The Innovative Marketer

Liveblogging at the Eloqua Experience Conference

In a room filled with 600 marketers from companies large and small.  Last night at the welcome reception, I met one-person marketing departments and reps from some of the largest multi-national corporations in the world for both service and products companies.   They're all gathering in SF for the annual global conference for Eloqua.

I'll update this blog throughout my day to share the ideas I hear.

- Joe Payne, Eloqua CEO introduces a packed, sold-out conference.   Announces a new book by Steve Woods called The New Revenue Engine.  Declares a need for standard marketing reports like income statements, balance sheets and cash flow statements. 

- Andre Yee, head of Eloqua engineering gives a sneak peek at the revolutionary new offering from Eloqua, making the application as easy to use as a Mac or iPhone.  (and it'll run on Mac and iPhone!).

- Matt Grantham shows a demo of the new Eloqua (tagline:  Power.  Simplified).  It's got universal search, some very sexy widgets and a thoughtfully designed new campaign canvas.  It looks like an app that Apple would have designed.

The staging of the conference seems to suggest Google, with primary colors everywhere, subtly reinforcing the ease of use message.  In fact, "easy" seems to be a theme, with new programs designed to make it easier for a marketer to train and deploy the company's marketing automation.

Send Email. Not too much. Mostly educational.

Just finished reading Michael Pollan's new book In Defense of Food, where he distills his approach to eating healthy down to seven simple words: "Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants."  What's beautiful about that is that it's general enough that everyone can follow it, and open for interpretation so that it can fit with anyone's lifestyle.

Last week, I stopped by the Marketing Sherpa Email Summit in Miami, and it seemed like marketers from every industry, at every level, were grappling with questions about segmentation, frequency of sending email, types of message to send.

So with a nod to Pollan, let me suggest an approach that may fit into any marketer's email marketing approach.

Send email.

No, email marketing is not dead.  If anything, corporate spending on the medium is increasing, and as the next wave of personalization and preference technology becomes more ubiquitous, and spam filters get better, It seems as if a new age of email marketing is nearly upon us.

Not too much.

Sitting with a bunch of my customers in Atlanta, I asked how much email to them from our company was too much.  The consensus was that there is no consensus.

It reminds me of a question I asked the audience at the OMS in San Diego a few weeks ago:  How do you know when your toast is done?

  Some people like their bread toasted super light, barely warm.  Others like it burn crispy so that the melted butter glosses the top of it.    So how much email is too much?  You have to ask your customers.  They're generally more than happy to let you know.   Keeping an eye on their Digital Body Language, their online behavior in reaction to your email send, is the best way to track their interest.

Mostly educational.

This was clear, both at the Sherpa show and at our customer group meeting.  If you are sending email on an ongoing basis to your customers, whether it's a regular newsletter, a multi-touch nurturing program, or an introductory note, be sure that what you communicate is of more value to them than their perceived value of their attention.

In a commercial transaction (as opposed to personal), there is an economy of information, where people trade their attention to you in exchange for something of value -- a new approach, an idea as to how to do their job better, some research that allows them to compare themselves to their peers.

If what you're sending is mostly educational, your perceived value will be high to your recipients, and you will find your open rates go up, your response rates increase.  And you'll likely find that you are top of mind when the customer is ready to move from the investigative phase of their buying cycle into the consideration phase.

More from Sherpa

Other bloggers have written about their impression of the event.  Here are some of the summaries I’ve read:

New objectives in email writing in 2008
http://emailgarage.wordpress.com/2008/02/25/day-3-new-objectives-in-email-marketing-for-2008/

Janine from VResponse had some interesting observations and I'm now 0 for 3 on events we're both at, but have no conversation longer than "hey there."  with her.    Check out her notes:
http://blog.verticalresponse.com/

And Duct Tape Marketing's Ubertaper John Jantsch scored an interview with Sherpa chief Eric Stockton to talk about Sherpa's mission and it's future.

What lead generation tactics are working for marketers

Continuing to post somewhat live from the show floor at the Sirius Decisions Summit...

This is the first time I've seen this cool new technology from Machine Dreams -- a personal communicator on each table at the summit which wirelessly transmits a "vote" in answer to a question the speaker poses.  The results are tabulated instantaneously and embedded inside their presentation immediately.  Very interesting and a good way to engage your audience directly.

Sirius launched their new demand creation tactics model which seems to have five components:

1. Buying cycle based
2. Leveraged
3. Tracked
4. Scored
5. Demand-type sensitive

They said in B2B interactions, the most in-use tactics for a first interaction with a prospective customer are white papers, in person events and trials, while the tactics used most often for second interactions were shorter events, like webinars.  Jaros made an important point that people in their second interactions are not yet ready for facts and figures -- they are still in education phase, so it's not yet time to sell.    He said that many companies try to increase the velocity of the lead through the pipeline after the first interaction; something that is rarely appropriate.

They said that trade shows and banner advertisements are becoming less and less used because many companies are attempting to do more for less money.

I'll have to check this figure, but I believe he said that most of the companies they surveyed spend 90% of their marketing dollars (non salary) on programs, and only 10 percent on systems.  He said an optimum split should be 65/35.

More notes as I gain better Internet access....

What's new in field marketing?

At the Sirius Decisions summit in Las Vegas, experiencing some connectivity issues.  Will provide updates as network availability warrants.

Tony Jaros, VP of Research for Sirius Decisions, talks about the next evolution in field marketing. Field marketing 1.0, he says, introduced concepts of systematic, predictable and repeatable marketing.  Talking about target marketing, getting sales and marketing to work together on who companies should target.  Lead flow process, handoffs and agreements between sales and marketing were part of the processes that were covered in the first generation of field marketing.   And then technologies, service partners and metrics need to fit together at the top, to bring together a close-loop process. 

Jaros says that more is needed and possible, because once these building blocks are in place, efficiencies are realized.  The problem is that many companies adopt the field marketing 1.0 concepts in principle, but they tend to implement them inflexibly, in a one-size-fits-all approach.

Here are some other highlights of Tony's talk:

There's a difference between cleaning a marketing database and creating a process to keep the database clean.

This is such an important point -- most marketer's don't regularly cleanse their marketing database of old or dead information, data which accumulates over time and affects your ability to crisply pull useful information.  For companies that do quarterly or yearly practice data hygiene, don't feel so good about yourselves.  Sending your data out to be washed and folded and returned a week from Tuesday is fine for that particular point in time, but the day you get your list back, the data pollution begins again.  Jaros says that organizations need to institute processes to continually keep the information in your database scrubbed.

Many metrics we use are of no use to the rest of the organization.

This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who reads and follows Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg, but our companies don't care about, among other things:

• Response rates
• Click through rates
• Attendee numbers
• Message testing figures
• List performance
• Programs completed per month/quarter/year

Rather, we should concentrate on providing the measures our organizations do care about, including:

• Inquiries
• Marketing qualified prospects
• Sales accepted leads
• Sales opportunities created
• Closed and won business

Liveblogging at the Sirius Decisions Summit in Las Vegas

Live now, at the Sirius Decisions summit, this year themed "Return on Integration."  We're at the Loewe's Lake Las Vegas resort with 240 other attendees, 61 percent marketing executives and 39 percent marketing.  I'll post highlights from the presentations as new information comes available.

Rich Eldh starts off by enumerating the top five issues affecting sales and marketing today:

1. Measurement and metrics
2. Sales readiness
3. User-generated content (under which he categorizes "custom sales content," something I don't quite understand yet)
4. Field Marketing 2.0 - the strategies, process and technologies that are the enablement of the integration between sales and marketing
5. Investment - more money needs to be invested in making organizations more productive

Should be an interesting event.  Stay tuned

Notes from the Marketing Effectiveness Summit

Live at the Marketing Effectiveness Summit in Mountain View, California, today, where 60 or so marketers are gathering for three days to learn, discuss and debate the latest in marketing practices.  Taught by Jeff Pedowitz of Eloqua, Laura Ramos of Forrester, Rick Wootten of Sonicwall and others, the seminar should be a good source of new info for marketers.

I'll be liveblogging the event, posting interesting updates as they occur.

Update 1: Jeff talks about the four levels of marketing maturity, the first of which is data cleanliness, where the quality of your lists is the key to becoming an effective, measurable marketer.   

Interesting question:  Why don't marketers have a professional designation, a way to raise the level of professional standards for marketers?  Doctors have the AMA, lawyers have the Bar -- what is the way by which we as marketers can continuously improve and indicate our professional development.

Next up:  Laura Ramos of Forrester.  Laura covers business-to-business marketing research and talks about the state of B2B lead management.  Forrester has a maturity model too (is this a trend?).  Forrester reports the number one lead management priority for this year is improving lead quality, not the number of leads.  This is important, because many organizations are focusing on raw numbers of leads, not lead quality.  What her studies indicate is that leads that are not sales-ready are falling out of the picture because sales won't follow up and marketing doesn't have a process for developing the leads over a longer period.  Not surprising:  firms that are more "mature" in terms of marketing process definition are converting more leads to sales.

Forrester is seeing more companies moving telesales people into "telemarketers," (not "smile and dial" folks, but professional telemarketers) whose job it is to nurture leads over a longer period of time.  As a result, the people in this group don't get measured on a quarterly basis, but rather over a longer period of time (sometimes as long as a year).

Jeff comes back and reports that the industry standard percentage of sales resulting from marketing leads is 75%.  He then goes through a very interesting lead generation calculator, which allows marketers to align themselves with sales leadership to precisely determine the number of raw responses, inquiries and leads that will help sales attain their targets.  This is a hugely powerful tool that can help marketers demonstrate value within their organization.

Discussion around good lead gen tactics.  Number one is customer referrals and Jeff recommends using a Netpromoter score to gage which ones are more likely to advocate for your company.

Another great idea:  everyone in your department is a speaker.  By making sure everyone on your team is trained to speak at an event, you're furthering your company's reputation as a trusted advisor.  As a speaker, you get a built-in assumption of credibility.  And with so many professional organizations in search of speakers at their events, this can be a powerful technique for generating new leads for your company.

The summit is offered in a few other locations throughout the year. 

Jim Steele from Salesforce.com on their marketing/sales process

Still at the SiriusDecisions Summit (up about $150 in the casino due to some dumb luck at the blackjack table).

Jim Steele, president of Salesforce.com is the keynote speaker talking about their sales and marketing process.  SFDC is heavily dashboard centric, using their own application to track in real time the results of their marketing campaigns.  He says the two areas are heavily collaborative, where marketing can see in real time the effects their campaigns are having on company growth, at least in the SMB market.  Inbound leads to the company are routed to telesales reps in a number of locations, internationally, who then call prospects to qualify them.  Apparently, Salesforce converts about 30% of leads into opportunities.

A great question came from a woman at Cognos who asked what happens to the 70% of leads that are not converted into opportunities.  We've been chatting both formally and informally at the conference about the need to nurture leads, to track where prospects are in the buy cycle so that you don't a) try to close business too quickly; or b) wait for them to over ripen when they are finally ready to buy.   It's interesting that Salesforce doesn't have a formal lead nurturing/cultivating process in place.

What's the impact of consumer-driven media?

John Neeson of SiriusDecisions is discussing the impact of blogs on marketing (now I'm blogging about him mentioning my blog during his talk on blogs -- the mind reels).  Here are some key stats he cites:

- 1/3 of all blogs will be abandoned within three months of creation
- 75,000 blogs are created every day
- 50-60% of blog "attacks" are sponsored by a business rival (really?)

Neeson's presentation focuses on blogs as a tool that people use to talk ABOUT your company and marketers should monitor them for content to gage your reputation in the blogosphere.

A notable omission the presentation is in how companies can author and use blogs as ways to effectively engage with their customers, to share ideas and insights, generate open conversations and build trust with customers, and testing out new product and business model ideas with people who care about you.   Blogs are not spectator sports and it's important for marketers to know that participation is key.

You can't automate a process that doesn't exist

I've been saying this for years, usually in response to this comment that comes up in meetings (generally after a trade show - see last post) :

"Hey, let's buy a great tool that will help us blah blah blah."

Look, if you're not doing something manually that meets your needs, don't expect that an automated solution will wallpaper over the problems you were having with internal relationships, bad or no processes, and lack of upper management support.

Fix all that first, then look for a tool to automate your new processes and relationships.

News Flash: Trade show marketing doesn't work

Latest news from SiriusDecisions:

In a survey they conducted of over 1,000 buyers, they rated trade show marketing as among the least effective ways of engaging with them along the buy cycle.  Couple this info with the report last year from Sirius that indicated that trade show leads were among the costliest and least effective of all marketing tactics, along with the fact that trade shows in general are among the most expensive marketing events leads one to this inevitable conclusion:

Trade shows are just not efficient sources of leads.

Now, they may be good for some other reason (reputation/brand development) or keeping up with the competition, but for executives looking to maximize the return on their marketing spend, a hard look at your trade show budget is a good place to start.