Demand Generation Best Practices from Vtrenz

Automated Marketing Solutions Mean More for Less

Though automated closed-loop marketing was once thought to be just about uniting sales and marketing teams, its benefits extend much further. As outlined in the latest Aberdeen Group Report, closed-loop marketing increases the relevancy of marketing messages to lift conversion, grow revenue and improve return on marketing investments.

Sophisticated, automated closed-loop marketing that incorporates lead scoring can prioritize leads and determine the likelihood of each becoming a customer by taking into consideration both Explicit and Implicit prospect data. And the best part? It saves time, money and helps you close more sales. Here's how:

• Aberdeen found that automated, closed-loop processes help Best-In-Class companies (those in the top 20% of aggregate performance scores) save time and money by incorporating lead management technologies that rank scores based on criteria identified as that most often associated with prospective customers.

• Time is saved by marketing teams, because only qualified leads are passed to sales versus sales spending their time chasing down cold leads. In regards to performance metrics, the average Best-In-Class company saw an annual revenue increase of 35 percent compared to a 7 percent increase by companies that do not use automated closed-loop marketing.

• Automated closed-loop marketing can be measured through relevancy, conversion and ROMI.

Save the green for your pocket and the planet. Automated closed-loop marketing is a winning strategy for successful CMO's.

Lead Management Offerings Can Make Sure Your Second Quarter Results Are Better Than Your First

According to a new survey, http://directmag.com/news/layoffs-freezes-dm-employment-0416/, by Bernhart Associates, sales tops the list of positions likely to be in the highest demand during the coming three months. Said Jerry Bernhart, "This is similar to what we saw during the last downturn [2001-2002]. Many companies apparently believe that a good way to weather an economic downturn is to increase the effectiveness of their sales force, and that's exactly what many of them are doing."

Unfortunately, simply adding bodies (and ultimately costs) to your sales force won't improve results if you don't have a marketing process in place that delivers qualified leads to all those new hires. The stronger the lead, the faster the opportunity is realized. To accomplish this feat, it is imperative that marketing and sales work together to accomplish revenue growth in a down economy.

Furthermore, focusing on improving sales is a worthy goal no matter what the economy. Companies are always well served with a strategy that enables the sales force to hone in on key prospects versus wasting time on cold calls. Analyst firm Aberdeen Group found that more than 66 percent of "Best-In-Class" companies (those in the top 20% of aggregate performance scores) use demand generation/lead management technologies to enhance sales efforts. Also, these Best-In-Class companies use lead management tools to automate actionable, timely prospect communications based on customer behavior. 

For companies eager to enhance second quarter results by beefing up sales teams, implementing a strong lead management program will help solidify results. For example, creating a lead score ranking can quickly alleviate the issue of chasing incorrect opportunities by new, inexperienced sales reps.  Sophisticated lead scoring models are designed to prioritize leads and determine the likelihood of each becoming a customer by taking into consideration both Explicit (BANT, demographic and firmagraphic data) and Implicit (Web site visits, email opens, etc.) prospect data. In addition, they can systematically watch for older leads that 'reengage' in the buying process and automatically notify sales, thereby helping to find opportunities that were thought to be lost.

All things considered, strategy is the key for companies to stay or move to the top in the second quarter. Increasing your sales force and not supplying them with lead management solutions can be a hard mistake in a market that leaves little room for error or rebound. Both sales and marketing will ultimately have to answer for results. A strong lead management solution can make a real difference. Have a successful quarter!

Using Lead Management to Tighten Your Marketing Strategy in a Down Economy

If you are a conscious marketer, you've either heard the U.S. economy is in a recession or heading toward one. Neither end of the spectrum is positive. Therefore, I'm sure you're wondering if it is still wise to aggressively spend during these stressful times, or if it is time to tighten the belt and conserve your precious marketing dollars. My answer is that this is not the time to hold back.  Companies are still spending money, especially for business products and services. In fact, a recent BtoB Magazine survey found that over 70 percent of the respondents were staying the course or even increasing their marketing budgets, with only roughly 30 percent reducing their budget plans.

The real change is that the tactics being used are shifting, and rightly so. And where do you think the shift is occurring? Well, it is no surprise that 45 percent of the respondents are reducing their print channel, whereas 48 percent are increasing their online channel. This, in my opinion, is due to the fact that in a downturn, there is much more pressure on proving ROI, and the online channel continues to outperform other types of mediums time and time again. And within online, email marketing continues to outperform all other tactics. According to Shop.org, email delivers an average cost per sale of less than $7, compared with $26 for paid search, and over $71 for banner ads.

