founder and Director of HT Financial Marketing and Monica Ralli (CMO of The Hay Group) In professional services, creating and sustaining long-term relationships with clients is ultimately a business’ most critical challenge. With multiple mediums and devices competing for your audience’s attention daily, the new era of marketing is all about an integrated conversation with a client. Organizations must truly understand their audience, which means allowing clients the opportunity to engage and interact with a company. In this way, their preferred behavior can surface and a deeper understanding is gained by both client (in relation to the offerings) and the business (in relation to client behavior). This integrated conversation provides the business with a line of sight from prospect to profit. This is valuable in itself, but becomes even more powerful as a way for marketing departments to demonstrate their impact beyond lead generation to sales, revenue growth and ROI. From an internal perspective, it is imperative that the marketing, sales, IT, and finance departments are fully aligned. Marketing automation is the catalyst for this, allowing for better understanding of prospect and client lifecycles. With this understanding, businesses can develop the appropriate ‘trigger’ for when action should be taken and by whom. Marketing can nurture customers through the sales funnel more efficiently and in a personalized manner, leading to increased lead generation – thus providing sales with Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs). In turn, sales can then focus their time on their best prospects to close deals, resulting in increased conversion and a significantly reduced cost of sales. From a financial point of view, this is an attractive proposition. Recently, one of our clients – a global professional services company that invested in marketing automation as part of their digital transformation – moved to an inbound marketing model. The company overall had to be persuaded that what was happening in marketing would have a deeper impact on its overall business. In order to prove this, the marketing department was going to be held to a number of key performance indicators (KPIs) to justify the investment in marketing technology and automation. In this model, targeted, compelling content was created and shared with clients and prospects to foster an ongoing conversation. This ongoing conversation provided an opportunity for clients to engage in multiple ways, leading to a greater exchange of client information that provided the company with a better understanding of who they were trying to reach. Content creation and distribution are critical differentiators in professional services and help lead to long-term client relationships. The company underwent both a mindset shift and operational shift in marketing in order to learn how to develop campaigns that would resonate with specific audiences. In this way, they were able to create integrated conversations – a focus and approach that previously was not in place. Over a period of time it became clear that lead generation could offer the company some clear benefits: A more relevant and focused conversation around specific campaigns that led to consistent brand recognition in high-growth audiences. A clear view of the client behavior through all stages of engagement and value to the company from prospect through to MQL, sale, revenue, and ultimately profitability. Reduced cost-of-sales by engaging the salesforce on MQLs that had a greater probability of converting to sales. This more valuable conversation with clients and subsequent measurable results also elevated the marketing discussion in the boardroom gaining support from both the finance and IT functions. Discussions were centered around the client in a way that allowed relevant behavior to correlate directly to numbers. This process wasn’t seamless. Data clean up shouldn’t be underestimated nor should be explaining the concept of a ‘digital heartbeat’ to those outside marketing! There were challenges around moving to a data-driven client base, focusing on conversations with clients who had and were engaging with the company. And surprisingly the change in mindset for marketing to align around a singular engagement strategy and not multiple activities required an extensive re-education process. Although the company is still on the journey to complete the full marketing automation integration, its first pilot campaigns are showing very promising results. Specifically, there are improvements around client engagement and positive internal alignment between the marketing department and sales and finance. For the first time, all are aligned around the same objective. Many professional services firms and financial companies, have yet to appreciate that prospects and clients need time to engage and seek an integrated dialogue with the company. If tracked, their journey from prospect to loyal repeat-business client can yield multiple opportunities for the company in providing an exceptional client experience as well as strengthening the company internally with a common focus across a single issue – clients.

