To help support its growth, the company planned to increase the number of scheduled prospective meetings and facilitate multi-threaded meetings that would involve multiple representatives from the client’s side to lead to more fruitful discussions and successful outcomes.

The Challenge

AffiniPay wanted to implement an account-based strategy to support its meetings-focused endeavors but faced uncertainties in the execution, primarily due to a lack of alignment among operations, sales and marketing teams. That misalignment produced a lack of trust and inefficiencies, which included misunderstandings of marketing qualified accounts and platform integrations within existing workflows.

Moreover, foundational data issues in AffiniPay’s CRM plagued its systems across 6sense, Salesforce, Gong and Adobe Marketo, which contributed to lower conversion rates, prompting AffiniPay to seek ways to maximize its ROI.

The Solution

AffiniPay turned to B2B Fusion, a B2B sales and marketing performance firm, to facilitate the transformation of its operations, team cohesion and training processes and guide its shift from a transactional B2B approach to an account-based experience (ABX) motion strategy.

First, B2B Fusion helped AffiniPay develop a model qualified account (MQA) framework for consistent organizational management and established fundamental segments in 6sense for accurate targeting to boost conversions. B2B Fusion assisted with this by getting all parties in a room to align definitions and processes and, once that buy-in was achieved, the firm then installed that philosophy into the systems.

AffiniPay also wanted to reset its 6sense pilot program, so B2B Fusion crafted tailored marketing campaigns within the platform to streamline the sales funnel and devise a comprehensive omnichannel outreach plan. Following this, the sales and marketing performance firm developed a cohesive messaging framework for AffiniPay to help the company land more meetings with relevant stakeholders in prospective accounts. Then, B2B Fusion assisted in pinpointing and rectifying core challenges within the initial 6sense pilot program.

Next, B2B Fusion helped develop a full-funnel demand generation campaign framework focused on cross-selling opportunities among AffiniPay’s diverse product lines. By analyzing customer data and insights, B2B Fusion helped customize marketing campaigns for 6sense, including operationalizing the sales funnel and creating an omnichannel pilot plan. This enabled AffiniPay to create targeted campaigns to address specific customer needs and interests, thereby increasing the relevance and appeal of cross-selling propositions.

Other strategic contributions from B2B Fusion included:

• Designing seamless business processes that allowed marketing and sales to act effectively on MQAs;
• Conducting a thorough 6sense keyword audit for enhanced performance;
• Implementing integrated campaigns across various channels to optimize the full sales funnel;
• Enhancing the usability of 6sense to align with operational needs, which is still a work in progress; and
• Reporting assistance in defining ABX pilot launch criteria and objectives for future success.

The Results

Collaborating with B2B Fusion positively impacted AffiniPay’s operations, leading to significant growth in its business outcomes.

“We’re in early stages of the rollout but see some promising early results already,” said Paul Hernandez, Director of Lifecycle Marketing at AffiniPay. “This includes a nearly 70% MQA acceptance rate by sales, with an extremely high sales qualified lead-to-win ratio of 33%, which is indicating ABM is much more effective versus traditional lead generation techniques on a per-unit basis.”

Other key benefits from the partnership include:

• Strengthened sales and marketing alignment;
• Improved data quality across all departments and streamlined decision-making processes; and
• Cohesive processes and campaigns that moved beyond traditional lead generation and focus on high-value accounts; and
• Expansion into new markets and industries.

Looking ahead, AffiniPay wants to increase the model qualified account volume to make an even greater impact on revenue heading into 2025.

The post How AffiniPay Unlocked 70% MQA Acceptance Rate Via An ABM/ABX Framework appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

“It’s difficult for a marketer to think, ‘Well, how do I put ABM and leads in my systems and measure everything?” Russo explained. “People just don’t know how to think about the unified funnel because they’re too focused on lead- and account-based.”

To dive deeper into the power of the unified funnel (and discuss the key components that are missing from the industry narrative), the Demand Gen Report team sat down with Russo to explore the components needed to unify those disparate motions.

Demand Gen Report: A unified funnel is the ideal outcome so practitioners can track all buying activities. Why is it important for practitioners to unite their funnels?

