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

 Not Your Parent’s Old Company Newsletter

At the same time, Aprimo recently reintroduced eNewsletters to our customers, partners and prospects. Why? Anyone who receives information from Aprimo marketing knows we strive to provide useful tools to make marketer’s jobs more strategic and productive. Yet, in our internal marketing meetings, we always came back to a need for an interactive channel that tied all of our nurturing campaigns, thought leadership papers, resources, tools in best practices in a summarized, hyperlinked and easy-to-digest resource. We also wanted to turn up the dial on our listening meter.

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 had the pleasure of meeting with a former boss today to talk about the ins-and-outs of B2B data management, including off- and on-line information.  I've never met another person quite like Mike (I'll call him Mike here) who gets really giddy about addresses, or more specifically, the processes used to improve their accuracy and quality:

• convert and parse
• standardize components
• correct
• enhance
• update

The improvements in the address data, in turn, lead to improvements in merge-purge - that dedupe process that consolidates all the sources of information about an individual to produce a 360-degree customer (or prospect view) for marketing.  

Maybe you're thinking... but most B2B marketing is online, why do I need address processing anymore?Yes, the majority of B2B communications are digital, but without address information you will struggle to:

• append firmographic information from industry files
• match to industry master lists to tie parent and child records together
• link individuals at the same company site
• match to industry data assets to standardize company name
• assign Sales reps by geography (unless you require Zip Code at the time of registration) 
• link revenue to marketing efforts

Most importantly, however, is the importance of quality address data to create the single customer and/or customer view, which remains a huge challenge for many B2B marketers.  And the challenge is only getting bigger with the continued expansion of data available for use.  Everything B2B marketers do is better when the data are accurate -- campaign segmentations, interactive email dialogs, lead management and results analysis.

It's been a while since I've been in the B2C and B2B data management trenches like Mike, and they've made some real strides in helping B2B organizations improve the quality of their marketing data.  

Here's another little advancement:  Linking home address to work address.  It's not out of reach!  With home address, the data available to you about the individual grows exponentially.  Isn't it an exciting time to be in B2B marketing!? 

Let me know what your biggest data management challenges are.  I guess I get a little giddy about address data, too.  I learned from the best.  (Thanks, Mike.)

cg

I hate to use the word, “hate”.  Rarely is a situation in such dire circumstances that it demands a word as commanding as “hate”.  But, I hate Operations.  I realize as a MBA student, I should probably learn to enjoy all aspects of business.  But truly, Operations is the bane of my existence.  I guess it’s because inside, I thought I was above it.  Operations is simply the art of defining common sense.  For example, increasing the capacity of your bottleneck will increase the capacity of your entire operations.  I do not need a PhD to understand that principle.  I have common sense; why should I take responsibility for those who don’t?  Plus, I figure that if I am ever fortunate enough to become a CEO, I will just hire a good operations manager.  My interests lie in Marketing and Finance; why would I ever need to worry about Operations?

Enter the real world.  Two weeks ago I was asked to take on a project in marketing operations.  My job is to help define the processes that exist in our marketing department in order to make our department operate more smoothly. Two weeks later, and my notebook looks like a labyrinth of arrows, boxes, and processes with no start or end.  Nothing ever humbles you like working on a problem you do not know how to solve.  Perhaps I’m the one with no common sense!  Excuse me while I go register for an operations course in the fall! 
 

• Subject lines. Send your control email to one group, but swap in a different subject line on your challenger email.
• Headlines. Leave everything the same between control and challenger, except for the text of the headline.
• Body copy. Here’s where you put your copywriter to work. If your control has long copy, test shorter copy in your challenger (and vice versa). Or, if your control takes a gentle approach, test a punchy, in-your-face challenger.
• Calls-to-action. Reword your call-to-action in your challenger. Note that this does not mean you change the offer itself—only the way you drive people towards it.
• Single design elements. Let your graphic team get creative. Swap in a new banner, Download button, link color, or sidebar. Again—make only one change at a time!

