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3 Strategies to Kick-Start your ABM Efforts

Account-based marketing (ABM) is neither a product nor a point solution. Rather, it’s a strategy, a mindset, and ultimately a cultural movement. Done correctly, this culture shift leads to better sales and marketing partnership, and eventually the ability to maximize revenue potential together with sales. On the marketing side, ABM forces them to think like salespeople, which means going from a lead-based to an account-based mentality. Instead of reacting to leads that are interested in products, marketing needs to catch up and align with sales by proactively selling into accounts that are a great fit for the brand. Additionally, they are catering messaging and personalization towards buying groups and personas, instead of individuals. Sales must also undergo a mentality shift because ABM forces them to trust technology and software to help scale their traditional strategic selling efforts. It requires them to trust marketing and really work together across the aisle.

While the idea of strategic selling has been around for a while, the technology has not. As the world of marketing and selling gets more complicated, ABM becomes more of a need than a want. Indeed, Sirius Decisions finds that 93% of B2B companies consider ABM to be extremely important for their success in driving more revenue.

Common Challenges

For the past few years, I’ve been reminded by customers and prospects about how difficult ABM execution is, especially getting started and obtaining early buy-in from sales. On average, it takes six to nine months to get ABM up and running, a lengthy process in part because of the challenge of aligning mentalities to create a shared strategy between marketing and sales. Alignment is required throughout the entire workflow in order to maximize the potential of ABM and maximize revenue together for the brand. Without this step, it’s impossible to define target account lists and prioritize accounts.

Another roadblock is building the right target account list to support the strategy. This is difficult because sales and marketing are forced to work with limited account level data, and don’t have the manpower or tech to scale their processes, especially the brands that have thousands of accounts in their database already. Often, the best fit accounts your looking for are buried deep in the databases or across different marketing and sales tools and data sources. As a result, sales and marketing are forced to spend months building target account lists that nobody agrees on and are often based on opinion, intuition, and gut feel instead of data.

Recommended Solution

The combination of clean data and artificial intelligence helps solve the challenges above. Successful ABM’ers use the combination of both to remove the guesswork out of creating a shared strategy and building the right predictive target account list.  Data refers to clean first-party customer data that contains firmographic, technographic, and behavioral activity data. AI refers to algorithms and machine learning to create an ideal customer profile (ICP) based on your first party customer data and then using the ICP to quickly scan and predict which accounts in your database should be considered target accounts. The AI prediction and recommendation is based on the first party data that you trained the ICP model with. As a result, successful ABM’ers can ensure they have a list justified by data, instead of opinions. Remember, your AI is only as accurate as the first-party data you train it with.

Kickstarter Strategies & Predictive Target Account Lists

1.     Land & Expand: Predictive Up-sell/Cross-sell List

The first key strategy is getting more from your existing customers. This is about landing and expanding across your customer base, selling them additional products, or up-selling the current products you have. For this scenario, you would train your AI-based ICP model with customers that just recently purchases up-sell/cross-sell products. You would then tell the model to scan your existing customer base that has not yet purchased certain up-sell/cross-sell products. The result would be considered a predictive up-sell/cross-sell list.

2.     More New Business: Predictive Best-fit List

The second strategy is to win more new business. This is about net new business coming into your ABM funnel and increasing the number of quality opportunities. This scenario REALLY requires collaboration and coordination with the sales team. No longer can you have a lead hand-off with clear marketing and sales demarcations. It’s about having one team executing together in a coordinated fashion. In this case, you would train your AI-based ICP model on your recent closed-won customers in the past 3-6 months. You would then tell the model to scan your known account database to see which accounts are best-fit accounts. The result would be considered a predictive best-fit list.

3.     Get Back on Track: Predictive Quick-win List

The third strategy requires focusing in on what accounts you can close fastest. This is a great strategy to have when you feel you are not on track to hit your quarterly ABM goals.  This involves looking at your average sales cycle and velocity for previous closed-won deals. In this case, you would train your AI-based ICP model on your previous high-velocity closed-won opportunities. You would then tell the model to scan your know account database to see which accounts are more likely to close the fastest.  This is a great tactic for marketing if they need to get back on track to hit their quarterly goals.

For more on how to kick start your ABM efforts, check out our webinar on the same topic.

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Millennials Have Higher Expectations for CX than Older Generations

The younger the consumer, the higher their expectations for the companies they engage with.

That’s the overall takeaway from Adobe’s 2019 “CXM Index” report, based on a survey of 1,500 U.S. adults regarding preferences and expectations for digital experiences in the retail, travel and hospitality, media and entertainment, and financial services industries.

“Younger consumers have higher expectations for innovation,” said Taylor Schreiner, director of Adobe Digital Insights. “The 18- to 34-year-old cohort, specifically, has grown up with digital and mobile, and they not only value innovation in customer experiences that address their needs, they demand it.”

Retail CX Insights

Consumers of all ages have come to expect certain types of communications from brands when they transact online. For example, more than half of online shoppers across age groups said they expect to receive an emailed receipt following a purchase. More than 40% expect to receive a text message when an order has shipped. However, brands might want to think twice before sending text messages that ask for feedback about a purchase; one in four consumers said they don’t want them.
Consumers do want to move fluidly between multiple channels of communication with retailers. One in three consumers surveyed expressed frustration with having to re-input their information when engaging with that retailer on a second platform (e.g., website to app or smart speaker to phone).

Additionally, younger consumers were more likely than their older counterparts to have had a bad experience with an online retailer. They were 173% more likely to have received a faulty product and 68% more likely to have to re-input information when re-engaging with a retailer on a second platform. Those 35 years or older, on the other hand, were more likely (40%) to abandon their cart as a result of a bad experience.

“The checkout is one of the most crucial aspects of the commerce experience,” Schreiner said. “Retailers need to ensure that they have implemented, and are optimizing, for a seamless and easy checkout process because it is the ultimate bellwether for sales and customer satisfaction.”

Travel and Hospitality

Consumers across the board said they have high expectations for their travel experiences both online and off. For example, four in 10 said they expected to receive a text message from an airline if their flights were delayed.
The report also found a travel brand’s mobile app is a key customer touch point—one that can either make or break the travel experience. Many respondents said they were impressed with the ability to check into their hotels via a mobile app instead of visiting the front desk. They also appreciated entering their hotel room to find it is set up for them based on the preferences indicated in the mobile app, such as their alarm clock already being set, or the temperature set to their preferred setting.

“When it comes to their travel experiences, consumers want to be surprised and delighted,” Schreiner told CMO.com. “Anything that can save them time and effort, and make their stay more pleasant, is going to be key, as are personalized and customizable services that enhance the travel experience.”

According to the report, people found that the following services help create noteworthy travel experiences: the automatic rescheduling/rebooking of a delayed flight; a travel booking site using a person’s travel history to send alerts about the lowest prices for a flight, hotel, or car rental; and an immediate response from a hotel when contacted via social media.

On the flip side, undisclosed trip cancellation policies that were not highlighted during the purchase process was the most negatively ranked experience across all industries.

Financial Services

Three in four consumers were satisfied with the experience they received when accessing financial information on a website (75%) or mobile app (76%). Sixty-eight percent were satisfied with customer service via chat or phone, which was higher than in any other category. Where financial services could use improvement is anticipating consumer’s needs on both websites and in mobile apps: Only half of respondents said they were satisfied with how much travel apps and websites anticipated their needs.
In fact, one of the experiences that was rated the lowest across categories was: “When I log into my bank’s website, I am taken to my most visited page right after I log in.”

