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Artificial intelligence (AI) has rapidly evolved from a futuristic concept to a practical tool that can transform business operations across industries. For most B2B companies, AI offers a powerful way to enhance marketing operations, providing insights, streamlining workflows, and boosting ROI. However, integrating AI effectively requires careful selection of use cases where it can make the most significant impact. Here’s a look at the best use cases for integrating AI into B2B marketing operations to unlock efficiency, drive better customer engagement, and support data-driven decision-making. Predictive Analytics for Lead Scoring and Qualification Predictive analytics, powered by AI, enables B2B companies to analyze historical and real-time data to predict which leads are most likely to convert. In B2B marketing, where sales cycles can be lengthy and complex, prioritizing the right leads can save time and increase conversion rates. AI can help by: Analyzing customer data  from previous interactions, behaviors, and demographics to assign scores to leads, indicating their likelihood to convert. Identifying patterns  that human analysis might miss, making lead scoring more accurate and data-driven. Improving efficiency in sales handoffs , so sales teams focus on leads with the highest potential. By using predictive lead scoring, B2B companies can improve pipeline efficiency, shorten sales cycles, and focus their resources on high-value prospects. Personalized Content and Messaging AI can enable personalized content experiences on a large scale, which is particularly valuable in B2B marketing, where personalized communication fosters stronger relationships. AI can analyze data from multiple sources to tailor content to each customer’s unique preferences and pain points. Key applications include: Customized email marketing  based on individual engagement history, industry, and past behaviors. Content recommendations  on websites and digital channels, guiding users to the most relevant resources for their needs. Dynamic landing pages  that adapt messaging and content based on visitor data, improving engagement and conversion rates. This level of personalization helps B2B brands nurture relationships, build trust, and increase engagement by delivering relevant and valuable content to each prospect. Chatbots and Automated Customer Support AI-powered chatbots can play a critical role in managing customer support and lead engagement. Unlike traditional chatbots, AI-driven bots can understand complex queries, interact in a human-like manner, and respond with relevant information. In B2B marketing, chatbots can: Provide instant responses  to frequently asked questions, offering value to prospects and customers without requiring human resources. Qualify leads on the website  by asking initial questions and directing qualified leads to sales representatives. Provide 24/7 support , ensuring prospects and customers get help at any time, which is especially useful for global enterprises. By automating these interactions, B2B companies can improve responsiveness, free up human resources, and provide a better experience for website visitors. Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Optimization Account-Based Marketing is a powerful strategy for B2B companies, targeting high-value accounts with personalized marketing efforts. AI enhances ABM by identifying which accounts are most likely to convert and offering insights into the most effective ways to engage them. AI can: Segment and prioritize accounts  based on data such as engagement history, purchase behavior, and fit score. Deliver personalized content  and ads to specific accounts, ensuring they see messaging tailored to their industry and pain points. Analyze ABM campaigns  in real-time, identifying which strategies resonate most with target accounts and making adjustments as needed. With AI-driven ABM, companies can improve their chances of closing high-value deals while maximizing the ROI of targeted marketing efforts. Predictive Content Creation and Optimization Creating relevant and engaging content is crucial for B2B marketing, but identifying what will resonate with a specific audience can be challenging. AI can analyze audience data, search trends, and engagement metrics to recommend topics, keywords, and formats that are most likely to perform well. For B2B companies, AI can: Generate content ideas  based on trending topics and commonly asked questions within the industry. Optimize existing content  by identifying gaps and suggesting keywords or format adjustments to improve SEO performance. A/B test different versions of content  to determine which resonates best with target audiences. Using AI to guide content strategy allows B2B companies to create more effective, targeted content that drives engagement and supports demand generation. Dynamic Pricing and Quoting In B2B markets, pricing can be complex, often based on factors like order volume, customer relationship, and competitive conditions. AI can streamline the process by analyzing relevant data to suggest optimal pricing for each customer. With AI-driven pricing and quoting, B2B companies can: Automate quote generation , speeding up the process and reducing manual errors. Suggest pricing adjustments  based on factors like industry trends, demand, and competitor pricing. Optimize discounts and offers  to balance profitability with customer acquisition goals. Dynamic pricing and quoting allow B2B companies to stay competitive and respond quickly to market changes, helping them close deals faster and with greater precision. Enhanced Customer Segmentation and Targeting AI can significantly improve customer segmentation, allowing B2B companies to identify highly specific customer groups based on data like industry, company size, purchase history, and engagement levels. With AI-enhanced segmentation, companies can: Create micro-segments  that capture unique customer needs and preferences. Target campaigns more accurately , sending the right message to the right segment. Adapt segments in real-time  as new data becomes available, ensuring marketing is always relevant. AI-driven segmentation helps B2B companies craft personalized messaging that resonates more deeply, which can improve conversion rates and campaign performance. Sales Forecasting and Pipeline Analysis Accurate sales forecasting is essential for resource allocation, budgeting, and goal setting. AI can analyze historical data, current pipeline status, and external factors to provide more accurate predictions of future revenue. For B2B marketing and sales teams, AI can: Predict revenue trends , helping teams set realistic targets and adjust strategies based on forecasted demand. Optimize pipeline management , identifying bottlenecks and prioritizing high-potential deals. Enhance cross-departmental alignment , as forecasting becomes more accurate and reliable, providing clarity for finance, operations, and marketing. AI-enhanced forecasting enables B2B companies to make more informed decisions, allocate resources effectively, and meet revenue goals with greater precision. Customer Retention and Churn Prediction Retaining customers is as critical as acquiring new ones, and AI can help B2B companies anticipate and prevent churn. By analyzing customer behavior, product usage, and engagement patterns, AI can identify customers who may be at risk of leaving. Key applications include: Churn prediction , enabling proactive retention strategies for customers at risk. Customer health scoring , providing insights into how well accounts are being served and where improvement is needed. Upsell and cross-sell recommendations  based on customer behavior and needs, helping to strengthen customer relationships and increase revenue. By anticipating churn and taking action, B2B companies can improve customer retention and maximize lifetime value. Fraud Detection and Security Monitoring With more B2B transactions occurring online, ensuring the security of customer data and transactions is critical. AI’s ability to detect anomalies and unusual patterns can help B2B companies identify potential fraud or security threats in real time. AI-driven fraud detection can: Monitor transactions and account activities  for signs of suspicious behavior. Prevent unauthorized access  by flagging unusual login patterns or usage anomalies. Safeguard sensitive customer data , helping to maintain customer trust and comply with security regulations. AI-powered security measures protect both companies and their customers, reducing risk and strengthening brand reputation. Setting Up AI for Success in B2B Marketing Operations For most companies, integrating AI into marketing operations offers a clear path to optimizing processes, personalizing engagement, and achieving higher ROI. By strategically selecting use cases - like predictive analytics, ABM optimization, and dynamic pricing - companies can unlock the transformative potential of AI while aligning with their specific business goals. The key to success lies in focusing on AI use cases that drive measurable results, continuously refining AI applications, and remaining adaptable to emerging AI capabilities. For companies ready to make the leap, AI in marketing operations isn’t just an opportunity - it’s a competitive advantage.

