Building meaningful customer relationships in a digital world

The SMA/ITAC Think Tank in December put the spotlight on marketing automation systems and digital marketing. Participants shared their experiences and insights, on everything from the value of the data that digital marketing provides, to the challenges of managing digital marketing programs. These are some of the key tips and takeaways from this Think Tank session:

1. Focus on learning everything you can about millennials
   • They’re your customers, your influencers, and decision makers
   • You need to understand their buying behavior, and their attitudes toward sharing online data
2. Tracking cookies may be in peril
   • Users are starting to prefer to browse ‘incognito’ – without cookies
   • Without cookies, there’s no data – this might be a big problem for marketers
3. Make the most of the analytics provided by your marketing automation system
   • These metrics offer a crystal clear view into how your prospects and customers react and behave
   • Use this information to tweak your campaigns as you go, and plan new campaigns

This SMA/ITAC Marketing & Sales Executive Think Tank was hosted at Cisco Systems Canada in Toronto, Ontario by Michael Turney, Vice President Marketing. The discussion was moderated by Bob Becker, Principal, SMA.

Attendees

• Wendy Serra, Partner Marketing Manager, Cisco Systems Canada
• Michael Turney, Vice President Marketing, Cisco Systems Canada
• Claude Couillard, Canadian Field Marketing Manager, HP Enterprise
• Azhar Khan, Marketing Account Manager, Cisco, Ingram Micro
• Faye Caldwell, Enterprise and Channels Marketing Manager, Canada, IBM Canada Ltd.
• Caterina Didio-Duggan, Canadian Regional Marketing Manager, Information Builders
• Andrew Bowden, Field Marketing Manager, Public Sector, SAS Canada
• Selda Uzunmehmetoglu, Field Marketing Manager, SAS Canada
• Vanessa Brown, Director, Thinkwise
• Paul McDevitt, Director, Marketing, Unity Connected Solutions
• Dave Dewitt, Marketing Brand and Pricing Manager, Wainbee Limited

Comments from our Discussion

Below are participant comments from our Think Tank. Each event is unique, and the needs of each technology company represented at the event are equally unique. As you will see, there are different opinions and approaches, but also some clear themes. We think you’ll find these comments from our participants very interesting. 

What we learned

• Focus on millennials – understand them. They are your new customer; they are now in the position of buying and are now decision makers.
• Bring the perspectives of millennials into your organization – at the very least for insight into how they want to be communicated with. Also important: to think about digital automation in terms of millennials’ communication preferences.
• Cookie manipulation (blocking the tracking of visitor info) may lead to greater emphasis on creating online communities, in Facebook, LinkedIn, more opportunities for members to ‘know’ each other.
• Understand data reporting and analytics for more effective campaigns.
• Pay attention to the scalability of marketing automation. Tweaking automation can give a sense of ‘we can get there.’
• Accessibility of data can help. Journey pathways can be improved by understanding the data to mine new customers, upsell and cross sell.
• Focus on the right customer at the right time with the data available to you.
• Look into persona marketing – review email campaign data and build from call to action.
• Make content relevant and timely, ready to absorb.
• Leverage Sales; tie their enablement to campaigns so that it has more relevancy and they are better engaged to hopefully obtain better traction.

What drove you to automated marketing activities? What are best practices with regard to what to automate and what not to automate?

 Do we need to be worried about losing the personal touch with digital marketing?

• Other than going to face-to-face events, was marketing really personal? Continue inside sales, go to chat rooms, and conduct ‘demo’ webinars. It’s never 100% one thing or 0% another.
• Make the digital tool accessible to Sales so that they can personalize and track on their own.
• Ensure your email has a strong call to action, even multiple calls to action. Give prospects the option to choose what to follow up on, what to click on. Note that this is a personal journey.
• A strong subject heading on your email campaigns directed to the right target market can be considered personalization.
• The personal touch is different now – it can mean ‘get in get out’ to one person, but to another it could mean ‘is the topic relevant?’ And anything in between.
• Ensure a consistent experience between call centre versus website. Analyze your data to ensure consistency throughout.
• Ensure prospect contact information is consistent so personalization is correct every time.
• Send message at the right time in their journey.
• Consider reading about Marketo on how they are doing a good job in the area of personalization with their prospects; very creative with timeline topics.
• Becoming too personal can be risky. Could be perceived as intrusive and a turn-off.
• Marketing automation should not be used as a standalone tool. Personal phone calls as an alert or indicators can be personal. Consider mixing traditional marketing with digital marketing (i.e. email or website visit).

How are your Marketing and Sales teams involved with marketing automation? Lead scoring, at what point/what variables to pass to the reps?

• Ask Sales to present in a ‘sell’ format during team meetings to continuously learn what their prospects have as top of mind.
• Lead scoring/point system should be continuously changing, using sales alerts. Marketing should test to see if Sales accepts lead scoring. If not acceptable, Marketing should amend point scoring system until Sales agrees. Build in the ability to divert quickly.
• Ensure that the team managing the lead scoring tool is expert.
• Post-event follow up is also KEY for Sales to take on. Closing the gap between prospect touches continues to be a challenge.
• Marketing continues to be challenged with the definition of what Sales considers a lead. Sales doesn’t want a lead; they want a purchase order.
• The Engage tool, part of Eloqua, can add to the digital footprint with lead scoring and offers email suggestions on what Sales should be sending, and how.

Many users are now blocking cookies on their browsers. How to deal with this newest challenge?

• This will be a definite impact on marketing in any organization. Google ad displays and email campaigns may increase.
• This may become a government regulation due to a possible privacy infringement. This is yet to be determined; if so, this is a new challenge yet to be addressed.
• In Europe, there is consent asking users to accept/decline cookies in browsers.
• Regulations such as CASL are leaving organizations asking, ‘Now what?’
• Ask millennials for their opinions – many are now using Google incognito mode.

Will Marketing and Sales become redundant in the future with marketing automation?

• Roles are changing – how you do your job will change – it may become a different job. Marketing may look different than today.
• Strategic individuals will always be needed; perhaps fewer due to all the automation.
• Data savvy marketers will be needed, fully understanding the data, thus increasing their responsibility.
• Perhaps a ‘Data Physicist’ will be needed. Need to fully understand what and why the prospect is doing what they are doing; i.e. an open email does not necessarily mean they are interested. Does an open email mean a read email? Does it mean interest?
• It will be necessary to understand behavioral science with the increased data created.

The next SMA/ITAC Think Tank will occur mid-February. Read the next update here.