And this pressure for hard and fast results will continue. Retrenching your lead generation efforts and raising visibility of the ROI of your initiatives (and the inherent tradeoffs of the various channels) will be paramount to remaining competitive. Focusing more efforts on cultivating the leads you have versus just acquiring new leads can provide substantial benefits. However, without the right technology in your hands, you may be grasping for answers when your boss comes calling. Smart marketing solutions (like Vtrenz’s new Lead Management Module (http://www.vtrenz.com/vtrenz/lead-scoring.cfm) can automatically manage incoming leads, provide a 'value' score, and notify sales when the prospect is ready to engage in a sale. They can also automate nurture marketing effort to stay in front of prospects during their buying cycle, while reengaging cold or lost leads.  And lastly, they can integrate your sales and marketing process in order to track a lead from inquiry all the way through to a sale. This will not only reinforce your closed-loop marketing strategy but save marketing time, money and prove ROI.   

If you find your back against the wall as many marketing and sales teams historically have during "shaky" times, give lead management technology a try and shake hands with your sales neighbor. You're sure to get tighter than ever.

It Doesn’t Require a PhD to be a Marketing Hero

For those of you who do not know me that well, I spent over 12 years in management consulting with Accenture. (Yes, I was one of the original And-roids as our competitors used to affectionately call us.)  During that time, the name of the game in helping companies with new strategies was to look at them from a "business integration" perspective. That meant that for an organization to make improvements and changes in any part of its business, we felt that four aspects needed to be accounted for:

• Business Strategy:  Understanding and defining a business' key goals and objectives and the corresponding plans to achieve those objectives
• Process:  Understanding the current processes a company uses, and reengineering those processes in order to drive sustainable improvements in performance
• Technology: Ensuring the correct technology is built or implemented to support the newly reengineered processes
• People:  Ensuring that the people responsible for managing and executing the new processes are well trained, with the right skills, and are incented appropriately in order to execute and sustain the new changes within the organization

Since my days there, I am sure much has changed in and around the methodologies and approaches, but I still think those four tenants hold true.  But unfortunately, like many of the unsuccessful change programs of the 1980s and 1990s (which of course NEVER happened at Accenture), the people component was often a mere afterthought, if acknowledged at all.

Now, what does this have to do with demand generation you may ask?  Well, demand generation and the corresponding strategies and best practices that are espoused across the many blogs and conferences today, are just like any other business change initiative.  They still require attention to all four areas to ensure that the benefits and ROI are attained.  There is no doubt that SaaS or on-demand applications have made the technology component much easier to implement.  This is especially appealing for marketing organizations that are looking to marketing automation to support their lead generation strategies, but in turn don’t want to lean too heavily on overly-burdened IT resources to get the solution in place.

But what about the marketers themselves?  Does the technology magically make them heroes in their organizations?  Were they just given the keys to the newest jet airplane without knowing how to fly?  Unfortunately, some of the old-school mentality around lengthy training requirements, inches and inches of workbooks and manuals, and cumbersome set-up requirements continue to detract from the promised benefits.  To take a lesson from Salesforce.com, if a user just wants to manage a set of contacts, he or she should be able to log on and go.  In the world of BtoB marketing, if I want to send a relevant and timely email to a prospect, I should be able to segment my list, build my message, send, and analyze.  And then, when I am ready to apply more advanced automated demand strategies, I should have the options to do so.  Of course, advanced capabilities still require advanced training, but only when there is a need or the organization is ready.  Marketers have enough on their plates already without over-complicating an otherwise straightforward process.

In closing, if your organization is considering the move to marketing automation,  remember to keep tabs on the adoption by the end marketing users, as they are the real heroes that will make it succeed or fail.

To me, that is Demand Generation 101, no PhD required.

Lead Scoring Has Grown Up

Lead scoring sure has come a long way. As highlighted at the DMA B-to-B Marketing Conference earlier this month (you can read my thoughts here), the majority of discussions, sessions, or proposed x-step plans for optimizing lead generation included lead score as a critical component. It is no longer a nice-to-have, but a must-have for leading organizations.

One expert in the field, Russell Kern from the Kern Organization, discussed optimizing the demand generation activities for their client organizations. Russell highlighted a lead scoring model that added, with yet another acronym, a solid approach for multi-dimensional lead scoring.  The model is titled APNRP (Attributes, Position, Need, Readiness and Preference) and was first coined by Bill Herr, managing director of sales lead programs for CMP Media. The idea is that the traditional BANT approach developed by IBM years ago has many limitations, the biggest of which is the adage that “buyers are liars.” BANT has been used successfully when the prospect is in the later stages of the buying cycle (although there is still much room for manipulating the results, even then). However, when we as marketers use this approach by itself in the early awareness and consideration stages of the buying cycle, self-reported BANT results are even less meaningful. Therefore, adding other dimensions and/or questions to the scoring model have proven for the Kern Organization to be a better, more balanced, approach. 

The basis of the APNRP approach is to ask qualifying questions, both on self-reported forms, as well as through phone discussions by telesales organizations (i.e. inside sales) to ensure the reported information is a accurate as possible. Examples information for each could include:

• Attributes. What is the size of their company? What industry?
• Position. What is the position of prospect within the company, or their main role in buying process?
• Needs. How good or bad a fit are your services to their needs?
• Readiness. How ready are they to move ahead with your products and services, or are they just in the assessment phase? Do they have budget allotted for the effort?
• Preference. Do they want to be called, or just receive emails at this time?

This underscores a key concept that I wrote about earlier this year that the right scoring approach must incorporate three levels of information, weighted appropriately, to offset biases. This includes incorporating the various demographic and firmagraphic information and BANT-related items, as well as implicit, behavioral information in order to make the lead scoring model all that more meaningful and less prone to self-reported inflations or deflations.

With a multi-dimensional lead scoring model in place, you will have taken a huge first step in building a leading demand generation process for your organization.

Lights Out Marketing

For those of you who missed it, the annual DMA B-to-B Marketing Conference was held this week in Orlando, Florida.  The title for this year's event was New Marketing Techniques (Leads x Conversion x Retention) = Higher Profits³.

As usual, this conference was filled with thought leaders and experienced practitioners in the area of BtoB branding, lead generation, and overall marketing strategies.  All gathered to share knowledge in their quest to improve their own marketing efforts and generate better returns for their organizations. 

Within this setting, I was lucky enough to be asked to present on the topic of data segmentation and personalization as it relates to ongoing demand generation. As any speaker knows, practice is key, and I had reviewed my presentation a number of times prior to my session. Given the 75 degree weather (as opposed to the March chill I left in Minnesota) and the site of a pool just outside the windows of the conference center, I knew I would have to keep the discussion as lively as possible to maintain the attention of the attendees. However, what I didn't expect was 15 minutes into my presentation, there would be a full power failure. Now, this wasn't just with the AV equipment, or in the microphone going off, this was a full hotel black out. And once the power returned, it happened again...and again.

As I stood in the dark and continued to execute my presentation (helped by a very, very understanding group of attendees) it dawned on me that this was somewhat indicative of the approach more and more companies are using in their lead generation campaigns. Having automated processes that run on auto-pilot, in a 'lights-out' fashion, allows a marketing department to spend more time in high value activities. As well, the timing of when we respond to a prospect should be based on the prospect's timeframe, not ours. The only way to successfully enable that is through pre-arranged, automated campaigns that run around the clock.

This concept was underscored the next morning as I listened to a case study presented by Babcock and Jenkins and their client Ciena. In this presentation, Lauren Goldstein, vice president of strategic planning at B&J, and Daniela Szymczak, marketing cultivation manager for Ciena, highlighted the success of a global, multi-channel campaign as part of a key new product launch. From planning the measurable goals of the campaign, to targeting and list acquisition, to the development of a global theme and multi-mode creative, all the way through a structured nurture program for generated leads, it was clear that the timing and coordination of all the pieces were critical to the campaign's success. By designing a campaign flow which included a series of communication tracks and follow-up activities, they were able to capture and nurture leads in an automated fashion, no matter where in the world the lead came from or from which channel it originated. 

In the next day's luncheon session, Yuchun Lee, CEO of Unica, discussed the impact of the Internet on cross-channel marketing. In his talk, Mr. Lee mentioned that from his experience, leading marketing organizations are executing up to 50 percent of their demand creation activities through automated, 'lights-out' processes.

Coincidental?  I think not. It is becoming clear that well defined, automated nurturing campaigns are the cornerstone of a successful demand generation strategy. And, they allow you as a marketer to sleep well at night knowing you are delivering more qualified leads and increased revenues for your organization. 

All while the lights are out.

Mashups for Marketers

Possibly by now you have heard the buzz around mashup technologies, and how they are providing end-users with new and enhanced ways of viewing information from various systems. Or, as one of our U.K. users asked, you might wonder, "Are they related to bangers and mash?" 

The best way to describe mashup technologies is with a couple of examples. The first is housingmaps.com, in which Google Maps is "mashed together" with apartment rental information from craigslist to show the location of available apartments in a given city. You may even be creating mashups yourself if you are using an RSS feed reader, which in turn allows you to “mash” content from more than one site. Not surprisingly, we are seeing more and more mashups available in the consumer Web, where Google, Yahoo, and other leading consumer-based sites want to provide an enhanced end-user experience.

Where this gets interesting for the BtoB marketer is the growing use in the business Web spawned by on-demand leader Salesforce.com. Business enterprises are taking note. According to a 2007 InformationWeek Web 2.0 survey, 43 percent of enterprises surveyed are finding mashups "very useful," and the general consensus among analysts and industry pundits is that the adoption of mashup technologies is accelerating, and will continue to do so.

From a marketing perspective, the power of mashups comes from the ability to put relevant content from your marketing efforts in the hands of your sales team.  Marketers can greatly enhance the effectiveness of the sales process by providing salespeople with easy access to campaign response information, Web-site activity, email marketing results and overall ranking (commonly called lead score) of the specific lead assigned to the salesperson.  And the power is that the information is real-time, bringing together CRM data with marketing results in a simple, easily consumed fashion.

So, if you start hearing a myriad of new Web 2.0 and mashup terminology, i.e., SOA, AJAX, WSAPI, XML, Widgets, Pipes, etc., all you really need to remember is ROI. Mashups provide value to your sales team and visibility into all your hard work in nurturing those leads for sales.

Marketing a SaaS Company

Marketing is definitely not what is used to be. The days of spending months planning, designing, executing and monitoring over-analyzed campaigns are gone. They are quickly being replaced with demand-generation processes that allow for repeatability, measurability and rapid time-to-value. For those of us lucky enough to have the chance to run a SaaS-based business, we understand the need for sales and marketing to work in lock-step, driving down our costs of customer acquisition, and getting the highest possible return on our marketing spend. 

In his Jan. 28 opinion piece for SandHill.com, "Re-learning Marketing for the SaaS Model," Steve Adams does a marvelous job of highlighting how the SaaS model is much more than a change to software delivery--it is a major shift in how we all think about our sales and marketing approach. The Sabrix, Inc. CEO writes, "The SaaS or on-demand model demands even greater attention to process, operational skills, metrics, training, as well as the ability to succeed or fail quickly and adjust accordingly." Succeed or fail quickly and adjust? That goes against our grain as marketers; but, it's becoming the new mantra for marketing a SaaS business.

Reading Adams' article reminded me of a situation in the early days of Vtrenz in 2002, when we were, of course, "eating our own dog food" by using our platform to launch a lead generation campaign. Money was tight and marketing, as usual, was trying to do more with less. As soon as our marketing team hit the Go button for the campaign, and results started to come in, we quickly realized the promotional offer was incorrect. Our first reaction was to quickly stop the campaign, fix the offer in all the electronic elements of the campaign (an added bonus in an on-demand marketing platform), and re-start the campaign. However, as we monitored the real-time results, we noticed that we were getting better-than-planned responses to the campaign. After a quick conversation with the head of sales, we determined that we could easily support this offer and therefore decided to let it ride with minor modifications. And the point of the story? The entire process of plan, do, check (re-assess) and act happened over a 24-hour period. How's that for responsiveness and aligning sales and marketing?

Another key point highlighted in Adams' article is the change in customer drivers for considering a software purchase. Long gone are the big-ticket installs, with the standard 1.5x cost of implementation on-top of the software. Customers measure time-to-value in terms of weeks rather than years, and this drives the need for an extremely high level of service orientation, both before the sale, during the on-boarding process, and in the ongoing support and training of current and future users. We build trust and win new clients by means of our sales and marketing process, but we build advocates through the delivery of our services.

So as you look at your own marketing strategies, especially if you are a SaaS business, remember that learning and adapting to this new model is imperative if you are to succeed.

To learn more about marketing strategies for SaaS-based businesses, I encourage you to attend the upcoming OpSource SaaS Summit Feb. 27 – 29 and hear industry veteran and Silverpop Vice President of Industry Relations Loren McDonald speak on how to market your SaaS business like a Web company. You can also read more of Loren's thoughts by clicking his name on the MediaPost blog found here.

East Coast Swing

Last week I took a four-day trip to the East Coast to visit Vtrenz customers in New England and New York, and to learn of further opportunities to improve the services of our organization. Of course, I fully expected to run into travel issues due to a planned Super Bowl parade in Boston, but, unfortunately for New Englanders, it wasn’t meant to be. No matter how lopsided a contest can look on paper, ESPN always has it right when it says, “That is why they play the game.”  But even under gray skies and glooming spirits, the trip to the Northeast was very rewarding. 

One visit of note was with Brainshark in Waltham, Mass., a leading provider of on-demand solutions for the creation, publishing and tracking of rich media content. Those of us on Salesforce.com’s AppExchange know Brainshark as the tool to use when providing an overview of our products. But its enterprise platform also provides for the much more robust delivery of presentations, e-learning courses and sales materials, not to mention marketing-related campaigns. As experienced marketers, we all know how applying rich media to our communications, if done correctly, can greatly improve response rates while providing a much more interactive and beneficial experience for our prospects. In fact, we used Brainshark’s own tool to “lure” them as a client. I encourage you to take a look at the firm’s offering; any opportunity we as marketers have to raise awareness of our messages above the clutter can pay off hugely in improved sales opportunities.

I also was fortunate enough to spend some time with Tom Stein, of Stein Rogan + Partners in New York City. Tom’s organization is one of the country’s leading BtoB agencies, and he has assembled an incredibly talented and creative group to meet the demanding needs of BtoB marketing organizations. In speaking with Tom, it is clear that organizations of all sizes are embracing the idea of automating demand generation, and are realizing the incredible benefit of closed-loop marketing processes. However, they’re also facing ongoing challenges as they try to understand the best methods, processes, and tactics to use across the various channels. Many organizations could benefit from developing an overarching strategy that aligns their brand, position, demand-generation activities, Web-site development and search strategies.  It is clear that Stein Rogan is well positioned to address many of these challenges for its clients, and I expect that the firm will continue to see an increased demand for its unique level of services.

To hear more from Tom directly, you can catch him in an upcoming Webinar by MarketingProfs: B2B 2.0 Expo, where he will be speaking on the future of email marketing in a Web 2.0 world.

The Art of BtoB Selling

I was intrigued by a short article in the January 28 edition of The Wall Street Journal, page B3, which highlighted a discussion with Ram Charan, the well-known management consultant. A couple of Mr. Charan’s comments stood out as poignant in relation to our desire as marketers to help sales win deals and increase revenues.

When asked by reporter Phred Dvorak what was wrong with today’s sales function, Mr. Charan responded by saying, “It has become very hard to differentiate yourself in the eyes of the customer, for business-to-business sales. So salespeople should not sell the product any more. They should find out what the customer needs, which will be a combination of products and services and thought leadership.”

Understanding a prospect’s needs, and developing nurture programs specific to those needs is one of the core principals in demand generation. This makes me think of a client of ours, LeanLogistics, whose marketing approach includes leveraging an incredible base of thought leadership and knowledge capital to provide value to clients, both during the sales process, and after someone has become a LeanLogistics client. By striving to understand and deliver offerings that meet the needs of prospects rather than just selling them products, the company has shown that its marketing efforts can have a dramatic impact on the success of sales.

Mr. Charan was then asked how sales needs to adjust to this changing climate. He said, “…the salesperson must build trust with the customers’ people that’s deeper than before and sustained over time. You cannot design a solution without information from the customer. And if the customer does not trust you, he or she will not give you information.”

We as marketers can do well by understanding how these sales changes impact our own efforts. Are we providing valuable content in our lead generation activities that is laying the foundation of trust with our prospects, or are we bombarding them with impersonal, irrelevant information that doesn’t match their needs?  In this time where information is king, remember, you only get out what you put in. And, the more we “give” our prospects, the more useful information we “get” in return.