Media and Entertainment

In the past two years, younger consumers were more likely to note improvements in their overall media and entertainment (M&E) experiences on websites, mobile sites, mobile apps, and smart speakers. Mobile apps have seen the largest improvement among the 18- to 34-year-old cohort.

The top most delightful entertainment experiences were all location-based. Visiting a museum and using a mobile augmented reality app to get more information on an artifact was ranked No. 1.

Ranked No. 2 was being able to order food at a stadium from a mobile phone and having the order delivered directly to the user’s seat. The third most delightful experience was using a wearable device at a theme park to gain access to shows, attractions, and more.

The most negative experience: paying to rent a movie online, and then not being able to watch it because of an unexpectedly slow internet connection.

How People React to Poor Customer Experience

The study shows that nine in 10 people ages 18 to 34 said they will take an action after having a bad online customer experience, such as telling friends, stopping purchases from the company, and posting reviews on a review site or social media. People over the age of 35 were only slightly less likely to take action (eight in 10) but are more likely to complain directly to the company after a bad experience.

Among those who posted on social media about their experience, two in three heard back from the company.

“Being responsive to customers is fundamental to meeting their customer experience expectations,” Schreiner said. “Responsiveness could easily remedy a person’s frustration, whereas the feeling that you are not being heard could add to that annoyance.”

This post originally appeared on CMO.com March 26, 2019. 

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The New Way Forward In B2B: Account-Based Experience

Steve Lucas, SVP of Marketo, an Adobe company, on Thursday challenged the thousands of attendees at Adobe Summit—The Digital Experience Conference to make every experience count.

“Experience,” he said, “is the line between epic and epic failure.”

With that, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen came on stage to discuss with Lucas Adobe’s 2018 acquisition of Marketo. Narayen provided some insight for other companies that may be considering their own M&As. To ensure a perfect union, an alignment in business mission, people, and culture is required, he said.

Narayen also talked about the experience mandate, which is spreading to organizations across B2C and B2B. His advice: “Digital is either a headwind or tailwind, and it is up to you to decide. The tailwind [mentality] lets you service your customers better.”

Lucas asked the audience of marketers to think about the experiences that engage them every day, as well as how much they’ve changed in just the past 10 years. Uber, without the great experience that is associated with it, is simply getting into a stranger’s car, he said. And Airbnb, without experience, is sleeping in a stranger’s home.

“It’s clear that experience is the true differentiator,” Lucas said. “It comes down to this: Experience makes or breaks a business. Case in point: Coachella vs. Fyre Festival. Coachella, time and time again, delivers amazing experiences to festival attendees. Fyre Festival, in contrast, is a pile of hot garbage.”

Helping B2B Meet the Experience Mandate

For B2B marketers, making experience their business means thinking beyond CRM. “The future of how we engage companies is not based on what people say, but what they do,” Lucas said.
CRM, he said, is inherently flawed as a marketing solution because it is built for salespeople. It relies heavily on salesperson input and perceptions about customers, and is based on what customers have said. But, Lucas said, building a selling strategy based on what people say instead of what they do isn’t the right strategy going forward.

B2B marketers need different data. “We care about people and campaigns—who [customers] are, what they read, how often they visit,” Lucas said. “We want to know which campaigns are moving them through the journey.”

The solution? Account-based experience, an entirely new way to identify, engage with, and deliver new experiences to account-based buying teams. That’s why Lucas said he is excited about this week’s announcement about a strategic partnership involving Adobe, Microsoft, and LinkedIn, which will help marketers gain a deeper, real-time understanding of targeted accounts and audiences more effectively through rich account profiles.

For his part, Lucas announced an industry-first partnership with conversational marketing platform Drift to power customer experiences with “conversational account-based marketing” (ABM) via live chat, one of the fastest-growing channels for B2B marketers. The partnership will allow marketers to personalize every website visit from a target account with a personalized conversation in real-time, as well as track all ABM conversations and attribute them back to revenue.

Jessica Kao, director of client services at consultancy Digital Pi, came on stage to discuss the challenges and opportunities that B2B marketers face with ABM.

“There are three main challenges that I see over and over,” Kao said. “First is the data challenges. We all want to jump right to creating that target list of accounts. But let’s face it: We all have bad data, and a lot of it is incomplete. Second, there’s not enough holistic coordination across all the various touch points.”

The third challenge, she said, is organizational alignment. Interactions with sales are separate from what’s going on in marketing. “It’s like the right hand isn’t talking to the left hand,” she said. In addition, most marketing teams don’t know what sales teams are saying or sending to target accounts, she said.

When ABM goes wrong, Kao said, customer experiences can suffer.

3 Ways Nvidia Is Moving the Needle

Alix Hart, global head of digital marketing at Nvidia, an AI computing platform for leading researchers, developers, and data scientists, talked about her B2B company’s digital transformation and how important ABM has been to that transformation.
“[Our customers are] the Einsteins and Da Vincis of our time, solving what was impossible only a few years ago, enabled and accelerated by the computing systems from Nvidia,” Hart told attendees. “They win Nobel prizes in physics and Oscars for technical effects, design self-driving cars, and find new methods to detect tumors early. They are changing the world.”

To successfully engage these individuals and the corporations they work for, Nvidia saw it needed to approach them with purpose and inspire them to better understand how its technology and systems could be used to accelerate their work and help train their teams.

“In a word, we have to be intelligent, listening and responding with just the right content that is relevant to their industry and the work they do,” Hart said.

Hart shared three ways Nvidia moved its needle. First, it built a platform to bring its customer data together, both digital and in-product data. Second, the company overhauled every experience—from websites to email templates to nurture journeys.

“We improved lead score models and pulled in predictive scoring tools, building some in-house with our data science team,” she said. “We built programs for the middle of the journey, where we most want to engage, share industry innovation, invite them to seminars and training, and celebrate their work.”

Third, Nvidia’s marketing organization partners very closely with its sales team to vet new models and get feedback on what’s working. Case in point: Nvidia’s social monitoring was inaccurately predicting sentiment much of the time. For example, posts about early tumor detection were classified as negative.

Nvidia marketers worked with the AI research team, who created a new algorithm and improved accuracy to over 80%. The company also created a customer segment scorecard to better understand engagement upstream in the journey so it can optimize its content faster, Hart said.

“Our goal is to intelligently connect and engage across a wide set of customers, from avid gamers to AI researchers, to create new customer relationships and build on existing ones—intelligently,” Hart said. “Bringing our data together for a unified view of the customer, and focusing on intelligent experiences and insights [was key].”

This post originally appeared on CMO.com March 28, 2019.

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All of Our Customers Will Move to the Cloud, Says Oracle CEO

“We have a big existing on-premise user base and I believe all of them will move to the cloud,” said Oracle CEO Mark Hurd. “In fact, I was with a large group of our users just last night and they’re all going to move on their time frame. We don’t put a time frame on it, but this thing is moving at a pretty good speed. It will not move linearly, it will move geometrically. When we get to a certain point you will start to see a geometric move in the market and it will be significant.”

