Data-Driven Marketing Power Drained by Basic Mistakes

Data-driven strategy is an ideal that many marketers, especially in the B2B world, have not fully mastered. For example, a 2015 survey of marketing professionals by Ascend2 and ZoomInfo found that only 33% of respondents called their data-driven marketing strategy “very successful.” The good news is that just 10% said their data strategy was somewhat or very unsuccessful. Still that leaves a lot of room for improvement! What's preventing marketers from maximizing data success? In a recent martechadvisor.com post, Hila Nir, vice president of marketing and product at ZoomInfo, cited the three most common mistakes sapping data-driven marketing potential, with a focus on business-to-business marketing. No. 1 is wastefully "throwing the net too wide" and hauling in confusion. While there is a mass of multi-channel data you can gather and analyze, only some data and patterns are relevant to marketing success. So where do you start? Nir advises going to the foundation of the customer relationship--the actual customer contact--and building from there. The No. 2 error is failing to frequently refresh customer and prospect data. Data value erodes over time as basics such as mailing address, job title, phone number and e-mail change. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software that stores lots of outdated legacy data can make the problem worse. And maintaining data quality is a big job that only grows with the size of the database. That's why 79% of the most successful data-driven marketers in the survey said they outsourced some portion of data management. Finally, mistake No. 3 is simply failing to take full advantage of customer and prospect data to improve cost-effectiveness and ROI. Trying to find a path through the data weeds to ideal customer targeting can certainly be daunting and strain internal resources--which is also why many successful B2B marketing efforts turn to consultants for database analysis. Needless to say, DBM Designs is among the data service partners who stand ready to assist! For the full article, go to http://www.martechadvisor.com/articles/audience-market-data/3-mistakes-that-kill-any-datadriven-marketing-strategy/

Planning B2B Mail to Win Decision-maker Attention

Business-to-business direct mail must leap basic hurdles to get through to decision-makers and prepare the way for sales. For one thing, there is usually a gatekeeper sorting the mail before it ever gets into the hands of a decision-maker/buyer. Getting past this gatekeeper means designing a mail package so it stands out and looks important/interesting, yet doesn't scream junk mail. Successful design tactics include dimensional mail and oversized formats (No. 11, 9X12 or 6X9 envelopes, for example). Then the copy (from teaser to letter) must do some heavy lifting. Studies have shown that, especially for the C-suite level, this means 1) focus on a topic that is significant to the target market, 2) provide a solution to a problem/pain point, 3) prove value with third-party endorsements, 4) intrigue with new information or perspective, and 5) as with any direct marketing, include a call to action--an attractive, time-sensitive offer. But probably the most important part of a B2B direct mail effort will be the list targeting. Selecting by industry and company size, based on profiling of best customers, is useful, but what about the title/department targeted? Here's where it gets trickier--especially when you move from the small business realm to the mid-sized or enterprise company where decisions involve multiple players. Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Newly released research by LinkedIn, based on a survey of 6,000 buyers, marketers and salespeople in seven countries, shows the number of departments involved in a B2B purchase decision varies significantly by industry. As an example, the number of departments involved in buying ranges from 3.4 for the travel industry up to 4.6 for manufacturing. When it comes to which department is most influential, results again depend on industry and product. For example, promoters of marketing and advertising services tap the marketing department as the most influential in buying, while adtech products choose Finance as a top target, and online media platforms go direct to media and communications buyers. For details relevant to your B2B targeting, take a look at the LinkedIn report "Which Departments Influence Buying Decisions in Your Industry?" at https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/blog/linkedin-b2b-marketing/2016/which-departments-influence-buying-decisions-in-your-industry---

