• An audience reach of more than 270 million contacts across more than 25 million global companies;
• Comprehensive first-party data that includes roof-top mobile data, more than 650 product intent categories, engagement from more than 100 branded newsletters and more than 500 thousand monthly B2B asset downloads; and
• An organic, permission-based audience driven by AI and machine learning to help match targeted content with contacts.

PharosIQ Capabilities

According to the company, pharosIQ is the first provider to offer first-party, permission-based, down-funnel targeting capabilities. PharosIQ’s signal engine is designed to integrate proprietary engagement data from B2B buyer interactions, such as:

• Down-funnel B2B user engagements across content, as well as content consumption patterns and topic trends;
• Down-funnel review site engagements that encompass comparison reviews, peer reviews and competitor analyses; and
• Human-verified intent-to-purchase project confirmation data, including project timelines, budget allocations, buying groups and business needs.

“Our goal is to cut through the intent data noise,” said Chris Rack, CEO of pharosIQ, in a statement. “The combination of our down-funnel intent signals and the full-funnel capabilities of our solutions has put us in the perfect position to evolve into the new company, pharosIQ. It represents an evolution of technology and strategic solutions that will empower B2B technology and services companies to target their customers precisely and efficiently.”

Reported Strategic Advantages

PharosIQ is positioned to become an end-to-end provider that covers the entire B2B technology sales and marketing process, which includes demand generation across all stages of the buyer’s journey, integrated multichannel solutions, proprietary first-party down-funnel intent buying signals and sales pipeline activations. This expansion seeks to speed up entrance into key markets, enhance localized campaigns and boost customer campaigns’ efficiency, accuracy and return on investment. Specifically, the company offers:

Intent Signal Scale & Diversification

Combining MRP’s first-party intent data with CONTENTgine’s first-party content engagement signals, pharosIQ includes a targeting engine designed to gather millions of B2B audience interactions to generate detailed signals at the location level.

Global Audience Reach

MRP and CONTENTgine’s combined global audiences seeks to provide greater scale across North America; Latin America; Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and Asian-Pacific markets, with a combined reach of more than 270 million contacts across more than 25 million companies.

Product Expansion To Support All GTM Phases

The product suite reportedly helps with digital and offline capabilities at all phases of the B2B buyer journey.

Expanded Global Team Footprint

The combined employee footprint will span five continents and cover 15 languages across North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

The post Meet pharosIQ, The New Company Created From MRP & CONTENTgine’s Merger appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

• MRP hired Christopher Rack as its new CEO.
• Rack previously held the position of Chief Revenue Officer at DemandScience.
• As CEO, Rack plans to help expand MRP’s growth.

MRP, a provider of account-based technology and solutions, appointed Christopher Rack as its new CEO. Rack will report directly to Seamus Keating, CEO of parent company FD Technologies.

Rack joins MRP with 16 years of B2B sales and marketing technology experience, leading teams in high-growth organizations and helping clients navigate complex and constantly changing business environments. Rack previously served as Chief Revenue Officer for DemandScience and has worked for companies such as eMedia and Spiceworks.

“This is an exciting phase in MRP’s journey,” said Rack in a statement. “Already established as an industry-leading provider of account-based technology and tech-enabled services, demand for MRP’s solutions is high and we are well positioned to scale. I look forward to bringing my expertise and experience to the role, working closely with the senior management, board members and the entire MRP team to take the company to the next level of growth.”

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“We’ve seen massive growth lately, which led to the creation of additional product lines and the desire to break out in different regions,” explained Heather Rath, ServiceNow’s Director of Field Marketing West. “There’s a lot of complexity as we look at sales’ needs and priorities, and if we break out a new industry team, they might have different priorities than an existing core team.”

The Problem

Rath’s problem was all in the name: As the company’s Director of Field Marketing West, she didn’t have much expertise or insights into the accounts that would operate out of ServiceNow’s East Coast buying centers. In addition to identifying geographic specificity, Rath also wanted to:

• Enhance the data fueling mid- and post-funnel ABM strategies; and
• Promote stronger collaboration between sales and marketing.

“Ultimately, our priority is to drive new and accelerate open pipeline to close — we’re not looking at loose metrics,” said Heather Rath. “But when we’re delivering interactions, engagements or account insights to sales, we want to make sure we’re delivering the most qualified, sales-ready engagement and the most up to date information and materials to sales to ensure we’re starting that conversation at the right time.”

And, in terms of the Western enterprise’s already existing ~1600 accounts, Rath wanted to ensure her team was focused on post-lead engagement for each account to ensure it was being targeted with the appropriate strategy and messaging. As Rath puts it, “our ultimate goal was to connect marketing awareness to sales readiness.”

“When we talk about post-lead engagement, we want to ensure we have the right programs with the right messages to support those open opportunities and drive them to close,” she continued. “However, we can’t use the same tactics across the full funnel, because messaging will be different dependent upon the industry, persona and intent data we’re receiving.”

She continued that she wanted to build a pathway to connect marketing awareness to sales readiness.

“The handoff, or insights, we deliver to sales is what’s most critical to the campaign — so often we’re executing programs, whether it’s a live event or online program, it’s always important to ask, ‘Why is this important?’ Why are we asking sales to do this?’” explained Rath. “We wanted to make sales more successful as we look across all stages of the funnel and promote that ABM mentality.”

The Solution

ServiceNow adopted MRP Prelytix, an enterprise ABM platform, to leverage its analytic capabilities to synchronize efforts across both field marketing and campaign teams. By leveraging MRP’s insights and orchestration capabilities, Rath was able to seamlessly move top-of-funnel marketing leads into mid- and post-funnel sales leads.

