Data is the fuel that powers modern marketing, enabling better understanding of customer needs that leads to better engagement, better content, and better marketing tools/approaches. Data by itself is useless, however, without a mature data management infrastructure of people, processes, and technology to turn raw data into actionable insight that drives engagement and ROI. Our “Data and Insight Series” focuses on building that mature data infrastructure.   The previous posts in this “data and insights” series described the importance of data in driving marketing ROI and detailed how your organization can develop a mature data infrastructure to support quality data and insights. In this post, 6 recommendations are offered that will have an immediate impact on your data quality and data maturity.  1. Improve the value of data with a data governance model.  You can achieve data governance in phases, so that it doesn't need to be super complex right from the start. A lot of organizations get stalled, and initiative dwindles, because they try to overcomplicate data governance. Three important things to focus on initially are: (1) Build a cross-functional team made up of people who have a stake in quality data. (2) Enable and empower the data team with decision-making powers, so they can identify issues and make needed changes to ensure data quality and effective data governance. (3) Map the data landscape you have, which requires having working sessions where the cross-functional team sits down together and everyone pulls up their systems and brings up the data points that are in play for them. Each team would also bring up its use cases for data and you can start discussing sources of data and their quality.  You’ll need to break data soilo’s wherever they are. So, for example, maybe marketing has their campaign data and customer segments built on certain data fields, say “country.” What happens when your ERP system changes from a three digit country code to a two digit country code, or vice versa? Your ERP is likely integrated with your CRM, so the new country code comes into your CRM. Your CRM is also integrated with your MAP. The country code change can completely blow up every single logic and country code that marketing uses in its MAP. That's a more common and chaotic scenario than you might think.  That’s why having cross-functional data governance protects the integrity and quality of your data and the systems it flows through. You need to map out your data systems, get people talking across functions and systems about any pending changes and how they might impact everyone’s use cases and data flows.  2. Perform an annual (or periodic) health check on your data and data quality, supported by a robust data health dashboard for ongoing monitoring and support.  Ideally, if you have a cross-functional data team in place, you're able to do the health check across the entire business and across all your systems. Marketing, for instance, may have data within its lead scoring program that suddenly stops getting captured for lead scoring purposes. Well, you're probably not going to notice that until a health check reveals it – during a health check, you'd actually look at the penetration of values across your key fields and you’d see that something’s gone missing. The health check helps you identify and remedy problems with your data and systems before they significantly impact everything you do. 3. Create a systems integration roadmap, allowing for “accepted levels” of integration within each phase, and communicate progress.   If your organization uses a MAP, CRM, and ERP, and your marketing team wants more customer-level data that lives within your ERP, marketing may find itself manually extracting all that data. These manual processes take so much time and effort, and can potentially diminsh the quality of the data too. So you need to know beforehand whether there's an integration in place (or not). An integration roadmap gives you that information. It tells you where you are with your core system integrations and what you have planned to expand those integrations. Knowing that can save you on needless investments, where people say, “we're not getting the data we need, so we need to invest in a CDP.” Maybe you don't need a CDP, but actually just need to better integrate what you already have – and let's put a plan in place to do that. 4. Implement controls on all data input and output sources to ensure data compliance, as well as data integrity.  When it comes to data input, people often ask, “how do we fix the data that's already in the system?” They don't necessarily think about how to fix data before it gets into the system. So looking at your form captures and your upload templates, etc., can help you ensure that you have quality controls in place before data flows in.  You could define validation rules on your forms or pull down master templates for your uploads. And it’d be exactly the same for your outputs. Make sure that not just anyone can export your data sets – you need controls in place, permissions within your user controls. That’s more important than ever because of increasing data compliance requirements. 5. Stay current on key business and/or functional team use cases to ensure data and insights are aligned.  This recommendation requires talking to people regularly in cross-functional planning meetings in order to understand and align with their use cases. Marketing operations, for instance, needs to remain aligned to the business use cases across their stakeholder teams. If that alignment is lost, then the data and insights you're capturing are going to lose value and confidence levels will erode.   6. Get a seat at the table re: martech/tech purchase decisions that will generate data within your Data Governance model.  New tech can change everything. New data could also overlap where data is already being collected. Data may need to be integrated into a BI tool or a data lake. If data comes in and is integrated with multiple systems, there has to be consideration of the impacts.  When you're looking at responsibilities around data management insight, you have to communicate with the stakeholders across functions. Planning across functions is far better than people getting surprised by unanticipated impacts that disrupt data quality and operations. For help in improving your data quality and data management maturity, reach out  to us today.

