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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!

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.

The biannual (twice per year) CMO Survey has just been released, and it offers some eye-opening revelations about the state of marketing operations. Almost 300 marketing leaders participated in the survey, and the topline findings are not good. In fact, the surveyed CMOs say that: Only 56% of the martech tools they’ve purchased are being used at all , Only 34% of martech tools are meeting expectations in terms of delivering on anticipated results, and The biggest challenge cited by the CMOs, related to the two data points above, is "integrating marketing technologies across other data systems in the organization." That last problem around integration, as every MOPs professional knows, is a foundational one. Most marketing orgs are currently exploring how to leverage artificial intelligence in order to drive marketing ROI. But a lack of martech and data integration has a huge negative impact on any marketing organization’s ability to access the benefits of AI, now and/or in the future (more on this key challenge below). After we’ve fully explained the key findings of the CMO Survey, we’ll offer a few recommendations for how you can drive improvement in how you optimize your martech stack. CMO Survey: 6 Key Findings Martech investments continue to increase Most companies plan to increase their martech budget annually, from the current 19% of the marketing budget to 23.5% next year. Martech investments are expected to be 31% of total marketing budgets in 5 years, so the “spend trend” is clearly upward.  But as martech budgets continue to increase, there’s growing pressure on CMOs to deliver a seamless integration of newly-purchased martech tools in order to drive a sufficient return on their martech investments. 2. AI is making an impact The marketing leaders surveyed say that AI is beginning to drive significant impacts. In fact, they say AI has:  Improved sales productivity by an average of 5.1%, Enhanced customer satisfaction by an average of 6.1%, and Decreased marketing overhead costs by an average of 7.0%. Impressive results, yes, but we’ve only just begun to integrate AI into marketing workflows. AI must be built on top of a firm foundation of (1) integrated martech tools and (2) martech tools that share data with each other and across the entire organization. 3. A disconnect between martech purchases and organizational goals Martech purchases have little or no value unless they’re supported by strategic goals and connected to specific use cases (such as enhancement of customer experience). When purchases are not clearly aligned with business goals and specific use cases, organizations are tossing their money out the window.  The CMO Survey shows that one of the root causes of martech underutilization is a lack of connection to any strategic focus on specific use cases. “Buying stuff” doesn’t necessarily drive ROI. 4. Martech tools are going woefully underutilized CMOs may be purchasing more martech, but a failure to maximize their value is the rule, not the exception. About two-thirds (66%) of purchased martech tools are not delivering on expectations. When CMOs were asked “how well is your company performing on each of the following marketing technology activities?,” on a scale from 1 (poorly) to 7 (very well), CMOs responded as follows: “Designing the broad architecture of our marketing technology systems” rated 4.4. So CMOs seem to be just bolting on parts to a machine that’s disjointed and increasingly difficult to manage. “Generating ROI from marketing technologies” and “Developing capabilities for using marketing technologies” both rated 4.5. So CMOs understand that they’re not maximizing martech value, not enabling their people to use it, and not driving sufficient ROI. “Integrating marketing technologies into our customer funnel,” “Leveraging data for tactical decision making” and “Leveraging data for strategic decision making” all rated 4.6. Again, failures around integration lead to a fragmented funnel and an inability to implement AI. 5. More focus placed on top of the funnel, and not enough on full funnel The CMO survey clearly shows that the main focus of martech tools and investments are on lead generation (top-of-funnel) activities, while bottom-of-funnel (e.g., customer acquisition and nurturing) and driving long-term customer value are viewed as secondary concerns.  Meanwhile, marketing leaders and marketers know – at least in theory – that all steps in the buying journey matter to customers, not just the moment of closing. Therefore, connecting your current tech stack to all the stages of the customer journey is foundational.  Focusing on lead gen and neglecting the rest of the funnel journey is like having an incomplete map to where you’re headed – it’s a great way to get lost as you seek to optimize your martech stack. 6. Martech effectiveness metrics misaligned with full funnel focus Related to the point above, marketing organizations are also using internal metrics that are skewed towards the top-of-the-funnel and fail to map the entire buying journey. The most common metrics cited by CMOs to measure martech effectiveness are lead generation, sales, and lead conversion, which are all (of course) relevant indicators. But the three least common metrics cited by the CMOs are also important ones: lifetime customer value, customer loyalty, and pipeline acceleration. 