Data is the fuel that propels the revenue engine of every organization today. While low quality data can “gunk up” your revenue engine and leave you on the side of the road with the hood up, high-quality data can help you reach your destination faster (i.e., revenue growth through marketing efficiency). So if data is the fuel, then the lead-to-revenue process is the engine, which makes MOPS the mechanic who enables the fuel and keeps the revenue engine humming along. As our 2021 Marketing Operations Report  makes clear, marketing operations does double duty with data: MOPS enhances the quality of your data while also ensuring that an efficient infrastructure exists. Why? So high quality data flows smoothly throughout your organization in order to drive revenues, optimize customer experience, facilitate alignment (of marketing, sales, and beyond) and serve as the basis for ongoing improvement of marketing performance. This post will explain the connections between MOPS, data, and better marketing ROI. MOPS delivers stronger processes around data Organizations with a defined MOPS function are, by definition, going to (1) have their data management systems better set up and integrated and (2) are going to understand how to use their data and data infrastructure to drive revenue outcomes. A good data management infrastructure and a good data governance process create the systemic conditions to support higher quality, cleaner data as well as the capacity to drive better results from that data.  MOPS delivers a richer understanding of your customers, gives you visibility into the buying journey and enables you to drive better marketing based on tracking results and adapting engagement approaches. MOPS also supports stronger, data-enabled alignment among marketing, sales and the entire organization, and becomes the foundation for the credibility of marketing as a whole. According to our 2021 Marketing Operations Report, organizations having a defined MOPS function “are over 2X more likely to strongly agree that their data management processes increase the value of data in their organization and help them achieve measurable results. MOPS not only helps organizations enhance data quality but also helps them utilize that data more effectively to drive revenues.” MOPS is the foundation for analysis and reporting. “With a richer, data-driven understanding of your customer,” says Rebecca Le Grange, managing partner of Sojourn Solutions, “organizations can drive better marketing based on monitoring results and adapting their campaigns and engagement. With good data and analysis, marketers can understand how campaigns are impacting revenues. They can have marketing attribution and increased credibility too.” Four data-related benefits MOPS provides The following are 4 of the major benefits MOPS offers around data management and leveraging data to drive ROI: 1. Better data for understanding and engaging customers.  MOPS enables you to integrate and update your data and systems so you gain higher quality data and full-funnel visibility into your customer/buying journey. With the capacity to access and share customer insights, you can drive more effective campaigns that better address the evolving needs of customers. These full funnel insights propel more targeted, effective campaigns and higher rates of conversion, boosting ROI. 2. Better alignment.  When there’s high quality data and full funnel visibility, you enable better conversations among marketing, sales and the entire organization about strategy and tactics, improving the customer experience, driving conversion rates, and who does what and when. MOPS and the accessible, quality customer data MOPS provides is the fuel that drives ongoing funnel conversations. 3. Performance optimization.  MOPS gives you a GPS so you have full visibility into where you’ve been and where you should be going next. MOPS allows you to course correct in real-time based on customer signals -- you can monitor campaign performance and customer behavior and adjust course accordingly. You can use data to build a continuous feedback loop that supports ongoing improvement.  4. Attribution and credibility.  MOPS offers you the data to connect what you’re doing to revenues, and gives you the capacity to prove the value of marketing to the wider organization. Attribution doesn’t just enhance ongoing marketing performance, but also gives marketing a more credible voice when it comes to requesting more budget. Marketers can say, “if you invest $1 in marketing, here’s what you can expect as ROI.”  As our 2021 Marketing Operations Report explains, “companies with named MOPS functions are 2.5X more likely to have significant insight into attribution of how marketing actions relate to customer behavior.” That builds marketing’s credibility and reputation across the organization.  The takeaway is clear: you need high quality data coming in and also an infrastructure to effectively deploy that high quality data in order to create a revenue engine. MOPS enhances data quality, as the fuel that runs through that engine, and also maintains the engine itself. It’s easy to understand why organizations with a defined MOPS function drive significantly better results with data as compared to organizations lacking a MOPS function.  To learn even more about how MOPS improves your customer data and how you manage that data to drive improvement, download our 2021 Marketing Operations Report .

When it comes to lead generation, lead nurturing, and converting leads into revenue, B2B organizations with a defined MOPS function consistently and significantly outperform companies without that function. Effectiveness at lead management, our 2021 MOPS Report  makes clear, is directly related to having superior capabilities in lead/funnel optimization based on high quality customer data that can be transformed into actionable and revenue-generating intelligence. Put simply, MOPS enables better lead management. While it may sound easy to convert leads into revenue at a high rate, the complexities of the customer journey across channels and the challenges around gaining a unified vision of your customer across systems make “the leaky funnel” a massive problem for all modern marketers. Research shows  that only about 10-15% of all leads eventually turn into revenue.  Put simply, MOPS drives higher lead-to-revenue conversion rates by monitoring your funnel and showing you ways to plug the leaks as they appear. Sojourn Solutions managing partner Rebecca Le Grange describes the challenge and the MOPS solution: “there's so much technology, data, people and processes involved throughout the process from lead to sale. A mature MOPS function pulls everything together. If the balance isn't right and you're focused too much in one area of lead management, leads and revenue will simply leak out. MOPS helps close those leaks.” Visibility into the funnel Marketing operations is about optimizing. Modern marketing requires a complex, evolving mixture of data, data analysis, processes, martech, alignment with sales (and beyond), campaign execution, reporting, and more, MOPS itself reflects that complexity, offering an integrative, aligned approach to improving how marketing gets done. Lead management embraces the entire funnel, from customer awareness all the way to lifetime customer value. MOPS, then, isn’t about pulling the “right” lever but about figuring out your funnel in real-time and then making the appropriate (and constant) adjustments to continually improve as you move your lead management process forward. It’s a waste of time for marketing to do great, creative work generating more leads, hand them off to Sales, and then pretend the job is done -- that conversion will automatically happen. In contrast, MOPS encompasses all parts of the funnel, driving a “revenue engine” that has many parts that need to work together to move from lead to revenue.  4 ingredients in the MOPS blender So what are the various ingredients that MOPS seeks to blend in order to continuously improve lead management?  1. Data.  Great marketing is based on a deep knowledge of customers and their expectations. Marketers, and the entire business, are in the game of understanding and meeting customer needs at every stage of the funnel. When that happens, revenue happens. But while data is the foundation, it’s clearly not enough to collect customer data. Turning data into actionable insights and (finally) revenues requires an entire, structured eco-system where data is cleaned, made actionable, and drives improved customer engagement. MOPS is that eco-system. 2. Reliable Reporting.  With effective reporting, the organization has visibility into exactly what’s working and what’s not. You can prove value by connecting activities to dollars. As our 2021 MOPS Report explains it, “with reliable data and reporting comes an improved ability to communicate and align with the larger business.” If marketing is generating more than enough leads, but Sales isn’t effectively converting them, then reporting will show it.  Instead of having Sales ask marketing for “more leads, please,” MOPS can analyze the situation and report back on the potential causes of the problem, then suggest solutions. Maybe marketing is generating low-quality leads and needs to focus on creating fewer, but higher-quality leads. Or maybe the leads are solid but Sales is struggling with how to effectively convert them. Maybe it’s a combination of factors. MOPS can structure and help inform these “difficult conversations,” offering data and reporting and (most importantly) a willingness to experiment with solutions. That’s a better approach than finger-pointing and recriminations between marketing and sales. 