It's All About Revenue Blog

It is great to see how the concepts of Revenue Performance Management have really taken off in the past 12 months. Thus, with great pleasure, the authors of this blog have decided to continue the conversation on Eloqua’s new blog It’s All About Revenue. There, we will have more perspectives from a broader set of sales and marketing professionals, more war stories, and certainly no shortage of opinions!

We will continue to share insights and learnings from The Revenue Lifecycle that help companies with the “how do I?” side of managing revenue growth consistently quarter over quarter. See you on the other side.

I can’t help but draw an analogy to the classic “Nature vs. Nurture” debate.  Let’s look at some comparisons.

• Nature refers to the role that “genetics” plays in the development of a person’s behavior or personality traits
• Nurture refers to the role that the “environment” plays in the development of a person’s behavior or personality traits

If you were to compare this to a prospect, you would say that

• Nature = Profile Fit which refers to the role that the prospect’s company and prospect’s attributes (size, title, etc.) plays in their ability to buy
• Nurture = Level of Engagement which refers to the role that the content or information the prospect has received plays in their ability to buy

When marketing implements a nurturing program, I think it is pretty clear that the focus is on “level of engagement”, but the added dimension that is not considered is time.  So at a high level I believe there are two key types of nurturing programs.

Short Term Nurturing – “Nurture for Leads”

• Goal: to help create more qualified leads for sales. 
• Content: top performing campaigns and offers
• Frequency: every 3-4 days or weekly
• Usage: more common
• Example: A “Welcome Program“, which nurtures new leads to your database. 

Longer Term Nurturing – “Nurture for Life”

• Goal: stay top-of-mind with prospects, so when a business event occurs they come to you first 
• Content: best practice and value-add content
• Frequency: monthly or quarterly
• Usage: less common (if automated)
• Example: it can be as simple as a newsletter or more complex based on roles/needs.  A customer of ours Administaff, who focuses on full-service HR offerings, has a great longer term nurturing program.  Customers only greater than a specific size can leverage their services.  So if a customer was too small, they used to move them to “disqualified”.  But a smart marketer realized that all companies grow in size over time.  So now, rather than disqualifying them, they send a monthly HR best practices newsletter to stay in touch, and when a company reaches critical size – they will come to Administaff first as they have remained top of mind.

So whatever nurturing you choose to do – do it now, and don’t worry about getting it 100% right the first time. 

Guest poster Jocelyn Brown, Manager Strategic Customer Success at Eloqua, has spent pretty much her whole career in Digital Media. In addition to supporting her customer’s success, Jocelyn is passionate about the intersection of the creativity of marketing and science of technology. In this post, she looks at 7 elements that help drive continued success with your marketing automation operation. Thanks Jocelyn for your insight!

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In my role at Eloqua I have the privilege of working with some of our largest global customers.  Once the stars have aligned, the CRM and data mart are integrated, logins have been provisioned and training has been rolled out, I have observed a few things that keep things running smoothly and drive success.

Across our successful global clients these are the common elements:

• Local Champions – Whether by division, product group or geographic region you need people in the field who provide in house support and guidance to your user community.  This will help you reach your goals around adoption, compliance, a feedback mechanism and deliver unique value to each area of the business.

• Town Halls – There is no better way to drive best practices and innovation than to share among peers.  In addition to the multitude of ways that Eloqua connects our users it is important to have your own community share organization specific examples of excellence (plus nothing drives innovation like a little competition.)

• Technical Environment Expert – Having an expert of your environment with your solution provider is a no-brainer for a large global account, though this can easily be an internal or partner resource.  This person should be connected within your organization and the solution provider – participate in their community, engaged with Product Management, on steering committees etc.  They will drive efficiencies, provide a highly trained technical resource to interface with other parts of your organization, along with providing proactive solution support.
• Bi-Annual onsite meetings – The project does not end with the completion of training.  To get the most out of your investment and to continue to be best in class you should be getting together at least twice a year with your account team.   You should expect to get the benefit of them working with other customers like you and a fresh perspective on how they can support your marketing goals.

• Governance – Shared technology requires a shared set of rules.  Typically these cover qualifications for access, scenario based training, campaign checklists, naming conventions, and data practices.  Since the heart of marketing automation is good data that last one is critical.

• Sales Visibility – Marketing now owns a ton of data that is crucial for the sales organization.  The more you make it available and useful the better.  Marketing and sales alignment is that last mile of productivity but transparency is the first step.

• Active Executive participation – Marketing automation adds immediate and obvious value to the marketing organization but you need to make sure that it is driving visible value to your Executive team.  Find at least one report that will engage your executive and have them participate in the value delivered to the organization (plus a little extra visibility with the boss never hurts.)

There are certainly more and I would love to hear what you think they are.

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But I’m also amazed by how many of these brilliant marketers can’t provide a succinct answer when I ask the question: what is the goal of this campaign?

