Marketing Insights

Many of us started our email campaign careers in batch and blast mode. Many are still there. But with the tools on the market available today to track your user’s behavior and the ability to sync those tools with your CRM software, the barriers are coming down. It’s time to leap over the hurdles and change your marketing strategy.

One of our Eloqua customers, Mark McCary, Senior Director of Global Marketing at Platts, uses the term “customer-generated marketing”. (You know, as opposed the marketing-generated marketing that most of us are currently doing.) Marketing Sherpa calls this concept “triggered email”. No matter what name you give it, it’s your goal.

I’m not naive. I know it’s easy for me to spout off about what you should be doing, and blithely overlook the fact that this is a massive change in your strategy. Your email blast numbers will dramatically decrease. However, conversely, your email campaign metrics should dramatically increase. As an added bonus, your campaign will have a longer lifespan since users can be triggering the campaign for as long as you have it running. 

If you’re experiencing resistance, offer to test marketing-generated versus customer-generated campaigns and let the numbers speak for themselves. Here is an excellent takeaway from the recent Marketing Sherpa Email Summit:

John Heidrich and Joe Nettum from Allstate described how their team is moving toward a triggered email strategy…They compared results from a campaign to encourage customers to sign up for an online account service system. One set of messages was sent batch-style to the entire list, and another set was sent to new customers, triggered by policy purchases:

• Open rates for the triggered email messages increased 84% over the batch messages
• Clickthrough rates for the triggered email messages increased 32%

Yeah, those numbers will speak quite eloquently for themselves.

What types of things should trigger an email campaign?

Certainly a purchase qualifies. But website surfing is your next best friend. For example, if you have three main products described on your website, you can measure the number of page visits to each area. Which product has the most page views? That should trigger an email to the prospect about that specific product. (What if they’re all three equal? Send an email with a comparison matrix to help the prospect differentiate your offerings!) You can also trigger off of whitepaper downloads, product trial downloads, abandoned purchases, and much more.

We’ll write about other triggers in a future post, but first….tell us your ideas! Have you seen anything work well? Is there something you want to try?

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Photo credit: timsnell | flickr

Today I was reading Sirius Decisions’ latest press release (”SiriusDecisions Benchmark Data Reveals: Best-in-Class Companies Positioning for Better Days“). This sentence stood out to me: “…the firm has found that marketers are changing the make-up of their programs to be closer to field activity, shifting the focus more on clients and current deals.”

It’s interesting to see the reporting data back-up what I’ve been noticing anecdotally. I spend my days guiding Eloqua’s small-medium business customers in their marketing automation projects. One refrain I’ve been hearing over and over is “lead nurturing”. It’s not about lead acquisition right now, it’s about mining the leads you already have, warming them up and getting them ready for sales.

However, it’s definitely time for a shift even further down the lead funnel. Sales cycles are now longer because of the economy and that gives marketing more of a chance to get involved in the sales process.

Alden Cushman, SiriusDecisions’ research director and benchmarking analyst says:  “From discussions with clients we’ve benchmarked, we estimate b-to-b companies are doubling their number of pipeline acceleration programs. Instead of focusing on generating new leads, these programs represent a more effective way for marketing to impact the extended sales cycle by helping to move deals that have stalled in the pipeline. Without question, the economy is driving this trend…”

What Can You Do?

• Re-engage Stalled Opportunities: Consider a short nurturing campaign to all contacts that have been sitting in the same Opportunity stage for more than 30 or 60 days (or whatever makes sense for your business). What can you offer them that will give them a nudge in the right direction? Customer testimonial videos are an excellent choice, or perhaps a “Top 10 things to consider when purchasing a…” checklist.
   
• Nurture the Account: For large deals that involve multiple contacts at one account, think about building a customized landing page for them. You can offer links to the collateral they’ve already seen and maybe some they haven’t yet (add green checkmarks to what they’ve been sent in the past). Be sure to give prominence to the name and number of the sales person for the account. Then add in some exclusive content that is normally only available via a form on your site. This is your chance to show them how well you treat your customers by giving them VIP treatment even before they’re a customer.
   
• Share “Privileged” Information: Maybe it makes sense to show your late-stage prospects a sneak peek of your upcoming product features or new service offerings?
   
• Food for Thought: Do you have a lot of ’stuck’ prospects clustered in a geographic area? Host a breakfast and invite those prospects along with two or three of your current happy customers and let them mingle.

I’d love to hear your ideas! Are you moving down the funnel and focusing less on new leads and more on maturing the leads you already have?

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Photo credit: Slowburn

The Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO) recently reported that spending on search engine marketing (SEM) in North America is expected to hit $26 billion by 2013.  And the majority of respondents (70%) said they are trying to generate leads for direct or indirect sales models.