On the geographic side, MRP analytics helped Rath identify what region intent signals were coming from so her team could act accordingly with the right messaging. For example, if the signal’s coming from San Jose, that would indicate a retention play is needed; if it’s originating from Charlotte, that could indicate a new acquisition.

“The great thing about the analytics tool is that we can get laser-focused not only on the geography and region, but also home in on specific accounts that might need additional support,” Rath explained. “We’ve been able to build micro clusters, if you will, that enable us to get very targeted on specific personas, intent, propensity or buying groups to execute successful campaigns.”

She continued that the team is also leveraging “two-touch” campaigns, which wrap a broader, early-stage outreach with a more targeted direct mail campaign. Rath emphasized that campaign follow up is “critical.”

“We collaborate most with extended marketing campaign and product management teams to ensure we have the right messaging, and then we connect with our inside sales and solution sales experts to ensure they’re driving the follow-up,” said Rath.

The Results

To best showcase ServiceNow’s results from the MRP ABM implementation, Rath cited a specific campaign she ran for a vaccine management company that required her team to quickly pivot and leverage insights and data to formulate a success campaign on the fly.

She explained that her team was able to prioritize accounts that were searching for specific keywords based on certain solutions that target personas and accounts ServiceNow did or did not own. As a result of its efforts, the team saw 3X sales-created pipeline.

“Collaboration is so important — not only at the top of the funnel but through the funnel,” explained Rath. “Being able to leverage these intelligent insights and meet accounts where they are is key to our business, in addition to ensuring we’re delivering the most pertinent information at the right time. The more actionable and qualified insights we can deliver to sales is just going to increase that trust and level of partnership. Having everyone on the same page and striving toward the same goal is really important.”

The post ServiceNow Increased Sales-Created Pipeline By 3X appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

“The State Of ABM Maturity” survey, which polled 1,275 global marketing leaders in mid-2021, found that more than two-thirds of B2B marketers reported using ABM in 2021, and more than half said it’s among their most essential programs. In fact, one in five indicated it’s the single most crucial marketing program in their arsenal.

But the research found that this top-priority status doesn’t translate into bottom-line results. Just 23% of marketers achieved revenue growth of 25% or more with ABM, while 38% reported uncertain, unmeasured or negative revenue impact.

One key to top performance is maturity. Leading ABM practitioners are more likely than average to have implemented ABM programs at least two years ago, with a third that embarked on their ABM journey more than four years ago.

But that doesn’t mean the road to ROI needs to be a long one. The elite group of companies with a track record of peak ABM performance share a set of strategies and practices that other companies can adopt to shortcut their route to success. The most critical steps for marketers to achieve significant results with their ABM programs include:

Collaboration, Not Isolation

 Organization-wide collaboration is a must. Top ABM performers not only share insights widely across interdisciplinary teams, but they coordinate approaches to shared target accounts and standardize measurement frameworks across the company.

The number of roles ABM leaders include in their initiatives was 36% higher than the survey average, averaging six compared with four for those reporting unmeasured or negative ABM revenue impact. The wider variety of roles ensures that on-the-ground customer expertise is incorporated into ABM strategy.

Fully 90% of top ABM performers reported the close cross-functional collaboration between marketing and sales to create ABM strategy, ensuring that marketing delivers meaningful insights to power sales interactions that produce results. Two-thirds (66%) of top performers leverage multiple teams to execute ABM across their organizations, rather than isolating ABM in a single siloed department within marketing.

Data Management & Visibility Really Matter

Among ABM practitioners whose initiatives produce significant revenue, teams share a single view of truth for each target account based on rich troves of data, deepening understanding and collaboration capabilities.

Eight in 10 top performers reported three or more systems contributing data to ABM, broadening the number and type of information that can be collected about target and existing accounts. Furthermore, 84% of ABM top performers said their tech stack is wholly or significantly integrated, rendering the data more usable across teams.

High performers are twice as likely to use intent data and predictive analytics alongside their own CRM and MAP data to create account profiles, helping identify the following best marketing action to take in real-time rather than relying on historical data. The ability to trigger relevant messaging immediately is critical. As one example, the half-hour after engagement with digital content is when viable prospects are most likely to be receptive to follow-up contact from sales.

More than four in 10 ABM leaders said they have complete visibility into ABM campaigns being managed by other teams across their organizations compared with just 7% of those realizing unmeasured or negative ABM impact. That visibility helps teams coordinate efforts and collaborate on optimal unified strategies instead of duplicating efforts and sending disparate or even contradictory messages to target accounts.

Orchestration & Personalization Help Buyers Buy

High performers know their audience and precisely identify target accounts’ needs, and can customize the account’s experience based on the specific product or solution under consideration and factoring in their stage within the buyer journey. Messages are delivered consistently across touchpoints.

ABM leaders use more systems to deliver marketing messages, with 84% using three or more tools to reach audiences through various digital channels.

Nearly half of top performers, 46%, said their ABM systems automatically adjusted content to match viewers’ engagement stage within the customer lifecycle, compared with just 11% of those who reported unmeasured or negative revenue impact. That capability is more critical than ever when customers often skip “steps” on the customer journey and require digital experiences to adapt accordingly.

Closing the gap between opportunity and reality with ABM doesn’t require a years-long wait for investments to pay off; instead,, by following the lead of ABM top performers and adopting proven strategies for people, processes and technology, B2B marketers can speed their journey to profitability.

For more insights into the complete roadmap to ABM success, The State Of ABM Maturity the report now.

The post A Roadmap To Speed Revenue Gains For ABM Leaders appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

Research by McKinsey found more than 75% of buyers and sellers said they now prefer digital self-serve and remote human engagement over face-to-face interactions. That’s a remarkable shift, but one that makes sense in the context of recent events. In fact, it’s far from solely a 2020 phenomenon. As sales leaders felt empowered by the new dynamics of virtual selling in their workforces, they’ve embraced the shift to digital and remote engagement.