Jon Russo: Typically, you’ll have a lead funnel, an account funnel and a sales funnel, but your CEO or CFO isn’t trying to reconcile all these different funnels; they view it as one go-to-market (GTM) motion. But marketers often don’t see leads as part of an account.

DGR: Bringing leads and accounts together in a singular system is difficult and requires a lot of manpower and technology — what advice do you have for companies looking to unify the two?

Russo: It starts with change management. First, you need to define the lead process, then define the account process and finally put the right architecture into place to support your singular lead and account processes. If you have partners, referrals or even “contact us” as your inbound channels, you should be able to use all those as filters for volume and velocity for your single funnel.

Performing a lead- and account-based motion requires a data architecture. That architecture typically sits in Salesforce, which marketers don’t spend a lot of time thinking about. But they need to access it frequently; it’s critical to get to that next step.

DGR: What would a technology stack to execute these motions look like?

Russo: A best-in-class tech stack would include an account-based technology, marketing automation platform and a customer relationship management system. Those are the three critical ingredients, but you can improve by implementing “nice to have” solutions, such as a lead routing platform, a sales engagement platform and a sales execution platform.

DGR: What are some of the challenges organizations often face when working to deploy the unified funnel? Are there any key areas that are often overlooked?

Russo: Oftentimes, practitioners and thought leaders miss the SDR productivity side of the funnel. And that’s where the rubber meets the road: You can have the best reporting in the world, but if your SDRs aren’t following up on things, it won’t be productive.

Marketers often lose sight of SDR productivity, and in today’s environment, sales efficiency and productivity is top of mind for everyone. You don’t want to introduce technology without being thoughtful around SDRs’ workflow, because that workflow should in turn feed the unified funnel.

DGR: What steps can organizations take to better account for SDR motions?

Russo: The first tip is don’t measure in data visualization platforms, because the insights from the account sit in a different platform and they’re not in the workflows of SDRs. Those technologies don’t help sales productivity; they’re good for pretty dashboards. You need to be in the SDRs’ workflow.

You also need the right technology that allows you to track and attribute deals through your platforms. You need to be able to say, “This intent drove this deal through the pipeline.” And there’s data architecture behind that, which we talked about earlier.

DGR: Do you have any statistics or examples of how a unified funnel benefits organizations?

Russo: I recently worked with Amplience, a digital experience platform, to help them roll-up account data from disjointed metrics on several global clients and prospects and increase the productivity of their sales teams. By implementing the unified view, the company saw:

• A 6.5X higher conversation rate on a 6sense qualified account versus traditional cold outbound;
• 83% of its opportunities come from accounts in the decision and purchase stage, compared to 55% previously; and
• A 36% increase in the average first-year annual contract value for deals entering the pipeline.

DGR: Why do you think SDRs aren’t accounted for when discussing the unified funnel?

Russo: In my operating role, I ran an SDR function, as have my team members. So, we’re probably biased on how the salesperson thinks of change. Marketers get enamored with tools, whereas a salesperson wants a simple, scalable and repeatable process. I have an SDR background, so I’m more thoughtful about it, but I’ve also studied hundreds of clients and looked at their entire sales and marketing engine. I think more holistically about sales and marketing driving revenue, as opposed to just marketing.

The post The Secret To Unlocking Full Funnel Efficiency appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

This year’s online #B2BMX event – taking place June 7–10, 2021 – will focus on the nuances of account-based strategies, with 50+ sessions that will expand on growing trends to help organizations enter the next level of their account-based strategies and programs.

The event itself will be divided into six separate tracks: ABM Alignment, Campaign Execution, Targeted Content, Strategy & Outcomes, Precision Partnering and Audience Insights. Attendees will learn about the most pressing topics in these account-based areas, including how to build impactful account-based experiences (ABX), the benefits of leveraging intent and signal data, the best ways to create targeted omnichannel content offers and much more.

“We consistently hear from B2B marketing practitioners that they are trying to advance their ABM programs to be more effective in connecting with targeted buyers and accounts,” said Andrew Gaffney, Editorial Director at Demand Gen Report. “We’re really proud of the extensive program we put together, with a ton of great use case examples and a ‘who’s who’ of thought leaders demonstrating how to better customize messaging, orchestrate programs across marketing channels and ultimately be more relevant and valuable to their buyers.”