By: Brit Tammeorg Posted: March 18, 2016 | Mobile Marketing Businesses large or small can benefit immensely from mobile marketing. SMS marketing, otherwise known as text message marketing, is one of the most personal ways to communicate with your buyers. After all, what other marketing tool do you know of that allows retailers and business owners to have virtually immediate contact with their customers? More than 90% of text messages are read within 3 minutes, according to a study by MobileSquared. And while email inboxes can get clogged with spam and unwanted promotions, customers are very careful about opting in to text message updates, which means that your message will reach the right person who is actually interested in your offerings. But simply investing in an SMS marketing program isn’t all it takes to reap the rewards. SMS marketing, like any other campaign, requires time, attention, and the occasional tweaking for your business, budget, and customers.Whether you’re already running an SMS campaign or you’re looking to start one, here are four tips to get the most out of SMS marketing for your business: 1. Comply with the Laws Text message marketing is a privilege for businesses, not a right. Each country adheres to a specific set of laws, so if your business’ SMS campaign has a global reach, make sure you understand the laws in each country. In the U.S., aside from the basic law that you must have the consent (opt-in) of your recipients to send them promotional texts, there are a few other laws that you should be aware of: Opting in can’t be a condition of purchasing. In other words, you can’t force anyone to consent to receiving SMS messages from you by barring them from buying unless they agree to opt-in. You need to include a “Help” function if you anticipate that your recipients may need additional information about your message. That way, they can ask technical questions about texting and get useful answers. You need to include an opt-out or “STOP” function that’s clear and easy for your recipients to do, and that works. Don’t tell them they can opt out by sending “STOP” to 9876 and then keep sending them messages after they’ve followed your instructions to opt-out. Don’t end up like Jiffy Lube with a $47M lawsuit settlement for sending unsolicited texts to customers or Papa John’s whopping $250M suit for the same reason. Not to mention Life Time Fitness’ recent settlement $15M for sending unsolicited marketing text messages.Bottom line: Make sure you’re compliant. Companies of all sizes get sued for the misuse of SMS marketing all the time. 2. Build Your Subscriber List So how do you encourage your prospects and customers to opt-in to receiving your SMS messages and comply with the law? There are several ways to build your SMS subscriber list by making the opt-in function more visible throughout your marketing channels.Take a look at some of the channels below to determine where you can add SMS opt-in information: Facebook: Add a “Mobile Number” field to any Facebook page sign-up and an “Opt-in” button for them to sign on to your SMS campaign. Make sure you validate the number before you add this person to your campaign. If they entered the wrong number, you could potentially be sending text messages to someone who didn’t authorize them. Website: Include SMS opt-in instructions on your website. Email: Make SMS opt-in visible on your newsletter. Direct Mail: All snail mail should have instructions for SMS opt-in printed on it. Mobile: Send an opt-in text, such as “Text YES to receive discounts and promotions from XYZ company.” Additionally, all of your customer-facing employees should be trained to ask for a customer’s permission for opt-in. This means that they need to be able to explain the benefits and details of your SMS campaign (coupons, discounts, appointment reminders, events, etc.). 3. Write Great Messages Text messages take a different form than emails and other channels of communication, so be mindful of how your message will be viewed. Your subscriber will see your message on a screen smaller than a computer, so keep your messages short and straightforward. But cutting down on the quantity of content doesn’t mean you need to sacrifice quality as well.Remember, your main objective is to give your subscribers information that they can understand quickly and easily. You can try to be clever or humorous as long as your customers are get it. The key is to follow the voice of your brand and be personal. Address your subscribers by their name and understand their behaviors (interactions with your brand, purchase history, downloads, etc.) and what stage they are in their unique customer journey. Then, use this information to send relevant text messages that hit the target. For example, if you’re a massage clinic sending a message to a new customer, text him with “Hi Kevin, thanks for coming in today. Enjoy %15 off your next sports massage with discount code: 15OFF” to keep him coming back.However you choose to shape your messaging, be sure to avoid these SMS sins: Don’t spam. Don’t send several texts a day to your subscribers. Depending on your business, an SMS campaign of 4-12 total messages per month should be sufficient. Don’t send off-target offers. Offer your subscribers something of value. If you constantly send them texts about products or services that aren’t relevant to them, you may lose them as an SMS subscriber or even as a customer. Don’t wake them up. Ideal texting time is between 9am and 8pm. Anything sent before or after that treads the line of being intrusive. 4. Measure Your Results Like your other marketing channels, you’ll need to understand how to measure your SMS marketing results to track the success of each campaign and learn how to optimize them.Track the following metrics and repeat periodically to continue to enhance your campaign: Calculate your churn rate. Take the number of your people who unsubscribed from your SMS campaign and divide it by the total number of customers who initially opted in. This will reveal how quickly your subscribers are leaving your campaign. Determine your redemption rate. Take the number of your subscribers who responded to call-of-action and divide it by number of total subscribers in your program. This indicates how successful your campaign was at generating responses. Calculate the cost. Take the cost of each SMS message and divide it by the redemption rate (calculated above). Based on how much you invested, did it perform well? SMS is quick and effective way to reach your audience wherever they are. By following the tips above, you can get your SMS marketing campaign off on the right foot. Understand the laws, build your subscriber list, craft great messages, and measure and analyze your results. Have you already started on your SMS marketing journey? I’d love to hear your tips and tricks in the comments section below! For more on SMS and mobile marketing, check out The Definitive Guide to Mobile Marketing.

