The Book: Digital Body Language

Marketing is undergoing a major shift that has been brought on by the change in the way people find and consume information. Whether it is Google’s ability to make the information resources of the Internet searchable or social media’s ability to connect people with peers for credible opinions on products and services, the way in which we access information and search for products has fundamentally changed.

As this transition happens, marketing and sales teams must react. With the shift to online from face to face, the ability to see body language and “read the room” has disappeared. Marketing must step in to read prospects’ Digital Body Language and use that knowledge to guide the prospects’ buying process.

The new book “Digital Body Language – Deciphering Customer Intentions in an Online World”, discusses the transitions that this is forcing in marketing departments everywhere, as they move to succeed in this new reality. In it, Steven Woods, industry expert and CTO of Eloqua discusses best practices for analyzing and understanding customer intent through analyzing their Digital Body Language.

The book uses informative explanations and in-depth case studies of many of the leading marketers around the world to show approaches to profiling, leads scoring, lead nurturing, sales handoff, marketing analytics, and data management.

Woods makes a compelling case that the transitions we are all experiencing in today's marketing environment are part of a fundamental shift in the way we think about marketing and the way we understand the buying process of our customers.

Available today on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Body-Language-Steven-Woods/dp/0979988551

the official press release:

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Eloqua-980067.html


And some reviews of the book:



Laura Ramos, VP at Forrester Research, on B2B Marketing Posts:
http://b2bmarketingpost.com/2009/03/10/digital-body-language-steve-woods-on-b2b-marketing/

Mike Gospe on the Marketing Campaign Development blog:
http://marketingcampaigndevelopment.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/digital-body-language-book-review/


Jep Castelein on LeadSloth:
http://www.leadsloth.com/blog/book-review-digital-body-language/

Paul McCord on the Sales and Sales Management Blog:
http://salesandmanagementblog.com/2009/04/06/book-review-digital-body-language-by-steven-woods/

Bill Lawler from Lawler on Leads:
http://billlawler.blogspot.com/2009/03/digital-body-language.html

Andy Beal on Marketing Pilgrim:
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/04/win-copies-of-steven-woods-digital-body-language-book.html

Joe Zuccaro on Marketing Consigliere:
http://www.marketing-consigliere.com/?p=2120#more-2120

Jeff Ogden on Fearless Competitor:
http://www.findnewcustomers.net/digitalbodylanguage


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Exeros: A Viral Contest Leads to the Creation of a University

Being a small company often provides interesting opportunities as well as unique challenges. Denise Sparks at Exeros had both, and I thoroughly enjoyed chatting with her about her approach to demand generation when I was writing Digital Body Language. Denise's creative marketing techniques got the word out about the Exeros product and lead to an even larger initiative that established them as a thought leader in their industry.

Here's Denise's case study from the book. It's a great story about using market education and content creation to establish a leadership position:

Exeros: A Viral Contest Leads to the Creation of a University

Exeros was faced with an interesting challenge. As a small company with a revolutionary product in the master data management (MDM) industry, they had to get the word out and build awareness of their product. Confident that it had solved a 40 year old data management problem, they used a contest to prove their point. Beat your peers in data mapping with any technique or tool you wish, and win $2500, beat the machine and win $25,000.

As they began to build awareness of the contest, Exeros found a valuable ally in the organizer of DAMA – the largest conference in the industry. In an industry not known for excitement, the Exeros contest was just what was needed as a show highlight, and the contest was promoted to the conference list and the winner announced at a show lunch.

In combination with announcing the contest to their house list and embedding it in the email signature of all their employees, this allowed word of the contest to begin to spread. Independent data management forums and Yahoo groups began passing around word of the contest and soon the industry was well aware of both the contest and Exeros.

All interested participants were routed to a landing page where their information was captured and they were entered in the contest. On the day of the contest, a WebEx kicked off the contest with results due back in 2 hours. Over 200 industry experts competed for the prize, with no-one able to beat the Exeros machine. Coverage of the contest extended to 5 online publications that were highly relevant in the space, and Exeros became a known entity in the data management space.

Analyzing this success, Exeros realized that the viral contest had been a great win in getting awareness in the potential buying audience, but had not directly driven leads that were ready for sales. The challenge for Exeros was to help guide their prospective buyers from the “this is new” phase to the “I’ve got to get it” phase. To do this, the buyers needed to educate themselves on the challenges, approaches, and opportunities of a master data management project and where exactly a vendor like Exeros could help. Trade shows and Exeros-branded webinars were not as effective as needed due to travel costs and the assumed bias of a vendor webinar. The Exeros marketing team decided there was an opportunity to fill the knowledge gap in the market and use that as a way to attract potential buyers…and MDM University was born.

MDM University was launched as a separate brand (although with Exeros and their business partners identified as sponsors), with rich, valuable content, education at all needed depths throughout the lifecycle of an MDM project, and speakers from the industry. The MDM University was marketed through online ads and in trade publications.

By catering to the buyer’s need for education, Exeros was able to attract a large audience of the key people in any buying decisions. Because MDM University was perceived to be vendor neutral, it was able to attract 5 times the number of attendees to a web seminar than Exeros or any of their vendor partners could on their own. Throughout the process, the educational choices of the University attendees were tracked to build a view of their interest areas and the phase in an MDM project they were at. Through sponsorship of MDM University communications, Exeros received tremendous brand exposure. When the Exeros sales team contacted a lead and introduced themselves as sponsors of MDM University, not only were they received as a highly respected and credible brand, but they were contacting prospective buyers at just the right phase of an MDM project.

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Proactive Service, Twitter, and Brand

I said that yesterday's was my last post, but the folks at TripIt gave me a reason to write another one. There's a lot of debate going on with regards to how social media can be used in B2B, and here's one example of a great way.

TripIt is a service that organizes your travel - you forward your itinerary to an email address, it parses it, organizes it, gives you maps, directions, etc. It even tells you when people you know are in the area. I travel a lot and it's a great service.

But I don't like their calendar synch. It's not that it's broken, it just does things in a way that I don't like. I would never actually call into their support desk because it's not a big enough deal to bother. I did a tiny bit of looking around to see if I could make it work the way I wanted to, and I couldn't - I wasn't sure whether it was me or the service, and I will admit, I didn't really put that much effort into it. I just went about my day as a mildly grumbly TripIt user.

