This is the fourth in my series of how the Imperatives of the Marketing Revoloution apply to Business-to-Business (B2B) marketing.  This imperative is titled "Engage Customers with Conversations."   I've included a link to posts on the first three imperatives at the bottom of this post.

Engage is the new “overused” word but it sounds so right…engage, discuss, talk openly. We have to include our prospects and customers in product design and input. We have to listen to the issues they are having…not only with features and functions but with usability, services, support or maintenance. We’ve all heard that product management is changing….Communities are changing the way we get and process feedback. You have to get involved…there are free mechanisms funded with, as Jeffrey Hayzlett former CMO of Kodak and industry thought leader puts it, OPM – Other People’s Money. Of course I mean Twitter, Linked In and Facebook to name a few. Get in and start listening at least. 

Our engagement with customers used to be restricted to our annual customer event, occassional on-site visits, and fly bys at industry trade shows.  Now, thanks to the availability of networks like Linked In and our own private communities, we have the opportunity to be in almost constant dialog with our customers.  You are making key decisions on everything from Product and Marketing strategy to paid search.  Wouldn't it be great to have customer input?  I think many are concerned about tipping their hand, impacting deals in the sales pipeline or not responding to every piece of input customers provide.  But, in reality, customers feel better when you listen and they generally understand that you can't do everything.  The end result of listening has relationship benefits on a 1:1 basis and great benefits on the overall decisions you make.  I think the face-to-face events are still a key piece of the puzzle but the new online community can fill in the long gaps.

The best executed Marketing Automation tactics will fall short if they don't reflect the needs of your customers.

The tools are there...Engage!

Here's a link to the previous posts -

1. Marketing Must be Accountable
2. The CMO as a Change Agent
3. Let Go, Customers Control Your Brand

This is the third in my series of how the Imperatives of the Marketing Revoloution apply toBusiness-to-Business (B2B) marketing.  This imperative is titled "Let Go, Customers Control Your Brand." 

It could be said that this has been the case all along.  In reality, the customer's opinion of your company is always what has driven your brand.  The major difference is the level of communication from customer to customer versus vendor to customer has changed the game.  In the past, a strong marketing organization to influence the opinion of the market regarding their brand by controlling the message and the references and testimonials.  That is no longer the case...social marketing has ended any aspect of control by a vendor.  Now all of your references and realities are out there for the market to learn and understand.

So, how do you respond as a B2B Marketer?  The same way you need to respond to anything these days - with the truth.  What is important for you to do is make sure that the truth is good news.  So, what is important is for you to listen to prospects and customers needs and provide a solution with vision that addresses those needs.  Customers and prospects can articulate their issues and challenges (it's the rare customer that can provide feedback to the design of a product, however).  You need to apply creativity and innovation to addressing those issues and challenges.

The market will buy on message for a while.  There's a groundswell of evidence that many current b2b marketers are not realizing the vision of nurture marketing and lead scoring.  Customers are still buying but expect some lash back in the lead management arena soon.  Customers cannot keep up with the volume of content required for lead nurturing and this is preventing them from realizing the value that vendors have promised. I think it's similar to adding automation at the end of a manufacturing process but not setting up your materials and purchasing.   You can ramp marketing volume without setting up your whole marketing process to support the volume...but I digress. 

So, let's test this theory.  Will customers start to speak up about these issues (it means admitting struggles publicly so that part will be interesting)?  Will any of the "hot" lead management brands start to suffer from this lack of success? 

Here's a link to the previous posts -

1. Marketing Must be Accountable
2. The CMO as a Change Agent

I'm not tethered to my laptop, but I certainly couldn't say that of my iPhone and iPad.  Our new mobile app makes this more true than ever.  Here's my story...