As someone who has been writing online content for the last two decades, I’ve often received lengthy “SEO (search engine optimization) briefs” listing numerous keywords to be placed into the content a specified number of times at specific places, including in the title and subheadings. “SEO requirements” have, over the years, dictated the length of content, the number of keywords within, the number of links included, the title of the content, and much more. Inorganic SEO requirements don’t help readers While content creators like myself have generally understood the importance of SEO and search rankings for online content, working with rigid SEO requirements can feel like a straightjacket that limits content creativity and doesn’t result in helpful, readable content for consumers. Almost all content creators want to make organic, creative content that truly helps people who neither know about, nor care about, SEO requirements. People simply want content that’s valuable. SEO has long sought to “figure out” what Google’s mysterious, all-important search engine algorithm requires for a high ranking. And if you think writing that sort of SEO-first content is tedious (trust me, it is), try reading this formulaic stuff – it can read like a bored robot wrote it on a bad day. Google’s update: Creating content for humans, not search engines Google created the “give the algorithm what it wants” problem and is now seeking to solve it with its recently launched Helpful Content Update . The new update began its roll out on August 25th and took until early September to conclude. The tone and content of Google’s Helpful Content Update announcement was music to the ears of every content creator and marketer who prefers to create content for real human beings rather than algorithms. “We know people don’t find content helpful if it seems like it was designed to attract clicks rather than inform readers,” said Google’s announcement. “We’re rolling out a series of improvements to Search to make it easier for people to find helpful content made by, and for, people.”  Google is well aware that search engine optimization has become more of a rigid, formulaic game than a way to create content that actually serves and informs people. Users of Google’s search engine have noticed the problem for many years and have been complaining to Google about an array of misleading tactics driven by SEO “tricks,” including misleading headlines, content filled with repetitive, distracting SEO keywords, and content that performs well for SEO but that lacks any real insight or value for readers. Bottom line? People go to Google’s search engine for information and actionable insights, not to get tricked, and Google is now advocating for its human users. “This ranking update will help make sure that unoriginal, low quality content doesn’t rank highly in Search,” says Google, “and our testing has found it will especially improve results related to online education, as well as arts and entertainment, shopping and tech-related content.” Human-Centricity: It’s been a long time coming These changes to Google’s search engine rankings that prioritize people over algorithms, that reward the helpfulness and originality of content over its adherence to some “check-the-box” approach to SEO, have been long overdue. The changes are great news for marketers and content creators who put helping people above “tricking” a search engine algorithm. The changes are also great news for people who use Google search to actually find useful, insightful, and original content. Who does the change hurt? Anyone who has been creating and posting content with the primary purpose of driving search engine visibility and traffic, rather than helping people. These SEO tricksters will now need to perform the hardest trick of all (for them): actually helping people by creating valuable content. Advice for adapting to Google's Helpful Content Update  Google helpfully provided the Search Engine Roundtable  with two sets of questions content creators and marketers can ask themselves about their content in order to determine whether it will perform well with the new content update.  Answering “yes” to some or all of the questions is a warning sign that you might be taking a “search engine-first” approach (not a “people-first” approach) and should therefore reevaluate: Is the content primarily made for search engines rather than humans? Are you producing lots of content on different topics in hopes that some of it might perform well in search results? Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics? Are you mainly summarizing what others have said before without adding much value? Are you writing about things simply because they seem trending and not because you’d write about them otherwise? Does your content leave readers feeling like they need to search again to get better information from other sources? Are you writing to a particular word count because you’ve heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? Google also added that “people-first content creators focus first on creating satisfying content. Answering “yes” to all or some of the questions below means you’re probably on the right track with a people-first approach to content.” Here’s the second set of questions: Do you have an existing or intended audience for your business or site that would find the content useful if they came directly to you? Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge (for example, expertise that comes from having actually used a product or service, or visiting a place)? Does your site have a primary purpose or focus? After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they've learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal? Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they’ve had a satisfying experience? The bottom line on Google's Search Rankings update The update from Google search offers marketers a clear message: create content that prioritizes value and usefulness for people rather than applying rigid SEO requirements. Google has, after a long time coming, finally gotten it right. Of course content should be created for people, not search engines. That’s a win-win-win for content creators, marketers, and anyone who seeks value from content.

