Marketing operations is a complex interaction of people, processes, and technology that seeks to prove and improve the value marketing brings to any organization. The multidisciplinary nature of the function means that marketing ops professionals must have a unique skill set that includes a clear understanding of how the overall business works, where technology deployments can drive efficiency, how to advance organizational alignment on big strategic initiatives, data analysis and communication chops, and much more. Above all, marketing ops professionals need to be learners who can adapt with the business climate, as well as the ever-accelerating pace of technological change. To be effective, marketing ops professionals need to take a scientific and data-informed approach to their work. What’s a scientific approach to Marketing Ops? The function of marketing ops is relatively new and so is the role. There are no clear lines of functional demarcation nor clear “rules of the road” to guide action. To make matters tougher, change is happening faster today than ever, especially around technology and customer expectations. In short, the marketing ops function is hard. Nobody has “relevant experience” or a collection of best practices that hold true for all contexts, largely because the future remains murky and full of contradictions that will require marketing ops professionals to remain agile and ready to pivot on a dime. The bottom line here is that data, not hunches or “what worked before,” should be the guiding force behind how marketing ops does what it does. The ability to manage and learn from data, to move from data points to analysis to action/decision, is what effectiveness looks like for marketing ops. Doing that well takes a scientific approach, an iterative mindset that enables people to learn from data as they move forward, analyze what they’re learning, and put ongoing lessons learned into action. Nothing in marketing ops is “set-and-forget” or “done forever.” The learning and iteration never stop. What’s an iterative mindset? Lessons from “The Lean Startup” The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses , by Eric Ries, is a book that’s been spectacularly influential over the last decade, changing the way organizations of all sizes, as well as business professionals, think about how they deploy data to inform their decision-making. Don’t let the book’s title fool you – It’s not just a book for startups, but is actually a manual about how professionals, including marketing ops people, can learn from data and build successful experiments (which is what marketing ops is about, after all).  Ries explains that learning is an iterative cycle or continuous feedback loop fueled by data. Learning itself is the product you are developing over time. The ultimate goal is not a revenue target or a fully-developed product/project, but creating a “learning mindset” within your organization to drive efficiency. Ries calls for: rapid experimentation of hypotheses (the concept you’re testing), rather than beginning with a full-blown project plan; effective methods to shorten cycles of learning by leveraging the right data and measurement approaches,  measuring actual progress with clearly pre-defined KPIs, and  continuing the cycle of learning. Reis offers several practices that will enable marketing ops leaders to gain greater agility and the ability to implement lessons quickly. Let’s dive a bit deeper into those. Build, measure, learn The “build, measure, learn” loop enables what Ries calls “validated learning.”  Measurement matters.  An iterative approach to the marketing ops function requires getting relevant feedback on what you’re doing. Doing that well requires a deep commitment to measurement. You can’t improve what you cannot measure, so start any experiment by asking what success looks like and how you will measure it. By listening to incoming data and focusing on measurement, you can minimize the risks of building something irrelevant and save yourself (and your organization) valuable time and other resources (money). The idea here is to “fail small,” then continually integrate lessons learned so you iterate towards success. Build, measure, learn is a repeatable optimization loop and a way of life that can be divided into three stages, according to Reis: 1. Build the minimum viable version  of the product or concept. You’re not looking to build the whole thing, just enough of it to start measuring whether it’ll work (or not). The minimal viable version, which some might call a pilot, is where “fail small” comes from, but you don’t actually fail when you learn something, says Reis. Learning lessons (what Reis calls “validated learning”), at a reduced cost, that you can apply later on in the process is the outcome you’re seeking from the MVV (minimally viable version). 2. Test the MVV and report back to the team about what you’ve learned. Again, you need to have already considered how you’ll measure the outcomes you seek to drive.  3. Collect relevant data, analyze it,  and transform it into insights you can use for the next round of iteration to your MVV. 4. Based on lessons learned, change what you’re doing  in order to lean into what’s working and away from what’s not. When you follow this iterative approach, you can ensure that you’re only scaling up the MVV based on what’s working.  Needless to say, human emotions can be involved all along the way. It’s important that you adopt a “learning mindset,” which requires humility. You’ll need to emotionally detach yourself during the process and base decisions on the data and not your hopes, assumptions, or need “to be right.” The takeaway Reis’s concept of “build, measure, learn” works for marketing ops because you’re always aiming at a fast-moving target. In a business landscape of newness and uncertainty, exactly the kind of landscape marketing operations people confront every day, having a data-informed and scientific outlook is the only way to find the right answers. Reis “lean startup methodology” is also a mindset marketers need to succeed. Of course, today’s right answer may not work next week. Lather, rinse, repeat. For help in improving your approach to marketing operations, contact us  today.

With its 22D release launching in November, Oracle Eloqua  is adding a number of enhancements to help marketers work smarter through better data analytics, reporting, integrations with other tools/platforms, and much more. This blog post explores some of the highlights in the 22D Release  and also connects you to useful Oracle resources to learn more about the new 22D Release:  Three new reports available  Every B2B marketer understands the importance of measurement for proving and improving performance. You can’t improve what you don’t measure. As such, 22D will offer three new, standard reports to help marketers better track their audiences and the quality of audience engagement. New Report 1 - Database Growth Trend Report: This is a standard report that offers Eloqua users a deeper look into their database growth trends by showing: Growth rates for Total Contacts and Reachable Contacts (i.e., contacts with email addresses that have neither hard bounced nor globally unsubscribed). The report also includes prebuilt graphs and visual indicators to show upward or downward movements in these growth rate trends. New Report 2 - Auto Activity Analysis Report:  Provided on a monthly basis, this standard report offers a breakdown of open and click activities, including auto-generated activities, by campaign.  An auto-generated activity is a click or open that’s been done by a bot or scamming/privacy tool that opens/clicks in order to check for malicious content. Segmenting auto activity helps marketers understand when their engagement efforts are reaching humans and when they’re reaching bots/tools. Obviously, B2B marketers would prefer to engage humans, not bots. New Report 3 - Contact Field Analysis Report:  Provides a breakdown of field usage in order to help marketers understand and therefore improve the effectiveness of their forms and fields within them. The new CFA Report features new calculated measures, including: (1) Total Values; (2) % of fields populated; (3) Missing Values; and (4) % of Missing Values. A bar chart helps users visualize the relationship between fields populated versus missing fields. Integrations and plug-ins B2B marketers live in a world of proliferating martech applications and platforms. These tools need to “play nice with one another” in order to deliver value, and 22D reflects that integrative and value-adding impulse: Updated Support for Webex App:  22D supports Cisco’s new Webex webinar app  offering by enabling Actions, Feeders, and Decisions (see below) for webinar and meeting registration. These capabilities make it simple for Oracle Eloqua users to identify and engage with people who have registered for a Webex webinar. Feeders “allow external systems to determine and control which contacts or custom objects enter into a campaign or program canvas,” so you can pull webinar registrants in. Actions  are defined as “steps on a campaign or program canvas that are delegated to an external system,” so you can plan how to interact with webinar registrants. Finally, Decisions  “are steps on a campaign or program canvas that directly control the path a contact or custom object takes as they flow through a canvas,” so you can orchestrate engagement depending on how interactions go. Updates to Microsoft Outlook Add-In (coming in December):  This 22D feature is more about licenses: post-update, Eloqua users must have both Oracle Engage and Outlook licenses in order to log in. Oracle notes that no additional purchase will be needed. The add-in provides users with easy access to both Oracle Eloqua Profiler  and Engage  straight through Microsoft Outlook's email composer. It offers a seamless and consistent experience for sales users to interact with key prospects across a range of platforms and devices.  Integration of Oracle Fusion Analytics Warehouse [FAW] for Eloqua:  FAW provides analytics for Oracle Cloud applications. The native integration extracts and loads campaign data directly from the Eloqua Insight data warehouse. The integration also offers prebuilt KPIs, metrics, and reports for Eloqua campaign analytics. Other 22D Enhancements Bulk API Updates:  The Bulk API  contact app supports high volume data transfer – and its exports can now include source campaign id and fields, enabling for more accurate tracking and measurement. All Special fields (for example, id) are now included in Fields endpoints. Engage Send Limits are now Generally Available:  As all B2B marketers know, the cadence of messaging is an important factor for driving conversion. When you send too many messages, you turn customers off and also tarnish your brand reputation, not to mention triggering problems with your email deliverability. Engage send limits, now in GA with 22D, help manage the number of emails a sales rep can send to the same contact over a period of time. While these send limits apply to Engage and Oracle Eloqua Sales Tools for MS Outlook, they do NOT impact Eloqua marketing sends. For more details about Oracle Eloqua’s 22D Release, you can access an Oracle Eloqua “explainer video” here  (free). For more information about how Oracle Eloqua can help you prove and improve your B2B marketing efforts, contact us .