3. Technology.  Customers neither see nor care about an organization’s internal systems and tech stacks. From the outside, they see every organization as one unit that should serve their needs. MOPS drives exactly this sort of customer-centricity as to systems and technology. An organization might consider purchasing lots of “cool” technology, but the role of MOPS is to ask: (1) how does this tool/technology serve our organizational strategy? and (2) how well does this tool/technology integrate into our existing systems/solutions?  MOPS, then, brings a much-needed strategic and integrative focus to all technology-related decisions. As Le Grange points out, “the role of MOPS is to be the voice of reason when it comes to aligning strategy and technology acquisition. Cool tech is great, but it takes more to justify a technology purchase.” 4. Relationships/Organizational Alignment.  MOPS, by definition, works across multiple parts of the organization and encompasses technology, sales, marketing, data management, and beyond. MOPS professionals understand how to talk the language of each department but also how to talk the language of the overall business, which is revenues. The role of MOPS is translational -- to bridge these departmental silos and strengthen structures of communication across the departments.  Getting everyone on the same page Lead management has never been more complex and multi-channel than today. As our 2021 MOPS Report explains: “Today’s deals are the culmination of a chain of events that is led by the buyer and enabled by marketing in partnership with sales” and other areas of the business. MOPS helps pull the entire lead management process together, explains the Report: “data and technology are the bedrocks of modern marketing and the processes that utilize [data and technology] to identify, influence and measure leads are the foundation. The positive impact of MOPS is in optimizing these fundamental capabilities, enabling automation, scale, and ongoing improvement.” MOPS doesn’t just offer full funnel visibility, but also aligns all the activities and processes that impact the buying journey, reporting on what’s happening every step of the way. MOPS aligns the internal approach around the customer, which is essential for lead management effectiveness. Funnel leaks will inevitably happen, but MOPS seeks to continually reduce them and improve conversion rates: MOPS methodically approaches funnel leaks “as scientific questions to be interrogated and solved,” explains the 2021 MOPS Report. At the end of the day (and this post), MOPS provides the tools and approaches to plug those funnel leaks as they happen, boosting conversion rates.  To learn even more about how MOPS optimized lead management, download  and read the full 2021 Marketing Operations Report: MOPS Increases the Impact of Marketing.

Our 2021 MOPS Report clearly shows that companies with a defined MOPs unit are better at navigating change and implementing new initiatives than organizations that lack a defined MOPS function. Whether change arrives in the form of a global pandemic, digital transformation, or evolving customer behaviors/expectations, having a defined MOPS function enables an organization to effectively pivot when needed. This post, part of a multi-post series that digs into the details of our 2021 Marketing Operations Report , explores how MOPS can help future-proof any organization by enabling agility when it comes to people, processes, and technology. MOPS: Enabling faster learning cycles Marketing operations is a multidimensional function encompassing data management, lead generation, technology optimization, performance measurement, and more. At its most basic, MOPS is about helping organizations optimize their marketing. MOPS requires an “optimization mindset” that’s willing to develop hypotheses and experiments, monitor the results, analyze lessons learned, apply those lessons, and keep on moving forward based on what performance data is showing. MOPS isn’t just an infrastructure of processes and technologies, but also a facilitator of continuous learning. The feedback loop that MOPS provides is the best tool for adapting to change. During the global COVID-19 pandemic, for example, organizations with a defined MOPS function proved to be much more adaptable and significantly outperformed their peers because they were willing and able to pivot their marketing approaches based on rapidly-shifting market demands. MOPS: Ideas aren’t enough It’s great when B2B marketers have new ideas, but ideas by themselves are not sufficient. Organizations also need the capacity to test, monitor results, analyze performance data and transform data into actionable insights, report key metrics, and connect ideas and actions to actual revenues. MOPS enables all of those capabilities, giving organizations the foundation for agility and change-readiness. As Sojourn Solutions managing director Rebecca Le Grange explains it: “MOPS enables organizations to fine tune marketing in order to support change rather than starting from scratch every time customer behavior or expectations change. MOPS is about improving processes and measuring results.” MOPS gives your organization a laboratory to experiment and test ideas. Data as fuel for change Organizations that have faster cycles of experimentation and learning are simply better at adapting. Decades ago, marketing campaigns would be launched with a “big idea” in mind, but performance metrics could take a full year to arrive. You’d make a big bet, investing massive budgets on campaign execution, and then wait months (or a full year) to see the results. And, yes, you could tweak the next campaign based on what you’d learned in a prior (failed) campaign, but the cost was losing the big bet you’d placed a year ago. Meanwhile, the market kept moving and changing -- by the time you’d learned your “big lesson,” customers had already changed and moved on, so the lessons you’d learned at great expense were learned too late. MOPS enables the opposite of this older approach: it allows marketers to test ideas at smaller scale and “fail small” when it comes to results and budgets. Campaign approaches can be tested in rapid cycles, data can be collected immediately, analysis can happen within days or weeks (not months and years), and less budget can be allocated to approaches that don’t work. Marketers can discard, scale up or tweak more ideas in a shorter time frame. Failing small allows marketers to constantly pivot based on what the data is showing, moving constantly towards better. Marketing within a MOPS framework is like using a GPS when you drive, guiding you where to go. As the 2021 MOPS Report explains, data is key to finding your way amidst change: “standardized approaches to data . . .make companies better able to cope with change. In 2020, existing trends in the B2B buying process accelerated. Executives described unusual rates of digital adoption, increased customer churn as well as unfamiliar behaviors from existing customers.” Despite these challenges, organizations with a defined MOPS function simply iterated and pivoted their way to better results, while organizations without a MOPS function had to guess, rely on hunches, and hope for the best.  Having a lab available for testing, as MOPS provides, leads to better results. “Marketing organizations with an operations group were in a superior position because they were better able to rapidly test new solutions,” says the Report, “they were 50% more likely than their peers to say their organization is very strong at building experiments to test insights in the field.” Organizational alignment and change management Big changes that impact customers don’t just happen in one area of the business, but typically encompass multiple areas such as marketing, sales, IT, customer success, and beyond. MOPS enables the building of those key internal, interdepartmental relationships in order to drive change. MOPS “acts as a conduit and translator with other departments, such as helping to align sales with the integration of CRM and insights tools. This [MOPS] function can be vital to ensuring broad support of initiatives both before and after their implementation,” says the Report. Whenever change initiatives happen, MOPS is there to offer a standard approach, a workable framework for testing, and a structured approach to building key relationships across all relevant departments. Do these capabilities help change happen more effectively? The 2021 MOPS Report answers a resounding “yes.” MOPS develops the roadmap for change Among the multiple roles of MOPS professionals is helping organizations anticipate change and develop a roadmap for getting from here to there. MOPS is on top of technology trends and how those trends align with the organization’s strategic goals. The technology roadmap that MOPS helps build isn’t about buying “cool” technology but about finding the right technology to serve an organization’s larger strategic goals. The pace of change in business technology and customer behavior has never been faster than today. As the Report makes clear: the role of MOPS is “to track and analyze the innovation in technology trends with business goals and the technology roadmap for context and to maintain an ongoing conversation with IT partners about what’s necessary today and what’s emerging for the future.” Developing change-readiness is a big part of the MOPS function. To learn more, download  and read the full 2021 MOPS Report.