By: Phillip Chen Posted: March 17, 2016 | Modern Marketing For marketers at growing companies who are ready to make the leap from a small marketing group to a larger-scale function, making their programs larger and more effective is almost always on their minds. But how do you grow with your programs so that you don’t get left in the dust? I started at Marketo when our marketing team was relatively small, and since then we have more than doubled. Throughout this time I have observed two types of marketers—the ones that have been able to grow with the company and the ones that weren’t able to punch above their original weight class. So how do you make sure that you’re growing with your company? Here are four ways to take yourself, and your marketing, to the next level: 1. Start Digging for Insights If you have no idea where to begin, start by looking at which of your programs are performing well and which could use some improvement. Indicators of program performance can include things like subjective opinion, pipeline attribution, or even something as basic as abnormal response rates. When you dig into this, you’ll find is that your original question will cascade into a series of additional questions such as “Is this an anomaly?” or “How can this be replicated?”. Ultimately, it’s the insights that stem from your curiosity that will lead you to a new idea to boost your programs. At Marketo, to gain insight into how we could grow our virtual event from 9,000 attendees to over 20,000 attendees, we put together a focus group of people with varying degrees of knowledge about what a virtual event was. Then, we asked them a series of questions, drilling into their answers looking for more insights. What we found were new ways of promoting the event, messaging around it, and other things our current event lacked. For example, we found that virtual attendees appreciate subtitles as not everyone can rely solely on audio. Another insight we found was that there was a misconception that a virtual event was a webinar, and that people didn’t realize it was very interactive and that they could interact with sponsors, network, listen to different sessions, download content, and also win prizes. Aside from focus groups, other ways you can uncover insights for your company include surveys, internal interviews, customer interviews, and of course reports. 2. Coordinate with Other Teams The difference between a small program and a larger program often comes down to cross-functional coordination. If you are effectively able to leverage other teams, you’ll have a greater impact with what you can do. The reason our field events at Marketo have grown so vigorously is because we have a buy-in process with sales and a coordinated effort of different roles and responsibilities to penetrate any given region. We start by showing our sales reps all the options available to them in terms of campaigns, events, and reports. Then, we have them request these options through a form or meeting. Doing this enables us to understand what our reps needs, which we can then translate into a plan. Our plans are reviewed by sales, so they can provide their feedback on whether or not it supports their objectives. As you can see, our program would be stifled if only handled by one group and not as a collaborative effort. Cross-functional coordination doesn’t apply to just sales and marketing alignment for B2B marketers, but extends to other departments as well as applies across marketing. Consider working closely with customer success, support, and other teams in your organization. 3. Plan Your Program Backwards Dream big, and then figure out what it takes to get there. This might seem intuitive, but in reality this is probably done poorly most of the time because of the considerable amount of effort it takes. Say for example that you want 1,000 people to register for your event. What do you have to do to get there? It will take a lot of brainstorming, and although you may not reach your goal initially, over time you will learn more effective ways to achieve the big dreams that you have. Remember that this is an iterative process. The first time you do this, your guesstimates or forecasts will probably be off. For example, you may think that sending one email can drive 100 people to a webinar, but it only really drove 10. While your assumption was off, the next time you go through this process, you will be able to better understand your investments and how to reach the numbers you are trying to achieve. 4. Obtain the Appropriate Resources I hate to tell you, but the honest truth is, if you want something to grow and scale, it will require resources in the form of time and money. What I will say though is that when there’s a will there’s a way. If you’ve done a good job of planning, you’ll be sharp and ready to handle any objections when talking to stakeholders—proving to them that what you want will help them achieve their goals. It’s unbelievable the number of times I’ve gotten my program invested internally over others, purely because I’ve put together a well-thought out plan of how the investment will be used and why it’s the right allocation of budget. At the end of the day, obtaining the appropriate resources is about creating a convincing argument as to why your program deserves more investment than another. To help you create a convincing argument, measure as many aspects of your program as possible to see where there may be outlier results that you can leverage to get your project funded. Things to measure may include pipeline, new logos, customer acquisition cost, new names, attendance rate, or number of marketing qualified leads to name a few. Growing with your marketing can be painful. It requires adaptability, a big dream, but also the willingness to learn and sweat to create something larger than yourself. Ask questions and get curious, bring in other teams to do something larger than just one function, plan a way to get what you want, and ask for the appropriate resources to get there with the right metrics to back it up.