In the ever-evolving landscape of marketing technology, staying ahead requires not only embracing innovation but also ensuring that your martech stack is optimized for efficiency and effectiveness. A martech stack audit is a powerful tool that can unlock a myriad of benefits for marketers , ranging from cost savings to enhanced performance. In this blog post, we'll delve into the top benefits of conducting a martech stack audit and how it can propel your marketing efforts to new heights. 1. Cost Savings One of the most compelling reasons to audit your martech stack is the potential for significant cost savings. Our research has shown that marketers can reduce their technology spend by an average of 20% within just 12 months.  A comprehensive analysis of your technology infrastructure, expenses, and strategy helps to identify areas of inefficiency and recommendations tailored cost-saving measures. By optimizing your tech stack, you not only save on unnecessary expenses but also allocate resources more effectively. 2. Centralized Oversight In the complex realm of marketing technology, centralized oversight is paramount. A martech stack audit empowers marketing operations teams with the tools and expertise needed to gain full visibility and control over technology spend, utilization, performance, strategy, and skills. Centralized oversight ensures that every component of your tech stack aligns with your overarching business goals, supports your key use cases, and fosters a cohesive and efficient marketing ecosystem. 3. Streamlined Integration Efficient data flow is crucial for marketing success. What does this mean? Mapping your products and integrations to customer journeys, ensuring a seamless flow of data and functionality across your marketing ecosystem. By identifying and eliminating redundant products, functions, and contracts, you're able to optimize your martech stack for maximum efficiency and effectiveness.  A streamlined integration not only enhances workflow but also contributes to a more agile and responsive marketing strategy. 4. Performance Assessment Understanding how well your technology is performing is essential for driving successful marketing campaigns. A martech stack audit assesses technology performance, identifies critical gaps, and provides actionable recommendations to enhance performance, plug gaps, and align technology with your business objectives. This proactive approach ensures that your martech stack is always aligned with your marketing goals and adapts to changes in the market landscape. 5. Skill Alignment The best technology is only as good as the team using it . Lack of skills can lead to underutilization of technology and hinder your return on investment. A martech stack audit addresses this challenge by aligning your team's technology proficiency with your overall technology strategy. We also recommend training and support to ensure your team can fully leverage the potential of your marketing technology stack, maximizing the impact of your marketing efforts. 6. Contract and Vendor Management Clear insights into your contracts and vendor relationships are crucial for making informed decisions. A martech stack audit captures and documents all relevant information, providing a comprehensive view that helps you optimize vendor relationships and make strategic decisions about your technology partnerships. This transparency ensures that you are getting the most value from your technology investments. 7. Governance and Compliance In an era where data compliance and security are paramount, a martech stack audit should include tracking and monitoring governance information. It enables you to establish robust governance protocols and ensure that your marketing technology stack adheres to industry regulations and best practices. This not only protects your brand and customer data but also builds trust with your audience. 8. Understanding Your Ecosystem The martech ecosystem is vast, complex, and ever-evolving. We recommend a single source of truth, acting as a repository for storing information and details on your full stack. A discovery exercise within your martech stack audit helps you identify legacy technology still in operation, as well as your known technologies. By understanding your ecosystem, you can make informed decisions about updates, upgrades, and strategic investments, ensuring that your martech stack evolves alongside your business. Bottom-line? A martech stack audit is not just a one-time task; it's a strategic investment that continuously pays dividends.  From substantial cost savings to enhanced performance and compliance, the benefits are undeniable. By conducting regular audits, marketers can ensure that their martech stack remains a dynamic and powerful asset, driving success in an increasingly competitive digital landscape. Interested in learning more about how a martech stack audit can help you? Check out our Martech Stack Audit services , or simply contact us  today. Update: In late 2023, Thomson Reuters (TR) and Sojourn Solutions (Sojourn) began an ambitious project to optimize the Thomson Reuters marketing technology stack, seeking to create an effective, efficient, and centralized operating model for long-term stack management. The project concluded in 2024 with great success - learn more: A StackTastic Project: How Thomson Reuters Transformed Its Martech Management and Performance.

There are a handful of marketing operations leaders who are at the top of their games, driving themselves, their teams, and seed by their businesses beyond the status quo to achieve leading-edge MOPs performance. They’re the people who are motivating and empowering others, while transforming new ideas into better ways of working.  One such exemplary MOPs leader is Atanas Vasilev , Senior Director, Marketing Operations at Progress Software . Progress is the leading platform for developing and deploying strategic business applications. Progress also enables organizations to effectively manage their data platforms, cloud and IT infrastructure. Vasilev and the Progress MOPs team have partnered with Sojourn Solutions for well over a decade to drive the continuous improvement of their marketing operations.  We spoke recently with Vasilev about how he approaches being a MOPs leader. How do you define success for yourself and the MOPs team you lead? Vasilev: My team and I work to ensure that Progress has 24/7 lead processing. We also make sure we’re the center of excellence for Progress when it comes to marketing technologies, lead management, and supporting the overall demand generation efforts within Progress.  We have pre-defined KPIs that we constantly track and use to measure our success. So our top KPI is not losing one lead, which means that all leads that Progress generates, regardless of the channel, should get processed and stored in Salesforce. Sometimes we might have delays in processing, but we never lose a lead.  We also work to generate valuable insights for the marketing organization that can unlock value and inform how we do campaigns, helping us drive better customer engagement and higher conversion rates.   How did you first come into marketing operations? Vasilev: I spent almost 15 years in digital marketing, so my background is mostly in technology. Now that I’m in marketing operations, I still work in technology to some extent. But I find that marketing operations is a much broader and more mission-critical function for the organization than, say, digital marketing. What skills and experiences are important in your MOPs leadership role? Vasilev: The three pillars of what I and my team do are (1) systems (2) data and (3) process. By process I mean knowing how marketing and sales work, and having very good project management skills to drive operational excellence. Data is so important: a successful marketing operations professional should have a background in, and be comfortable learning about, how data informs what marketing does. People management skills are also crucial, because the work of marketing operations is sometimes stressful. The team is often working on solving challenging problems and are under time pressure. Being a good manager of people helps set the right culture and expectations, so people can be productive and handle the pressure well. How do you approach your professional development?   Vasilev: I approach professional development internally and externally. When it comes to internally, the best way to learn is talking with people in other functions. I might meet with a sales rep and ask them to please walk me through how they closed a deal. What exactly did they do from when they received the lead until they closed it?   I also learn externally from outside partners such as Sojourn Solutions. Our partnership has provided me and my team with a lot of know-how based on Sojourn’s experience gained from working with other companies who might have similar use cases as we do. I also use Forrester to keep track of trends and best practices in marketing operations.   And of course, I receive a lot of input and knowledge from the three big vendors for marketing automation platforms: Oracle, Adobe, and Salesforce. How do you develop your team and give them the resources, skills, and support to be successful?  Vasilev: All of my team members have to become certified experts, in the platforms we use. They take courses around being an Eloqua Implementation Specialist, for instance, or learn project management skills. Learning on the job is important here.  Whenever I hire talent, I look for someone with at least some experience with marketing automation platforms. If you hire someone who has zero experience and knowledge on MAPs, it'll probably take them two years to be effective. The second best hiring criteria is past experience in a marketing role, if you're coming from a demand gen function, for instance, that helps you understand the processes we use. What's been your biggest challenge and your biggest accomplishment as a MOPs leader?  Vasilev: My biggest challenge is that all eyes are on us. Let's say Progress sees a drop in lead volume or lead conversion for a certain product line. Everyone will start asking us what's wrong. Many times nothing is wrong when it comes to, say, Eloqua or the demand gen process itself, but maybe the overall business cycle is slowing down and buyers are losing confidence or budget.   Sometimes, of course, the problem may be with our processes or system or our data. We then have to analyze the situation and come up with good solutions, and quickly.   Our biggest accomplishment is that we never lose a lead. It's 24/7 open running here. We do our job every single day and we help keep the marketing team and overall business running. We provide a platform that’s stable and that works reliably for our people. That’s a source of pride.  How do you use external partners like Sojourn?  Vasilev: There are two main use cases. First, when we need extra hands and we need it now. Unfortunately, things can happen unexpectedly and there might be too many ongoing projects for our team. That’s when we go outside for more hands.  The second and bigger use case is when we don't know something and so need “strategic consulting” because we don't know what we don't know. In such situations, we ask Sojourn to provide us with new ideas for navigating situations that maybe we don't know how to navigate.  Outside consultants have typically seen multiple use cases from different companies and know how to approach building and implementing the right solution for the right use case. Our internal team hasn’t seen all those use cases, nor have we developed and customized different solutions to address them. That’s when we call upon an experienced strategic consultant like Sojourn. Any final thoughts for MOPs professionals? Vasilev: If you are a person who feels fulfillment from the fact that what you've built works and it's mission-critical for the business, then you’ll be right for marketing operations. It’s not a great profession for people who need constant external validation. When I was in digital marketing, the fulfillment came from rebranding or redesigning the whole company website. You built a splashy presentation and showed everyone the cool things you created. You got a lot of attention and maybe some awards. But if you're in marketing ops and doing a really good job, nobody will chat about how great you’re doing. People outside your team maybe don’t even understand what you’re doing.  If you’re not doing a great job and something is going wrong, everyone will want to reach out and tell you. The reward for marketing operations is intrinsic and intangible: no news is good news. As a mentor once told me, the best thing you can do as a manager is to make it so you are no longer needed by your team. You build a solid organization and grow your people so they can do everything without you. If you’d like to improve your Marketing Operations team and maximize the ROI of your marketing operations, we can help. Learn more about us or feel free to reach out directly today!