The evidence is in, the jury has spoken, and the verdict is loud and clear: business organizations that have a defined marketing operations (MOPS) function significantly outperform organizations that don’t have a MOPS function. Despite the open and shut business case for MOPS (more on that below), only half of all B2B organizations that generate $1 billion in annual revenue or more have a defined MOPS function. For smaller organizations, that MOPS number is even lower. So while MOPS clearly adds business value, most organizations have yet to fully tap into that value. MOPS as a discipline embraces many important sub-disciplines, including lead management, data management, martech, attribution/reporting, and more. We looked into trends around marketing operations with our 2019 MOPS Maturity Benchmarking Report , and now we’ve done it again. Here are the six biggest takeaways from our new 2021 Marketing Operations Report , with commentary on each takeaway from our managing partners Rebecca Le Grange and Dan Vawter. 1. Having a defined MOPS function helps organizations successfully manage change and also outperform organizations that lack a defined MOPS function. The report says that companies with a defined MOPs unit are 51% more likely to strongly agree that marketing is effective in managing change and implementing new initiatives. So whether change arrives in the form of a global pandemic, digital transformation, or evolving customer demands, having a defined MOPS function helps organizations effectively adapt and pivot as needed. MOPS also help organizations obtain more leads and also convert a higher percentage of those leads into sales. Le Grange : MOPS serves as the foundation for how organizations operate and execute marketing. MOPS enables those organizations to fine tune marketing in order to support change rather than starting from scratch every time customer behavior or expectations change. Vawter : Many marketers know their audience and are able to put together a really strong demand generation program. But how do you turn that demand and lead gen into pipeline and revenue? It sounds simple, but there’s a lot that needs to happen. It is the MOPS function that nurtures those leads, progressing them through each stage of the funnel, coordinating with different marketing channels to ensure that the messaging is all tied together and drives sales. 2. Businesses with a defined MOPS function outperform their peers in lead generation. B2B organizations with defined MOPs groups were 53% more likely to have significantly outperformed their sectors in H2 2020 than similar companies without the function. Their success relates to having superior capabilities in lead management and funnel optimization based on high quality data analysis that delivers actionable intelligence. Le Grange : There's so much technology, data, people and processes involved throughout the process from lead to sale. All of it requires a mature MOPS function to pull things together. If the balance isn't right and you're focused too much in one area, and you've got gaps, leads and revenue will simply leak out of your funnel. MOPS is there to close any gaps. 3. MOPS optimizes the relationship between marketing and technology.  Almost 90% of those organizations with a named MOPs group say that it “helps marketing and technology work together.” This results in strengths across the organization in the use of technology, including better utilization of existing solutions and the integration of new tech to faster turnaround on technology needs. Vawter : We sometimes see companies purchase technology quickly and without a plan for its successful adoption and utilization. The stronger a company’s MOPS function, the better job they do (1) deciding upon the right technology in light of their strategic goals and (2) integrating it into their organization, meaning, not just integration from a systems perspective but also getting the right people with the right training involved so that the tech gets utilized and delivers real value. 4. MOPS helps organizations drive better results with their data. Companies with MOPs are over 2X more likely to strongly agree that their data management processes increase the value of data in their organization and help them achieve measurable results. MOPS not only helps organizations enhance data quality but also helps them utilize that data more effectively to drive revenues. Le Grange : Data is the foundation for analysis and reporting. And with a richer, data-driven understanding of your customer, organizations can drive better marketing based on monitoring results and adapting their campaigns and engagement. With good data and analysis, marketers can understand how campaigns are impacting revenues. They can have marketing attribution and increased credibility too. 5. MOPS helps deliver cross-functional alignment A stunning 97% of companies with a named MOPs function say their marketing is aligned to key business outcomes. MOPS helps organizations connect their marketing spend and efforts to attributable revenues. It also helps marketers align with Sales and other business units that impact customers and revenues. Vawter : An organization with a strong MOPS function will be in a constant, ongoing conversation with sales and other areas of the business that impact revenues. For example, MOPS is going to know the number of leads delivered to Sales, how many were rejected, how many were accepted (and why). MOPS enables marketing, sales, and other functions to be completely aligned on goals, on who is doing what and when. 6. Marketing is elevated by the MOPS function.  With stronger data and insight capabilities, marketers working within organizations with a defined MOPS function were 33% more likely to have had an expanded role in setting corporate strategy than their peers at other organizations (without MOPS). That focus is supported by the standardization and common metrics provided by MOPS; 82% of those at companies with a MOPS function say that it “gets everyone on the same page.” Vawter : With a strong MOPS function, you're going to understand all of your systems and processes, how they're integrated, and how your data fits together. And you're going to be able to present to leadership a set of defined, accurate results. In companies without MOPS maturity, marketers will present their metrics and the rest of the organization sees them as unrelated to the overall business.  Le Grange : MOPS can bridge the gap between marketing and other departments, and that creates credibility. I think it comes down to how MOPS professionals bring more of an analytical, scientific approach to conversations and processes. You develop a hypothesis about what's going to work, then make experiments, tweak things as you go. You're looking at all the variables, at the data around what's working or not. That evidence-based approach offers marketers a lot of credibility within the senior leadership team. To learn more takeaways, download  the full 2021 Marketing Operations Report.

