Austin Sal Abramo

Director of Marketing Operations

ThomsonReuters, Inc.

A Thomson Reuters Case Study

Fully Leveraging Marketing

Automation to Impact Revenue

Austin 2014 Modern Marketers Tour

Sal Abramo Director Of Marketing Operations

About Me

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Sal Abramo

• Director of Marketing Operations

• sal.abramo@thomsonreuters.com

• LinkedIn:

www.linkedin.com/in/salabramo/

• Topliners Member

• Multi-Eloqua Markie Award

Winner & Finalist

About Thomson Reuters

• Leading source of intelligent information

• 60,000 employees in more than 100 countries

• 2014 Revenue: US $12.9 Billion

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“A 20-year business cycle in which the most successful enterprises

will reinvent themselves to systematically understand and serve

increasingly powerful customers.” - Forrester Research

Welcome to the Age Of the Customer

- Forrester Research

“75% of the buying process is

complete before a B2B prospect

contacts a company."

"In the discovery and

exploration phases

58% of B2B buyers are

searching references

provided by their peers"

- Forrester Research

“Reliance on knowledgeable

peer references has more than

doubled in the past 5 years.” -SiriusDecisions

"28% of business-to-business

buyers share online vendor

marketing content with over

100 other people." - CMO Council

Trends For 2014

• Data and analytics #1 focus of planned spend increase (61%)

• Lead conversion is the new obsession

• A multi-channel strategy that embraces mobile is a must

• Big data setting new expectations for measurement.

• Chief Marketing Technologist is a Must-Have (70%)

• Search, social media & community growing in importance

• Marketing budget increases as a % of revenue

– 10.6% average in 2013

– 98% report planned increase

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Source: Gartner, 2013. Forrester, 2014. Deloitte University Press, 2014.

Agenda

• Sales & Marketing Alignment

– Roadmap to a mutually beneficial relationship

• Personas

– How to develop & use them the TR way

• Lead Scoring

– Fully leverage for better conversion & results

• Lead Nurturing

– Essentials to driving better campaign performance

• Marketing Measurement & Attribution

– Actionable insight for continuous improvement

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Perception of Marketing & Sales Alignment

Sales & Marketing Alignment

• Mutual agreement on:

– Definition, goals and success measures

– Lead scoring, opportunity management, action process…

– Targeted segments, sub-segments, accounts

– Campaign, selling plays and themes

– Budget priorities by region

• Jointly shape strategic account & deal acceleration planning

• No leads left behind - SLA foundation

– Establish a formal handoff process from marketing to sales

– Marketing is held accountable for quality & volume

– Sales is held accountable for rapid and complete follow-up

• Top-to-bottom - Automated lead tracking & processing

– Marketing retains visibility to results across the sales funnel

– The organization recognizes & agrees with claims of success

• Foster and strive for an environment of….Mutual Respect and cooperation

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A Philosophy I Strongly Suggest You Pursue

If the data is not in

your CRM & MA systems,

it does not exist.

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Agreement on Lead Definitions

What is a:

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An individual who has expressed

an interest in us, and/or shows

ability and likelihood to do

business with us, and for whom

we have contact information

Target universe of potential

customers who meet product/

service segmentation criteria

Prospect

Lead

Agreement on Marketing & Sales Stage Definitions

• Contacts/Inquiries: A unique individual who has no or an

outdated level of qualification.

• MQL – Response Inquiry: A response from an individual to a

marketing campaign or someone who has taken proactive steps

to demonstrate interest in a message, product, offer, content or

service by either providing or confirming an email address.

Meeting base line scoring criteria. Also known as a hand-raiser.

• Sales Accepted Lead : Lead has been accepted by sales for

further development.

• SQL (Sales Qualified Lead): The primary individual associated

to a potential buying cycle that has been touched by an SR and

is ready to be forecasted.

• Won - Closed Business: A deal has been approved by a

customer and the customer has purchased.

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Agreement on Lead Funnel Stages & Goals

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Marketing Activity

Campaigns

Raw

Inquiry

Nurture

Lead Scoring &

Routing

Not ready, Nurture

MQL SQL

Converted

Nurture

Qualified

Not ready,

Nurture

Contact/Account

Opportunity

PERSONAS

What is a persona?

Representation of the attitudes, behaviors and beliefs of a user type

within a targeted demographic.

1. Who are our buyers?

2. Why do they buy?

3. How do they buy?

Why are personas important?