By: Jignesh Shahfrom Grazitti Posted: March 14, 2016 | Lifecycle Marketing Word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most powerful channels for bringing new customers to your business. In fact, according to Edelman Trust Barometer, 84% of B2B businesses initiate the buying process with a referral. And data from Marketo Institute shows that the referral is the best acquisition channel for conversion rates at almost 4x the average. So, it should come as no surprise that many B2B marketers are following in the footsteps of companies like Uber who have successfully grown their businesses using referral programs. While companies from any industry can harness the power of word-of-mouth marketing, these types of programs pose unique challenges for B2B businesses. Due to the complex sales processes and expensive nature of some B2B products, you need to put time and careful consideration into developing your referral program’s strategy, structure and internal processes. Below are seven questions that you should ask yourself, your marketing team, and key players on your sales team as you develop a B2B referral program in order to anticipate issues and avoid pitfalls: 1. Is your product referral worthy? Customers will only refer your product if they have had an extremely positive experience with both your product and your company. Referral marketing is best suited for products with strong customer benefits and successful support. Before you consider developing a formal referral program, you need to assess the customer satisfaction levels for your product. Are your customers enthusiastic about your product enough to recommend it to others? To determine this, you may want to conduct a Net Promoter Score (NPS) study. NPS measures your customers’ willingness to recommend your product to other buyers. If a NPS study is not feasible, assess your customer retention and subscription renewal rates. 2. Which customers should you target? The most effective way to get your referral program off the ground is by targeting your best customers. Here are there things to look for when identifying these key participants: Payment: Start with targeting customers who are willing to pay for the product typically believe in its value. Avoid targeting customers that have just started on free or trial plans as they may not have experienced the full product benefits. For these customers, you need to first focus on making them successful before asking for referrals from them. Activity: Target customers who actively use your product as they can best communicate its value to others. Achieved ROI: Customers who have used your product to achieve measurable results can illustrate the product’s value better than those who have just started using it. 3. How will you promote the program? Now that you have defined your referral program’s target audience, you need to decide how you will ask them to join. For the most part, it’s better to start with a small, targeted push by sending invitations to those who are most likely to become referrers. You can do this through a targeted email campaign or by asking sales to send personal invitations.Once your program starts to take off, you can then begin to promote referrals more extensively through your website, blogs, newsletters, social media, and direct mail. You can also extend the referral program to your partners if you have an active channel program. 4. How will you qualify referred leads? Qualifying referred leads is a more complicated process for B2B companies. You need to confirm that your sales team hasn’t already identified the referral as a prospect. Depending on your sales process, this can be automated partially or completely using a marketing automation system and CRM.You also need to verify that the referred business has the budget, authority, and timeline to make a purchase. You can ask for this information upfront as part of lead capture process or your sales team may prefer to ascertain this information by speaking directly to the referred lead. This is where sales and marketing alignment is vital to define and agree upon how you will qualify and accept referred leads. 5. How will you hand-off referred leads to sales? One of the biggest pitfalls businesses encounter with B2B referral programs is that qualified, purchase-ready referred leads may get lost in the process. Not only is this a lost sales opportunity, but it may discourage customers from making referrals in the future. If you want your program to be successful, it’s essential that you work with sales to establish a system for tagging referred leads and directing their information to the right person who will follow up promptly.You may want to create separate CRM views or marketing alerts to make sure that the sales team follows up on referred leads quickly. Consider creating a written service-level agreement (SLA) with sales to establish how and when sales representatives will follow up with leads. 6. How will you motivate customers to make referrals? Even if customers love your product, they’ll still need a little motivation to introduce your brand to others. This is especially true given the cost of most B2B products and services. As a result, many B2B referral programs use rewards to motivate and thank the referrers.Here are some factors to consider when choosing an incentive structure: Reward Type: What type of reward will resonate best with your customers? Product discounts, free training, conference passes, and gift cards with tangible value are a few options. Choose the appropriate reward type (or types, if you are going to let customers choose) based on your customer demographics. Reward Size: How big does the reward have to be to matter to your customers? In general, senior-level buyers require larger reward sizes. What will your budget permit? Mile-Post: Will you provide rewards only when the lead makes a purchase? Given a typical B2B sales cycle, this can sometimes take weeks or months, so consider whether it make sense to provide a smaller reward as soon as the lead is qualified. Single or Double-Sided: Will you reward only the referrer? Or is there something you offer the lead as well so that they too benefit from coming in as a referral? 7. How will you automate your referral program? With all of the moving parts involved in a B2B referral program, it will save you time, money, and resources if you find ways to automate some of the tracking and administrating aspects of your program.Consider the following questions in order to help define how your marketing automation platform and CRM can support your referral program: How will you capture referred leads and referrers? Can you automatically qualify leads before handing them off to sales? How will you know when a purchase has been completed so that you can thank the referrer? Can you automate reward delivery? Make Your Referral Program a Pillar of Business Growth Word-of-mouth marketing is a worthy investment for any company with useful products and a significant customer base. Even though B2B referral programs can pose unique challenges, your business can build a successful program by identifying and anticipating these challenges from the start. Work with your sales team to identify your best customers and develop a referral lead-to-revenue process. Then, map out the incentive structure, the promotion strategy, and any automation needs. Now that you know what questions to ask yourself when developing the program, you can be on your way to making your referral program a marketing pillar of growth. If you have run a referral program before, do you have any considerations or tips to add? Please share them in the comments section below. This blog was co-authored by Rachit Puri at Grazitti.