5 Recommendation for Optimizing Martech Every MOPS and marketing organization is different, and confronts a different set of problems. With that said, we suspect that every organization struggles to optimize its martech. As such, and based on the challenges described above, we’d like to offer you a few recommendations for improvement: Audit your martech stack regularly. You can’t improve what you don’t monitor and measure. We at Sojourn Solutions know from long experience that some marketing organizations don’t even know what martech tools they’ve purchased, let alone understand: (1) the strategic focus of each purchase and (2) the specific use cases the purchases were/are intended to support. Start by auditing what you have, and then map each listed martech tool to a strategic focus and its specific use cases. Dump whatever isn’t aligned to a marketing strategy or use case. Once you’ve mapped each tool to a strategic focus and/or specific use case, you can begin evaluating what tools are actually delivering business value and which ones are just taking up space and wasting budget. If a martech tool isn’t earning its keep, move on from it as soon as you can. Evaluate the level of integration within your martech stack and across all your systems. This is a big one, because tools that aren’t connected and sharing data with each other make your stack impossible to optimize. That’s especially true when it comes to a present and future featuring AI. Map your existing integrations and identify areas where you need to integrate. Evaluate your marketing metrics, especially those around martech efficiency. The CMO Survey showed an overemphasis on top-of-the-funnel metrics like lead generation and a relative neglect of metrics related to the full customer life cycle.  Customers expect you to add value at every step of the customer journey. The marketers who focus on the entire funnel are the ones who succeed in good times and tough times. Get outside help, if and when needed. If you don’t have the internal resources to implement the first four recommendations above, consider bringing in outside expertise to help. You can read the full CMO Survey for Spring 2024 (free). If you’d like to improve your marketing operations and maximize the ROI of your martech investments, Sojourn Solutions can help.  Reach out to us today!

Undertaking a marketing technology (MarTech) audit can offer several significant advantages for a large company. Key benefits include:   Enhanced Efficiency and Cost Savings Identification of Redundancies: A MarTech audit can reveal overlapping tools and platforms. By eliminating redundancies, companies can reduce costs associated with licensing and maintenance. Optimization of Usage: Audits help identify underutilized tools. Companies can either eliminate these tools or optimize their use, ensuring they get the best return on investment (ROI). Streamlined Processes: With a clear understanding of the current MarTech stack, companies can streamline processes, reducing complexity and improving overall efficiency. Improved Integration and Data Management Better Integration: Audits help assess how well different tools and platforms integrate with each other. Improved integration leads to better data flow, reduced data silos, and more cohesive marketing operations. Data Quality and Management: A thorough audit highlights issues with data collection, storage, and usage. This allows the company to address data quality issues, ensuring that marketing decisions are based on accurate, up-to-date information. Increased ROI from Marketing Efforts Alignment with Business Goals: By understanding the effectiveness of the current MarTech stack, companies can better align their tools with strategic business goals, leading to more targeted and effective marketing efforts. Improved Campaign Performance: With a clear understanding of the tools available and how they are being used, companies can refine their campaigns, leading to better performance metrics such as higher conversion rates and improved customer engagement. Enhanced Decision-Making and Strategic Planning Informed Decision-Making: A MarTech audit provides detailed insights into the performance and capabilities of existing tools. This information is critical for making informed decisions about future investments in technology. Strategic Planning: The audit helps identify gaps in the current technology stack, enabling the company to plan strategically for future MarTech investments that align with long-term goals. Compliance and Risk Management Regulatory Compliance: A MarTech audit can identify potential compliance issues related to data privacy and security, helping the company avoid legal and financial penalties. Risk Mitigation: By identifying outdated or unsupported technologies, companies can mitigate risks related to security breaches or system failures. Enhanced Customer Experience Personalization: By optimizing the MarTech stack, companies can deliver more personalized and relevant customer experiences. This can lead to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty. Omnichannel Consistency: An audit helps ensure that the marketing tools in use support consistent messaging and customer experiences across all channels. Competitive Advantage Staying Ahead of Trends: Regular audits keep the company informed about new technologies and trends in the MarTech landscape, allowing them to adopt innovations before competitors. Differentiation: A well-optimized MarTech stack can give the company a competitive edge by enabling more effective and innovative marketing strategies. In summary, a marketing technology audit enables large companies to optimize their MarTech stack, reduce costs, improve efficiency, enhance decision-making, and ultimately, drive better marketing outcomes that are closely aligned with their business goals.

Cookies are crumbling, which impacts how marketers collect customer data and how they leverage data for their marketing efforts. Customer concerns about privacy and control over how their data is being collected and used have led to emerging regulations such as GDPR and CCPA. These regulations increase restrictions on tracking third-party data/cookies (that allow marketers to track visitors across domains) imposed by multiple operating systems like Google, Apple, and Mozilla, ad-blocking software, and more.  These combined data restrictions have brought about the death of third-party data/cookies, meaning that marketers and customers alike have entered a new era of data privacy. More than ever, marketers need to be deeply aware of data privacy concerns and how they impact the use of customer data. What is zero-party data? Fortunately for marketers, there's something better than collecting third-party data. Zero-party data, a term first coined by Forrester Research  a few years back, comes directly and consensually from your customers in response to your asking them what they want from you. Such data is of higher quality because it takes the guesswork out of identifying your target customer’s preferences: instead, you ask and they tell you. Obviously, they only tell you if they trust you, which changes how you market to them. As Sojourn’s Kelly Newton - Eloqua expert and Marketing Automation Consultant - explains: “zero-party data is of the highest quality because it is explicitly-provided preferences shared by customers themselves on the types of information they want to receive and how they want to receive it.” So when brands show customers those subscription center check boxes, they can collect zero-party data such as communication preferences, product preferences, and customer interest areas/topics. They can then use that data to categorize customers into groups for email or other types of marketing engagement that addresses stated customer preferences. Brief overview: 3 other types of customer data First-party data, though similar to zero-party data because both originate directly from customers, is collected within a brand’s domain (usually through enabling tracking) to support a transaction, or as a support or service requirement. It doesn’t come in direct response to requests about how customers want you to engage with them, as zero-party data does. Second-party data is typically someone else's first-party data: it’s data your organization has purchased from another organization or that’s been shared with you through a data partnership arrangement. Third-party data is collected outside your brand’s domain from a variety of sources, such as a customer’s (cross-domain) browsing history. This data is typically collected from third-party cookie tracking , a functionality that is now disappearing. Massive benefits of zero-party data With the coming elimination of third-party tracking, first-party data and zero-party data become the best data sources for understanding and engaging with your customers. Sojourn’s Kelly Newton identifies three main benefits of using zero party data: 1. More customer trust.  When marketers explicitly ask customers about how and when they’d prefer to be communicated with, and when marketers respect those customer preferences, a foundation of trust gets built and maintained. That trust is gold for marketers. “Customer consent and trust are so important today,” says Newton. “Marketers and everyone else are all learning how we can respect and appreciate each other in better ways. It's all about building relationships based upon trust and the shared exchange of value.” 2. Higher-quality customer data, and more of it.  When customers trust you, they’re also more comfortable sharing zero party data. It becomes a virtuous cycle where more trust leads to more data – and more relevant data. ZPD is of much higher quality than other types of data “because it comes directly from the source and with full consent,” says Newton. “So you don’t need to guess or infer about a customer based on third-party data because they’ve explicitly told you exactly what they want.” 3. More personalized and effective campaigns. More and better zero-party data becomes the fuel for driving better campaigns that are more personalized and more engaging. With marketing automation, it’s never been easier to take customer preferences and automatically serve up content that addresses the expressed needs of customers. As Newton says, “zero-party data can be translated into really beautiful profiles of each customer that you can target for so many different messages and offerings. So if you know from zero-party data that customer A is a parent and also a history teacher, that's two different categories and two different email campaigns you can create and automate to nurture them.”  With zero-party data, you know you’re sending content that’s more relevant to customers and that they’re more likely to engage with. “You get to know individual customers better with zero-party data and first-party data,” says Newton, “and you can use your marketing automation platform (MAP) to scale, automate, and personalize customer engagement. You can set up campaign canvases based on who your customers have identified themselves as and what actions they take in relation to your content and nurturing campaigns.” A final word Let’s give Forrester Research, who invented the term, the final word  on zero-party data: “Zero-party data is extremely valuable and will improve the effectiveness of personalization efforts. Ultimately, zero-party data can reduce marketing waste for a brand and improve the lives of its customers – a win-win situation for everyone involved.” To learn even more about how to collect and leverage Zero-Party Data to improve your marketing efforts, reach out  to us.

Marketing Operations and Operational Process blog series Series introduction: Marketing Operations is a complex mixture of people, processes, and technology all working together to prove - and improve - the value of marketing to your company, your customer, and your employees. While the technology and people components of this “Marketing Operations Triangle” get a lot of attention, Operational Process deserves much more focus as a driver of value. In this blog series, we’ll be giving it the attention it so richly deserves. We already know what high-performing organizations are doing to drive continuous improvement of their operational processes. They tend to have processes that are: Tied to business outcomes; Part of (and aligned with) their organizational culture; Get continuously improved over time; and Represent a competitive advantage over their competitors. So what actionable steps can organizations like yours take to emulate the success of these high-performing orgs? Here are seven suggestions around operational processes that can help you improve: 1. Document your operational processes and how they impact business outcomes. When I ask clients “how much of your process is documented,” I typically get one of two answers. First, “yes, we’ve documented our processes, but that documentation is a bit out of date.” That’s actually a good answer because it acknowledges that the company recognizes the value of documentation and shows they view processes as dynamic, constantly in need of improving. The second answer might be, “we have a few bits of documentation here and there, and we have some super smart individuals who just make sure our processes are working.” That answer is a good start, but it doesn’t enable you to scale or even sustain your processes. What happens when your “process guru” who keeps things humming decides they want to retire or switch organizations? What can you do about partial documentation or old documentation that needs updating? Get that important process knowledge documented, right now. You can’t afford to wait for that surprise resignation or early retirement before you scramble to get knowledge out of your “process guru’s” head. Get basic tools in place to ensure the process is being followed. This may be as simple as a checklist or sign-offs. Once 1 and 2 are complete, look at your key processes and see how they align to business outcomes. Make sure you’re clearly drawing that connection between processes and business outcomes. 2. Ensure that processes are owned, measurable, and aligned. A defined person needs to be accountable for each process and needs to “own” that process. By measurable, we’re talking about going well beyond checking the “done” box. You want to apply KPIs and qualitative metrics that help ensure that you’re not only getting the job done, but that you’re doing it efficiently.  Start with the “done” box - quantitative data matters when you’re building repeatable and defined processes. Add a qualitative element. For instance, is the process getting completed within a particular time frame? Or at a particular accuracy/quality level? If we’re talking about campaign execution, for example, maybe you’re measuring the duration of the entire process. Or the number of back and forths as a result of missing information in a brief. You need to begin by identifying the metric, then identify the quality marker. Now you have KPIs that get baked into goals, which is what you need. 3. Consider your organizational maturity. As operational processes mature, organizations naturally build their own methodologies and best practices. These lead to standard tools and methods that can then be expanded upon in multiple ways: By adoption in other parts of the organization.  By starting with a small focus area and then expanding (for instance, lead management might start with just terminology and scoring, then move into hand-offs, establishing SLAs, etc.). By increasing capabilities, such as with data processing and distribution. As the team is able to accomplish more, it can deliver more frequently. This expansion can eventually develop into a Center of Excellence model, particularly in larger organizations whereby a SWAT team of experts can assist other departments, share best practices, and help them test or expand processes. 4. Develop a change management process.  Driving change in any area of the business is challenging, and Marketing Operations - and improving operational processes - are no exceptions. Change management capability is a major gap within most organizations and one that’s not considered enough as we look at data, lead management, and other drivers of marketing value. Just one new and improved process could add substantial value to all your new initiatives. Among the foundations of change management is clear and constant communication with all impacted parties. 5. Work to remove the stigma from operational processes. Marketers think, and rightly so, that they’re creative professionals. And of course they add value by being creative. But having insufficient processes can result in less time for creativity and more resources getting lost in wasteful processes.  Marketing Operations is truly a blend of art and science, the creative and the efficient. You can’t have one without the other. There is too often a stigma around “process” that marketers think is a straight-jacket on their creativity. A good operational process that’s effective and efficient enables creativity, while a bad one bogs down creativity. 