The analysis indicates on MarketingCharts.com however, the only metrics marketers are using include: increased traffic, conversion rates, click-through rates.  In addition to these metrics, you should also track “net new” web visitors, known vs. unknown visitors and form abandonment rates.

But what do these metrics tell you? What should you focus on improving? With any metric, there should be an action based on the result. What are these actions?

• Increased traffic
  Track volume spikes or peaks to your landing page or website based on when campaigns are launched and overall trend on an ongoing basis.
• Conversion rates
  For web metrics conversion rates we typically track form submission from suspect to inquiry, however, you should also track conversion rates from other stages of the lead funnel – we need to understand which key words bring in the closed deals vs. which bring in researchers.
• Click-through rates
  It’s important to understand the increase traffic number and then one level deeper is the click-through rate, how many people clicked on an email or a web link to then get to your landing page or website. This tells you how many people raised their hand to your offer. So it’s a metric that helps you understand if your message was relevant to the audience.
• “Net new” web visitors
  Having increased web traffic is one thing, but are you bringing in “net new” web visitors from your campaigns? This metric needs to help you understand if you are bringing in leads at the top of the funnel or helping you convert leads already in the funnel.
• Form abandonment rate
  This metric helps you track how many clicks convert to prospects and how many prospects are not completing the form. This helps you decide whether you need to re-think your form (how many questions are you asking), do you have too much friction? Does your offer not resonate? Or perhaps your key word is not relevant to the offer?

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At three recent user group events I’ve attended for my company, the topic of social media has been a hot one, with Twitter being the hottest topic of all. The Big Question is: Would it be valuable for my company to be on Twitter? My colleague Chad Horenfeldt recently wrote a great post on social media success stories that helps answer this question and based on my own knowledge of what I’ve seen work for our company so far, I would definitely encourage you to go for it.

Kai Turner recently posted an excellent article on Mashable that I would highly recommend as you’re ready to get started. His eighth and final point is actually something I would have listed as #1: get started on Twitter by listening. This is easy to do with TweetDeck because you can set up searches on keywords that interest you (for example, your company or product name). See what people are saying and how they’re saying it, then when you’re ready to jump into the stream, you’ll understand the flow that you’re becoming a part of.

TweetDeck - b2b search

Here is an image of my “b2b” search term that I set up this week just to see what kind of chatter appears there. It’s a broad term (”b2b marketing” might be better…I’ll try that next) but I like the eclectic mix of items that pop up on it and I’ve found a few interesting folks on there that I’m now following. (By the way, I’m sure there are a ton of great tools out there that accomplish the same goal of searching the Twitterverse – I just happen to like TweetDeck.)

Another interesting point that Mr. Turner makes is the idea of having a casting call for your brand voice: “Most likely it will be someone from the marketing or the PR team. Maybe even a junior intern who has been given a list of things to post on Twitter. A more successful tactic would be to find someone, internal or external to the company, who is already on Twitter and speaking naturally in a tone of voice that matches your Brand Voice.” I just love this idea! With Twitter you’re learning to think outside the usual marketing and branding box, so you might as well go all the way and continue thinking outside the box when you find your “speaker”.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this topic. Have you recently stepped into the Twitter waters and have some tips to share with the rest of us? Are you considering it but still have concerns?

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Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. We’re all familiar with that phrase from an environmental standpoint, but have you thought about it from a marketing point of view?

As marketers we spend a lot of time and effort creating campaigns. We have to prepare our target list, write our messages, design our landing pages, alert the sales team on what we’re sending out, etc., etc. It takes a lot of momentum to get something like this out the door. In environmental terms, we use a whole lotta energy. But for many of us, it’s a one shot campaign, whether it performs poorly or exceptionally. We’re usually thinking about the next campaign and moving on to the new cycle of preparing our target list, writing our messages….you get the idea.

However, if you look back at your campaign results from 2008, I’m sure that you’ll see a few campaigns that are worthy of a repeat. My friends, there’s no shame in this. Be green! Recycle those high performing campaigns and squeeze some extra life out of them! You can re-run the campaign to the same audience as before, just focus on the new leads that have joined your database since the original campaign. Or consider a new target vertical and tweak your message as needed.

When you’re a green marketer you can increase your productivity. If your goal was to run one campaign this quarter, you can increase that two – one shiny new one, and one recycled proven performer.

(My thanks to Chris Petko, Eloqua’s Director of Marketing Operations, who first introduced me to the term Green Campaigns.)

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And, to conclude our series: Myth #4 – Analyzing campaign and marketing ROI is not worth the effort required. Reality check – any metrics that provide you actionable insight to improve performance is worth it.

