A big deal for us at ReachForce is to improve the nurture email conversation, to never send pointless, cheesy emails, among other things.  As marketers, we all get far too many of them.

ReachForce send a traffic builder email prior to the Marketo Summit that many of you received, with the subject line: “Free Beer, and Gold For Everyone.” This “blast” delivered some of the most astonishing and awesome results we’ve ever seen – the biggest of which was feeling like we truly connected with you.

And for the metrics hungry, it was a serious winner with a 42.8% open rate, 37.8% Click to Open Rate, and most importantly our booth ended up Number 1 in booth scans out of 55 exhibitors, for a 300%+ increase over the previous year.

Ah, but then we need to send the show follow-up email. The Suits are getting nervous. There are notes.  Suddenly, a lot of Helpful Guidance. And Nervous Concern.

You’ve all been there. You go out and work to create a better, more successful approach, one that still resonates with your buyer personas, your business needs, but one that’s outside the lines a bit, to try and lift response and more importantly, engagement, and it works great. But then someone decides it’s TOO different, and decides to shut it down.

Thankfully, team ReachForce is pretty bold, we love a good conversation and we are usually willing to make fun of ourselves. So for the post show follow-up, we tested 2 messages, the traditional post show email pushing hard for a meeting (sorry!) which was an updated version of our own last year post summit email, and the other email was breezier, fun, whoopie-esque thank you for the remaining 80%.

We desperately wanted whimsy, authenticity and conversation to win, and to keep all the back seat copywriters away. Our first clue would be the open rate. These were the comparison subject lines and measured open rates:

Traditional: Email A: Tremendous Opportunity at the 2013 Marketo User Summit 39.7%

Whimsy: Email B: Marketo Summit: So many whoopie cushions… 39%

It is wrong to root for a certain test segment – well we did, and were surprised – the traditional subject won out, but by a statistically insignificant margin. However, it still won.

But what about engagement? This is the real meat of the matter. We all live by the mantra of focus, and just One Call To Action. These are RULES people. But who wrote the rules? What if the rules have changed because people and their behavior has changed? What if we are measuring the wrong thing?

So here are the engagement stats:

Email A: Tremendous Opportunity at the 2013 Marketo User Summit 13.6% Click to Open

Email B: Marketo Summit: So many whoopie cushions… 12.2% Click to Open

Feeling a bit dejected at this point (BTW the full text of both emails is at the end). Until we looked at the Email Link Performance.

One of the best practices from the days of direct postal mail, is that long copy is okay, and PS statements get a lot of reads. So we tested a PS in both messages – those in the whoopie segments knew there was a test, but didn’t know the details. Those in the tremendous opportunity got the information disclosed in the PS. Both are below:

Email A: Tremendous Opportunity at the 2013 Marketo User Summit - PS

PS – A little weirded out by the tone of this email? You’ve been sent a 20% test segment. We did it so we can track it and share with our bosses why it’s important to remember we are sending emails to individual people, to awesome marketers, and not just batch blasting for numbers and sending the same, old thing. To get the real email click here. Next week, we’ll share the results.

Email B: Marketo Summit: So many whoopie cushions… PS

PS – We sent a 20% test segment of our last year Marketo follow-up email. we did it so we can track it and we can share with you and our bosses why it’s important to remember we are sending emails to individual people, to awesome marketers, and not just batch blasting for numbers. We’ll share the results with you in my next email.

So far, boring is winning. What got the clicks?

In email A, there were equal clicks on 1) the desired action (download the case study) in email A and 2) the request to be sent the  “real email” . Taking this into account, we rebaked the results of the click-off, and calculated only against the click on the case study:

Email A: Tremendous Opportunity at the 2013 Marketo User Summit 7.6% Click to Case Study

Email B: Marketo Summit: So many whoopie cushions… 10.6% Click to Case Study

When looked through this lens, the clear winner is conversation and engagement. This point alone was worth the test, but what’s not measured is there were 3 leads directly back to ReachForce off the conversational email. Additionally, there is clearly higher  interested was generated in the company overall (as seen by the click in the email signature) and notably, the second highest percentage of clicks were those who clicked the conversational  CTA to talk to sales. We can’t compare this in the bake-off, because we didn’t include a link to sales in the Tremendous email, but we will next time.

Full text of both emails follows.

