The Giant Book of MARKETING AUTOMATION

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1 The Giant Book of MARKETING AUTOMATION

2 Marketing Automation is one of the most important revolutions in B2B marketing in recent years. It has changed B2B marketing from a cost center to an important revenue driver and has transferred the role of engaging and educating prospects and clients about products and services from Sales to Marketing. According to the research firm Gleanster, 77% of CMOs at top performing companies indicate that their most compelling reason for implementing marketing automation is to increase revenue. Yet, marketing automation is far from being a marketing silver bullet. In fact, it s not marketing automation, but the marketing programs that you generate via the platform that bring in the revenue. Marketing automation platforms have opened the door to a new kind of marketer - what the Pedowitz Group calls Revenue Marketer. These marketers are familiar not only with the traditional skills of marketing, but also in lead and demand generation and are able to consistently drive new leads down the funnel. Revenue Marketing requires marketers to add new skills in addition to the traditional branding and PR. Modern B2B marketers require mastery of social media, working with cloud-based technologies and even coding basic HTML. Marketing automation is where these new marketers thrive. While Marketing Automation holds great promise, this promise is also hard to realize. There are several challenges for succeeding with Marketing Automation: The steep learning curve in setting up and operating the platform. The constant need for new content for nurturing. The lack of sufficient data or tools for a good segmentation. However, don t despair! Here is a list of 20 hacks that can propel your marketing to new heights: 1. Create segments on data that matters The old segmentation, that was based on SIC codes and job titles, is no longer relevant. In a world with plethora of data, marketers should do more. According to MarketingSherpa, marketers are doing a good job segmenting based on triggers or past campaign behavior, but are hardly making use of the data on the web in order to better segment and send relevant content. Marketing Tactics Automatically send based on triggers 39% Segment campaigns based on behavior 37% Dynamically personalize content 36% Segment campaign based on sales cycle 28% Allow subscribers to specify preferences 21% Include survey trivia or games Use loyalty programs Dedicate resources to produce content Make use of animated gifs 18% 14% 12% 11% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% Source: MarketingSherpa I 02

3 The vast amount of data on the Web, combined with data from Marketing Automation and CRM, generate a powerful segmentation platform. For example, knowing what your prospects are talking about in social media or the technologies that they use on their website can boost any segmentation to new levels of effectiveness. 2. Create ultra-personalized communications While the mean Click-Through Rate is 3.6%, according to Silverpop, the top quartile of companies managed to increase it to 8.8% while the bottom quartile got only 0.6%. What is one of the main differences between the top and the bottom performers? The answer is: relevancy of their communications and its resonance with the audience. Today, the amount of data that exists on the Web as well as in companies CRMs allow for much more personalized communication. Research shows that personalized communication is significantly more effective. According to the analyst firm Forrester, companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads, at 33% lower cost. One successful ultra-personalized campaign that we performed at Mintigo leveraged PPC budget data that we acquired through big-data analytics. The campaign goal was to convince B2B companies that are heavily invested in PPC to try out Mintigo. Therefore, in our , we said: Our data shows that you spent $X on PPC last month, would you like to hear about a solution that can deliver better ROI? This approach tripled our results as compared to previous s. 3. Introduce your reps, before they make the first call With marketing platforms, s typically go out of the mailbox of one of the marketing team members or simply from marketing. However, Marketing Automation platforms allow you to send communications directly from the sales rep or business development rep that is responsible for the account. The advantage in this approach is that prospects get familiar with your rep even before they make the first call. In addition, it provides the feeling of a one-to-one conversation between the prospect and your company. This tactic can also create great opening lines for sales conversations: Wondering if you had the chance to read the ebook that I sent over yesterday? It s a great way in helping Sales to get their foot in the door. I 03

4 4. Leverage stage-based nurturing programs Nurture tracks can be either linear or stage-based. The linear nurturing program is the easiest to build when you are just starting off. Linear nurturing can be visualized as a flow of s sent to prospects, one after another, in order to keep prospects engaged. Linear nurturing, however, takes little account of prospects personas, activity or stage in the funnel, as prospects muddle along from one to the next. Linear Nurturing To account for personas, it makes sense to build a stage-based nurturing program where prospects simply switch between modules as they advance through the purchase funnel. In a stage-based nurturing approach, users switch between small modules of nurturing, designed for different products, stages in the funnel, or personas. Linear Nurturing ebook Infographic Whitepaper Infographic Whitepaper As you develop additional personas, you simply add more modules. Some modules can be unique for one persona while others can be applicable to several or all personas. One of the most basic modular nurturing programs can be designed to cater to content needs all the way from the top to the bottom of the funnel, moving prospects between modules as they engage with the content. Stage-based Nurturing In the example above, modular nurturing starts from the top of the funnel (TOFU), where prospects receive more general education like whitepapers, ebooks and infographics. Once they click on one of the s and download the asset, they identify themselves as interested in the industry; therefore, it s time to start educating them on the product. I 04