It’s been 22 years since Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine co-wrote a seminal book about a (then) relatively-new concept called “customer experience.” The 2000 publication of Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business  helped define and drive CX as a central concept in marketing and business. The book was based on over a decade of pioneering research conducted by Forrester’s CX research team, of which the co-authors were a part.  Manning and Bodine’s book helped define CX and what it meant for business organizations: “Customer experience is how your customers perceive their interactions with your company,” they wrote. “Once you understand that, you can manage your business from the outside in.”  Now Vice President and Research Director at Forrester, Harley Manning recently wrote a fascinating retrospective  on the Forrester blog about the lasting impact of the seminal book he co-authored. In his retrospective, he notes that many things have changed in the realm of CX since 2000, especially around digital technology and the still-developing concept of “digital-first CX,” but that many aspects of Outside In  still apply as powerfully today as they did in 2000.  Here are Manning’s five foundational truths of CX that remain ever-relevant: 1. You need your customers more than they need you. Customers can make or break your business, depending on the CX you deliver. The CX “revolution” Manning helped spark involved the idea that CX includes the product, the purchasing cycle, marketing engagement (online and offline), after-sales, and everything else that potentially impacts customers. Today, every marketer understands that multiple touch points (i.e., customer interactions) are the norm and that every single touch point is critical for building a strong CX. In his retrospective article, Manning says that too many businesses continue to treat customers as if their time and feelings don’t matter: “They barrage customers with an onslaught of spam emails, deploy customer service phone menus designed to prevent people from getting to human help, [and] goal customer service reps on ending calls quickly (as opposed to solving the customer’s problem)." That approach is anti-CX. 2. Superior CX creates superior customer loyalty. A great CX doesn’t need to be a “perfect” CX. Customers, after all, are human and understand that life can have the occasional pothole, the bad day in an otherwise good month. When brands have a clear, consistent CX strategy that gets driven across the entire organization, customers appreciate and reward the long-term CX discipline with their loyalty. When the occasional “mess ups” occur, they’re more forgiving because of the good times that have come before. CX, after all, is an ongoing, evolving relationship between brand and customer. Manning’s retrospective on the Forrester blog describes the continuing importance of CX as a way to turn “purchasers” into brand devotees. Manning defines these brand devotees as “a type of super-loyal customer who is loyal because they are having a great customer experience . . . One-hundred percent of the devotees of a brand intend to stay with it, 100% intend to buy more from it, 100% are willing to forgive it when it makes a mistake, and 100% are willing to pay a premium price for the brand (versus just 11% of non-devotee customers).” 3. Superior customer loyalty leads to superior business results. Inside Out  clearly defined the business benefits of a positive CX: businesses get “higher revenues resulting from better customer retention, greater share of wallet, and positive word of mouth, plus lower expenses due to happier customers who don’t run up your service costs.” Manning’s retrospective echoes Outside In  by reiterating the business benefits of a strong CX: “look at the business results of brands that have a high percentage of devotees. For Tesla, each devotee is worth 149% of a non-devotee. Its stock price went from $17 per share at its IPO in 2010 to over $800 per share as I’m writing this in July of 2022. That’s a return of well over 4,000%.” Simply put, maintaining and building a great CX is the best way to build any business. 4. Delivering superior CX requires business discipline. Outside In  was so impactful because it highlighted the strategic nature of CX, and how building a great CX took internal coordination, alignment, and strategic discipline around delivering on customer expectations. The seminal book made it clear that all organizational departments, as well as every single policy, process, and technology are components of a holistic CX ecosystem. CX wasn’t just the job of customer-facing departments, like sales and customer service, but involved everyone and everything in the business.  “A customer ecosystem is the complex set of relationships among a company’s employees, partners, and customers that determines the quality of all customer interactions,” the authors write in Outside In . You need a strategy to drive CX, as the book explained: “employees and partners need a shared vision: a customer experience strategy. Without that beacon, employees are forced to set out on a random walk, and their decisions and actions will inevitably be at odds with each other, despite all the best intentions.”  That need for a strategy to underpin CX hasn’t changed at all since 2000, says Manning, but has only become more challenging as CX touch points and digital channels proliferate. 5. Emotion is the key to CX differentiation. CX certainly includes filling in the potholes in the customer journey, but CX goes beyond just fixing potholes and removing friction. In order to be a superior CX, there must be an emotional component. That need for emotion hasn’t changed since Outside In  was published. As Manning writes in his retrospective: “emotion has a bigger impact on customer loyalty than either effectiveness or ease. Sometimes it has a bigger impact than both effectiveness and ease combined. That’s because effectiveness and ease are table stakes,” but emotion brings CX to a higher level. As Manning writes at the end of his retrospective, “the late, great poet laureate Maya Angelou expressed [the importance of emotion in CX] best when she said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” That’s as true for customer experience as it is for everything else in life.”

On the second day of this year’s Dreamforce  (Sept. 21, 2022), Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) announced the launch of Salesforce Genie , along with some important partnerships that will help SFMC leverage real-time data to personalize customer engagement across channels. The company announced these new partnerships during an hour-long Dreamforce session called “Deliver Customer Moments that Count.” Lidiane Jones , EVP and GM of Experiences Clouds for Salesforce, hosted the Dreamforce session by noting that “ 71% of customers  today want real-time personalization across every channel,” and brands therefore need to have the capability to (1) understand customer needs in real-time and (2) address those needs with personalized messaging across channels. That’s a difficult task because of the proliferation of systems and too much data: companies have an average of 976 separate applications  to run their business, which fragments both customer data and digital experiences.  How can marketers build the capability to personalize at scale, across channels? Jones noted that accessing and leveraging real-time data is essential for personalization efforts and orchestrating customer messaging. But getting customers to share their data is an increasing challenge. Jones noted that “90% of marketers say that recent data privacy changes have impacted their work.” Salesforce Genie: Real-time data for instant activation Jones offered a simple answer for marketers wanting to access and activate real-time customer data: the newly-launched Salesforce Genie , which Jones described as “a real-time CDP for SF Marketing Cloud that marketers can use to personalize and automate engagement through every channel.” The official SF  announcement notes that Salesforce Genie “unifies all of a company’s customer data across channels and interactions into a single, real-time customer profile, so every experience across the Customer 360/SFMC is more automated, intelligent, and real time.”  Identifying moments that matter.  Jones explained that the automatic customer profiles created by Genie dynamically adapt with incoming data and can also trigger automatic alerts to sales reps or marketers for relevant outreach. Genie “can help you identify and take advantage of the moments that matter to customers,” empowering you to “make those moments magical,” said Jones. Furthemore, Genie can help marketers with better, and more dynamic, targeting and customer segmentation, “helping you improve your ad spend” and account-based marketing (ABM) efforts. Personalization and orchestration.   Using Marketing Cloud Engagement  in tandem with Genie, marketers can take Genie’s real-time data and respond immediately to user activities by automating engagement/outreach efforts to increase conversion and cost-efficiency — for instance, marketers could automate the sending of a follow-up email immediately after an existing customer reaches a new loyalty tier, or trigger a personalized mobile/SMS and advertising journey based on an online behavior (e.g., viewing a product’s price or delivery time) that strongly signals an intent to purchase. Two new partnerships: WhatsApp and Amazon Sagemaker Jones announced a partnership with leading, global communications platform WhatsApp , enabling SFMC users to send SMS business messages via the WhatsApp platform. Matt Idema, VP of Business Messaging at Meta, which owns WhatsApp, came on stage and said that “a billion people use messaging apps every day to talk to businesses. Now, marketers can reach out with messaging on WhatsApp about promotions, support, and beyond.” Next, Jones announced an SFMC