And then I Twittered about it, part happy, part grumbly.

Within a short period of time, I got a tweet back from Kristin at TripIt, asking me to connect with her offline.

I did, and it turns out that I wasn't missing anything in the calendar synch, but they know about the issue I was complaining about and are working on it.

So now I'm a happier TripIt user. Interestingly, the problem I had did not change. I still don't like their calendar synch, but the proactive nature of their service made me significantly more happy.

A few points from this experience for any companies who are not on Twitter yet:

1. Get out there and listen. You'll be amazed what you hear that you wouldn't hear from any other channel (in this case they knew it already, but in many cases, you may not).
2. Don't fool yourself into thinking that if you have a great support desk, you don't have to listen on Twitter, there are a LOT of issues with any product, service, or company, that are annoying enough to stop someone referring you, but not significant enough (or the type of issue) that one would pick up the phone to call a support desk about.
3. Proactive service, even if the problem isn't resolved, is very helpful for customer satisfaction. In this case, I at least now know (a) my problem is not currently solvable, and (b) the folks at TripIt know about it and are working on a solution. That makes me feel a lot better.

If you're not actively listening on Twitter, on blogs, on all forms of social media, you should be.

Here's my prediction:

In a few years, we'll all be laughing at service organizations that "wait for
unsatisfied users to actually pick up the phone to reach out to THEM."

Merry Christmas to all, have a great holiday season. Read More...

High noon at the web form

Quickest draw wins... well not quite, but speed is more important than many B2B marketers realize (or at least act upon). Fine tuning your response to inbound inquiries can have a significant impact on your success without requiring much of an investment.

Leigh Anne Wallace at Reachforce had a blog entry recently that was a good reminder for all of us of the studies that show the real benefits to responding quickly to inbound inquiries: http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/what-is-your-web-lead-response-time-b2b-marketing-and-sales-tip-177/. From the original report:

"The speed of first attempt (time to first dial) to a newly generated web lead
correlated with a significant increase in the number of qualified leads. For
each tier of delayed response in the survey question (for instance, responding in 30 minutes rather than 10 minutes) the percent of leads qualified dropped 4.3% and close rates fell nearly 2%."

It's more difficult than it seems as you need to put three basic processes in place to have it make sense, unless your flow of inquiries is small enough that you really can follow up with every inquiry. You need:

1. a basic call/no-call qualification process
2. the basics of routing to the right rep
3. a quick notification process
   

For the lead qualification process, I'd hesitate to call it lead scoring just yet, because you many want to lower the bar a little bit and follow up with most inquiries, even those that would not pass as A leads. There is a strong argument in favour of automating most of this process because it's all too easy to come up with an "I didn't call because..." reason after the fact if you leave it to the individual callers. You'll likely need to manage and measure follow-up speed in a hands-on way, and if it's open to loose interpretation, that process might fall apart quickly.

For lead routing, again, simple is best. The best I've seen had a very small dedicated person/team on it, rather than distributing more broadly. It's likely that your first call outcome goals are relatively simple in nature (more details, setting a meeting, etc) and can be managed by someone who is not that territory's sales rep.

For notification, once you know you're going to call them, and you know the right rep to make the call, email is usually quickest and easiest. Its main drawback is that it's more difficult to close the loop and monitor response times, but to get a process up and running quickly it is the easiest bet.

It doesn't take long to get a feel for what your actual response times to inbound marketing inquiries are, and if it's not what you'd hoped, there may be an easy way for you to improve your team's performance. A quick "mystery shopper" inquiry or two can give you a good idea of how you're really performing. In fact, I might try that with the Eloqua team right now... Read More...

Interesting Times in The Demand Generation Space

I spent a bit of time this weekend reading (okay, more like skimming, I admit) a report on our recent SAS-70 audit. I would be lying to call it an interesting read; detailed descriptions of our process controls, policies, and operations as a software company. But, it did get me thinking about the ongoing evolution of the Demand Generation space.


It's an interesting space, and it has been evolving very rapidly. When we started Eloqua back at the end of 1999, Google was still 10 months away from launching adwords, blogs only existed in primitive form as frequently updated web pages, and most B2B websites were barely more than brochure-ware.


Now, 9 years later, finishing a SAS-70 audit is one of those moments that makes one take a moment to reflect on the space, where it came from, and where it's going (I guess it's a bit like that first grey hair; a sign of age and wisdom, they say, but also a moment to reflect on times past). After a few years in which us early Demand Generation vendors stumbled around unsure of our own identities, the space has taken on a somewhat clear identity (*nowhere near as clear as the identity of spaces like CRM, but Demand Gen is a lot newer of a space than CRM).


Demand Generation essentially entails, at its core, the use of web analytics to understand prospect behaviour and intent (what we call Digital Body Language). Based on that understanding, marketers then:

• Personalize the targeting, timing, and content of messages to prospects based on their interest area and interest level


• Determine which leads are ready for sales through lead scoring and lead routing, while nurturing the leads that are not


• Analyze the success of their campaigns based on how they facilitate prospects' buying processes


• Continue to grow their understanding of each prospect's Digital Body Language through management and enhancing of their marketing data

So, that leads to a fairly defined set of functionality; email, web analytics, search tracking, landing pages, form capture, lead scoring, marketing automation, lead routing, CRM integration, basic data management, and analytics. As we close out 2008, that's where the core capabilities are in the space.

As we've had the good fortune to work with a wide variety of clients over the years, the directions in which they are hoping to see the space evolve are not always identical, and the SAS-70 audit process made that point quite clear. This is an audit that larger organizations (especially public companies) are seeking, whereas smaller organizations often do not have the same requirements.

The next few years will show an interesting evolution in the Demand Generation space as this is just one aspect of its continuing evolution. Here's what we're seeing if I use a way-too-broad brush to show the trends:


Larger organizations: as they shift their marketing efforts more towards demand generation and inbound marketing and away from outbound marketing, they are looking for ways to manage 100s of marketers, 1000s of campaigns, and 10s of 1000s of marketing assets around the world. Campaign planning, calendaring, and approvals are of interest. Similarly, the need to communicate with millions of contacts and score leads across multiple geographies and product lines makes data management a key area of focus for them.