——————–

Email A: Serious, business-y, 20% of list

From: ReachForce

Subject: Tremendous Opportunity at the 2013 Marketo User Summit

——————-

Now that the Marketo Summit has concluded, we look forward to an opportunity to explore a key and growing topic of high interest: how companies are successfully accelerating lead conversion from their inbound marketing initiatives. Webtrends is one of many ReachForce customers that are seeing significant improvements in the number and quality of inbound leads as well as a reduction in cost per lead.

In summary, Webtrends uses ReachForce SmartForms to bridge the huge gap that exists between the need to increase conversions through shorter forms, and the need to capture the rich business firmographic and demographic information required for nurturing, scoring, routing, targeting and segmentation. Please review the study, below, regarding Webtrends’s successful use of ReachForce SmartForms.

Read about Webtrends’s success here.

I’d also like to have your Account Executive follow-up to explore how we may help you accelerate lead conversions and revenue growth. When is a convenient time this week for an introductory call?

———————-

Email B: Conversational, Fun: 80% of List:

From: ReachForce

Subject: Marketo Summit: So many whoopie cushions…

——————–

Team ReachForce gave you 636 whoopie cushions, 386 Glowing Orbs of Power, 137 in-booth demos, 27 Hey Girl photo frames, 1 ice luge and a Sold Out Speaking session. We’re still catching our breath. But we had a great time, and we hope you did too.

It was loud on the show floor, and you may have been busy in class, so it might have been hard to hear some of those demos. So I’d like to drop the hint – just softly – that we’ll be doing full live demo webinars of our new Marketo-integrated cDQM Continuous Data Quality Management solution and our SmartForms web form data appending in the next couple weeks, and I’ll send you all another note once the schedule is up. In the meantime, take a look at this.

I’m also running a test, and at this moment, you are part of it. (See PS below)

I look forward to continuing our conversations and nurturing you all a little bit. Or if you need immediate answers, click here for a pretty rapid response from the wonderful people of ReachForce sales. I’m super proud of Team ReachForce for working so hard, looking so good and making you all feel welcomed.

The folks in attendance were serious about their craft, and their companies had each made an investment of at minimum $30,000 per year plus staffing and training to put the powerful capabilities of marketing automation to use in the organizations. We’ll say at minimum, this is investment is a $100,000 annual cost to the business, and ROI is not only expected, but these marketers jobs may be on the line if they don’t show results.

But we marketers often cannot control the practices on the sales side of the fence, and this massively impacts our ability to show ROI.

I asked this audience a raise your hand question: “How many of your sales people keep their client list on spreadsheets and not in the CRM?” This seems a crackpot question – but I knew it wasn’t.

Small, furtive low-slung raised hands briefly appeared. I quickly counted 10 people before the hands disappeared. I would guess the real count was triple that – or 10% of the marketers in that room, fronting a combined investment by the industry of north of $30 million dollars – and these folks have no control or insight into the very best customers of their businesses – and neither do the business owners.

This issue had recently come to my attention in a 2-hour consultation with a B2B Marketer looking to borrow an ROI calculator ReachForce is developing, to try to demonstrate to her leaders the cost of data abuse and the significant business risk inherent in bad data practice. She pointed out in her multi-billion revenue business, sales people were keeping their client lists in excel spreadsheets, and when they left the business, the list walked with them.

In this instance, at this business, the average ticket was about $7,000 per sale, with repeat sales every 6 months. Since purchase behavior is pretty predictable, once an account is on board, they tend to be repeat buyers — but as this is a commodity business, buying choice is often driven by relationships — all of which was only captured in this spreadsheet.

On a conservative 5 year life-time value (LTV), one buyer name would be worth $70,000. If this rep is managing 50 accounts — and the only contact information exists on a spreadsheet he controls — if he walks, he’s leaving with a business asset worth $3.5 million.

We in marketing have certain stereotypes that we assign to sale people, and sorry to say this, if you are in sales, but please don’t be too offended that we sometimes think of you as a bit whiny. Some examples:

• “I don’t want to record all my activity in the CRM, it takes too long.”
• “I don’t record all my emails with customers in the CRM, a lot of that stuff is just personal.”
• “I don’t want to attach everyone to the opportunity, it’s too many names to manage.”
• “I’m your best sales person, I refuse to put up with all these database rules.”

And perhaps, because they are seen as rainmakers, they are allowed to complain and avoid being subject to these good data practices and their bad behavior is tolerated.

