reference · 2021. 2. 13. · this is how customer relationship management, or ‘crm’, became...

Win more customers with an integrated marketing communications and

automation strategy

Author: Dr Dave Chaffey (Smart Insights)

Part of the Email Marketing and Marketing Automation Toolkit

Reference

Win more customers with an integrated marketing communications and automation strategy © Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides. 2

CONTENTS

About the authors ...........................................................................4

Introduction .....................................................................................5

Success factors for integrated marketing and sales engagement ................... 5

About this guide .............................................................................................. 6

Step One: Define your opportunity ...............................................8

Review current customer journeys and lead funnel ........................................ 8

Model lead improvements for business case .................................................. 9

Define sales process governance ................................................................... 10

Martech platform ............................................................................................. 10

Step Two: Set engagement strategy ............................................12

Segmentation and targeting strategy .............................................................. 12

Content strategy .............................................................................................. 13

Marketing and sales contact strategy .............................................................. 14

Step Three: Implement action plan .............................................17

90-day implementation plans .......................................................................... 17

Measurement and optimization ....................................................................... 17

Applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) ................................................................... 18

Summary .......................................................................................20


FOREWORD FROM YOUR SPONSOR: SALESFORCE

Let’s journey back for a second. Your sales rep leaves the company, taking with him all

that valuable information about your customers and, ultimately, those relationships.

This is how customer relationship management, or ‘CRM’, became such a critical system

for businesses – to keep customer relationships safe within your company and empower

all sales reps with the right customer information. This is why Salesforce developed the

world’s leading CRM.

Today, in the world of proliferating digital channels, it’s no longer enough to simply store

essential information about a customer. Companies need to do more to meet customer

expectations, which means data on customer interactions needs to be recorded and

leveraged to create the experiences that will keep them coming back.

Right now, there’s a gap between perception and reality. Our research shows 80% of

companies believe they deliver “super experiences” but only 8% of customers agree. In

other words, companies have a long way to go. Even the smallest change can have a big

impact on customer satisfaction.

In our Win & Grow Customers ebook, we shared recommendations for improving the

buying experience and unlocking long-term customer value – specifically how to use

deep customer knowledge to deliver personalized, seamless buying experiences, both

to bring in new customers and to effectively retain, cross-sell, and upsell existing ones.

Our work with Smart Insights recognizes the important role that having a coherent content

strategy plays in the overall experience. We hope you find the recommendations useful

when refining your approach to creating experiences for your prospects and customers.

Salesforce

http://Win & Grow Customers ebook


ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Dr. Dave Chaffey is co-founder and Content Director of digital

marketing management advice site Smart Insights. He is author

of five best-selling books on e-commerce including Digital

Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice and was

recognized by the Chartered Institute of Marketing in 2004 as

one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape

the future of marketing.


INTRODUCTION

Success factors for integrated marketing and sales engagement

The new B2B buying journey

Today’s B2B customer journey is the most complex ever. There are multiple potential

touchpoints that can support contact nurturing to increase conversion to sale, as our

customer lifecycle visual shows.

Customer lifecycle touchpoints. Source: Smart Insights

Optimizing each touchpoint to improve the relevance and experience for each prospect

gives great opportunities to grow the volume of leads into your sales pipeline. By combining

the power of automation and Artificial Intelligence, you can increase communication

relevance and use insights about your audience engagement to improve effectiveness

and improve lead quality.

Whether you apply these marketing and sales enablement automation techniques for

tactical campaigns or always-on lifecycle marketing, you have to acknowledge the complexity of the modern funnel. Delivering on this opportunity means you must consider

the success factors and use technology to orchestrate integrated communications across

these touchpoints. We will explain these success factors in this practical guide.


INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS IT? ALWAYS-ON LIFECYCLE MARKETING

Continuous investment in paid, owned, and earned digital media to engage prospects and customers to meet purchase intent as they research products through search, social media, and publisher sites. Successful implementation should include Marketing Automation via email, personalization, and ads to nurture prospects who show interest in products when they visit your website but don’t buy straight away.