Mark Hurd, CEO of Oracle, discussed the huge growth in the cloud applications market and he expects Oracle to lead that market in an interview on Bloomberg:

Cloud Applications Will Become a $400 Billion Market

The apps market is about a $125 billion market. It has two pieces to it. First is back office, which is what we call ERP. This is basically your financial systems, procurement, manufacturing, supply chain, and HR. That is really 70 percent of the applications market or around $85 billion. Second is the front office market which includes marketing, sales automation, service, etc. add up to $40 billion. A very interesting phenomenon is that as the on-premise applications market moves into SAAS it actually grows exponentially. Now the applications market is doing all of the server work, all the operating systems, and all the database work. It’s the data center, it’s the people. So the market will actually grow from $125 billion and probably triple just as it moves to SAAS because it’s taking share from the other parts of the IT market. The applications market I predict will actually become more like $400 billion as it goes forward.

We think it is an amazing opportunity. We are growing our applications market over the last 8-12 quarters more than double-digit. The market itself is growing and we are gaining substantive share. We are the leader in ERP. If you go back to Gartner, IDC, and the analysts we are leading in HR now as well. These are very attractive and robust markets. Our customers want to modernize, want to spend less, want someone else doing the work, and they want someone else assuming the risk. We are extremely bullish about our position in the market.

All of Our Customers Will Move to the Cloud

We have rewritten our application base for the cloud, for SAAS. We have been doing this for years and we’ve invested a lot of capital. We are deploying our capabilities all across the globe. We are extremely excited and bullish about not just our current position. here is going to be a leader in this market and there is no one today with more than 50 percent market share. In fact, the highest application percentage of any company in any segment is sort of mid-20s. This generation will see a leader that is much more material than that and I volunteer us to do it. In most segments, the leader has 50 percent plus.

We have a big existing on-premise user base and I believe all of them will move to the cloud. In fact, I was with a large group of our users just last night and they’re all going to move. They are all going to move on their time frame. We don’t actually put an end of life. We have a competitor that does that, but we don’t do that. We want them to move at their pace and we want them to feel good about it. We don’t put a time frame on it, but this thing is moving at a pretty good speed. It will not move linearly, it will move geometrically. When we get to a certain point you will start to see a geometric move in the market and it will be significant.

>> Watch the full Bloomberg interview with Oracle CEO Mark Hurd.

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How the Whole Business Wins with Successful Marketing Attribution [Part 2]

In part one of this series, I compared marketing attribution to the Big Bad Wolf, a once-intimidating presence that kept marketers from successfully connecting their marketing to revenue. While the act is no longer such a scary monster, the intricacies of attribution models remains a beast. Fortunately, it’s one you can easily tame with a little bit of information.

So, let’s dive into the two chief types of marketing attribution models and cover the many merits of each.

Single-touch attribution models

These models offer marketers the simple solution of applying all credit to a single touch point in the customer journey. There are three widely used single-touch attribution models:

• First-click models give 100% credit to the action that drives the first visit to your website.
• Lead-creation-click models give all credit to the last action a visitor takes before filling out a contact form and becoming a lead.
• Last-click models give all credit to the marketing channel that turned a lead into an opportunity.

Without a doubt, single-touch models are the easiest to implement and understand. But they have obvious drawbacks—namely, they attribute all the credit to one activity, prohibiting marketers from connecting revenue to multichannel strategies. While these may work in B2C scenarios, where customer journeys tend to be shorter and more straightforward, they are insufficient for B2B revenue attribution. For example, a first-click model will never help you understand the impact of a retargeting campaign because, by definition, it won’t be the first click. Similarly, a last-click model will never help you understand the impact of a top-of-the-funnel acquisition campaign.

Multi-touch attribution models

Unlike single-touch models, multi-touch attribution gives marketers the chance to allocate different revenue credit to different activities. There are five particularly popular multi-touch models:

• Linear models give equal weight to every touchpoint. So, if you have three touchpoints, each will receive a third of the credit.
• Descending or time decay models give more credit to touchpoints that are closer to the conversion.
• U-shaped models attribute 40% of revenue credit to each the first and lead-creation touch. They evenly split the remaining 20% between every other touch.
• W-shaped models attribute 30% of credit to each the first visit, the lead-creation session, and the opportunity-creation session. They divide the remaining 10% among all other activities.
• Full-path models attribute revenue to activities throughout the entire customer journey. In these models, 22.5% of revenue credit goes to each the first touch, lead-creation touch, opportunity-creation touch, and closed-revenue touch. They distribute the remaining 10% among all other touchpoints.

Multi-touch attribution models are particularly useful in B2B marketing environments, where customer journeys are regularly drawn-out and nonlinear. Because these models align with crucial funnel stages, marketers can use them to gain an improved understanding of customer journeys and accelerate purchases.

Additionally, for B2B marketers with particularly complex, long, or irregular customer journeys, it may be worthwhile to consider a custom attribution model—or one powered by machine learning. While pre-configured multi-touch models, like the ones previously discussed, align closely with the stages of a typical B2B journey, it’s important to use an attribution model that matches your business.

Select the right marketing attribution model for you

While marketing attribution is typically discussed in the context of attributing revenue, marketers also use attribution to understand what activities are driving other outcomes, such as pipeline and leads. Picking a marketing attribution model that fits your needs ultimately depends on what you’re trying to measure.

If your goal is to see how effectively marketing attributes leads, you need a model that measures the first touch and lead creation: a U-shaped model.

On the other hand, if you want to understand how your marketing is impacting revenue generation, using a full-path attribution model for a more comprehensive approach is the way to go.

Whatever you choose, marketing attribution is the key to understanding how you’re reaching your anticipated outcomes. And it’ll put you on a path to influencing desired behaviors and driving more conversions.

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5 Brands that Centered Digital Transformation Around Customers

A keen focus on customer experience is helping enterprises compete and win in today’s highly competitive business landscape.

That was the main takeaway of this morning’s keynote session at Adobe Summit—The Digital Experience Conference.

“Powerful experiences change the way we think, interact, entertain, work, and relate to the world around us,” Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen told a record 17,000 attendees at Summit, in Las Vegas. “And the impact of these experiences spans from the largest brands and institutions to students and artists everywhere.”

Inside Adobe’s Digital Transformation

Adobe, Narayen said, has spent the past few years going through its own significant transformation–one that has spanned every part of the organization. There’s no denying that the company was a leader in creative desktop software (think: Photoshop). The issue at hand, however, was that Adobe was only able to deliver new products and updates every 18 to 24 months. While this model served it well for almost a decade, Adobe soon realized its business was at a crossroads.
“Our product cycles were too slow to keep up with the pace of innovation our engineers wanted to deliver,” Narayen explained. “We didn’t have a direct customer relationship to understand which features would add the most value. And we weren’t attracting the next generation of new users.”

Moving to a cloud-based subscription model put the customer experience front and center, he said, delivering a continuous stream of innovation to customers.

“We became a company that relies on data as much as creativity,” Narayen said. “We became a company that focuses on understanding customer intent so we can deliver a personalized experience at every touch point. And, in the end, we became a more successful company. Our success has been predicated on the core belief that digital transformation starts by reimagining the entire customer journey.”