Along time ago, I started my career with Global Sources, in Hong Kong. Our CEO, Merle Hinrichs, recognize the real value of sales data, and how critical security and precision were around this. All of the lead data, server-based at that time, was stored on a secure floor, and beyond that,  in a secure room. In seven years with the company, as a leader in data marketing practice, I was NEVER allowed in that room (and I doubt a salesperson was ever allowed on that floor). The business has grow exponentially over the last 25 years, and their incredible data has been at the core of it.

So, my brothers and sisters in marketing automation, those of you struggling with this issue, here are the only things that will solve this problem for you:

1) Sales commission is tied to good data practice – 10% of total bonus.

2) Sales people are required to complete every step of the sales process in Salesforce – if they don’t, they don’t get commission on the deal. No zero day closes where every deal is a cold call.

Bad data practices – super risky and potentially massively and negatively disruptive to your business – only continue as long as sales people are allowed to make excuses. Feel free to tweet this article – maybe someone upstairs will notice.

New solutions provide continuous marketing data enrichment and insights to help marketers maximize revenue.

AUSTIN, Texas – April 3, 2013 – ReachForce, a leader in B2B data solutions for marketers, announced it has acquired SetLogik, an innovator of cloud-based data and analytics solutions, to form the industry’s first Connected Marketing Data Hub. The new Connected Marketing Data Hub offers an integrated suite with continuous data quality management and predictive marketing capabilities. Designed to integrate with leading marketing and sales automation platforms, like Marketo, Eloqua and salesforce.com, it supports marketing professionals to more effectively collect, qualify, target, and convert leads throughout the buyer’s lifecycle.

With the proliferation of channels and explosion in data, the emphasis for CMOs to play a greater role in accelerating revenue has escalated, resulting in leading organizations turning to marketing automation technologies to drive the best response from their lead data. However, these automation initiatives often suffer from incomplete or out-of-date lead data, resulting in wasted efforts and missed sales opportunities.

“Before marketers can fully take advantage of automation platforms and other modern techniques for driving efficiencies and nurturing leads, they first need to tackle the important issue of managing the quality of their data,” said SiriusDecisions Co-Founder and Managing Director, John Neeson.  ”Best practice organizations centrally and continuously manage 360-view of high quality customer data including biographics, demographic, firmographics and transactional information across all databases, marketing automation and CRM systems and other end points.”

“As we continue to launch multiple campaigns globally and in the various industries with which we work, it is important we maintain accurate data to ensure we are sending relevant content to our audiences,” said Ruth-Ann Femenella, Marketing Programs Manager at GXS, a leading B2B integration company. “As a SaaS company ourselves, we recognize the value of the model in bringing offerings quickly and easily to companies. We are excited at the prospect of ReachForce’s new capabilities and look forward to implementing them in our current lead generation process.”

Neeson continued, “This holistic approach gives marketers the ability to power revenue generating campaigns with in-depth customer insights that accelerate sales and produce the type of business contributions increasingly being asked of CMOs.”

“The stakes have never been higher for marketing organizations as they assume more responsibility for revenue,” said Bob Riazzi, CEO and President of ReachForce. “Many marketers have automated their campaign management and digital marketing execution to drive more revenue, but poor data quality is having a negative impact on their success. It was clear what we needed to do to help, and the results are huge. With the addition of SetLogik’s platform to ReachForce’s existing product portfolio we accelerate the time required to transform leads into revenue for our customers.”

About ReachForce

ReachForce delivers cloud-based data solutions for B2B marketing professionals to accelerate leads to revenue. The ReachForce Connected Marketing Data Hub provides continuous marketing data enrichment and insights to help customers reach their maximum revenue velocity. Since 2005, more than 400 leading companies including Act-On Software, Dassault Systemes, Eloqua, GXS, Marketo, ReadyTalk, and Webtrends are increasing the effectiveness and driving higher revenue velocity through digital marketing automation initiatives with better quality and enriched lead data and insights from ReachForce. For more information about ReachForce and revenue velocity best practices, visit our site at http://www.reachforce.com or follow us on Twitter@reachforce.

With perfect timing, I was delighted to see our wonderful friends at Pardot just created a fantastic and humorous illustration of this exact problem, with their new infographic pitching sales and marketing into the world of Game of Thrones.

Recognize anyone? Maybe this would serve as a helpful icebreaker at your next joint sales and marketing meeting. I think it’s going up on my office fridge.

