Marketing Automation Best Practices

Creating Content for the Buying Committee

2011-10-18T09:33:00.000-07:00

Creating Content for the Buying Committee

Most B2B sales are not decided upon by just one person. Often a committee of folks is involved, both during the initial decision process and further down the buyer journey, during the purchase process. As many as 8 or more participants weigh in internally before a final “Let’s do it” is heard.

As frustrating as this is for sales, it’s even more frustrating for marketers trying to:

Identify these committee members and
Serve them relevant content

Unfortunately we usually only get access to just one committee member, the person who is raising their hand. He or she has clicked thru one of our emails, filled out a form, attended a webinar, etc. and made themselves known.

Let’s call this person the Champion.

Sirius Decisions has identified a total of 4 committee member types:

The Champion
The Influencer
The Negotiator
The Ratifer

So how do you send relevant content to these people, at the correct time they need to see it, without even knowing who they are?

You can’t. Not unless they raise their hand too. Sorry.

So, we are left with 2 approaches to ensuring relevant content is sent to the right person at the right time:

Enable the Champion as our “Content Distributor”
Populate Social Media, as well as your own website, with easy to find answers to likely questions from the Influencer, the Negotiator and the Ratifier.

Creating the Personas

The first step is to create personas for each of the 4 committee member types. Ask sales what keeps each one up at night? What do they want answers to? What content tools can you provide that will help answer the question, “What’s in it for them?” Once we know what list of concerns each committee member type has, we can create specific content to address each one of their concerns.

Converting the Champion to “Content Distributor”

Once the Champion has initially raised their hand, the next step is to add them to a nurturing/scoring program that feeds content, directed at them initially. This is typically Thought Leadership content. It’s never about you at this stage, it’s always about what you can do for the Champion. The goal is to provide enough credibility that your company makes it to the short list of evaluated vendors.

Focus on content that is appropriate not only for the Champion, but for the Influencer as well. The goal is to get the Champion to pass your Thought Leadership along to the Influencer.

Don’t forget, the Influencer is searching on their own, so make this content easy to find on your website as well, along with targeted Social Media, just in case you haven’t converted your Champion to “Content Distributor” just yet.

Content that makes the Champion look like a hero will get forwarded more often than “non-hero” content. So what the heck is Hero Content? “Hero Content” has to be good enough to warrant a “Hey Influencer, look what I found” reaction from the Champion.

Assuming the Champion progresses through the buyer journey and is engaged with your nurturing content, at some point the lead’s internal Decision Process shifts to a Purchase Process. The trouble is you may not know when this actually occurs. The Champion may have scored very high at this point, but the Purchase Process committee members may not have even weighed in yet.

Based on what you and your sales team know about your own sales cycle, you can send a Purchase Process trial balloon email to the Champion when the time feels about right and see what the response is. Did the Champion click thru to the ROI calculator? Did it appear as if they may have forwarded the email?

If so, now is the time to leverage your Champion to distribute content relevant to the Purchase Decision group. ROI calculators, ROI Case Studies, Financial risk aversion content. It’s all about the money.

Once again, this group is searching on their own as well. Make sure this type of content is easy to find, not only on your website but on targeted Social Media as well. Hero content works best here too.

Summary

Just because we don’t always know who the committee members are, we can use this strategy to convert the Champion to our “Distributor of Content” to those behind the curtain. Content creation should therefore be focused on serving the following committee member types:

The Decision Process

· The Champion

· The Influencer

The Purchase Process

· The Negotiator

· The Ratifier

This will help define the What. Leverage MA to define the When.

Steve Kellogg

-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia

-Eloqua Certified Marketing Automation Best Practices Consultant

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Social Media: Tracking What Others Say About You

2011-09-20T11:00:00.000-07:00

With better Social Media reporting tools coming on line, we’re starting to get a much better picture of the extent Social Media plays in converting leads into buyers.

These tools provide insight into the whole other universe of inbound conversations occurring before, during and after our own outbound marketing communications.

And while the traditional funnel model continues to work for our outbound marketing efforts, alas - it no longer fits with the overall buyer journey.

Instead, the buyer journey now looks like a grid, with seemingly disjointed inbound and outbound touch points all playing a role in converting leads into buyers.

Welcome to The Grid

Here is a visual example of how a buyer journey might progress from beginning to end.

Black squares are Inbound touches and Red squares are outbound touches. We see this person bouncing all over the place, but ultimately ending up a buyer.

If we try and convert this buyer journey example into a linear roadmap, it would look like this:

We can track all the outbound activities just fine, the disconnect continues to tie in the value of all the inbound activities into one holistic view that can be leveraged for reporting.

Our colleagues in Germany will have an even tougher time, as Germany has recently banned the business use of FaceBook Fan pages and Facebook "Like" social plugins because the data collection infringes on Germany’s data protection laws.

So, while we can’t road map the collective social media activities of a single individual yet, we can definitely track how and where our products and brands are being perceived within the social media framework.

Recommendations:

Get insight into the overall sentiment of your brand as well as those of your products/services within the social media universe. Overall, is the conversation mostly positive? Mostly negative? Mostly neutral?

o Use this to focus on keeping your +/- ratio extremely high for each product and each brand.

How does this sentiment compare to your competitors? Where is your company in the “love-fest” pecking order within your industry?

o Use this as a benchmark in elevating and keeping your overall +/- ratio higher than your competitors.

How much share of overall “voice” is your company receiving within your industry compared to your competitors? In other words, how much buzz is about you vs. the competition. (This could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on whether the sentiment is mostly positive or mostly negative).

o Use this as a benchmark in increasing and keeping dominance in your overall share of voice within your industry.

Which “megaphones” are people using to communicate? Facebook? Twitter? Blogs? Forums?

o Use this to help identify where resources should be focusing their social media efforts.

Where specifically are the most influential conversations coming from? Are there particular blogs, forums or groups that are being particularly influential?

o Efforts can then be made to encourage the positive and repair the negative.

So how do you track and measure all this?

One of the better tools I’ve used that can provide these insights and more is Radian6 which was recently purchased by SFDC.

If you only care about Twitter, they just announced Twitter Web Analytics, a tool that helps website owners understand how much traffic they receive from Twitter and the effectiveness of Twitter integrations on their sites.

If you want insight into ALL of the recommendations above, Astadia is offering a complimentary Social Media Assessment Summary, for a limited time.

All you need is:
1. Your Company Name
2. The name of the Competitor you want to compare your share of voice to
3. The name of the product or service you want to get sentiment on

Click here to request this complimentary Assessment Summary

Controlling what content is received along with when a lead receives it through outbound marketing is easy. Controlling where leads go to find useful information and what they read about us from others during the sales process is next to impossible to control.

We can still influence the outcome however by (1) incorporating the whole grid in our marketing efforts and (2) by beginning to incorporate the insights listed above.