Remember, you are looking for trend points to make educated bets on campaign optimization. Ultimately, the demand generation team that can demonstrate and confidently predict, in terms of revenue, what happens when they spend a single marketing dollar earns the right to ask for increased budgets and resources. Data points actually give you the confidence to try new campaign approaches, test messaging, and focus on ways to sustain and build long-term relationships.

Automation and systems integration can sure make the entire process less time consuming and may even increase accuracy. These elements, however, are certainly not required. As long as your lead capture systems are getting what you need to report on in the front end – then you can always export the pipeline data from your CRM systems and, with your sales team, tie the data points together – it just takes more time and effort. Once your process is documented and in place, automation and integration can really help to facilitate time to results. And, integration between sales and marketing systems helps facilitate building detailed reports and dashboards that both organizations can believe in.

All metrics need to be considered within the larger context. Your marketing ROI should facilitate the right set of conversations around what is working, what is not, so that you can make identify what to test and optimize. And, once you have a baseline of performance metrics over a period of time, then you can set goals to decrease cost per conversion and increase conversion ratios to realize year over year improvement in marketing campaign performance.

Get started today. Clearly benchmark what your campaign conversion ratios look like on average. You will need to define “conversion” for your organization and the types of campaigns you are running. But, define it nonetheless and document what your baseline is today. Next, benchmark where you are in terms of ability to influence revenue. How you define “influence” will be largely determined by that attribution method that you have adopted. And, if you do not know what the total influence really is – your benchmark today is 0%. The good news – it should be easy to improve upon if you can get your measruement definitions and processes in place! Then, as you adopt more sophisticated campaigning techniques – you can start to really deomonstrate marketing effectiveness improvement. Wouldn’t you like to show trend lines like the following image?

Demonstrating Marketing Effectiveness Improvement

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OK – I hope you are still with me. We tackled that Cost Per Name does not tell the whole story. We’ve identified a Campaign Revenue Attribution method that makes sense for our own organization. Now, let’s knock down one of the most common myths of all.

Myth #3 – The data will provide us with a “perfect path” of events required to convert a customer. Reality Check – The Magical Dashboard DOES NOT Exist.

If this were X-Files, I would be Scully on this one. Stop your quest for a magical dashboard that unveils the perfect sequence of events, universal temperature, dash of salt required to generate predictable revenue. The reality is that the perfect path will be unique by your individual buyers.

What we can do is analyze trends from direct revenue and influenced revenue models to better understand which campaigns work better and when – and then to optimize by improving over baseline performance. This requires us to get black and white in our reporting so that trends can be identified. At the same time, getting black and white does not mean evaluating one campaign and making long-term decisions based on performance off of that one data point – context is always required.

For example, your organization invests in an expensive tradeshow but no immediate sales opportunities result from participation, does that indicate that you should cancel all tradeshows for the rest of the year? Maybe. Maybe not. What it means is that you need to evaluate that event within the context of prior tradeshow performance as well as other campaign types, to understand what was going on. Was it this particular show (i.e. attendance was poor, bad booth location, etc.)? Was it how we prepared for the show (i.e. did we forget send out the invitation to our customers with enough notice, etc.)? Or, maybe it is in exact alignment with the past 4 shows we have done and therefore the discussion becomes how much of the total marketing mix we willing to allocate for next year. Perhaps we do fewer tradeshows and better use our resources elsewhere.

Getting black and white helps you to trend and compare the data so that you can have the right discussion on which campaigns are having the greatest impact on revenue and how that affects planning moving forward.

And to conclude our series, Myth #4: Analyzing marketing ROI is not worth the effort required.

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Yesterday, in our series on Marketing ROI, we looked at Myth #1 – Cost per name is enough for measuring marketing effectiveness. The reality is a single metric does not tell us the whole story. Today, let’s explore different campaign revenue attribution methods so that you can better begin to look at the bigger picture.

Myth #2 – Long-term ROI analysis is better/worse than the short-term ROI analysis. Reality Check – Campaign revenue attribution methods will always be flawed no matter which method you adopt. The key is to pick your methods, be consistent, add complexity as you learn from your data analysis.

Even if you have the most automated system in the world, it still is never going to be 100% perfect. No campaign revenue attribution method can perfectly account for the role brand awareness, customer referrals, sales efficiencies, impact the likelihood that your buyer will purchase from you. And, what about that rogue sales rep who never associates a primary contact (and therefore campaign history) to all of her bluebird opportunities that keep coming in? The goal is to pick a method that you can actually adopt and make decisions from. In many cases a short-term analysis and a long-term analysis perspective is helpful for different reasons. And remember, we are looking for trends. Short-term trends help us make immediate tactical choices in optimizing campaign assets, etc. Long-term trends help us to strategically plan and demonstrate a broader sphere of influence.