Sunday April 7 – If you are a super-nerd like me, you may have signed up for the inaugural Marketo Individual Certification Exam. Originally scheduled to be offered on Sunday afternoon 4/7/13 and Monday 4/8/13, there are now test sessions scheduled for every day of the Summit. Benefits of taking (and passing) the exam is earning an individual credential that certifies your marketing automation skills, plus at the Summit, cost is just $125 from a planned $175. As a live-proctored exam with no outside materials allowed, finding other locations to take it may be limited. If you have a year of experience in Marketo, study up, and take the exam.

Sunday April 7 – Where to eat? Interested a real San Francisco experience? So are we – Mary Firme is planning to fill the prosciutto room at the historic North Beach restaurant with fellow Marketo University students – shoot mfirme AT reachforce.com an email or tweet @MaryFirme if you’d like to join in.

Monday, April 8 – Marketo University – this is a training day for marketing operations practitioners who need to understand the intricacies of forms, landing pages, reports and more. The great thing about these sessions is they will incorporate the most up-to-date features like scoring tokens that you may not have kept up to date with in your lazy, lazy life as a marketing professional. Plus, you are out of the office and no distractions.

Still looking for a hotel? The Hilton Union Square is booked – and don’t go to the financial district hilton – far and in kind of an icky area. Try the Hotel Monaco – it’s very close to the Hilton, and has a boutique feel.

Monday April 8 – Cocktails from 5 – 8 – Great time to get out and meet face to face with other forums friends. Maybe you can’t talk to your family and friends about how cool it is to do lead gen with marketing automation, but you can here! Party happens in the sponsor pavilion – come see ReachForce at Booth 36 – we have great new solutions, but ibuprofen, which you may need later… see next item…

Monday April 8 – San Francisco Social Club – Diagonally across the street from the Hilton at Jaspers. Sponsored by the Social Club Consortium of ReachForce, LeadMD, Kapost and Readytalk. Starts at 8 p.m.  a REAL taste of San Francisco with hand-crafted foods, an oyster station from the fantastic oyster purveyors in Tomales Bay, incredible mixology drinks to celebrate the festive culture of the city by the bay, a super hot DJ and lots of other cool stuff, including the icey cool drink luge. Sign up – capacity is limited, but get your name on the list at least!

Tuesday April 9 – Drag your butt out of bed and Go to breakfast. You’ll get more out of the Summit by being social and chatting with anyone you sit down to eat with. As mom says – don’t skip meals, it’s not good for you! ANd don’t sit with people you know – what’s the point?? If you drag your butt out really early, walk over to Powell street – the early bird doesn’t have to wait in line for the cable car line and you can stroll back down easily if you get off at the top of the hill.

Tuesday April 9 – Sessions take place all day – plan out what you hope to attend. The Bizzabo mobile app will keep you in the loop on other participants, sessions and offers. Just download from the App store or Android marketplace.

Tuesday April 9 – Official Marketo Customer Appreciation Party – offsite. Dress up, get on the bus, and get ready to have a blast! And don’t worry about being stuck all night – cabs are plentiful if you need to come back early and work on those spreadsheets! Note: O’Farrell is in the Tenderloin – not the “glamourous” part of San Francisco – heads up walking at night. You’re in the city now kiddos!

Wednesday – April 10 – Morning – Rise and Shine – It’s the Revvie Awards. Meet the super ninja nominees who are slaying it in Marketing Automation. ReachForce is nominated – we’re excited!

Wednesday April 10, 2:30 p.m. Don’t leave early! You need to visit “Tips and Tricks to a Great Set of Lead Data” and get a special handout that will help to make peace between marketing and sales data flags.

Can’t Wait! See You Soon!

Ryan Gosling announced today that he’s leaving acting – and made ReachForce wonder if there is an unspoken backstory to do with revenue marketing and the upcoming Marketo Summit April 8 – 10.

He’s been making quite a bold appearance around our offices as we prepare for the Summit, where our own Mary Firme will be speaking about tips and tricks to great lead data. Ryan’s inspiration – and love – for the intricate details in the daily life of B2B revenue marketers, propels us to greater and greater marketing heights. Now, it appears, marketing automation marketer love may have proven too big a distraction to his other activities beyond Pinterest and certain potty-mouth Tumblrs – if today’s news reports are to be believed.

Ryan recently filmed a new Terrence Malick film here in Austin, just near ReachForce HQ. We can’t say if we spent tons or a lot of quality time with the hunky social marketing sensation. It is unknown if his acting sabbatical travels will lead him to the Hilton in San Francisco in a couple of weeks, but stop by our booth in the Marketing Nation partner pavilion (Booth 36)- we may have some more news.