Steve Kellogg

-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia

-Eloqua Certified Marketing Automation Best Practices Consultant

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5 Lead Scoring Myth Busters

2011-08-28T14:23:00.000-07:00

Having researched countless lead scoring programs for various clients, certain patterns tend to appear over and over. A few very lucky clients get it right the first time, but this is extremely rare.

Some clients enable a simple lead scoring program initially, then if it fails to meet the expectation of sales, they leave it on a shelf and abandon the idea. Successful clients actively tweak their scoring program continuously, adapting to changes in their industry, their products, and the shifts in behaviors of their leads.

Myth #1: Lead Scoring Works Immediately

Successful lead scoring programs take time to develop. On average 3-6 months to test, evaluate, tweak, etc, often even longer. It is very common to see either very low scores or very high scores come through when you first fire up the program. This is normal. Go back to sales and refine the scores further, each time getting closer and closer to accurately scoring explicit and implicit criteria. You really need to evaluate it for the entire length of your average sales cycle to fully vet it. So if your average sales cycle is 2 years, be very patient as you diligently continue to refine it.

Myth #2: Lead Scoring is for Everyone

If sales’ only criteria for accepting a lead is if there is breath showing on a mirror, then sales will ignore lead scoring. In fact they will resent any efforts to throttle back non MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads). Some sales reps are desperate for any lead, whether they are qualified or not, so taking the time to develop a scoring program for them is not typically worth the effort. Also if the sales cycle is extremely short, say less than 30 days, it may not be worth it to develop a lead scoring program either.

Myth #3: One Size Fits All

I have clients that have multiple lead scoring programs running simultaneously, one for each product, geo or BU. Keep in mind this took several years to get to this stage and was done only after fully vetting their first successful lead scoring program. When setting up an initial lead scoring program, I recommend scoring on general interest first – Not by Specific BU. The advantages of doing it this way are:

Vetts the process with Key Players
Builds Confidence/Buzz
Gains Momentum
Build out Specific BUs once Success Achieved

Myth #4: Lead Scoring Generates More Leads

It always surprises me how prevalent this misconception is, especially among sales. It is often the reason sales reps ultimately ignore your lead scoring program. The truth is, just the opposite occurs. Sales actually gets fewer leads; but they tend to be of higher quality and further in the buying cycle. Make sure sales understands that lead scoring does not guarantee a lead has an open PO ready to sign, or have their checkbooks out, it only provides a pecking order of who to call first, second, third, etc. That’s it.

Myth #5: If Sales Looses Confidence in Lead Scoring – Game Over

This almost always happens when the mistake is made to launch an initial lead scoring program to the entire sales organization out of the gate. Sales heard about this cool thing called lead scoring, marketing is anxious to provide immediate value, so the lead scoring program is launched quickly. That’s when the trouble starts. Sound familiar?

If this occurs, don’t give up, but don’t re-launch an edited version to the whole sales team. They are already circumspect and if there are still any edits to be made, then it will be very difficult to get full buy-in moving forward.

Instead work with 1 or 2 sales champions and really get them involved in making the tweaks. Have them evaluate the last 50 closed deals and look for explicit similarities. Are they sharing a specific job role or title? Look for similar behaviors as well. Visits to certain web pages, attendance at specific webinars, etc. If you look, patterns will emerge. Make sure your next generation scoring program is incorporating these.

If you are new to lead scoring or need a Lead Scoring “Do-Over”, consider the following tips, depending on whether you have many leads or few leads:

We Have Many Leads in CRM

Start with an Inactive Lead Nurturing/Scoring Program
Pros:
Converts dead or “junk” leads
Doesn’t disrupt current lead flow processes
Cons:
Takes full sales cycle to provide value
Leverage nurturing to drive scorable behaviors – don’t just leave it to happenstance

We Have Few Leads in CRM

Score Everyone Often
Focus on recency of behavior, rather than frequency of behavior
Give sales visibility to all scored leads (not just MQLs)
Build Fast Lane for Ready to Buy Leads
Work closely with your “sales champion” throughout testing phase
Leverage nurturing to drive scorable behaviors – don’t just leave it to happenstance

Lead scoring is marketing's gift to sales. It can be an extremely powerful sales enablement tool. But it rarely works correctly out of the box and requires continuous course correction once it does work. Having that expectation helps make the lead scoring journey worth all the trouble for the entire enterprise.

Steve Kellogg

-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia

-Eloqua Certified Marketing Automation Best Practices Consultant

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What Happens When Everything is Relevant?

2011-07-08T17:40:00.000-07:00

Right now, adopters of marketing automation have a leg-up in that our messages are presumably more relevant than those still incorporating batch & blast messaging. We have the advantage of right time, right message, right person workflows.

But as marketing automation adoption continues to skyrocket, what happens when everyone’s messages are relevant? Now what? Competition for attention becomes even more challenging.

Even now, my inbox is already full of relevant messages. For example, I am a member of at least 20 LinkedIn Marketing Automation groups and continue to receive extremely relevant discussion topics all day long.

So how can you get your marketing email to move to the front of the line?

Urgency
Importance

All other things being relevant (excuse the pun), we tend to focus on those messages that are (1) Urgent, then (2) Important.

An email from my bank suspecting fraud on my account is both urgent and important. I would stop everything and take action.

An email reminding me I only have 30 minutes left to register for a popular workshop is urgent and worthy of my immediate attention as well (assuming it is relevant and important).

An email inviting me to a webinar 5 weeks from now may be important but it is not urgent.

Many studies indicate that people wait until the last minute before taking action. I recently helped a client with a webinar registration test in which over 55% of the registrations were submitted within 24 hours of the event, despite the initial invitation and reminder emails being sent 2 weeks prior. Leveraging the last minute is a sure-fire method of getting your message to the top of the list and “forcing” action.

Don’t’ Fake Urgency

You can’t always create urgency when there really isn’t any. Don’t fake it whatever you do. We all hear the radio commercial that makes an offer to the next 20 callers only, that runs every 2 hours.

Making it Important

If you can't make it urgent, try and make it important. I know everything we marketers send out is extremely important (at least in our eyes) but it may not be perceived that way by the recipient (shocking I know). One way to help sell importance is to make it scarce.

You’ve developed an eBook that contains information rarely seen before. Your offer is a complete paradigm shift, a game changer. You’ve figured out a way to put a square peg in a round hole. Make your message important by including scarcity when possible.

If there is no urgency, and your message is not particularly earth-shattering, at least make it convenient. This is one reason video is so successful. It’s easy and requires very little effort. If I’m confronted with 20 relevant messages, I’m definitely responding to the one that requires the least effort to respond to first.

As an early marketing automation adopter you may not need to leverage these tactics now, but you will. Better to leverage them now.

P.S. So what happens when down the road, everything becomes relevant, urgent, important and convenient? I’m not sure what we do. Maybe we put down our devices and pay attention to the person next to us?

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Automation Best Practices Consultant

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Priceline is Following Me...Literally!

2011-05-03T12:06:00.000-07:00

Several months ago I needed to book a hotel in Hollywood, CA near a client. I had never used Priceline before so I’d thought I’d give it a try. They found me a good deal at a hotel “nearby”. Long story short they ended up booking me into a hotel in Century City, which is nowhere near Hollywood.