Salesforce’s latest edition of its State of the Connected Customer Report  offers important insights from nearly 17,000 B2C and B2B buyers on the evolving customer engagement landscape marketers face right now. The Report focuses much attention on a few key marketing trends, including the evolution of trust in customer-brand relationships, customer experience as an increasingly digital-first proposition, the use of data for engagement, customer demands for increased data privacy, omnichannel engagement, and more.  But one thing is clear from the Report – however customers choose to engage with brands, they expect flexibility and a personal touch. They also demand increasing control over their personal data, with trust as their beacon. The Report shows that a whopping 88% of all customers believe that trust becomes more important in times of change , so brands need to build trust into everything they do. Top 5 actions to build trust Of course, trust is not easy to build, but it’s (alas) quite easy to lose. Even more challenging, customers want brands to drive increasingly personalized engagement via multiple channels, but they also expect you to fully respect their data privacy concerns. With that said, customer trust in businesses has actually been growing . The Report notes that “52% of customers say they generally trust companies — up from 48% in 2020.” The Report even recommends five practical actions marketers can take to boost trust: 1. Communicate honestly and transparently:  Customers expect you not to lie to them or mislead them. That erodes trust quickly. Instead, they want to hear the truth, even when it’s messy. 2. Use customer information responsibly:  Brands must comply with relevant data privacy regulations (GDPR, etc.), but customers want brands to be reliable stewards of their data, using it responsibly and letting customers know what’s happening with their data. 3. Treat customers as people, not numbers:  If you don’t know this one already, you’re in big trouble. Customers, especially B2B customers, want marketers/brands to understand their needs and address them in whatever they do, from developing brand offerings to marketing outreach and beyond.  Today’s customers know it’s possible for companies to deliver a personal touch across digital systems and are looking to purchase from organizations that understand and anticipate their needs.  The majority of B2B customers, the Report says, “expect offers to always be personalized.” Continued exposure to great digital experiences has raised customer expectations even further, placing underperforming organizations under mounting pressure to drive digital transformation . An eye-opening 88% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its product or services — up from 80% in 2020, according to the Report. 4. Resolve issues proactively:  This tip is related to improved digital experiences – customers now demand that companies identify issues quickly and, once identified, move immediately to resolving them. If a customer needs to take time out of their day to resolve an issue they think the company should have resolved already, you may lose that customer. 5. Communicate proactively:  Customers don’t just want you to solve problems, they want to be kept in the loop. Again, the explosion of Amazon-style, automated, and digital-first engagement has raised the bar for all customers and brands when it comes to communication. Values matter, even in B2B The Report makes it clear that, for many customers, it’s not enough for companies to deliver a great product or service; they must also stand for the values they believe in, not just with employees and suppliers, but also with customers. A massive “85% of customers say their purchase decisions are swayed by how companies treat employees , and over 75% watch for a company’s environmental practices, like protecting natural resources and achieving net zero emissions,” explains the Report. Nearly 90% of customers expect companies to clearly state their values, “but only half feel this is common practice,” says the Report. With the growing impact of values on purchase decisions, standing on the sidelines or offering “vanilla press releases” is less safe for brands than it used to be. Two out of three customers have actually stopped buying from a company whose values don’t align with theirs. The takeaway here is that customers, even in B2B, want to know who you are, what you value, and see you standing up for your beliefs. Data privacy concerns grow This may be the least surprising  trend in the Report. Consumers are willing to give you their data, but only if they receive sufficient benefits from the brand in return . For instance, the Report notes that “46% of customers would share their style preferences to get tailored rewards.” Growing privacy regulations and bans on third-party browser cookies have accelerated the growth of consent-forward approaches to information gathering. Again, what’s at stake here is customer trust. The vast majority of customers (74%) say that organizations gather more customer data than they actually need, and many customers feel that businesses aren’t being transparent enough about how they use data. If brands clearly explained how they intended to use customer data, 79% of customers said they’d be more likely to trust said brand with their information.  Demand for omnichannel engagement grows Shifting customer communication preferences are a big part of the Report, as email lost its (long-held) spot as the number one preferred communication channel, with the phone replacing it. Meanwhile, in-person and online chat channels continue to grow in favor with customers.  Most preferred customer channels: Phone (59%, up from 54% in 2020) Email (57%, down from 65% in 2020)  In-Person (46%) Online Chat (42%) Mobile Apps (28%) One thing hasn’t changed: Customer engagement is as omni-channel as ever, with customers turning to an average of nine different channels to communicate with companies . Marketers clearly need to meet people where they are, and do so in a seamless, omnichannel way.  Want to stay connected with your customers in order to improve your performance and revenue? Reach out  to us for help.