To do that, Adobe created a data-driven operating model (DDOM) for running its digital business. Its framework includes a common taxonomy of the journey, metrics and goals, and who in the organization owns various parts of the customer journey. The DDOM dashboard shows the overall health of the business and is mapped to the entire customer journey of discover, try, buy, use, renew.

“We’ve built a DDOM dashboard that now is a single source of truth that has democratized [our] data and shifted the discussion … with all stakeholders across the world [focusing] on insights and actions,” Narayen said.

Best Buy’s Playbook For Success

Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly joined Narayen on stage to talk about the retailer’s digital transformation, which started in November 2012 when “everyone thought Amazon was going to kill us,” Joly joked.

The company came up with a new strategy that prioritized customers above all else. “We said, ‘We are not in the business of selling products or doing transactions with you. Our purpose is to enrich lives with the help of technology,’” Joly said.

Step one toward a more customer-centric business model was making a few changes right off that bat, such as dropping prices and making a commitment to ship fast and free. Transformation also entailed an investment in customer experience, where data played a large role in driving the company forward.

“Data is the enabler of digital transformation,” Joly said.

Building a single view of the customer was key, not to mention a “huge undertaking” Joly told attendees. But orchestrating targeted and personalized customer experiences are impossible otherwise. From there, Best Buy’s marketing strategy has evolved quite a bit: Whereas seven years ago approximately 80% of its media spend was analogue, today 90% is digital.

When looking at the competitive landscape (read: Amazon), Best Buy quickly figured out that its stores could be its advantage. That’s why another key part of the BestBuy transformation was upskilling employees—“blue-shirts,” as Joly called them—to ensure customers would have the best possible in-store experiences. Another bonus: In-store employee turnover is now less than 30%, down from seven years ago.

Today, Best Buy customers can also use digital services in-store to compare product features, see which stores have the products they are looking for, and more.

“The stores have proved to be an unbelievable asset,” Joly said. “Half of our online orders are picked up in store or shipped home from a store.”

To further differentiate itself, Best Buy created a slew of new services to help customers make better, more informed buying decisions. One example is its Tech Advisors services, which sends consultants to customers’ homes to help them decide which technology is going to work best for their needs. This free service gives consumers product recommendations via a personalized plan, with no obligation to buy. Customers can get advice about Wi-Fi, smart appliances, home theater, and more.

What’s next? According to Joly, the digital transformation journey is never really over, so the retailer will continue to focus on developing and selling customer-centric solutions, and building relationships with consumers.

Intuit’s Digital Transformation Is Rooted In Data

Tech company Intuit’s digital transformation began as a move from desktop to cloud-based SaaS. According to the company’s CIO, Atticus Tysen, who was interviewed by Adobe CIO Cindy Stoddard, Intuit’s transformation was very much focused on data.

“IT played a major part in laying down the right infrastructure and data pipes,” Tysen said. The main goal was to ensure data was delivered in the right way, at the right time, so that employees would be able to deliver on the customer experience mandate.

During this process, Tysen found himself forming some unusual synergies across the organization, working with other C-suite executives such as the chief customer success officer, the CMO, and even the CFO. He learned that marketers were some of the most sophisticated users of data and also noted a growing trend in the employment of chief data officers. Intuit’s own CDO works relentlessly across the organization to help the various business lines think correctly about data.

The key, Tysen said, is cleaning the data and removing the organizational silos. At Intuit, the IT team is set up with small teams assigned to work with various functions of the organization more closely. There’s a group that works directly with marketing, a group that works with finance, etc. Gone are the days when CIOs can think strictly in terms of IT metrics, Tysen said. Each and every function within a company needs to align around a common set of business metrics, breaking down silos and “working more horizontally than ever before.”

SunTrust’s Mission To Lead With Purpose

SunTrust CMO Susan Johnson came on stage with Adobe CTO Abhay Parasnis to discuss how digital is disrupting financial institutions. Johnson, who started her career as an engineer at Apple, said her move “from numbers and science to a world of possibilities—marketing” was an exciting change. SunTrust had a ton of data, and Johnson was committed to building a marketing organization that could use this intelligence to reach people creatively.

“Step one was to invent a new marketing playbook [rooted in] purpose, tech, and courage,” Johnson said. “Purpose is what grounds us. Our transformation was grounding and removing friction from financial services.”

The technology portion, Johnson said, was about helping people manage their finances fast and plan for the future. Suntrust began with siloed point solutions but eventually evolved to a broad, bank-wide digital strategy.

“Today we are more client-centric than product-centric,” Johnson said.

Johnson said she is hypersensitive to the colliding worlds of tech and marketing. Marketing, she said, once lacked certainty. But today it’s where organizations can measure, target, and segment.

Technology also has played a critical role in Suntrust’s transformation journey: “We are committed to [helping customers] build control and confidence over [their] money,” she said.

Johnson pointed to the power of AI in helping the bank target and reach new segments of people, wherever they are, who need Suntrust’s services. Adobe, Johnson said, has been key in getting Suntrust to this point. The bank is also constantly on the lookout for startups to work with and is currently looking to build an app for wearables to help people manage their money.

“Think of what Fitbit or Apple have done with fitness, [and that’s what] we want to do with financial fitness,” she said.

Generally speaking, Johnson said, marketing has become a growth driver, but the synergy between CMOs and CIOs cannot be overstated. There’s an immense amount of data, and IT teams can help marketers determine what’s actionable.

“The relationship will [continue to] be really important,” she said.

Chegg’s Data Science Team Works To Improve CX—Constantly

Like the other speakers on stage, Chegg CEO Dan Rosensweig emphasized the importance of data to his organization’s transformation journey.

Chegg is a subscription-based service committed to helping students learn on-demand in a personalized way. The company’s focus on data and analytics has helped it reach students on the right channels, with the right message, at the right time. It has 30 data scientists working across various business groups helping to collect, analyze, and disseminate data across the company.

As a result, it has been able to lower its cost of acquisition from about 63% to approximately 80% renewal rates—all because of data and analytics.

“Young people demand good experiences, and they don’t have tolerance for bad experiences,” Rosensweig said. “We have an opportunity to know what matters [to them] because of data and analytics. Our data scientists are working to understand what we are doing wrong and how we can fix it.”

This post originally appeared on CMO.com March 25, 2019.

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How the Whole Business Wins with Successful Marketing Attribution [Part 1]

Every sector has its Big Bad Wolf. For marketing, it’s attribution—or at least it was. These days, attribution isn’t so scary. The wolf has been declawed, and today’s marketers are expected to be able to connect their efforts and spend to revenue. But while we may better understand marketing attribution, the technology, processes, and skill sets around it aren’t always so clear.

In fact, only 25% of marketers are doing multi-touch attribution, according to the 2018 State of Pipeline Marketing Report. And nearly 30% aren’t using an attribution model at all.

So, what exactly does successful marketing attribution look like, and what can you do to build it into your marketing processes?

The ABCs of marketing attribution

To effectively connect marketing to revenue, marketers need to gather the right marketing and sales data and analyze it correctly.

Most marketers today typically capture two categories of data:

1. Activity metrics: These measure how many blog posts, articles, sponsored events, and other activities marketing has been responsible for. Activity metrics are all about what marketing has done (and how much it’s spent on those activities).
2. Engagement metrics: These look at how people have reacted to marketing activities. How many hits did your blog receive? How many contacts did you meet at your event? Metrics such as views, clicks, likes, and time spent on a site all help answer these questions.