However, to remain relevant in a rapidly-shifting digital economy while maintaining critical business continuity, the sales and marketing leaders of tomorrow must realize that demand from their target accounts may shift and reprioritize accordingly.

Intent data can provide insights that translate to highly-personalized interactions, which is vital to sales in a digital world. Sales teams need to execute on those insights quickly to create the personalized experience needed to build long-lasting business relationships in today’s digital-first world. To remain relevant and stabilize revenue, B2B sales and marketing leaders should reinvent their approach to sales by focusing on three key areas:

Continuously Nurture Real-Time Customer Visibility

The digital sales cycle has many advantages over the previous way of doing business — it’s always-on and can scale rapidly to meet demand. AI-powered tools can deepen sales integration to nurture opportunities at scale and build more personalized experiences and content that reaches customers in real-time. Ongoing interactions and intent data can further refine AI models and ensure they are adapting to evolving trends as they happen.

Employing Integrated Data Intelligence

Putting the right data-driven tools in sales leaders’ hands can help them capture a single view of their customers to act quickly and effectively on crucial opportunities. At the same time, these innovations enable sales and marketing teams to collaborate seamlessly together and ultimately win. Just as the sales cycle has become digital, so too have sales teams. 

In order to provide the best engagement with prospects and customers, sales teams should rely on collaborative dashboards and integrations to ensure they have the latest information about a prospect, their engagement and where they are in the buying process. Sales departments who may be spending less money on travel, conferences and tradeshows should invest in technology solutions that will help them collaborate seamlessly across time zones. 

Focus On The Highest-Value Probability Opportunities & Activities

With an even greater deluge of data, sales teams need to focus their efforts on accounts that are most likely to buy or promise the greatest return. Sales teams need to look at new and existing customers to ensure they are maximizing their cross-selling, upselling and customer retention strategies. 

The most innovative sales and marketing teams are working together to focus on understanding their top customers’ needs to create tailored product bundles. Be sure to take things a step further and revisit your existing channels to understand how you can shift targeted customers to a direct model. Throughout 2021 and beyond, it’s as much about recomposing the reality of target accounts as it is about prioritizing the B2B digital experience.

In her role as SVP of Americas, Enterprise Sales, Devon Wellbrock is responsible for managing many of MRP’s key client relationships. She has managed campaigns in the U.S., EMEA and Latin America. Devon works one-on-one with clients to help them run effective, results-driven campaigns. She is skilled in creating and executing marketing plans, along with managing an internal team of client facing resources. In her spare time Devon is an avid cyclist. She graduated from Temple University in Philadelphia.

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This year’s Buyer’s Insights & Intelligence Series hosted by Demand Gen Report provided many key insights into intent data gathering and segmentation, buyer reliance on the presence of the vendor and the prominence of ABM and explored how B2B marketers are using these data insights to adapt to the challenges of social distancing.

During ZoomInfo’s session, presenters showed that 75% of buyers are spending more of their time researching their purchasing decisions than in previous years, which provides marketers with more data and insights than ever before. DeAnn Poe, SVP of Marketing at ZoomInfo, explained that the pandemic is an opportunity for businesses to use their intent data to tailor their messaging toward buyer needs and look for spikes in research topics for more accurate intent.

“This gives you a lot more data and insights that you can leverage to reach out at the right time, and tailor your message to speak directly to the topics and content they are already engaging with,” Poe explained, “They are not casually reading content that they might be interested in or might read someday. They are doing serious research and have reached an inflection point where they have a problem they are trying to solve and they are actively seeking a solution. This is an opportunity to swoop in and save the day by presenting the best solution possible.”

Using Spikes & Hidden Factors To Get A Complete View Of The Buyer

Intent data is more relevant for identifying buyers than ever before, especially with all marketing outreach happening from home. During her presentation, Kay Kienast, CMO at TrueInfluence, explained that company data, contacts, persona databases and cookie data are the most common methods of gathering intent data, but using it only to target accounts is a waste.

“Intent data is being used by sales as a means of ‘I want to talk to this person at that number and email address,’” said Kienast. “But intent is more intelligent than that. You want to go in-market where people are.”

Keyword searches, blog content and website content reading rates also highlight intent, and Kienast explains that TrueInfluence uses its Relevance Engine to proof leads and identify intent more accurately. Marketers should dig deeper into the intent of buyers and companies by following the spikes in research, finding the highest quality intent, accounts and leads in the channels and markets buyers are active in.

6sense’s session discussed the opportunity to move away from traditional marketing based on form fills, emails and cold calls to help marketers improve their ability to use intent. Latané Conant, CMO at 6sense, explained that as marketers send constant emails and phone calls, the buyer gets bombarded and decides to withhold information and remain anonymous, creating a dark funnel that prolongs the marketing process.

“We have no idea on what’s what,” Conant explained. “If you uncover your dark [funnel] — using AI, big data or an ABM platform — all of a sudden you know exactly how many accounts of your ICP are in each of the buying stages. You know how they are engaging and where they are in their journey by finding that sweet spot or in-market indicator.”

During LeadMD’s session, Go-To-Market Practice Lead Kristen Markson noted that buyers’ needs and insights need to be a priority for marketers, as the amount of research and content consumed by potential buyers can lead to spikes in intent data or new insights into buyers.

Markson also provided some suggestions for marketers looking to improve their data:

• Install a buyers’ intelligence committee that reviews current and recent insights and data;
• Focus on best buyers who are data-validated, displays positive signals;
• Holistic views help marketers understand all aspects of buyers, their needs, the market and segmentation.

“Becoming more knowledgeable about buyers isn’t something we can do just once,” said Markson. “It’s an ongoing process that must be a team effort that aligns people, processes and systems to deliver not only great experiences, but also the ongoing insights to improve them. Building an agile process for understanding buyers and asking questions directly is the best way to prepare for the next big change or crisis.”

Doubling Down On ABM For Greater Engagement

Research presented during Dun & Bradstreet’s session showed that 60% more marketers are implementing ABM strategies and plays in 2020 as opposed to 2019’s 37%. This revealed that digital interactions are now twice as important for engaging with prospects during social distancing.

Nipul Chokshi, VP of Marketing at Dun & Bradstreet, explained that data can make or break a business’ ABM plays, and that segmenting account data by how each account fits into a business’ ICP can help drive consumption. Along with intent data, account data can also be used to identify the profitability of an account, allowing marketers to more accurately decide which accounts should be targeted.

“When finding what a good account and contact looks like, it’s not just how closely they resemble your ideal customer profile or the type of interest they are exhibiting, but also how profitable they can actually be,” said Chokshi. “What a lot of our customers are doing is a combination of fit and intent plus risk to really surface and bubble up accounts that sales and marketing teams should be pursuing their business.”

Segmenting your account data is also another way for businesses to adapt to the changing market and buyers’ needs. During Triblio’s session, Chief Customer Officer Andrew Mahr explained that ABM requires multiple strategies that can handle different segments of account data to help marketers fix their account listings, improve their targeted messaging and account-based analytics.

“It’s not just about finding accounts in your hidden funnel,” Mahr explained. “It’s about understanding what needs are driving [buyers] forward right now. Are there new problems you can solve for them that give you a chance at booking a meeting with them and getting engagement? You need to make sure you’re delivering something that alleviates their pain right now and use data to drive that conversation.”

Along with having multiple ABM strategies, first and third-party intent data is essential for understanding how account data is segmented. Redpoint Global, a customer of Triblio, leveraged first and third-party intent data to personalize their ads to nurture potential buyers through targeted messaging.

Another session with TechTarget reiterated the importance of targeted messaging in a case study discussion with its client Cornerstone OnDemand. Brenna Lenoir, Director of Field Marketing at Cornerstone OnDemand, said a focus on interacting with accounts directly and targeting accounts on a stricter criterion of risk and intent allowed the company to drive more engagement and sales.

“MQLs are linear and follow a straight path, but ABM is a little bit different,” Lenoir stated. “With ABM, you’re starting with the accounts you want to target. You can do this based on intent. Your focus isn’t about volume, it’s about the opportunities, such as how many meetings you can get with target accounts, how many accounts are engaging with you and ultimately how your win rate has improved because of the investment.”

In MRP’s session, Pierre Custeau, SVP of Product at MRP, highlighted the importance of understanding all facets of your enterprise ABM strategy and capabilities, both for businesses looking to create new ABM plays and for those who are looking to experiment with ABM. He stressed that there will also be a higher likelihood of complications with enterprise ABM plays.

Custeau broke down his presentation into 5 pitfalls to avoid, including:

• Inadequate oversight from system administration;
• Failure to execute insights at speed of buyer engagement;
• Poor data management capabilities;
• Only leveraging one channel; and
• Failure to measure and learn from results.

“ABM within enterprise should be about achieving higher ROI,” said Custeau. “More money equals more results for your marketing dollars. It’s predicated on not just surrounding the account with the right messaging, it’s based upon implementing ABM strategies across the enterprise. It’s also about engaging the customer and gaining the insight to help businesses focus on the right companies.”

Understanding Buyers To Plan & Build A Better Strategy

According to Drift’s session, 80% of businesses believe that they are providing the best buying experiences for their customers. However, only 8% of buyers believe businesses are catering to their needs, with 74% of buyers switching brands or 51% stopping the purchasing process entirely.

“There’s this huge gap between perception and reality when it comes to the customer’s experience,” said Molly Clarke, Head of Digital Marketing at Drift. “Some companies think they are doing a great job, but really they are not.”

Julie Hogan, VP of Customer Experience at Drift, emphasized the importance of knowing buyers and their needs. Obtaining new buyers is 5X to 25X more expensive than retaining old buyers, and retaining old buyers will help businesses increase their ROI. Hogan explained that using feedback from older buyers improves current marketing strategies while also helping marketing teams build more efficient strategies for newer buyers in the future.

“We’re closing that loop, feeding the insights from customers back into the top of the funnel and back into what we’re doing to attract our most successful customers,” Hogan explained.

The Demandbase session also spoke to the importance of understanding the buyer’s journey, as sales reps are making a more consolidated effort to know about buying teams, their goals, needs and challenges.

According to a new B2B Buyer Behavior Study, 65% of buying teams felt that the sales rep addressed their needs and concerns with content and targeted messaging. When sales teams understand who is on the buying team and what their goals are, businesses can impact their buyers, drive more engagement and foster more wins.

“We’re enabling our sales teams to understand [buyer] personas, how they are involved in the field and what their goals are,” said John Dering, Senior Director of ABM Technology & Strategy at Demandbase. “This is so salespeople have a resource that allows them to say, ‘If I’m talking to this type of persona in the buying group, I know what’s relevant to them and communicate with them in their own tongue.’”

Another session from PureB2B debunked a common marketing misunderstanding – the sales-ready lead. According to PureB2B’s CRO Chris Rack, 83% of the buyer’s journey is already finished before buyers are sales-ready, and that focusing on the sales-ready lead can result in an 80% loss of potential revenue.

Rack said marketers should implement a “get-in-early” strategy, using content and human interaction to help buyers in the researching stages of their journey. “No one wakes up one day and says, ‘I need to buy a CRM,’” he said. “They do, however, wake up and think, ‘I need to organize my prospects better.’ By getting in early, and educating your client or prospect with content, you are helping build that narrative that you can solve their problem. Being able to get in, nurture, influence and reach the sub-buyers outside of the main decision-maker is vital to generating long-term ROI.”

A session from SurveyMonkey highlighted the importance of using feedback to improve your understanding of buyers and the market.

“Feedback is more important than ever,” said Jack Foster, Senior Director of Generation & Marketing at SurveyMonkey. “You need to be listening to your customers and telling your story through them. Collecting high-quality feedback is important.”

Folloze’s session explored the account-based experience, and how ABM is ultimately more customer-centric than marketers realize.

Gary Gerber, Head of Product Marketing at Folloze, emphasized that every interaction with an account involves personalized campaigns, channels and buyer’s journeys that align with a business’ goals. He defined this as the Customer Journey Personalization Strategy, saying marketers need to personalize these experiences in order to build trust in a cost-efficient manner.

“As a customer goes through their journey with you or are experiencing you through different channels, ads, social media, etc., you need to be able to personalize consistently over time and across different channels,” Gerber stated. “What kind of experience are you giving them? How do you deliver these experiences? How do these experiences build trust?”

Gerber also passed along these tips for building a strategy for marketing and ABM strategies:

• Have a clear goal that you can use to measure your success;
• Put the people first;
• Design content for every account; and
• Leverage all data sources to fact check and enhance.

Managing Data & Leads Is Crucial For Success

LeanData’s session highlighted how poor data management can result in a lack of funnel visibility, bad data and account segmentation, misaligned marketing and sales and an overall poor buyer experience.

“If someone reaches out to you and four people from your company say, ‘I got it,’ why are they saying that?” asked Charm Bianchini, VP of Growth Marketing at LeanData. “It’s because there is bad data. They all think that they own that customer account and they are all going to follow up on that customer. And the poor customer is probably going to be bombarded and think, ‘What is going on here? If they have a poor buying experience, they may reconsider buying from you.”

Bianchini believes that businesses need to clean up and understand their data first and foremost. She suggested forming a data committee comprised of both marketing and sales that proofs data, validates leads and forms clear goals for the entire business to follow. The alignment of marketing and sales and the data committee can strengthen the business’ data and prevent their databases from being siloed.

“Once you have multiple eyes staring at the process, you are able to quickly point out what is not working and correct it,” Bianchini stated. “You can then use that to improve the quality of data and benchmark it over time. You need to adapt to change.”

A presentation by Conversica delved into the idea of an augmented workforce as a means to efficiently manage data, using intelligent virtual assistants (IVAs) to assist SDRs in lead outreach and follow-ups.

“You’re joining up the SDR teams, sales reps and marketers that you currently have, and they are getting a helping hand,” said Amanda DePaul, Senior Director of Demand Generation at Conversica. “What the IVA is doing is automating your routine tasks to free your people up to do what they do best. Essentially, you’re creating an SDR for your SDRs.”

Encouraging Buyer Interdependence Closes Distance

As social distancing policies continue, buyers are becoming more independent in their research but do not want to be isolated from vendors.

ON24’s session reinforces this, with Cheri Keith, Head of Strategy at ON24, emphasizing the importance of presence during the researching process. Buyers are already engaging with content while researching a potential purchase, and marketers need to be mindful of how and where they deliver that content.

Keith explained that the current digital-only environment is not an excuse for marketers to forgo human interaction. Citing SiriusDecisions’ research, she highlighted that human and non-human interaction are two different experiences for buyers. The preference varies among buyer personas, but marketers need to demonstrate a mix of digital and physical interactions in order to meet buyers wherever they are.

“People still crave human interactions,” Keith insisted. “This notion that a buyer would go through an entire process without actually engaging in a human way with your company has been debunked at this point. Just because in-person events are on hold, for now, doesn’t mean buyers don’t want human interaction in this new world of working out of our home offices.”

Content4Demand’s session encouraged businesses to provide more content that enables buyers, giving them independence while relying on the businesses they are buying from.

According to Brenda Caine, Senior Content Strategist at Conten4Demand, buyer enablement content allows businesses to provide guidance and information for the buyer to interact with. This content is persona-focused, solution-focused and community-driven to help buyers understand their needs and reach a purchasing decision with a business’ presence still being felt.

“In buyer enablement, you are typically in the middle or late stages of marketing, so you want to give buyers information that will help them make a decision,” Caine explained. “You can determine the best format based on your objectives, your audience, your messaging and even the decision.”

Another session from Grubhub explained how offering virtual events can encourage freedom of choice, allowing businesses to engage their target audiences based on their preferences.

Heather Grobaski, Senior Enterprise Sales Director at Grubhub, explained that seven out of 10 events are now virtual, which allows buyers to choose whether or not to attend a digital event based on the time, location and cost. To encourage freedom of choice, Grobaski suggests providing incentives, such as meal coupons, that can be redeemed at any time or place, driving more engagement toward the digital event.

Despite being isolated at home, marketers are leveraging the power of data insights to optimize their marketing strategies in our “new normal.” Whether it be through understanding their ABM strategies, maintaining their relationships with existing customers or encouraging and helping buyers reach a purchasing decision, businesses are willing to adapt in order to thrive to the current pandemic and to future challenges.

For the full Buyers Insights and Intelligence Series experience, check out all the sessions on-demand here.

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This years’ Campaign Optimization Series, hosted by Demand Gen Report, put a spotlight on the strategies and tools marketers have seen success within this new environment, with targeted webcasts led by industry thought leaders addressing topics such as ABM for sales success, virtual event best practices, data strategies and more.

During her session, DeAnn Poe, SVP of ZoomInfo, cited recent research from HubSpot that highlighted a renewed interest in marketing, but less interest in speaking with a sales rep, which could be because budgets are in flux. In spite of this, people are looking for authentic connections and partnerships. “People want help; people want partnerships,” said Poe. “They want more thoughtful and educational content to help navigate this new normal.”

Bridging The Gap Between Physical & Digital

Despite the traditional reliance on physical events to engage audiences, marketers have had to adjust their strategies to mimic in-person engagement virtually. During her session, Cheri Keith, Head of Strategy for ON24, highlighted ways to ease into a digital-only environment:  

• Personalize communications for specific accounts;
• Keep branding consistent to avoid confusion; and
• Make the presentation/webinar/session available on-demand.

Tyler Lessard, VP of Marketing at Vidyard, also explored how businesses are using the spike in virtual events to engage target audiences with visual content during his presentation.

“I’ve seen more companies using educational thought leadership in visual formats as a way to continue to get their message out there,” Lessard explained. “They are doing it in a way that builds their brand using visual content and real people from the company. This creates content that is highly shareable and interesting.”

Gordian, a Vidyard customer, created a video series called “Job Order Contracting 101” that allowed the company to educate buyers through private content. Gordian was able to generate $20 million in revenue and new leads for sales to follow up with and track content engagement numbers.

Using webinars, videos, podcasts and other forms of virtual content as educational tools can keep your buyers informed while expanding your brand’s reach. “[This] gives you that added benefit of infusing [content] with your brand personality, making it more visual and memorable than static content,” said Lessard.

But with the onslaught of digital event invitations hitting buyers’ inboxes, marketers must find ways to stand out. During a fireside chat, Heather Grobaski, Sr. Enterprise Sales Executive at GrubHub, and Madeline Maguire, Head of Enterprise Demand Generation for GrubHub, shared how marketers are adding a unique incentive to their virtual events by sending Grubhub gift cards to registrants or meeting attendees.

“Everyone is shifting to these virtual events and I’m personally getting flooded with invites daily for different meetings and events that have gone virtual,” said Grobaski. “As a best practice, you can really set yourself apart. Not everyone is offering brunch, lunch or happy-hour where attendees can order food in.”

Adopting ABM To Better Engage Key Stakeholders In Buying Committees

According to research cited during Dun & Bradstreet’s session, 80% of pipeline is impacted by canceled in-person meetings. This creates the need to have an account-based mindset in this new reality is important. Nipul Chokshi, VP of Marketing at Dun & Bradstreet, noted that it’s not just important to have an ABM mindset, but each team must have specific metrics to effectively measure success.

Measuring tangible outcomes isn’t just for achieving goals; it’s also to align more closely with sales. Chokshi referenced one of their customers, LiveRamp, that measures their metrics based on meetings booked from target accounts, clicks and website traffic. With success so easily defined, aligning with sales to drive revenue was much easier.

“When you start talking about things like opportunity, pipeline and revenue, you’re automatically starting to align with sales,” Chokshi said. “The most effective revenue engines in the B2B world are aligned, if not integrated, from a sales and marketing perspective.”

Content also needs to be the core of any ABM strategy, according to Alicia Esposito, Senior Content Strategist at Content4Demand. During their session, Esposito and Tonya Vinas, VP of Content Strategy at Content4Demand, stressed the importance of tailoring content for the whole buying committee and using it to facilitate relationship building — not merely stuffing leads into the top of the funnel.

“Content is the underlying component that drives ABM success,” said Esposito. “The stakes are high in ABM, and every step of your strategy needs to rely on relevant, engaging content that speaks directly to your buyer.”

But it’s not always necessary to start from scratch when it comes to content. Vinas and Esposito suggested doing a content audit and shared an example of a financial data company they worked with to help identify content gaps by color-coding content based on whether it’s reusable (green), potentially reusable (orange) or when there are gaps (red). Companies can take a similar approach to maintain a high-level overview of their content and determine what can be easily repurposed and which content needs to be updated down the road to fill in gaps.

While marketers are often focused on winning new business, experts noted it may make more sense to look to the customers you already have to drive revenue. During his session, Andre Yee, Founder and CEO of Triblio, put it succinctly: “It costs five times more to win a new customer than to retain an existing customer.”

Yee noted there can be big payoffs to focusing on the customers who are already familiar with your product and process. According to a Gartner study quoted in the webinar, 80% of future profits come from 20% of customers. Yee broke down the process into several phases:

• Warm up the buyer by featuring specific content to expose their needs;
• Propose a consultation or a product offer with account-based ads and custom content; and
• Start an outbound cadence through sales, with talking points culled from the personalized content used in the previous two phases.

It’s important not to overlook revenue in your own backyard, and ABM can be a perfect way to reach your existing customer base. Experts said typical ABM tactics like personalization can focus on onboarding new clients seamlessly through personalized microsites to secure loyalty early in the provider-client relationship. This can set the stage for upselling later on in the buyer journey.

Carlyn Manly, Head of Marketing at Folloze, agreed. “When it comes to ABM, customer lifetime value reigns supreme,” she said during her session. “The initial deal is only the beginning.”

Clients and prospects are expecting consistent, excellent value that improves over time. This means that B2B marketers must take a long-term approach to their ABM strategy. Manly stressed the importance of investing in a full relationship from start to finish and engaging in a personal and meaningful way.

By leveraging what Folloze calls a “full-funnel personalization strategy,” Manly suggested creating microsites that are segmented by account, buyer persona and user experience. Marketers can take account data or visitor data to create a personalized experience for a one-to-few or one-to-many approach. The result is a microsite that looks as though the content is hand-picked, but in reality, it is a process that has been replicated dozens, if not hundreds, of times.

Leveraging Intent Data For Authentic Sales Engagement

A facet of generating conversions is timing. Sales should engage earlier in the buying journey, and not when the prospect has made up their minds, according to Demandbase. Intent signals — such as keywords — can be used to identify where the buyer is in their journey and understand their pain points.

“The more specific your keywords are, the better you can understand your intent signals,” said Jay Tuel, VP of Sales at Demandbase, during his session.“A nonspecific keyword like ‘marketing’ doesn’t help you understand intent, but a keyword like ‘account-based marketing’ helps you understand just want the intent is. Specificity is important.”

A presentation led by MRP also emphasized the importance of combining intent data with predictive analytics. Peter Murphy, Global VP of Platform Sales, explained that predictive analytics is important for understanding a target’s propensity to buy, and that using intent data on its own limits a business’ ability to get a jump on the market.

“It poses a significant latency marketing trigger,” Murphy explained. “[Intent] can certainly help when identifying accounts, but it’s very one dimensional. Your intent provider may be pointing this out late in the game or you don’t have enough signals captured to let you know in time, or you might be getting too much false noise and too many false positives.”

Predictive analytics allowed MRP to enhance their lead generation and identify new active accounts faster. Their models explained that businesses using intent data with predictive analytics were three times more likely to generate healthy leads than businesses solely using intent data. By collecting information from various platforms and services, they were able to accumulate more accurate and valuable intent data while simplifying their outreach programs.  

Prioritizing Data To Enhance Segmentation

During the series, experts noted that the accuracy and timeliness of data are essential to optimizing marketing strategies, maintaining operations and generating leads businesses can act on. During a session led by Openprise, experts placed emphasis on knowing the accuracy of your data and segmenting it into a usable format.

Openprise worked with Rockwell Automation to tag address data, segmenting the insights into categories to determine which were valid, invalid or in need of investigation. This data orchestration strategy led to an 82% increase of valid and usable data by the end of 2019.

Katrina Lord, Marketing Specialist at Rockwell, shared three tips to improve data aggregation, segmentation and dissemination:

• Create segment reports to identify what is broken and what works;
• Investigate where and how the data became faulty; and
• Prioritize which segments best fit your business’ lead validation and assignments.

“By prioritizing data segments, you can find which segments have notable gaps,” Lord said. “That way other teams can see how your investigation improves data streams or identify what areas need improvement.”

LeanData’s webinar also explored how marketing technology can also be used to optimize a business’s data strategy. According to Charm Bianchini, VP of Growth Marketing at LeanData, martech comprises 30% of most business’ marketing budgets, with data playing a key role in the solutions’ implementation. However, inaccurate data hinders operations and campaigns, causing targeted messaging to reach the wrong buyer, delays in lead follow-up and target accounts being falsely identified.

Bianchini recommends implementing a data hygiene plan with multiple teams internally, ensuring the data is accurate, up-to-date and revised regularly.

“Take a step back and think about your data and your data strategy,” she said. “It always can be improved. Take the time to invest in [data] because the better you can make it, the better your campaign performance will be.”

Making Emotional Connections In Times Of Uncertainty

Despite the uncertainty, there is still ample opportunity for B2B marketers to engage potential buyers. According to LeadMD, 52% of B2B buyers plan to make a hardware or software purchase despite the pandemic, or because of it.

In their webinar, Kristen Markson, Practice Lead for Go-To-Market at LeadMD, suggested leading with empathy to strike a tone that corresponds with the uncertain times. She outlined a path that B2B marketers can implement, called “Update Your Journey Map,” which contained the following steps to make a more authentic connection that customers are looking for:

• What are they thinking and feeling?
• What information do they need?
• Where do they do their research?
• What steps do they take to learn more?
• What are their pain points in the process?
• Whom do they trust?

PFL and DialogTech also provided five simple strategies to help cope with the uncertainty of COVID-19 during their session, including:

• Clean your data;
• Provide valuable content;
• Build relationships;
• Get creative with marketing strategies; and
• Don’t wait to start.

Traditional spray-and-pray tactics are a thing of the past, as people long for face-to-face interactions. “Now more than ever, as people are looking for a connection, it’s so important that marketers put the buyer — the human, the customer — at the center of their strategy,” said Kate Adams, VP of Marketing at Drift, during her session.

Randi Barshack, VP of Marketing at RollWorks, understands the psychology of the B2B purchase cycle and emphasized that non-linear storytelling may be an effective way to reach customers by activating the limbic system — the emotional center — of the brain.

Barshack suggested going above and beyond words to tell a story: she recounted a time during the B2B Marketing Exchange, using scented candles and air fresheners to tell RollWorks’ story. Since nearly every marketer has an attendee list and giveaways at trade shows, Barshack and her team gave away vanilla-scented candles to poke fun at bland, predictable marketing and to engage prospects in a more creative way.

“We need to evoke the emotion that will allow our prospects to understand how their lives will be better with your product,” Barshack said during her presentation. “By learning the basics of a story, including the inciting event, escalating drama, the climax and resolution, marketers can connect powerfully to prospects and customers in a time where face-to-face interactions are increasingly scarce.”

All of the sessions from #COSeries 2020 are now available on-demand here.

The post #COSeries Recap: Empathy, ABM & Data-Driven Digital Campaigns Become Top Priorities For B2B Strategies In New Reality appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

The report explores findings and analyses such as:

• How work-from-home policies will adapt in the future, perhaps growing as much as 400% in the U.S. and doubling in Europe;
• A 480% average lift in interest in video conferencing solutions from February to March 2020 across geographies and market segments; and
• The interest in virtual-office and UCaaS solutions across all firm size segments has grown dramatically from February to March, with a 135% increase across all topics of intent.

“It’s easy for marketers to draw on intent simply as a tactical method of identifying sales leads, rather than an integral part of the strategic prioritization and planning process,” said Pierre Custeau, SVP of Product at MRP, in a statement. “This report is a great example of how external data can become immediately actionable for marketers in responding to the major drivers, restraints, challenges and lucrative opportunities impacting the growth of the market.”

The post MRP Unveils Intent Trends Report appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

Is it possible that the reason why sales and marketing alignment remains elusive is that the term “alignment” isn’t sufficient; it doesn’t capture the real sense of what’s essential? While alignment may look great on paper, the reality is that it’s impossible to achieve if sales and marketing operate as two different organizations that exist to plan, orchestrate and optimize two separate processes.

The move from conventional “alignment” to sales and marketing collaboration requires a focus on more than just getting the two functions to work together. B2B sales and marketing leaders need to develop buyer-focused engagement strategies that rely on joint planning and execution across the organization. This operational collaboration reinforces the narrative that sales and marketing are profoundly interdependent. In other words, both functions must recognize that they need each other and that a coordinated approach to revenue generation is essential for success. But these factors aren’t sufficient to create the level of sales-marketing cohesiveness and coordination that are needed for high-performance ABM and revenue generation.

True collaboration requires marketing and sales to work cohesively at all levels of both functions, translating collaboration to execution. The more complex and longer the buying process, the greater the need for this collaboration to exist. Marketing needs to target intelligently to design conversion and revenue-optimized buyer journeys. However, a lengthy sales cycle makes it problematic for the sales function, which is measured on tight quarterly goals, to sustain steady engagement. Both roles need to agree on how they will collaboratively manage this demand while providing an accountable environment that aligns sales and marketing buyer engagement strategies.

One of the biggest obstacles to this collaboration is the use of inconsistent and duplicate measurement efforts across sales and marketing. Collaboration calls for a single source of truth to measure, base and optimize the demand engine. This consolidation of cross-functional data can unify teams in a way that is both objective and scalable, making it easier to track pipeline conversion performance while still driving revenue and identifying any constraints across the funnel. A best-in-class ABM platform helps provide the fundamental measurement and analytics to help foster this collaboration. When combined with CRM and marketing automation systems, ABM technology helps provide the coordinated insights, orchestration and omnichannel actions that help prove — through analytics — that this collaboration is not only worthwhile but necessary to remain competitive in today’s environment.

Preparing sales and marketing teams for ABM and this collaborative environment requires re-education and diligence, but the results are worth it. When sales and marketing cooperate, customers win with a better buying experience. And the organization wins with better communication among teams, more accountability to the overarching revenue goals and most importantly, higher ROI. 

Kevin Cunningham co-founded MRP in 2002, now the largest and most tenured enterprise-class predictive ABM platform in the world. After years of successful growth in the U.S. market, Kevin led the First Derivatives, PLC acquisition of MRP in 2008, and he then directed the expansion of MRP’s presence across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In addition to his role as CEO, Kevin serves on the board of Executive Management for First Derivatives, and the Board of Trustees of Settlement Music School, the largest community school of the arts in the United States.

The post Sales & Marketing Collaboration: ‘Alignment’ Isn’t The Right Goal For Optimal Buyer Experience appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

FEATURES/FUNCTIONALITY

Prelytix offers a variety of tools to power lead intelligence, marketing campaigns and execution. Key features include:

Lead Intelligence:

• Account-level Insights, designed to help determine the correlation between ad exposure and site visits, assets downloaded, content, leads generated, etc.
• Lead Analysis, which helps prioritize leads through lead scoring, market insights, account-level insights, etc.
• Segmentation, which provides customer and prospect segmentation capabilities, which in turn aims to assist marketing prioritization and effectiveness.
• Predictive Scoring designed to automatically score prospects based on behavior and engagement levels.
• Account Identification, which aims to help identify and distribute accounts internally, giving prioritization to those that are more likely to convert to sales.

Marketing Campaigns:

• Omnichannel Tracking, which provides tracking across multiple digital advertising channels, such as video, mobile and social media.
• Revenue Planning designed to help allocate marketing budget based predicted amount of incoming revenue.
• Media Attribution, which aims to assist in the attribution of marketing budget by identifying successful campaigns and initiatives.
• Opportunity Timeline, which provides a timeline that helps visualize the effects of individual campaigns, leads and other opportunities.
• Customization, which allows for custom report types to match the goals of a company.
• Journey Analytics, which provides tools to analyze every stage of the customer journey to customize an account-based funnel.

Campaign Execution:

• Email Campaigns designed to connect sales emails with cross-sell/upsell marketing campaigns across multiple channels.
• Website Personalization, which provides tools that dynamically serve content, messaging and calls-to-action.
• Prioritized Accounts designed to help determine which accounts have the highest/lowest opportunity to convert.

TARGETED USERS

MRP Prelytix’s target audience includes mid-range to large enterprises that serve multiple geographies, lines of business or industries. These enterprises require a flexible, mature and scalable ABM solution that can support global companies and coordinate execution across multiple marketing channels.

COMPATIBILITY

While integrated custom engagement data includes hardened connections directly into SFDC, Siebel, Eloqua, REST API, Marketo, HubSpot and Pardot, MRP Prelytix enables client systems to behave like ABM tools, making ABM a consistent strategy across client teams and technology.

DELIVERY/PRICING MODELS

MRP Prelytix is delivered via software-as-a-service (SaaS) and licensed on an annual subscription basis and is customized to meet the needs and objectives of clients.

CURRENT CLIENTS/USERS

MRP works with more than 450 companies, including Oracle, HPE, SAP and Thomson Reuters, managing over 1,000 engagements across the globe. 

COMPETITIVE POSITIONING

For enterprise organizations that serve multiple geographies, lines of business or industries, MRP Prelytix is an ABM platform designed to give you control of your data, visibility into your target market and scale in the delivery of the highest impact engagement strategy.

CONTACT INFO

MRP
1818 Market Street
37th Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19103
Tel: 215-587-8800
Email: marketing@mrpfd.com

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