Citeline , the world’s leading provider of business intelligence in the pharmaceutical and medtech industry, had to set up a completely new Martech infrastructure/Tech stack which involved a new Eloqua marketing automation platform (MAP). What catalyzed the change was Citeline’s being sold by its parent company Informa in 2022. Citeline, formerly Pharma Intelligence, was ultimately acquired by business intelligence giant Norstella, forming a $5 billion global firm. Citeline had to rebrand, becoming one of five brands under the Norstella umbrella. Citeline needed to rapidly de-couple its infrastructure away from Informa. During the transition phase, the Citeline team quickly understood that if it moved forward with both Eloqua and Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC), its legacy platforms, it would incur substantial implementation and maintenance costs, hindering the firm’s progress moving forward. The Big Question The big question Citeline confronted, and which Sojourn helped them answer in the affirmative, was: “Could Citeline manage its operations and continue to effectively run its business without the license costs and complexity associated with SFMC, by leveraging Eloqua alone?” Citeline decided to sunset its SFMC license and migrate to a single instance of Eloqua, migrating all its data, assets, configurations, processes, etc. to the new instance. With new tech being implemented across the Citeline corporate structure and across Citeline’s customer/CX journey, the pressure for Marketing to rapidly launch a new Eloqua instance and seamlessly migrate from its existing/legacy systems was high. Citeline wanted the entire Eloqua migration project completed within an aggressive timeline of 6 months, with the overarching goal of ensuring minimal business impact/revenue disruption. Timing was also important because Citeline faced contractual penalties that would get triggered if it continued to depend upon its legacy infrastructure from Informa. Challenges to Project Success This Eloqua migration initiative marked a significant shift in Citeline's tech architecture, encompassing a new Sales CRM, MAP instance (Eloqua), and Website.  Some challenges Citeline faced in migrating to the new Eloqua instance included: No flexibility on program milestones due to the entire Citeline technology stack being switched at the same time. Failure to switch on time would have resulted in massive costs. Implementing new technology, including a single instance of Eloqua, involved extensive data migration and integration of third-party apps/platforms. All legacy processes and workflows needed to be brought into alignment with the capabilities of the new Eloqua instance. Complex (highly scripted) email campaigns needed to run without disruption to either customers/subscribers or business revenues. Removing SFMC meant replacing workflows and processes, and connecting a new App (Instant Marketing) to Eloqua. Ensuring that all agencies/partners worked well together in order to minimize internal disruption for the Citeline team, which needed to: (1) continue performing their day jobs and (2) prove to their new Norstella investors that they could still generate revenue as this massive transformation was happening. The Citeline team needed to be rapidly trained and enabled to work in the new Eloqua framework, ensuring seamless operational continuity. First Steps: Designing a Customized Eloqua/MAP Solution Citeline brought in Sojourn Solutions as a project partner. In collaboration with the Citeline team, Sojourn swiftly organized and facilitated discovery sessions to create a streamlined blueprint/project framework for an Eloqua roll-out, crafting related timelines and project priorities. High among the project priorities was ensuring flexibility within any planned martech solution in order to accommodate potential new requirements in a fast-moving, rapidly-evolving program. Sojourn, for example, provided deep technical expertise around architecting new ways of delivering Citeline campaigns and integrating with the new CRM and website.   Implementing the Solution The Citeline-Sojourn partnership successfully implemented the new Eloqua instance. In order to minimize disruption to Citeline’s revenue-generating Insights email product, the project team worked successfully to eliminate email deliverability challenges. This ensured email reach and customer engagement, not to mention business/revenue continuity for the critically-important Insights email product.  Citeline’s Insight email was driven by customized content preferences pre-defined by email subscribers. So, the project team collaborated with a development agency to ensure Salesforce Marketing Cloud emails could be created and run within the new Eloqua instance using RSS-type functionality. This would now be delivered through the Instant Marketing app/add-on. Sojourn also provided additional development support to standardize data and support field value updates. Project Deliverables Project deliverables were focused on data migration, asset migration, app/platform integration, new processes and templates launched, as well as user enablement. Here’s a brief summary: 1. All relevant data was migrated from Citeline’s legacy systems into the new Eloqua instance in a timely and accurate fashion.  2. The following Citeline assets were migrated into a new Eloqua framework: 8 ‘always on’ forms including Landing Pages 14 ‘always on’ Campaign Canvases and approximately 35 inflight Campaign Canvases 100 ‘always on’ Emails and approximately 95 inflight Emails 3. The following processes were built: Forms and Lead Score to Salesforce Bi-directional syncs Cleansing processes 4. The following templates were created: 4 key Form templates 12 Campaign Canvas templates 50 Email templates 5. Other deliverables: Users were trained and enabled (see details below) IP warming was completed to ensure quality and business continuity + Preference Center for email subscribers to personalize content Documentation was provided Enabling People and Processes In order to ensure project success and maintain the new platform after its go-live date, Sojourn trained the internal Citeline team on new processes and workflows. It also supported Citeline’s Product Marketing and Campaign teams after go-live by providing hypercare. This included daily platform monitoring to proactively manage any potential problems/issues that might arise and potentially disrupt business continuity. Hypercare also involved daily calls with the project team, including Citeline’s internal people as well as relevant external agencies. Even after the go-live date and in order to support Citeline’s full operational continuity, Sojourn helped support ongoing Eloqua technical and integration requirements. It also delivered hands-on campaign reporting and analysis to Citeline as a way to ease the pressure on Marketing during go-live. KPIs of Project Success: Outcomes The success of the Eloqua migration project was indicated by the following: 1. A single instance of Eloqua was successfully put in place by early July 2023, less than 6 months after the March project kick-off and well within Citeline’s desired timeline. Significant costs (related to licenses and development needs) related to continuing with the legacy SFMC platform were avoided, including an 88% savings on licensing-related costs, as SFMC was sunsetted. 2. Existing SFMC data, journeys and campaigns were successfully migrated and running 'as is’ in Eloqua by June 28, 2023, including 1.6 million emails per month with up to 20 pieces of content each (dynamic content where each recipient can receive different news articles direct from the website). 3.The project developed a Citeline-owned Eloqua instance and migrated it from Informa business systems so Citeline could transition its corporate structure from Informa to Norstella. 4. The project team coordinated the migration with Salesforce workstreams to successfully minimize disruption for Citeline’s commercial team and customers. 5. Because of the low code and no code nature of the solution, software complexity was reduced and Citeline no longer needed a dedicated developer. Marketers saved about half of their time and were able to manage the work with user-friendly functions such as “drag-and-drop.” A Word from Citeline Chris Fowles, Citeline’s Sr Director Technology, Sales & Marketing Business Partner, explained the benefits of the Eloqua migration project this way:   The project goals were achieved, which included getting Citeline away from Informa as well as having us be in control of our own infrastructure and destiny. The initiative was about keeping our business up and running at a time of rapid change. We wanted to avoid having any operational downtime, keeping leads and revenue flowing. We were also hoping not to take a hit to our revenues as we moved our infrastructure away from Informa. Delays would have cost us. Commercially, we actually grew our revenues last year as the project happened, and our number of leads generated have only continued to grow. Regarding the process of working with Sojourn, Fowles said:  Where Sojourn stands above the rest of our partners is in their flexibility. When the project requirements and timelines shifted, Sojourn never made managing these new requirements seem inconvenient to them, although we knew it was indeed inconvenient. At the end of the day, I still don’t know how we managed to do it all in time and within budget, but Sojourn was a big part of that success.  Learn more about how Sojourn Solutions can help improve your Marketing Automation - as well as your Marketing Operations - or feel free to reach out to us today.