Together, these metrics help define spend and provide visibility into the top of the funnel, however, they alone do not demonstrate the comprehensive impact of marketing. Attributing marketing’s role in revenue generation takes some careful analysis of sales data, too, in order to connect the dots from marketing to business outcomes.

Break down the barriers between sales and marketing

Successful attribution is nearly impossible when your sales and marketing teams operate in silos.

To break down the barriers, you need to capture all relevant customer and revenue data in a shared CRM system. Specifically, you’ll want to know:

• Deal size
• Customer engagement
• Upsell potential
• Time spent as a customer

Only by connecting marketing lead generation to opportunities created and deals closed—unifying the full funnel—will you be able to see how marketing spend contributes to revenue.

Choose your attribution model

Once you have the data, it’s time to decide how to apply revenue credit to the various marketing activities that took place across the customer journey. There are two broad approaches to attribution:

1. Single-touch attribution models offer a simple approach that applies 100% of the revenue credit to a single touch point in the customer journey. While these models are easiest to implement, they’re relatively one-dimensional. Because they attribute all revenue to a single activity, they are limiting—especially if you need to account for a multichannel strategy.
2. Multi-touch attribution models, on the other hand, give different revenue credit weights to a range of activities. These models are particularly important in the B2B space, where it is critical to understand how the various marketing activities impacted the customer in their long, complex journey. In journeys that can be made up of tens to hundreds to thousands of touchpoints, emphasizing certain key touchpoints that align with vital funnel stages can help marketers better understand buying journeys and close deals.

Is it really worth it?

Great attribution is tough, but it’s worth the effort. In fact, successful attribution can benefit your business in several areas:

• Intangibles: Better alignment between sales and marketing, improved communication across all teams, and change perception from cost center to revenue center
• Accountability and transparency: Simpler ways for marketing to prove its value to the C-suite and board, easier partner referral evaluations, and clearer insight into the value of guest blogging
• Reporting and forecasting: Increased ability to predict customer actions, report on account-based marketing activities, forecast department goals accurately, and record granular metrics
• Optimization: Improved paid media ROI and more optimized budget allocation for campaigns and channels
• Decision making: Comprehensive evaluation based on pipeline and revenue, not clicks and leads, and more accurate cost-per-lead and cost-per-opp metrics

CMOs, marketing ops, and practitioners: take note

Beyond overall organizational benefits, successful attribution can also directly impact different stakeholders within marketing.

For CMOs, attribution means greater job security. In fact, 43% of CMOs say marketing now leads more company activities. And by definitively proving the value of marketing activities, CMOs stand to broaden that position further. Additionally, marketing departments that can demonstrate value tend to enjoy higher budgets.

Marketing operations and analytics teams are the ones in the trenches getting their hands dirty with the systems and data that marketing relies on. As attribution becomes more important, these roles are becoming more valuable. These teams hold the keys to the data castle, and marketing ops and analytics experts will lead the charge to drive more effective campaigns through attribution, data, and analytics.

Marketing practitioners—the ones handling demand gen and individual campaigns—can also benefit from attribution. When they demonstrate the value of their activities, higher budgets are bound to follow. More importantly, by tying activities to revenue, practitioners have even better metrics to assess the success of their campaigns and improve performance over time.

Great attribution starts with you

With successful marketing attribution in place, there’s a long list of benefits for many people in your business across a host of different roles. But someone has to take the initial steps to implement processes and select the right attribution model for your business.

Check out part two of this blog post to see how you can be the one to do it.

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Why Email Marketing Still Rules (Plus 3 Tips to Increase Engagement)

Email marketing is like an old friend. It’s been around for years. It doesn’t surprise you much anymore. You may even find it a little boring sometimes. But at the end of the day, you know you can depend on it.

Even with the emergence of more exciting engagement tactics, email marketing has remained a key method for reaching your audience.

In fact, nearly 70% of people between the ages of 18 and 34 prefer companies communicate with them through email, according to MarketingSherpa research. That number’s even higher among 35- to 44-year-olds and 45- to 54-year-olds.

Regardless of how people feel about email communications, many marketers’ email campaigns are failing to connect with customers.

Nearly half of the marketers who participated in a recent Demand Metric/Return Path study reported email open rates of 15% or less, while almost 60% cited click-through rates of 8% or less.

But that isn’t because email marketing is past its prime. It’s because too many marketers have neglected the recent paradigm shift. Namely, today’s customers have become much more sophisticated about how they consume content.

Here are three easy ways you can improve your email marketing efforts to better connect with your audience and increase engagement:

1. Segment your lists

The first thing you’ll want to do is figure out who you should be talking to—and why.

Some of the most popular characteristics marketers use to segment their lists include:

• Job title or function
• Demographics
• Purchase history
• Website activity
• Past email clicks or opens

Why is this important? For one, people’s inboxes are overflowing with marketing emails. If you insist on sending messages that fail to pique their interests, they’ll quickly tune out.

Say you’re trying to engage a chief human resources officer (CHRO) audience. Sending those executives HR content isn’t enough. Instead, you need to focus on their particular industries and needs.

A CHRO in the rapidly growing high-tech industry, for example, would likely be interested in information around talent recruitment.

Meanwhile, a CHRO in a legacy industry—where decades-long employees are nearing retirement—would gravitate more toward content on workforce management and succession planning.

Segmenting your lists gives you a chance to customize your communications, creating tailor-made messages that resonate with your intended audience.

2. Trigger your messaging

As a marketer, you’ve heard the phrase “email blast.” Does it make you cringe? It should.

Rather than sending emails to large, unorganized lists of contacts, you need to strategically engage.

Launching a triggered messaging program—using innovative email marketing software—can help. It allows you to contact customers and prospects based on actions or conditions.

For instance, if someone abandoned their online shopping cart on your ecommerce site, you could send them a strategically timed discount offer. Or, if a person attended your recent software showcase, you could send them an exclusive invite to register early for the next event in town.

By making each of your interactions more meaningful, you’ll earn more customer trust and gain greater influence over their buying decisions.

3. Take advantage of your data

In modern marketing, data is a priceless commodity. And while most marketers recognize that, too few use it like the valuable currency it is. Instead, they treat these precious golden nuggets like knickknacks on some dusty, old shelf.

But for email marketing to have real impact, data must be front and center. Marketers need to capitalize on the information at their fingertips to learn more about their audience and personalize their communications.

That could mean studying device data to better understand how customers view emails and then optimizing messages for mobile. Or it could mean analyzing complaint data to determine optimal email cadences.

Even information that doesn’t seem relevant can be useful. Evaluating how customers behave on a website or social media channel can provide a more vivid picture of their interests, enabling you to improve how you engage with them.

Deliver quality communications

Putting these three ideas into practice will help you elevate your email game. This will:

• Engender trust between you and your customers—because you’re not bugging them with emails at all hours of the day.
• Prove you’re tuned in to their needs—because you’re only sending them relevant information.
• Show you’re listening to them—because you’re providing value, not just trying to sell them stuff.

That’s all your email subscribers are looking for today. And they, along with their inboxes, aren’t going anywhere—especially now that you have these three tips to increase engagement.

Download The Definitive Guide to Engaging Email Marketing to learn more.