As someone who started working in B2B marketing back in the late 1990s - when we searched for information on AltaVista, were blown away by the mobile functionality of our BlackBerries, and wrote monthly reports via manually (and monotonously) pulling numbers out of spreadsheets - I like to end each year by reflecting on the past and future of marketing. Some things will never change: (1) B2B marketing will always be about reaching the customers who are most likely to buy your offerings; (2) technology will always be an enabler of what we do; and (3) human creativity and imagination will always be essential. What’s in store for B2B marketing in 2023? After doing some thinking on my own and also reading a few hours of “marketing trends for 2023” stories (accessed via Google, not AltaVista), I’ve come up with a few ideas: 1. More marketing technology and more customer data will be available in 2023 than ever.  This “trend” is so obvious that it’s a good place to start. The martech landscape  is now 10,000 tools and apps, up 24% from 2020. B2B marketers also have more access to customer data, at both the individual and account level, than ever before.  More martech and more data in 2023 doesn’t necessarily make B2B marketing any easier. Sometimes, managing tech and customer data are so time-consuming that there’s no time left over for actual marketing. You still need a strong marketing strategy  in place in order to help you make decisions about what martech and what customer data to leverage  in order to achieve your strategic goals.  2. 2023 will be a year where ‘doing more with less’ is paramount.  If you’ve been watching or reading the business news, and paying attention to global economic trends, this one is another no-brainer. A global recession seems a safe bet, along with high inflation, high interest rates, and high energy costs. All of that will negatively impact B2B revenues, and thus impact marketers and their budgets. This might not be the ideal year for taking a big gamble on that brand new, expensive, and untested martech tool. You may have to get back to the basics of engagement, while focusing on time-proven strategies, tactics, and tools. 3. Face-to-face engagement makes a comeback.  The last few years of COVID-driven social distancing have been tough on B2B marketers, especially those who enjoy attending conferences in-person and meeting customers face-to-face. 2023 promises to be a more social year, when many of the virtual events of 2020-2 become F2F (and virtual/hybrid) once again. Will it be weird? Yes. Will marketers need to re-learn how to interact in person with stakeholders? Surely.  Most importantly, will those F2F interactions lead to better outcomes in terms of building customer trust and strengthening customer relationships? Indeed.  4. Trust remains a paramount marketing concern.  Whether the interaction is F2F or digital, gaining customer trust is the key to marketing success. You want and need customers to share more first-party data  so you can personalize engagement. To do that, you need to build trust. You want to cross-sell and up-sell. Again, you need to build trust. The good news is that customer trust in businesses is actually growing, from 48% in 2020 to 52% in 2022, according to Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customer Report . 5. The cookie-less future is here.  Ready or not, you’re not going to be able to access customer data tracked outside of your brand’s own domain (i.e., third-party cookies are going away). The loss of this cross-domain tracking capability changes not only what data B2B marketers can access, but how they engage customers. Transparency in how you collect, manage, and use data matters now more than ever.  6. First-party data is the gold B2B marketers must mine for successful engagement.  In order to access the high-quality customer data  you need to fuel your marketing efforts, from scoring to personalization to email and beyond, you’ll need the permission/consent of your customers. To get that important asset, you’ll need to make it worthwhile for your customers to share with you. Give them value to get the data you want. Earn customer trust by sharing real and relevant value – that’s what marketing is in 2023, as it was in 1999. 7. Personalization is more important and more possible for B2B marketers to deliver.  In the 1990s, personalization was copying and pasting the same marketing email to multiple customers, but inserting their name into the Dear [customer] line. Today, B2B customers expect you to understand their needs and address them with personalized messaging and personalized offers.  And due to the increased sophistication of CRMs, MAPs, and AI/automation, personalized engagement at scale is becoming more achievable. Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customer Report  says that 73% of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs, while 56% of customers expect offers to be personalized. 8. ABM will continue to expand. B2B marketing is so different from B2C. In B2B, most purchasing is done by a group, often a buying committee, that seeks to make the best collective decision for the business. Yet most marketing technologies and tactics were developed with a B2C approach in mind – i.e., the individual lead who makes a purchasing decision by themselves for themselves.  Account-based marketing puts B2B into an account-first context, enabling B2B marketing and sales teams to identify accounts with the highest likelihood to buy, map out and engage buying groups, collect and leverage the “right” data , and improve ROI. A final caveat:  The B2B trends for 2023 listed above are not intended to be comprehensive or taken as profound truths. I don’t have a crystal ball. Change (and the need to remain flexible in the face of it) has long been the only certainty in B2B marketing.  But no matter what happens in 2023, we're here to help you prove and improve the value of your marketing. To learn how we can help, reach out  here.

Event marketing, although expensive, may be the most personalized and effective B2B marketing channel there is, especially for strengthening business relationships and closing deals. Live events continue to make a comeback as COVID-19 concerns fade. Despite being forced to rely on virtual events and other digital channels since the pandemic began, 94% of event marketers  said they planned to return to live events this year and into 2023.  Doug Binder, author of the recent book Gather: The Business of Coming Together , has been an organizer of B2B events for over three decades and knows as much about organizing great events as anyone. “Live events have been lost for a while, and that’s led to lost value and feelings of loss too. Face-to-face (F2F) interactions at events can be very valuable for strengthening human relationships as you're sharing ideas and experiences or just having very human encounters. Those human moments matter. Serendipity is a very real and valuable thing that can’t be easily replicated virtually ,” Binder explains. Event Marketing 101: Why people gather Humans want to gather , as countless surveys have shown, because F2F gatherings strengthen human bonds and build deeper connections. Emails and other forms of digital customer engagement are great, but a real-life conversation over coffee or lunch is hard to beat. While people enjoy the comfort of their own homes and devices, they’re also craving social connection and new F2F experiences. “Gathering together supports personal connection and growth,” Binder says, “because you learn from other people, and you can gain from helping others too.” Binder adds that “humans also have a need for celebration, which might be collective rituals like celebrating a birthday or collectively celebrating business milestones.” Those human moments resonate in memories and strengthen connection, in ways an email can’t replicate. Binder points to a widespread sense that something has been missing from our lives when everyone does business remotely . Technology, especially remote technology, has made it possible for us to interact in ways we never would have pre-pandemic, when being on Zoom all day would have been inconceivable. “Technology can deliver the sight and sound of real life,” Binder says, “ but not that sixth sense of being in a room with other people and sensing the vibe. ”  Binder offers an example “If you're presenting in a room in front of others, you can sense if people are getting the message or not, then adapt what you’re saying and doing. You can't sense that vibe so well on Zoom. For me, I’ve missed live events the most, the magical sound of applause and laughter – you feel that stuff viscerally in your bones and in your heart.”  Conferences are places where you can build intentional relationships among your customers, sharing deeply human interactions.  Organizing successful events: 4 best practices for coming together 1. It’s about them, not you.  The mistake Binder sees organizers make most often when planning events/gatherings is beginning and ending with a notion about what they're going to do, such as an agenda of sessions or schedule of speakers.  “Instead,” he says, “ organizers need to begin by thinking about what the audience needs and wants.  As organizations struggle to bring people back into gatherings, the audience holds more of the cards. You need to provide them with a clear reason to come, because they can access virtually.” It’s about their needs first, not yours. Your events need to have a clearly-defined purpose. Ask your stakeholders and attendees what they want to see and use their feedback to build the event. Collective and data-driven decisions go a long way towards engaging your attendees. 2. Make people feel something.  Binder believes the pandemic has “rewired people’s brains and motivations”  around life. To succeed at organizing gatherings, according to Binder, “you must put yourself in the audience's shoes. Empathy is a much bigger deal now than it was before the pandemic, because we've all been through so much. It’s not so much about what we say or what we do at the gathering that matters: people largely remember how you make them feel.” Provide meaningful opportunities for your attendees to engage with one another during the event, because those F2F interactions usually create the most memorable attendee experiences. 3. Give people choice.  In addition to a desire for “experiences,” people also want more control of their time and more choices. So at a typical conference, you might have the general sessions, two hours where you need people to be present in order to listen to the leadership team, learn about the product, or watch the demos.  “But after that’s done,” says Binder, “give people options where they can go to the beach or go to a class or maybe have a one-on-one meeting with the VP of product marketing.” Giving people choice drives better experiences and more engagement.  4. Leverage technology.  Binder views technology as an important enabler of gatherings. People need the capability to plan and coordinate their schedules, which technology enables, but Binder also champions “the capacity of gatherings to deliver serendipity, surprise, and delight.”  The right tools, including event websites and apps, can help you give your attendees an overview of the event, from what sessions are available to what activities are taking place that week. The easier it is for your attendees to access the information they need to have a sense of control over their event experience, the more likely they are to be satisfied. Conclusion In the end, the goal of event marketing should be to make people feel valued, to offer them a clear purpose and a sense of deeply-human connection to your brand. When you do that, you’re also doing great business.