By Chuck Leddy, B2B Brand Storyteller, and Charlotte Currie, Global Head of Customer Success at Sojourn Solutions Sojourn Solutions collaborates not only with our customers and their Marketing Operations teams to unlock business value, but we also work closely with leading martech vendors to enhance that value even further. Our team of experienced consultants, whom we proudly call Sojourners, bring deep expertise to every engagement. While we may not claim to have all the answers, our strong partnerships and continuous learning ensure we deliver the best possible outcomes for our customers .  When and who we partner with largely depends upon the specific needs of our customers, in terms of the use cases and needs they have, as well as on the capabilities of the martech vendors we partner with. “We collaborate with our partners to help our customers,” says Kristin Connell,  Global Head of Strategy & Innovation at Sojourn Solutions.   “We partner with Instant Marketing   because they help address and solve some important Eloqua use cases our customers have that Eloqua doesn’t support 'out-of-the-box.' IM has, for example, helped our customers save on licensing fees for other systems used for one-off edge cases. They've also help our customers deliver more personalized and timely engagement through Eloqua, with SMS for example. These benefit - saving money, improving customer experience, and driving more measurable business value - are top reasons why we've invested in our partnership ecosystem with companies like IM." Why We Partner: To Help Customers When our customers need help, they call on us. When we need help, we call on our partner ecosystem to bring in specialized martech or expertise. One of these partners is UK-based Instant Marketing  (IM, hereafter), a technology vendor that offers “instant extensions” for Oracle Eloqua, enabling Eloqua users to easily customize Eloqua features to support their campaigns.  Eloqua users can  decide to build new features and IM can instantly build them for the user. If a customer's Eloqua and/or MOPs team already has JavaScript skills, IM can support them with training, support and consultancy . We partner with Instant Marketing because they allow our MOPs customers to easily customize and build Eloqua apps and extensions that create business value. For example, IM allows Eloqua users to leverage things like: Direct Mail App & Web Push  Personalized Content and Emails Create Custom Apps Directly within Eloqua The synergy between Sojourn Solutions and Instant Marketing is simple. Sojourn is brought in to help MOPs teams work more efficiently, and Instant Marketing helps Eloqua users and MOPs teams by extending Eloqua and building customized solutions that drive business value.  “We tend to work best with people who are experts in the Eloqua space,” says Sam Smith, Director of Instant Marketing. “For example, Sojourn’s team is wonderful at high-level, strategic, and hands-on implementation. But there's only so far that they can go, because there's only so far that Eloqua can go “out-of-the-box.” So Sojourn might handle 75% of their customer's implementation and then they'll reach out and tag us in when it comes to delivering new capabilities that might need custom development.” Partnership in Action Let’s look at specific examples of partnership creating value for our customers. Instant Marketing provides a product called Advanced Email for Eloqua  that enables users to send personalized email messages from personal accounts while including cc, bcc, and attachments, all direct from the Eloqua canvas. When Sojourn worked with Citeline - the world’s leading provider of business intelligence in the pharmaceutical and medtech industry - the customer needed to quickly migrate its Salesforce Marketing Cloud to Eloqua. Citeline generated subscriber revenue by sending highly-customized emails to medical professionals looking for the latest trends and news within the fast-evolving pharmaceutical industry. Citeline, working with Sojourn, had to rapidly sunset its SFMC license and migrate to a single instance of Eloqua, migrating all its data, assets, configurations, processes, etc. to the new Eloqua instance. With new tech being implemented across the Citeline corporate structure (in the middle of a restructuring) and across Citeline’s customer journey, the pressure to maintain the quality and continuity of Citeline’s “Insights Email product” (and the business revenues associated with this flagship product) was enormous.  We knew Instant Marketing could help, so we brought them in. The Challenge  Citeline’s complex and highly-scripted email campaigns needed to run without disruption to either customers/subscribers or business revenues. Removing SFMC from the equation required replacing workflows and processes, and connecting a new App, i.e., Instant Marketing’s Advanced Email for Eloqua, that would allow Citeline to customize high-quality emails at scale. The Sojourn-Citeline project team collaborated with a development agency to ensure Salesforce Marketing Cloud emails could be created and run within the new Eloqua instance using RSS-type functionality, which would be delivered through IM’s Advanced Email for Eloqua. Project Success  The partnership worked: the use of IM’s Advanced Email for Eloqua was central to the success of the Eloqua migration project, and it delivered the following results for Citeline: 1. A single instance of Eloqua, with the ability to customize emails as enabled by Instant Marketing, was successfully put in place less than 6 months after the March project kick-off and well within Citeline’s desired timeline. 2. Significant costs (associated with licenses and development needs) related to continuing with the legacy SFMC platform were avoided, including an 88% savings on licensing-related costs, as SFMC was sunset and the new customized Eloqua solution (with Advanced Email for Eloqua) was brought online. 3. Existing SFMC data, journeys and campaigns were successfully migrated and running 'as is’ in Eloqua using IM’s Advanced Email for Eloqua, including 1.6 million emails per month with up to 20 pieces of content each (dynamic content where each recipient can receive different news articles direct from the website).  4. Because of the low code and no code nature of the Instant Marketing solution, software complexity was reduced and Citeline no longer needed a dedicated developer. Marketers saved about half of their time and were able to manage the work with user-friendly functions such as “drag-and-drop.” Again, the convenience of having an Eloqua email customization at scale made possible by Instant Marketing and their Advanced Email for Eloqua helped with the speed and effectiveness of the solution. Because Sojourn already had an existing relationship with Instant Marketing, it knew precisely what business value IM could bring to the table for the benefit of Citeline.  Other Customer Use Cases for IM Sojourn and Instant Marketing have partnered to help other customers as well: A telecommunications customer of Sojourn is considering using Instant Marketing plug-ins to support omni-channel communication with their customers, including the use of SMS/text messaging with customers from Eloqua.  That same telecomm customer is considering using the Instant Messaging API to send out service communications based on billings and product data, without having to bring the data into Eloqua. Again, IM is supporting convenience and expanding customer capabilities within Eloqua. A healthcare customer of Sojourn is considering leveraging Instant Marketing’s SMS plug-in to increase communication and attendance at their live events. As these customer use cases show, our partnerships are ultimately about doing whatever it takes to help customers succeed. Learn more about how Sojourn Solutions and its vendor partnerships can help improve your Marketing Operations . Feel free to reach out  to us today.

By Chuck Leddy, B2B Brand Storyteller Sojourn partners with multiple martech vendors in order to expand our capacity to help our customers. We recently had a conversation with one of our partners, UK-based Instant Marketing, about when and why we partner.  Participants in this conversation included Sam Smith, Director of Instant Marketing, Carl Cooke, Customer Success Manager of Instant Marketing, and Charlotte Currie, Global Head of Customer Success at Sojourn Solutions. The following is an edited transcript of the discussion. What should people know about Instant Marketing? Smith:  We help our customers extend Eloqua out-of-the-box, Eloqua might cover half of a particular customer’s use cases. Of the remaining half, maybe 25% are use cases for which we have connectors for out of the box. Eloqua is great, but I wish it did more channels and ad targeting. The remaining 25% of use cases might call for custom solutions. An Eloqua user might have a requirement that's so unique that no one else has ever had it before. So we address two categories of requirements: (1) either the need for Eloqua extensions or (2) a unique need where we can build a customized Eloqua solution. Cooke:  We've seen numerous cases where Eloqua users come to us with an “impossible task” and are looking at Eloqua alternatives. The customer doesn't recognize that the “impossible” use case can actually be done within Eloqua. That's where we step in and help. How does Instant Marketing deliver value through partnering with Sojourn?  Smith:  We tend to work well with experts in the Eloqua space. Sojourn’s team is wonderful at both defining the vision for the project and for high-level, strategic, and hands-on implementation. But there's only so far that they can go because there's only so far that Eloqua can go “out-of-the-box.” So Sojourn might handle 75% of the client's implementation and then they’ll reach out to us when it comes to delivering new capabilities that may need custom development. Currie:  For us at Sojourn, the partnership is about having the shared goal of extending what our customers think is achievable within Eloqua. We're very much about understanding what the goals of our customers are, and then helping them achieve what they’re trying to achieve. Sam, Carl, and the Instant Marketing team work in exactly the same way. Our collaboration works because we’ve forged a partnership based upon going above and beyond for our customers. What’s the process of working with Sojourn on customer use cases? Smith: Our working relationship is founded on mutual respect and mutual competence. Sojourn is very good at what they do and we're quite good at what we do, which is the development of add-ons. It all comes down to the client making an ask to Sojourn, who will try to figure out if they can achieve the ask within Eloqua “as is.” If not, the next step would be requesting some kind of customization – and that’s where Instant Marketing excels. Cooke: The trust and transparency between us and Sojourn are key. We all communicate really well to understand and deliver on customer needs. Again, there's nobody passing the buck or avoiding accountability. We all own the challenges and take responsibility for developing the solutions for customers. Currie:  From Sojourn’s perspective, we know what we can do and we know what we cannot do, but we also know what we can do together, which is a more expansive approach to serving customer needs. Instant Marketing is an extension of our team and vice versa. We're not crossing over in terms of capabilities, and we know there are experts within both entities and in multiple subject areas who can come together and deliver significant and sometimes-unexpected business value for our customers.  