Intelligent Demand Generation / eTrigue Corporation

An interesting article by Andrew Gaffney of the DemandGen Report “New ROI Study Shows Firms with Ops Teams, Metrics Outgrowing Competitors” highlighted a new study by the Lenskold Group / MarketSphere that showed that firms with Marketing Ops are outpacing their competitors 52% to 46%.

“We consistently see that the high performing marketing organizations tend to have advantages in marketing operations, strengths in generating insights, and ROI discipline,” says report author Jim Lenskold, president of Manasquan, NJ-based consultancy the Lenskold Group. “The economic pressures are increasing the demand for measurements and ROI, and should motivate marketers to improve their capabilities. It is a critical time to understand and manage marketing effectiveness. And as marketers experience the opportunity to improve marketing effectiveness with better insight, we would expect those practices to hold steady and continue on beyond the economic recovery.”

This is a trend we have seen for some time. Firms are measuring both their marketing programs and marketing organizations more than ever before. The ROI of marketing spend and the volume of sales-qualified-leads delivered to sales are now common measures for compensating marketing executives.

Measurement is just one aspect of the general shift marketing organizations are making as they begin to own the upper portion of the sales funnel. “A more operational approach to the marketing function makes organizations more accountable and more efficient.” According to Mark Lewis, Director of Marketing at Fujitsu Computer Products. “Just as Sales organizations have added Ops support to better understand and manage the sales cycle, marketing organizations need to measure their performance as well.”

And while Marketing departments are becoming more analytical, don’t expect the science of marketing to render the art of marketing obsolete. As Dan Pink describes in his book, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, the right side of the brain skills such as creativity, empathy, contextual, and big picture thinking are going to become increasingly important as we outsource and automate marketing.

Is your marketing organization measuring its way to success?

While this may sound a bit self serving given companies who provide Marketing Automation platforms like eTrigue benefit from customers with large prospect lists, it may be time to re-think your email list strategy.

Our customers, who cover a wide variety of industries have traditionally followed similar strategies—build a list that targets the budget holder, typically the decision maker, and nurture until sales ready. This may be one or two different contacts at a company.

What worked in the past may not be appropriate today. The current recession, albeit over-hyped, is being reflected in how companies evaluate spending decisions. In fact, the financial crisis spooked many companies into what is likely to be a long-term change in both spending habits and their decision making process. We are seeing dramatic results from smart marketers adapting to this change by casting a much wider net at each target company. Where a single individual may have been responsible for vendor or product selections that process now may include two, three, or more to make a buying decision. These extra eyes on the spending process requires company-wide nurturing to assure that once the buying process starts, it moves rapidly. A group decision making process makes it harder than ever to identify who has influence, so broader marketing strategies are appropriate. This in turn means larger lists and an often requires an automated lead nurturing process.

Marketing automation allows companies to appropriately target each decision maker based on their particular concerns. A CEO may be interested in revenue and cost, the CFO in cost only while Sales is interested solely in revenue. Using a batch and blast solution that doesn’t let you effectively segment and drive recipients to the appropriate content lessens the likelihood of a sale or best case extends the sales cycle.

Beginning with a message that is typically appropriate for a given title is a good place to start. Following up with a second email based on content viewing habits that tell the whole story rather than title helps you focus on specific pain points. Behavior and motivations change in tough times. Revenue may not be a concern of the CEO and the moment; he may be solely focused on cutting costs. If you continue to bombard him with revenue messages, you’re less likely to get his attention. Well crafted emails and content targeted appropriately can be the difference between winning and losing a customer.