We’re super excited to announce our latest ReachForce lead generation strategy webinar on Thursday, March 28 at 1 p.m. CDT as we present Ross Graber, Research Director for the Marketing Operations Practice of Sirius Decisions, and his new view on the key elements for data strategy in a demand creation program, explaining that “contact data provides the fuel for marketing to become a predictable source of revenue.”

Capacity is limited so sign up now to reserve your seat. 

Key Issues to be covered:
• Supporting demand creation objectives with data strategy
• Aligning the factors for prioritizing data investment
• Balancing the global programs with local execution 

What you will walk away with:
• View of the models other companies are using to help prioritize data investments
• Perspective on how alignment between demand spend and data spend
• Best practice trends for approaching contact data

Ross brings over 15 years of b-to-b marketing experience with focus spanning marketing measurement, demonstrating ROI, data management, process development, marketing technology, customer marketing and sales enablement.

Follow Ross on Twitter @rossgraber.

For all you experiential learners, the webinar is now available on demand and includes suggestions for landing pages that could increase both conversions and data capture for lead profiling with ReachForce SmartForms.

B2B Landing Pages Webinar On Demand: The Chemistry of the B2B Landing Page.

We’ll be doing a foll0w-up session in the near future – once you register for the On Demand Webinar we’lll automatically contact you with news of the next one.

With SmartForms, a simple web form with basic questions is transformed into an information rich event that adds in zip code, mailing address, headquarters location, industry segment, revenues, phone number and more.

Working in concert with marketing automation systems like Marketo, Eloqua, Pardot, Hubspot, Silverpop and Act-On and CRMs like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics, no matter how teams route their sales leads, the SmartForms data is automatically added to marketing and sales databases, triggers routing workflows and speeds leads to the correct person, eliminating time consuming and potentially delay-inducing handling steps.

“SmartForms is designed to optimize results for each customer – it works with any marketing automation system and any CRM – and the data enrichment ties into how each sales or marketing operations team works. If leads route both by industry segment and revenues or by location and number of employees, SmartForms automatically adds in this data to let sales operations deliver that lead to the right sales person within seconds of submission. This jump in speed helps SmartForms customers open more new orders,” said Mary Firme, Chief Lead Accelerator for ReachForce.

In her recent post, Buyer Behavior Helps B2B Marketers Guide The Buyer’s Journey, Forrester Analyst Lori Wizdo, notes that buyers may be up to 90 percent of the way through their product journey before raising a hand to sales. “For many product categories, buyers now put off talking with salespeople until they are ready for price quotes,” Wizdo writes. With this in mind, speed in replying to sales leads is more critical than ever since buying committees and short lists of vendors may have already been formed.

“If a lead gets stuck in a qualification stage and no resources are available to research and add the missing routing info for a few days – how much business is being lost? SmartForms automated enrichment eliminates much of this friction and delay,” Firme explained.

SmartForms is the solution of choice for a growing number of sales operations and marketing operations leaders. ReachForce case studies show that one customer was able to speed prospect profile completion from 20 days to 1 day using SmartForms. This speed to lead handling may partly explain the persistent 40% increase in sales pipeline at this company.

About ReachForce
ReachForce delivers cloud-based software and lead management services specifically designed for B2B marketers to accelerate conversions from their inbound, outbound, and database marketing initiatives. ReachForce fuels lead generation for over 400 leading companies such as Box.net, Citrix Online, Eloqua, GXS, Marketo, TripAdvisor, and Trend Micro. Businesses use ReachForce to optimize their routing, nurturing, scoring, segmentation and marketing automation initiatives to accelerate revenue. For more information on ReachForce, visit our web site at http://www.reachforce.com or follow us on Twitter @reachforce

Happily, Marketo has just announced a new personal Marketo certification that will launch at the Marketo Summit 2013. Users can register to take the exam on Sunday April 7 or Monday April 8 in the second half of the planned Marketo University day.

Offered as a stand alone option or an add-on to an existing registration, the exam costs $125 per participant, a discount off the standard $175. Those who sit for the exam during the summit and receive a passing score will be certified during the Summit and get some special recognition as well.

With the talent gap widening for experienced marketing automation users and administrators, this new certification will serve as an important benchmark for hiring managers and marketing automation team administrators, as well as an important proof point of the skills all of us are working to develop to make our marketing automation systems work to their ultimate potential.

ReachForce will be studying up and taking the exam and look forward to adding this certification to our Launchpoint listings for ReachForce SmartForms and Data Cleanse and Append Solutions listed there.