As soon as I got the confirmation I called them and requested a refund, but despite 30 minutes of wrangling with the “manager” they refused to budge. I ended up paying for 2 hotel rooms that night. The hotel in Century City from Priceline and the hotel in Hollywood that I ended up booking on my own. Lesson learned – I will never use Priceline again. Ever.

Yesterday I needed to book a hotel in Palm Springs, near another client. I went online and did the usual searching, using Kayak, Travelocity, Expedia, etc.

Within 20 minutes I was shocked to receive an email from Priceline.com offering discounts on hotels in Palm Springs on the same days I was planning on being there. How did they know I was looking for a hotel in Palm Springs? How did they know which days I was going to be there?

As a marketing automation and Best Practices consultant I would be the last person to toss up the Big Brother argument for cookie tracking, but wow, this is the first time I’ve ever felt like Big Brother was actually watching me – stalking me almost.

If the email was from a company I would actually consider doing business with I wouldn’t mind, in fact I’d probably appreciate it, but what made this so unsettling is every time I even hear about Priceline it always reminds me of the money I lost.

Cookie Tracking

There has been a lot of discussion lately about cookie tracking as it relates to privacy issues vs. relevance.

In fact, in the EU, there is a new law which goes into effect in May that now requires websites to obtain a user's consent before even being allowed to install a tracking cookie. Yikes.

Summary

Marketing Automation and cookie tracking in particular make it easier to send “hey we just watched you online and boy do we have a deal for you” emails.

As more and more companies test these waters, it will be critical to everyone's success to make sure to also include as part of the process, confirmation of a good relationship with the target just prior to sending the email. Otherwise we all run the risk of facing the same restrictive legislation the EU is about to face.

Key Takeaway
If the current state of the relationship is monitored, sending the right person the right message at the right time can be extremely effective in fostering a deeper, more personal relationship.

If the relationship is not considered, then it's like the ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend who won't stop following you. They’re stalking.

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

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What To Do When Your Webinar Ends in Disaster (A True Story)

2011-04-13T08:09:00.000-07:00

After months of planning, preparation, content creation and all the other hard work that goes into creating a compelling webinar, the XYZ company (actual company name witheld) was finally ready to launch their very first webinar event.

The speaker was lined up, the slide presentation was finalized and the webinar vendor selected.

Thanks to some great marketing Best Practices work on our part (sameless Astadia plug :) there were 3 times as many registrations as the company ever expected. The virtual room was packed and everyone was ready to get started. Customary housekeeping announcements were made (be sure to mute your phone, there will be Q&A at the end, etc).

All was going brilliantly until about 10 minutes prior to the end of the webinar when a faint conversation started in the background on the webinar conference phone line. One of the participants forgot to mute their phone and his conversation with one of his employees was getting louder and louder.

The audience soon realized that the conversation he was having was a very personal HR discussion with an employee about their prolonged illness.

"Do you need to take an extended leave of absense?"

"What is your overal prognosis?"

It was extremely uncomfortable for everyone to have to listen to, even briefly.

Now, normally the moderator would have simply done a "MUTE ALL", however she couldn't because the presenter was calling in remotely on the phone and of course that would have muted him as well.

Since this was their very first webinar the moderator never thought that simply having the presenter dial in as an attendee would be an issue. Obviously a lesson well learned and never repeated.

But it's not what this company didn't do that is the point of this post, it is what they did to recover from this that set them apart.

Despite numerous attempts to get this person's attention and get him to mute his line, it quickly became clear the only solution was to stop the webinar. Since there was only 10 minutes left, it didn't make sense for everyone to have to hang up and redial back in, this time with the presenter able to mute all.

Instead, the moderator apologized profusely, ended the webinar immediately, and made a promise to make it up to everyone.

Here is exactly how the XYZ Company did that:

They called each and every attendee and personally apologized for the dissruption
They sent out an email with an invitation to a live "encore" presentation to be held within 2 days
They automatically entered all attendees into a contest, giving away a new iPad2 at the end of the encore presentation to one lucky winner
They also offered a comprehensive, on-site technology cost-audit, no matter where the customer was located - all at no charge

The good-will the XYZ Company generated by their actions as a result of this disaster did more than any webinar content ever could in building a positive lasting impression.

So often we hear about companies who seek to hide or flat out deny obvious product or service glitches, but in this case, the XYZ Company turned what was a total disaster into an incredible opportunity to build both trust and value.

By the end of the encore webinar, many that attended were ready to buy.

Those that didn't buy either complimented the XYZ company to other colleagues or sent complimentary emails to the XYZ Company directly. Some even blogged about the experience, including me.

The original webinar was meant to communicate how great the XYZ company is. But it was the actions they took after the disaster that proved it.

ACTIONS ARE THE BEST CONTENT
Chances are, you may never have to expereience anything like this, but I encourage you to actually embrace disasters if and when they occur.

Social Media is the collection plate of horrible experiences, which is why so many companies are reluctant to jump in. They are afraid of negative comments. But if actions really are the best content, then what a perfect arena to join and actively look for opportunities to build trust, in part by repairing trust in front of others.

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

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How Many Invitation Emails Does it Take to Get a Webinar Registration?

2011-04-03T11:16:00.000-07:00

To help answer this question, we (Astadia) recently had a chance to reconfirm initial tests we performed several years ago, but with some interesting new results.

We wanted to know:

How many webinar invitations do people ignore before finally signing up?
How many webinar invitations will people tolerate receiving before unsubscribing?
How long or how soon before the webinar do invitation(s) work best in generating registration signups?

Here are the results:

2 weeks out = 21 submissions – Subject Line: Register Today
1 week out = 55 submissions - Subject Line: There’s Still Time to Register
3 days out = 34 submissions-- Subject Line: Last Chance to Register
1 day out = 37 submissions -- Subject Line: You Have 24 Hours Left to Register
Day of Webinar = 46 submissions -- Subject Line: You Have 30 Minutes Left to Register

Key Takeaways:

19% of registrants waited until the day before the webinar to register
24% of registrants waited until the day of the webinar to register
43% in total waited to within 24 hours of the webinar to register
Adding urgency to the Subject Line increases conversion
There was no spike in unsubscribes whatsoever throughout the entire invitation process. In fact the unsubscribe rate remained below industry averages.

While these results only reflect what worked best for this particular client, I'd love to hear what metrics you have captured and what timing is working best for you.

NOTE: We were unable to test invitations sent further than 2 weeks out as the webinar content didn't get finalized until then.

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

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Building a Nurturing Fast Lane

2011-03-08T10:00:00.000-08:00

Nurturing programs do a great job of building relationships, from tire kicker all the way to ready to buy leads.

There are those rare leads however that are impatient and are ready to buy sooner, sometimes much sooner. Your nurturing pace is too slow for them and they are ready for contact NOW.