If you're a marketer like me, you are always "on."  I mean you think a lot about marketing even when you're not at work.  Like you, as a consumer and business professional, I am  (as is my immediate family) bombarded constantly by off- and on-line messages, which never fail to get me thinking about the strategy and tactics behind a commercial message that is highly relevant.  I am particularly curious about the communications that completely miss the mark!    I'll also admit that I am a weekend peeker -- on my own marketing initiatives.  I like to know how marketing campaigns are progressing as well as the status of creative reviews, etc.  Don't get me wrong, I do have a life.   And, it just got better with our mobile app!

When I purchased my iPad, I said goodbye and closed my work laptop on Friday evening and used my iPad for everything digital, including managing my work and personal email boxes.  I couldn't, however, fulfill my desire to know the progress or status of some marketing activities or check the numbers on a campaign report, etc.   Sooooo... on occasion I'd boot up my laptop to access our integrated marketing software solution. (More than you think!)  

As of this Monday when we released our mobile app, I can stay with almost 100% confidence that I can power down my laptop on Friday for the whole weekend and still remain informed about my projects.  I am particularly excited about the ability to use my iPad and/or iPhone on workdays that take me away from my desk.   For starters, I plan to take my iPad instead of my laptop to certain industry events for note taking.  It's much more portable and easier to carry, and importantly, I have as much access to any of the marketing information I need -- email marketing reports, post campaign analyses, digital assets, etc.  And when the opportunity arises -- as it often does -- I can pull up a solution brochure and send it to an interested prospect on the spot.  Isn't being mobile with marketing automation awesome?

Check it out --

I was reading the results of a study that challenged B2B marketers long-held belief that human emotions were only a factor in personal purchases, but not commercial ones.  Even without the research, I never believed emotions weren't a factor.  I mean did every human being leave their emotions behind when they arrived at the office?  Quite the contrary, they combined it with the other colleagues on the purchase team. 

Creating relevant email marketing messages and offers takes more than just understanding the organization's business challenges and how you can solve them.  It's about addressing the single key emotion of the buyers -- fear.  In consumer marketing there is an emotional play on Risk and Reward, which does not exist in B2B marketing.  The individual doesn't achieve a personal "reward" for the purchase, which leaves Risk uncountered.  Hence, today's buyer's goal is not to make the best decision, but to avoid exposure to risk.

I think today's marketing automation software aptly equips B2B marketers to adopt relevant B2C tactics, one of which is personalized promotional communications that appeal to the emotional aspects of the purchase.  Use inbound forms to foster 2-way dialogs that result in information capture that reveals something about the individual's thoughts about purchasing solutions for their company.  Face it, it feels more personal when ask about them, not the business.  Use these data, combined with their role and other data to drive dynamic content in your email messages.

You'll still need to focus on the business challenges, but start thinking of your prospects as individuals with human emotions, one of which greatly influences their purchase decisions -- fear. 

If you're an interactive marketing professional who uses email marketing software and email deliverability solutions or you work with clients that do, there's a good chance that you've either asked yourself or have been asked:

 What are the email marketing best practices for:

• Subject Line Length
• Day to Send
• Time of Day to Send
• Copy/Creative Length

First, let's get on the same page with the definition of a best practice.  Wikipedia defines a best practice as a technique, method, process, activity, incentive, or reward that is believed to be more effective at delivering a particular outcome than any other technique, method, process, etc. when applied to a particular condition or circumstance.  

If you're like me, you know that best practices are those tips, benchmark comparisons and guideposts for which marketers must pay.  No one gives it away free.  And those that you find free in the public domain would suffer from oversimplification bias.  That is, it would likely be simplified from the detail so it "applies" to all or most marketers.  The problem is that going too far to simplify the information distorts the original information.   That's industry research reports cost money. The researchers use representative industry samples for their research.  And the reports often show results by B2C versus B2B, by large companies versus small companies, by organization type (client-side versus service provider) and sometimes by industry.  The details matter.