What are the various use cases that Instant Marketing can address for customers? Smith:  A quick win would be adding new channels. So we let you orchestrate across more channels, including SMS, WhatsApp, push notifications, web push app, push ad targeting, Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc. Direct mail postcards. A quick win might be to take your investment and leverage it in more channels.  A more complex win is achieving a weird, unique, but necessary requirement. That might mean a custom integration, it might mean some kind of custom logic. It might be calling out to AI, or using AI to generate unique content for each individual. So the simple use cases are around adding campaign channels, and the more complex ones are around unique customizations. Can you offer a specific example where partnership with Sojourn helped a customer resolve a challenging use case?   Smith:  One customer, a specialized publisher, wanted to take their vast amount of content published each day and let their users provide topic preferences. These content preferences were so granular that each user gets their own unique content subset based on pre-determined keywords or categories. So these were highly-personalized emails, but it would not have been possible to send this personalized content without the client’s use of our Advanced Email for Eloqua.  The impact was simply that Eloqua became viable because the customer needed to find a way to make it happen, and fast. If they couldn’t do the customized emails inside of Eloqua, then they just didn’t have a good plan B. It would've meant building some staggeringly complex tool from the ground up or migrating to a completely different marketing automation platform. What that looks like to a C-suite executive is a succession of rapid and potentially-costly migrations to different marketing tools because you just can't make it work within Eloqua. That would have been a massive headache on so many levels, which we helped them avoid. Any other customer use cases you want to highlight? Smith:  One of the most sophisticated customer use cases we’ve addressed was a home service client that used SMS to dispatch third-party service providers. The service client’s customer would get an SMS message saying, hey, we're sending the service engineer to your house at a specific time. And the service provider would text their customers just after the appointment to see if the service technician had showed up. So this customer was using the SMS channel operationally to hold their army of 3rd-party contractors to account. If you have a second channel, for instance, you can double or increase by a third the impact on revenues, while you're only increasing costs by 3 to 5%. You're also fostering better relationships with your customers. You're getting seen more. You're diversifying your portfolio of communications methods.  Any final thoughts on partnering with Sojourn? Smith:  Sojourn is   highly-competent and very organized, and they know what they're talking about. Their consultants are excellent. It's a team effort, but people like Charlotte have worked to develop the customer relationship in order to make us feel like we’re a seamless part of the team when we come in. We really do go beyond simply referrals – we actually work closely together with Sojourn on behalf of customers so they can achieve their business goals. Our combined approach can achieve a level of success that the customer just wouldn't have expected otherwise. When you're vetting your consultancies, you can go to Sojourn and say, “what does ‘good’ look like to you? You’ll be pleasantly surprised at just how good good can actually be with a combined approach to achieving customer success. Note:  Our partnerships are ultimately about doing whatever it takes to help our clients succeed. Learn more about how Sojourn Solutions and its vendor partnerships can help optimize your Marketing Operations . Feel free to reach out  to us today.

In the world of B2B marketing, data is everything. But not just any data - clean, accurate, and well-managed data. As organizations lean on increasingly complex marketing technology stacks to drive revenue, the health of your marketing database can be the silent factor that determines the success or failure of your entire marketing strategy. If you’ve been wondering whether your marketing database could be holding your team back, now is the time to evaluate its health. Poor data quality leads to wasted resources, missed opportunities, and even damage to your brand’s reputation. In contrast, healthy marketing data ensures more personalized and effective campaigns, higher conversion rates, and stronger relationships with prospects and customers. Why Database Health is the Foundation of B2B Marketing Success Your marketing database is more than just a collection of names and emails - it’s the backbone of your entire demand generation strategy. Each data point feeds into critical marketing operations, from segmentation and audience targeting to reporting and automation. Here’s how a healthy database directly impacts key areas of B2B marketing: Targeting & Personalization: When your data is accurate, you can better segment your audience and deliver personalized content. Healthy data allows for more precise targeting, meaning your messaging hits the mark every time, resulting in better engagement and conversion rates. Email Deliverability: Poor data quality can wreak havoc on your email deliverability. Invalid email addresses, outdated contacts, or even simple errors like typos can cause your emails to bounce or be marked as spam. A clean, healthy database means your emails reach more inboxes, improving your deliverability score and the overall success of your email marketing campaigns. Compliance & Trust: With increasing data privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA, a poorly managed database can lead to serious compliance issues. By maintaining a healthy database, you’ll ensure that your organization meets all regulatory requirements while fostering trust with your audience. Operational Efficiency: A healthy database reduces the friction caused by errors and inconsistencies in data, which can slow down marketing operations. By prioritizing database health, your team will spend less time troubleshooting and more time focusing on strategic initiatives that drive growth. Guidelines for Managing Marketing Database Health To ensure your marketing database remains a strategic asset and not a liability, follow these proven guidelines for maintaining and improving its health: Regular Data Audits:  Schedule regular audits of your database to identify and clean outdated, incomplete, or duplicate records. This ensures that you’re working with up-to-date and accurate information, helping you avoid costly mistakes and ineffective campaigns. Standardize Data Entry:  Implement standardized data entry protocols to ensure consistency across your entire database. This could involve using uniform naming conventions, required fields for contact information, and automated tools that flag data entry errors in real-time. Invest in Data Enrichment:  Use third-party services to enrich your existing database with additional information, such as company size, industry, and job roles. This allows you to create more personalized and targeted marketing campaigns. The key is to fill in any gaps in your data while enhancing the overall value of your database. Monitor and Improve Email Deliverability:  Poor deliverability rates can signal issues within your database. Ensure email addresses are validated at regular intervals, remove hard bounces, and pay attention to soft bounces and unsubscribes to maintain a strong sender reputation. Implement Data Hygiene Tools:  Consider leveraging automated data hygiene tools that can continually clean and deduplicate your database. Tools like BriteVerify  can help you validate emails and reduce the risk of bounces, ensuring your campaigns reach the right people. Align Data with Business Processes:  Your marketing database should align with the broader business processes across sales, marketing, and customer service teams. Ensure that data is shared effectively across departments and that any insights are communicated clearly, helping to maintain consistency and drive alignment across all functions. Comply with Data Privacy Regulations:  Stay on top of global data privacy regulations, such as GDPR and CCPA, by maintaining clear records of consent and opt-ins for all your contacts. Make sure your database management includes processes for handling consent and responding to data requests, ensuring your organization remains compliant. Segmentation and Targeting:  Build and maintain accurate segments within your database for more personalized and relevant marketing. Use clean data to create specific groups based on demographics, behavioral insights, or firmographics, which can dramatically improve your engagement and conversion rates. By following these tried-and-tested guidelines, you can keep your marketing database in top shape and ensure that it consistently drives results. Database health isn’t just a one-time effort - it’s an ongoing process that requires dedication and the right tools to maintain. Assessing Your Database Health: Are You Ready So now we know why marketing database is important - and how to get on track to achieve it - but before you can fix any issues, it’s essential to assess the current state of your database. Is it outdated, incomplete, or inconsistent? Does it align with the marketing and business processes you’ve implemented? A comprehensive database health assessment will give you a clear picture of where you stand and what steps to take next. To get started, try our Database Health Quiz , a quick and easy way to uncover hidden issues in your database and get tailored recommendations for improvement. The quiz covers all the key areas of database health, from data accuracy to deliverability and business process alignment. Your results will help you prioritize the most critical improvements and set your team on a path to better performance. Take the quiz and see how your database measures up. Invest in Your Database, Invest in Your Success The best marketing technology and the most sophisticated strategies are only as effective as the data that powers them. Don’t let poor database health hold your B2B marketing organization back. By investing in a healthy, well-managed database, you can unlock new levels of efficiency, improve your campaign outcomes, and ensure long-term success for your business. Ready to take the next step? Start by assessing your database health today with our Database Health Quiz . It could be the most important step you take toward driving real results in your marketing efforts. That being said, if you've got questions, feel free to contact us to get a conversation started.

In today’s digital-first world, webinars are a powerful tool for marketers to engage audiences, generate leads, and establish thought leadership. But simply hosting a webinar isn't enough - effective webinars require seamless execution, audience engagement, and detailed insights to optimize performance. This is where Marketo’s Interactive Webinars, a feature of Adobe Marketo Engage, excels. Marketo offers an all-in-one solution for planning, executing, and analyzing webinars, helping businesses unlock the true potential of this format. If you are considering enhancing your virtual events, here’s why Marketo’s Interactive Webinars might just be the game-changer you need. Seamless Integration with Adobe Connect One of the standout features of Marketo’s Interactive Webinars is its integration with Adobe Connect , a robust platform that makes running virtual events smoother. This direct integration means you don’t have to manage multiple tools or switch between platforms to host a webinar. From within the Marketo interface, users can plan, promote, and execute webinars with ease. This seamless integration also reduces friction when preparing for an event, ensuring that everything, from registration to post-event follow-ups, flows naturally. Having an integrated system helps businesses save time and resources by centralizing their webinar efforts on one platform, making the whole process more efficient and reducing the risk of technical issues. Customizable Webinar Experiences Personalization is crucial in today’s marketing landscape, and Marketo’s Interactive Webinars allow marketers to create highly customizable events. Whether you want your event to reflect your brand’s aesthetic or tailor the experience based on the audience segment, Marketo provides customizable templates that allow you to design each aspect of the webinar. These templates give your webinars a professional look and feel while aligning with your brand guidelines. This level of customization not only enhances the user experience but also helps convey a more cohesive brand message to your audience. Real-Time Audience Engagement Engagement is one of the biggest challenges during webinars. It’s easy for attendees to become passive listeners rather than active participants, which can limit the effectiveness of your message. However, Marketo’s Interactive Webinars come packed with a suite of tools designed to maximize attendee engagement in real time. These features include: Live Q&A Sessions : Engage attendees by answering their questions during the webinar, creating a two-way dialogue. Polls and Surveys : Gather insights from your audience on the spot with live polls and surveys, which also help keep them involved. Interactive Chat : Foster interaction among attendees and between them and the presenters through a chat function that encourages real-time communication. These features ensure that your webinars aren’t just one-way presentations but interactive events where audience participation is encouraged and valued. Lead Generation and Qualification Webinars are not just for delivering content—they’re powerful lead generation tools. One of the greatest advantages of Marketo’s Interactive Webinars is the platform’s ability to track detailed engagement data from each attendee. Every interaction, from chat participation to poll responses, can be monitored and recorded, providing valuable insights into how engaged an attendee is with your content. Marketo’s platform automatically captures and scores leads based on their level of engagement during the event. This allows your marketing and sales teams to follow up more effectively with highly interested prospects, targeting them with personalized post-event content. With Marketo’s automation, you can easily set up workflows that send targeted emails based on attendee behavior, helping nurture leads more efficiently. Comprehensive Analytics and Reporting Post-webinar analysis is essential for understanding the success of your event and making improvements for future webinars. Marketo provides comprehensive analytics and reporting  that go beyond simple metrics like registration numbers or attendee lists. The platform tracks key performance indicators (KPIs) such as: Attendance and Drop-off Rates : See who stayed for the entire webinar and who left early, helping you assess the quality of your content or timing. Engagement Metrics : Track how actively participants engaged through questions, polls, and other interactions. Conversion Data : Monitor how many attendees converted into leads or customers, providing a clear ROI for your efforts. These analytics not only help you measure success but also offer actionable insights that can inform your future marketing strategy. The more data you collect, the better you can optimize your content and approach for future webinars. Streamlined Automation for Efficiency Managing a webinar, especially at scale, requires efficient processes. Marketo’s automation features handle many of the repetitive tasks that can bog down your team. From sending automated registration reminders to follow-up emails, Marketo helps automate key aspects of webinar management, so your team can focus on delivering great content rather than administrative work. By automating the workflow surrounding your webinars, you ensure that nothing falls through the cracks, and attendees are nurtured throughout the entire process—from registration to post-event engagement. This allows marketers to focus on strategy and content while Marketo handles the backend tasks that can take up valuable time. Scalable and Flexible Solution Whether you're hosting small niche webinars or large-scale global events, Marketo's Interactive Webinars can scale to meet your needs. The platform’s flexibility means you can run multiple webinars simultaneously, target different audience segments, and personalize content at scale. This scalability makes it an ideal solution for businesses of all sizes looking to use webinars as part of their larger demand generation strategies. Marketo’s Interactive Webinars provide an all-encompassing solution for businesses looking to create engaging, data-driven, and scalable virtual events. The combination of seamless integration with Adobe Connect, real-time audience engagement tools, and powerful lead generation and analytics capabilities makes it a standout platform in the world of digital marketing. By leveraging these tools, marketers can not only deliver impactful content but also gain valuable insights to refine their future strategies. If you’re ready to take your webinar game to the next level, Marketo’s Interactive Webinars offer the ideal platform to engage audiences, drive demand, and generate leads efficiently. For more information, visit Marketo's Interactive Webinars Overview . Or contact us to see how we can help get you started!

Smurfit Westrock , which operates in 40 countries with 100,000+ employees, is a global leader in sustainable paper and packaging solutions. The B2B company has grown over the years both organically and by acquisition. While Sojourn Solutions has been helping Smurfit Westrock transform its marketing operations since 2017, a primary focus of the last 3 years has been on lead management. We recently spoke with Hee Suk Ko , Director of Enterprise Marketing for Smurfit Westrock, about the company’s lead management challenges, and how they were tackled. What follows is an excerpted version of that conversation:  What were the biggest challenges Smurfit Westrock faced around lead management? Ko: Our primary challenge was limited visibility into lead progression through the funnel. Previously, leads would be handed off to sales without a unified process for follow-up or optimization of the lead-to-conversion process. While certain divisions and teams may have had more mature processes, holisitically, we lacked comprehensive visibility to share learnings and improve our lead quality, lead velocity and closed/won deals.  What was the impact of that previous lead management process on (1) the relationship between marketing and sales, and (2) the customer experience?  Ko: The lack of visibility resulted in inconsistency in both the relationship between marketing and sales and in the customer experience. Some sales team members were eager to receive leads regardless of quality, while others might disregard leads they deemed insufficient. This disparity created misalignment in the customer experience where marketing communications often failed to align with the actual buyer journey and sales interactions. What needed to change?  Ko: We needed to standardize our approach and definitions regarding lead quality and scoring across the organization. Despite having a unified CRM, its usage and data quality were inconsistent. We had to develop a formal framework for lead quality and scoring and streamline the process for sales to follow up on leads, ensuring we – both marketing and sales – could track whether leads were accepted or not as well as their dispositions.  How did you go about working with Sojourn to gain more visibility into the customer journey? Ko: We began by consolidating data from our CRM and marketing automation platform to create initial enterprise marketing attribution dashboards. We then focused on standardizing the definition of a marketing qualified lead (MQL) and tracking key metrics such as MQL acceptance rates, contact rates, and conversion opportunities with each business unit and corresponding sales leaders.  This process evolved into a more holistic approach, incorporating data from additional sources like our web analytics platform and internal financial systems to enrich our understanding of our prospects and customers.  Note from Sojourn:   Smurfit Westrock’s Eloqua-Salesforce integration was updated to match its current business needs (each campaign response would create a new Lead (MQL) in Salesforce.).  The work included changing the lead model, lead assignments, and adding new fields for Lead/Opportunity objects to the integration, and adjusting the sync'd campaign fields.  Overall, these changes meant giving Sales greater context into Leads, and more rich data being available for Marketing to use in segmentation and scoring.  How did these changes impact how marketing and sales worked together? Ko: The improved visibility has fostered a more collaborative approach between marketing and sales. We’re now more intentional and data-driven in our resource allocation for external activities such as trade shows and campaigns. Collectively, we have a better understanding of our customers’ buying journeys, which allows us to identify gaps, improve channel performance, and optimize our targeting. This improved visibility ultimately drives better orchestration, engagement, and conversion rates.  What changes were made with your technology infrastructure and data? Ko: We enhanced our existing CRM-marketing automation platform integration to provide sales with more comprehensive and up-to-date lead information relevant to their division and end market segments. We implemented a contact validation tool and a thorough data cleanup process. Additionally, we optimized our form fields to ensure sales had sufficient information to effectively evaluate and follow up on leads. While we have made great improvements, we recognize that this is an iterative process as we introduce new data sources, technologies, and teams.  Note from Sojourn:  We created dashboards to analyze marketing's influence on revenue, while allowing analysis of channel, buyer role, and buyer journey.  All analysis is split by division giving insight into regional/solution and product differences. Sojourn's recommendations have covered:  (1) optimization of targeting by buyer role in the buying group, (2) optimization of segmentation, including earlier identification of contacts and increasing use of automation to manage contacts across the buying group, (3) optimization of channels, including which channels to prioritize because of their impact on pipeline and revenue. What have been the main benefits of the transformation? Ko: Tangibly, we’ve achieved significant cost and time savings that will compound over time. We now have greater visibility into the buyer journey and marketing influence, all while tracking conversion rates by division to have more informed decision-making conversations with our sales leaders. This improved visibility has also built trust in our data as well as within marketing and sales relationships, both of which were previously lacking and/or inconsistent across teams.  Marketing and sales teams now engage in data-informed conversations about lead prioritization and lead allocation. There’s been a cultural shift, with a heightened appreciation for lead management and tracking capabilities. The ability to have a 360-degree view of customers has become increasingly valuable, especially as we continue our focus on first-party data and consider factors beyond just closing deals, such as payment behavior and cross-selling opportunities. Note from Sojourn: $250K cost savings in FY24 when compared to implementing a productized attribution tool. 85% reduction in event data processing time (7 days reduced to 24 hours), thus speeding up follow-up emails and sending more timely, relevant communications. Open and click through rates improved 14.78% and 17.80% respectively, showing a positive trend in email engagement. What capabilities has Sojourn contributed to Smurfit Westrock? Ko: Sojourn brings two critical areas of expertise: 1. technical knowledge of our tools, integrations, and backend systems and 2. a strategic partnership that understands the nuances of our organization. Our day-to-day partners at Sojourn have been able to adapt to our needs, provide best practices, and offer insights from their consultative experiences while recognizing our unique challenges and requirements at Smurfit Westrock to build authentic relationships internally with sales and externally with our customers.  Learn more about how Sojourn Solutions can help improve your   Marketing Operations  - or feel free to   reach out  to us today.