While lead scoring programs monitor and report on these, anyone who indicates that they want contact immediately, should get contact immediately – like in the next 5 minutes. Lead scoring programs are fast, but not that fast!

The Nurturing Fast Lane

it’s surprising how many leads actually take action if you give them the opportunity to request contact immediately, where it makes sense. We all know that just slapping a Contact Me link on your website usually produces nada, but presenting a way for impatient leads to make contact at the end of an engaging asset often yields better results.

Try adding a Contact Me Now link at the end of every asset in your nurturing program. For example, a link at the end of an entertaining video, an informative whitepaper or a relevant case study. Add this fast lane option to the end of each asset you deliver, even if it’s just an email.

It often relieves friction if you give them a choice of how they want to be contacted. Something like this:

Yes I want to learn more:

BTW: This usually also gets you a valid phone number if they choose that option. Expect roughly 75% of responses to want email contact vs. phone contact, but hey, its better than wanting no contact!

Rely on form notifications to get this into the hands of sales immediately. Time is of the essensce. An immediate repsonse is always ideal. Sales love talking with leads who are engaged right now.

If you don’t have a fast lane built into every nurturing touch point, try adding it. I’ve seen results anywhere from 0.5% to 3% response rates! The more interesting, informative, relevant and sometimes entertaining the content, the better the conversion. The story of our lives.

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

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How to Make Supply Chain Management (and your product) Funny

2011-02-20T10:50:00.000-08:00

Killer content must be:

Relevant
Interesting
Informative
Entertaining

Entertaining? Yes, according to the new book "Content Rules" by Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman.

I couldn't agree more.

Think about it, as more and more companies adopt marketing automation, more of the content we all start receiving will be relevant. Geez, when everyone is relevant, now what? Now how do you get their attention?

Get ahead of the curve as an early adopter of marketing automation by ensuring your content is interesting, informative AND entertaining.

WHERE TO BEGIN?
So question #1 is which content should I focus on making entertaining? The answer is, which content is currently converting the best? (For those who have adopted Revenue Performance Management, which content is producing the most revenue?

I took a poll of our own Astadia marketing content and here's what I found.

Video outperformed all other types of content by a large margin. In fact the least-watched video still outperformed the best viewed non-video asset by a mile. In addition, we found that:

Those watching a video watched more than 1 video
Video links got higher SE results than whitepaper, case study or other asset links

Which of your assets currently work the best? Is it video as well?

So why are videos so popular? I think for two main reasons:

They take very little effort to watch (unlike Case Studies or Whitepapers)
Smart Phones make it very easy to watch video, and Smart Phone useage is exploding

So how do you make an entertaining video? Here's a perfect example:

COMPANY: Kinaxis, Inc. A Supply Chain Management Company
CHALLENGE: Tell potential customers how simple their Supply Chain Management Solution is to implement
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS: Write a white paper or a case study.
FINAL SOLUTION: Create a funny video instead:

https://community.kinaxis.com/docs/DOC-5353

Once you've watched the above video, check out the follow-up video. It's even funnier!

https://community.kinaxis.com/docs/DOC-5415

I would very likely forward these videos to friends and colleagues (just like I'm forwarding to you).

As more and more B2B companies begin to "see the light" and adopt marketing automation, it becomes more important than ever to stand out. Being relevant won't be enough anymore - it's probably not enough now.

I highly recommend reading Content Rules. It's an excellent tactical how-to guide in creating your own killer content.

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

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Share the IT Love This Valentine's Day

2011-02-01T07:24:00.000-08:00

Sending flowers or candy to your IT Department may not be on your love radar this Valentine’s Day but you might want to consider it. Why? Read on:

According to a recent survey by Alterian, 67% of marketers experience friction with IT in both selecting and implementing social or online marketing tools.

So why all the friction? Well, look at your requests from IT’s perspective. When IT receives your request, they have to consider:

Reliability issues
Duplication of existing processes or effort
Compliance issues
Incompatibility issues
Security issues

You can’t blame them, since they will usually end up owning and maintaining your requests ongoing. Unfortunately, this usually means delays in implementation, push back in functionality or outright refusals to move forward.

I see the results of this quite often in a registration form. Marketing wants a simple registration form to download a whitepaper. IT wants to incorporate the company’s existing registration process to comply with all the concerns listed above. So marketing ends up with something like this:

Download your complimentary Whitepaper here:

If you don’t already have a login, you have to create a new account, which often includes creating a new username and password. This is usually emailed to you. So what should have taken less than 15 seconds ends up taking 5-10 minutes. Geez, all that just to get a whitepaper?

IT is happy. Marketing is unhappy. Leads are very unhappy. Win/Loose/Loose.

I recommend a compromise.

For these types of activities:

Trial software downloads
Customer Portal access
Support access
Etc.

Use IT’s existing form process.

For marketing-specific assets, such as:

Whitepapers
Videos
Webinar/event registrations
Etc.

Use Eloqua’s built-in form/landing page functionality.

Now, where it gets tricky is where the form field values on the marketing form are different than on the IT form. For example if you want to ask a lead scoring question such as Job Title on your marketing asset form, you’ll likely use a picklist. This same question may also exist on IT’s form but it may be and open text field. So you’ll have to go through each form field for both forms and make sure they are all in sync. You’ll also have to consider form update rules – which field from which source overwrites existing values in CRM.

So make an effort to share the love with your IT Department this Valentine's Day. They don't get much recognition so you'll win big points. And acknowledging their own pain can help you alleviate some of your own.

BTW: Check out Scott Brinker’s Chief Marketing Technologist post about shadow IT. He makes some interesting additional recommendations.

P.S. In February of last year, I wrote a blog called Share The Love This Valentine’s Day which was about sharing the love with sales. To be honest, I think sharing the love with IT is actually the priority, otherwise you won’t have enough form submissions to give sales the BIG love.

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

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What's Wrong with This Picture?

2011-01-26T09:37:00.000-08:00

I was surprised when I saw the results of a recent Email Benchmark Survey from Marketing Sherpa. It shows the effectiveness of email marketing at achieving objectives. The top 3 were:

Increasing website traffic
Building Brand Awareness
Increasing Sales Revenue

I realize that these may not have initially been the goals set out for email marketing, but the trouble with these top 3 is that they are all typical results of batch and blast email marketing.

#1. Increasing Website traffic – I'm surprised this was #1. While generating known visitors back to a website is always good, it would not likely be #1 for those who have adopted marketing automation. Email recipients have likely been to the website at least once. So generating the same eyeballs to your site is probably not as ideal as generating net new eyeballs to your website.

Email is not the best solution for this. Social media, Blogs, PCC and organic search will get you further every time obviously. Don’t get me wrong. Getting someone to click through an email to a specific, relevant landing page with a form on it probably counts as increasing website traffic, but increasing website traffic wouldn’t be my #1 objective. Yet it was the #1 most successful email objective in the survey.