All is not lost, as the beauty of 1:1 marketing is testing.  Test your subject line length.  Test to determine if action words drive incremental opens, click-throughs and conversions.  If you have a marketing automation solution like Aprimo, you can pre-test on a small random sample and then quickly move to production with the winner(s).  I love data-driven marketing, and in particular, the digital channel for the ability to conduct tests in near real-time.  It's a wonderful thing when a marketer has access to actionable data.   So use your experience and talent and answer those questions for yourself.  They're sure to be applicable to your business without caveat.

All dietary preferences aside, what I’m talking about here is planting, nurturing and tending your relationships rather than going for the quick kill. And that’s crucial in order to be taken seriously in the new “trust economy”.

People are bombarded with social media content and social media advertising these days.  From celebrities and sports stars to companies and organizations, having a Facebook page is de rigueur, tweeting the latest activity standard operating procedure.  Your audience has very tiny slivers of attention available for what you have to say, so you’d better make it count. Make it relevant and personal, and worthwhile, too, or you’re dead in the cyberwater.

You can start by being a real person. You’re not your product or service. You’re a living, breathing human being with real interests and opinions to share. Let them be known, and let yourself come through as a person. People can spot a marketing pitch a mile away, and they will block you out as fast as you can say ROI.

People turn to others whose opinions they trust when it comes time to consider a product or service. So you need to learn the skill of identifying the influencers, and develop those relationships. As Chris Brogan and Julien Smith say in Trust Economies: Investigations into the New ROI of the Web:

“The goal isn’t to roam around on social networks handpicking friends. Instead, get involved with communities of interest, and grow these experiences and relationships BEFORE you need them.”

So think long term here, people. If you’re building relationships strictly for business, they will be short-lived. But if you have a genuine interest in ongoing relationships with people, the customer part will follow. Find those people that have something to do with your product and ask them about their own interests – their projects, problems and challenges. And paramount here, you must be honest. If they have something negative to say about your product, respond and take measures to improve it. That’s establishing trust, rather than fishing around for good comments about what you’re selling. They are looking for better ways to do things...not marketing automation.  Start the relationship by listening and learning.

Everyone’s filters are on high alert these days, and it takes time and careful tending to grow your trust base. Don’t squander this opportunity to have it flourish by pressing your marketing agenda.  Get your overalls on and start farming.

B2B demand generation professional are being encouraged to drive nurturing programs to develop prospects with initial interest to the point where they are ready to begin a buying process.  By automating this aspect of demand generation, sales is in the position of working higher qualified leads.  But getting started with this process has more complexity than just defining a nurture campaign and turning it on.  If you are in a position where you are not yet using lead nurturing (you should know that you have a lot of company so don't feel like you are behind), you are probably in one of two general categories for handling leads today

1. You may have an inside sales or telemarketing group that is pre-qualifying inbound leads and setting appointments for your sales team.

2. You may be routing inbound leads directly to your sales team or distribution channel.

In either case, your sales channel is used to a certain quality and volume of leads driving their activity.  If you use Option 1, you likely send a reasonable volume of leads to your sales team and find that a fair number of people are taking appointments to placate your telemarketing team but the deals don't go anywhere so you have a quality problem.  If you are using Option 2, your sales team has gotten used to sifting through your leads and is probably picking out the apparent good leads and ignoring the rest. 

Lead nurturing will clearly help either scenario but it will also disrupt the current volume and quality that sales is handling. So, you need to get your sales team ready for this change and find a way to redirect their effort due to less leads from marketing.

Turning all of these knobs along with defining your nurture campaigns (define the buying stages, aligning content to these stages, defining your different buyers, etc.) is not a simple process.  One thing that might help is a logical way to get started with lead nurturing to help you get started and understand the impact.  Here's one idea...look for more soon.

Revive Nurture - One type of nurturing is used to find lost gems in your current list. This is a great place to start as it doesn't disrupt your current lead gen processes.  It simply finds some lost opportunities and drives some increased volume for your sales teams.  You can run this nurture campaign by identifying contacts that have not interacted with you or responded to any of your outbound activity for a prolonged period (e.g. consider a period equal to your typical buying cycle).  Contact these people to see if they are still interested in hearing from you and offer them some information.  Obviously, you probably won't get a big response but you will likely drum up some opportunities.