The impact of the no-code movement is clear for B2B marketers. In the past (and in the present too), if the marketing team had a great idea about how to better engage customers, one that involved building an app or a chatbot, they’d have to write up a detailed proposal, present it to the IT department, then wait for IT to decide whether it had a software developer available to do the coding (i.e., to build the app or chatbot). If no coder was available, marketing’s great idea would get put on the shelf. No-code tools, which are becoming more available and flexible these days, are taking the coder out of the scenario described above. B2B marketers who have great ideas can use no-code tools to actually build whatever they want by themselves. Instead of relying upon and waiting for coders/developers to build websites, landing pages, apps, and chatbots, marketers can cut out the middle person and “just do it” themselves. No-code is basically DIY for marketers. What no-code tools unleash: Creativity and productivity Software developers can use no-code tools to become even more productive, enabling them to reduce time to “go live” even for the most complex coding work. No-code tools will also empower B2B marketers to build marketing assets without gaining buy-in or waiting for resources from the IT department. Instead of marketers requesting service via a drawn-out internal process, they’ll be able to build more of what they need (and faster) via self-service. This more streamlined journey from idea to execution will eliminate bottlenecks that stopped or delayed marketers in the past, creating opportunities for anyone on the marketing team to act on an idea rather than waiting in line for a software developer/coder. BTW, no-code tools still involve code No-code (and low-code) tools are basically visual, easy-to-use builders, using drag and drop functionality, that help marketers intuitively assemble and build things without any code application. There’s coding involved, but it’s built-in and happening “under the hood” so (non-developer) marketers don’t see any of it. As a marketer assembles and manipulates blocks in a simple user interface builder, the code is automatically generated in the background. No-code capabilities for 3 key functions Martech guru Scott Brinker’s keynote at the March, 2021 MarTech conference addressed three key areas  where no-code martech will be most beneficial: Automation: The ability to automate routine activities and processes so marketers can focus on developing ideas rather than coding or requesting coding professionals; Augmentation: The acquisition of new creative and analytical capabilities that improve existing tools and help marketers work smarter and faster;  Integration: The connectivity of no-code tools with other tools and data in your tech stack. There are an increasing number of no-code tools available for workflow automation, business process automation, and more. According to Gartner ,  the global no-code (and  low-code) market is projected to total $11.3 billion in 2021, an increase of 23.2% from 2020. Marketing automation platforms like Marketo and Salesforce have already baked in no-code workflow automation, enabling marketers to use drag and drop tools and other intuitive user interfaces to set up complex workflows. No-code tools aren’t being deployed in silos, of course, but are increasingly getting integrated across the tech stack. Even better, no-code tools are being integrated using no-code tools that make integrations easier. Scott Brinker calls these no-code integration tools Integration-Platform-as-a-Service (or IPaaS). Integration is so central to today’s business stacks that the big marketing automation platforms have even begun acquiring IPaaS vendors: Salesforce, for example, purchased  IPaaS vendor Mulesoft. Research  from no code IPaaS vendor Zapier says that 42% of U.S. digital marketers expect to use six or more new apps in 2021, so no-code integration tools are perennially useful. That’s a clear indicator that marketers are planning to augment their existing capabilities through adding various no-code tools.  A no-code use case & how to choose no-code tools In a recent B2B Marketing webinar, No-Code Martech in Practice , Kirsty Dawe of no-code vendor Webeo, explained that no-code tools support agility, which is especially important as customer demands are shifting so quickly and marketers are under intense pressure to keep up. Dawe demonstrated how a landing page could be changed within minutes using drag-and-drop and text editing tools that are no-code (i.e., no html know-how needed), resulting in a 61% increase in “time on page” for the client page in question. Dawe then went on to describe four key criteria that marketers should consider when selecting no-code tools: The user interface and user experience of the no-code tool needs to be intuitive and easy-to-use. No-code tools need to “play nice with others,” meaning they should integrate (or be easily integrated) with the rest of your tech stack, including your MAP, CRM, and beyond. Carefully consider “permissions control” available for the no-code tool so that only authorized persons can make changes and build marketing assets using the tool.  Carefully consider available training options so that your people can quickly and easily start gaining value from the no-code tools. Adoption is never a matter of simply handing random no-code tools to your team and saying “go at it, folks!” No-code martech is an emerging movement that promises to help developers work more efficiently, but also empowers marketers (i.e., non-developers) to go from idea to making (eliminating long waits for IT resources). The takeaway is clear, no-code tools transform marketers into makers. Are you interested in learning more about this topic or other hot topics in our industry? Reach out to us  directly and let us know - we'd love to hear from you and even interview you on the topic!

Scott Brinker  is a martech legend. He’s the author of the must-read chiefmartec.com  blog, which examines the intersection of marketing, technology, and management, and he's also the program chair of the Martech conference series. But Brinker may be known best as the creator of the Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic  a widely cited vendor blueprint for marketing professionals.  Sojourn chatted recently with Brinker about trends in martech and what they mean for B2B marketers like you. How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted digital transformation and martech?  Brinker:  It's been a huge accelerator. During the pandemic, businesses got forced into a situation where the only way to engage their customers, and their employees was through digital channels. It was like 5 years of digital adoption happening in one year of rapid change. As people start returning to more “normal,” it becomes more about finding the right balance between digital engagement and other ways to engage. Making the fastest choice isn't always making the best choice. For the next year or so, I expect that people -- businesses and customers alike -- will take a deep breath and say, let's evaluate these changes more carefully moving forward -- are these the right tools? Is this the right way to use them? Do we want to make more changes? How have marketers navigated these shifts toward digital-first customer experiences?  Brinker: It’s varied by industry and even more so company by company. The younger companies that were born in an environment where digital engagement, digital marketing mechanisms were built into how they started out did relatively better than older companies that had more of a legacy infrastructure. Some of that legacy had to be removed in order to make way for digital transformation. Why is the right kind of marketing management so essential for digital transformation?  Brinker: This was very much the focus of my book Hacking Marketing . From the 1970s into the early 2000s, marketing departments had a cadence that was set by the yearly marketing plan and making relatively large bets on big campaigns. Marketers wouldn't be able to evaluate the performance of those plans and campaigns until the following year.  As we’ve moved into a digital environment where we have the ability to test and learn and change things so much easier, marketers are working more like software developers -- we build something, we track it, we see what people like based on feedback, we tweak and adjust as we go. But taking advantage of these faster iterations requires changes in thinking about how marketing gets managed, which is why the right kind of marketing management is so essential. What are the big obstacles in the way of the ongoing transformation of “marketing-as-software” that you’ve just described? Brinker: There’s the technology and infrastructure components, because you need the right tools and you need these tools to be connected to each other and to your data. You don't want to end up with a fragmented or siloed environment. Then there's the processes for how marketing works when producing things digitally, being able to iterate quickly, as addressed in the previous question. And then there’s a cultural shift that needs to happen. We can’t use our gut instincts and experience to make all these big decisions anymore. So instead let's test ideas, let's put data behind it: all of that’s a necessary cultural shift for many marketers and companies. How is software development a great model for modern marketing? Brinker: With software development, someone starts with a big idea, like we’d love to build an app that does X. But that idea is in its initial state and remains subject to how it will be implemented and what will actually work in the real world.  Well, the big idea still drives the creativity and strategy of marketing too, but the difference is that now we don't have to put all our chips on one big bet. We can now say, let's put a few of our chips here, then see where that smaller bet is going. We can adjust our bets along the way, which is a more effective way of getting to the outcome we want from the big idea we’re betting on. How is the idea of “agile,” developed in the software world, applicable to today’s marketing? Brinker: Agile practices like scrum and lean and Kanban were developed to ensure that software development would be able to get more tightly aligned with the actual needs of users. Those practices are very relevant to digital marketing environments where it's the exact same thing [but meeting the needs of customers]. Agile isn't about changing the big idea or your strategy. It's about finding the best way to execute and deliver upon the strategy. For it to work, you have to be measuring performance. Marketing attribution has gotten a lot better in the past few years because we're using more digital touchpoints and we're able to connect them back to our performance analysis. That said, attribution is still not a perfect science. You could argue that it could never be perfect because there are multiple factors that we don't capture data on. A B2B prospect might make a phone call to her best friend who’s used a product and that prospect hears a negative review. How do we capture the impact of that call? Attribution data is really valuable as directional data and helps us see the signals and helps us make better bets, but you need a healthy skepticism. Any final thoughts for B2B marketers? Brinker: There's so much happening in marketing today that any rational person is going to wake up in a sweat and be like, “Oh my goodness, the number of things I don't know is growing by the minute.” You're constantly running to keep pace with change, and that can be really stressful. I just want to say that you’re not alone. Everyone in marketing, including me, feels that same way. Just keep focusing on what matters to your customers. Just accept that you won’t know all of the emerging technologies on the martech landscape [there are over 8,000 today] and that's okay.  Want to learn more about how to buy, implement and integrate martech in order to improve your B2B marketing? Reach out to us here .