#2. Building Brand Awareness – Yikes, this is #2? Someone once explained to me that even though 80% of their emails never get opened, the brand awareness that emails generate from exposure to the FROM and SUBJECT lines were effective at building brand. Can you imagine telling your CEO, "Unfortunately most people won't open our emails, but at least they see our name." You might as well start clearing out your desk. Marketing automation practitioners would likely focus on sending more relevant messages that actually increase opens and subsequent click through rates.

#3: Increasing Sales Revenue – A worthy objective but the measure of success may be suspect. Sending an email to sell a widget might generate a temporary lift in widget sales but as soon as the widget emails decrease, so do widget sales. This is a common B2C scenario. In B2B, it obviously takes more than email to drive sales. There’s usually a whole host of assets that contribute: webinars, white papers, video, tradeshows, etc. And of course the holy grail is an accurate method of attributing revenue across all marketing touches.

So what might this survey look like if B2B marketers who have adopted marketing automation were to respond?

Top B2B Marketing Automation Email Objectives: Align with the goal of the CEO. How?

Use email to drive form conversions
Use email to drive segmentation (through topic click throughs and/or progressive profiling)
Use email as feeders to nurturing and scoring programs
Use Autoresponder emails to fast track the next call to action

What are your top 3 email objectives in 2011?

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

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When Holiday Greeting Cards Go Bad (a marketing spoof)

2010-12-20T13:19:00.000-08:00

Since this is my first video blog post, I wanted it to be a funny one, so here goes:

Watch as I create what I thought would be a beautifully rendered, extremely customized personal online holiday greeting card.

The result? Let's just say that the final output was not what I expected! Its pretty funny.

Watch the 3 Minute Video: When Holiday Greeting Cards go Bad!

A marketing spoof

P.S. Feel free to pass it along to anyone in marketing!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

From one marketer to another!

P.S. If you happen to be thinking of actually setting something like this up, this video is proof that I thought of it first :)

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

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6 Marketing Automation New Year's Resolutions - #6

2010-12-17T06:41:00.000-08:00

Marketing Automation New Year's Resolution #6:
HARVEST THE UNKNOWN VISITOR

Congratulations! If you’ve implemented the first 5 Marketing Automation New Year’s Resolutions, you moved from Demand Generation to Demand Management – a major and significant evolution!

You now control every square inch of the funnel and are able to fully report on each funnel stage’s contribution to revenue. All leaks are plugged, all metrics fully in place, data standards in place and your funnel is now fully aligned with both sales and marketing.

So what’s next, a vacation? You certainly deserve one! And when you return, get ready for the final frontier -- the universe before the funnel.

There are 4 steps to this:

Step 1: Inventory All Pre-Funnel Feeders

Leads live a double life. The life you know about as they become known to you (through tracked implicit and explicit indicators) and the life you don’t know about. The specific journey that got them introduced to your neighborhood. LinkedIn, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, Google Buzz, Twitter, PPC, Wikipedia, organic web searches, blogs and a number of other sources we may not even know of, all play a role in crafting an invitation to your party.

It is this journey, this universe of unknown activities that we need to understand and then harvest in order to provide a perpetual feeder into our now healthy, happy funnel.

Step 2: Establish Dashboards That Determine Influenced Revenue of Each
Build Dashboards that focus on mapping the pre-funnel journey. Find and track every single freeway, side street and back road that leads to your website and begin to make a connection to these initial pre-funnel activities and resulting influenced ROI.

Step 3: Prioritize Initiatives That Consistently Influence the Most Revenue
As you gain insight into the pre-funnel sources that ultimately contribute the most to influenced revenue, you can begin to rank and prioritize the major pre-funnel influences. This ultimately gives you the metrics you need to support increased efforts and resources on those influences.

Step 4: Focus Resources on Expanding Those Initiatives

From here it’s just a matter of focusing resources on what is working while abandoning the support of pre-funnel efforts that don’t pay off in influenced revenue.

There you have it, a complete 2011 Marketing Automation Roadmap.

Can you implement all 6 Resolutions in 2011? It’s possible. But don’t get frustrated if it takes longer than you’d like. As you’ve heard many times by now, marketing automation is a journey, not an event.

But if your organization is ready to start tackling each Resolution one at a time and in the order prescribed, you are on your way to being added to that very elite group of "Best in Class" performers.

See all 6 Marketing Automation New Year's Resolutions:

Resolution #1 - Establish Corporate Alignment
Resolution #2 - Establish One View of the Truth
Resolution #3 - Establish Data Standardization
Resolution #4 - Fill in the Content Gaps
Resolution #5 - Tighten the Plumbing
Resolution #6 - Harvest the Unknown Visitor

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

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6 Marketing Automation New Year's Resolutions - #5

2010-12-10T17:20:00.000-08:00

Marketing Automation New Year's Resolution #5:
TIGHTEN THE PLUMBING

There are 4 parts to this:

Step 1: Identify all funnel leaks

There are typically 3 areas of the funnel that leak:

Sales Ignored Leads
Sales Rejected Leads
Customer Retention and post sale Cross-Sell/Upsell opportunities

Tighten your funnel metrics to provide insight into all 3 of these typical leak sources. Institute a deadline for sales to either accept your MQL or reject it, within a certain period of time. Find out how long sales really needs to make a decision about these and then develop a process that manages these leads after the cutoff period. Consider reassigning the lead or drop them into a sales-rejected lead nurturing programs. I wrote about this in a recent blog post called Funnel Goo.

Step 2: Build/Modify Nurturing/Scoring Programs to Plug the Leaks
If you discover a significant leak where sales is rejecting or ignoring an unusually high number of MQLs for example, build a specific nurturing program just for this leak. If a relationship has already been established with a sales rep, marketing can continue to own the conversation but can, through marketing automation make it appear that the message came directly from the sales person.

Sales people love this, since they don’t have to do much except answer their phone or their email, should the lead reach out. Marketing loves it because they regain control of an already nurtured lead, one that marketing has already spent time and money to acquire and nurture.

You might also consider creating a separate sales-rejected lead scoring program just for this group. For example, say you are getting lots of web leads who turn out to be college students. Sales rejects these, but marketing can nurture and add them to a long-term scoring program, tracking their activities all the way through graduation and onto their initial career path.

By the time they have the ability to make a purchase they already have a great long-standing relationship with you! Granted it’s a long-term approach, but what better way to grow your own leads who are often literally raving fans by the time they reach career readiness.

Step 3: :Leverage Better Data to Drive More Relevant Conversations
If you followed and adopted Resolution #3, you’ve repaired your data to the point that you can start to really start taking advantage of it. Target your new found segments to take relevance to an even higher level. Your segments will get smaller and your messaging more precise. This is where you can really start to make traction towards right time, right person right message targeting.

Step 4: Communicate What’s Working

Larger companies in particular sometimes work in Silos. Different regions or verticals generate a particularly successful campaign without word of it getting out to the rest of the global organization. China might have tremendous success with an SMS campaign combined with email that could be re purposed and replicated elsewhere for instance.

When something works, especially if it beats your existing benchmarks, don’t keep it a secret. Make sure there is a vehicle that communicates the wins on a regular basis. Maybe an internal marketing newsletter or “Win of the Month” internal email. Often teams end up competing for Best Metric awards.

See all 6 Marketing Automation New Year's Resolutions:

Resolution #1 - Establish Corporate Alignment
Resolution #2 - Establish One View of the Truth
Resolution #3 - Establish Data Standardization
Resolution #4 - Fill in the Content Gaps
Resolution #5 - Tighten the Plumbing
Resolution #6 - Harvest the Unknown Visitor

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

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6 Marketing Automation New Year's Resolutions - #4

2010-12-07T07:58:00.000-08:00

Marketing Automation New Year's Resolution #4:
FILL IN ALL ASSET CONTENT GAPS

There are 4 parts to this:

Step 1:

The first step is to inventory all your existing marketing assets. Make a complete list of everything you've got. Videos, White Papers, Recorded Webinars, Product Brochures, even content-rich web pages. If you have different Geos or marketing groups, make sure they all contribute to the list. You might discover assets you didn't even know you had.

Step 2:

Identify which stage of the buying cycle each asset belong in - Early Mile, Middle Mile or Last Mile. Each stage requires a different conversation, along with a different set of assets.

For example, when a lead first enters your universe they may be just kicking the tires, wanting to learn more about your capabilities. This is typically the Early Mile, so the content they receive should focus on things like Thought Leadership. Start the conversation by establishing your company's credibility as a viable solution provider. It should answer the question, "Why Buy?"

The Middle Mile focuses on "Why Buy from Me". So assets that differentiate your company's services/products is best. Prospects may not be ready to review specific product specs just yet, but they usually want to know the specific benefits of your company.

The Last Mile is the final evaluation period. Spec sheets, pricing promos, etc. It's finally all about you. Focus on answering the question, "Why Buy from Me Now."

Step 3:

Once you've done a complete Asset Inventory and mapped out which buying stage each asset belongs in, it will be very clear where you are asset rich and where you are asset poor. You may have plenty of assets in the Early Mile and Last Mile, but not much in the Middle Mile area. Wherever your gaps are, the next step is to fill those gaps ASAP.

Step 4:

Once you start delivering these assets you can determine which ones are contributing the most to revenue. There are usually a few solid winners and some solid losers as well. Map out the most effective at contributing to revenue and create more just like them. This keeps the focus on New Year's Resolution #1, Align with the Goal of the CEO.

6 Marketing Automation New Year's Resolutions - #3

2010-11-26T09:33:00.000-08:00

Marketing Automation New Year's Resolution #3:
ESTABLISH DATA STANDARDIZATION

There are 4 parts to this:

Step 1: Establish a Standardized Data Set
Collectively establish and agree on a list of standard data fields. What fields do you consistently need to capture? Once you establish your master set of fields, make a Data Dictionary out of it. Convert to pick lists wherever possible – avoid open text fields, since there is no way to consistently score, report or segment on them. Spread the word that this is the Standard Data Set.

Step 2: Enforce the Standardized Data Set at every Acquisition Source
Review every data acquisition source and convert the process to the Standardized Data Set dictionary. Forms, list uploads, you name it.

Step 3: Append Incomplete Data fields
It’s hard to target a marketing campaign to specific Job Functions if the field is only 10% complete. Append those fields that are important for segmentation and/or scoring first. Then focus on filling in the remaining blanks.

Step 4: Build a “Data Washing Machine” to clean existing bad data
Normalize as many fields as possible. Start with all the open text fields you always wanted to leverage for scoring and/or segmentation but couldn’t.

Step 5: Merge and Purge
Clean up your duplicate records and build a process that requires a search for existing records prior to creating new ones.

Step 6: Keep the New Data, Discard the Old Data
Aging plays an important role in overall DB health. According to Eloqua, Lists older than 1 year have a decrease of 25% in open rates and 12% in CTR. Create active and inactive contact groups and treat appropriately.

See all 6 Marketing Automation New Year's Resolutions:

Resolution #1 - Establish Corporate Alignment
Resolution #2 - Establish One View of the Truth
Resolution #3 - Establish Data Standardization
Resolution #4 - Fill in the Content Gaps
Resolution #5 - Tighten the Plumbing
Resolution #6 - Harvest the Unknown Visitor

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

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6 Marketing Automation New Year's Resolutions - #2

2010-11-19T09:35:00.000-08:00

Marketing Automation New Year's Resolution #2:
ALIGN TO ONE VIEW OF THE TRUTH

There are 4 steps to this:

Step 1: Fully Integrate Marketing Automation to CRM
Sales enablement tools are a crucial component of marketing automation. It is marketing's gift to sales in helping them identify not only a pecking order of who to call first, second, third but also to provide key insight into online behaviors that will drive a much more relevant conversation. Getting Lead, Company and Contact data in full 2-way sync between CRM and Eloqua is what keeps the trust and value of these sales enablement tools in place for salespeople. It's what establishes one view of the truth.

Step 2: Set up a Full Lead Funnel Stage Evaluation Process

If you haven't yet fully adopted the Sirius Decisions Funnel model, you should. It opens up some extremely insightful reporting capabilities.

SUSPECT | INQUIRY | MQL | SAL | SQL | CLOSED WON

How many leads are at each stage of your funnel?
Is this number growing or shrinking?
How long have they been at each stage?
What is the conversion rate to the next stage of the funnel?
What is is costing you to get these conversions at each stage?

Step 3: Align All Reporting to Support the Goal of the CEO
Tracking your marketing effectiveness at the level described above helps provide tangible metrics to the CEO as proof that their goal is being adopted by both sales and marketing, supported, measured and (hopefully) reached.

Step 4: Evaluate the Overall Health of the Data
As you evaluate the metrics above you will begin to spot weaknesses in effectiveness. Certain target groups might be performing better than others for instance. Conversions from Inquiry to MQL may be lower than expected. It's time to take a hard look at the completeness of your data.

You'll never get out of the Batch and Blast era of marketing without focusing on your data. This is typically a huge problem for most companies. Legacy databases, 3rd party list rentals, no data acquisition standards -- the result: incomplete and unreliable data. It's time to evoke a full data standardization process.

See all 6 Marketing Automation New Year's Resolutions:

Resolution #1 - Establish Corporate Alignment
Resolution #2 - Establish One View of the Truth
Resolution #3 - Establish Data Standardization
Resolution #4 - Fill in the Content Gaps
Resolution #5 - Tighten the Plumbing
Resolution #6 - Harvest the Unknown Visitor

Steve Kellogg

-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

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6 Marketing Automation New Year's Resolutions - #1

2010-11-12T09:02:00.000-08:00

This is typically the time of year that many companies revisit their goals, initiatives and 2011 objectives. So in looking ahead to next year, what marketing automation resolutions/goals should you focus on, and in which order?

While this is often driven by your company's overall business objectives, we do know that tackling specific goals in a specific order can greatly influence your chances for long term success - best in class success in fact.

At some point in your career you were probably told that marketing automation is not an event but a journey. It’s so true.

No matter how badly your company wants to be on the marketing automation autobaun at 120 MPH, there is a ramp-up period. You can't fight the laws of physics. So step one for next year is to get everyone over the fact that it is impossible to achieve every goal/resolution first.

Marketing Automation New Year's Resolution #1:
ALIGN WITH THE GOAL OF YOUR CEO

There are 4 steps to this:

Step 1: Aligning with Your CEO:

It goes without saying that making your CEO look good makes you and your team look good. And since the goal of almost every CEO is growth, make sure everyone on your team is clear about what specific kind of growth the CEO is expecting. Is it revenue growth? Is it growth in profit?

Step 2: Align Sales and Marketing Success Metrics:

If marketing measures its success by growth in new leads but sales is measuring success based on growth in sales revenue, this disconnect will prevent establishing true corporate alignment. Eloqua recently launched RPM - Revenue Performance Management, a brilliant concept that best of breed companies seem to have in common as a methodology. For example, just having sales and marketing aligned to the same measurements of success is a huge step towards best in class performance.

Step 3: Determine contribution to Goal by Sales and Marketing

So if the CEO’s goal is $100m in revenue, the next step is to determine the contribution to goal by both sales and marketing. Who owns what percentage of the goal? Does marketing own 60% and sales 40% for example? Get clear about who contributes what. This prevents any year-end finger pointing concerning who didn’t perform.

Step 4: Define Resulting Targets at Each Lead Funnel Stage

Marketing’s next step is to work the funnel backwards in determining the volume you need at each lead stage to achieve your revenue goal. If marketing’s goal is to generate $60m in revenue then you’ll need to determine the quantity of leads required at the SQL stage, the SAL stage, the MQL stage, the Inquiry stage and the Suspect stage in order to reach the goal. Use historical conversion metrics as your guide. If you don’t have these metrics, Sirius Decisions has benchmark conversion data at each stage you can leverage.

Steve Kellogg

-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia

-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

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Left Brain is the New Right Brain

2010-09-03T12:17:00.000-07:00

Are you more Left Brain dominant (logical, analytical, plays it safe) or more Right Brain dominant (passionate, creative, risk taker) in your work?

In general, if you are in IT, chances are you are more Left Brain dominant. If you are in sales or marketing, you are probably more Right Brain dominant.

But when it comes to adopting marketing automation, the left brain is the new right brain, at least for marketers. Being creative, artful and engaging isn’t enough to get your message through all the clutter any more.

Like it or not, we (us marketers) have to start getting (gulp) data-centric. The sad truth is that if your company has been in existence for more than a couple of years, chances are, the quality of your data is awful. I can almost guarantee you that this will severely impact your long-term marketing success.

Even the most expensive marketing automation tools in the world won’t get you results if your message isn’t relevant. You can’t have relevance without good data. You can’t have good data without data standards. You can't have data standards without a process and you can’t have a process without the left brain.

To illustrate, I've created a little graphic that shows how the two brains need to work together in delivering the right message to the right person at the right time. (Notice the double entendre – right person, right brain -- clever eh?)

Marketing automation is definitely a group effort, with both dominant left brainers and right brainers crossing paths and working hand in hand to deliver results.

So fear not right brainers, it’s time to get out of your comfort zone, get technical and embrace data. BTW: There are some great new data tools out there, including Jigsaw and others. Eloqua has a good Data Normalization program that can help as well.

BTW: If you are curious as to whether you are left or right brain dominant, take this interesting little test.

P.S. If the test shows you with equal dominance on both sides, you’re one of us :)

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

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An Easy Way to Increase CTR by 55%?

2010-06-27T16:09:00.001-07:00

An interesting SMB study recently released from GetResponse revealed up to a 55% increase in promotional email CTR if social media links were also present in the email.

In fact the more social media links you include, the higher the click through rate increases, according to the study.

3 social media icons or more: 11.20% average CTR

2 icons: 9.30% average CTR

1 icon: 8.7% average CTR

No icons: 7.20% average CTR

So going from no social media link icons (7.2% CTR) to adding 3 social media icon links (11.20% CTR) actually increases average click thru rates by 55%, again according to the study.

The study also found that when adding just one social media link:

Twitter offered the highest CTR: 10.2%

Facebook: 9.1%

MySpace: 8.7%

LinkedIn: 7.20%

Digg: 5.30%

(Hmmm...the fact that LinkedIn was so low tells me this study was likely from SMB B2C companies)

Also what the study didn’t mention was whether or not the increase in CTR was actually caused by recipients clicking the social media links themselves, thereby causing the uplift in CTR.

Either way, it seems to be a likely candidate to do some quick A/B testing yourself, especially since marketing automation vendors such as Eloqua provides such a easy way to add these icons to your emails.

I’d love to hear any metrics from any testing you do or have already done in this area.

Steve Kellogg

-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

-Join me on: Linkedin | Twitter | Facebook

Photo from ymedialabs.com

Everyone Wants a Discount!

2010-06-11T11:27:00.000-07:00

How many times have we bought something and then realized we could of gotten it cheaper? The avoidance of this pain and embarrassment is what typically fuels our need for discounts, often more than the need to actually save money.

In B2B, many sales reps rely on discounts near the end of the sales cycle as a way of getting stalled leads to take action. For example, it’s the end of the quarter, they are close to making quota but need more sales on the books quickly to make their bonus.

Many marketers however realize that as soon as the “D” word is mentioned, it immediately changes the game. The buying decision process moves from a pragmatic, long-term needs-based evaluation, to a short-term emotional decision. And while the sales rep is happy he/she's made the sale, C-levels need certain margins to keep the Exec Team happy. Isn’t there a way to make the sale and keep the margins higher?

SiriusDecisions recently offered this advice:

Avoid turning to financial levers and discounts too quickly and look at “information voids” which may be causing deals to stall.
Try leveraging tools such as online savings calculators, gap templates and feature/functionality side-by-side comparisons as stimulus offers, which successfully match the needs of the prospect.

By delivering these types of assets at the right time, you will help satisfy the emotional needs of the lead by proving that your product/service will solve their problem and eliminate their pain. If you don’t have these assets, create them ASAP.

Eliminating long-term pain (right solution) is far more valuable than eliminating short-term pain (right price) and the better your assets are at communicating this, the further down the funnel your leads will go, and usually the more loyal they will become.

BTW: Offering a discount too soon is often more harmful as it raises several concerns to a potential buyer:

“I don’t even know if I want your product/service yet, why are you already offering me a discount?”
“Now that you’ve given me a discount, what else can I get?"

Apple doesn’t do discounts. You want an iPad? iPhone? MacBook Pro? You will pay retail for it – but it offers a proven long-term solution.

Apple has done a great job training consumers that retail is the price everyone pays. There are no discounts to be had. Still, despite this, Apple managed so sell over 2 million iPads in less than the first 2 months since its release.