Do you have a centralized customer and prospect database that you access to plan, execute, and measure cross-channel 1to1 marketing campaigns?  You're fortunate if your answer is, "Yes."

But... are you done?  I think not, as the pace of change in on-line and digital marketing, coupled with the increased splintering of the web, introduces more and more disparate data that need to be harnessed continuously for marketing -i.e., trigger-communications, interactive dialogs, audience segmentations.  Face it, the ability to frequently modify a marketing database data model, change its update processes, expand audits, and manage the new data sources to sustain the much needed 360-degree view is unrealistic.  Even the best IT staff would be challenged to keep up without making compromises or exchanging long-term strategies for short-term needs.

Don't fret despite my somewhat gloomy intro, as marketers can solve the challenge of data fragmentation -- without IT!

Yes, you heard me correctly!  I'll explain, but first I must go backward in time before forward.  I was never a big fan and stayed away from the industry kool-aid that many drank when they built a virtual marketing database that used campaign management software to create the "single-view" that a marketer could use for segmentations.  (There are many reasons for which I am not a fan, and I can elaborate on those some other time if you should be interested.)  I bring it up because marketers have long had the ability to connect to multiple data sources in order to see a whole customer view, but today's dynamic marketplace reveals limitations and perhaps, obsolescence in yesterday's solution.  How could this be you ask?

On-line and digital customer information is growing at great speed, and the marketer's need to leverage and innovate with it for a competitive advantage is universally embraced.  Marketers need access, and don't have the time to wait for IT and DBAs to load data to the servers to which they have access and map data to the campaign management software, AND to estimate the affect of the additional data on system performance when more data are moved onto the application servers for processing.  That simply doesn't work with the pace of marketing change we are experiencing.

Marketers like me need a campaign management solution that allows me to connect to multiple data sources, adding new ones when and where they emerge quickly.  We need to do this without IT or DBA intervention and without unnecessarily moving data just to create our expanded or new customer view.   

Does anyone know of a marketing automation solution that lets the marketer adjust and expand ever-changing customer view needed for 1:1 marketing communications?  Hmm... I do.
 

I recently had the pleasure of reviewing my daughter's mid-year report card for her sophomore year.  A pleasure because it was all A's, even with AP classes that will earn her college credits.  Yes, I am boastful, but can you blame me?  With these A’s in mind, I got to thinking about where else an array of A’s makes me happy. It’s in 1:1 marketing...  [yep, no kidding!]

As a seasoned marketing practitioner who's been in the trenches for years, using marketing automation solutions to plan, execute, and measure my multi-channel campaigns, I can appreciate the value of at least 5 A's -- i.e., Audience, Activity, Account, Asset, and Analysis.  Each offers a unique benefit to the marketer, with a whole that is even greater than the sum of its parts.  The A’s, and importantly, the marketer’s ability to record, document and associate them with specific marketing initiative(s) is critical to a marketer’s success! Here’s a couple of big reasons you should demand the A’s from your multi-channel campaign management solution:

·         Accountability (I’m sticking with A’s!) – Marketers can focus on the present (i.e., flawless marketing campaign execution) with applications that automate and/or support the creation of campaign information like audience contact history, funding account, brand assets used, post-campaign analyses, etc. that are "must-haves" to calculate ROI.   

Additionally, marketers can go beyond the campaign-centric use of the A’s to look across campaign, across time – i.e., longitudinal tracking and measurement. Marketers can easily assess aggregate-level spend and ROI, or other meaningful metrics (e.g., retention versus acquisition spend, Brand A versus Brand B marketing ROI comparisons, etc.)

·         Advancement (no comment on the A…) Marketing is indeed a mix of science and art. Science gives us the data, i.e., the facts that we transform into information and insight, which then fuels the “art” of marketing.  Marketers infuse a bit of art by adding their experience and creativity [to insights] to produce implications that convert into meaningful marketing actions and decisions. Without the A’s marketers cannot generate the learnings they need to refine and advance future marketing initiatives for greater ROI nor can they advance their individual experience and expertise in the practice of 1:1 marketing.
 