Change, at the individual or organizational level, is both essential and challenging. People typically have an aversion to change that’s hard-wired into our brains, shares  Leigh Burger , Principal Customer Success Manager at Adobe, who spoke during an Adobe webinar called The Anatomy of Change . It’s not surprising that the vast majority (60-70%) of change initiatives fail, mostly because of people’s natural resistance to change. “Millions of years ago, our ancestors lived in a world in which physical danger was ever-present,” says Burger. As people in business environments, we’re constantly monitoring our environments for threats, even though we're not really in any physical danger. People's automatic responses to change are not intentional, but are instead hard-wired by millions of years of evolution.  7 best practices for driving change Being intentional about driving change takes coordination, time, and constant effort. “If a change is coming, [leaders] tend to send out the emails to notify folks of the change, but they’re not actually doing much of anything to manage or lead people through the change in a very positive way,” Burger says. No matter how much technology or process is involved in the transformation, the change will not happen without human beings adopting the desired behavioral changes.  We can’t “force” anyone to change, says Burger, but we can influence them. Here’s how: 1. Address the emotion and fear.  The first job of change management is to get people to move past their initial, automatic aversion to change. Change begins when people move beyond their reflexive fear and start thinking. “Perhaps the fear involves a potential change in their role or fear of losing their job. Perhaps it's fear of losing control, agency, or status,” says Burger. When people are afraid, their emotions can negatively impact their logic and their ability to act.  Effective change managers immediately address the emotions that people feel in order to move them to a place where they can think more logically about the change. 2. Define the vision.  What will life look like for stakeholders after the change? You should be asking for people’s input as you define and drive the vision behind the change. “Hopefully that process looks like a conversation, a two-way dialogue where you have the opportunity to understand other people’s perspectives,” says Burger, “as well as influence and address any questions or fears people may have.”  You can't address what you're not aware of and you don't want “surprise obstacles” slowing the change management process.  You’ll need to motivate your teams with a strong vision, then align that vision to the execution of the change. Doing that allows you to track and monitor progress against strategic goals to ensure success and drive results, notes Burger.  3. Articulate why you're making the change.  The why is so critical to helping stakeholders understand and jump on-board with the change. “What I recommend is writing down all the reasons why, then distilling them into something memorable, something people can easily make their own and tell to others,” Burger says. If your team has trouble answering why they're working on a change initiative, their work becomes directionless. You need a clear plan, articulated well, and your entire organization needs to be brought on board. 4. Map out the stakeholders.  List the groups and teams that will be impacted by this change. If you're not sure whether a group might be impacted, go ask them. Next, think about and list the people you think might become an impediment to the change. “The reason you need to ID these folks is because research shows that emotional contagion is a real thing,” Burger says, “so if you have someone that's a naysayer and not willing to give the change a try, that can impact the whole group.”   Consider what you can do to strategically influence the naysayers. Perhaps it's a conversation about agreeing to disagree, but with the ability to gain agreement for the good of the whole team. Also consider giving the naysayers an active role to keep them close, which can become a strategic advantage downstream.  5. Set clear expectations.  What does a timeline for change look like? When do you actually expect the adoption of the change? When do you expect to see something different happening consistently? “There's typically a beginning, a messy middle, and hopefully full adoption at the end,” says Burger. Have a transparent timeline and communication tools that allow for updates and input. And while planning is great, you also need to be willing to change plans if needed. The critical part is staying in constant communication with your stakeholders. 6. Have the communication tools you need.  If you're going to lead a complex change management process, the question becomes “what tools do you need to make the change happen?” What are the tools you're going to employ to provide stakeholders with what they need to support the change. Consistent communication is critical for success, and it can’t be one-way. “The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place. So in addition to using email as a tool, you should consider fireside chats, one-on-ones, leveraging frontline managers, an open Slack or team channel,” says Burger.  Marketing statistics tell us that we need 7 to 10 touch points before they take action on a purchase, so imagine the touches and the influencing factors that need to happen when asking someone to change their behavior. Talking to people matters, so don’t just rely on email or digital channels. 7. Self-care for change managers.  Leading change can mean that we have to step outside of our comfort zones. And that means we can feel vulnerable, which takes courage. We need to ask others what they think, and understand that we may not have all the answers. “Trust is a product of vulnerability – it grows over time and it requires work and attention and full engagement,” Burger says.   As an agent of change, it's essential that you keep yourself centered and “don't deplete yourself. You can't give what you don't have, so take good care of yourself,” which might mean exercising, sleeping, and good nutrition, among other things. Need help managing change within your B2B marketing organization? We’re here to help guide and advise you. Contact us  today.