Same Message

+44% purchase intent

VP of Tax

VP of Tax

Tax Director

Tax Director

Tax Manager

Tax Manager

Create buyer personas to:

Better Indentify Targets

Improve Segmentation

Choose Relevant Content

Boost Results

Persona Examples: Snapshots

•DEMOGRAPHICS

•MOTIVATIONS

•CHARACTERISTICS

•GOALS

•PAIN POINTS

Lead Scoring

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What is lead scoring and why do it?

• Lead Scoring: A focus on generating a sales-ready

lead using an objective ranking of one lead against

another.

– Prioritizes leads based on prospects’ profile fit and level of

interest and helps sales zero in on the most promising leads

– Provides an objective measure of which prospects need

further nurturing, enabling marketing to concentrate efforts

– Helps align the right follow-up to the corresponding inquiry

– Increases deal close rates, company revenue and revenue

per deal

Focused Lead Scoring

What Should Be Scored?

Implicit (Digital Body Language)

• Email Open/Email Click

• Web Site

– Specific Page (+/1)

– Return

• Content Interaction

• Activity Velocity

Explicit

• Lead Source

• Demographics (job role,

buyer persona, company size,

location, department)

• BANT Questions/Progressive

Profiling

• Existing Customer or Account

Lead Scoring Pilot

• Get feedback from Sales on Scoring criteria

• Send Sales all leads with lead ratings

• Have a pilot team evaluate lead scoring:

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Nurturing

Leads

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Effective Lead Nurturing

• Fully Leverage the Power of Marketing Automation

• Persona-Focused Valuable Content

• Segmentation

– The Buyers Journey/Journey Mapping

• Forms

– Smart Forms & Blind Forms

• Up Qualify With Tracks & Plays

– Pain Points, Pricing, Features, Value, Industry…..

Nurture Plays & Tracks

Stage 2: Keeping Up

With VAT Compliance

Stage 3: Avoiding Audit

Exposure

Stage 4: Thank You

& On-Demand

Follow-Up

Stage 1: How to Transform

Big Data

A Nurture Program Mapped To The Buyers Journey

3 Essentials To Drive Nurturing Results

1. Strong Content: Valued persona-driven content they can use

2. Automating your approach and processes

• Moving leads to next buying cycle as they engage

• Use surveys & multiple choice qualifying questions

• Integrate tele-prospecting and phone touch

• Fully leverage and automate forms

• A/B & multi-variant testing critical

3. Focused Lead Scoring

• Implicit: data on an action, digital body language

• Explicit: demos, or BANT qualification

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#eloquatour

33% Increase in

Leads Generated!

@Dan_Allis

Smarter Forms

Long Form Short Form

Blind Forms

Identifies a contact by their

email address and submits a

blind form in the background

to further segment and qualify

the prospect

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Increased

Newsletter

Leads by 75%!

Measuring Marketing Attribution & Results

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Eloqua Dashboards

Campaign Insight

Salesforce Dashboards

Sales Insight

BI Dashboards

Marketing Insight

#eloquatour

28% Increase in leads

sent to Sales

72% Reduction in time

taken to convert leads

into opportunities

185% Increase in revenue

attributed to Marketing

@Dan_Allis

Results

Lessons Learned • Sales and marketing alignment central to success – a shared understanding of the

buying process is critical – establishment of SLA’s great first step

• Marketing automation will not fix broken sales and marketing processes – stuck in

batch and blast, hunch based, outbound only processes …..simply do not work

• Highly targeted, valued content, personalized, right person, right time, right message

is critical……always oriented to a clear call to action

• A healthy, ever-growing and engaged database is core to success – focus on opt-in,

white listed, targeted nurturing with all content sent of high-value

• Customer and prospect engagement happens on many dimensions, face to face

with outside sales, over the web, via social media, telemarketing, physical

events…contacts are not just sitting around waiting for the next email

• Always keep demand type front and center…new concept, new paradigm, focused

at existing customers, established market...etc. Is the task fishing or farming?

• Reduce waste by targeting as tightly as possible ….think personalized and tailored

• Development of personas is key to segment and engage targeted audiences

• Examine and align the sales process to The Buyers Journey – always seek better

ways to engage with targets

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It’s a journey, not a destination

Questions?

Resource List

• Eloqua – Oracle

– Integration, deployment & best-practice consulting

• B2B Fusion

– Business process, sales & marketing alignment consulting

• Sirius Decisions

– Demand generation, marketing operations & best practice consulting

• Affine Analytics

– Business intelligence, big-data, marketing measurement

• Tony Zambito

– Persona development & buyer insights

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