Recent advances in give demand generation marketers tricks to reduce waste and gain better results. But, the sheer volume of options can be overwhelming. So, I thought I’d share what I’m finding most useful right now:
- First – if you have marketing automation or CRM, there are probably new tools just waiting in the platforms you already own. It seems like something new is coming up all the time. I’ve recently found the ability to see better engagement metrics, especially specifics on who opened an email but didn’t click and how prospects interacted with each part of an email. I recommend reading articles from the knowledge base or attending one of the “new features” webinars. For a small investment in time, you might find one or two tricks.
- Next, if you’ve been afraid to consider changing your marketing automation, the old days of each automation platform being significantly different with steep learning curves and long adoption has become a thing of the past. I work with HubSpot, Pardot and Marketo and the interfaces are getting easier and much more similar. I’m not suggesting you dump something’s that’s working well for your company, but if you have been thinking about exploring new options, now might be the time. Ditto for diving into platforms like WordPress, ABM technology and some more advanced functions of Salesforce.com. They all feel very similar to work with right now.
- Data modeling has gotten easier too. There are more resources than ever to review profitable customers and highest potential prospects to find look-alikes. New AI tools have made it easier and less expensive and there are more vendors to choose from. My insider tip – the best use of data modeling is not to be able to magically find a whole list of brand new prospects waiting to buy. It’s being able to cut tire kickers, unqualified prospects and low revenue customers out of your marketing efforts and your budget spend. I had one client pare down their database by over 800,000 names and they’re getting the exact same number of sales.
- New technology has also changed contact discovery. Until recently, if you wanted to prospect with a particular company, you had to have someone call for the contact info or spend a lot of time trying to populate the names, address and phone info by surfing the web. This process has been largely replaced by using data scraping which means lower expense and faster information for individual contacts.
- Once you get the names in your database, enriching data gotten easier too. With new resources for appending data, you don’t have to wait for the prospect to give it up! Here’s an example of what you can get with data append:
- Firmographics – URL, industry, address, size of company, location, etc.
- Technology data – data on tech stack, and current configuration. These can be helpful to confirm technology compatibly or for competitive displacement.
- Intent and search data – keyword info on which companies or individuals are searching for solutions like yours. (Or your competitors.) Even if this is only identified at the account level, the information is valuable for consultative selling and to hyper target digital marketing.
- Web data – you don’t need to know a prospect before you can start tracking them. Use cookie data to start tracking anonymous activity and their history will flow into a specific contact once they’ve engaged enough to fill in a landing page.
All of these give your marketing programs more power – by allowing you to segment and personalize emails to be relevant to each prospect and even customize digital ads and social media outreach. And all of these tools mean you’re closer to the on-on-one experience that really makes prospects respond.
Need some help with this? Contact me at jackie@jackiewalts.com.