Whether it’s an existing campaign that is “expected” or the new one you’re spending all your waking (and some of your sleeping) hours planning, if you can’t explain the goal, is it really worth all your time and effort?

Let’s recall the SMART method of creating goals…

• Specific – What is it exactly that you’re trying to accomplish?
• Measurable – How will you know you’re successful?
• Achievable – BHAGs are motivating, but are you capable of reaching this goal? Do you have the necessary tools/budget/know-how to attain it?
• Realistic – How realistic is it?
• Timed – Set the clock. When will you accomplish it?

It’s not hard and it won’t take more than a few minutes from your jam-packed day, but the time you spend on it may be the difference between marketing effectiveness and just more work down the rabbit’s hole.

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A great database helps you identify, profile and target the right people, at the right time.  So if your ability to communicate is only as good as your data, what should you be reviewing to make sure your database is healthy?

Start with the following metrics based on the Demand Lifecycle™ …

Then continue looking at metrics within the context of the following:

• Identify – which metrics help you identify your most qualified contacts.
• Profile – which metrics help you understand which values in your database you need completed in order to profile your contacts.
• Target – which metrics give you the ability to understand which segments in your database that you need to target.

A healthy database is the foundation for any campaign.  And it’s important to make sure you are always evaluating the database using the metrics and approach described above.

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Marketers (and demand generators) have to be good storytellers.  They have such a small window of opportunity to engage a person with an idea or message, they need to make it count every time.  A great book was written by Chris Heath and Dan Heath, called “Made to Stick“, and it is a book on why some ideas survive and some die.  They summarize this in six key principles that can be articulated in one sentence: Simple Unexpected Concrete Credentialed Emotional Story (or SUCCESs).

I thought it would be worthwhile to examine the six principles they discuss, and see how marketers could take advantage of these concepts to tell better stories.

Principle 1: Simplicity

It’s not good enough to be concise, you need to be concise and profound. “A one sentence statement that is so profound that an individual could spend a lifetime learning it”.  Marketers face this challenge every day – whether it is trying to develop your next brand platform or watching the available spaces countdown in your ad word editor.  How can you communicate your message so that it drives others to think,  and continue to be interested?  This is probably the toughest part of effective marketing.

Principle 2: Unexpectedness

To get people to pay attention to your ideas, “We need to violate people’s expectations. We need to be counterintuitive.”  And it isn’t enough that you just shock or surprise someone, you need to generate real interest or your idea won’t last.  Marketers are some of the best at coming up with creative ways to present their message – one of my favorite customer campaigns recently was Tanberg’s “I want my hour back“.  Which posed an interesting question on “what would you do if you could get 1 hour back?” And then tied it to Tandberg’s video conference solution as a way to get that hour.

Principle 3: Concreteness

We need to make our ideas clear, and to do that, we need to explain those ideas in terms that are real.  Although some analogies can be very successful – they can also be a crutch.  If you are a marketer who has a complex solution or service – try and speak in terms that your customers can relate to and understand.

Principle 4: Credibility

Sticky ideas have to carry their own credentials.  Meaningless stats and calculations don’t always leave people convinced something is true.  A good example of this is the concept of email deliverability – no matter how data shows this is important, a much more compelling argument is “have you ever gotten a flaming email from the CEO that one of your campaigns ended up in a prospect’s junk mail?”  All of a sudden a story on bad email deliverability has more credibility than any number of stats you could present.

Principle 5: Emotions

“We are wired to feel things for people, not for abstractions”.  And we all know that people buy more on emotion than logical choice.  So how can a marketer create a connection with their prospects?  The importance of relevancy cannot be understated in marketing communications.  I believe there are four dimensions of relevancy (personalization): content, timing, delivery and sender. For more details on this concept – check out this article.

Principle 6: Stories

The best way to get people to act on your ideas, is to tell  stories.  By telling stories you mentally prepare yourself and others to deal with situations when they occur.  The best marketers and sales people in my organization, are the ones that have either lived through or learnt the key stories that make our customers great, and can tell them time and time again.

So there you have it, six principles to making your ideas stick.  So the next time you are tempted to rewrite all of your customer case studies into the same boring generic format (Pain, Solution, Results), think twice.  Maybe it is time to figure out how you can leverage the six principles on your stories and really “make it stick”.

Hey look kids, there's Big Ben, and there's Parliament! --Clark Griswold

Eloqua’s recent Customer Success tours have spawned good discussion around lead nurturing.  One question that stuck out to me was “When do you stop nurturing a lead?“

Let’s start by reviewing the basics of a good nurturing program…  First, the goal: to progress a lead from one lead stage to the next with the goal of acquiring a new customer or of retaining or developing an existing one.  To obtain a new customer though, you have to start by building a relationship.

Before you go crazy with marketing automation and lead management, let’s think about the journey.  First, recognize where your lead is in your funnel.  Is your intended audience comprised of suspects that you know little about? Are they sales rejects – not yet ready to purchase? Are they pure responses – someone who has responded to a campaign, but who doesn’t yet meet the qualification criteria necessary to send them to Sales for follow up?