B2B marketers have seen AI integrated into their martech tools for a while now. Some of the most popular AI use cases include conversational chatbots, email send time optimization (STO), and email subject line optimization (SLO) to name just a few. These limited forms of AI have been deployed to work on specific tasks. They've pulled from limited sources of data in order to “learn,” such as using a specific company’s digital knowledge base to inform how a conversational chatbot interacts with customer queries. Generative AI: ChatGPT launches On November 30, 2022, ChatGPT  (a free tool) was launched with much fanfare and has garnered widespread attention since then for its potential to transform B2B marketing content creation, from blog posts to emails to landing pages. Many copywriters and creative marketing types have wondered whether the emergence of ChatGPT - also called “generative AI” because it learns/trains itself based on a larger scope of online source data - would mean the end of their jobs. Some human writers have criticized ChatGPT for simply parroting the vast scope of online content it “learns” from, but if deployed effectively this AI parrot can sound pretty good. However, no matter how “well-trained” ChatGPT becomes on the back of human-generated content, it should not be used without a human reviewing the resulting content because: The generated content can be inaccurate.  For instance, if the majority of the source data ChatGPT scours through says “the moon is made of cheese” or “2 + 2 = 5,” its generated content would reflect that collective “wisdom.” Remember that ChatGPT is a form of large-scale crowdsourcing of information, with all the risks such an approach entails.  The generated content can “sound wrong,”  in terms of your desired tone and brand voice. You’d need a human marketer to review tone. The generated content might be non-compliant  with privacy standards and other strategic considerations defined by the B2B brand’s content strategy and guidelines.  Typing a generic prompt into ChatGPT (“write a landing page about our new product”), generating unreviewed content, and then deploying said content for your B2B marketing needs can create more brand harm than good. Like any tool, ChatGPT is best deployed by a knowledgeable and experienced practitioner who has a clear strategic direction and understands how to use the tool. ChatGPT for B2B Marketing: 2 warnings As a general rule, you should approach ChatGPT the way former President Ronald Reagan dealt with the old Soviet Union: “trust, but verify.” Why? 1. Generated content can be wrong or biased.  B2B marketers should never forget the oldest maxim in the world of data: “garbage in, garbage out.” The garbage can show up as inaccurate information and biased opinions that ChatGPT pulls from (or crowdsources). You need to be skeptical and check whatever content ChatGPT generates for you. 2. The quality of your prompts impacts content quality.  Veteran marketing copywriter David McGuire used ChatGPT for the first time, as described in his blog post , and quickly discovered that the quality of the generated content was closely related to the quality of his queries/prompts. McGuire found that the process of using the AI tool was highly iterative. For example, when he wrote a generic prompt asking for a blog post on “email best practices in B2B marketing,” he didn’t like the resulting content’s generic, boring tone and its complete lack of links to other sources.  So McGuire had to keep iterating his prompts to include [the initial prompt] plus [“in a chatty tone”] and [include links to other sources]. Think of ChatGPT as a honing or navigation system that can continually bring you closer to your destination. McGuire notes that B2B marketers will need new skills, “like writing an AI prompt that delivers good results, and knowing where to spot the weaknesses in AI-generated copy . . . Writing still takes skill, thought, and – above all – empathy.”  5 tips on using ChatGPT for B2B marketing campaign content The tips detailed below should be used when deploying ChatGPT to create B2B marketing copy for email campaigns, landing pages, or other content formats. 1. Start with your “why.”  Without a strategic context in place, you’re just flailing around. Don’t turn to ChatGPT for help generating copy until you clearly understand: (1) your audience (2) where they are in the buying journey (3) what message(s) will move them forward (of course, an email campaign can be orchestrated in a sequence) and (4) the requirements/standards for each content format (a blog post is different from a quick email). Pro tip: You can even, ironically, use the tool to help sharpen and formalize your “why.” 2. Write a basic prompt.  This is just the beginning of an iterative/learning journey of sharpening your prompt and improving the generated content. You might refer to this useful list of 120 Best CHAT GPT Prompts for Marketers , which includes these email-related prompts: “Write a persuasive email to increase attendance at our upcoming event” “Create a reminder email for our upcoming event” “Generate a thank-you email to send to customers who attended our event” 3. Define a tone of voice and length.  You can typically improve the quality of the prompt by asking ChatGPT to adopt/use a particular tone of voice, such as "act as an email marketing copywriter” or “use a chatty, fun tone.” You can also specify your content’s length by limiting the number of characters you want generated.  4. Ask ChatGPT follow-up questions.  The generated content will generally sound bland and generic out of the gate. B2B buyers/audiences are generally not blown away by cliches and calls to action they’ve heard a million times before. So keep iterating your prompt, asking ChatGPT to give you better, more “human-sounding” alternatives that you can mix, match, and stitch together into something that meets your needs. 5. Learn as you go.  Don't just treat ChatGPT as a mindless automation tool, but learn from each interaction. Ask it why it has chosen particular approaches to help inform your own copywriting approach as well as how you deploy the tool in the future. Just as ChatGPT will continue to learn and improve as a tool, so must you as a user. To better illustrate the "ask it why" point, we entered our example prompt "Write a persuasive email to increase attendance at our upcoming event," and ChatGPT generated a well-written email. We then asked it why it included such a sense of urgency in the email- its response was correct (and very polite):    Do you have any additional tips on using ChapGPT to help create B2B marketing campaign content? Or any questions to this point that we didn't address in this post? Contact us  to share / learn more.