Survey: Market Rewards B2B Predictive Marketers

Business-to-business marketers who use predictive analytics are rewarded with better revenue and market position, according to a recent Forrester Consulting survey. The study tapped 150 respondents from market-leading B2B firms in a range of industries, dividing them into predictive marketers, those using modeled data for forecasting and scoring, and "retrospective marketers" without predictive analytics. The survey, commissioned by predictive marketing firm EverString, found that B2B predictive marketers are 2.9 times more likely to have revenue growth above the industry average, 2.1 times more likely to occupy a commanding leadership position in their product/service market, and 1.8 times more likely to exceed company goals when compared with retrospective marketers. No wonder 89% of the B2B marketers interviewed included predictive analytics in their 2016 plans, either initiating or expanding implementation! Some 49% already used predictive marketing, 44% said they planned to expand or upgrade existing predictive implementation, and 40% planned to initiate predictive efforts within 12 months. Equally interesting, most of the marketers (78%) saw a shift in their role from demand generation to deal acceleration, requiring involvement in the sales cycle beyond pouring leads into the top of the funnel. And here is where predictive marketers led retrospective counterparts again. Predictive marketers showed effectiveness across the customer life cycle, with 49% listing two or more customer discovery tasks (building brand equity, audience targeting, identifying best account types, etc.) among their top three best practices, balanced by 51% including two or more tasks from later in the sales cycle (such as qualifying leads and managing the end-to-end customer experience). Retrospective marketers focused mainly on customer discovery in naming their top three best practices (70%). Marketing success with any stage in the sales cycle is still all about the data, however. Predictive and retrospective marketers agreed that their two biggest marketing challenges were ensuring quality data from a variety of sources (47%) and managing data from a variety of sources (47%). For a Forbes magazine summary with a link to the full report: http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2016/01/24/89-of-b2b-marketers-have-predictive-analytics-on-their-roadmaps-for-2016/#147e0488d291

Using B2B Data Segmentation for Sales Success

We work with many business-to-business clients on direct mail and data services projects, and a key task is list segmentation, selecting and personalizing by criteria with proven impact on sales success. A recent MarketingProfs article by Ed King, CEO of data automation firm Openprise, offers some great practical tips on using B2B segmentation for demand generation, starting with these top ways to segment B2B customers and prospects: 1) job level, which can be inferred from job title, winnows the decision-makers from the chaff of general leads; 2) job function, also inferred from job title, can start with coarse department divisions, such as Finance, Sales, IT, etc, or drill down by specialization within functional area, to tailor for buying process; 3) company size, either in terms of annual-revenue or employee-number ranges, helps target for product/service fit and offer; and 4) industry, using NAICS or SIC codes, selects best verticals for response/purchase. Segmentation can be used to achieve many key goals, King points out. Segmentation of the existing database helps develop a profile of best customers, so the business can market look-alike prospects by the same job, company and industry parameters. Segmentation also allows B2B marketers to go beyond targeting individual leads, who may not be the right contacts, to an account-based marketing that is more efficient. Segmentation, of course, supports more engaging personalization. Finally, segmentation permits money-saving suppression of low-value or low-response targets. These goals are not out of reach even for B2B marketers lacking quality segmentation data since they can turn to data services like ours for data appending and data cleaning/normalizing for effective segmentation. For the complete article, go to http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2016/29267/four-practical-segmentation-tips-for-b2b-marketers

Don't Let Data Glitches Stymie B2B Lead Efforts

Business-to-business marketers dedicate chunks of budget and time to gathering qualified leads. Unfortunately, we've seen basic data problems undermine the effectiveness of hard-won B2B prospect and customer databases. So we'd like to pass along a recent MarketingProfs article alerting marketers to six of the most common data pitfalls. No. 1 on the list posted by Rob Manser, acting director of marketing at contact validation firm Service Objects, is relying on a single contact method in lead data. Focusing solely on e-mail outreach, for example, increases failure from address errors or poor channel response. By gathering or appending multichannel contact options--phone, e-mail and mailing address--the chances of connection climb. As Manser points out: "An e-mail or a phone call might never be returned, but a clever direct mail piece may catch a prospect's eye." Problem No. 2 arises from incorrect data gathering--incomplete, typo-riddled, misformatted or just plain bogus contact information. It doesn't mean all bad-data contacts must be tossed; many can be cost-effectively salvaged today via data verification, validation and appending software. Pitfall No. 3 is out-of-date information. Valuable contacts change companies, move to other locations in the same company, change titles and departments, etc. Frequent and thorough contact-data updating is required. That said, even when info is technically correct, Pitfall No. 4 occurs because data is not contact-specific enough; using a headquarters phone and address instead of the contact's division location will miss response in a geo-targeted campaign, for example. No. 5 on Manser's list of prospecting mistakes: Lead data that doesn't include a company's key targeting criteria--such as title or company size--which creates costly sales and marketing misfires. The final error compounds all others: allowing a contact database to become a pool of wasted opportunities by failing to fix data problems. Manser argues that there is no excuse now that marketers can turn to database services for quick, automated data-appending, data-verification and data-validation programs for clean-up--and we agree!  For more: http://www.marketingprofs.com/opinions/2015/28978/six-huge-lead-generation-pitfalls-that-are-hurting-your-business