partnership with Amazon SageMaker  (a machine learning platform) that will enable marketers to integrate their SFMC data to build AI and machine learning models that can predict customer behavior and thereby inform customer engagement efforts. “With SageMaker, you can now build and train AI models with your Salesforce data,” Jones said. Of course, marketers can also build AI models with Salesforce Einstein . As the official Salesforce announcement  said, “the new integration will enable customers to use Amazon SageMaker, AWS’s machine learning (ML) modeling service, alongside Einstein, Salesforce’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology, to build new AI models tailored to the unique needs of their business — and use them in real time across the Customer 360.” SFMC in action: Build-A-Bear drives personalization Jennifer Kretchmar, Chief Digital and Marketing Officer at Build-a-Bear, spoke next about her company’s use of SFMC to drive personalization. “We use real-time customer data to personalize experiences and engage with our Build-a-Bear customers across channels,” she said.  Build-a-Bear pulls together data from various systems, including purchasing history and first-party behavioral data gained from customer website visits, to create a unified view of the customer that drives cross-channel engagement. The company has leveraged SFMC to increase digital engagement by 278%.  BaB also uses Einstein to build AI models for predictive purposes and uses real-time data to orchestrate and automate customer journeys, including using popular messaging apps for automated SMS outreach to customers. Salesforce Marketing Cloud's clear direction With the launch of its real-time data platform, Genie, and the announcement of new partnerships/integrations with WhatsApp and Amazon SageMaker, Salesforce Marketing Cloud has clearly signaled where it’s headed next: helping marketers unify their data to drive digital personalization at scale and in real-time. Contact us  for more information about how to use Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Genie to improve your marketing efforts.

This year’s jam-packed Dreamforce  included a practical, insight-filled session on Email Marketing Best Practices and Innovations , with a focus on Salesforce Marketing Cloud. The session began with Salesforce’s Heidi Robbins, Director of Marketing Strategy, describing some recent trends she’s seen in email marketing. It finished with Salesforce’s Rachel Boyles, Senior Product Marketing Manager, describing how Salesforce itself has adopted some of these recent email trends to make its own email marketing campaigns more effective. 4 pillars of effective email marketing Robbins began her talk by outlining what she called the “four pillars of effective email marketing:” Strategy Data and deliverability Design Customer Experience/CX Email marketing strategy On the strategy pillar, Robbins highlighted “the importance of setting meaningful goals and metrics” for your email campaigns. Those goals should be divided into two distinct categories: (1) internal goals around driving efficiency and (2) customer-facing goals around driving email impact. Your internal focus on efficiency, noted Robbins, should work to decrease the time it takes to build emails. Starting each email from scratch, she said, is wasteful and limits customer impact. Automating your processes around how you build and send emails is, Robbins explained, a key component of streamlining your email workflow to make it more efficient and scalable.  When it comes to impact on customers, the second strategic focus, Robbins asked marketers to “look beyond the open rate, which is a superficial metric, and instead connect your metrics back to the business.” Repeating a phrase that was the focus for much of Dreamforce 2022, Robbins also told marketers to “focus on making moments that matter” by seeking to connect on a deeper, more emotional level with customers. Data and deliverability key in email marketing Robbins explained that driving customer engagement is the key for email deliverability. “Engagement gets you better data and improves your brand reputation, both of which positively impact deliverability.” Robbins asked marketers to “build a data framework that includes the data you have now, the data you need, and the data you want.” Quality data enables personalization, which in turn enables better engagement and better email deliverability, creating a virtuous cycle. Email marketing and design Robbins noted that effective email campaigns should have a standard look and tone that recipients can feel. She therefore asked B2B marketers to... ...