6. Leverage technology to help optimize processes. Automating a process can often be the best and simplest solution. When you import and export data or seek to “clean” your data, automation can be a huge help, reducing or eliminating tedious manual processes. Again, automating a process, partially or completely, can liberate marketers to spend more of their time being creative, or even strategic.  There are so many tools available for so many aspects of process optimization. These tech tools can actually bring best practices and also provide alerts to relevant people about what they need to do and when.  7. Consider bringing in outside expertise. Outsiders to your organization can often see things you don’t see and identify unseen opportunities for improvement. So many operational problems are actually process problems in disguise. Outside experts can recommend tools and technologies (see #6 above) as well as bring you vast experience and a methodology/discipline to drive needed improvements in your operational process. Marketing Operations professionals are always so busy getting things done day-to-day – an external expert can bring a “big picture” focus on your operational processes and help you drive changes that add real value to your marketing efforts.  Do you want to drive more value for your company? Your customers? We can help you evaluate and grow your Operational Process maturity -  reach out  to start the conversation. Next post in series:   O2's Marketing Operations increases campaign efficiency 27% via new Operational Processes (post 4 of 5)

Marketing Operations and Operational Process blog series Series introduction: Marketing Operations is a complex mixture of people, processes, and technology all working together to prove - and improve - the value of marketing to your company, your customer, and your employees. While the technology and people components of this “Marketing Operations Triangle” get a lot of attention, Operational Process deserves much more focus as a driver of value. In this blog series, we’ll be giving it the attention it so richly deserves. I’ve been a Director of Marketing Operations for a couple of organizations, and currently hold the role for a global software provider. As someone who’s worked in Marketing Operations (primarily centered around Marketing Automation Platforms) for the last decade, I notice that when people think about Marketing Operations, they generally frame it narrowly around technology and more specifically, Marketing Automation Platforms (MAPs). But Marketing Operations goes far beyond the MAP, so it needs to have an effective way to manage all the projects within a marketing organization.   Campaigns, content assets, and templates all live in many different places. Keeping track and coordinating all of those different pieces, pulling in people and processes - all while keeping the human element firmly in mind - is what holistic project management is all about. Getting it right enables the creativity that got so many marketers interested in marketing in the first place. You need enthusiastic, open-minded creatives involved, but you also need an effective workflow, operational processes that are optimized, and obviously your martech (including your MAP). That’s why it’s so important to me to get Marketing Operations and all of marketing to move towards this holistic project management concept, which I’ll describe below.  Start with the end in mind, and think holistically We don't want to start developing a project “just” by looking at the outcomes we seek to deliver at the end. Holistic project management isn’t just about asking “how many email opens do we want to get?” Or “how many deals do we want to close?” It's essential to consider the human element:  Which marketers will be working on this project, and what are their strengths and capabilities? What will the workload and workflows of these marketers look like? What will they test or experiment with and how will we measure how those experiments went? You need to see the whole project experience from beginning to end, including the people and the other project enablers such as technology and process.  When I think about holistic project management driven by Marketing Operations within marketing, a few key considerations come to mind: Productivity is an obvious one, so what will the project’s output and impact be and what will success look like? Resource management asks how much time marketers are spending on tasks and what tasks they’re prioritizing. For example, since the pandemic began I’ve seen a huge increase in meetings. I'd like to see us revert back to a reduced number of meetings, with marketers doing more of the actual work. Reporting and measuring, with the goal of optimizing and improving everything we do.  