Smaller organizations: often more nimble and innovative in their approach, and more aggressively adopting social media tools for demand generation, such as search engine optimization, blogs, Twitter, etc. This drives an increased need for cross-media integration, embedding of RSS content, and social media awareness.


So, we're at an interesting cross-roads as an industry, because although I have bucketed each of these needs by size of company, both groups benefit from each other's investment. It's an excellent benefit of the SaaS model. Even things like the work that was done in preparation for our SAS-70 audit, although not required by the smaller organizations we work with, will benefit them in terms of process management and organization, in the same way that the investments we have been making over the past while in simplicity and usability are also benefiting our larger clients.


It will be interesting to see how the Demand Generation industry evolves over the next 5 - 10 years. Will it evolve into very different and distinct solutions for small organizations and large, as we see in the difference between accounting and ERP software? Or will small and large organizations use shared aspects of a common platform as is the model with SaaS CRM?


Looking forward to the next few years, and I'm very interested in your comments. Read More...

Fresh off the presses

I just received the final, final, final proof copy of the layout for my upcoming book - Digital Body Language. We're sending it to the print on demand presses tonight, and I should have a copy in hand within a week. Exciting times, to be sure. Also a good time to look back on the overall process for creating it. I had only a limited idea of what I was getting into when I agreed to write a book, so for anyone who is considering it, here's what it actually entailed...

• ~ November 20, 2007: original idea formulated and discussed. Really vague discussions, where I think I said "yeah, that sounds like a good idea".


• ~ November 25, 2007: as a complete surprise to me, Joe Payne, our CEO, announced at the company meeting that I would be writing a book. Nothing like pressure.


• December-February 2008: I spent quite a bit of time sketching out a rough outline (bullet points - maybe 20 per chapter) of what might make a compelling book.


• February-March: Here's where the fun began... by this point I had spent a bit of time reading a few articles on book writing, but I would say that the best advice was "just start writing", so I did, scratching out a rough draft of the first chapter (and a bit).


• March 2008: introduced to Dave Morris, at New Year Publishing, who agreed to take on the title as a publisher. He described a publisher as being basically a project manager who knows all the ins and outs of the book industry, and can get the right set of layout editors, printers, copy editors, and proofers together. Fair enough.


• March-July 2008: Writing like mad. I end up travelling a lot from Toronto (home) to the West coast, and 5 hrs is about the right amount of time for putting in a solid writing session. Mike Dowding, my copy editor kept me sane by massaging my writing into a more readable form.


• June-July 2008: The thing that I really wanted to do with this book was highlight a lot of real-world case studies; what real marketers are doing to improve their marketing. During this period, I did deep interviews with around 50 organizations that are doing very interesting things in their marketing functions


• July 2008: Live on Amazon - http://tinyurl.com/5mmbjx. Seriously, you only need cover art and an ISBN number to be live on Amazon - I was amazed.


• July-October 2008: Getting a case study from a client published in a book requires a LOT of back and forth. A draft, multiple revisions, PR approval, legal approval, changes from both of those, signoff; lots of back and forth. I was doing around 40 case studies, of which about 30 got to final approval. I had no idea going into the process that this would prove to be the most time-intensive part of the whole book creation process.


• October 6, 2008: We had Eloqua Experience, our international user group in Las Vegas, and the goal was to have copies of the book for everyone there. It takes about 6 weeks to offset print and ship books and about 1 week to digitally print and ship books. We missed both deadlines. Disappointment, for sure, but we did have a single advanced release copy available to hold up to the audience. Small victory...


• October 15, 2008: Final version of manuscript and all finalized case studies and approvals submitted to layout for the final time. The approval back-and-forth had lead to a LOT of changes; case studies in and out, pull-quotes in and out, stats in and out. This was now final. Big weight off my shoulders, sigh of relief...


• November 22, 2008: Just back from vacation, realized that the "final" layout I had been sent for review had used the wrong version of the manuscript and case studies. Oooops, all wrong, back to the drawing board.


• December 11, 2008: Final PDF of layout arrives, all is good, sending it for print-on-demand proof to be created.

So, that's the process - just over a year from idea to completion - from what I've heard that's about the norm. All in all, it was interesting and even enjoyable in parts. Working with a broad spectrum of marketers tackling interesting and difficult problems was by far the best part; it's amazing how open people are to sharing the good and the bad of what they've been working on. It was fascinating to hear many of the stories.

Next up, the book as part of our Marketing efforts. Anyone who has done this before, I would love to hear from you on what worked, what didn't. Anyone who is thinking about it, I'd be glad to share more of the trials and tribulations if you're interested.

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What I Learned in Kindergarten about B2B Marketing

There's a lot about B2B marketing that can be learned in kindergarten. Like sharing. It's all the same except that the currency has changed from chocolate bars and those little packages of cheese and crackers to information.


As a provider in the space, you (hopefully) have something to share in terms of your insights, ideas, best practices, and advice, and you definitely have something that you want in terms of an opportunity to share your value proposition with the right audience who may eventually become buyers.

If you haven't yet, think of each of your marketing interactions in terms of a your-chocolate-bar-for-my-cheese&crackers metaphor, and you might come up with some easy wins to better engage your audience.

Top 6 B2B Marketing mistakes of sharing we all should have learned in kindergarten:

1. Asking for their entire lunch: one of the things that you can ask your audience for, and most B2B marketers do, is their contact information. This is a significant ask, and many potential buyers are hesitant to give it for good reason. But as a marketer, ask for just a little bit (name, email, that's it) at first, and make sure you are offering something good in exchange. Don't ask for 15 fields of information because you "might" need it. Every field makes the hurdle higher.


2. Trying to trade away the black jelly-beans: We all love our own products. That's healthy. But don't fall into the trap of thinking that "10 reasons you need my product" is rich, value-add content. It's a sales pitch. Even if you get away with it once, you won't get away with it twice.