About this guide

How will this resource help me and my business?

With today’s new B2B buying journey, success depends on delivering the best content

personalized for each prospect in the right context during their buying decision and

facilitating human interaction via sales.

The aim of this guide is to walk you through the success factors needed to deliver on the

promise of automation for your business.

It goes beyond discussing the benefits of automation to give you a process framework

that combines a roadmap to improvement, together with strategy recommendations and

practical tips.

Who is this guide for?

This guide will help sales and marketing leaders who are reviewing how to leverage

technology to improve the quality of their processes for customer acquisition. It is relevant

for both B2B and B2C audiences.

The guide is aimed at helping these roles:

þ Marketing directors and CMOs

þ Sales directors and sales managers

þ Business owners reviewing improvements to their marketing and sales processes

þ Marketing technologists including CIOs responsible for integrating marketing

applications and data

How is this resource structured?

This guide is in three parts, each including three key strategy success factors. Together,

they give you a simple structure to plan how you make the business case for automation,

create a communications strategy, then implement it using marketing automation

technology.


INTRODUCTION

In this guide, we prompt you with questions around key decision points and examples of

how to achieve success, including:

þ Content mapping to define the best quality content to support each step of lead

nurture and consultative selling.

þ How to create a better buying experience through relevance – through smart segmentation and targeting.

þ Sales and marketing alignment to redesign new business processes.

þ Insight about interactions to support Artificial Intelligence and creative optimization.

Each part includes success factors, questions to ask partners, and practical tips.


DEFINE YOUR OPPORTUNITY1Review current customer journeys and lead funnel

r Q. Is the gap analysis showing improved opportunities for increasing micro-conversions?

The size of the opportunity from automation will depend on the maturity of your use of

content, email marketing, ad retargeting, and website personalization to nurture leads.

Your team or partners should perform a contact strategy gap analysis to visualize current

touchpoints against potential touchpoints where content isn’t used.

WHAT IS IT? CONTACT STRATEGY GAP ANALYSIS

You can visualize the touchpoints at a high level during the planning process by comparing ideal touchpoints (such as those shown in the introduction) against current touchpoints like those shown below.

Gap analysis of customer lifecycle showing currently managed touchpoints


5 TOPIC1 DEFINE YOUR OPPORTUNITY

Marketing Automation tools like Salesforce Pardot Engagement Studio, which we

use at Smart Insights, enable you to visualize the sequence of touchpoints during

implementation.

Model lead improvements for business case

r Q. Have you modelled the cost benefit of improving content effectiveness?

Modelling the commercial returns can help because investment in new content and

sales processes is significant and low-quality content won’t get the cut-through you need

against competitors. This will align your automation initiatives to support the business

growth objectives for customer acquisition and retention, modelling the incremental

improvements to the inbound marketing and sales process to justify sufficient investment

in new content and sales processes.

! STRATEGY RECOMMENDATIONCreate a conversion-based funnel model to make the business caseImprovements in acquisition should be based on modelling increases in visits via organic search and social media, and increases in conversion from improving sales and marketing steps. Changes in funnel performance can then be reviewed within your automation system, as with this example:


5 TOPIC1 DEFINE YOUR OPPORTUNITY

Define sales process governance

r Q. Have you reviewed how to improve marketing and sales alignment?

In businesses of all sizes, there are often different people responsible for marketing and

sales. While it’s logical to work towards the same goals using a communications strategy

agreed to provide a seamless experience from marketing through to sales, this doesn’t

always happen given the focus on business-as-usual campaign activities. Deploying

sales and marketing automation technology gives a great opportunity for teams to work

more closely together and design an improved customer experience and content strategy

that will boost conversion.

! STRATEGY RECOMMENDATIONAlign marketing and sales communications to reduce time to valueAutomation enables you to provide more relevant content and services throughout the customer lifecycle. From the first marketing-led prospect touchpoints through to sales qualification by sales to customer on-boarding, automation can enable a smoother process where the next-best content is provided to your audience at each point. This will help them learn about your solutions and establish credibility to start using your service.

Martech platform

r Q. Do you have integrated technologies in place to implement engagement strategy?

Consider the range of on-site and off-site touchpoints that need to be harnessed to

achieve time to value. These include website-based interactions via forms, personalized

content and live chat, email marketing, push messaging, social network interactions,

and display ad retargeting to name just some of the options available. Now consider the

collection of interaction data for each touchpoint; insight can be gained at each point. An

integrated solution is needed to deliver on the promise of automation.

! STRATEGY RECOMMENDATIONSelect an integrated solution to deploy cross-lifecycle integrated communications and insightWith over 7,000 martech solutions catalogued by Scott Brinker in his latest Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic, there certainly isn’t a lack of choice of technology solutions. However, many solutions only focus on part of the lifecycle, making integration difficult or expensive. Use this simplified table of six types of martech functionality to assess against different capabilities needed from A through D:

Win more customers with an integrated marketing communications and automation strategy © Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides.

11

1 DEFINE YOUR OPPORTUNITY

Martech Function/Channel

1. Paid media 2. Earned and owned media

3. Website and mobile experience

4. Email and automation

5. Analytics 6. Multichannel integration

A. Core broadcast

communications

Direct ad platform management

Social media Content or commerce management

Email broadcast Website analytics Sales

B. Personalized individual

communication

Retargeting platform Outreach Personalized messaging and mobile push

Retargeting or contextual platforms

Tag management Customer service and support

C. Optimization Programmatic Creative testing Landing pages and CRO tools

Creative optimization, rendering, and AI/Machine Learning

Customer Data Platforms and ID management

Sales optimization

D. Insight Customer data platform Social benchmarks Survey tools Intent Segment and campaign reports

Attribution models Call tracking

Simplified categorization of martech tools needed for integrated comms


SET ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY2 Segmentation and targeting strategy

r Q. Do you have a layered targeting approach to deliver relevance?

You’re likely already actively emailing your prospects and customers. If so, here’s a

question for you: how many different target audiences do you mail to? Be honest. Our

experience and data from many surveys tell us that many marketers still send ‘one-size

fits all’ untargeted emails despite the options in Marketing Automation systems for

sending different targeted emails or using dynamic content with different creative/offers

to different audiences.

WHAT IS IT? DYNAMIC CONTENT INSERTION

Rules used within email creative to tailor subject lines, images or copy to the needs and interests of different audiences.

! STRATEGY RECOMMENDATIONReview your targeting capabilitiesTo improve response and ROI with the need for budget increases, we recommend you assess potential layered targeting approaches as shown in the table below where each email you send can be tailored depending on the targeting criteria which are most likely to boost relevance and context for your audience. Consider how readily your platform supports targeting based on multiple criteria. AI-based approaches can help here.


2 SET ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY

Layered targeting technique

B2B example B2C example Commentary

Profile demographics Role, industry or solution application

Gender, age or geography Disclosed on profile – can also be persona based or psychographic based

Value Lead grading based on potential deal size

Value of purchases against future potential value

Inferred

Product interest Products or content browsed on-site

Product categories browsed

Inferred (sometimes disclosed on form)

Activity Lead scoring based

on level of activity, e.g.

number of whitepaper

downloads

Browse or basket

abandons

Inferred

Lifecycle position Prospect vs customer and

degree of engagement

Number of products

purchased and level of

activity

Inferred

Examples of layered targeting options

We find that if businesses use targeting at all, it is often based on disclosed, profile-based

data entered into forms. More mature companies also use inferred data, based on insight

collected about interests inferred from content interactions. They combine multiple

targeting criteria into a single email based on dynamic content insertion.

Content strategy

r Q. Do you have relevant top, middle, and bottom-of-funnel content for prospect nurturing?