Doing the right things, instead of everything Marketing Operations and other members of the marketing team need to say “no” and need to prioritize what’s driving real business impact. You really can have too many ideas floating around and have too much going on at the same time, which diminishes focus and quality. The antidote? Having visibility into people’s workloads and having capacity planning within the marketing function. That’s super important for preventing marketer burnout, prioritizing the work that adds the most value, and enabling more creativity. Marketing must be able to say “here's what we're recommending and here's why in terms of alignment to business outcomes, goals, objectives, etc”. – and connect that purpose to who's available and when, and how they execute the work in a way that’s sustainable for people. That might sound “fuzzy” but it’s absolutely mission-critical for proving and improving the value of marketing. Change management: mindsets matter The “mindset” part is really important for holistic project management. Yes, we need the right tools, processes, and workflows, but marketing enablement also includes collecting feedback from all marketers to know what they need from Marketing Operations in terms of enablement - training, tools, dashboards and whatever else. Having a change management process driven by Marketing Operations within Marketing means showing people what the change will look like and continuously communicating the benefits of moving towards a new way of thinking and a new way of doing things. Why?  We know that most people are resistant to change; Other people may automatically embrace any change; And still others prefer to take a “wait-and-see, I won’t stick my neck out” approach. As Marketing Operations professionals, we have to help the whole of marketing (and beyond) see the benefits of being process-oriented, of understanding how to prioritize and improve how they spend their time.  One thing I do as a Marketing Operations  leader that’s really helpful is participate in the change initiative myself, so I’m not talking from an outsider perspective. You can then say, “I applied the new process or workflow and here are my thoughts, does anyone have suggestions for improvement?” That humanizes the conversation and helps people be more open about sharing feedback. Holistic project management means bringing the human back into how we improve operational processes. People often have amazing ideas that they’re hesitant to share, and we need to uncover that lost value. Personas for understanding your marketers In marketing, we have buyer personas that help inform how we position and message our products and services to different types of buyers. For Marketing Operations to be effective, we have to think about marketer personas - the ways in which marketers prefer to be communicated with and/or engaged with us.  You can’t talk to a change resistant marketer who’s been around the block for 20 years the same way you’d talk to a young marketer who just finished school and embraces all forms of change. The resistant person might have gone through dozens of change initiatives over the years with mixed degrees of success. The young marketer who embraces change may also be blind to some of the potential challenges or obstacles ahead. They have different wants, needs, and experiences. You may need to adjust what you say and how you say it, as well as how you listen, depending on the marketer persona.  If you’re interested in learning more about how to build and/or optimize holistic project management to benefit your organization, contact us  today.  All posts in series:   How effective Operational Process drives Marketing Operations success (post 1 of 5) How Marketing Operations can grow Operational Process maturity (post 2 of 5) 7 tips for Marketing Operations to improve Operational Process (post 3 of 5) O2's Marketing Operations increases campaign efficiency 27% via new Operational Processes (post 4 of 5)

Although Oracle have already sent out an update, we wanted to give you a heads-up ourselves about some important changes from Yahoo!, that might affect how Oracle Corporation North America uses Oracle Eloqua. What’s Happening? Yahoo! has recently updated its Feedback Loop (FBL) system. This system helps email senders, like you, get reports on spam complaints from Yahoo! Mail users. These updates could change how these complaints are reported to Eloqua, which might impact the data you see for your email campaigns.   Here’s What You Need to Know:   1.  Spam Complaint Data: You might notice a delay or change in how often spam complaint data gets reported. This could affect how quickly you can respond to these complaints.  2.  Deliverability Metrics: The changes might influence your overall deliverability metrics because of the new way Yahoo! processes feedback.  3.  Campaign Adjustments: You may need to tweak your email strategies to keep your deliverability and engagement rates on track.  The Oracle team is on top of this and is working closely with Yahoo! to understand these changes fully and plan to make any necessary adjustments to minimize disruptions.   What You Can Do:   •  Monitor Metrics: Keep a close eye on your deliverability metrics and spam complaint rates over the next few weeks. If you notice any significant changes, take action promptly.  •  Review Campaigns:  Take a look at your current email campaigns. Consider making adjustments to improve engagement and reduce the chance of spam complaints. This could mean refining your targeting, enhancing your email content, or adjusting how often you send emails.  •  Stay Informed: We’ll keep you updated as we learn more about the impact of Yahoo!’s changes, and will share any further recommended actions, if needed.  This change takes effect on Thursday 1st August - so please ensure you have contacted Oracle Support to have Yahoo Feedback Loops setup and request TXT records from Yahoo Sender Hub for any of your sending domains, as per Oracle’s update.  If you have any questions or need help with any of the above, feel free to reach out to us. We’re here to support you!