3. Going hungry - not asking for anything in return: A contentious point, I know. But, we're all under pressure to build our businesses, and if you don't ask for information, you won't get it. Be respectful, don't ask for too much, but if you continually provide great content, you can ask for a small amount of information in return.


4. Stealing lunches: It's bad, don't do it. Ever. Kindergarten, or now. Every time you ask a person to pay attention to your message, you are requesting something from them. You'd better provide something in return. If you're emailing them, it is NOT free, it's an "ask", you're asking for their attention. If you don't provide quality content, you've given nothing in return, so pay attention to content quality or you'll lose people's interest quickly.


5. Taking something you already have in your lunch bag: You don't gain anything, and they feel taken advantage of. If you've already asked them for their industry, title, company size, etc, don't ask again. Put the effort in to make sure you know that you've already got the information, and don't ask for it again. If your content is rich enough, ask something new that you don't already have.


6. Mistaking your carrots for a chocolate bar: The concept of "valuable content" is thrown around very loosely in some marketing circles. You're not the judge of that, your audience is. Don't let your standards slip until you think you're trading away carrots and convincing yourself they're a chocolate bar. Things like a 1hr webinar with rich, non-salesy content from an independant market expert are good; Things like Top 10 reasons to buy your product are not good.

We at Eloqua have called it "Equitable Exchange of Information", but at the end of the day, it's really about sharing, and the same principles apply to information as to chocolate bars. Create great content, share generously, ask for only a little in return, and you're off to the races.

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What Obama's Campaign Can Teach about B2B Marketing

The folks over at the Jaffe Juice blog had an interesting post regarding Stephen Geer, Obama's lead email marketing strategist's presentation at the Email Insiders summit. It got me thinking about the similarity between their highly effective strategy for a Presidential campaign, and the approach required to be a highly effective B2B marketer.

See the full blog post here: http://www.jaffejuice.com/2008/12/keynonte-at-email-insider-conference-stephen-geer-obama-email-director.html


They used a "3 M's" strategy, Messaging, Mobilization, and Money. I think their approach has some great lessons for us B2B marketers looking to connect with an audience.


The order of the Ms is important, and Money is the last M. First is Messaging; follow all the messaging threads and discussions that are going on, whether in the media, blogs, Twitter, etc. This is as important for B2B marketers as it is for political campaigns, as it is the best way to understand how to connect with the audience (by listening) and then establish a connection in whatever arena (blogs, Twitter, events, etc) makes sense for your audience. No money at this point, it's far too early for the sales pitch, just a focus on establishing a connection.


The next M is Mobilization; getting the audience engaged, interacting, organizing, voting. This is a step that is often under-invested in in many organizations. Use your web presence to "mobilize" in a way that makes sense for your audience. Attending events, downloading whitepapers, coming out to breakfast seminars, and joining webinars, are great ways to engage with your audience.


Only then do you get to the last M - Money. If you ask for the sale from someone you have not connected with and truly engaged, you will likely be wasting your time and frustrating them. Make it easy for them to raise their hand to say that they are ready to buy, as Obama's campaign did with "Donate" buttons in emails, but don't push hard for the sale until you are sure they are ready. Obama's campaign used forms, surveys and behavior to identify the right influencers, in the same way that we B2B marketers can use our prospects' Digital Body Language and lead scoring. Read More...

6 Ways to Get Sales to Adopt CRM Systems

As refined as today's CRM systems are, they suffer from an age-old problem; sales rep adoption. They have come a long way in terms of usability, configurability, and universal access, but the problem still remains. The good news is that we as marketers can help to tackle that problem, and in doing so, gain a lot of goodwill with the folks over in sales management.

The thing that we as marketers bring to the table is on the "carrot" rather than "stick" side of the equation. Rather than enforcing adoption through techniques such as commision hold-backs or managerial review, we have the unique opportunity to encourage adoption by making a CRM system (whether Siebel On Demand, Salesforce.com, or Dynamics CRM) into a place where sales people receive enough value to want to adopt it.

How can you do that?

1. All lead flow should be directly into your CRM system. If you have done your work on scoring and qualifying leads to the point that they are truly sales ready, then sales will be eager to receive these leads. See comments on lead scoring here for more: http://digitalbodylanguage.blogspot.com/2008/12/dimensions-of-lead-scoring.html


2. Show how you're marketing to them. Sales wants to know what messages their prospects have received in order to prepare for conversations with them. Ensure your outbound communications are logged against the recipient record in your CRM system


3. Show what each prospect is interested in. What emails did they read? What did they see on the website? What searches did they do? What forms did they submit? Sales can be more prepared for a call if they know what prospect hot buttons are.


4. Show both the explicit (who they are) and implicit (how interested are they) score in the prospect's record in your CRM system. It gives a good quick perspective as to whether they are worth putting in a call to.
   
   
5. Show them their Territory visually. For each rep, show them their accounts, rolled up by Activities and Implicit Score over the past few weeks in order to give them a prioritized calling list in Red/Yellow/Green highlights.


6. Give them an out - expose one or two nurture marketing programs or lead-rewarming programs to them that allow them to drop cold leads in and have them kept warm by your marketing programs until they are ready to buy. More on that here http://digitalbodylanguage.blogspot.com/2008/12/giving-sales-out.html

Getting sales to successful and eagerly adopt your CRM system is a good thing for more than just the sales team. If you are looking to better understand your marketing campaigns through to pipeline and revenue, you need strong sales adoption of CRM throughout the pipeline. By giving them reasons to adopt you not only strengthen your relationship with sales management, but you help out your own ability to analyze marketing efforts.

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Decorative Cakes and Social Media Policy

I just happened upon a friend of mine's blog. She does incredibly ornate, customized cakes for special occasions. Fun stuff like Mini Coopers, McDonald's Happy Meals, cowboy hats, etc.

The thing that got me thinking though was that her blog was there, live, with great content that's relevant to those interested in customized cakes - tips for cake decorators, tips for lighting and air conditioning in venues where cakes are on display, etc. And I know for a fact that she does not have dedicated web team creating content.

So why is it that getting into social media is so difficult for many companies. Most B2B marketers are in a similar situation to Juanita Koo at Sweet Things; they have a niche product with associated content that is unique or interesting to their target audience. The next steps should be simple; create content, get it out there, and stimulate excitement and interest in the audience.