5 TOFU Nurturing ebook Infographic Whitepaper MOFU Nurturing Infographic Case Study BOFU Nurturing Whitepaper Demo Pricing Whitepaper Middle of the funnel (MOFU) track is where they receive more product-related materials, such as case studies, product-related whitepapers and product-related how to infographics. If they click on one of these assets, you can infer that they have some interest in your product, and you can move them into the bottom of the funnel (BOFU). BOFU is where you try to approach the sale directly, through offers and also via sales outreach. Overall, this example is very simple and rudimentary, but stage-based nurturing can grow very complex in order to accommodate various lead types, stages and personas. There can also be nurturing modules for recycled leads, opportunities or any other track that you may think of. When nurturing tracks are becoming more advanced and complex, stage-based system can make life a lot easier for marketers as it allows for easier updates of content. 5. Use Teleprospecting in your nurturing Lead Development Reps, Business Development Reps, or Teleprospecting, whatever they are called in your organization, can be valuable assets for every nurturing program. There is so much that can do, and at the end of the day, a phone call at the right time can do a great job pushing leads to the right direction. There are different types of calls to nudge prospects to sign up for a webinar, basic prospecting to a full prospecting call, with the aim of engaging to begin the sales process and become an opportunity. BDRs should be a part of your nurturing by alerting them when calls should be made. However, the hard part is to determine the right moment for a call. If you push the call trigger too fast, your reps aren t going to be happy as they are going to hear a lot of rejections! Prospects are not going to be happy, as they will feel that you are practicing aggressive marketing. I 05

6 However, when the call arrives just at the right time, more prospects will say yes, and this may be just the right nudge to push them towards engaging with sales. The only question left is, when is the right time? While there is no silver bullet, the best approach is lead scoring, which accounts for multiple touches in the funnel. When a prospect reaches a certain score, automate CRM tasks for the reps to call him or her immediately. Users are typically most receptive just after they download an asset from your website. 6. If it s not killer content - KILL it! 70% of people prefer to get to know companies through content rather than through ads, according to Content+. However, bad content carries heavy penalties for companies, according to IDG Connect North American IT Buyer Survey: 22% of the buying process is wasted with ineffective content Vendors with bad content are 27% less likely to be considered on the buyer short list Bad content reduces the likelihood of closing a sale by 40% In addition, there is a direct cost to bad content in terms of unsubscribe rate (see section 8, Calculate Opportunity Cost ). It takes a lifetime of good content to win people s trust, and just one bad asset for them to unsubscribe. In a time where everyone produces content, marketers need to break from the pack every time. When marketers send content, they are asking for people s time filling out forms and also reading the content. Therefore, bad content is breaking your trust with your readers. Here is a simple framework for detecting and killing bad content: THE FRIEND TEST Can an industry friend or colleague identify three things he or she learned from your asset? Would they send this to their boss? Or recommend this asset to another friend or colleague? THE TEST Did the asset get higher than average Click Through Rate? Did the landing page get higher than average form completion rate? THE SHARE TEST Was this asset liked, twitted or forwarded by ? Was it covered by industry blogs and publications? If your content did not pass one or more of these tests, it s time to modify it or just scrap it altogether for content that will do a better job. I 06

7 7. Ask your audience for content advice Data can take you a long way towards improving and more relevant content. At some point, though, you would like to talk to some of your prospects to better understand what type of content they are looking for. Is it the how to guides, infographics or thought leadership pieces that they find most useful? There are several ways that you can reach your audience: The old-fashion way: Simply sample a few who downloaded a recent asset and them asking for 5 minutes of their time to get feedback on the piece. Connect with a few prospects on social networks. a quick survey a couple of days after downloads. This can be risky, as it may result in high unsubscribe rate and low response rate. Try offering a reward. Use a feedback widget on your landing pages. GetSatisfaction, Kampyle, and WebEngage are all great tools to get feedback from your audience on a regular basis. 8. Calculate opportunity cost Bad and irrelevant content is expensive. It s not just about the money spent for creating it, but also the damage to your brand and to your marketing database. Specifically, it s the cost of all of those precious prospects that unsubscribed. Calculating Opportunity Cost Average Cost per Lead Acquisition Example $ 45 x Number of s Sent 50,000 x Unsubscribe Rate 0.6% = Opportunity Cost $ 13,500 Here is a case in point: according to marketing provider Silverpop, underperforming s get 0.6% unsubscribe rate. Therefore, by sending a blast to 50 thousand people, you get 300 people opting out of your list. If your average acquisition cost is $45 per lead, you just lost $13,500. This is your case for investing in good content and sending it in a timely, data-driven manner. Every time you send bad content, not only that you don t get the benefits, but also you lose people who opt out of your list. I 07