Marketing Operations and Operational Process blog series Series introduction: Marketing Operations is a complex mixture of people, processes, and technology all working together to prove - and improve - the value of marketing to your company, your customer, and your employees. While the technology and people components of this “Marketing Operations Triangle” get a lot of attention, Operational Process deserves much more focus as a driver of value. In this blog series, we’ll be giving it the attention it so richly deserves. The UK telecommunications company O2 is a great example of how improved operational processes can not only drive efficiency but also enable a marketing team to free up time for higher-value marketing tasks. O2 went from having non-standardized approaches to campaign management that were creating many problems (more on those later) to a streamlined process that resulted in: a 27% increase YoY in the number of campaigns executed, and 100% accuracy in campaign execution. Campaign management challenges O2 had a small team managing all sorts of operational requests – campaign execution, peer reviewing of campaigns, building out assets and campaign flows in Eloqua, changing lead management processes, and much more. The team did anything and everything related to campaign execution, data, marketing operations, and automation. They’d receive requests from two different business units, typically via email or a quick phone call saying, “can you just do this for us now?” The problem was that these requests didn’t have a structured process behind them to ensure: (1) a clear direction and time frame for executing the brief and (2) all the information and resources needed to execute the request were included with the brief. “The briefs they received were so dramatically different. Some requests came with lots of details and relevant resources/assets,” says Rebecca Clark, Customer Success Manager at Sojourn Solutions, who worked with the O2 team on improving the process, “while others did not. The timeframes for delivery could be all over the place too.”  The O2 team simply didn't have the resources to manage it all, and they lacked enough budget to outsource the work. In fact, the team’s budget was being reduced. O2’s campaign management, especially in light of how requests and briefs were being handled, just wasn't working as efficiently as it could have. Setting expectations with the business units making requests was a massive and time-consuming challenge, and so was managing the team’s budgets, priorities, and schedules. The team would sometimes run out of budget for the month in the middle of the month and then had to seek authorization to spend more. Their operational processes clearly needed to change around campaign management. The change: Streamlining campaign management Due to the sheer volume of the O2 team’s work, much of it unplanned for requests, the team just weren’t able to prioritize work and schedule campaigns  effectively. They finally decided they needed a new process and a more supportive infrastructure around campaign management.   Fortunately, O2’s Campaign Program Manager, Nicky Clarke, had a solid background in project management so she understood the need for and challenges around driving improvement of operational processes. O2's Clarke sought to implement a streamlined process that not only allowed the team to see how their budget was being spent, but also ensured that the briefs and requests coming in had a specific process and quality standard supporting them.  “We introduced the O2 team to Smartsheet, which is a project planning tool,” says Sojourn’s Clark. “You can have forms and attachments within a Smartsheet, and the form is submitted by the person requesting the work.” The requester has to fill in certain fields and then complete a detailed brief that's attached. So it’s an automated process where updates get made, and where each request gets allocated to the right resource with a realistic time frame for executing the work. “That approach with Smartsheet gave the O2 team a more structured approach to requests and briefs,” says Clark.  Adoption of the solution took some time, as the people making the requests were used to just picking up the phone or sending quick “request” emails. They were told to make requests using the new process. “The O2 team became really good at telling business units that they needed to follow the new operational process in order to make a request,” reports Clark, “and it made the team’s workflow so much easier.” Results: Campaign efficiency & enhanced capabilities  With the new process in place, and despite a decreasing budget, the O2 team was able to increase the number of campaigns it executed by 27% YoY. The effectiveness of those campaigns increased too, some of that due to better briefs that helped inform more effective asset/content creation. There was also a huge time saving