I hope that I have accomplished two things with this post: 1) redeemed myself by showing that my report card intro was not so "far fetched;" and 2) imparted some valuable information about why marketers need a multi-channel campaign management solution that easily supports our marketing A's.  Let me know if I did either! :o)

• Transaction data - For every sale, you at least need to know the product and the amount and date of the purchase.
   
• Past campaign response data - For every campaign you've run, you need to identify who responded and who didn't.  You may need to use direct and indirect response attribution.
   
• Geo-demographic data - This is optional, but you may want to append your customer file/database with consumer overlay data from companies like Acxiom.
   
• Lifestyle data - This is also an optional append of indicators of socio-economic lifestyle that are developed by companies like Claritas.

• Missing data analysis. What fields have missing values? Should you fill in the missing values? If so, what values do you use? Should the field be used at all?
   
• Outlier detection. Is “33 children in a household” extreme? Probably — and consequently this value should be adjusted to perhaps the average or maximum number of children in your customer’s households.
   
• Transformations and standardizations. When various fields have vastly different ranges (e.g., number of children per household and income), it’s often helpful to standardize or normalize your data to get better results. It’s also useful to transform data to get better predictive relationships. For instance, it’s common to transform monetary variables by using their natural logs.
   
• Binning Data. Binning continuous variables is an approach that can help with noisy data. It is also required by some data mining algorithms.

I'd love to hear your questions or comments if you have a few moments over the Holidays. 

My best to you and your family!
Jim

Customers have “contact rights!” Unfortunately, not all marketers respect them, let alone optimize them for mutual benefit to brand and individual. Why not? I’m glad you asked, and I’ll start my answer with a very light definition of contact optimization.

Contact Optimization: A 1:1 marketer’s use of industry software to centralize business rules, constraints, and priorities and customer preferences that they can apply during a campaign segmentation to ensure the final target audience comprises only the individuals for whom that campaign represents the optimal mix of message, offer, time, and channel to meet current business objectives.

Answer: As optimized campaigns typically produce better results, I am somewhat perplexed as to why   we still have industry colleagues who do not use these tools in concert with their campaign management solutions. Here’s my thoughts about why I think they should use contact optimization solutions -- for reasons that benefit the professional, the company, the customer as well as industry peers:

•       Relevance: Show you know and listen to your customers, or you may pay the price. Yesterday’s overlooked marketing messages are today’s annoyance, as consumer apathy turns to anger and hostility.   Emerging communication venues like social networks can turn a “private” matter public in just a few minutes, weaving and leaving a wrath of brand bashing that will need to be silenced and reversed.

•       Accountability: Unwanted messages are, simply put, marketing resource waste. With increasing pressure to cut cost and grow revenue for maximum ROI, we have our marching orders. Management’s accountability mandate gives us license to optimize and an opportunity to move away from defending spend to championing and promoting its value. 

•       Responsibility: Keep the industry self-regulated.   We have had only a handful of regulations and restrictions imposed on us over the many decades of 1:1 marketing.   Key to a future with marketing freedom that mirrors our past is an ability to pro-actively adjust and align marketing strategies and tactics for mutual relationship benefit, as the customer perceives it. 

•       Reach: Prevent the creation of an email “postage stamp.” The big expense associated with off-line marketing tactics like direct mail and the complexities of a multi-channel marketing may have heavily influenced historical optimization solution use.   As more of us have shifted our emphasis to online communications, a low cost channel, we may not see the “benefits.” This couldn’t be further from the truth, as the email glut continually causes ISPs to develop new ways to filter and block emails. Perhaps they may even begin charging “postage” to reach the inbox.