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Treat Customer Data Like You’d Want Yours to Be Treated

Last Christmas, I bought a friend of mine a subscription to a science and culture magazine. She had discovered the magazine during downtime at work, so she was delighted when they started showing up at her door.

The gift was a hit, despite the fact that I’d misspelled her name. But then other magazines offers started to arrive in the mail. Then came requests for donations from charitable groups. Next, travel agency ads. And then came the political mailers.

Once she activated her digital subscription, things got worse. Although Google’s algorithm kept some spam out of her inbox, the same companies crowding her mailbox turned up there. Eventually, she ditched that email address for one the magazine didn’t know about.
How did she know that the magazine had sold her data? Because my misspelling showed up everywhere. Fed up, she checked the magazine’s privacy policy; with no recourse but to cancel her subscription, she did so months before it ran out.

Customer Experience Matters More

By selling my friend’s data, the magazine lost her business. So what did it gain in return? Probably around $0.20. Although the value of a customer’s data varies according to their life circumstances, seldom does it sell for more than a dollar.

In aggregate, user data sales add up. But no amount of ad money can erase the stain that selling it leaves on the customer experience. In research published this past May, data exchange Insights Network noted that 90% of consumers consider it unethical for companies to share personal data without the user’s consent. Although some customers will look past data sharing they see as unethical, those like my friend won’t.

Whether my friend is the exception or the norm isn’t important. What’s important is that nearly three-quarters of consumers consider the customer experience an important factor in their purchasing decisions, according to a PwC report published earlier this year. And nothing puts the customer experience in jeopardy quite like unethical use of personal data.

Treat customer data like your own

Customers have different expectations, of course, for how you should handle their data. So how can you tweak your data policies to deliver the best experience for the most customers? Follow the Golden Rule: Treat user data as you’d want your own to be treated. In other words:

1. Don’t buy data; ask for it.

In the U.S. alone, companies spend more than $10 billion annually on third-party audience data. The trouble is, 65% of consumers are uncomfortable with their personal data being shared with for-profit firms, according to the Insights Network report.

But where, if not from data vendors, can you get customer insights? What about customers themselves? Snapchat and other firms focused on the customer experience are partnering with companies like Jebbit to collect what’s known as declared data. Declared data is first-party information that consumers volunteer about their motivations, intentions, interests, and preferences.

Although it might seem impossible to gather enough declared data for Big Data initiatives, Jebbit points out that online experiences and conversations can make collection scalable. Plus, because customers volunteer it, declared data tends to be far more accurate than third-party data, which two-thirds of surveyed consumers told Deloitte is mostly inaccurate.

2. Give the customer something in return.

The question is, are consumers actually willing to share their data? Most are—provided they get something in return. According to a survey by Acxiom and industry group Data & Marketing Association, 58% of consumers make decisions on a case-by-case basis as to whether a service enhancement is worth sharing their data.

What, exactly, do customers want in exchange? In a world, personalization. Epsilon research shows that 80% of consumers are more likely to buy from brands that offer personalized experiences. Most consumers realize that products and services can’t be tailored to them unless they share some amount of personal data.

If you need inspiration, look to Spotify. Not only does the music service leverage user data to create customized Discover Weekly playlists, but it builds bottomless Daily Mixes in the user’s favorite genres. Last but not least, its Release Radar helps users find new releases by their favorite artists.

3. Get consent before sharing or selling user data—or better yet, don’t sell it at all.

While the U.S. doesn’t have a comprehensive law like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which requires companies to obtain the customer’s consent before sharing or selling their data, new legislation like the California Consumer Privacy Act indicates a shift in that direction. Simply because the practice is currently legal in the U.S., doesn’t mean it’s a smart business move.

To show that you’re serious about protecting your customers’ data, start by updating your privacy policy to make clear that you’ll seek informed consent before selling or sharing their information. The University of Michigan’s Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research provides a primer on model language as well as phrases to avoid. Although it’s focused on research data, best-in-class companies take a similar approach to their marketing data.

In a time when the customer experience matters most, surreptitiously selling user data simply isn’t a smart move. The science magazine might’ve made a quarter by doing so, but it also turned a paying customer into a quitter.

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How to Build Brand Loyalty on Your Landing Page

Your landing page is your opportunity to make an impression on your target audience. If it connects on an emotional level and has a clear and transparent purpose, site visitors are more likely to identify with your brand. Building loyalty often takes a bit more time, but your landing page is a start to a long-term relationship with new customers.

For most businesses, around 65% of their revenue comes from an existing customer base. Connecting with your customers to build a relationship from the moment they land on your page through the ordering process is key to remaining competitive in your industry.

Though many elements tie into how loyal people are to one brand over others, we’re going to go right back to the beginning—that first impression when a user lands on your page, and how you can build brand loyalty from the first few seconds when a new customer sees what you offer.

1. Consider Visual Aesthetics

It takes milliseconds for someone to form a first impression of your website. The overall design has a significant impact on whether the person stays or bounces away. Building brand loyalty is difficult if the person can’t stand to look at your page because of the design. A visually pleasing design draws site visitors in and keeps them there long enough for you to make an impression.

2. Place Contact Info Front and Center

Place your contact button where users see it from the minute they land on your page. Would you want to do business with a company lacking contact information? In addition to a contact button, consider having a live chat feature or a toll-free number right near the top of the page. These elements should be above the fold so users see them the instant your page loads.

Isaacs & Isaacs offers an excellent landing page to begin to build trust with potential clients. When you land on the page, the phone number is at the top, and a live chat feature appears in both the upper right and the lower right corners of the screen. Placing the live chat button in multiple locations encourages interaction and shows this company wants its site visitors to get in touch.

3. Focus on Voice Branding

Voice is the wave of the future online—about 27% of the younger generation uses voice search on their mobile devices. Podcasts grow in popularity from year to year, and people expect a level of interactivity never before seen online.

Voice branding is the wave of the future. The average person listens to several hours of audio content each day, and the majority of Americans listen to weekly audio podcasts. One way of developing loyalty is showing site visitors you offer a podcast and voice search from the minute they land on your page.

4. Personalize Results

Create more than one landing page to tailor your content to different audience segments. For example, if you have locations in two cities, target locals in City 1 with one landing page, and users in City 2 with a second landing page. The more specific you make the pages for each audience, the higher the chances they’ll become loyal fans of your business.

Sotheby’s International Realty features properties all over the globe, but when you land on their homepage, they target your area and show you properties that might be of the most interest to you.

Note the Florida property that appears above, and how it is in the same country as the user who accessed the site. A Canadian visitor, meanwhile, might see property in Alberta. The image varies, but other elements remain the same, creating a personalized landing page that speaks to each user and their interests.

5. Create a Streamlined Experience

The user experience of your site is something customers tend to remember. Have you ever visited a website and grown so frustrated over non-working features or hard-to-find pages that you bounced away and went to a competitor’s site instead? Aggravating your customers is the opposite of building brand loyalty with your website.

Instead, ensure every element on your landing page works seamlessly. Test all buttons and make sure the sales funnel is clear, so users go from landing on your page to the action you’d like them to take almost instinctively. If you aren’t sure whether your landing page performs well, implement some split-testing models and see what elements need changing and what works well.