First, start with the end in mind – where and how do you want to report on campaign performance? Next, pick a revenue attribution method that makes sense for your organization in terms of your analytics maturity, the technology and resources you have access to, and your sales and marketing processes. Now, stick with it. Be consistent for a period long enough to identify short-term trends, test, and optimize campaigns over baseline performance. If you currently do not know what your impact on revenue is today – you may be starting with a baseline of 0. Some methods to evaluate:

100% Most Recent Campaign – A simple model may look like 100% forecasted revenue attributed to the campaign that caused the buying cycle. In a CRM system like Salesforce.com – this would be called Opportunity Source and it would reflect the most recent campaign of the primary contact associated to the opportunity. If you want to leverage out-of-the-box ROI reporting and dashboards in a system like SFDC.com – this model may make most sense for you. 

%Split Across Original/Most Recent – Other CRM systems may support a simple splitting of revenue attribution across more than one campaign tied to the primary contact mapped to the opportunity. This may make more sense based on functionality supported by your CRM and the length of your sales cycle.

Equal Attribution Across All Campaigns – One way to gauge total influence on revenue is to equally weight revenue across all campaigns of contacts mapped to the opportunity. 

Complex Weighting By Campaign Type – After short-term trends are proven out and validated, you may choose to advance to a more complex weighting of revenue attribution based on Campaign Type to demonstrate total influence. For example, a Web Resource Center visit participation gets 5% of the credit, where an in-person tradeshow meeting gets 25%, etc.

Long-Term Marketing Influence – Long-term ROI metrics can be leveraged in conjunction with short-term ROI models to better understand less tangible aspects of marketing effectiveness and overall influence.

Which methods make sense for your organization? Are you doing something different? What process and technology changes will you need to account for to adopt new methods?

Tomorrow…Myth #3: The data will provide us with a “perfect path” of events required to convert a customer.

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Not enough marketers are measuring ROI. ROI – the term I hate to love. I LOVE it – because it is essential to improving campaign performance. I HATE to love it – because it is hard. So hard, in fact, we have a gazillion ways to refer to it: marketing ROI, short-term ROMI, long-term ROMI, closed-loop reporting, marketing effectiveness measurement, direct revenue impact, influenced revenue, etc.

Call it whatever you want – you need a way to tie revenue impact to your campaigns (across marketing-initiated campaigns, sales-initiated prospecting campaigns, partner-driven campaigns, etc.). And, let’s be clear – you don’t need it just so you can prove your worth as an employee to your organization. You need it so that you can trend, compare, and optimize your campaign performance in the short term and better plan for the long term. This is about trend over baseline metrics to make educated decisions on resources and spend – not who “gets the credit”.

I have to slightly disagree with David Meerman Scott and his position in Why marketing ROI measures LEAD TO FAILURE. Mr. Scott believes executives hide behind ROI and “play it safe” and I have certainly seen that attitude take hold. On the other hand, a world with no measurement of marketing effectiveness leads to a failure in demonstrating value to the business. I believe that ROI measurement should foster conversations and inspire improvement as well as risk-taking. And, certainly “return” and “investment” may need to be examined within context of the campaign objective.

If you do not have any ROI reporting in place today – I want you to stop what you are doing and make it your next quarterly focus to get it in place. I don’t care if you think it is too difficult of a task. If you do have ROI reporting in place – I want you to consider how you leverage that information to improve your communication mix. Perhaps, you are ready to take your revenue attribution model to the next level of sophistication.

This is the intro to a 4-part series on debunking the myths that I see preventing many marketers from tackling ROI reporting at all – or at the other end of the spectrum – aren’t using the ROI data points to make relevant decisions.

Myth #1 - You can only control leads into the funnel so cost per name and cost per inquiry is enough. Reality Check – One conversion metric cannot tell the whole story.

If cost per name were the only metric that mattered then you could hand our sales team a phone book and call it a day. Or, maybe you just advertise on the cheapest keywords possible. Looking at the economics of each conversion milestone of your lead funnel will help you to understand what triggers you can pull to impact specific stages of the sales pipeline. This way you can adjust volume into the funnel AND impact the velocity through the funnel as well. For a more transactional sales process, you still need to evaluate beyond cost per inquiry and look at the attribution from a lifetime customer value perspective.

An example – Omniture recently talked about their own offer testing where the “Complimentary Guide” converted 42% more inquires over the “Online Webinar”. But, the Webinar converted 155% more sales-ready opportunities from the inquiries over the Guide. Getting “beyond the lead” metrics is critical to really understanding marketing effectiveness.

Tomorrow we will tackle one of my favorite discussions. Myth #2: Long-term ROI analysis is better/worse than the short-term ROI analysis.

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