ABM-Focused Keynotes Explore Account Alignment, Content, Engagement & More

As with every B2BMX event, Next-Level ABM is packed with keynote presentations from top influencers sharing their experiences and best practices with ABM.

• Andy Crestodina, Co-Founder and Strategic Director of Orbit Media, will kickstart the event with a keynote on how research-backed outreach encourages buyers to interact with a website, and the best ways to decided which content form best fits with your ABM program;
• Best-selling author of “microMARKETING” Greg Verdino will take the virtual stage to discuss the importance of catering directly to the buying group the importance of catering directly to the buying group and share some best practices for putting key accounts —  and the people behind them — first in the buying process;
• Demandbase‘s Jon Miller will discuss how marketers can leverage an ABX model to align with buyers at each stage of their  journey. He will also provide tips for data insight implementation to improve marketing and sales actions and further drive ABM success for future account interactions;
• Forrester VP Principal Analysts Nicky Briggs and Phyllis Davidson will highlight custom content’s impact on ABM by sharing pitfalls marketers might face when scaling and managing their ABM content;
• A panel of revenue leaders, including Darryl Prail of VanillaSoft, James Gilbert of CRMNext and Sangram Vajre of Terminus will touch base on the current state of ABM and discuss new ways to evolve future go-to-market strategies;
• In another panel keynote, Christelle Flauhaux of FortressIQ and Karen Sage of Syncron will join Andrew Gaffney to discuss the shifting structures of revenue teams and the current roadmap for building multichannel ABM engagement programs; and
• ON24 Mark Bornstein will discuss how personalized digital experiences and targeted content can build stronger engagement strategies that enhance ABM programs for highly targeted audiences.

Breakout Sessions Analyze What Works To Build Stronger ABM Programs

In addition to the keynotes, attendees could watch 50+ sessions, ranging from case studies, labs, breakouts and lunch & learns, presented by some of the top B2B voices in the industry. In these sessions, B2B experts and practitioners will explore various ABM-centric topics, ranging from unique account engagement strategies to creating account-centric ABM programs.

Rob Leavitt of ITSMA and Gemma Davies of ServiceNow will explore the best ways to bring ABM tactics and strategies into customer-centric organizations. Leavitt and Davies will also discuss how to innovate and expand existing ABM strategies to ensure long-term ABM success.

Corrina Owens and Taylor Young of Profisee will break down how 1:1, 1:few and 1:many ABM programs work, and how each program functions when engaging executive accounts. The duo will also recommend tools and solutions marketers can leverage to scale their ABM programs for the executive stage.

Kelvin Gee of Oracle will tackle the concept of a centralized approach to ABM. Gee will discuss how having a center of excellence can help improve the maturity of ABM programs and share four separate approaches marketers can take to create a centralized hub that supports ABM strategies.

Some other interesting sessions to check out include:

• Building Your Partner Ecosystem & Channel Strategy, where Theresa Maragol of AchieveUnite highlights the critical components for building successful channel strategies that scale; and
• David Bruno of Aptos will explore the harsh reality of content creation for ABM programs in Confessions Of An Overworked Content Marketer: Satisfying The Relentless Demands Of ABM.

Next-Level Activities For Hands-On Learning & Networking

For attendees looking for new hands-on ways to learn and network with peers, #B2BMX Next-Level ABM will host a plethora of workshops designed to help attendees overhaul their ABM strategies, programs and conversations, with many famous B2B faces providing new tactics and best practices for attendees to learn from.

One workshop presented by Pam Didner, titled: ABM Sales Motions: How To Maximize Sales Enablement For Key Account Strategies, will highlight account-specific sales enablement opportunities that can support existing ABM programs. She will also work with attendees to brainstorm creative ways to align with sales teams for stronger account-based plans and engagement.

Jon Russo of B2B Fusion will also host a workshop titled: Using Leads, Piloting ABM — Argh, How Do I Measure Everything?, where he’ll cover the questions marketers should ask, as well as the necessary tools for measuring ABM successfully. Russo will explore the idea of having a separate funnel strictly for leads as a means for measuring account readiness to engage.