• Aprimo Marketing Studio has campaign management tools to randomly split your groups for A/B testing of outbound messages. In addition you can use criteria to dynamically serve up different content in emails and microsites and monitor results through your dashboard to focus on the best results and learn for future efforts.
• Google Website Optimizer is a free Google service that lets you present different content and design options to your visitors. Google tracks the conversion results.
• SiteSpect lets you run not only A/B testing, but also multivariate testing in which you test many changes at the same time.
• Omniture Test&Target is an interface for designing and executing your tests.
• Webtrends Optimize provides a unified testing and targeting platform.
• Vertster speeds up the process of performing multivariate testing, when you’re ready to go there.

Got a gut feeling about what works and what doesn’t? Use testing to check those hunches and back them up with measurable results. You can be sure your top competitors are already doing it. So, move A/B testing to your front burner today—and make it an ongoing part of your efforts.

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.
 

Marketers on the street often come up to me and ask, "How many times can I contact my customers and prospects?"  Actually, marketers do not come up to me and ask me this question, but they should be asking someone this question.  Actually, I decided to write this blog because I am surprised how many organizations do not manage the number of time  customer and prospect communications much at all.  In some cases customers and prospects are being barraged with marketing communication to the point that the communication is becoming less and less effective.

Opt-Outs First
There are customers and prospects that you should not be contacting at all.  These are individuals that have asked to be removed (opted-out) from your marketing communication.  If someone asks to no longer receive your marketing messages by all channels, or by a specific marketing channel of email, mail, or call, then they are probably not interested in your messages or in receiving your offers via that specific channel.  The customer or prospect by providing you this information has just saved you money, increased your response rate, and has provided you a preference. So, you should use that information.

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! 

• Address standardization and correction - catch bad addresses
• Simple data checks and formatting - Email validation and phone number formatting
• Bogus name, email, and address checks - the Mickey Mouse and swear word filters and other bogus names that come in from so many web form submissions
• Consolidate - combine duplicate individuals into a single individual entry
• Housholding and firmholding - associate individuals to a household for consumer marketing and to a business site for B-to-B marketing.
• Merge and consolidate new data with your existing customer records - don't add dupes to your own database

A common statement inside of many organizations (especially BtoB organizations) is that they are a "sales led" organization.  Interestingly, depending on who is making this statement, this is seen as either a strength or a weakness.  If it is coming from the CEO or head of sales, in most cases, this is a considered a compliment.  They view this as an organization focused on the front lines of building a successful business vs. a business distracted by internal obstacles and debate. 

However, when spoken by leaders in marketing, this is often considered a weakness.  They see this is an organization driven by the "deal of the day" and not necessarily a holistic view of the market and the needs of the customer.  They would like to see the organization become "market led" vs. "sales led."

While this debate has raged for a long time, I believe the web is changing the face of this debate.  Rapidly, the web is becoming such a dominate force inside a company's business development process, they simply cannot ignore its' strategic importance to the lifeblood of the company.  Whether this takes the form of email marketing, social media strategies, banner ads, SEO, or search engine management, it all affects the core of how many companies are attracting their prospects today.  Given marketing is almost always the owner of these various web strategies, with the rise of web based marketing, there is also a rise in marketing's strategic position within the enterprise.

You might ask how this is different than any other marketing strategy of the past.  Didn't marketing always play a role in finding new prospects within the business development process?  There is one huge difference.  The prospects of today have dramatically different expectations of the sales process.  In mass, the prospects of today simply do not want to be sold.  They expect to find what they need, when they need it, using their desk top, a few search terms, and a trillion web pages almost all controlled by individuals outside your company.  With this expectation, they cannot be "sales led" because, at the beginning, they now expect to lead themselves to the right solution using far more resources then your sales team to make that decision. 

The group responsible for them finding the "right solution" and resources during this critical early search is marketing.  Therefore, if your new prospects cannot find you on their own terms using today’s expectations, they will probably never be around to be sales led no matter how many times you call them or have your reps send them a letter.  Hello new world.  We are all going to have to become market led or potentially become isolated to just serving our existing customers because the new prospects are leading themselves to the right solutions on their own being effectively influenced by web based marketing from other "market led" competitors.

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?