That effort seems to stumble in mid sized or larger companies more times than not. I'm not convinced that it is a lack of enthusiasm or passion either, as every company has a few folks of the right personality to want to be the passionate advocate for your space.

More often than not, overly heavy guidance on policy, brand use, messaging, content, and topics, stifles the creativity of the content creators and convinces them to expend their creative energy in other places.

Luckily, we've seen recent leadership by Intel and Cisco among others, with some great examples of social media policies. Minimal rules, just guardrails. No approvals, just training. If you're considering diving into social media, or thinking about marketing "getting involved" with existing bloggers at your company, read these policy statements first.

Intel's social media guidelines: http://www.intel.com/sites/sitewide/en_US/social-media.htm

Cisco's social media guidelines (a bit tougher, but still fairly open): http://blogs.cisco.com/news/comments/ciscos_internet_postings_policy/

It's a bit more than the official policy though. Culture has a lot to do with it, and if people are worried about needing executive blessing for every piece of content, it will have the same stifling effect, regardless of the official policy. Make sure your team is able to create content with the same level of enthusiasm as Juanita Koo does for her cake decorating blog and you'll be set up for success. And of course, if you're in Toronto and in need of a custom cake... http://sweetthings-toronto.blogspot.com/

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Giving Sales an "Out"

Any of us who work with longer sales cycles have experienced the leaky funnel. Laura Ramos at Forrester talks about it a lot, as do most other luminaries in B2B, and at Eloqua, it's one of the most common things our clients ask us about.

So, as marketers, what can we do to "plug" it... not a simple task, as leads leak out of the funnel for so many reasons; interest wanes, priorities shift, or sales connect too early or with someone without enough pull to get something done. Mostly, these leads just go quiet. Sales is hesitant to call it "dead" right away as it might not be, and by the time they're sure it's dead, they're unlikely to dig back into their lead pile and set a status on it.

So, how do we as marketers help?

One trick is to give sales an "out" - build one or more "rewarm" nurture campaigns that are designed for cold leads. Give sales a simple (ie, one click) way to add a lead to that campaign from where they are (ie, their CRM system, most likely). When a lead is suspected to be dead, all they need to do is throw it back over the fence to you in marketing and you'll nurture it until it pops up again as a hot lead due to lead score.

I blogged about a simple way to think about Nurture Marketing the other day here: http://digitalbodylanguage.blogspot.com/2008/12/nurture-marketing-vs-pachinko.html Read More...

Dear Santa...

I just want more milk and snuggles please...

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Scrooged?

Last night we received a very strange call from Cruella's MOTHER...we'll call her GC. She offered to purchase plane tickets for John and I to fly to Portland THIS WEEKEND.

What's the catch?

She says the kids miss John...all little giggle talks about is Isabelly (as she calls her)...its a gift from Grandma to the kids, not us...yes she expects the tickets to be around $1000 each...

So I ask myself again...What's the catch?

She says there is no catch...she's just trying to give the kids a special gift for Christmas...

Pros - We get to see the kids, Isabella gets to meet her brother and sisters, aunts and uncles and cousins live there too...we'd get to see all of the extended family and friends we miss so much. We get to see snow at Christmas time (expecting 2 feet tomorrow!)

Cons - other than the obvious one of having Mr. C's ex-wife's MOTHER buy something so expensive for us....traveling at Christmas...missing out on our tree and home that is so festive. Traveling with an infant is going to be interesting...having to be ready to go by Friday night...aaaaaaah!

I can't help but think there is some way this will backfire....John will have to claim support or money from GC at the next support hearing or she'll suddenly try to "require" something from us if we accept the gift...

Or maybe she is just being generous as this is the season for giving?

Of course I can't say no to this...what an opportunity for John to see the kiddos. We thought we'd have to wait until summer time to see them again.

But, am I right to be suspicious or am I just being Scrooge? Read More...

We're going!

Ok...we've agreed to it...we're leaving Saturday morning and returning home on Tuesday. I can't believe we're going to Portland! Now watch us get totally iced or snowed in...luckily we've got layovers in San Francisco and Los Angeles...which means we at least won't get snowed in on the stopover flights.

I'm excited!

We won't have a car, but I'm hoping everyone can come and visit us to meet Bellina!!! Read More...

Packing for a baby...

So after looking it up online I have found the following list of "must-have packing items" for a trip with a baby...

Diapers - One for each hour you'll be in transit, plus extras in case of delays

Pad to put under your baby during diaper changes - You can buy disposable changing pads at supermarkets or reusable ones at baby stores

Blankets - Bring a few — you'll use them to lay your baby on, cover her, cover yourself if you're nursing, protect your clothes from messy burps, shade your baby, and more

Plastic bags - Carry a variety of sizes for storing soiled diapers, clothes, and blankets

Diaper rash cream

Wipes

Small bottles of disinfecting hand gel, baby wash, and baby lotion

Tissues

Extra pacifiers (if your baby uses one)

A few of your baby's favorite toys

Clothes, socks, and booties or shoes - One to two outfits per day is a good guideline

Washable bibs

Sun hat

Lightweight plastic feeding set with utensils, and baby food - If your baby's eating solid foods

Formula, water, and juice if appropriate

Extra bottles, nipples, and sippy cups if appropriate

Energy-boosting snacks for you to munch on

Breast pump (if you use one)

Nightlight - So you can keep the room lighting soothingly low during middle-of-the-night diaper changes

First-aid kit - Baby pain reliever and supplies for treating minor injuries

Sling or front carrier - Lightweight, hands-free way to keep your baby close in crowded places like airports

Portable crib or play yard - A safe place for your baby to sleep or play

Inflatable baby bathtub - Can make bath time easier at your destination

Car seat for safer travel by car or plane

Collapsible stroller - Can be gate-checked or stored in the overhead bin of an airplane

So, when you get to the airport...look for me...I'll be the one hiding behind this pile...
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Portland Trip in Pictures...

On our way!


Our little reindeer in the airport.


All together...


Meeting big sissy Lexi for the first time. Lexi was amazingly great with Bella. She took lots of initiative to hold her and take care of her...and didn't even mind her crying. Bella loved being with her big sissy.


Meeting big brother Eric for the first time. Eric pretended like he wanted absolutely nothing to do with Bella when they first arrived. Later that day when she was asleep in my arms he said, "Ok...I'm ready to hold her now." That was the start of a beautiful relationship. She fell asleep in his arms and won his little heart. Now he doesn't think having ANOTHER sister is all that bad.


Meeting big sissy Maddie for the first time. Maddie was so excited that her little sister was here. She wanted lots and lots of sissy time...and insisted that when bella was crying it was because she missed her big sissy. Bella's been crying lots these days...we hope her big sissy comes to visit again soon!


We'd win the father and son look alike contest.


The J's loving on their new cousin. They couldn't get enough of her.


Meeting Bop for the first time. Well, she actually met him in the airport for the first time...but she finally got to be held by her grandpa!


Happy 18th Birthday Lexi!


Happy 9th Birthday Eric!


His two favorite gifts - night vision goggles and a new basketball


We told the J's that Bella was practicing ninja moves when she's kick out her legs. They were amazed...and then one of them tried to ninja kick her back...aiya!


The lovely miss Lexi


Maddie's new journal entry..."I love my daddy so much. So far I'm having a wonderful time here. I am so happy."

Now she is writing on her "secret" page.


Just because you dare them doesn't mean they HAVE to do it...right?
Baby

Bella's first time in the snow!










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A mixing bowl of things and thoughts...

Two days ago squeaker turned 1 month old. I was in tears just thinking about it...how quickly she is getting older! She is still so small...doesn't fit into anything but newborn clothing sizes...everyone keeps saying she'll chunk up in a month or so, but I just can't imagine it.



We have had so many generous gifts from our friends and family over the past couple of months. Thank you EVERYONE. Thank you notes are on the way if you haven't yet received them. Just yesterday we got two big boxes for Bella from her cousin Savannah. Savannah is just a few months older than Bella so she sent all her clothes she doesn't fit into and some she just had too many of. WOW...it was like Christmas day. We just kept pulling outfit after outfit out of the box. We found about 6 outfits that will fit her now...plus some onesies. She'll be a styling little girl now.



Grandma Annie left for Phoenix yesterday. I was very sad to see her go. There is something about having your mom around when you just have a baby that makes it hard to say goodbye. Especially when you wake up from a nap to a scene like this...baking fresh cinnamon rolls, sitting by the oven and loving on the squeaker.



I realized later that we hadn't gotten a photo of the three of us while she was here...that made me all the more sad. Its the same with John's mom. I didn't think about the importance of the generational photos while they were here.

My brother and his family came to pick up grandma. It was fun to have them here...we had such a nice lazy day. We decorated sugar cookies, watched the movie, HOLES and went for a walk to get the mail and decided to dip all our toes in the hottub before going back home. Of course with three young children how can you NOT get wet when there is a hottub...even if your parents tell you NO?



While nursing the squeaker last night I just looked at our beautiful christmas tree and sang every carol I could think of. Funny how I've forgotten some of the words to carols I knew as a kid. I decided its time to brush up on the Christmas Carols so that I can sing them to Bella the way my mother used to sing them to me. Its important to me that my home is full of music.



I got a Fedex package on Thursday from my work. I received my FIVE YEARS OF SERVICE plaque. Wow....Have I really worked there for 5 years? How quickly time flies.



Right now Mr. C and Squeaker are taking a nap together. Its so cute...she's curled up behind his back and they are both just snoozing away. Its a beautiful Saturday morning. The Ft. Huachuca Winter Carnival/Family Fun Festival is today. I'm going to wake them up soon...Its time to enjoy the festivities that say CHRISTMAS!

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6 Really Simple Marketing Metrics for your Execs

We've all seen a similar cycle.... if you ask a marketing exec in a B2B company what metrics they'd want, it ends up in a complex description of ROI, funnel velocity, or influence measurement. Great goals, for sure, but not exactly quick wins. So, the reports aren't created for them and they end up with nothing. Let's start from the other direction, and look at 6 very simple measurements that you can provide them that they give them some simple insight into what's actually going on in marketing.


If you already provide this, fantastic, but I suspect there might be more than a few execs who don't have this data about marketing, and who would truly appreciate it. I get the pleasure of chatting with lots of present and future Eloqua clients, and from them I commonly hear that even high level data like this is very much appreciated.


-Contact database growth over time; gives a good sense of new name acquisition, unsubscribes, and overall size of list.


- Web traffic (new and returning visitors); this is where you're driving most people to if you're successful, it never hurts to have execs know about traffic levels. Knowing that x-thousand people are viewing your site on a daily basis never hurts in ensuring budget for the site redesign doesn't get cut, either.

-Raw Inquiries (form submits); I'm a huge proponent of lead scoring, but if you're not at the point where you can provide an executive dashboard of leads, properly scored and tallied, at least put out a list of raw inquiry counts to show inbound interest


-Total Campaigns; How many unique campaigns have been sent in the last month. This shows the level of activity of your marketing team in creating and promoting content, events, and webinars

-Communication Frequency; How often are you communicating with your database, are you under/over communicating


-Top Search Terms; How are people finding you? What are they most interested in, and is it more awareness, discovery, or validation?

So why these metrics? Well, for one, they're easy to do. Not much work with data or business processes involved, and you can have execs looking at them quickly. But, the more important reason is that they begin to focus attention on the right issues. It's only a beginning, but the direction is the right one.


As the world moves from outbound marketing and promotion to inbound marketing and demand generation, you need your execs to be asking things like: How do people find us? How many people are we educating? How frequently do they come to us for more information? Are they only passively reading that information or willing to provide their information in order to get it?


The more that execs ask this type of question, the more they will be bought in to the concepts of inbound marketing and demand generation. They will push for better nurturing of leads, more investment in social media to generate market awareness, more lead scoring, and better coordination with sales on which leads to hand off, and when. Those are the right directions for them to push, and if you can provide them with some of the right data at the start, you'll inspire more of those questions.


If you're already an Eloqua client and just want to build this out, there's some info on dashboarding on Eloqua Artisan - the user blog: http://eloqua.blogspot.com/2008/12/quick-win-whats-going-on-in-my-database.html. Enjoy - I'd love to hear some of your best dashboards that people can get started with quickly and easily. Read More...

Holiday Time: Top 10 Wish List for Sales

An interesting chat between Rob Leavitt (http://tinyurl.com/66ox38) and Drew Neisser (http://tinyurl.com/6lsmdl) on Marketing as a Service got me thinking about Marketing's other customer - Sales. What can we as marketers do for them.

Okay, sales complains about marketing. But, it's the holiday season, so in that spirit, let's look at the Top 10 gift ideas for marketing to give to sales. Most of these are quick to implement and show real value to sales. Who knows, maybe next year, sales will even have you on their holiday gift list. (okay, I don't guarantee that, but it's a nice thought...)

1. Real-time alerts when their own prospects visit your website so they see interest as it happens


2. A weekly (daily?) list of their hot leads who have shown activity that week to help them make sure they are talking to anyone showing interest


3. All leads passed to sales scored explicitly (who they are) and implicitly (how interested they are), to give them insight into who needs a call


4. Lead score displayed in their CRM system for all leads


5. Account rollup showing the hottest accounts based on recent activity, so they can plan their day at a glance and know who needs a follow-up


6. One-click access to a marketing history for each contact, so they can see what each person has received, read, reacted to


7. Latest marketing collateral available to them in Outlook so they can download, modify, and send, saving them effort in creating content


8. Trackable emails sendable from Outlook so they can see when their own prospects click on emails sent to them directly


9. Marketing communications being automatically sent "from" each salesperson rather than from a corporate address to help develop their relationships


10. A nurture program available to them to add their "not ready to buy" leads to, with one click, so they can be kept warm until they are ready to buy

Am I biased, can all these things be done with Eloqua? Yes. But, regardless of your Demand Generation platform, they're great ideas to get sales more engaged and enthusiastic about your marketing efforts.

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Emotional Unsubscribes

I get asked a lot about unsubscribe rates as an indication of buyers losing interest. I always caution people not to look to hard at that number. If you think of your own behaviour when you lose interest in a particular sender, you'll see why (most of you). You just ignore them. That's it, no unsubscribe, nothing. I heard someone at Eloqua call this an "emotional unsubscribe" and I like that term for it.

The trouble is, this is much harder to detect and react to. You might even see a little bit of email open behaviour from these recipients if they are using preview panes in their email client.

If you look at your world this way, the question is, how do you react. The first step is understanding who has emotionally unsubscribed, the second step is re-engaging with them, and the third step is dropping them out (or nearly out) of your communications if you can't re-engage.

Identifying them is a bit more of an art form than looking at explicit unsubscribes, but still very possible. What we generally do is look at people who have been communicated with (over a period of 6 months or more), but have a minimal amount of open activity, and no clicks. The people who meet that criteria are close to being emotionally unsubscribed.

Next is re-engaging. There are a few techniques here, depending on how far gone you suspect your emotionally unsubscribed audience is. Sometimes, tweaks in subject line, email copy or offer can do it. Focus heavily on the first 2 seconds of viewing your message - these are, after all, not avid readers - so subject line and the first few words of content are, at best, all that will be read. Some of our clients in financial services have successfully used free, unique research offerings to spur activity in low-activity recipients.

Don't try to hard though - the folks at Marketing Sherpa did some interesting research that showed that over 40% of people count an email as spam even if they once subscribed, but now have lost interest or receive too many communications from you. Be dilligent about cleaning out your database of those who have lost interest. Read More...

The Contact Washing Machine

I think we can all agree that B2B marketing has shifted from a purely creative discipline to a much more operational, process-oriented, data-centric, analytical discipline. It's a long road though, as the data we get to work with is often... well... terrible.

Data comes in through so many sources, most of which are not controlled in any way - free-form text. Web forms, tradeshows, lists, internal systems, etc. We're then expected to use that data for analysis, segment targeting, lead scoring, etc.

The best thing that anyone in Demand Generation can do, to set up for long term success, is to build a "Contact Washing Machine" that standardizes and normalizes this data as it comes in. For Eloqua users, I'll talk about some of the pieces of a good Contact Washing Machine on this blog's sister blog - Eloqua Artisan (http://eloqua.blogspot.com/2008/12/whats-in-name-job-titles-and.html).

If not, the things I typically see addressed on all incoming data are:

• Standardize Title to allow it to be used for Segmentation or Scoring
• Standardize Country to a 3-letter or 2-letter code
• Fix Zip codes from New England... they have a leading 0 and Excel drops that if the list has ever been in Excel
• Map to sales (or field marketing) territory
• Validate physical address (if you'll be using this)
• Match company to existing company list (or use a standard code such as DUNS)
• Map industry to SIC, NAICS or other industry code (if this is important for you)
• Any other data standards or fields that are key to your business

Putting this in place, and having all incoming data flow through it, is a great way to avoid the cycle of data continually degrading over time until a major undertaking (at great cost) is done to cleanse it, whereupon it immediately begins degrading again. Time is too short for bad data...

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The Grandma's...

Oh we've had so much fun these past few weeks with the visit of Bobbi (short for Babushka - or grandma in Russian) who is John's mother and Grandma Annie - or my mother. I had to blog an ode to Grandmothers. They've been so loving and helpful and kind and it is so precious to see them with Bella. I've loved watching them with this little baby girl. Whatever will I do when left to my own devices?

Grandmas Wings
© Ricky R. Hernandez

Grandma I wonder
where you keep your wings.



Are they hung in your closet
with the rest of your things?




Do you put them away
and just use them at night



or give them to Rosie
to polish up bright.




I know you have wings,
for this must be true,




'cause God always gives
them to Angels just like you.



THANK YOU BOBBI! WE LOVE YOU!


THANK YOU GRANDMA ANNIE! WE LOVE YOU!
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Books, Blogs, and Demand Generation

I'm in a bit of a circular world right now as I write a blog about Demand Generation that explores the topics in a book I've just written about using various web media, including blogs, for Demand Generation, and of course both the blog and the book will be used for generating demand. So, I should probably explain that, me, this blog, and the book.