8 9. Repurpose content Marketers spend more than 25% of their marketing nurturing on content marketing, yet most struggle to produce enough content to support their marketingnurturing efforts. It s hard to generate stellar content, but when you have a great asset, make sure to get the most out of it. One asset can be communicated in several ways in order to cater to people s preferences: For example one great ebook can be turned into the following assets: Webinar Video Blog post Repurposing can generate four great content assets and help you reach prospects via the medium that they prefer. Those who prefer short form can read the blog, those who prefer long form will read the ebook and those who would like to just listen can simply watch the webinar or video. 10. Create sequels If you have a successful asset that you already repurposed, just follow the lead of the movie industry and create a sequel It may even be better than the original! The point is that great content can easily lead to more great content. See for example how Steven Covey did it. His first book: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was a bestseller. To cash in on the success, he titled his next book: The 8th Habit, thus building on the success of his first title. This can be applied to any form of content. 5 Successful Tips blog post can be followed up with 5 Additional Successful Tips post. A How to guide can be followed by More Ways to. Creativity has no boundaries. 11. Same content - different costume If you only get a 4% click-through rate, it does not mean that you have to give up on those other 96%. The fact that someone did not click on your does not mean that they did not find it interesting. There can be myriad of other reasons: It was bad timing. Your just came in the middle of a torrent of other s. The subject line was not attractive. Your did not render well on mobile. They already have a stack of whitepapers on the desk at the moment. In the world of content marketing, re-gifting is allowed! You can take your content marketing asset and repackage it. A whitepaper can get a new name, landing page and an , and become a whole new asset. A webinar can change its title and promoted to the same audience again. I 08

9 12. Understand your personas personally Targeting marketing by persona improves click-through rate by 16%, according to a research by HubSpot. A well-defined persona allows you to put yourself in your prospect s shoes and discover common interests, pain points and content that resonate better. Your personas should have similar backgrounds, demographics, goals and objections. Big-data can help you discover your personas. In fact, by scanning the social web, it s possible to identify buying signals and interests of your total universe of prospects. Big-data helps you find buyers with common interests and buying signals that align with your product. It also helps you figure out what messages will engage segments today. 13. Spend more time automating Despite the name, Marketing Automation requires a fair amount of manual labor in order to work. The main challenge is that it takes time to set and test automated nurturing tracks and scoring programs. Therefore, sometimes the easiest path is simply to generate a simple one-time process in order to get things out the door. Marketing Processes that Need Automation Lead Processing At least one Nurturing Track Lead Scoring Follow-Up s Alerts and Reminders Just remember that Excel does not scale and the sooner and more robust your automation processes are, the easier it will be for you in the future. Here are a few processes that are worth automating, if you have not already done so: Lead Processing Everything from assigning leads to campaigns in your CRM to making the decision to push a lead to Sales. Lead Nurturing Get at least one generic lead nurturing program in place in order to keep your leads engaged. Don t just settle for blasts every once in a while. Nurturing can maintain high touch with leads before they are contacted by Sales. Lead Scoring Scoring provides visibility to both you and Sales about how ready the lead is. Follow-up s Automate follow-up after events and webinars. Alerts and reminders Make sure that your best leads are contacted by Sales by setting alerts after an agreed upon amount of time. I 09

10 14. Cross-sell content Downloading content is one of the signals that we marketers are looking for to infer interest and fit. It shows that a prospect is entering some research phase about the product or industry. This is especially true for Middle of the Funnel (MOFU) content. Therefore, this is a great point in time to deepen engagement with some of your other content. Here is a great example from KISSmetrics, a Web Analytics tool. KISSmetrics is known for producing great infographics. Right after you subscribe to their blog, you receive an offer to review some of their most successful infographics. Thank You For Subscribing =) Explore our exclusive infographics below... 6,554 people like this. How do colors affect purchases? Which U.S. brands are spending the most on advertising? Bounce Rate Demustified There are three great ways to cross-sell your content: In the thank you page, after submitting a form for downloading one piece of content Within a thank you that contains a link to the asset With a dedicated one or two days following the download. This is a great trick used by Hubspot. A few days after downloading one of their content assets, you may receive another piece of content on the same topic I 10

11 15. Provide more visibility to Sales 79% of leads never convert into sales, according to MarketingSherpa. One of the great promises of Marketing Automation is to provide a platform for communications between Marketing and Sales, and specifically, to convey valuable leads that should get Sales reps attention. Best Bets My Watch List Web Activity View: Edit I Anonymous Web Activity My Create New View Name Account Last Interesting Moment Status Jeffrey Waits Zthes Enterprise Clicked Link in 20-tips-improving- -fulfill 1 week ago Lead Sue Morber Fixote Inc Milestone: Accelerated lead nurturing; shows Heavy Interest 6 days ago Need Analysis Marc Lakwski Eble Systems Sales Clicked: Clicked link in Eble Systems-Marketo Customers Milestone from patricia.roosa@demo.marketo.net 1 week ago Contacted Rosa Simonich Simonich Family Web: Visited the pricing page 4 days ago Negotiation/Review Jessica Cephus Dbax Limited Web: Searched for Marketo 6 days ago Contacted Deborah Willman Oleval Inc. Milestone: Lead was converted 3 days ago Prospecting Dennis Guenther Bsize Associates Sales Opened: Opened message Etlive Inc-Marketo Lead Management from patricia.roosa@demo.marketo.net 1 weeek ago Qualified/1st Demo Done Priority Some Marketing Automation platforms have additional tools that they sell in order to foster better communications. However, even without any tools, you can do a pretty good job on making sure that high priority leads get the attention that they deserve. Specifically, there are some alerts and tasks that you can set automatically for: Requests to speak to a sales person or demo requests Visits to your pricing page or other bottom of the funnel pages on your website Leads that downloaded content or visited the website multiple times in the past week or so (they may be comparing you with the competition). Requests to speak to a sales person or demo requests The more visibility sales has, the higher the likelihood that your content and nurturing efforts will turn to sales opportunities. I 11

12 16. Score your leads While it sounds like common sense, a good scoring model presents a real challenge. The challenge is twofold: first, developing a model that reflects the value of a lead in reality, and second, agreeing on this model with Sales, which ultimately needs to follow up on the leads with the highest score. Some Marketing Automation platforms offer out of the box scoring model that can be a good starting point. Nevertheless, after the model works for some time, it s a good idea to make changes and tweaks to it. 17. Create ridiculously short forms Reducing the number of form fields from nine to only five increased conversion rate from 10% to 13.4% - a 30% increase, according to Marketo. Furthermore, 62% of prospects rarely leave their real phone number. How about asking for just three fields? First name, last name and business ? I 12

13 Users are willing to share more information based on their stage in the funnel. If they are early in the funnel, downloading a whitepaper, why not try a ridiculously short form with 3 fields to increase your conversion rate even further. There are three ways to get other information you need from the form: 1. Source it from databases such as Data.com through their API 2. Progressive profiling. Ask for more information in every subsequent form. Name and in the first form, company size and revenue in the second form, until you manage to fill out all of the forms that you need. 3. InterestBase. Mintigo can help you not only with the accurate contact information, but also with a lot of other data that you can use to profile your leads. 18. Always analyze your data by persona If you dip one foot in boiling water and the other in ice water, on average, you re comfortable. That s the problem with looking at average performance at the end of a campaign. Every campaign, from the most successful to the worst performing, will look very different when you analyze it by persona. I 13

14 The keyword here is targeting. What you ll learn is that some personas really loved your content, downloaded, and tweeted, while your content did not resonate with others. Therefore, when looking at your campaign results, always segment it to uncover your real performance. 19. Be agile and listen to buying signals. Content is great, but at the end of the day, we are all here to sell. But when is the right time? Sell too soon, and you ll lose prospects. Yet, not selling can be a lost opportunity. This is why you should constantly listen to buying signals. There are buying signals that you can track through prospects behavior, such as visits to your pricing page or multiple visits within one day. There are also buying signals that are based on big-data. The approach at Mintigo is to continuously search big data on the Social Web to discover your total universe of prospects. By matching patterns from your existing customers and pipeline, Mintigo searches and sources business contacts who look like your ideal target. Then, Mintigo extracts intelligence that you can t get elsewhere, like prospect needs and previous purchases across millions of companies. This way, Mintigo can calculate propensity to buy and tell you what products or services your prospects are likely to be interested in. 20. Figure out the right frequency. Advertising frequency has been researched for the past 150 years. It is traditionally attributed to Hermann Ebbinghaus, a German psychologist, who developed the notion of a learning curve. According to the theory, people need to see a message multiple times before it resonates with them. While there are differing views about what the right frequency is, there is little doubt that frequency contributes to overall conversion. Obviously, frequency has its limits, in which people unsubscribe or are annoyed if they see too many ads (see Calculate Your Opportunity Cost"). Here is how you can get higher frequency for your prospects: Set up robust nurturing programs by persona. Launch retargeting ad campaigns through companies like AdRoll, Bizo or Google. Try to get prospects to follow you on social networks. You can try and get more social clout by emphasizing your social calls to action (you can even try pop-ups) Conclusion Marketing Automation is a great platform for marketers. But like any other platform, it's how you use it that determines your results. These 20 growth-hacking tips should help you get the most from your marketing automation platform. I 14