Other workshops include:

• Positioning ABM As A Growth Lever In Your Revenue Engine with David Lewis of BDO Digital;
• Precision Demand Marketing: Response To Revenue with Integrate‘s Stephanie Swinyer and Danny McKeever;
• ABM Targeting & Segmentation: A Hands-On Strategy Workshop, with Mark Ogne, ABM Consortorium;
• It’s Complicated: Marketing/Selling To, Through & With Your Channel — An ABM Story with Spark Your Channel‘s Heather Margolis;
• Strengthening Executive Engagement: 5 Keys To ABM Success with ITSMA’s Rob Leavitt; and
• Connecting The Dots On Content & Audience: Building Messaging Strategies That Support Targeted Programs For Specific Buyers & VerticalsConnecting with Lisa Wallace and Kelly Zahoudanis of Content4Demand.

The event will also feature additional hands-on activities for attendees to share their ABM experiences and learn from their peers, including:

• 1:1 “Speed Dating” sessions that allow attendees to network with likeminded individuals, matching people by their preferences and interests for an engaging conversation;
• Roundtable discussions where attendees can discuss specific topics during conversations facilitated by industry experts;
• Certification courses on topics such as ABM Foundations, Digital Experiences and Virtual Events; and
• The chance to connect with sponsors and learn about the top ABM martech tools available.

This only covers a small portion of the information and activities at #B2BMX Next-Level ABM. Check out the website for the full agenda and save your seat today! All sessions will be available on-demand to registrants after they air.

The post #B2BMX Takes ABM To The Next Level With Renewed Focus On Account Targeting & Engagement appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

“When you look at personalization, I still think B2C companies have a leg up on B2B,” said Jon Russo, Founder & CMO of B2B Fusion, in an interview with Demand Gen Report. “If I think about my Amazon experience, it is lightyears ahead of any B2B experience. B2B is catching up with content that they’re starting to serve that is applicable to me. Look at my Netflix experience — it’s just a much easier experience. But it’s also based on the personalization of content that’s relevant to me. YouTube would be a great example of that. I’ve been doing a lot of binge-watching of certain things within YouTube. And now it’s automatically presenting the content based on my interest. With AI, I think you’re going to see a lot of changes here in 2020 and beyond.”

Where B2B organizations have a leg up on B2C is around progressive profiling, according to Fatemeh Khatibloo, VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester. Getting relevant data from buyers is crucial in achieving the level of personalization they desire, and progressive profiling allows marketers to glean intelligence by gradually collecting it in a way that won’t turn the buyer off.

“In B2B, there has been more of a focus towards asking the prospect a few questions,” said Khatibloo in an interview with Demand Gen Report. “You’re on this part of my website, you’re looking to download a white paper, maybe I’ll ask you for a couple of pieces of information about yourself, but not everything about you. And then based on what you’ve seen when you downloaded the white paper, I might ask you a couple of more questions, whether that’s via live chat or via an email or whatever that is. So, I’m painting a picture of you as a long tail buyer. And that’s something that historically B2C marketing has not done from a personalization perspective.”

Delivering Relevancy Based On Intent Signals Becomes A Common Practice

Modern B2B marketers are thinking less about personalization and more about relevancy. Doing personalization for the sake of personalization is no longer cutting it with buyers, who can see right through these initiatives.

Daniel Englebretson, Director of Growth Marketing and Demand Generation at Phononic Inc., for example, said he “favors relevancy in the form of account + role + intent signals + tailored value proposition,” stating that it is “easier to scale, less creepy, and tells a pretty good story. It also doesn’t require PII [personally identifiable information], but if it does, it doesn’t come off creepy.”

It’s a matter of putting yourself in the customer or prospect’s shoes and delivering messages that change based on how you’re talking to them.

“I am strongly opposed to personalization for the sake of personalization,” said Englebretson. “If what I know about the person does not meaningfully change the way I’d interact with them in a material way, then I prefer to not use it. Not only is it awkward, but there is risk that you’ll turn the prospect off.

“Call me an idealist, but in the case of personalization for the individual, ‘healthy balance’ really comes down to empathy — your ability to scale empathetic conversations. Ask yourself, ‘Is this a human interaction?’ and if the answer is no, then don’t do it.”

Similar to Englebreston, marketers are starting to leverage signal and intent data to gain relevant intelligence of the buyer that they can use for deeper personalization.

For example, Kenna Security uses data from Bombora to target people who have been searching for topics relevant to their offering. According to Jeremy Middleton, Head of Marketing Strategy and Operations at Kenna, he and his team also similarly track the same engagement through G2 — all of which indicates the intent of the buyer, allowing the team to better cater their messaging to their needs.

“We have three high-level ways of looking at intent with customers,” said Middleton. “Once we see people who are interested within our segment, we then go in and research our primary personas, make sure those people are in our databases and start doing more personalized and targeted outreach through marketing automation.”

Finding The Sweet Spot Between Personalization & Privacy

A common challenge for B2B marketers is achieving a healthy balance in catering to consumers’ desires for personalization and maintaining their privacy.

But a Forrester report, titled: “The Privacy-Personalization Paradox,” states that privacy and personalization aren’t mutually exclusive. Today’s buyers demand relevance and recognition, yet they are not thrilled with the fact that they don’t have complete control over the data marketers use to deliver that experience.

However, research shows that buyers are willing to share information about themselves in return for relevant content that will help them find solutions to their pain points. So, the key to a healthy balance between personalization and privacy really revolves around relevancy and transparency.

“Privacy is about giving people control of what and how their info is collected and used,” said Leslie Alore, Director of Corporate Strategy at Iron Mountain. “Personalization is about giving people a better experience that’s relevant and valuable to them. If you are transparent and consistent about exposing people to the data you collect and demonstrating you’re using it in a way that brings value to them, then that’s the perfect intersection of these two concepts.”

Personalization in B2B marketing will continue to be an important element in modern go-to-market strategies, and as buyers’ expectations evolve, marketers will need to focus heavily on maintaining authentic relationships through relevant, thoughtful messaging and being transparent with how they’re using buyer data to deliver on these expectations.

“Bringing humanity back into marketing and giving people some control over how their data is used is, is tremendously valuable,” said Forrester’s Khatibloo. “It’s also a really, really great way to protect and defend against any of these upcoming privacy regulations that are going to be hitting us over the next couple of years.”

For those looking to take the next step in their personalization strategies, Russo suggests keeping the end goal in mind and working backward to figure out how personalization could support that goal.

“By doing that, you improve the probability of getting the right strategy to collect the right data, and see if you can even collect that data,” said Russo. “I think the flip side risk is it’s easy to get lost in the trees across the forest here, where everybody is trying to do personalization at scale. But what’s that ultimate endpoint that you’re trying to get to? It’s very easy to get lost in the technical side of things and it’s also very operationally challenging to pull off. So, I think having the end in mind gives you the opportunity to have a dialogue around the data, and then around the resource requirements to execute that personalization.”

The post Balancing Personalization & Privacy Through Relevant, Transparent Communication appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

The focus is now on revenue; marketing operations leaders are tasked with helping visualize and execute plans to meet short- and long-term goals of the entire company — not just the marketing department.

Demand Gen Report reached out to eight leading industry experts, analysts and practitioners to discuss how they have seen the marketing ops role evolve to incorporate other aspects of the business — such as revenue ops — as well as what the connections are between these roles under the marketing ops umbrella.

Jocelyn King, President, MOCCA Marketing Operations Professional Association

In the 12 years since marketing operations was recognized by IDC as a function and MOCCA was established as the dedicated professional association for marketing operations leaders and practitioners, marketing ops has evolved from exclusively planning marketing technology roadmaps and demand funnels to becoming the CMO’s essential strategic leadership over operational excellence in marketing.  

Today, marketing ops is continuing to evolve rapidly as it leads the steep change curve that marketing finds itself on. CMOs are under more pressure and scrutiny than ever, and marketing ops’ charter is to ensure that marketing excels and scales. The recent rise of revenue operations is challenging marketing ops leaders to additionally own greater mastery of sales and customers. The focus of revenue operations is ensuring that marketing and sales excel and scale. Marketing ops leaders must step up to meet this greater need. Since sales ops tends to focus on fiscal weeks and quarter-end results, while marketing ops focuses on quarters and long-term strategic plans, marketing ops is uniquely positioned to ensure both effective short-term results and long-term revenue operations scaling and effectiveness. Today’s marketing ops leaders must rally to stay relevant not only to marketing, but also to sales and customer needs to be valued and relevant to company revenue growth. Fortunately, managing continuous change and driving difficult conversations and decisions is in marketing ops’ DNA.

Linlin Li, VP of Marketing Ops & Strategic Projects, Centrify

Marketing Ops has a unique advantage to lead or evolve into a revenue ops function, whether formally or informally, because at the core of revenue ops is customer journey operations, brand experience and customer insight. The advancement of the martech world and data science practice has enabled marketing ops teams to have a new arena to influence the organization’s top-line growth for scale, efficiency and efficacy of all revenue-driving efforts across marketing, sales, customer success, product, support and services.

At Centrify, I see this manifest in three areas where marketing ops is taking the lead and connecting the dots:

1. Drive cross-functional efforts to design, execute and report company revenue models;
2. Focus on a holistic view of the customer journey and end-to-end touchpoints and engagement for both prospective and existing customers; and
3. Challenge the status quo and innovate via advanced martech and data science to future proof processes and alignment for scale and intelligent growth.

Debbie Qaqish, Principal & Chief Strategy Officer, The Pedowitz Group

We are seeing a rapid expansion in marketing operations’ responsibilities because of the talent and skill they bring and the changing requirements for marketing. I see five stages of marketing operations maturity that reflect the additional responsibilities to the broader business and to revenue operations. 

The first stage is efficient — meaning marketing ops is working to do things as well as they can. This is a reactive state centered on getting and using technology. The second state is effective. In this stage, marketing ops begins to be more proactive and works more with re-engineering processes that then help define technology requirements. This role is still very marketing-centric and includes rich integration with sales to attain revenue goals. 

Marketing’s ops impact on the business really takes off in the customer-centric stage. At this level of maturity, the marketing ops group is key to operationalizing the customer journey for both net-new acquisition and account expansion. At this stage, marketing ops works across functions as a practice. The final stage is next gen. In this stage, we see more changes in organizational structure to support marketing ops’ new responsibilities. We see sales and marketing ops combine and other functions, such as customer success, also join to create one unified function. This new function provides the best opportunity to operationalize the customer journey across every part of the company.

As described above, the marketing ops’ set of responsibilities are rapidly expanding because they serve as enablers of customer-centric strategies. Marketing technologies allow marketing to have a digital relationship with clients at every stage of the journey. This digital relationship produces data and insights that can be shared with all customer-facing functions of the organization. Customer engagement is the new battlefield and the MO function is perfectly positioned to help win the fight.

Jason Keller, Marketing Operations Manager, Logi Analytics

I’ve seen that when marketing ops is involved in the execution, tech implementation and/or automation of a business process, the reporting related to that process tends to get adopted by the marketing ops team as well.

The kinds of projects adopted are usually closely related to the top of the sales funnel (i.e. ABM, martech tools, data services, etc.). Typically, this is a good thing, as it usually ensures that the metrics align with the intended outcomes of these processes (given the person measuring knows how and why the processes were created to begin with).

That said, it also means that every time a marketing ops team attempts to help with a new process or work-stream, the demand out of that team is always getting compounded by the reporting needs that follow the original request for support. This makes it really easy for a marketing ops team to accidentally overextend itself, thinking they can take on the extra bit of work without thinking of the extra bit of reporting that will likely be requested as well.

Jon Russo, CMO & Founder, B2B Fusion

Marketing operations is a passion area of mine, as the function represents the heart of reporting on the business impact a marketing organization has. In my 10 years as a CMO and my five years on the board of MOCCA, I’ve seen marketers achieve revenue operation responsibilities in unique situations.

If a company is a growing SaaS organization, it is more likely to find one person in charge of all operations (sales and marketing) from a revenue marketing or revenue operations perspective.

In a highly transactional B2B sale where marketing sourced revenue is greater than 50% of the revenue, we also see marketing operations owning the revenue operations function, regardless of company size.

According to LinkedIn, sales turnover is 13% per year and marketers turnover is 17% per year. So, the third situation we see when revenue operations is under marketing operations’ responsibility is where the revenue ops person leaves the company. The next logical place for an organization to look for talent is internally.

In larger organizations, typically more than 500 global employees, we more universally find two different functions — revenue operations and marketing operations, typically reporting to different entities in the organization.

Paul Green, Director of Marketing Technologies, Extreme Networks

I continue to see the marketing operations role grow in prominence throughout many organizations. I believe marketing operations has now become the central layer of glue to true alignment between sales and marketing, in addition to other key stakeholder departments like sales and channel operations, finance and IT. This is so important as marketing operations purview expands from budgeting and planning, and now has a keen focus on the operationalizing and optimization of marketing technologies. These marketing technology investments are becoming key growth strategy enablers and require deeper cross functional team designs to maximize effectiveness and efficiencies centered around long-term growth.

Cristina De Martini, Research Director For Marketing Operations, SiriusDecisions

Marketing operations is certainly evolving — moving from a tactical project management role that facilitates organizational efficiencies to a more strategic role informing marketing strategy through solid performance measurement and analytics, and aligning that marketing strategy with sales and the go-to-market plan.

Revenue operations is putting an organizational design solution on top of an alignment problem to the age-old question of how to align organizational functions. The true objective is to establish an integrated approach to align marketing, sales, customer success, finance and all direct contributors to an organization’s revenue strategy to enable scalable growth. We don’t always have to have a direct reporting structure to attain the desired alignment. Think of it as a team sport where each player must play their respective position for the team to meet its goal. To gain alignment, strong operations leaders will ensure that:

1. All parties are involved in planning at the front end and establishing a common set of goals;
2. Communication is consistent and allows the strategy to drive the processes and technology selection; and
3. There is interlock around a common measurement framework that provides both description and predictive analysis, technology integration and master data management.

John Hurley, Senior Director of Product Marketing, Radius

This evolution of ops roles has created a new paradigm — one where ops is a direct contributor to an organization’s top-line and a major stakeholder for an organization’s revenue strategy. What started as a response to address marketing and sales’ technological destiny has quickly spiraled into a massive undertaking that directly feeds into an organization’s revenue engine. 

Think about the following initiatives, all of which are top-of-mind for progressive marketing organizations:

• Diagnose and fix core data gaps;
• Develop 360-degree customer profiles;
• Uncover total addressable markets;
• Build hyper-targeted campaign audiences;
• Implement new scoring models; and
• Orchestrate channel experiences across platforms.

Now ask yourself, could any of these initiatives be successfully executed without core marketing operations people? 

According to the Harvard Business Review, B2B organizations with advanced data strategies are twice as likely to grow revenue by more than 30%. This is why investing in data and intelligence is their number one priority for reaching their goals. It’s clear that companies recognize the opportunity and what they need to do. Business leaders can no longer ignore the importance of having reliable data and a smart data strategy, and they can’t go without a strong marketing ops function.

The post Industry Experts, Practitioners Sound Off On The Evolution Of B2B Marketing Ops appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

By Jon Russo, Founder & CEO, B2B Fusion

It’s time for the next generation of marketing automation – a revenue-generating marketing automation system that focuses on predictability, effectiveness and a holistic view of a prospect/customer situation, using the right analytics.

I am a former high-tech CMO who understands SaaS companies and platforms. I’ve implemented multiple instances of marketing automation platforms, and more recently I started a business digging deep into the marketing automation/CRM ecosystem to get more revenue, more quickly. Based on my experience, here are four areas where I think the next generation of marketing automation solutions will provide useful solutions:

Predictive Analytics:  While the lead scoring models of yesteryear give us a good start sorting the needles from the haystack, people are starting to realize that companies cannot “set and forget” these models and expect them to work in the long term..  Buying behaviors change, and B2B buying committees are complex groups.  A predictive element, with newer analytic capabilities, is emerging in the B2B world, leveraging technologies similar to what B2C marketers like Amazon.com use today.  B2B marketers can use these capabilities to determine what products or solutions are most likely to be purchased, based on similar demographic or segmentation sets.

Data Quality:  As I’ve previously posted on my blog, the data element is the single most important area for companies to understand and harvest, yet at the executive level it is often the least understood.  Bad data is like a rifle with its sight off; If your sight is off by a quarter inch, you’ll miss your target by a mile.  If the data is bad, you’ll never reach your target, or you’ll lose valuable time trying to reach your target. Newer marketing automation systems that leverage the right SaaS integrations will be more sophisticated, going beyond deduplication at the account, contac, and lead level (like they do today or with other third-party tools like CRM Fusion and Dupe Blocker.); they will provide real-time feedback on phone numbers and contact information to increase the effectiveness of the inside sales organization. Outsourced data-cleansing strategies will become less prevalent as time goes on.

360 Degree Prospect Views:  With SaaS environments leveraging CRM (Salesforce.com) and new integration technologies (Dell Boomi), there is a newer way to get intimate understanding of your customer, in real time,  prior to sales reaching out to them. Billing information, trouble tickets and other service questions can theoretically be displayed to a sales person so they are not surprised while calling into new or existing accounts trying to upsell them.  With a 360 degree view, coupled with predictive analytics, there will be new ways to get more revenue for savvy companies. Customer marketing (up-sell, cross-sell) is the hardest type of marketing to do and measure, and this 360 degree view will help complete that circle. The single most important aspect is to make it easy for sales reps to get access to these capabilities from their current systems.

Meaningful Analytics: The first-generation SaaS marketing automation vendors made an attempt at analytics, either licensing third-party software (Micromuse, Good) or attempting to build it on their own. The next-generation analytics dashboards will be visible to anyone with CRM access, not just marketing users with marketing data. These analytics will show the areas above – marketing influenced revenue, 360 degree views and data quality.  While some of this can be reported in systems today, it’s challenging at best.

What do you think, and what are you seeing for future marketing automation environments to get more revenue more quickly?  Where are the pain points and shortcomings in your marketing environments?

Jon Russo has been a three-time B2B Chief Marketing Officer at companies ranging from former divisions of General Electric to Silicon Valley startups.  His global assignments have includes Luxembourg, New York City and Silicon Valley where he helped lead a $180M M&A (GlobalCenter acq. by Frontier) and an IPO of SaaS mobility company iPass as a 16b officer. Russo is a recognized speaker at numerous industry events and conferences, including CXO, venture capital, Internet, hosting and software as a service venues. He has appeared on national television news outlets, including Fox News. A former active duty Army officer, Jon Russo earned his MBA in Marketing from the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley, and an undergraduate degree in Finance from the University of Connecticut.

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Since the original funnel model was built around the concept of steadily moving a buyer from awareness to interest to desire to action, Ernst pointed out that it doesn’t really apply for the new buyer who goes through a different process of discovering, exploring and engaging.

“Today’s reality is behavior has changed such that buyers don’t necessarily go through awareness through buy stages,” he added. “They tend to become aware of more things as they are doing their web research, they become aware of more options and their consideration sets expand. Buyer behavior is not funnel shaped.”

Instead of modeling sales and marketing strategies around a top-down model, Ernst suggested companies should think about the buyer experience as a process that includes post-sale service and building ongoing loyalty.

While the content at DemandCon did challenge some of the conventional thinking around the sales and marketing funnel, it also showed a growing emphasis on a shared approach to revenue performance and measurement.

Highlights included:

• Hugh McFarlane, CEO of MathMarketing, presenting a session on how the metrics and visibility are key enablers to growth strategies in a session titled “See Far, Go Fast;”
• Jon Miller, VP of Marketing at Marketo, sharing real-world insights into how the company skyrocketed to 1,000 customers in three years, and
• Jon Russo, Principal of B2B Fusion, offering tips on “Translating Marketing Activity into CEO and Board Level Impact.”

The event also presented some great real-world insights and case studies from practitioners, including a behind a video presentation offering a behind-the-scenes look at how DemandGen International helped Concur Technologies build a successful lead management system including lead scoring and nurture programs.

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