In the dynamic realm of marketing, where change is the only constant, navigating the landscape has become increasingly complex. As a seasoned marketing executive, you are no stranger to the challenges posed by rapidly evolving technologies and buyer behaviors. One area that often demands your attention is Marketing Technology, or Martech, and ensuring that it aligns seamlessly with your overarching business objectives. Martech alignment with customer journey One critical question to ponder is: Is your Martech stack effectively aligned with your customer journey? As the custodian of the company's marketing vision, it's imperative to ensure that every piece of technology in your arsenal plays a role in enhancing the customer experience. The journey from awareness to advocacy should be seamless, and your Martech stack needs to be a cohesive force, not a collection of disparate tools. Supporting marketing use cases Does your Martech have the right capabilities to support your diverse marketing use cases? In a rapidly changing marketing landscape, where channels and strategies evolve swiftly, having the right tools for the job is paramount. Your Martech should be versatile, capable of adapting to the unique demands of your various marketing initiatives, whether it's a social media campaign, a personalized email outreach, or an immersive digital experience. Integration across technologies Integration is key. Can your Martech integrate seamlessly with existing and new technologies? In an era where data is king, the ability of your Martech stack to communicate and share information with other business-critical systems is non-negotiable. Siloed data is a roadblock to effective decision-making. Your technology should be an integrated ecosystem, fostering collaboration and ensuring a unified view of your marketing efforts. Evaluating license costs License costs can be a significant pain point. Are you getting the best value for your investment? As a seasoned leader, you understand the importance of optimizing budgets. Evaluate the costs associated with your Martech stack and ensure that the functionalities align with your needs. It's not just about cutting costs but maximizing the ROI on your Martech investments. Scalability for growth Is your Martech scalable to meet the growing needs of your organization? Your role is not just about meeting today's objectives but envisioning the future. Your Martech should be scalable, adapting to the evolving scope of your marketing strategies as your company grows. What serves you well today should seamlessly transition into a tool that propels you towards tomorrow's goals. Pro tip: Scalability is indeed important, but before scaling it's critical that you prove the martech and its supportive elements are positioned to be sustainable - if not sustainable, your scaling efforts will more than likely fail. Many see this as a failure of the martech, and while this might be the case, we typically see this in approaches that don't consider sustainability before scaling. People and enablement Having the right Martech is crucial, but do you have the right people and enablement strategies in place? Your team needs to be equipped with the knowledge and skills to harness the full potential of your Martech stack. Training and development should be a continuous process, ensuring that your team remains at the forefront of industry trends and technological advancements.  In a landscape marked by change, it's not just about addressing these challenges but turning them into opportunities for growth and innovation. As you steer through the complexities of the digital age, consider partnering with a consultancy that understands your unique challenges and offers both strategic insights and hands-on expertise. Tailoring solutions to your unique profile Given your background, goals, and pain points, a Marketing Operations consultancy can serve as a strategic partner in your journey towards marketing success leveraging your martech stack. A focused approach, when aligned with your vision, can provide innovative solutions to complex challenges, leveraging their deep understanding of market trends and buyer behavior. When selecting a consulting service, focus on their ability to align marketing operations strategies with your business objectives. Look for evidence of expertise through success stories and a consulting approach that resonates with your company's vision and values. Emphasize a partnership that not only solves problems but contributes to your strategic marketing success. The challenges you face in the realm of Martech are not obstacles but opportunities to evolve and excel. By ensuring alignment, embracing integration, optimizing costs, and fostering scalability, you pave the way for a marketing ecosystem that not only meets today's demands but anticipates and shapes the future. Questions? Let's talk! Contact us  or email us directly  today to get a conversation started. Update: In late 2023, Thomson Reuters (TR) and Sojourn Solutions (Sojourn) began an ambitious project to optimize the Thomson Reuters marketing technology stack, seeking to create an effective, efficient, and centralized operating model for long-term stack management. The project concluded in 2024 with great success - learn more: A StackTastic Project: How Thomson Reuters Transformed Its Martech Management and Performance.

In today’s digital-first world, the landscape of marketing is constantly evolving. Businesses are increasingly relying on a diverse array of marketing technologies to streamline their operations, engage customers, and drive growth. As the number of tools in a company's MarTech stack grows, so too does the complexity of managing these tools effectively. This is where a marketing technology audit, or MarTech audit, becomes crucial. Basically put, a MarTech audit is a comprehensive evaluation of all the marketing technologies, platforms, and tools that a company uses. The purpose of this audit is to assess the effectiveness, efficiency, and alignment of these tools with the company’s overall business objectives. Here we’ll explore what a marketing technology audit entails, why it’s important, and how it can benefit your business. Understanding the Marketing Technology Stack Before diving into what a MarTech audit is in detail, it’s essential to understand what constitutes a marketing technology stack. A MarTech stack refers to the collection of software, platforms, and tools that marketers use to execute, manage, and analyze marketing activities. This can include tools for email marketing, social media management, content management systems (CMS), customer relationship management (CRM), analytics, advertising platforms, and more. Over time, as companies grow and their marketing needs evolve, the MarTech stack can become unwieldy, with redundant tools, outdated platforms, and underutilized software. This is where a MarTech audit comes in. What is a Marketing Technology Audit? A marketing technology audit is a systematic process of evaluating and analyzing the MarTech stack to ensure that it is optimized, efficient, and aligned with the company’s strategic goals. The audit involves taking inventory of all marketing tools, assessing their performance, evaluating integration and data flow, identifying redundancies, and uncovering opportunities for improvement. Key Objectives of a MarTech Audit The main objectives of a MarTech audit include: Inventory and Categorization: Identifying and categorizing all the tools within the MarTech stack, including their functions, users, and costs. Performance Evaluation: Assessing the effectiveness of each tool in achieving marketing goals, including its impact on ROI, customer engagement, and campaign performance. Integration Assessment: Evaluating how well the tools integrate with each other and with other business systems, such as CRM or ERP platforms. Cost Analysis: Analyzing the costs associated with each tool, including licensing fees, subscriptions, and hidden costs, and comparing these costs to the value delivered. Data Flow and Management: Reviewing how data is managed across the stack, including data accuracy, consistency, and accessibility. Compliance and Security Review: Ensuring that the tools comply with relevant data privacy regulations and that security measures are in place to protect sensitive information. Strategic Alignment: Determining whether the MarTech stack aligns with the company’s broader business objectives and marketing strategy.   Why is a Marketing Technology Audit Important? Conducting a MarTech audit is essential for several reasons, all of which contribute to the overall efficiency and effectiveness of a company’s marketing efforts: Optimizing Tool Utilization One of the most significant benefits of a MarTech audit is the ability to optimize the use of existing tools. Often, companies invest in sophisticated platforms with numerous features, but only use a fraction of their capabilities. A MarTech audit can identify underutilized tools, enabling the company to either maximize their use or switch to more cost-effective alternatives. This optimization can lead to better resource allocation and improved marketing performance. Reducing Redundancies and Costs Over time, as companies add more tools to their MarTech stack, redundancies can occur. Multiple tools may be performing the same or similar functions, leading to wasted resources. A MarTech audit helps identify these redundancies, allowing the company to consolidate tools and reduce unnecessary expenses. This not only saves money but also simplifies the management of the technology stack. Enhancing Data Integration and Flow Data silos—where information is isolated within different systems—are a common challenge in many organizations. These silos can lead to inefficiencies, inaccuracies, and missed opportunities. A MarTech audit assesses how well the tools within the stack integrate and whether data flows seamlessly between them. By improving data integration and flow, companies can gain a more comprehensive view of their customers, make better-informed decisions, and deliver more personalized marketing experiences. Ensuring Compliance and Security With increasing data privacy regulations, such as GDPR and CCPA, ensuring compliance is more critical than ever. A MarTech audit reviews whether the tools in use comply with relevant regulations and whether adequate security measures are in place. This helps protect the company from potential legal risks and ensures that customer data is handled responsibly. Aligning Technology with Business Goals Marketing technology should support and enhance a company’s strategic objectives. However, as new tools are added, it’s easy for the MarTech stack to become misaligned with these goals. A MarTech audit ensures that all tools are working towards the same objectives, whether it’s increasing customer engagement, improving lead generation, or enhancing brand awareness. By aligning technology with business goals, companies can ensure that their marketing efforts are both effective and efficient. Facilitating Continuous Improvement The digital landscape is constantly changing, and so too are the needs of businesses. A MarTech audit is not just a one-time activity but part of a continuous improvement process. Regular audits help companies stay up to date with the latest trends, technologies, and best practices. This continuous evaluation and adjustment ensure that the MarTech stack remains relevant, efficient, and capable of meeting the company’s evolving needs.     The Value of a MarTech Audit A marketing technology audit is an essential process for any business that relies on digital marketing tools to drive growth and engage customers. By evaluating the effectiveness, efficiency, and alignment of the MarTech stack, companies can optimize their resources, reduce costs, improve data management, and ensure that their marketing efforts are aligned with their strategic goals. In an increasingly competitive digital landscape, the value of a well-conducted MarTech audit cannot be overstated. It’s an investment in the future success of your marketing efforts, providing the insights and direction needed to stay ahead of the curve and achieve lasting business success. Schedule your MarTech stack review with us today.