Working as a B2B marketer has always been a tough job. No matter how convincing and targeted your messaging, B2B prospects sometimes won’t purchase. Add a possible economic recession into the equation, and the already rocky path to marketing ROI becomes even rougher to traverse. We asked two of our most experienced marketing leaders at Sojourn Solutions – Rebecca Le Grange  (Managing Partner) and Charlotte Currie  (Global Head of Customer Success) – for advice on how B2B marketers like you can navigate the challenges of a potential economic downturn. They offered the following advice: 1. Double down on strategic focus.  Your overall strategy needs to inform all your decisions about who to target, how, and what investments to prioritize. You’ll need a solid business case for making every investment, especially in a recession, because resources are limited. Have rigorous, evidence-based discussions with your stakeholders about the cost of doing nothing versus the cost of making a particular investment. What are the pros and the cons, as well as the various risks involved?  There needs to be back and forth within any marketing team about what investments get made, and which ideas get put on the back burner. Again, having strategic clarity helps in making those decisions and convincing the team to buy-in. If you're not clear on why you're funding or not funding a particular project, then you're going to make poor decisions and have pushback. – Le Grange 2. Measure and prove value.  In a downturn, there needs to be more focus on justifying any investment. For our Customer Success Team, for example, we need to ensure that when we're starting a client project, we understand exactly what business outcomes we’re trying to drive and how we're measuring success. By understanding that, we ensure that we can show our clients the value created at the end, which is essential for justifying client spend. If we can’t measure and prove value and progress on agreed-upon outcomes, then clients may get pushback from their leadership and future investments could be imperiled.  – Currie 3. Have a plan, then learn and adjust.  The reason for using tools like marketing automation software is that you can get feedback on performance and adjust as you go. For example, you need to measure and take learnings from different touch points in the customer journey, and use them to optimize each touch point. These small improvements over time have a big cumulative impact. Doing this well means using your pre-determined metrics and KPIs, plus spending time analyzing your reports. It means using all that data and analysis to get smarter over time about which contacts you're targeting - which contacts to remove from your list - and how to prioritize actions and investments. – Le Grange 4. Drive growth through existing customers.  Acquiring net new customers is expensive, especially in an economic downturn. Many of our clients are looking to their existing customers to drive as much revenue growth as possible, because those revenue-generating relationships are already in place and can be expanded.  It starts with considering how to retain your existing customers, then moves to asking how to cross-sell and upsell. This is where having a strong and accurate database helps you better understand and engage your customers around their particular needs.  – Le Grange 5. Fine-tune lead management.  Lead management is always important, but it can usually be made more efficient. That takes fine-tuning your lead management process from beginning to end in order to ensure that it's delivering more quality leads and closing them.  When your lead management process is improved, less resources get lost through funnel leakage and more resources go back to marketing for nurture campaigns if leads aren’t ready to close. It’s also important to increase the sharing of relevant customer information and activity across your organization, but especially between marketing and sales. That shared data fuels quality conversations about how to coordinate actions to convert leads into customers. – Currie 6. Use automation to support data quality.  Database hygiene is the foundation for good customer engagement. A messy, unreliable, and incomplete database wastes resources. You can use automation to ensure that your contact data hasn’t become outdated or incomplete. Decommissioning bad contacts saves you resources and supports more focus, while standardizing your data enhances your ability to target and personalize engagement. Every month that you don’t conduct active cleanup and standardization of your database can bring a 5% decay, where data becomes outdated and unreliable. That ongoing decay adds up over a year and costs you money. – Le Grange 7. Better understand your customers.  The more data you collect and the more you understand what your customers want from you (it’s value, by the way), the more you can deepen and expand your business relationship. The 80-20 rule (Pareto Principle) says that most of your revenue comes from about 20% of existing customers, so focus your energies there.  When customers visit your website, for example, make sure you’re categorizing the areas of interest they focus on, so you can follow up with relevant, personalized messaging. It’s a straightforward equation: the more customer data you get, the better your analytics and segmentation/ personalization efforts will be, which leads to better outcomes. – Currie 8. Improve operational efficiency.  Taking less time to do what you're already doing adds up over time to create significant value. So many of our clients are trying to become more efficient in their marketing operations processes. That means focusing on driving efficiency with the tasks they have on their to-do list each day, each week, and each month. We’ve found that leveraging more automation can help. When it comes to campaigns, for instance, that might mean automating and orchestrating as much of your messaging as possible via your marketing automation platform. It might mean deploying artificial intelligence to optimize performance. Sometimes it means putting more thought into the various steps within a campaign, driving efficiency by mapping out those steps and carefully considering each one upfront. Sometimes clients will say, ‘that's a lot of work upfront,’ but that work makes you much more efficient in the long-run. – Le Grange 9. Deliver value throughout the customer journey.  Provide consistent value to customers, don't just come in when you need to close or during the week before a renewal date. Customers can see you haven't demonstrated value throughout their journey and you’re just looking to cash in. You need to work on the relationship constantly, building trust and aligning internally to put the customer at the center of all you do. When you do that, it’s easier to convert and close because customers will want to keep that value-sharing relationship going. – Currie To learn more about, or put into effect, any of the recommendations described above, reach out to us here .

Salesforce is making some big enhancements in 2023 and beyond to its Marketing Cloud Account Engagement  tool, formerly known as Pardot (note: Salesforce is using both names now, but the intent is to sunset its use of “Pardot” and use “Marketing Cloud Account Engagement” instead). In a recent Salesforce webinar, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Product Roadmap  (unfortunately, not available on-demand), conducted by Danielle Grau (SF Director of Product Management) and Lindsey DiGiovanni (SF Product Manager), the company revealed its future roadmap for the tool. Grau began by explaining that “Pardot is now going to be known as Marketing Cloud Account Engagement,” a platform which helps B2B marketers scale personalized customer outreach across marketing, sales, and beyond. Account Engagement, the company says, is a single source of truth offering organizations the ability to: Easily automate cross-channel journeys to create a consistent, seamless customer experience; Optimize marketing performance by measuring in real-time how every action/activation influences pipeline; Drive marketing and sales alignment and coordination in a single platform that connects and shares data across the organization. Highlights on what’s coming for Marketing Cloud Account Engagement From a high-level perspective, the Marketing Cloud Account Engagement roadmap is looking to (1) enhance automation, (2) connect to more sources of external data, (3) enable increasing levels of orchestration and customer personalization, (4) leverage artificial intelligence to improve marketing performance, (5) improve measurement and reporting capabilities, and more. Grau and DiGiovanni made it clear that Salesforce is quite ambitious in its quest to enhance the functionality of Marketing Cloud Account Engagement. Listed below are some of the highlights from the Roadmap, as detailed by Grau and DiGiovanni during their hour-long webinar.  These highlights aren’t intended to be comprehensive, either in covering: (1) all of the enhancements envisioned in the future roadmap or (2) explaining each enhancement in-depth. There’s a link to the Marketing Cloud Account Engagement product release notes at the end of this post – accessing that resource is the best way to get the latest and the most comprehensive information about what Salesforce is planning for Account Engagement (formerly Pardot). Here’s a sneak peek: 1. Optimize Account Performance. This functionality, coming in Spring ‘23, will audit and analyze how you are using the platform and then “recommend actions you can make to get the most out of Account Engagement,” says Grau. It sounds like a great performance optimization tool. 2. Prospect Activity Tracking.  This functionality, coming in Winter ‘23, will analyze prospect engagement levels “to protect account health,” says Grau, potentially by pausing account outreach if an account has stopped or slowed down their level of engagement.  This enhancement is a win for account/contact personalization. 3. Conditional Completion Action.  Will enable marketers to set up/automate account-based orchestration with condition (“if X, then Y”) logic. It will also allow for the fine-tuning of automation/orchestration based on segmented prospects, and the engagement actions they display. If a prospect clicks on a certain link in an email message, you could orchestrate/automate a relevant follow-up message. 4. An Extensible Platform Enabling External Actions.  Will allow marketers to push data in and out of external apps/tools and also orchestrate and automate actions across various external apps (such as Zoom and Slack). Enhancements like these are intended to make cross channel and omnichannel engagement possible. For example, Account Engagement could automate the notification of sales reps on Slack when a prospect account has taken a certain action that might render them a “hot” lead, such as when a prospect is looking at price or product support details for a certain offerings. In another example, you might set up a webinar on Zoom and then automatically pull in (1) registration information and (2) see who actually attended. That information is highly-useful for planning potential follow-up action. 5. Full Prospect Sync.  This data-related functionality enables marketers to sync all prospect records with just one click, while also improving field sync performance. The trend here is to reduce time-consuming manual work for marketers while driving data accuracy/quality. 6. Einstein Optimization of Send Times (STO), at the Prospect Level.  Einstein is SFMC’s artificial intelligence tool. The enhancement enables Account Engagement to leverage Einstein AI to determine the optimal/best time to send a message/email to a prospect based on that prospect’s historical preferences. This enhancement goes beyond current STO capability, which looks at the entire contact list or other historical data to determine the optimal send time for the list. 7. API Enhancements.  This enhancement comes under the “play nice with others” umbrella. It will enable marketers to query more business unit data via Account Engagement, report on Prospect Lifecycle, and leverage a unified API experience. 8. Operational Performance Enhancements.  Will offer B2B marketers greater insight into campaign performance, such as providing email bounce rates and enabling the automation of actions to clean up and update your contact lists based on that performance data. Another enhancement that reduces the amount of monotonous, manual operations around your customer data. For more information (including enhancement release dates) about the Marketing Cloud Account Enagement Roadmap, please refer to the product release notes . For help in considering whether Marketing Cloud Account Engagement could help your B2B marketing efforts, reach out to us here .