6. Offer a Loyalty Reward

Another essential item on your landing page is placing your loyalty program front and center. If users feel rewarded for doing business with you and telling others about you, they’re far more likely to return to your brand for future purchases. Discounts increase the likelihood a consumer does business with you by about 77%, so place discount info and programs front and center on your landing page to encourage brand loyalty.

Kings Island offers a season pass with a lot of extra perks if you sign up. Not only is it cheaper to visit multiple times, but Gold Pass holders get free parking, discounts on food and bring-a-friend discounts. By highlighting the season pass and the benefits of it on their landing page, they attract loyal park visitors who will buy the pass year after year.

7. Make an Emotional Connection

In a recent study, experts found companies that make an emotional connection have customers with a 306% higher lifetime value, and who are much more likely to recommend the brand to others. Your landing page must make an emotional connection with your readers, and the best way to do that is to figure out what their emotional pain points are.

If you sell kitchen tables, perhaps you could create an appeal to people who want a cozy kitchen where the kids can do their homework, and the whole family can gather. You would then tap into those emotions to grab the user’s attention and show them you understand where they’re coming from. Tapping into their emotions begins building brand loyalty because you seem to understand the consumer.

8. Remain Consistent

Keep your landing page consistent with the overall tone and look of your brand. Around 63% of consumers say brand consistency impacts whether they spend money with a brand. If a customer visits your Facebook page and then your landing page, the overall look should offer recognizable symmetry.

Gain Trust

In addition to the minor elements that draw in users and make them want to give your brand a try, pay attention to trust indicators. Add reviews of your brand, testimonials, and any memberships in industry organizations or business organizations. When a consumer sees others are happy with what you offer and you aren’t afraid to put reviews of your brand out there, they are much more likely to give you a chance and begin building a relationship that creates loyalty.

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Why Email Marketing Still Rules (Plus 3 Tips to Increase Engagement)

Email marketing is like an old friend. It’s been around for years. It doesn’t surprise you much anymore. You may even find it a little boring sometimes. But at the end of the day, you know you can depend on it.

Even with the emergence of more exciting engagement tactics, email marketing has remained a key method for reaching your audience.

In fact, nearly 70% of people between the ages of 18 and 34 prefer companies communicate with them through email, according to MarketingSherpa research. That number’s even higher among 35- to 44-year-olds and 45- to 54-year-olds.

Regardless of how people feel about email communications, many marketers’ email campaigns are failing to connect with customers.

Nearly half of the marketers who participated in a recent Demand Metric/Return Path study reported email open rates of 15% or less, while almost 60% cited click-through rates of 8% or less.

But that isn’t because email marketing is past its prime. It’s because too many marketers have neglected the recent paradigm shift. Namely, today’s customers have become much more sophisticated about how they consume content.

Here are three easy ways you can improve your email marketing efforts to better connect with your audience and increase engagement:

1. Segment your lists

The first thing you’ll want to do is figure out who you should be talking to—and why.

Some of the most popular characteristics marketers use to segment their lists include:

• Job title or function
• Demographics
• Purchase history
• Website activity
• Past email clicks or opens

Why is this important? For one, people’s inboxes are overflowing with marketing emails. If you insist on sending messages that fail to pique their interests, they’ll quickly tune out.

Say you’re trying to engage a chief human resources officer (CHRO) audience. Sending those executives HR content isn’t enough. Instead, you need to focus on their particular industries and needs.

A CHRO in the rapidly growing high-tech industry, for example, would likely be interested in information around talent recruitment.

Meanwhile, a CHRO in a legacy industry—where decades-long employees are nearing retirement—would gravitate more toward content on workforce management and succession planning.

Segmenting your lists gives you a chance to customize your communications, creating tailor-made messages that resonate with your intended audience.

2. Trigger your messaging

As a marketer, you’ve heard the phrase “email blast.” Does it make you cringe? It should.

Rather than sending emails to large, unorganized lists of contacts, you need to strategically engage.

Launching a triggered messaging program—using innovative email marketing software—can help. It allows you to contact customers and prospects based on actions or conditions.

For instance, if someone abandoned their online shopping cart on your ecommerce site, you could send them a strategically timed discount offer. Or, if a person attended your recent software showcase, you could send them an exclusive invite to register early for the next event in town.

By making each of your interactions more meaningful, you’ll earn more customer trust and gain greater influence over their buying decisions.

3. Take advantage of your data

In modern marketing, data is a priceless commodity. And while most marketers recognize that, too few use it like the valuable currency it is. Instead, they treat these precious golden nuggets like knickknacks on some dusty, old shelf.

But for email marketing to have real impact, data must be front and center. Marketers need to capitalize on the information at their fingertips to learn more about their audience and personalize their communications.

That could mean studying device data to better understand how customers view emails and then optimizing messages for mobile. Or it could mean analyzing complaint data to determine optimal email cadences.

Even information that doesn’t seem relevant can be useful. Evaluating how customers behave on a website or social media channel can provide a more vivid picture of their interests, enabling you to improve how you engage with them.

Deliver quality communications

Putting these three ideas into practice will help you elevate your email game. This will:

• Engender trust between you and your customers—because you’re not bugging them with emails at all hours of the day.
• Prove you’re tuned in to their needs—because you’re only sending them relevant information.
• Show you’re listening to them—because you’re providing value, not just trying to sell them stuff.

That’s all your email subscribers are looking for today. And they, along with their inboxes, aren’t going anywhere—especially now that you have these three tips to increase engagement.

Download The Definitive Guide to Engaging Email Marketing to learn more.

The post Why Email Marketing Still Rules (Plus 3 Tips to Increase Engagement) appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

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Treat Customer Data Like You’d Want Yours to Be Treated

Last Christmas, I bought a friend of mine a subscription to a science and culture magazine. She had discovered the magazine during downtime at work, so she was delighted when they started showing up at her door.

The gift was a hit, despite the fact that I’d misspelled her name. But then other magazines offers started to arrive in the mail. Then came requests for donations from charitable groups. Next, travel agency ads. And then came the political mailers.

Once she activated her digital subscription, things got worse. Although Google’s algorithm kept some spam out of her inbox, the same companies crowding her mailbox turned up there. Eventually, she ditched that email address for one the magazine didn’t know about.
How did she know that the magazine had sold her data? Because my misspelling showed up everywhere. Fed up, she checked the magazine’s privacy policy; with no recourse but to cancel her subscription, she did so months before it ran out.

Customer Experience Matters More

By selling my friend’s data, the magazine lost her business. So what did it gain in return? Probably around $0.20. Although the value of a customer’s data varies according to their life circumstances, seldom does it sell for more than a dollar.

In aggregate, user data sales add up. But no amount of ad money can erase the stain that selling it leaves on the customer experience. In research published this past May, data exchange Insights Network noted that 90% of consumers consider it unethical for companies to share personal data without the user’s consent. Although some customers will look past data sharing they see as unethical, those like my friend won’t.

Whether my friend is the exception or the norm isn’t important. What’s important is that nearly three-quarters of consumers consider the customer experience an important factor in their purchasing decisions, according to a PwC report published earlier this year. And nothing puts the customer experience in jeopardy quite like unethical use of personal data.