In today’s era of data-driven and increasingly automated B2B Marketing, it’s essential to have the capability to uncover unique customer insights and trends gained from data to improve your strategy and campaign effectiveness. The Salesforce Pardot marketing automation platform helps B2B marketers do just that with a number of tools fueled by artificial intelligence. Like working with all AI tools, the quality of your data matters (“garbage in, garbage out” is the truest of truisms), as does how you manage and integrate your customer data across your entire organization. Salesforce, of course, is the top CRM in the world -- and it’s been using that powerful position to develop better, more intelligent marketing automation tools (through Pardot) for B2B marketers. Let’s look at a few of those AI-fueled Pardot tools, which were described in a recent Salesforce webinar, Power Your B2B Marketing with AI and Analytics  (free to download with registration). But first, a little background on terminology to avoid any confusion. Salesforce Pardot uses Pardot Einstein  as its foundational AI tool. Einstein monitors and analyzes data from Pardot and Salesforce and also uses data to prioritize work for sales and marketing teams. Data, of course, gets turned into algorithms, customer analytics, and predictive insights. With enough data, Einstein can reveal how prospects engage with your assets and transform your customer data into dynamic, accurate lead and behavior scoring, as well as campaign insights. So when you see the word “Einstein,” think AI. Here are 4 of the key tools connected to Salesforce Pardot that leverage AI to help B2B marketers work smarter: 1. Einstein Analytics for B2B Marketing  is a customer intelligence platform within Pardot driven by AI-powered features designed to improve marketing efficiency, accuracy and measurement. In terms of measuring performance and mROI (marketing return on investment), Einstein Analytics integrates and analyzes data from Pardot and beyond to allow B2B marketers to: understand performance across all your channels and campaigns; attribute marketing impact; generate intelligent predictions about customer behavior; give you recommendations for next engagement steps tailored to your organization’s needs; and be fully applicable for ABM (account-based marketing) efforts. 2. The Einstein Behavioral Scoring Dashboard  can easily be added to Einstein Analytics for B2B Marketing (the tool described above) to provide an instant picture into how your customers are engaging with and responding to your B2B messaging. The dashboard collects demographic, geographic, and even firmographic data and enables B2B marketers to see how their marketing actions are moving the needle on customer engagement. Armed with this customer intelligence, B2B marketers can make quick adjustments that improve engagement and CX.  3. Einstein Behavior Scoring  (EBS), explains Salesforce, is an automated tool that “uses machine learning to uncover the most influential [customer] behavior signals across past and current prospect engagement. For each prospect, EBS considers all types of Pardot prospect engagement activities, and identifies positive and negative interactions. An evolving Einstein scoring model weights each activity and assigns a score from 0 through 100.” As with all things related to AI, the more data you collect over time, the more accurate EBS becomes. 4. Einstein Attribution  (EA)  uses AI to develop a data-driven model that attributes revenue share based on your actual customers, their engagement, and your revenues. Instead of choosing a marketing attribution model before you start measuring and reporting, B2B marketers can use Einstein Attribution as a “plug-and-play” attribution solution to analyze historical campaigns and identify emerging customer behavioral patterns. EA allocates conversion credit to multiple campaigns, so marketers can see which campaigns are most effective at generating revenue. As Alon Shvo, Product Manager for Salesforce Pardot, explained during the Salesforce webinar, EA offers “a turnkey AI solution with minimal set up. You flip the switch and you’re up and running with accurate marketing attribution.”  An Einstein attribution success story Jaime Lopez, General Manager of Marketing Operations and Digital Acceleration at shipping and energy giant Wärtsilä  (19,000 employees and about $6 bn in revenue), spoke during the webinar about how EA  “has transformed our marketing attribution from an art into a science.”  Prior to using EA, Wärtsilä had been doing attribution via a time-consuming, manually-intensive and imprecise approach. “We were unable to drill down to the campaign and channel level,” said Lopez,”and the manual processes and need for in-house expertise were taking limited resources away from our marketing team’s main function of engaging with our customers.” Using EA, Wärtsilä greatly reduced its manual processes and time related to marketing attribution. “EA was basically a plug-and-play platform,” said Lopez.  Even better, EA offered the B2B logistics company an unprecedented level of granularity in connecting marketing actions to revenues -- “it became easy to drill down to the campaign and channel levels,” said Lopez, “ and with EA we could explain 7X more revenue than the legacy attribution model we’d been using before.” Best of all, Lopez was able to use EA to boost marketing’s credibility with the company’s senior leadership team. “EA enabled marketing to show that we were returning 3.5 dollars in profit for every dollar invested in marketing,” said Lopez, “so we could accurately tell leadership how much profit we’d generated from the company’s investment.” That’s the definition of C-suite credibility: show them the money (or in this case, the mROI) and you can ask for more. Salesforce Pardot continues to develop its AI and analytics tools to help its B2B users market better. Moving forward, we’ll continue to keep you updated on where Pardot is going next with its roadmap and capabilities.   Want to learn more about the Salesforce Pardot MAP and how it can help your B2B marketing? Please feel free to reach out to us here  for more information.