This blog post summarizes key findings from Adobe’s “State of Marketing Automation” report Adobe recently collected actionable insights and best practices from more than 600 B2B organizations, all of them using a variety of marketing automation platforms (MAPs). The purpose? To learn exactly how today's high-performing B2B marketing teams are leveraging technology to separate themselves from the competition in 2023 and beyond. B2B marketing teams face limited resources and economic pressure as they drive strategic priorities around ROI/return on investment, growth, and optimizing customer experience. Adobe found that the top-rated marketing objectives for 2023, all rated as “very important” or “extremely important” by at least 90% of respondents, were the following:  Improve marketing ROI: 98%  Grow pipeline and revenue: 97%  Provide great buyer/ customer experiences: 97%  Keep pace with marketing tools and techniques: 93% Adobe’s report  The State of Marketing Automation  (free download) describes in detail how the best B2B organizations are tackling these challenging priorities in 2023. This blog post summarizes the report’s key findings. Accelerating adoption of MAPs and AI Marketing automation is widely viewed by B2B marketers as an essential ingredient for success. Adobe finds that “98% of B2B marketers say that marketing automation is very important or extremely important to their success.” Leveraging a MAP is simply the best way to orchestrate personalized buyer and customer engagement at scale and support efficient growth. B2B marketers are using their MAPs to drive both lead-first and account-first (ABM) approaches for engaging their target customers. The use of AI/artificial intelligence is also growing, according to Adobe, whether the AI is embedded in a MAP or otherwise. The Adobe report finds that “91% of leading companies are very or extremely satisfied with the embedded AI marketing automation features they are using today.” More personalization across channels The top-rated B2B organizations surveyed by Adobe are adopting more personalization across channels to drive ROI, leveraging their MAPs and other technology tools to do so. The report finds that “99% of leading companies are using a medium or high level of personalization across their marketing channels.” These high-performing B2B organizations know that big-ticket purchases often involve large buying groups and long buying cycles that can involve hundreds of touch points. That level of targeted, consistent, and highly-personalized account engagement can only be achieved with automation and AI. The great news for B2B marketers is that this “personalization at scale” technology is now proven and readily available, with more and more B2B companies putting it to good use. “To achieve success,” says the Adobe report, “[B2B] leaders are addressing all aspects of great personalization, including centralized customer data, content creation, omnichannel customer journeys, and measurement.” The complexities of personalization at the account-level (via ABM) are many and B2B organizations are leveraging technology to resolve challenges that include understanding buying groups and the associations within them, as well as the size of account-level opportunities and target accounts.  More channels are being accessed by B2B buyers, making orchestrating engagement across these channels more complicated. While email has always been an important B2B channel, other channels (such as SMS) are growing. For example, Adobe finds that “90% of B2B marketers plan to implement or improve website chat” in 2023. “Using an increasing number of channels creates an increasing need for orchestration between them,” explains the report. “As with personalization, leaders are making use of automation and AI to deliver results. Whether they are using lead-based marketing, account-based marketing, or both, many of the same capabilities are needed for great orchestration. Scoring, stage tracking, routing, and audience and activity triggers help [B2B marketers] listen, adapt, and respond.” Measuring what matters In one of the Adobe report’s most powerful findings, “100% of leading companies plan to work to improve attribution” in 2023. Yes, all of them. B2B organizations are focusing more energy and investment on attribution for one simple reason: it helps them prove and improve marketing impact. They’re seeking to measure the pipeline, revenue, and ROI performance of every campaign, channel, content asset, and touchpoint so they know what tactics are working at each demand stage and where to invest more resources, says the report. More than 7 of 10 of those surveyed (71%) have moved from single touch to multi-touch attribution approaches. B2B attribution can be tough to get right. According to Gartner, a typical buying group for a B2B solution involves 11 members. And with each member of a buying group engaging with B2B sellers through online and offline channels over the course of a multi-week or multi-month buying cycle, the number of touchpoints can easily grow beyond 100 for just one deal. So, the Adobe report notes, “it takes multiple campaigns, multiple channels, and multiple content assets—a lot of marketing investment—to get every B2B deal done.”  The ability to tie marketing actions to pipeline, revenue, and ROI changes everything marketing does. When done right, “attribution provides visibility to the revenue impact of every trackable touchpoint—and, thus, every campaign, channel, and content asset,” notes Adobe. When this information is combined with cost data, ROI is revealed. Attribution truly becomes the enabler of data-driven marketing optimization. Leveraging better data for better experiences Adobe finds that data management effectiveness underpins the success of high-performing B2B marketing organizations. After all, notes the report, “it’s data that informs effective targeting, personalized engagement, and accurate measurement. Marketing automation platforms . . . provide a powerful marketing data environment.” Customer data fuels great planning, engagement, and measurement. When marketing automation was first created nearly two decades ago, it gave marketers a much more actionable environment for marketing data than the CRM systems they’d been working with. “Marketers with complex customer data requirements are learning how to enhance the power of marketing automation and their overall martech stack through the addition of a dedicated customer data platform (CDP) that’s designed for B2B data structures,” says the report. The idea is to improve the quality of data, maintain its quality, and then enable its activation (often through automation) for customer engagement that’s timely and personalized. In 2023, the available technology is enabling more of that “data-fueled” engagement than ever.   For more information about, or help with, implementing any of the B2B marketing best practices and technologies listed above, reach out  to us today.

The roles and responsibilities of the B2B marketing function have grown dramatically over the last few years, especially since the pandemic has accelerated digital-first (often, digital-only) customer engagement. Marketing automation vendors such as Oracle have been working hard to provide the technology tools to enable marketers to succeed in a world where customers increasingly expect personalized, omnichannel engagement.  Oracle Eloqua , for instance, has announced a product roadmap for 2023 and beyond that empowers B2B marketers to: (1) deliver personalized customer experiences at scale and across channels, (2) intelligently adapt to evolving customer behaviors, and (3) connect data and systems in order to orchestrate engagement at scale. Since “doing more with less” is imperative for marketers in 2023 (and always), Oracle is also seeking to automate more tasks around campaigns and data management, so marketers can invest more of their limited time innovating and creating.  Sojourn's December 2022 Oracle Eloqua User Group  (virtual, and free on-demand), hosted by Karin “KP” Pindle (Senior Martech Advisor at Sojourn Solutions), was highlighted by a 50-minute presentation by Oracle’s Chris Campbell  (Director of Product Management, Oracle Marketing). Campbell basically offered Oracle’s vision for Eloqua and described its product roadmap coming in 2023 and beyond. The vision guiding Oracle Eloqua’s roadmap “Marketers need to deliver real-time, connected experiences” across channels, doing so with “contextual relevance,” says Campbell, and Oracle is working to address that need via three key areas of focus: Personalization at scale:  Oracle deeply understands that B2B marketers need to “know their customer” at a granular level in order to drive better personalization, says Campbell. Oracle has therefore created unified customer profiles that pull in data from across the Oracle ecosystem and beyond. Eloqua is also being designed to enable messaging with centralized content and enablement. Connecting experiences:  Oracle is focused on enabling B2B marketers to orchestrate (and automate) digital experiences across channels using intelligent journeys that can adapt to customer behaviors at scale. From a “back end perspective,” unifying data and systems is a key foundation for creating these connected, cross-channel customer experiences. Differentiating your marketing:  Oracle believes that automation and tools such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, embedded in the Oracle ecosystem, can liberate marketers from routine, manual, and data-intensive tasks and thus free them up for more creative work that can truly differentiate them from rivals. Oracle’s Fusion Marketing , for instance, allows marketers to engineer and orchestrate experiences. Oracle’s AI tools such as Einstein can support cross-channel and predictive experiences based on a unified customer profile and unified content management across the entire Oracle ecosystem. Highlights of the 2023 roadmap Having described Oracle’s foundational vision, Campbell went on to highlight some of the specific product enhancements Oracle and Eloqua will be launching in 2023 and beyond. 1. New user experience/UI.  Oracle is seeking to provide the same “look and feel,” in terms of user experience/user interface, across its multiple platforms, including its Eloqua MAP. The new Eloqua UI/UX aligns its MAP with the same UI/UX of all Oracle Cloud Applications, based on the award-winning Redwood Design System . Campbell noted that this UI enhancement is scheduled for release in the first half of 2023. 2. SMS enhancements: Segment filters.  Campbell notes that mobile SMS is a growing channel for B2B marketers and “we’ve had great interest around our SMS features.” The new “segment filters” enhancement will allow marketers to create customer segments based on SMS-related activities such as: phone number consent, replied to SMS, sent SMS, clicked SMS, and more. 3. Multiple branded domains.  “This feature will allow marketers to easily create and manage campaigns for multiple brands within a single Eloqua instance,” says Campbell. It enables marketers to configure up to ten brands within a single MAP instance, as well as select specific brands when creating emails in order to auto-apply images. 4. Subject-line optimization.  This enhancement works with Oracle’s AI and ML tools in order to help marketers optimize their email subject lines in order to drive email opens/engagement. It uses AI/ML to identify words and phrases that encourage customer engagement, as well as predicting open rates based on different subject lines offered by marketers. 5. Oracle Fusion Marketing Guided Campaigns.  Campbell describes this as a “new guided campaign workflow that allows marketers to build multi-channel campaigns across emails and advertisements targeted to your accounts.” The enhancement will also enable marketers to measure campaign effectiveness and attribute opportunity scores based on engagement, including intelligently scoring leads for potential sales follow-up. 6. Simple campaign enhancements.  Campbell says that Eloqua will be adding campaign approval functionality to simple campaigns, allowing marketers to configure approval workflows to prevent campaigns from being activated without the assigned approval. For more information about Oracle Eloqua’s 2023 roadmap, along with launch dates and details about specific enhancements, visit the Eloqua Release Center  in the Topliners Community. For more information about how implementing and properly managing Oracle Eloqua can help you prove and improve the value of your B2B marketing, reach out  to us today.

Marketing Operations remains a relatively new function and profession, but it’s evolving quickly. In its annual report  State of the Marketing Ops Professional , MarketingOps.com (the community-led platform for Marketing Operations Professionals), surveyed almost 600 Marketing Ops pros from multiple industries to better understand the trends driving the function. Those trends can be broken down into two large categories: (1) “people” trends impacting Marketing Ops pros and teams and (2) martech trends impacting the tools and technologies deployed and supported by Marketing Ops. In this two-part series, we’ll cover the findings of the must-read report under those two categories, beginning below with trends impacting Marketing Ops pros.  7 key findings on Marketing Ops pros Who are Marketing Ops pros? They are problem-solvers who take a strategic, cross-functional, and data-informed approach to proving and improving marketing value/ROI. The important work they do requires a thorough understanding of what other people do within the organization - Marketing Ops pros must align with Sales and other teams. It also requires a deep understanding of business processes, the customer/buyer journey, data analytics, and how technology impacts all of it. Here’s what the report found about the evolving role of Marketing Ops pros:  1. The Marketing Ops function is expanding and maturing. 80%+ of companies have a dedicated Marketing Operations individual or team (up from 65% in 2021), says the report. While 80% of Marketing Ops pros have at least 3 years of experience, 30% of them report having 10+ years of experience. Only 1 in 10 pros working within the function have less than a year of experience. In terms of age, survey responses indicate that most Marketing Ops pros are either Millennials or Gen Z, so they tend to be lifelong learners who skew younger. 2. The Marketing Operations role can be different depending on the organization.  The Marketing Ops function is anything but a standard, cookie-cutter role, which is why it’s so challenging for its practitioners. As the report explains: “Marketing Operations can look different at each organization. Some Marketing Ops pros are dedicated to managing software tools, naming structures, integrations, workflows, and the technical aspects of the marketing team. Others work closely with GTM teams to define leads, lead handoff processes, automation, and ensure the end customer experience is streamlined.” Clearly, the Marketing Ops role requires a learning mindset, both because the role requires working across multiple parts of the organization and because Marketing Ops continues to evolve and expand in scope. Regardless of the setting in which the Marketing Ops pro works, communication skills are essential because Marketing Ops is tasked with driving change across the organization. This means they must speak “the language and lingo” of multiple areas, from IT to Sales to Finance and others. 3. The top job responsibilities involve tech, processes, and data. The report found that the top four job responsibilities for Marketing Ops pros are:  Developing and implementing software or system integrations (54%) Designing, implementing, and optimizing operational processes/procedures (48%) Evaluation of tech stack and assessing what tech is needed (48%) Data analysis and data reporting (47%) So Marketing Ops pros must keep pace with trends in martech, including automation, artificial intelligence, and data management, while also keeping up with their organization’s various use cases for technology. 4. Marketing Ops is like a coach helping the marketing function prove and improve its value.  The report is clear about the most common, and most important, role of Marketing Ops: it operates “like the coach of the overarching marketing team, planning out the strategy, monitoring execution, and making sure that everything is running smoothly so the players can succeed.”  The Marketing Ops function, as we’ve said repeatedly, is ultimately about proving and improving what marketing does. That takes investments in technology, but also in training and enabling people. 5. Marketing Ops is a well-compensated function.  According to the report, about 7 in 10 Marketing Ops professionals make more than $100,000 per year. Those that report being at the Director, VP, or Executive level typically make $250,000 per year or more. As Marketing Ops becomes more defined, so will the specific titles and specialized roles within the function. It’s clear that more organizations are not only deploying a dedicated Marketing Ops team – with an average team size between 2 and 10 people – but are also seeing the need to fairly compensate and retain Marketing Ops talent. 6. Marketing Ops pros report working most closely with Sales, Demand Gen, and Sales Ops.  This is no surprise given the cross-functional nature of the role. Marketing Ops seeks to foster alignment in order “to figure out the best strategy to reach and convert more prospects and to engage with existing customers,” says the report. The alignment of the multiple teams that impact revenues and customer experience is foundational for Marketing Ops success.  7. The top four priorities for Marketing Ops teams are, according to the report:   Supporting revenue operations and pipeline Improving campaign efficiency Data cleansing/hygiene Improving/updating the tech stack Conclusion: State of the Marketing Ops Pro Report The Marketing Ops function is complex and multi-faceted, requiring its practitioner’s to have a broad-based skill set, as well as a mindset of continuous learning/growth. “The State of the Marketing Operations Professional” report highlights the multiple challenges Marketing Ops pros face – especially around alignment, processes/data, and technology – and how they are meeting them. In our next post, we’ll explore the technology and tools Marketing Ops pros are deploying and supporting to get the job done.   Want to learn more about Marketing Operations and its impact on driving the efficiency and effectiveness of your B2B marketing? Let's talk .

Marketing Ops remains a relatively new function, but it’s evolving rapidly. In its annual report  State of the Marketing Ops Professional , MarketingOps.com (the community-led platform for Marketing Operations Professionals), surveyed almost 600 Marketing Ops pros from multiple industries to better understand the trends driving it. Those trends can be broken down into two large categories: (1) “people” and teams and (2) tools and martech deployed by Marketing Ops. In this 2-post blog series , we cover the findings of the must-read 43-page report under those two categories. In this post (#2), we’ll explore the evolution of martech and how marketing ops deploys it to prove and improve marketing ROI. 4 key Martech trends Marketing Ops teams are tasked with selecting and deploying martech to drive marketing efficiency. Whether they’re choosing or using martech, Marketing Ops teams “are prioritizing tools that are able to grow and scale with them, and that integrate with their existing martech stack,” says the report. Here are four key martech trends highlighted by the report: 1. Most popular “general” tools. The #1 tool Marketing Ops pros use is - wait for it - spreadsheets, a surprising finding since spreadsheets have been around since 1979 . This finding is a bit like learning that Pac Man is the #1 video game decades after its creation (not true, by the way – the most popular video game today is Candy Crush). The #2 and #3 most popular tech tools are the collaboration/project management platforms Asana and Jira. As one senior Marketing Ops leader recommends in the report, you should either be using your tools or losing them: “Audit your tech stack and ask if anyone is using the tool. If not, get rid of it. Ultimately, you want every tool in your stack to contribute to revenue. When contracts are up for renewal, really think about their value, current features, and overlap with other tools.” 2. MAPs and martech tools.  Adobe Marketo Engage is the most popular marketing automation platform, with HubSpot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and Oracle Eloqua following, in that order, within the MAP category. About 80% of surveyed Marketing Ops pros report being either “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied” with their current MAP.  Unsurprisingly, Salesforce is by far the most popular CRM. More than 50% of Marketing Ops pros surveyed have a martech stack that includes a dedicated email and/or landing page creation platform. 3. Most important factors when choosing a martech provider.  The most important factor when Marketing Ops selected new martech in 2022 was the tool’s ability to integrate within their martech stack, with 69% of Marketing Ops pros citing that factor. Second was the tool’s ability to scale along with the company, with 53% of Marketing Ops pros citing that factor.  The next four most important factors in choosing a martech provider were: Ease of use (39%) Ability to meet compliance challenges, especially around data privacy/GDPR (29%) Price (26%) Service and support levels from provider (20%) 4. The top coding language Marketing Ops pros know is HTML, with about half of those surveyed knowing it. About 30% of Marketing Ops pros know JavaScript. When it comes to knowing the #1 coding language in 2022, Python, only about 5% of Marketing Ops pros know how to use it. About one in four Marketing Ops pros say they don’t know a single coding language. The good news, of course, is that in-built automation and other martech trends around “consumerization” are reducing the need for any user to understand a programming language to create value. The future of Marketing Ops: 3 ongoing trends “The State of the Marketing Ops Pro” report concludes by looking at the ongoing trends that will continue to shape the function. Three of the biggest “future trends” are: 1. More clarity and definition around the role.  Marketing Ops remains relatively young, and it tends to be an “everything plus the kitchen sink” role in many organizations. Marketing Ops pros, the report says, “want a more clearly defined role in their organizations.” The future will see more headcount, increased resources, and more specialized roles within the Marketing Ops function. 2. Marketing Ops talent will be harder to find and develop.  The function is so challenging because it’s so collaborative and cross-functional. The ideal Marketing Ops pro is strategic and data-driven, conversant in new technologies, a great communicator who can gain “buy-in” from Sales, IT, and senior leadership, and a dedicated, lifelong learner. Where does such a person find time to sleep, let alone perform their challenging and ever-evolving responsibilities? Marketing Ops will basically develop alongside the capabilities of the professionals working within the function. The future may indeed be about martech, but it will also be about the creativity and commitment of people. 3. There’s room for more digital transformation and growth at 93% of organizations , even if they already have a Marketing Ops team. Average Marketing Ops teams might have 2-10 members today and use a limited number of martech tools. The future will see more demand for what they do as well as larger, more specialized Marketing Ops teams deploying a bigger martech stack. As we’ve seen in Sojourn’s Marketing Ops reports done in 2021  and 2019 , the level of maturity among Marketing Ops talent and martech is growing but still leaves a lot of room for more growth. In fact, “The State of the Marketing Ops Pro” report says that only 7% of organizations surveyed have a fully developed digital maturity level, with integrated systems, complete lifecycle nurturing, and personalized content. That means 93% of organizations will continue to need big investments in their Marketing Ops capabilities in order to achieve marketing goals. Read post 1 of this 2-part series now.  Want to learn more about Marketing Operations and its impact on driving the efficiency and effectiveness of your B2B marketing? Contact us  today.