by having everything in one place and not having to chase down missing pieces of a brief. The team could actually plan their days and their weeks, because the requests were coming from one place with one standard process. “The new, streamlined campaign management process freed up the O2 team’s time to actually consider how they could manage their workload even better,” says Sojourn’s Clark. “They started asking, ‘are the processes behind the things we do as good as they could be?’” The streamlined process freed up some of their budget too, so they could analyze their tech and consider bringing in more effective tools. O2’s Nicky Clarke summarized O2’s operational process improvement journey this way: “We saw a huge increase in the volume of work coming into our team and our budget decreased by 50% at the same time, so this meant we had to optimize the way we worked in order to prioritize what we were doing and deliver more with less. We re-organized our team internally and upskilled their capabilities. We worked with Sojourn to introduce Smartsheet for brief logging and workflow management within our team and cross-functionally with our external agencies. It’s made a big difference. Now we’re constantly reviewing processes and optimizing ways of working in weekly collaboration sessions.”  If you’re interested in learning more about how to increase the efficiency - and effectiveness of your campaign production or other marketing operations related processes,  contact us  today. Next post in series:   How holistic Project Management optimizes Operational Processes in Marketing Operations (post 5 of 5)

A strategic focus across S&P Global is LEAN efficiency and process, and efforts like this contribute significantly to our strategic business goals, as well as helping to ensure Marketing is operationally streamlined. Zoe (Lowther) Mol, VP Global Marketing, S&P Global Platts Introduction Data in its raw, unfiltered form offers no insights to drive great business decision-making (it’s simply “more information” in a TMI world). It takes skilled, experienced professionals to make meaning and provide strategic, actionable insights from data. Enter S&P Global Platts, in business for over a century and now the leading independent provider of information, benchmark prices and analytics for the energy and commodities markets. The London-based business intelligence company has over 1,000 employees spread out over 19 offices worldwide, all of them with one goal — to leverage data to bring clarity and transparency to the energy and commodities markets. Challenge: Work differently Keeping up with the fast pace of global change has now become a core organizational capacity. Call it agility or adaptability or whatever you want (this isn’t buzzword bingo), but change happens fast today and individuals and organizations had better be ready to accommodate it. Well, S&P Global, the 17,000-people strong, global parent company of S&P Global Platts, decided that the entire global operation would migrate its marketing automation to the Marketo platform. Solution: A 3-part migration To complete the planned migration from Eloqua to Marketo, S&P Global Platts worked with its partner, Sojourn Solutions. A three-part solution was co-developed that was structured around risk mitigation, campaign migration, and multiple integrations. We'll look at how each part of S&P Global Platts’ Marketo migration solution was developed and executed... Results: Savings, plaudits, awards S&P Global Platts finished its migration on schedule and without downtime or disruption of its MAP operations, as they’d promised their parent company. Perhaps best of all, S&P Global Platts saw huge benefits to their bottom line, including a 75% savings on campaign migration costs to Marketo. This was a true collaborative effort between Platts’ Marketing, IT, and Content teams, and executed by our preferred partner, Sojourn Solutions.  Melissa Thames, Global Head Marketing Operations, S&P Global Platts In the end, the S&P Global Platts migration project was recognized with a prestigious 2018 Revvies Award, in the category “The Transformer.” S&P Global Platts saw huge benefits to their bottom line, including a 75% savings on campaign migration costs to Marketo. In addition, as the Revvie Award press release explains, “after implementing the Marketo platform, S&P Global Platts automated their subscription and information distribution process, saving more than 15 weeks of people-hours annually” and gaining massive cost benefits. (include in section where award image appears to left of text) Since 2008, Sojourn has been our go-to marketing operations strategy and support team. They most recently helped us successfully move to Marketo from Eloqua which involved many integrations and complex use cases that required solutioning. We couldn’t have done it without them. Melissa Thames, Head of Global Marketing Operations