“develop an email Design System, which is a collection of reusable components, guided by clear standards, that can be quickly assembled to create digital experiences.” Customer Experience/CX in email marketing “The biggest CX trend in email marketing is to make things fun and to put play at the center of the email experience,” said Robbins. Doing that well takes authenticity and a commitment to building community, both digitally and in real life (an approach Robbins calls “IRL + URL”). How Salesforce approaches its email marketing Rachel Boyles took the microphone next and began describing how Salesforce approached email campaigns for its own B2B customers. She began by detailing six big challenges Salesforce shares with every other B2B brand using email marketing: Having siloed and unused customer data; Facing the need for ongoing product education of its customer base; Competing priorities for the marketing team and limited time/resources; Noise coming from the brand and to customers across multiple channels and internal teams; Lack of customer personalization across content assets; Marketing team members with varied skill levels and experience with email. Boyles tackled these challenges with three strategic goals in mind: To provide personalization at scale; To automate behavior-based customer journeys; and To deliver connected, engaging customer experiences. “We started by building our marketing journey around our B2B customer’s journey,” said Boyles, using Salesforce CRM and data to segment customers through multiple factors such as region, industry, and title. “We then aligned our content delivery around customer behaviors, especially connected to their buying stages and their online behaviors,” she said. For example, if a prospect downloaded a white paper promoted in an email, a Salesforce rep would automatically be alerted and a follow-up recommendation would be generated for the rep. Finally, Salesforce focused on content quality: “we created messaging that stood out, with clear calls-to-action, less jargon, and more concise language.” Nobody has any time for emails that aren’t immediately, clearly relevant to them. Salesforce “activated our CRM data for personalizing email messaging, and worked continuously to ensure that our customer data was reliable, timely, and accurate,” Boyles said.  Regarding Robbins’ earlier recommendation that marketers create a Design Center of reusable, modular assets available for building email campaigns, Boyles explained that Salesforce has done exactly that. “We created a modular design center so our marketers could easily drag and drop assets” into an email, giving emails a standard look and feel for specific campaigns. “We also leveraged collaborative design tools so more of our people could provide input and ideas on design choices,” she said. Both Robbins and Boyles concluded the Dreamforce session by explaining how marketers could learn more about the various Salesforce Marketing Cloud tools to help them improve email marketing effectiveness.  Are YOU interested in learning more about how to help your teams build better email campaigns with Salesforce Marketing Cloud? We can help - contact us  today.

The proposed American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADDPA) , now pending in the House of Representatives, would provide a wide-reaching national privacy standard, overriding existing state privacy laws. If the ADDPA becomes law, marketers would only have to conform to one, national data privacy regulation instead of the patchwork of state laws currently covering the same ground - including laws in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, and Virginia (a dozen other states are now considering data privacy laws as well). The ADDPA would likely serve to loosen some of the highly pro-consumer privacy regulations now in effect under the California Data Privacy Law. For this reason, the ADDPA could face opposition in the Congress from California legislators. As a Los Angeles Times story  recently explained, [U.S. Speaker of the House and California Representative Nancy] “Pelosi’s public opposition, which echoes concerns from [CA] Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Privacy Protection Agency, marks an escalation in the standoff between California lawmakers and a large bipartisan group of [ADDPA] supporters.” What the ADDPA looks like While the proposed federal privacy law is still subject to change during the legislative process (it’s become clear that California wants to keep its more pro-consumer data privacy law), the broad outlines of the current federal proposal include the following, according to a report  from the Congressional Research Service: Data collection and management The ADDPA would cover information that “identifies or is linked or reasonably linkable” to an individual. The bill would prohibit covered entities (including B2B marketers, of course) from collecting, using, or transferring covered data beyond what is reasonably necessary and proportionate to provide a service requested by the individual, with some exceptions. It also would create special protections for certain types of sensitive covered data (like health-related data). The ADDPA would also require covered entities to adopt data security practices and procedures that are “reasonable in light of the entity’s size and activities.” The Federal Trade Commission  (FTC) would be authorized to issue regulations specifying these data security requirements.  