•       B2B marketers are in need, too. As more B2B marketing organizations build marketing automation solutions with field enablement functionality, these firms will need to centralize contact rules and priorities to ensure that Sales and Marketing teams with access to the same pool of prospect and leads are aligned in their messages, offers, and treatments. With their focus on the integration of their demand generation and lead nurturing solution with their SFA tool, most B2B firms overlook the importance of establishing and automating contact management processes.

We have the means to not only respect customers’ marketing “rights,” but we have the duty to do so!  I can incorporate easily and efficiently the customers’ “rights” in my marketing strategies and tactics without compromising business performance. So can you! 

During a recession you not only have to compete against your regular competitors, you must also fight the most dreaded enemy of all—no decision! During tough economic times the only thing you can count on is that you’re going to have to work twice as hard to close the same amount of business as before. Therefore, you must ramp up your campaign management efforts accordingly.

RFM and data mining help you find a subset of your customers that are most likely to react/respond to your marketing campaigns (personalized emails/microsites, direct mails, call center, etc.).  By targeting ONLY those likely to respond, you achieve about the same response/sales at a fraction of the cost.


Aprimo's Multichannel Campaign Management and Data Miner solutions provide the tools you need to survive and even flourish in the current economy.  No data miners on staff? Simple RFM (recency, frequency and monetary value) can help you increase response rates and overall campaign performance.  The notion is those that bought most recently, purchase more frequently, and have spent the most, are your best prospects for future marketing campaigns.

If you're a B2B marketer, Aprimo Lead Manager (LM) can automate the nuturing and scoring of your prospects until they qualify for "Lead" status.  At that point, LM can automatically assign and route the leads to the appropriate sales person.  With Aprimo, no leads escape your sales funnel.  More to come on all of these topics soon!
 

Jeff Baker wrote a recent post, “Autopilot for Marketing," while flying from Indianapolis to Phoenix. He wrote it in the air, and I find myself doing the same thing right now. The wonders of social media applications.

We live in such an all-access society. It doesn’t matter that I have no access to the internet (although some airlines will soon offer wireless!) or my Blackberry (gasp!) and am forced to maintain the same uncomfortable upright position for three hours. As long as I have my laptop, I can let my creative juices flow. In a moment of honesty, I will admit that I wouldn’t be writing a post right now if my only tools were a pen and paper. When I’m back online in a few hours, I can submit this post for review and it’ll soon be live on the Aprimo blog.

Automation in general is everywhere. We use automation to schedule bill payments online. Many use it in email marketing. You don’t honestly think that seconds before you received that e-newsletter from [fill in the blank company], someone in their office clicked a big, red button labeled “send,” do you? We use automation for workflow and project management. Even your favorite pizza joint automates pick-up and delivery orders online. I think the biggest benefit of this is pre-paying with a credit card. I never have cash when the pizza guy knocks, but I can fill in my tip on the receipt and… voila.

As I fly toward San Diego for the DMA09, I must be somewhere over Arizona. When I’m back on the ground and this post goes live, I’d love to hear from you. What automated process in your personal life can't you live without? Is it your washing machine (wash, rinse, spin)? Is it online bill payment?

What about in your work? What process has your team automated that gives you daily benefits? What processes do you wish you could automate? Could Aprimo provide relief?

• Interactive Marketing Campaigns - Replace email blasts that don't work with campaigns that run continuously (24/7), serving up variable highly personalized content in the form of email messages, offers, inbound forms/surveys, microsites (PURLs), etc -- based on an individuals off and online behavior.
• Creative Control - Give Marketers an easy-to-use HTML designer that lets them create professional-quality marketing content for their online communication vehicles while protecting brand standards with templates and reusable content blocks.
• New Communication Devices (e.g., microsites, PURLs) - Reduce dependence on corporate web site team, and allow Marketers to create powerful "weblets" within a campaign to improve customer engagement outcomes
• Demand Generation - Provide controls to manage online marketing tactics or tools  that "sit outside" the 1:1 marketing campaign, but directly affect the outcomes such as search engine management, web analytics, web alerts, and banner ad management.