Account-based marketing (ABM) is a highly-effective approach to driving revenues that focuses marketing and sales resources (budget, people, technology, etc.) around a pre-defined set of target accounts. While ABM has clearly been shown to boost return-on-investment  and revenues, doing ABM “right” requires significant maturity in your marketing operations, especially around data management. Many organizations struggle with where to begin implementing ABM. It starts with analyzing your existing tech stack, your existing accounts, evaluating the skillsets/capabilities of your team, and then working to (1) understand and (2) close your existing gaps, especially around data management capabilities. Setting up the right infrastructure to support ABM is challenging, but once you do it ABM can deliver increasing levels of ROI and revenues. “ABM programs have been shown to result in significant improvements in pipeline growth,” says Todd Berkowitz, Practice Vice President at Gartner , “[and] If economic uncertainty continues, these programs should remain a core element of marketing strategy.” To get a better sense of the state of ABM in 2020, Demandbase  conducted a survey of 900 companies. The survey and resulting 44-page report, called 2020 ABM Market Research Study  (free download with registration), is a comprehensive look at the state of play for ABM right now. Let’s explore the report’s many findings. Who is doing ABM? More than 6 in 10 companies surveyed (61%) had a full ABM program in place or were in the midst of a pilot program. Among the remaining 39% of companies without existing ABM programs, most were thinking about starting an ABM pilot within the next 6 months. That leaves only a small sliver of “ABM laggards” who aren’t either doing ABM now or thinking about doing it soon (only about 10% of surveyed companies are such “ABM laggards”). Large and mid-sized companies are leading the march to ABM. Doing ABM right takes marketing ops maturity and a supportive data infrastructure. Companies making the fastest progress with ABM programs are those with over 1,000 employees, with nearly 3 out of 4 (71%) of them having either a full or pilot ABM program in place. The top industries that reported full ABM programs were: (1) computer software, (2) IT and services, and (3) marketing and advertising. The #1 Challenge to ABM, by far . . . The top challenge reported for every stage of ABM, whether a full program, a pilot, or in the consideration phase, is data quality and data management. The key success factor in nearly all approaches to marketing, but especially with ABM, is (1) knowing your customer(s) and (2) leveraging what you know (i.e., data) in order to send relevant messaging that facilitates the buying journey. Your CRM is necessary, of course, but doing ABM right requires accessing and leveraging even more customer data, having the capacity to transform data into actionable business intelligence, and then acting upon that relevant data in a timely manner that enables conversion and supports the buying journey. Like all marketing, ABM must be fueled by the right data, the right metrics, the right reporting, and the right technology/automation to fuel the whole program. 7 major trends in ABM The Demandbase report lays out 10 major trends in ABM. Let’s examine some of these trends in-depth: ABM budgets are rising. As companies see strong results from either full programs or pilots, more investments are being made into ABM. Investments increased by an impressive 40% year-over-year, from 2019 to 2020. That momentum will only grow as more ABM programs get off the ground and show positive results, attracting even more investment. ABM measurement remains problematic. The report shows that companies are strongest in driving marketing-sales alignment to support ABM, but weakest in ABM measurement. Obviously, measuring ABM performance is key for driving success and going to bat for more ABM budget, but data management and attribution (i.e., connecting ABM activities to revenues) remains problematic for most companies now “doing” ABM. Traditional lead-based habits remain an obstacle, making ABM measurement harder. Measuring ABM ROI is proving difficult because so many organizations maintain a historic overreliance on lead-based metrics that don’t fit their new ABM models. ABM programs need ABM-appropriate metrics, which seems obvious enough until you realize that only 29% of companies that use ABM are measuring Marketing Qualified Accounts (MQA), according to the report. Measurement matters, but isn’t being done well enough. What was the #1 content topic requested by respondents to the ABM survey? You guessed it: content about ABM measurement. More budget for content and account selection.  In an era of social distancing and everyone working from home, more marketing budget is going towards ABM-related digital content and away from live events and live meetings. More money is also going towards better selection of accounts for ABM programs, as a way to optimize targeting and resource allocation. If done badly, account selection can sink an ABM program faster than almost anything. ABM revenue growth is coming from existing accounts and net-new accounts.  Great news here: the ABM survey shows that a focus on strengthening existing account relationships is a great revenue-booster. The surveyed companies seeing the highest returns from ABM programs “expect their revenues to come equally from net-new logos and existing customer expansion,” says the report. So whether the account is brand new or as old as the hills, ABM works to boost revenues. Poor data quality is limiting ABM efforts.  “Account data quality is an issue that has plagued the success of [ABM], and it remains a constant focus for our survey respondents,” says the report. “Data quality issues were named the #1 challenge for executing ABM in 2020 while improving data quality landed in the top three list of priorities” for next year. Data is what fuels ABM effectiveness, at both the account level and the individual/stakeholder level . Putting “garbage data in” your ABM program means getting “garbage results out.”  Quality data and data management maturity remain, by far, the single biggest drivers of ABM success. The tools for ABM success: CRM, MAP, and Martech . When the survey asked “what tools B2B companies can’t do ABM without,” respondents led with CRM (83%) and Marketing Automation (73%). Any martech tool or app that enhances data quality, helping transform data into real-time, actionable business intelligence, is also a must-have for ABM success. Want to learn even more about setting up an effective ABM program, especially getting your data management maturity right for ABM? Reach out to us here .

As a global telecommunications company based in the UK, O2  is in the business of communication. But the company’s marketing team found itself experiencing problems around its data quality and lack of alignment between marketing and sales. Some six years ago, O2 decided to make a change, working with Sojourn Solutions to enhance its data management processes and drive better internal alignment around lead management. At a recent Virtual Eloqua User Group meeting hosted by Sojourn’s Karin Pindle, O2’s Louise Winch  (Head of Data and Lead Generation) described exactly what O2 did in order to transform its marketing — and detailed the great results the telecommunications company achieved. The formula Winch described may be simple to state, but took time and effort (and budget) to ultimately achieve: better data quality + better campaign management processes = stronger sales-marketing alignment + increased marketing ROI. Technology helps, but an integrated approach is needed Winch began by describing how O2 used its tech platforms, including Salesforce and Eloqua, to improve data quality and better deploy its data for marketing purposes. O2 began “by taking our data management back in-house, meaning we were able to connect things up better internally” and drive alignment, says Winch. Winch also explained that O2 had to “change its communications strategy. We moved to an always-on strategy where we had a full, end-to-end view” of the customer journey. O2 also needed to enhance the skillsets of its team members, turning them into an in-house agency with all the necessary expertise in tech and processes. Sojourn helped the entire way. O2 also implemented a contact washing machine (CWM) to ensure and maintain data quality as data came in, moved through, and got deployed via O2’s Salesforce and Eloqua platforms. Quality data, which O2 now had more control over internally, became “the fuel for our marketing programs” and led to higher-quality leads getting sent on to sales (who converted them into more revenues). Working with Sojourn to drive benefits O2’s improved data quality brought multiple benefits for marketing and sales. Marketing was able to “increase the number of its campaigns while also gaining more efficiency in campaign delivery,” said Winch. She noted that “a blast campaign that used to take us 6 weeks to conduct now takes us just 6 minutes.” Improved data also enabled O2 to segment its customer base and drive engagement/ROI through better targeting of content. O2 worked closely with Sojourn to implement better lead management and lead scoring, as well as better email processes like send time optimization (STO), which led to higher email open rates. Using its contact washing machine, O2 achieved a data completeness rate of nearly 100%, which led to better targeting and improved lead quality. The result of these initiatives? “We’ve now got well-established alignment and trust between sales and marketing, which is a byproduct of having such good data,” says Winch. O2 is on pace for a 62% year-over-year “increase in opportunities handed over to sales in 2020,” says Winch. As Sojourn’s Charlotte Currie, who’s worked closely with Winch and O2 on their transformation efforts, says: “the contact washing machine has taken out a lot of the manual work of ensuring data quality and also helps O2 classify its leads by relevant customer attributes like job function and job title.” Winch summarized O2’s results: “if you have good data, you improve performance.” O2’s lessons learned   Winch shared several key lessons learned along O2’s journey to better data, better lead generations, and tighter marketing-sales alignment. Here’s a few highlights: “Set the bar high, but remain realistic. If you want world-class data, it won’t happen overnight.” “Document your processes” to support scaling and sharing of best practices. “Evangelize the benefits of great data to all involved. Keep communicating.” “Automate where you can.” “Continually review results and share insights with the team.” “Look at what content is getting engagement and consider using it for future campaigns.” As a rule, do more of what’s working and less of what’s not. “Change as you go and remain flexible.” The takeaway from Winch’s presentation is clear: O2’s commitment and hard work in driving data quality (and improved data management) increased its ability to  deliver better marketing results through its Salesforce and Eloqua platforms, while also driving internal alignment and more leads that were also higher-quality leads. Perhaps the best result of all for O2 is the increased trust and better collaboration between marketing and sales in closing the loop on leads, converting them into more revenue via a more targeted, data-driven approach to customer engagement.  O2’s impressive results go far beyond simply leveraging technology: O2 has empowered its people and unleashed its processes to work better within a larger, always-on demand generation ecosystem that continues to drive improved performance and revenues. Want help in improving your data quality and transforming your lead generation? Let’s talk !

See post 4 in our MOPs Maturity Benchmarking series:  Improving processes for data and lead management: Post 4 (of 6) . Account-based marketing focuses marketing resources (people, processes, and technology) onto a limited number of key accounts, and it may be the hottest trend in B2B marketing over the past few years. Matt Senatore, Service Director of ABM, SiriusDecisions , explains that ABM programs are gaining traction because they boost marketing return on investment (ROI), “achieving 19% faster revenue growth and 15% higher profitability compared to non-ABM programs.”  This fifth post in our 6-post MOPs Maturity Benchmarking Series will explore the opportunities and challenges of ABM: when implemented properly, ABM programs achieve amazing results  and ROI, but proper ABM implementation is often quite difficult or impossible for too many B2B companies right now. We’ll describe the key obstacles to getting ABM right, and offer suggestions for overcoming them. ABM works, but is woefully underutilized According to our 2019 Marketing Operations Maturity Benchmarking Report , less than 1 in 5 (18%) of mainstream companies have an ABM program in place. This woeful number doesn’t reflect the clear effectiveness of ABM (when done right) in generating revenues, but instead shows a lack of MOPs maturity.  Even among the top-performing B2B companies we surveyed, those with higher levels of MOPs maturity, less than half are using ABM. But those that do have ABM programs are seeing strong positive impacts on revenues. The average increase in customer engagement with ABM programs, compared to non-ABM, was an impressive plus 20%, according to SiriusDecisions. ABM programs “result in higher ROI, bigger deals, and increased win rates,” compared to non-ABM approaches, says Matt Senatore. Obstacles to implementing ABM While we know that ABM programs work, a big question looms: why aren’t more companies launching them? As Dan Vawter , managing director of Sojourn Solutions, explains, “setting up an effective ABM program takes maturity in selecting the right accounts, getting the right people involved, pulling the right systems together, deciding how to message those key accounts, and through which channels, and then being able to measure results. ABM isn’t just about marketing, but requires aligning and coordinating people and systems from sales, IT, and other departments.” Among the biggest obstacles for B2B companies in implementing ABM, beyond integrating technology and systems across departments, is coordinating people who don’t traditionally work together: “that’s a key reason why so few companies do ABM,” says Vawter, “because it requires people to actually talk to each other who aren’t in the same departments, and they’re all using different systems, and all that coordination is very hard to pull off inside a big company.” ABM is NOT a technology, but a marketing approach that requires focusing often-disjointed resources onto a few key accounts. “It makes complete sense to talk to a handful of accounts about what’s super-relevant to them,” Vawter says, “but it’s also very difficult for B2B companies to do ABM well. There are platforms out there today that help, but companies need to customize their own ABM programs, coordinating their people, processes, and technology around the chosen accounts. They aren’t usually set up to do this ‘ABM groundwork’ well.” Understanding what is working or not is critical in ABM programs where lots of funds are being spent on a small number of accounts. ABM requires a more holistic approach To get ABM right, B2B companies must effectively coordinate cross-channel and interdepartmental communications to deploy their resources and messaging within fewer accounts. Among the biggest hurdles to ABM is enabling personalization through the full buyer journey. Getting the relevant message to each contact within an account to help them decide to purchase your product is quite difficult but essential for ABM success.“ Most companies don’t have the ability to look at all of those different account touchpoints holistically,” explains Vawter. “If they have a marketing automation platform, maybe they can look at the email channel in a silo, and maybe they can look at their web traffic in a silo. Maybe they can look at offline separately. Maybe they can look at their sales activity, separately. But they’re not looking at everything in one place, which ABM demands.” According to our MOPs Maturity Benchmarking report, a mere 14% of mainstream companies can gain insights from data in order to help them drive ABM program effectiveness. That’s a massive visibility problem that can render ABM programs a no-go from the beginning. “If you don’t look at account data holistically,” says Vawter, “then you’re going to  make mistakes because you’re looking with tunnel vision at this very narrow piece of the entire customer journey that includes all of those different contacts across that account. You won’t be able to accurately measure and attribute results to specific marketing actions.”  Without this necessary visibility into the customer journey on each account, an ABM program becomes a useless game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, leading B2B marketers nowhere as they flail around to connect their many actions to specific outcomes. You can’t “do” ABM wearing a blindfold. Measurement matters too While setting up an ABM program is difficult, compelling you to resolve challenges around disjointed systems and departments, another big obstacle is gaining visibility into your customer’s journey and measuring results. If you can’t track key ABM metrics, ABM becomes impossible to scale, which is likely why most companies simply don’t launch or scale up ABM programs.  A lack of capacity to measure ABM effectiveness damages you in two existential ways: first, you won’t be able to drive ABM improvement or optimization if you don’t have visibility into what’s working or not, and second, you can’t make a business case for expanding your ABM program if you have no relevant metrics/results to show your C-suite leadership team. You might be driving success with a small-scale, pilot ABM program, but you won’t be able to explain why it’s working — which is frankly embarrassing and makes it impossible to gain leadership buy-in for scaling up ABM success. Getting help from outside advisors with experience implementing ABM (and measuring its success) can be a key step in overcoming challenges, especially around coordinating your people and processes, as well as enhancing your data capabilities to support ABM. “It takes a lot of MOPs maturity to do ABM well,” notes Vawter, “but the B2B companies that are mature enough to do ABM are seeing superior results in accelerating their revenues.” Gaining sufficient MOPs maturity to implement ABM may be the fastest way available to achieve competitive advantage. Many of our customers struggle with where to begin in regards to ABM. Analyzing your existing tech stack and understanding your gaps – especially around data – are both critical to success. We can help –  contact us  to get the conversation started. To learn more about how to take your MOPs maturity to the next level, download our  2019 Marketing Operations Maturity Benchmarking Report . Note: The next and final post  (of six) in our MOPs Maturity Benchmarking series will focus on why it’s important for B2B companies and MOPs to have processes in place for: (1) identifying technology gaps (2) choosing the right martech for their needs (3) getting the “right” people to support the tech and (4) knowing HOW to work effectively with vendors.