Analysis of impact:  Most of the ADDPA’s provisions around data collection and data management are already imposed on marketers via GDPR and the California Data Privacy Law, so not much would here. Again, the federal law is generally less protective of consumer privacy than the California law, which is why some of the Big Tech companies support it. Consumer control and consent ADDPA would give consumers various rights over covered data, including the right to access, correct, and delete their data held by a particular covered entity. It would further require covered entities to give consumers an opportunity to object before the entity transfers their data to a third party or targets advertising toward them.  Analysis of impact:  On these “consumer control and consent” provisions, the ADDPA is aligned with GDPR, so it would very impose minimal “new requirements” on B2B marketers. Obviously, consumer consent and consumer trust are intertwined – B2B marketers should be asking customers for consent as a standard procedure anyway, in order to build trust and foster more data sharing. Third-Party data collecting entities ADDPA would create specific obligations for third-party collecting entities, whose main source of revenue comes from processing or transferring data that they don’t  directly collect from consumers (e.g., data brokers). These entities would have to comply with FTC auditing regulations and, if they collect data above the threshold amount of individuals or devices, and would have to register with the FTC.  Analysis of impact:  The ADDPA shows a clear intent to regulate data brokers through the FTC, which will have the power to audit and issue regulations on how data brokers collect and use/sell data. This is clearly bad news for third-party data, which has become problematic anyway due to changes in third-party cookies (in short, they are getting eliminated). Protections for youth The ADDPA would create data protections for individuals under age 17, including a prohibition on targeted advertising, and would also createe a Youth Privacy and Marketing Division at the FTC. These additional protections would only apply when the covered entity knows the individual is under age 17, though certain social media companies or large data holders would be deemed to “know” an individual’s age in some circumstances.   Analysis of impact:  Here, the ADDPA is responding to a number of recent studies  making the connection between online activities and negative psychological impacts on young people. These additional protections give the FTC the power to crack down on excessive ad targeting and other forms of engagement to young people. Civil Rights and algorithms The ADDPA would prohibit most covered entities from using covered data in a way that discriminates on the basis of protected characteristics (e.g., race or sex). It would also require large data holders to conduct algorithm impact assessments, and submit these assessments to the FTC and also make them available to Congress on request. These assessments would need to describe the entity’s steps to mitigate potential harms/discrimination resulting from its algorithms, among other requirements.   Analysis of impact:  There’s been a growing public concern that algorithms have massive impacts, but are also beset by patterns of discrimination. Under the category of “garbage in, garbage out,” regulators don’t want data that merely reflects patterns of historical discrimination to be fed into algorithms. Under the more pro-consumer California law, consumers can opt-out of having their data used to build algorithms, while the ADDPA does not allow this, it does empower the FTC to regulate algorithms. Private right of action The ADDPA would create a private right of action starting two years after the law’s enactment. Injured individuals, or classes of individuals, would be able to sue covered entities in federal court for damages, injunctions, litigation costs, and attorneys’ fees. Individuals would have to notify the FTC or their state attorney general before bringing suit. Before bringing a suit against a small- or medium-size business, individuals would be required to give the violator an opportunity to address the violation.  Analysis of impact:  This “private enforcement” provision of the ADDPA is very similar to enforcement mechanisms within GDPR and the California law, so not much would change here for B2B marketers. Bottom line? The ADDPA, even if it becomes law, will likely not create additional requirements when it comes to how you collect and manage customer data, largely because the proposed federal law is less protective of data privacy than the current California data privacy law. Want help in how you collect and manage your data so you not only comply with data privacy regulations but also optimize your marketing ROI? Contact us  to start a conversation.