Steve Kellogg

-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

-Join me on: Linkedin | Twitter | Facebook

Images by: http://fordesigner.com

There's No Such Thing as a "Pretty Good" Alligator Wrestler

2010-05-05T14:54:00.000-07:00

While this statement is a great starting point for many topics, if you define the alligator as Data and the wrestler as Data Management, you see where this post is going. You either have really good data management or you live with bad data.

We have found that customers that leverage data quality tools generate an average of 260% more leads per month.

Bad Data Hurts You
Like the wrestler who never really perfected his technique, you can get seriously hurt by bad data. And it’s not just the reporting that gets fouled up, it’s the loss of confidence in those reports, and ultimately the loss of confidence in you to provide accurate information that does the real damage. Once trust in data is lost it is extremely difficult to regain it. You typically have to prove yourself over and over again before any confidence returns.

It’s Not Bad Data, Just Bad Processes
Salespeople fill in fields in their CRM with any answer, just because they are required. Form fields are open text fields instead of pick lists, so anything goes.

6 Steps to “Really Good” Data Management
After surveying other colleagues both internally and externally, (thank you Astadia and Eloqua) the following Best Practices were identified:

Step 1: Establish a Standardized Data Set
Collectively establish and agree on a list of standard data fields. What fields do you consistently need to capture? Once you establish your master set of fields, make a Data Dictionary out of it. Convert to pick lists wherever possible – avoid open text fields, since there is no way to consistently score, report or segment on them. Spread the word that this is the Standard Data Set.

Step 2: Enforce the Standardized Data Set at every Acquisition Source
Review every data acquisition source and convert the process to the Standardized Data Set dictionary. Forms, list uploads, you name it.

Step 3: Append Incomplete Data fields
It’s hard to target a marketing campaign to specific Job Functions if the field is only 10% complete. Append those fields that are important for segmentation and/or scoring first. Then focus on filling in the remaining blanks.

Step 4: Build a “Data Washing Machine” to clean existing bad data
Normalize as many fields as possible. Start with all the open text fields you always wanted to leverage for scoring and/or segmentation but couldn’t.

Step 5: Merge and Purge
Clean up your duplicate records and build a process that requires a search for existing records prior to creating new ones.

Step 6: Keep the New Data, Discard the Old Data
Aging plays an important role in overall DB health. According to Eloqua, Lists older than 1 year have a decrease of 25% in open rates and 12% in CTR. Create active and inactive contact groups and treat appropriately.

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

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5 Lessons in Subscription Management

2010-04-18T19:52:00.000-07:00

The #1 reason people unsubscribe is because they receive irrelevant emails. So assuming you have your segmentation in place, the next step is to focus on subscription management. Rather than just having subscribers globally opt out, providing the option to edit their own communication preferences is considered a best practice.

But what categories should you offer? Preferences by industry, by product type, by type of offer (newsletters, events, product updates, etc)?

Lesson 1:
I’ve seen subscription preference pages that first ask for Job Role, Industry, # of employees, etc. Understand that “Manage Your Preferences” is different than “Update Your Profile”. And while trying to combine both on the same page is very tempting, it usually results in a very busy and often overwhelming form. If it takes longer than 15-20 seconds for someone to update their preferences, you run the risk of subscribers simply checking the “Unsubscribe from All” checkbox instead.

Lesson 2:
Offer an easy way to manage their preferences AND/OR update their profile, but not on the same page. Here’s an example of helping subscribers understand the options:

The one suggestion I might make to the screenshot above is to consider changing the label: “Update Your Profile” to something like “Update Your Career Profile”. This reduces potential confusion as to the difference between Update Your Profile and Update Your Preferences, which could easily be construed to mean the same thing.

Lesson 3:
Make it easy to update both. Avoid the back button. Include a link on the Preference page to also update their career profile. Add a link on their career profile page to also update their subscription management preferences. Back button = bad. Same page link =good.

Lesson 4:
Deciding which subscription preferences to offer depends on the types of content you actually send. If you sell very few products/services you might break it down simply by type; Newsletters, Events, Webinars, Product Promotions, etc.

For those with multiple products or solutions or verticals, you’ll need to identify which core segments you typically send different content to and break it down that way. Is your content geo based? Industry based? Solution based? Product based? A good rule of thumb is to mirror the main menu options you have on your website. Is your site broken down by Geo? Solution? Product Type? Industry? Managing preferences in parallel with website navigation helps keep things in parallel.

Lesson 5:
Don’t use “Update Your Career Profile” as your primary driver to obtain/update explicit information. Keep in mind most people will never see this page unless they are about to unsubscribe and stumble upon this as they update their preferences. Better to gather this type of information through progressive profiling.

This doesn’t mean you can’t ask for additional information on this page. But make it optional, pre-populate as many fields as you can and wherever possible make the fields picklists. Finally make it clear why filling in the fields will benefit them. Try using a headline such as: “Updating your career profile helps us deliver more relevant and timely information.”

SUMMARY
Apple’s new iPad is the latest device your customers can now use to receive your emails. Together with iPhones and other smart phones, these devices have become so personalized that “invading their space” takes on a whole new meaning. People are becoming much less tolerant of non-relevant emails.

Making it easy for them to establish their preferences reduces the dreaded global unsubscribe. And since they’re already in “updating” mode, making it easy for them to also update their career profile is often an easier sell, as long it’s crystal clear what’s in it for them.

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

-Join me on: Linkedin | Twitter | Facebook

Segmenting the Zoo

2010-04-06T10:07:00.000-07:00

Photo by E.G. Bucknell

Let’s say you sell wild animal food and you have a new line of vitamin-enriched foods to announce. Your target market includes all the animals in zoos.

Obviously you wouldn’t send the same announcement out to the whole database. Lions will be interested in learning about the benefits that pertain to them, while flamingos will be interested in relevant benefits to them.

So while you could send a completely different message to each of the 1,857 different animals, is this practical? How do you decide which segments are worth creating and targeting?

Segmentation Best Practices:

Does your segment meet all of the following criteria?

Is this segment possible to produce? Do I have (or can I get) the implicit/explicit data to even capture them?
Is this segment accessible? Do I have their contact information?
Is this segment worthy of a different message than others?
Is this segment fairly stable? Do the members move in and out of this segment quickly or do they remain fairly dormant?
Is the segment substantial enough to be profitable?

If the answer is NO for any of the above, targeting your message to this group is probably not worth it.

Steve Kellogg

-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant
-Join me on: Linkedin | Twitter | Facebook

Social Media: The Next Big Content Discovery Tool?

2010-03-19T08:50:00.000-07:00

80% of companies are now using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees.

YouTube is now the 2nd largest search engine in the world. It is also fast becoming the World’s largest product review site.

25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 brands are links to user-generated content.

78% of consumers trust peer-to-peer recommendations, while only 14% trust advertisements

SEARCH is a significant reason to adopt a formal social media strategy.

In fact in the near future, social media my drive an entire paradigm shift in the way we conduct search. Content may begin to find us through social media networks, rather than the other way around.

For the complete story, check out this enlightening and entertaining Social Media Revolution video on YouTube.

Steve Kellogg

-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant