Keep Your Customers Coming Back for More

Editor's Notes

• #4: Today, I would like to cover with you the strategy, content, programs, metrics and S&M alignment
• #5: We all are on a journey as marketers, and our goal is to acquire new customers at the lowest possible cost, engage them in meaningful conversations on the channels of their choice,, retain them and provide value so that they keep coming back for more, and ultimately turn them into brand advocates
• #6: Yet, Marketers mostly focus on Acquisition – according to data from Forrester online survey, only 12% of content marketers focus on retention, Cross-sell and upsell
• #7: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-cost-customer-acquisition-vs-retention-ian-kingwill
• #8: So how do we build the winning customer dg strategy?
• #9: So different teams touch customers in a typical organization and they have different goals. DG team focuses on cross-sell/ upsell, CAM – on successful product adoption, growing product usage and retention, cust. Mktg. grows a community of brand advocates. Today, I want to focus on the first first one primarily.
• #10: Step #1: you start with the goals – and for revenue marketers the most important goal is revenue
• #11: When you know you sales bookings revenue goals, then calculate backwards to figure out how many wins (or closed won deals at your average sales price you need), how many opportunities, Sales qualified leads and Marketing Qualified leads, and program successes. From there you can determine your program mix. This is your revenue funnel. If you have historical data on conversion rates between stages of the revenue funnel, you can figure out how many programs you need to run in order to generate these MQLs. If you don’t, start building benchmark data.
• #12: If you have Marketing Automation, it’s important to map out your revenue model with all stages. You can’t do that in isolation, so tight alignment between marketing, sales, operations team is critical is setting this up. On this slide, you can see what Marketo’s customer revenue model looks like.
• #13: Step#2: you need to understand your audience and build profiles of customers that you’ll be marketing to. A lot of this information should be already available to you from marketing to prospects. Now that they are in your database and part of your community, you have an opportunity to ask them even more questions and use various listening tools to develop more robust profiles, targeted messages and assets
• #14: A Customer Persona is a representation of your Ideal Customer Personas are developed based on customer demographics and behavior, along with your own understanding of their motivations and challenges. To do that, most companies conduct qualitative interviews and surveys of their customers and sales people as well as analyze customer demographic, firmographic, behavioral and purchase data available to them in their MA, CRM and other systems. Here are some questions you want to ask when building your customer persona This data will help you develop the right content, messaging, utilize the right communication channels and build the right program mix and cadence.
• #15: The next step is to start developing even more advanced and targeted segments taking into account behavioral data, scoring (or where the customer is in their buying cycle); If you have marketing automation solution like Marketo, it’s easy to do; you need to define what behaviors you want to listen to (for example, last engagement or web site visit, attendance to your event, specific asset download or specific score threshold). The more precise your segmentation the more targeted and relevant your campaign messaging and overall customer communications, which will ultimately drive higher engagement, conversions, customer sat. and retention metrics and revenue.
• #16: Next step, is to look at the products & services in your portfolio and map those products to your segments. First, you’re looking at what products are owned by your customer accounts and where the white space is. The x on this slide represents current product ownership by a particular segment and the white space represents paths or opportunities for cross-sell. This map will come very handy when you start building you retention and cross-sell nurture streams. Another way to think about it is that x on this map represent retention streams and topics and white space represents cross sell nurture paths. And don’t forget to prioritize your most promising segments! Of course, you don’t go through this process in isolation – it’s important to work closely with Product or Segment marketing, Sales and business stakeholders to prioritize segments, products, dg efforts.
• #17: Finally, you determine your tactics. We use a mix of programs designed to engage our customers across a variety of channels, including email, social media, events, web, etc. I will touch on some of them, but before I do, I’d like to spend a few minutes on content
• #18: So how do we build the winning customer dg strategy?
• #20: According to Marketo online survey, 50% of the respondents named content marketing as a skill critical to their success in 2016
• #21: We don’t need more content, we need better, relevant, and more useful content Last week, I had an opportunity to listen to a great presentation from the CMO of Wunderman agency during our revenue kickoff. And she gave an example where a furniture retailer sent catalogs of outdoor furniture to millennials living in a big city as an example of poor content strategy. Not only outdoor furniture was irrelevant to that audience, but it was a big waste of resources and reflected poorly on the brand.
• #22: We produce a lot of content at marketo and relevancy and our audience needs and interests are always at the top of our priority. We also encourage everyone to educate first and sell second. In that we follow 4-1-1 rule: foe every 4 educational/entertaining assets, offer 1 soft promotion and 1 hard promotion. Try it yourselves
• #23: Here are some examples of content that we develop for different audiences and segments As you can see, we focus on different topics and imagery are different, b
• #24: Organizations often have a small team or even no team to create the content to fit their nurturing needs. To maximize the value of your team, and save money, use 3 Rs of content marketing: Reorganize: Maximize your efficiency and use section of the same piece to create smaller breakout pieces – we do that with our 100-page long definitive guides Rewrite – extend your investment of time and money when creating content by using the content that you already have Retire – content that no longer has relevant information, content that’s underperforming, outdated reports or content that was created for a particular event or moment in time that’s passed
• #25: Determine content roadmap Support content requests from various teams Oversee content creation process Ensure consistency of message and voice Streamline content creation for scalability Reduce duplicate efforts and resources
• #27: So now let’s shift gears and look at some examples of customer marketing programs … and what I’d like to focus on is nurture.
• #28: So let’s define nurture first. It’s about listening, building trust, providing valuable, relevant information and engaging customers in conversations on the channels of their choice.
• #29: So different teams touch customers in a typical organization and they have different goals. DG team focuses on cross-sell/ upsell, CAM – on successful product adoption, growing product usage and retention, cust. Mktg. grows a community of brand advocates. Today, I want to focus on the top two primarily
• #30: So let’s look at Cross-sell and retention nurture
• #31: So the types of nurture we’ll discuss -
• #32: Let’s look at Cross-sell. Streams: We structure our streams based on product interest since we sell specific products like Analytics, RTP, Calendar and mobile. Triggers: Any customer who doesn’t have these products and expressed some interest in them (by either visiting a related product page on Marketo web site or by downloading a related piece of content is added to one of these streams. Customers can be in multiple streams at the same time Cadence: nurture emails go out every two weeks and in this case they are not mutually exclusive since a customer can express interest in multiple products at the same time (different from prospect nurture) 3. Content / story based on personas We vary content in the streams depending whether we talk to practitioners or executives. Regardless, the content here is inspirational, focused on best practices, why to buy and solutions for specific challenges or needs. We also follow a 4-1-1 content rule where we show 4 pieces of light, educational, entertainment content first (infographic, funny video or ebook), followed by 1 soft sell like product webinar and 1 hard sell like a discount offer or demo (which makes someone an act now, which means that Sales need to reach out)
• #33: This is what cross-sell nurture streams look like in Marketo CEE
• #34: Here are some examples of our Analytics focused nurture casts. As you can see the one on your left is more targeted to practitioners and the one on the right is for Execs
• #35: Retention nurture is different; the primary goal is to drive product usage among practitioners as well as to illustrate value and thought leadership with all stakeholders (user, decision maker, influencer, gate keeper (IT) Our segmentation is based on the products a customer has, the depth and breadth of features used and topics related to those features or capabilities, So we define the segments based on whether someone is a novice, intermediate or advanced user. But how do we know that? How do we know who to nurture: We leverage product usage data from Gainsight (which plugs into SFDC CRM and feeds into marketo) to trigger nurture campaigns (e.g. if someone is a novice user, we use indicators such as the # of emails sent, # of landing pages and forms and nurture them on the best practices of email marketing – from basics to more intermediate topics like trigger emails, nurture, A/B testing, etc. An intermediate user gets nurtured on more advanced topics like personalization, analytics, etc. and that’s where we can start introducing cross sell products In addition to product usage data, we also use qualitative data from QBRs or customer surveys indicating what content they want to receive) The content we use is educational, full of tips and tricks, best practices and step-by-step instructions Different streams & content for practitioners and executives;
• #36: Here’re a couple of examples of Revenue Cycle Analytics nurture emails; they contain how-to-tips and links to more detailed step-by-step documentation. As you can see, the content here is more detailed, instructional and DG content We also include webinar series and more hands-on workshops, field events, university courses, user group seminars
• #37: Today’s digitally-empowered buyer is channel-agnostic. Now, more than ever, your customer is in charge. As a Multi-channel marketer, you’ll need to do two things- • Listen: Pay close attention to buyer behavior across all channels so you have a single, integrated view of the buyer persona. • Act: Manage, personalize, and act on conversations with buyers across channels. A conversation you start in an email must continue when the buyer navigates to your website, and shouldn’t skip a beat when she jumps over to your Facebook page.
• #38: Let’s look at the multichannel nurture dimensions You can replicate the same segments and content used in your email nurture and leverage them on other channels – your web site, social channels, third party web sites you then need to listen for signals indicating where the conversions take place (and take into account customer channel preferences and conversions on specific channels)and orchestrate content and flows accordingly. Let me give you a few examples
• #39: In this example, we want to nurture a marketo customer coming to Marketo web site. They will see different content compared to marketo prospect visiting the web site. You define segmentation rules as broadly or as narrowly as you need; you can replicate your email nurture segments for your web site using RTP or create new ones for very targeted programs like regional events. Real time personalization work great with known web visitors, but even more amazingly, it can work with all anonymous web visitors as well
• #40: And if you want to take it even further, you could nurture the same customers not only via email and on your web site, but on third party web sites through Google retargeting on their ad network and by using our Ad Bridge capabilities you can upload same smart lists (or segmentation data) to social networks like LI, Twitter and FB and optimize your targeting capabilities thereby making your advertising dollars work harder and increasing ROI on your programs So, with Marketo Marketing Automation, which includes AdBridge + RTP, you can create personalized targeted experiences for your customers everywhere – via email, on your web site, 3rd party web sites and most popular social networks. The fun part is orchestrating flows – if someone downloads your offer on email channel, you don’t want to show them the same offer on the web site and visa versa.
• #41: Let’s switch gears and talk about measurement or KPIs that are important when evaluating your DG programs I think marketers struggle to measure programs ROI for two reasons. One is because they might not think about measurement upfront and then fail to create the right structure/framework to measure results. Two, there is no alignment on what metrics matter.
• #42: Consider your audience and what KPIs you’ll be measuring at what point in time There are 2 sets of metrics you want to consider – Engagement metrics – relate to your programs – you may want to track them relative to goals you set at the end of the program and over time Some of these metrics include … Another set of metrics is revenue metrics, and those are important to your sales, CMO, CEO; you don’t measure these right at the end of your program as it takes time to create opportunities, generate pipeline and close deals. But these metrics are critical to track because knowing the marketing contribution to revenue and ROI on your programs gives you credibility and helps defend your budgets. So, Focus on revenue metrics and ROI Optimize programs to drive higher ROI
• #43: It’s very important to have a framework and a time frame for measuring the results of your programs. Let’s consider our email nurture program and what you might measure over a 6 month period So, say in January you set up and launch your nurture program. You measure the engagement score a month later (combination of clicks, opens, content downloads). It’s 70, then you start testing an optimizing it and get the score up to 80 by 4th month. In May (in 5 months): your compare the results to historical – pre-nurture or to a control group that hasn’t been nurtured; in this example, nurture drove 4x the #of fast leads and doubled the number or MQLs 6 months – 2x the number of opps; and we can take it further and track the pipeline and closed deals
• #44: I want to touch on First and Multi-touch attribution quickly as this topic comes up a lot. Let me give you an example. Let’s say you have an opportunity or closed a deal valued at $100k in revenue. So in the case of First touch attribution, the first program that touched that deal (and in this example, it’s analytics ebook content) will get the full $100k attribution, regardless of the fact that there were 4 other programs that had an impact. Does that make sense? Now, let’s look at this same example with MT attribution lense.
• #45: In this example, we have the same $100k deal, but we take into account all programs that influenced the deal and give them equal attribution. So as you can see, the ebook on Analytics gets $25k, Analytics survey gets 25k, webinar and tradeshow get $25k each. Registering for a webinar doesn’t get any attribution b/w registration is not a success. Now this looks a lot more balanced and true to reality.
• #46: And I
• #47: Finally, I’d like to talk to you about S&M alignment, which is critical for the success of your business as Marketing cannot run programs in isolation
• #48: The first critical step in alignment is to agree on definitions. Program success – click or download, webinar reg. or attendance What’s MQL, SQL, Opportunitywhat activities warrant immediate follow-up – important to keep them constant Several teams need to come together and define these terms – Marketing, Sales, Sales Development (Inside Sales), Marketing and Sales Ops.
• #49: So the definition of MQLs for customers is very different. If your organization has multiple products or services sold into the installed base – in other words, if you run an up-sell/cross-sell business, you need to think about prioritizing customer leads for your Sales teams. At Marketo, we started with general MQLs initially, but as we grew our x-sell products and services portfolio, it became obvious that we need to measure the customer’s interest and buying intent for different products separately. That’s why we moved to product MQLs. Again, this may be different for your organization. At Marketo, Product MQLs are based on Product Interest score; and a threshold of becoming a product MQL is 5+ points Customer can be an MQL for multiple products in the same month. A customers can be an MQL for multiple product in a given quarter, once disqualified for 1 product they can’t become an MQL for that product again for 3 months; Again, this is not set in stone, but can be different for your organization. I will touch on the importance of lead scoring in subsequent slides.
• #50: We use lead scoring for demographics fit (a VP of mktg. is scored higher than a marketing coordinator) For Asset scoring, we look at whether it’s an early stage or late stage asset and the level of engagement that’s required to consume it (for example, an infographic is just 1 point, but a 100+ page Definitive guide is 10 points) Behavior scoring: again, this is different depending on the early-mid-late stage of content and whether the behavior represents buying intent or not. E.g. visit to a pricing page +10, visit careers pages – minus 10 And of course, you need Marketing Automation software to activate the lead scoring and use it for all your campaigns.
• #51: Teams also need to align on goals – pipeline, revenue, opps, MQLs Tracking these goals on a big screen TV via Marketo Marketing Calendar provides visibility to Sales, C-Suite and business stakeholders Everyone is in the know on the key programs program visibility to the C-suite, sales or other company stakeholders for more cross-functional alignment.
• #53: Regardless of who follows up on leads, Sales need a way of prioritizing the volume. At Marketo we use our MSI tool (you see a screen shot here) that plugs in directly into SFDC to help with prioritization. This is what it looks like to the SDR or Sales rep inside CRM Leads are sorted by a single score, but reps can if the lead is scored high due to fit or engagement/buying intent, or both Interesting moments show the lead’s activity, so they can have a more relevant conversation This is how we help focus the sales rep on the hottest leads AND enable them to be more effective when they do connect with a prospect or customer
• #54: At Marketo we have these in place and it is all automated. So when a lead becomes a lead, if after the first day they haven’t touched it, they get a nice incredibly friendly reminder. And you can see from this slides the reminders get less friendly. As you can imagine, there are very few leads that aren’t followed up within a 3-day period. And by the way, some leads are followed up much more quickly. Now, this may seem a bit harsh, but hey, that’s an SDR’s job. Their primary mission is to call and qualify our best leads and pass them to an AE if they think an opportunity exists.