There's No Such Thing as a "Pretty Good" Alligator Wrestler

While this statement is a great starting point for many topics, if you define the alligator as Data and the wrestler as Data Management, you see where this post is going. You either have really good data management or you live with bad data.

We have found that customers that leverage data quality tools generate an average of 260% more leads per month.

Bad Data Hurts You
Like the wrestler who never really perfected his technique, you can get seriously hurt by bad data. And it’s not just the reporting that gets fouled up, it’s the loss of confidence in those reports, and ultimately the loss of confidence in you to provide accurate information that does the real damage. Once trust in data is lost it is extremely difficult to regain it. You typically have to prove yourself over and over again before any confidence returns.

It’s Not Bad Data, Just Bad Processes
Salespeople fill in fields in their CRM with any answer, just because they are required. Form fields are open text fields instead of pick lists, so anything goes.

6 Steps to “Really Good” Data Management
After surveying other colleagues both internally and externally, (thank you Astadia and Eloqua) the following Best Practices were identified:

Step 1: Establish a Standardized Data Set
Collectively establish and agree on a list of standard data fields. What fields do you consistently need to capture? Once you establish your master set of fields, make a Data Dictionary out of it. Convert to pick lists wherever possible – avoid open text fields, since there is no way to consistently score, report or segment on them. Spread the word that this is the Standard Data Set.

Step 2: Enforce the Standardized Data Set at every Acquisition Source
Review every data acquisition source and convert the process to the Standardized Data Set dictionary. Forms, list uploads, you name it.

Step 3: Append Incomplete Data fields
It’s hard to target a marketing campaign to specific Job Functions if the field is only 10% complete. Append those fields that are important for segmentation and/or scoring first. Then focus on filling in the remaining blanks.

Step 4: Build a “Data Washing Machine” to clean existing bad data
Normalize as many fields as possible. Start with all the open text fields you always wanted to leverage for scoring and/or segmentation but couldn’t.

Step 5: Merge and Purge
Clean up your duplicate records and build a process that requires a search for existing records prior to creating new ones.

Step 6: Keep the New Data, Discard the Old Data
Aging plays an important role in overall DB health. According to Eloqua, Lists older than 1 year have a decrease of 25% in open rates and 12% in CTR. Create active and inactive contact groups and treat appropriately.

Updated 5-8-12
Visit my brand new website and learn more about data standardization best practices

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

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5 Lessons in Subscription Management

The #1 reason people unsubscribe is because they receive irrelevant emails. So assuming you have your segmentation in place, the next step is to focus on subscription management. Rather than just having subscribers globally opt out, providing the option to edit their own communication preferences is considered a best practice.

But what categories should you offer? Preferences by industry, by product type, by type of offer (newsletters, events, product updates, etc)?

Lesson 1:
I’ve seen subscription preference pages that first ask for Job Role, Industry, # of employees, etc. Understand that “Manage Your Preferences” is different than “Update Your Profile”. And while trying to combine both on the same page is very tempting, it usually results in a very busy and often overwhelming form. If it takes longer than 15-20 seconds for someone to update their preferences, you run the risk of subscribers simply checking the “Unsubscribe from All” checkbox instead.

Lesson 2:
Offer an easy way to manage their preferences AND/OR update their profile, but not on the same page. Here’s an example of helping subscribers understand the options:

The one suggestion I might make to the screenshot above is to consider changing the label: “Update Your Profile” to something like “Update Your Career Profile”. This reduces potential confusion as to the difference between Update Your Profile and Update Your Preferences, which could easily be construed to mean the same thing.

Lesson 3:
Make it easy to update both. Avoid the back button. Include a link on the Preference page to also update their career profile. Add a link on their career profile page to also update their subscription management preferences. Back button = bad. Same page link =good.

Lesson 4:
Deciding which subscription preferences to offer depends on the types of content you actually send. If you sell very few products/services you might break it down simply by type; Newsletters, Events, Webinars, Product Promotions, etc.

For those with multiple products or solutions or verticals, you’ll need to identify which core segments you typically send different content to and break it down that way. Is your content geo based? Industry based? Solution based? Product based? A good rule of thumb is to mirror the main menu options you have on your website. Is your site broken down by Geo? Solution? Product Type? Industry? Managing preferences in parallel with website navigation helps keep things in parallel.

Lesson 5:
Don’t use “Update Your Career Profile” as your primary driver to obtain/update explicit information. Keep in mind most people will never see this page unless they are about to unsubscribe and stumble upon this as they update their preferences. Better to gather this type of information through progressive profiling.

This doesn’t mean you can’t ask for additional information on this page. But make it optional, pre-populate as many fields as you can and wherever possible make the fields picklists. Finally make it clear why filling in the fields will benefit them. Try using a headline such as: “Updating your career profile helps us deliver more relevant and timely information.”

SUMMARY
Apple’s new iPad is the latest device your customers can now use to receive your emails. Together with iPhones and other smart phones, these devices have become so personalized that “invading their space” takes on a whole new meaning. People are becoming much less tolerant of non-relevant emails.

Making it easy for them to establish their preferences reduces the dreaded global unsubscribe. And since they’re already in “updating” mode, making it easy for them to also update their career profile is often an easier sell, as long it’s crystal clear what’s in it for them.

Updated 5-8-12
Visit my brand new website and learn more about website optimization best practices

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

-Join me on: Linkedin | Twitter | Facebook

Segmenting the Zoo

Photo by E.G. Bucknell

Let’s say you sell wild animal food and you have a new line of vitamin-enriched foods to announce. Your target market includes all the animals in zoos.