This year’s Tableau session at Dreamforce, called “Use Data to Boost Your Bottom Line,” focused on how the Salesforce BI (business intelligence) tool enables companies to: (1) bring all their data into Tableau, (2) customize their Tableau dashboards, and (3) generate insights and transform them into better decisions. While Tableau is typically described as a business intelligence dashboard, it might better be viewed as an organization’s bridge connecting its raw, unfiltered data on one side with insights and actions on the other. The function of Tableau is to be the platform where data gets transformed into insights that are easy to view and analyze, forming the foundation for organizational decision-making. Salesforce’s Greg Bennett, Director of Product Marketing, and Salesforce’s Darin Bergeson, Senior Manager, Product Management, led a Dreamforce 2022 session on Tableau that was rich in detail and, yes, filled with insights. More data means a bigger “data gap” Bennett described how the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation in multiple areas of human endeavor, from how work happens (remote and hybrid work models now predominate) to how people shop, seek entertainment, access healthcare, and do nearly everything else. “Every digital transformation is at heart a data transformation,” said Bennett, “More data is being produced today than ever before, and is available to drive insight and action.” But a “data gap” remains, explained Bennett, a wide chasm between expectations for data and how data is actually being leveraged (again, with Tableau serving as the bridge over that data gap). Bennett cited an IDG survey which found that 83% of CEOs want their organizations to be more data driven, while only 30% of employees believe their organization is actually data driven. That’s a huge gap of 53% between expectations for data and “data reality.” 4 factors driving today’s data gap Bennett detailed 4 factors he believes are “driving today’s data gap”: 1. Data chaos, which is the result of “so many sources of data that create a huge volume of data” that organizations simply don’t have the present capacity to leverage into insight. More data is not a solution – rather, more data can lead to more needless complexity and more confusion.  2. Lack of data skills. The people who have access to data don’t necessarily have the skill set to transform raw data into data analysis and data-informed action. In the past, data scientists did much of this manually-intensive and highly-specialized work, but Bennett believes we need to make these data capabilities available to everyone, something Tablea does with a variety of AI and automation capabilities. 3. Lack of data culture. Bennett believes that “organizations should be putting data at the heart of its conversations and decisions. That isn’t happening enough today because data often remains an untapped resource.” Too many people continue to make decisions based on hunches and past experience, which can lead to bad decisions in a world that’s changing so rapidly. 4. Lack of enabling tools. The first three factors leading to the “data gap” can only be improved by giving people the tools to facilitate turning data into insights and actions. As Bennett explains it, “Tableau can help organizations optimize their existing processes with data, lower the current barriers to insights, and get data working harder and smarter for you.” Accelerating insights and actions with Tableau  Bennett notes that Tableau is a flexible tool, customizable by department – finance, HR, sales, marketing, and beyond – as well as by industry. With Tableau, he says, “we’ve created pre-built and flexible dashboards for every business function and every industry. For example, we help the sales function predict sales and revenue, which also helps with production planning and finance.” Bergeson then did a demo of some of Tableau’s pre-built dashboards. A marketer, for example, could simply pull down a “function menu” and select marketing from many other functions (finance, HR, etc.). Tableau, which is seamlessly integrated with Salesforce CRM data as well as data from many other sources, would then integrate and analyze available data in order to populate a pre-defined dashboard display for the marketing (or other) function. Of course, the marketer could then customize the pre-defined dashboard to better meet their specific needs.  Bennett then offered an example to illustrate the point. Software firm “Red Hat integrated more than 60 sources of data into Tableau,” he said, which not only scaled analytics across their organizations and helped create a data culture, but also saved them significant time on reporting and data sharing,” across the company. Bennett added that Tableau allows users to do deeper dives into data points displayed on the dashboard, for example by examining the source of the data used to generate insights, as well as how that data was collected – something Tableau calls “data lineage.” The Tableau session takeaways Bennett’s exploration of today’s “data gap” and its drivers was both compelling and true for most organizations that are simply awash in too much data. He gets high grades for diagnosing a common and mission-critical organizational concern – the lack of organizational capacity to leverage data into insight and better decisions. Tableau is clearly committed to closing the data gap through integrating an organization’s data and populating it into a business intelligence dashboard with best-in-class analytic capabilities fueled by automation and AI (Einstein, in the case of Salesforce). Will Tableau work well to bridge the data gap at your organization? Probably yes, but that’s a hard question that requires an understanding of your current data infrastructure and your strategic goals for the use of data. Want to learn more about Salesforce Tableau and how it might help you turn data into better decision-making? Contact us  for help.

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.