Account Based Marketing, or ABM, is a B2B marketing strategy that concentrates sales and marketing resources onto a defined set of target accounts and leverages personalized campaigns designed to resonate with each account. ABM is one of the biggest marketing trends of the last few years, leveraging strategic focus and personalization to drive marketing ROI. SiriusDecisions  explained the what, why, and how of ABM in a recent webinar, “The State of ABM 2019,” which provided insights and tips based on SiriusDecisions own research. Matt Senatore , Service Director of ABM, SiriusDecisions, began “The State of ABM 2019” by explaining the positive impacts ABM has on revenues: it achieved 19% faster revenue growth and 15% higher profitability compared to non-ABM marketing efforts. Nicky Briggs , Research Director of ABM, SiriusDecisions, added that “ABM is an accelerator because it yields better results and facilitates alignment” of marketing, sales, and other business areas. Setting up an ABM program: 5 key factors Senatore and Briggs explored 5 key factors related to setting up and effectively running an ABM program, including: (1) defining program strategy, goals, and alignment; (2) program planning and execution; (3) measuring results; (4) ABM team design and skill development; (5) infrastructure (including technology). There’s no “one-size-fits-all” approach to ABM, and “organizations deploy multiple ABM models, including large-account marketing, named-account marketing, and industry ABM,” said Senator. In addition, an organization’s access to data and its existing systems/tech stack may impact what it can do in terms of ABM strategy and execution. Many organizations will run ABM pilots at small scale, and then take “lessons learned” and enhanced capabilities to implement scaled-up ABM programs down the road. What content and channels drive ABM effectiveness? Briggs cited research showing that the most effective and widely-used content types for ABM programs are: (1) case studies; (2) whitepapers; (3) sales presentations; (4) webinars; and (5) video. So it appears that the best ABM content educates your prospects and provides them with information they can use to drive their internal buying process. In terms of the most effective sales/marketing channels, Senatore noted that face-to-face appeals were most effective in influencing buying decisions, including executive briefings, in-person selling, and live events hosted by the organization applying an ABM approach. ABM programs “need to incorporate relevance and personalization in order to drive effectiveness,” said Senatore. “When you’re able to do high-touch or face-to-face engagement, it has profound impacts on the buyer.” Of course, every ABM program needs to evaluate content and channel effectiveness through analyzing its own data. “Use your ABM wins and losses to evaluate what works best for you,” suggests Senatore, and then do more of what’s working based on ongoing, data-enabled measurement. Measurement matters a lot, but isn’t done enough Perhaps the most eye-opening insight revealed by the SiriusDecisions research relates to the importance of measuring ABM effectiveness, and the widespread failure of organizations to actually do it. As Briggs noted, “between 40 and 60% of companies are not tracking critical ABM metrics.” This damages your program, notes Briggs, in two big ways: first, you won’t be able to drive improvement/optimization if you don’t know what’s working or not, and second, you can’t make a business case for expanding your ABM program if you have no relevant metrics/results to show your C-suite leadership team. “The future of ABM depends upon accurate measurement of results,” said Senatore. “If you can’t show ROI, you can’t gain buy-in from leadership and your own marketing career may be in trouble.” That’s the bad news, but there’s a lot of ABM-related good news. Turns out that organizations that can  measure their ABM-related metrics see terrific results. The average increase in customer engagement with ABM programs, compared to non-ABM efforts, was an impressive plus 20%. Senatore referenced “higher ROI, bigger deals, and increased win rates” for ABM programs. Compared to non-ABM programs, ABM programs “won 13% more deals and those deals were also 21% larger in size,” said Senatore. “So when you do actually measure ABM metrics, you can prove better results for ABM compared to non-ABM.” Here’s what doesn’t work, according to Senatore: a marketing manager telling the C-suite, “we think, based on anecdotal evidence and good guesses, that our ABM program is working.” You need to prove ROI. ABM goes way beyond martech Setting up an effective ABM program will require integrating your systems and smashing data silos. As Briggs puts it, “you’ll need to begin by analyzing your existing tech stack and understanding your gaps to setting up an ABM roadmap. ABM is a strategy, not a technology.” Getting help from outside can be a key step in understanding your gaps, especially around your data capabilities, and improving your readiness to implement ABM. “Once you know your gaps, go out and talk with potential vendors about available technology, training your people, and driving ABM adoption,” Briggs noted. Another key component of ABM, designing and developing your team, will also take time and effort. And the leaders of those ABM teams need a strong skill set that includes strategic thinking, knowledge of marketing and sales practices, reporting and analytics capabilities, and understanding of technology. As Senatore explains, ABM managers “should be developing themselves while encouraging their team members to pursue skills development.” ABM takes infrastructure and alignment, especially with sales, but it’s also a skill set and a mindset change for all involved. Conclusion: ABM works, more measurement needed The key takeaway from the SiriusDecisions research is clear: ABM works to boost marketing ROI, but too many organizations are setting up programs without being able to measure results/KPIs. Because of this failure to measure, they’re not optimizing what they’re doing through ABM nor convincing leadership to scale up ABM programs through higher budgets. ABM’s effectiveness is loud-and-clear when it’s measured, but if you can’t measure ABM results, you’re asking leadership to take your word for it (which they won’t do for long). “Trust me” might work initially, but “show me the ROI” works best in a business world where ROI rules. Many of our customers struggle with where to begin in regards to ABM. As the SiriusDecisions research states, analyzing your existing tech stack and understanding your gaps – especially around data – are both critical to success. We can help with you both and more!  Contact us  to get the conversation started.   P.S. The SiriusDecisions Summit 2019  is May 5-8 in Austin, Texas! If you’re attending, please visit us at booth K25 to learn more about how we can help you and your marketing organization to run at peak performance.