Obviously you wouldn’t send the same announcement out to the whole database. Lions will be interested in learning about the benefits that pertain to them, while flamingos will be interested in relevant benefits to them.

So while you could send a completely different message to each of the 1,857 different animals, is this practical? How do you decide which segments are worth creating and targeting?

 Segmentation Best Practices:

Does your segment meet all of the following criteria?

• Is this segment possible to produce? Do I have (or can I get) the implicit/explicit data to even capture them?
• Is this segment accessible? Do I have their contact information?
• Is this segment worthy of a different message than others?
• Is this segment fairly stable? Do the members move in and out of this segment quickly or do they remain fairly dormant?
• Is the segment substantial enough to be profitable?

If the answer is NO for any of the above, targeting your message to this group is probably not worth it.

Updated 5-8-12
Visit my brand new website and learn more about marketing segmentation best practices

Steve Kellogg

-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant
-Join me on:  Linkedin | Twitter | Facebook

Social Media: The Next Big Content Discovery Tool?

• 80% of companies are now using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees. 

• YouTube is now the 2nd largest search engine in the world. It is also fast becoming the World’s largest product review site.

• 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 brands are links to user-generated content.

• 78% of consumers trust peer-to-peer recommendations, while only 14% trust advertisements

SEARCH is a significant reason to adopt a formal social media strategy.

In fact in the near future, social media my drive an entire paradigm shift in the way we conduct search. Content may begin to find us through social media networks, rather than the other way around.

For the complete story, check out this enlightening and entertaining Social Media Revolution video on YouTube.

Updated 5-8-12
Visit my brand new website and learn more about Inbound Marketing Best Practices

Steve Kellogg

-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

Would You Buy a Ferarri if You Lived on a Dirt Road?

In a blog by Brian Steel posted back in 2008, he asked this same question.

2 years later, this is still a very relevant question to ask. The point being that your “Ferrari” (Marketing Automation tool, CRM tool, BI Tool, etc), once configured will look gorgeous and powerful in your driveway, but if you want to get the most out of it, you’ll have to:

1. Insist the team really learns how to drive it (Training)
2. Pave the dirt road (Develop new processes and infrastructure to support/service it)
3. Have an up-to-date map of where to go (Discover the best destinations that will make the road trips both successful and satisfying)

If you’ve never raced before, take advanced driving classes (training). If you’ve never paved a road, hire a reputable paving company (consulting). If you need a map, hire an experienced guide (consulting).

It’s all part of “Ferrari” ownership.

Updated 5-8-12
Visit my brand new website and learn more about Marketing Operations Best Practices

Steve Kellogg

-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

Great Example of B2B Viral Campaign

Getting unknown leads to forward your marketing message to other unknown leads is no easy task, but viral marketing, when done right can generate significant spikes in overall interest in your products/services, often at far less cost than tryng to build the interest yourself.

In a recent post I outlined several key criteria that make up a winning viral campaign. In general, successful viral campaigns (success being measured as how many times a video was viewed, along with sourced visits to your website and ultimately conversions via form submits or contact) contain the following criteria:

Successful viral campaigns are:

• Very funny and/or
• Very entertaining and/or
• Very irreverent and
• Never contain a sales pitch

There are plenty of B2C viral campaigns on YouTube that meet this criteria, but how about B2B? There are far fewer examples.

Let's take data storage solutions for example. There's not much that's funny about that. But one company has created something that is very funny and offers an excellent example of how to generate B2B web traffic without a sales pitch, using viral marketing.

Watch it here:

http://www.youtube.com/TrickUniversity

Updated 5-8-12

Visit my brand new website and learn more about Content Marketing Best Practices 

Steve Kellogg

-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

Measuring Lead Attention Span

Here is an easy way to measure the general attention span of your active lead database. It borrows the same formula used to track Churn Rate.

definition -

Churn rate is a measure of customer attrition, and is defined as the number of customers who discontinue a service during a specified time period divided by the average total number of customers over that same time period.

So the formula looks like this:

# of customers who discontinue service during a specified time period
Avg. # of customers in same period

While churn rates are closely watched by companies that depend on subscribers, such as cell carriers and cable TV operators, we can adapt this churn formula to quickly detect the overall loss of attention within our active lead database.

In our churn definition above, let’s define customers who discontinue service as: Inactive Leads + Hard Bounces + Unsubscribes, within a specified time period

Let’s also define customers as: Leads with at least 1 web visit, 1 form submit and/or 1 email open, within the same specified time period

If we do a little napkin math, here is how this might look:

10,000 Inactive Leads (measured as the total # of once-active leads but now with no web visits, no form submits and/or no email opens) during the last quarter

+300 Unsubscribes last quarter

+200 Hard Bounces last quarter

= 10,500 total leads in last quarter that no longer pay attention to us

Divided by

75,000 = Average total of leads with at least 1 web visit, 1 form submit and/or 1 email open in the last 3 months

= Lead Attention Span Loss Rate = 10,500/75,000 = 14%

So essentially, we lost the attention of 14% of our active leads last quarter.

This is a good metric to trend quarter over quarter as it tells you in general how well you are improving your segmentation, messaging relevance and nurturing efforts.

It's hard enough to get a lead to respond, much less keep them engaged. Use this Lead Attention Span metric to guage the overall effectiveness of your engagement efforts over time.

Updated 5-8-12
Visit my brand new website and learn more about marketing metrics best practices

Steve Kellogg

-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant