1. Austin
Sal Abramo
Director of Marketing Operations
ThomsonReuters, Inc.
A Thomson Reuters Case Study
Fully Leveraging Marketing
Automation to Impact Revenue
2. Austin 2014 Modern Marketers Tour
Sal Abramo
Director Of Marketing Operations
3. About Me
3
Sal Abramo
• Director of Marketing Operations
• sal.abramo@thomsonreuters.com
• LinkedIn:
www.linkedin.com/in/salabramo/
• Topliners Member
• Multi-Eloqua Markie Award
Winner & Finalist
4. About Thomson Reuters
• Leading source of intelligent information
• 60,000 employees in more than 100 countries
• 2014 Revenue: US $12.9 Billion
4
5. “A 20-year business cycle in which the most successful enterprises
will reinvent themselves to systematically understand and serve
increasingly powerful customers.” - Forrester Research
Welcome to the Age Of the Customer
6. - Forrester Research
“75% of the buying process is
complete before a B2B prospect
contacts a company."
"In the discovery and
exploration phases
58% of B2B buyers are
searching references
provided by their peers"
- Forrester Research
“Reliance on knowledgeable
peer references has more than
doubled in the past 5 years.”
-SiriusDecisions
"28% of business-to-business
buyers share online vendor
marketing content with over
100 other people."
- CMO Council
7. Trends For 2014
• Data and analytics #1 focus of planned spend increase (61%)
• Lead conversion is the new obsession
• A multi-channel strategy that embraces mobile is a must
• Big data setting new expectations for measurement.
• Chief Marketing Technologist is a Must-Have (70%)
• Search, social media & community growing in importance
• Marketing budget increases as a % of revenue
– 10.6% average in 2013
– 98% report planned increase
7
Source: Gartner, 2013. Forrester, 2014. Deloitte University Press, 2014.
8. Agenda
• Sales & Marketing Alignment
– Roadmap to a mutually beneficial relationship
• Personas
– How to develop & use them the TR way
• Lead Scoring
– Fully leverage for better conversion & results
• Lead Nurturing
– Essentials to driving better campaign performance
• Marketing Measurement & Attribution
– Actionable insight for continuous improvement
8
10. Sales & Marketing Alignment
• Mutual agreement on:
– Definition, goals and success measures
– Lead scoring, opportunity management, action process…
– Targeted segments, sub-segments, accounts
– Campaign, selling plays and themes
– Budget priorities by region
• Jointly shape strategic account & deal acceleration planning
• No leads left behind - SLA foundation
– Establish a formal handoff process from marketing to sales
– Marketing is held accountable for quality & volume
– Sales is held accountable for rapid and complete follow-up
• Top-to-bottom - Automated lead tracking & processing
– Marketing retains visibility to results across the sales funnel
– The organization recognizes & agrees with claims of success
• Foster and strive for an environment of….Mutual Respect and cooperation
10
11. A Philosophy I Strongly Suggest You Pursue
If the data is not in
your CRM & MA systems,
it does not exist.
11
12. Agreement on Lead Definitions
What is a:
12
An individual who has expressed
an interest in us, and/or shows
ability and likelihood to do
business with us, and for whom
we have contact information
Target universe of potential
customers who meet product/
service segmentation criteria
Prospect
Lead
13. Agreement on Marketing & Sales Stage Definitions
• Contacts/Inquiries: A unique individual who has no or an
outdated level of qualification.
• MQL – Response Inquiry: A response from an individual to a
marketing campaign or someone who has taken proactive steps
to demonstrate interest in a message, product, offer, content or
service by either providing or confirming an email address.
Meeting base line scoring criteria. Also known as a hand-raiser.
• Sales Accepted Lead : Lead has been accepted by sales for
further development.
• SQL (Sales Qualified Lead): The primary individual associated
to a potential buying cycle that has been touched by an SR and
is ready to be forecasted.
• Won - Closed Business: A deal has been approved by a
customer and the customer has purchased.
13
14. Agreement on Lead Funnel Stages & Goals
14
Marketing
Activity
Campaigns
Raw
Inquiry
Nurture
Lead Scoring &
Routing
Not ready,
Nurture
MQL SQL
Converted
Nurture
Qualified
Not ready,
Nurture
Contact/
Account
Opportunity
16. What is a persona?
Representation of the attitudes, behaviors and beliefs of a user type
within a targeted demographic.
1. Who are our buyers?
2. Why do they buy?
3. How do they buy?
17. Why are personas important?
Same Message
+44% purchase intent
VP of Tax
VP of Tax
Tax Director
Tax Director
Tax Manager
Tax Manager
Create buyer personas to:
Better Indentify Targets
Improve Segmentation
Choose Relevant Content
Boost Results
20. What is lead scoring and why do it?
• Lead Scoring: A focus on generating a sales-ready
lead using an objective ranking of one lead against
another.
– Prioritizes leads based on prospects’ profile fit and level of
interest and helps sales zero in on the most promising leads
– Provides an objective measure of which prospects need
further nurturing, enabling marketing to concentrate efforts
– Helps align the right follow-up to the corresponding inquiry
– Increases deal close rates, company revenue and revenue
per deal
21. Focused Lead Scoring
What Should Be Scored?
Implicit (Digital Body Language)
• Email Open/Email Click
• Web Site
– Specific Page (+/1)
– Return
• Content Interaction
• Activity Velocity
Explicit
• Lead Source
• Demographics (job role,
buyer persona, company size,
location, department)
• BANT Questions/Progressive
Profiling
• Existing Customer or Account
22. Lead Scoring Pilot
• Get feedback from Sales on Scoring criteria
• Send Sales all leads with lead ratings
• Have a pilot team evaluate lead scoring:
22
24. Effective Lead Nurturing
• Fully Leverage the Power of Marketing Automation
• Persona-Focused Valuable Content
• Segmentation
– The Buyers Journey/Journey Mapping
• Forms
– Smart Forms & Blind Forms
• Up Qualify With Tracks & Plays
– Pain Points, Pricing, Features, Value, Industry…..
25. Nurture Plays & Tracks
Stage 2: Keeping Up
With VAT Compliance
Stage 3: Avoiding Audit
Exposure
Stage 4: Thank You
& On-Demand
Follow-Up
Stage 1: How to Transform
Big Data
A Nurture Program Mapped To The Buyers Journey
26. 3 Essentials To Drive Nurturing Results
1. Strong Content: Valued persona-driven content they can use
2. Automating your approach and processes
• Moving leads to next buying cycle as they engage
• Use surveys & multiple choice qualifying questions
• Integrate tele-prospecting and phone touch
• Fully leverage and automate forms
• A/B & multi-variant testing critical
3. Focused Lead Scoring
• Implicit: data on an action, digital body language
• Explicit: demos, or BANT qualification
26
28. Blind Forms
Identifies a contact by their
email address and submits a
blind form in the background
to further segment and qualify
the prospect
28
Increased
Newsletter
Leads by 75%!
30. #eloquatour
28% Increase in leads
sent to Sales
72% Reduction in time
taken to convert leads
into opportunities
185% Increase in revenue
attributed to Marketing
@Dan_Allis
Results
31. Lessons Learned
• Sales and marketing alignment central to success – a shared understanding of the
buying process is critical – establishment of SLA’s great first step
• Marketing automation will not fix broken sales and marketing processes – stuck in
batch and blast, hunch based, outbound only processes …..simply do not work
• Highly targeted, valued content, personalized, right person, right time, right message
is critical……always oriented to a clear call to action
• A healthy, ever-growing and engaged database is core to success – focus on opt-in,
white listed, targeted nurturing with all content sent of high-value
• Customer and prospect engagement happens on many dimensions, face to face
with outside sales, over the web, via social media, telemarketing, physical
events…contacts are not just sitting around waiting for the next email
• Always keep demand type front and center…new concept, new paradigm, focused
at existing customers, established market...etc. Is the task fishing or farming?
• Reduce waste by targeting as tightly as possible ….think personalized and tailored
• Development of personas is key to segment and engage targeted audiences
• Examine and align the sales process to The Buyers Journey – always seek better
ways to engage with targets
31