To help simplify decisions about how content can best be used to support prospects on

the path to purchase, it has become common to review opportunities for top of funnel

(TOFU), middle of funnel (MOFU), and bottom of funnel (BOFU), as shown in the table.



Automation rules can be put in place to recommend the ‘next-best content’ for a prospect

at each stage with distributing content at relevant points by email and web personalization.

REACH ACT CONVERT ENGAGE

Content type

and aim

TOFU

Awareness

Engagement

MOFU

Evaluation

Engagement

BOFU

Purchase

Engagement

ROFU

Retention/Advocacy

Engagement

B2B examples - Hero lead-gen for cut-through infographics

- 10X content

- Webinars – education

- Case studies

- Datasheets

- Independent reviews

- Webinars – demos

- ROI calculators

- Business case download

- Career development

- E-newsletter

Typical

distribution

options

- SEO

- Social

- Pop-ups and inline content

- Email welcome

- Email nurture

- E-newsletter personal

- Web personalization

- Livechat

- Emails from sales (automated)

- Webinars

- E-newsletter

- Web personalization

Techniques for using content across the customer lifecycle

We like this simple approach because it can help sales and marketing teams and their

agencies review content selection strategy at a high level, assess current gaps in content,

and prioritize new content. For example, do you have sufficient BOFU content? It can help

marketing and sales alignment because the marketing promoted content typically lies in

the Reach and Act stages, while content used to support prospect sales engagement is

used in the Convert and Engage phases.

Content formats

An alternative framework for visualizing the gap of current against future content is the

Smart Insights Content Marketing Matrix. This covers the level of engagement from awareness to purchase from left to right, as with the previous table. It also adds the

dimension of content engagement by considering more emotional against more rational

content. Use this framework to assess whether you are exploiting the rich range of

content types available.



Content Marketing Matrix. Source: Smart Insights

Marketing and sales contact strategy

r Q. Have you defined a comprehensive marketing and sales automation sequence to maximize conversion?

Once content types to support nurture have been initially defined, you can turn to more

detailed specification of the sequence of communications.

It’s easiest to start with automated emails triggered by events such as email registration.

You can then use this type of layout to specify your messaging goals against content,

copy, and creative to engage and nurture your audience. Additional fields should be used

to identify how content blocks are targeted.

Example content strategy



A similar approach can be used to improve planned communications that are part of

sales processes, which are often known today as sales cadences, indicating that you need to define the typical frequency or velocity at which a sales conversation should

happen. Rules are defined for when reminders are sent to engage audiences with

relevant content.

Sales cadence example. Will develop a new one version to included assisted sales

WHAT IS IT? SALES CADENCE

A sequence of interactions that a sales representative has with a prospect to engage with and form a connection. It defines a typical schedule for a sales process, supported by relevant content, for sales reps to follow up with each prospect via phone, email, and social media channels.

Rules-based approaches are still core to specifying marketing and sales enablement

sequences, but there are challenges with this because we don’t often know the optimal

content, message or frequency to deliver it. This is where Artificial Intelligence can help,

as we will see later in the report.


IMPLEMENT ACTION PLAN3

90-day implementation plans

r Q. Are you using 90-day planning to phase implementation and make optimization?

With the number of great options available for targeted communications across different

channels, some common questions we get are “where do we start?” and “how do we

optimize our nurturing process?” In either case, we recommend using a 90-day plan to

decide which new communications you deploy each quarter and which you optimize.

! STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION Use a test-learn-refine approach to optimize your communicationsWhile you can plan for a ‘big bang’ launch where you plan your entire prospect nurturing sequences from the start before implementation, a phased approach can work better because you can adjust your approach based on insight from initial deployments. For example, you could start with a relatively simple three-email nurture sequence which is untargeted and then add targeted versions.

Measurement and optimization

r Q. Do you have a process in place to optimize targeting, frequency and creative?

There are many variables to your communications which can be used to boost response.

You can test changes to targeting, cadence (or frequency), creative or offer to boost

response. These optimization tasks should be based on insight from your automation

system of the cadence or average transition times between different stages. For example,

these are moderate to long transition times that can be improved by optimizations which

consider whether more touchpoints are required:

r Visitor to Prospect – 10.3 days

r Prospect to MQL – 4.8 months

r MQL to SQL – 4.6 months

r SQL to Won – 1.3 months

These optimizations can also be planned and reviewed as part of the 90-day planning

approach because you will need to ring-fence time for testing and review, otherwise it

may never happen.


3 IMPLEMENT ACTION PLAN

This real example, shared with us by a marketer for a company selling glasses online,

shows the value of testing and also the importance of testing on commercial measures

‘beyond the click’ rather than solely on open and clickthrough rate.

Test and KPI Open rate Clickthrough rate

Conversion rate

Average order value

Revenue per 1,000 emails

Original – Name

only

11.1% 9.0% 2.0% £115 £23

Test variant – Name

plus pricing

11.3% 6.7% 2.8% £133 £28

Difference +0.9% -25.6% +40.0% +15.6% +21.7%

Example of variation in performance for A/B test

You can see that if the decision had been made solely on clickthrough rate of the test

variant, this would have been a mistake. When more pricing details about the glasses

are available in the email, this decreases clickthrough rate but sets expectations to frame

pricing so increases the commercial measures of conversion rate and average order

value on the website and overall revenue per thousand emails. This shows that even if

you are offering a B2B service, you must try to determine the impact on the value of your

tests.

Applying Artificial Intelligence (AI)

r Q. Are you using AI to improve communications relevance and response?

AI and Machine Learning are among the hottest techniques in marketing at the moment –

rightly so because these techniques help increase relevance across multiple touchpoints

and gain insight on your interactions with audiences. The capacity for many businesses

to deploy targeted Marketing Automation may be limited by the skills or experience of

people on the team to select the best targeting options and cadence.

! STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION Use commercial KPIs to review optimizationsWhile it is common for marketers to review responses based on clickthrough rates on calls to action for their emails, or their personalization panels, it’s best to look at the bigger picture of an increase in revenue per 1,000 emails where possible.



Automation systems that have predictive analytics features like Salesforce Einstein

reduce the need for rules-based configuration and analysis by offering automated:

r Journey insights: Leverage AI to analyze billions of touchpoints across consumer journeys and discover the optimal paths to conversion, including insights about

which channels, messages, and events perform best.

r Engagement scoring: Predict consumer engagement with your email or website, discover insights about why consumers click or purchase, and use predicted

behaviour to segment, trigger journeys, and personalize messages.

r Lead scoring: Prioritize the leads most likely to convert based on your history and past deals.

r Opportunity insights: Know whether or not a deal is likely to close based on customer sentiment, competitor involvement, and overall prospect engagement.

r Account-based marketing insights: Alerts on key business developments pertinent to your accounts such as your customers’ latest news, M&A activity, and

company expansion updates.



SUMMARY4We hope this report has helped you evaluate how you can deliver on the promise of

combining the latest Marketing Automation techniques with cutting-edge content

marketing introduced in the foreword. For successful implementation, consider how

you can refine how you deploy automation in your organization through this data-driven

approach.

To summarize, the three most important practical success factors to maximize response

are having a defined and integrated:

1. Content strategy: To maximize engagement and audience time-to-value

2. Layered segmentation and targeting strategy: To boost audience relevance and response

3. Contact strategy: To combine content, targeting with the right cadence to automate marketing communications and improve sales cadence

We have also seen how marketing and sales governance activities will improve time to

value within your business. Key management actions are:

r Creating a business case based on conversion-based engagement models

r Aligning marketing and sales to design integrated communications strategies

r Implementing a 90-day planning process to support a data-driven approach to

optimization

About the authorsIntroductionSuccess factors for integrated marketing and sales engagementAbout this guideReview current customer journeys and lead funnelModel lead improvements for business caseDefine sales process governanceMartech platformSegmentation and targeting strategyMarketing and sales contact strategy

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