Tailor the campaign content, frequency of communication, and messaging vehicle to funnel stage.  Many clients shared successes around their welcome programs.  This early-stage opportunity allows frequent communication and can often yield high conversion.  For sales rejects, less frequent but more personalized content that relates to your original interaction may be more appropriate.

But back to the question at hand:  just how long is this journey?  Sirius Decisions reports that the leads in your database will likely make a purchase within 24 months – either from you or from your competitors.  By process of elimination, the journey may be short for two groups within your target audience – those that convert on to the next stage – and into another phase of the relationship – and non-responders.  (If someone hasn’t clicked or been prompted to visit your site following your communication, it’s just not working.  Remove them, set their status to inactive and try a different tactic to re-engage them.) 

The most challenging group is like an annoying ex-boyfriend – they show occasional interest but just can’t commit.  They click but don’t convert.  They’re active, just not active enough for our pipeline-loving taste. 

Depending on the length of your sales cycle, you may consider several scenarios.  Try mixing up the channels - introduce new tactics such as direct mail, phone outreach, or social media if you’ve not previously.  If your benefit-focused campaign has exhausted all enticement, invite them to subscribe to your e-newsletter or some less-specific content in order to preserve the relationship without the burden of creating additional content.  Conversely, a polite but bold campaign that requests the user to bluntly signal their intention gets to the heart of the matter. 

“We noticed that you’d not responded to our recent emails. We don’t want to continue to fill your inbox if you’re not interested.  If you’d like us to continue to periodically send you information, please click here. Otherwise, we’ll remove you from our regular communications.” 

Bottom line:  There’s no exact answer to how long your nurturing program should last.  Above all, remember, this is a relationship you’re building.  Even if frequency and format change, it’s worth it to stay in touch.

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In the post Driving Demand for Your Online Events, we covered 4 key areas to focus on in order to not only get people to register for your webinar, but also to drive attendance. But it doesn’t stop there. The success of your webinar continues past the day of the event. Here are a few tips on maximizing the investment of your successful online event.

Click image to watch this 2 minute video!

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As we begin 2010, think of ways you can create points of reference within your organization where you can create standards.  Then evaluate and compare against past performance to ensure you are improving your overall marketing effectiveness.

Standards should be created in each of the four disciplines of the Demand Lifecycle™ – lead management, contact management, campaign management and marketing effectiveness. 

To get you started, Eloqua Best Practice recommends the following standards for measurement to create a baseline for evaluation and comparison.

Demand Lifecycle(TM) Recommended Metrics for Benchmarking

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I was thinking that there are many parallels between how you run a successful fantasy football season, and what it takes to run a successful Demand Generation organization. Indulge me…here we go.

It’s All About How You Matchup Against the Competition

Fantasy football is all about knowing your players and how they matchup against their opposing teams that week.  Even though you may have a great QB, if he is facing the no. 1 pass defense, maybe you should sit him that week. Well the same goes for marketing campaigns.  Many marketers today are using tools that allow them to see how prospects are visiting their website, and what they searched on to get there (great blog on search queries here).  This is becoming a new way of targeting follow-up campaigns or driving lead scores.  The reason search queries are so powerful, is that you know exactly what the prospect was thinking when they came to your site, how deep they are in their buying process, and are they evaluating any of your competition (“us vs. them”)?  By understanding who you are up against, you can zero-in on the strengths to highlight, and weaknesses to defend.

It’s Hard to Know Everything, So Rely on Others for Advice

There are so many things that go on during an NFL week, that it near impossible to stay on top of everything.  I heavily rely on data and advice provided to me by ESPN and other sites.  This allows me to stay on top of key trends and changes during the week.

Well the same goes with Demand Generation.  I am lucky at Eloqua to be involved with hundreds of successful customers, but not everyone has that luxury.  Get engaged with a community, read blogs (such as this one), and spend time with other demand generation professionals (see Eloqua Customer Success Tours).  Many marketers admit that they “don’t know what they don’t know”, but by spending time learning from others, you can at least “know more about what you don’t know”.

Time Kills All Deals (Inquiries)

In Fantasy Football timeliness of action is so critical.  Whether it is picking up a player on the waiver wire, or accepting a trade offer from another team.  You need be ready to take action, every day, every hour, every minute.  Well the same goes for Demand Generation.  You have heard the phrase “time kills all deals”, but how about “time kills all inquiries”?  In a study completed by M.I.T., they showcased that hours matter when following up to inquiries.  In fact, the chances of converting an inquiry to a qualified lead, is increased by 600% if you call in the first hour vs. the second hour. 600%!  That is really unbelievable.

Well there you have it.  If you are reading this article and won your fantasy football season, perhaps you should consider a career in Demand Generation.  Either that or you were just lucky enough to grab Chris Johnson or Aaron Rogers this year.  See you at the Superbowl.

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