It all started about a year ago, in a conversation with our CEO, after a long series of trips to visit a lot of clients. We were chatting about what each client was doing, how they were using our product (Eloqua), and what interesting things they were doing to do campaigns, score leads, automate marketing processes, manage data, coordinate with sales, measure effectiveness, etc. At first glance, it almost sounded like every client was doing something totally unique, but in our conversation I tried to tie it all together and say that it was all part of the same challenge.

And then Joe (our CEO) said "you should write a book about this". Kind of in the same tone as saying "you should order pizza for lunch"... I was not quick enough to say "but I have a day job", and so, with that, the book project was born.

It's been a very interesting year, spending a bit more time working to explain the new world of Demand Generation, but it's been a very fun one. I had the pleasure of interviewing over 50 customers throughout the year, and getting into a lot of details on how they were approaching the changes that are happening in marketing, and what they are doing to build a Demand Generation practice. From small startups through to Fortune 500 multinationals there were common threads in the changes they were seeing and the challenges they were tackling.

But, the most fun part of it so far has been getting to know the "new marketers". Operational, driven, process-oriented, data savvy, quantitative marketers - the exact opposite of the stereotypes.

So, the book... it's in layout right now (aah, that's it's own fun story, more on that another time), and due very soon. Which gives me a bit of time to take the ideas in the book online into a forum for more people to jump in with ideas, stories, and challenges. And, of course, the more people we can educate about Demand Generation, the more people may want to talk with us about how Eloqua can help. Nothing wrong with that at all...

I'll keep this blog updated on our progress with the book, and its trials and tribulations (I'm sure there will be some), as we use it in some of our campaigns. Read More...

Lead Scoring; Points, Ranks, and Sales Handoff

Everyone uses the term "lead scoring" in demand generation. It's definitely a foundational concept for the industry, but under the covers, there are (or should be) two things happening, only one of which is scoring. The goal, of course, is to look at your prospects, and understand whether they are the right person (explicit scoring) and/or are showing the right level of interest (implicit scoring). But, implied in this is the assumption that you will do something different with those that score high from those that score low.



If that's the case, and you are looking to do something different with some leads than others, you need to think about "lead ranking" as a core part of lead scoring. Let's look at an example. Say you want to divide up your leads using explicit (fit) criteria into As, Bs, and Cs, and then divide your leads using implicit (interest) criteria into 1s, 2s, and 3s. Then, the A1s would be passed to sales, the A3s would be nurtured, the C1s would be cultivated by inside sales to get to the right contact, and the C3s would be dropped (obviously the other categories would be dealt with also, but for the sake of simplicity bear with me).



Here's the challenge. We're now looking at two distinct undertakings:

1. Finding the right mix of criteria to score the leads in order to determine whether they are A, B, C, or 1, 2, 3. (See http://digitalbodylanguage.blogspot.com/2008/12/dimensions-of-lead-scoring.html for a discussion on why you really need both dimensions of scoring)



2. Building the business process for appropriate follow-up, nurture, or cultiviation of the leads once it has been decided that they are an A1, A3, or C1.

These undertakings are actually very separate, and both will need a lot of tuning over time. As your website changes, you launch new marketing campaigns, or you tweak the relative weights of one criteria over another, the scores of leads will change. Likewise, as you add sales people, change territories, or alter quotas, you may wish to send more leads of lower quality, or less leads of higher quality.

Separating the "lead scoring" - ie assigning 0-100 points based on activity - from the "lead ranking" - ie determining what is ranked as a 1, 2, or 3 - lets you build your business processes independent of any tweaking and optimization. Your field sales team may get A1 and B1 leads, your inside sales team may get A2, B2, and C1 leads, and you may route A3, B3, and C2 to your nurture marketing programs. Regardless of what you do to change your approach to scoring, or what the thresholds are for each rank, your team knows what to do when they see an A1 lead coming their way.

Not only can you better build your sales or nurture marketing follow-up processes based on abstracting the lead score from the lead rank, but you can look back at your sales successes after a few quarters, and by comparing the underlying score against the sales success rates, you can get good insights into whether you are able to loosen the ranking criteria and have more leads flow through to sales, or would be best to tighten the criteria and have less leads of higher quality.

This question is one of 8 critical lead scoring questions to consider when thinking about a lead scoring system.

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Dimensions of Lead Scoring

I get asked very frequently how marketers should think about lead scoring... how do you come up with a rule that scores leads based on "explicit" things like title, industry, and company size, while at the same time counting "implicit" things like what they've done on your website.

The way I see it, you don't. The two don't really mix. One of them, the explicit criteria, is about whether the lead is the right person, in the right role, at the right company at the right company. It measures ability to purchase. It's a key thing to measure, certainly, but it's not the whole picture. You also have to understand whether a buying process is actually happening in that company, and for that person.

The way that's measured is another dimension - intent to purchase. For this, you look at much more implicit information; web activity, searches, repeat visits, deep dives into specifications, response to marketing campaigns, etc. This tells you whether you are looking at a person who is actively considering your solution based on what is happening in their business.

Without looking at both of these dimensions, you're not able to tease out the right prospects for your sale team to focus on. Looking at the four corners of this chart, you can see why, it all comes down to what you'd want to do with each lead type:

• A1: Great leads; the right buyer and showing a lot of interest. Sales needs to call them right away
• A3: Right person, wrong time; this is a prospect who is the right role in the right company, but they are showing minimal interest. Calling them aggressively is wasting your time and theirs. They need to be nurtured over time until you see them showing the signs of being truly interested.
• C1: Not the right person, but excited; lots of interest, but minimal ability to purchase. Perhaps their interest can be leveraged into an introduction to the right people. Or, perhaps they are a student or a job seeker, and will never be a buyer.
• C3: Not the right person, and not showing interest. There's not much point marketing to these people or trying to call them.

Lead scoring needs to look at both of these dimensions, but trying to merge them into one will always risk confusing the keen student with the mildly interested CEO. Obviously you want to communicate with them very differently, so you need to separate the dimensions you score on in order to differentiate between them.

This question is one of 8 critical lead scoring questions to consider when thinking about a lead scoring system.

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