Treat customer data like your own

Customers have different expectations, of course, for how you should handle their data. So how can you tweak your data policies to deliver the best experience for the most customers? Follow the Golden Rule: Treat user data as you’d want your own to be treated. In other words:

1. Don’t buy data; ask for it.

In the U.S. alone, companies spend more than $10 billion annually on third-party audience data. The trouble is, 65% of consumers are uncomfortable with their personal data being shared with for-profit firms, according to the Insights Network report.

But where, if not from data vendors, can you get customer insights? What about customers themselves? Snapchat and other firms focused on the customer experience are partnering with companies like Jebbit to collect what’s known as declared data. Declared data is first-party information that consumers volunteer about their motivations, intentions, interests, and preferences.

Although it might seem impossible to gather enough declared data for Big Data initiatives, Jebbit points out that online experiences and conversations can make collection scalable. Plus, because customers volunteer it, declared data tends to be far more accurate than third-party data, which two-thirds of surveyed consumers told Deloitte is mostly inaccurate.

2. Give the customer something in return.

The question is, are consumers actually willing to share their data? Most are—provided they get something in return. According to a survey by Acxiom and industry group Data & Marketing Association, 58% of consumers make decisions on a case-by-case basis as to whether a service enhancement is worth sharing their data.

What, exactly, do customers want in exchange? In a world, personalization. Epsilon research shows that 80% of consumers are more likely to buy from brands that offer personalized experiences. Most consumers realize that products and services can’t be tailored to them unless they share some amount of personal data.

If you need inspiration, look to Spotify. Not only does the music service leverage user data to create customized Discover Weekly playlists, but it builds bottomless Daily Mixes in the user’s favorite genres. Last but not least, its Release Radar helps users find new releases by their favorite artists.

3. Get consent before sharing or selling user data—or better yet, don’t sell it at all.

While the U.S. doesn’t have a comprehensive law like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which requires companies to obtain the customer’s consent before sharing or selling their data, new legislation like the California Consumer Privacy Act indicates a shift in that direction. Simply because the practice is currently legal in the U.S., doesn’t mean it’s a smart business move.

To show that you’re serious about protecting your customers’ data, start by updating your privacy policy to make clear that you’ll seek informed consent before selling or sharing their information. The University of Michigan’s Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research provides a primer on model language as well as phrases to avoid. Although it’s focused on research data, best-in-class companies take a similar approach to their marketing data.

In a time when the customer experience matters most, surreptitiously selling user data simply isn’t a smart move. The science magazine might’ve made a quarter by doing so, but it also turned a paying customer into a quitter.

The post Treat Customer Data Like You’d Want Yours to Be Treated appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

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How to Build Brand Loyalty on Your Landing Page

Your landing page is your opportunity to make an impression on your target audience. If it connects on an emotional level and has a clear and transparent purpose, site visitors are more likely to identify with your brand. Building loyalty often takes a bit more time, but your landing page is a start to a long-term relationship with new customers.

For most businesses, around 65% of their revenue comes from an existing customer base. Connecting with your customers to build a relationship from the moment they land on your page through the ordering process is key to remaining competitive in your industry.

Though many elements tie into how loyal people are to one brand over others, we’re going to go right back to the beginning—that first impression when a user lands on your page, and how you can build brand loyalty from the first few seconds when a new customer sees what you offer.

1. Consider Visual Aesthetics

It takes milliseconds for someone to form a first impression of your website. The overall design has a significant impact on whether the person stays or bounces away. Building brand loyalty is difficult if the person can’t stand to look at your page because of the design. A visually pleasing design draws site visitors in and keeps them there long enough for you to make an impression.

2. Place Contact Info Front and Center

Place your contact button where users see it from the minute they land on your page. Would you want to do business with a company lacking contact information? In addition to a contact button, consider having a live chat feature or a toll-free number right near the top of the page. These elements should be above the fold so users see them the instant your page loads.

Isaacs & Isaacs offers an excellent landing page to begin to build trust with potential clients. When you land on the page, the phone number is at the top, and a live chat feature appears in both the upper right and the lower right corners of the screen. Placing the live chat button in multiple locations encourages interaction and shows this company wants its site visitors to get in touch.

3. Focus on Voice Branding

Voice is the wave of the future online—about 27% of the younger generation uses voice search on their mobile devices. Podcasts grow in popularity from year to year, and people expect a level of interactivity never before seen online.

Voice branding is the wave of the future. The average person listens to several hours of audio content each day, and the majority of Americans listen to weekly audio podcasts. One way of developing loyalty is showing site visitors you offer a podcast and voice search from the minute they land on your page.

4. Personalize Results

Create more than one landing page to tailor your content to different audience segments. For example, if you have locations in two cities, target locals in City 1 with one landing page, and users in City 2 with a second landing page. The more specific you make the pages for each audience, the higher the chances they’ll become loyal fans of your business.

Sotheby’s International Realty features properties all over the globe, but when you land on their homepage, they target your area and show you properties that might be of the most interest to you.

Note the Florida property that appears above, and how it is in the same country as the user who accessed the site. A Canadian visitor, meanwhile, might see property in Alberta. The image varies, but other elements remain the same, creating a personalized landing page that speaks to each user and their interests.

5. Create a Streamlined Experience

The user experience of your site is something customers tend to remember. Have you ever visited a website and grown so frustrated over non-working features or hard-to-find pages that you bounced away and went to a competitor’s site instead? Aggravating your customers is the opposite of building brand loyalty with your website.

Instead, ensure every element on your landing page works seamlessly. Test all buttons and make sure the sales funnel is clear, so users go from landing on your page to the action you’d like them to take almost instinctively. If you aren’t sure whether your landing page performs well, implement some split-testing models and see what elements need changing and what works well.

6. Offer a Loyalty Reward

Another essential item on your landing page is placing your loyalty program front and center. If users feel rewarded for doing business with you and telling others about you, they’re far more likely to return to your brand for future purchases. Discounts increase the likelihood a consumer does business with you by about 77%, so place discount info and programs front and center on your landing page to encourage brand loyalty.

Kings Island offers a season pass with a lot of extra perks if you sign up. Not only is it cheaper to visit multiple times, but Gold Pass holders get free parking, discounts on food and bring-a-friend discounts. By highlighting the season pass and the benefits of it on their landing page, they attract loyal park visitors who will buy the pass year after year.

7. Make an Emotional Connection

In a recent study, experts found companies that make an emotional connection have customers with a 306% higher lifetime value, and who are much more likely to recommend the brand to others. Your landing page must make an emotional connection with your readers, and the best way to do that is to figure out what their emotional pain points are.

If you sell kitchen tables, perhaps you could create an appeal to people who want a cozy kitchen where the kids can do their homework, and the whole family can gather. You would then tap into those emotions to grab the user’s attention and show them you understand where they’re coming from. Tapping into their emotions begins building brand loyalty because you seem to understand the consumer.

8. Remain Consistent

Keep your landing page consistent with the overall tone and look of your brand. Around 63% of consumers say brand consistency impacts whether they spend money with a brand. If a customer visits your Facebook page and then your landing page, the overall look should offer recognizable symmetry.

Gain Trust

In addition to the minor elements that draw in users and make them want to give your brand a try, pay attention to trust indicators. Add reviews of your brand, testimonials, and any memberships in industry organizations or business organizations. When a consumer sees others are happy with what you offer and you aren’t afraid to put reviews of your brand out there, they are much more likely to give you a chance and begin building a relationship that creates loyalty.

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