Welcome to the art of marketing operations, a tailor podcast. Here you can
grow your knowledge about marketing operations, listen to ideas and strategies to help you
scale, grow and optimize your efficiency, drive your speed to market and enrich
your work life. Let's get to it. Welcome to the art of marketing
operations, a tailor podcast. I'm Glen bottomly, and today my guest is
Josh Druck, Senior Manager Digital Marketing Operations at signify health, a healthcare organization
transforming how healthcare is paid for and delivered so people can enjoy more healthy,
happy days at home. Thanks for joining me today, Josh. Glenn,
thank you so much for having me. So happy to be here, really
excited. I've been waiting for something like this to come along and now we're
here, and only were here, but I'm on it, so this is
great. That's awesome. Well, before we get started, Josh, I
know that you support a variety of causes in your life, ranging from culture
and art and education, human rights, disaster and human humanitarian relief, science
and technology. Can you share a bit about just a nonprofit organization that you
support that just gives you the most joy? Sure, absolutely, absolutely,
I'm glad you asked this question. So right up the bat I've got a
I've got a put my foot forward for the philly start up leaders, the
PSL, as we call it here in Philly. Of course I have some
other health related ones that did mean a lot to me and nonprofits, but
I have to, I definitely have to talk about the PSL, you know,
really really cool organization here in Philly. I'm a Philly Guy at heart,
I'm a startup guy at heart, and so throughout my years here in
Philadelphia, going to college here as well, I've been a big proponent of
the Philadelphia start up leaders, a great place for innovation. You know,
I always say like minded professionals, those are the valuable people in the world
right that's something similar to why we're doing this podcast do today, you know,
talking with people who've been there, done that. Like I always say,
to know the road ahead, ask those coming back, and the PSL's
a great example of that. Fostering the Philly community, start up community specifically.
And then, and like I said, you know, the best people
that can help you or the people that have done it before. So entrepreneurs
gathering together, of course, with covid and stuff. Those those events,
the Philly Tech Week that we usually have in April has kind of been dispersed
and gone virtual. But I have to say that, yeah, the PSL
has been really crucial and integral and fostering that community here in Philly. It's
a small, tight knit community, but we all know each other and I
think a lot of that has to do with the PSL. So really cool
organization, like I said, you know, something that's kind of died down
a little bit and been a little bit more of a struggle to get everyone
in person, but that community still exists. There's a nice little email thread
that goes around, there's a slack channel and stuff like that. So really
cool to be a part of that. So really near and dear to my
heart, among others, but the PSL's are really cool organization that I've been
a part of since, you know, finishing college, and really cool diverse
inclusion, you know, really just like a a special place and, like
I said, being able to talk to likeminded professionals, kind of like what
we're doing here today, is really important for your professional development. So really
cool place. That's wonderful, excellent. Sounds like a fantastic organization. Will
Josh, let's dig in here and let's start right out with a big one.
multitouch attribution. Now, I know that you are a huge proponent of
multi touch attribution and I know also that you've spent a great deal of time,
you know, building models, communicating the value of multi touch and promoting
the results across a variety of organization which you have worked with. So why
do you feel so strongly that multi touch attribution is important and why should more
marketing operations teams incorporated? Yeah, this is a great question, Glen.
This scratches me right where I it's like I like to say. So there's
something really important about multitouch attribution, but let's break it down a little bit.
Let's first talk about the attribution piece and then we can talk more about
that multi touch means. So I'm not trying to redefine it for everyone.
I know people probably have had a good idea of what it means, but
in my mind we need to measure the effectiveness of marketing right. We need
to know what that journey looks like. Everyone's trying to figure out that path
to purchase, that click to close, whatever you want to call it journey
and multi touch attribution or attribution in general is a way of finally measuring marketings
influence and impact on the business, and that's super important. Right. I
think marketing, and will touch on this little bit later, but supplying warm
leads to the sales team, you know, really cool, really great it.
Can we get this down to a science? Can we get and multituch
attribution attempts to do that and attribution in general attempts to do that. And
with Omni channel the way it is today, there's so many touch points on
that journey and that click to close journey for the customer. Can we put
attribution? Can we figure that out? and and multi touches a piece of
that. So, you know, more than anything, the attribution piece is
just telling us, Hey, what's effective? Are we measuring certain pieces and
are they effective? As our website doing what it's supposed to be doing?
Our pieces of our website doing what it's supposed to be doing, and I
feel like that's missing a little bit from the marketing mix. Right. We
always talked about putting a you know, we're putting up ads and we're doing
things like that, which we've started to get attribution with right. Google has
made it easier to do targeting and figuring out kind of WHO's coming back to
our site when we do put out those ads. But can we draw it
all the way down to the to the path, to the purchase point right?
And so to me multi touch attribution is super valuable because it allows us
to tie back to what's working and what isn't working. Right, we're not
just putting that billboard on the side of the road these days and saying,
Hey, it looks like things have gotten better, but can we really tie
it to that billboard or is there something else happening here that we don't know
about? And so attribution, obviously, is probably the holy grail for most
marketers and I think I've gotten there and I've seen it and and, like
I said before, and to know the road ahead ask goes coming back.
Well, I think I've seen it and I have a little gist, a
little taste of kind of what that looks like, and so I'm really excited
about it. It's something that I preach and something that I tell everyone all
about how how multi touch attribution can really change the game for the marketing team
and really prove the value of the marketing team, and so what I've been
trying to do is is, as I've gone from from start up to larger
company as I am today, is try to scale that, try to showcase
that we can do multitouch attribution with many lines of business and there's a way
to kind of bring it all back home and say, Hey, marketing is
actually doing some stuff. That's tying back to some closed one deals, and
that's kind of the gist and and the real crux of how multitouch really works
and really does it's damage, so to speak. So from my perspective,
yeah, I mean tying everything back to close one deals, being able to
say hey, people landed on this case study and that case study heads then
actually been part of that path to purchase. Right, it actually went from
an ad to a case study to, you know, a contact us request
and then eventually coming through as a close one deal. That's super important and
I think we'll touch more on how we get there and how we do that.
But when I come to an organization and I bring that up, that's
the holy grail. I can see it on the VP's faces there. Wow,
this is what we've been trying to get to. This whole time,
not just that billboard on the side of the road, but actually tying back.
Is it working? Is it doing what we want to do? Not
just an uptick in in metrics or some vanity metrics, but actually seeing it
come through to fruition and close a deal. So super important. That's excellent.
Let's dig in on that just a little bit. So obviously various customer
journeys are going to take the buyer through various paths. To your point,
one person is going to come in, it's going to they're going to hit
a digital ad, then they're going to read the case study, then they're
going to move to a sales representative. Another one is going to come in,
they're going to do a contact us form, they're going to be on
a website, then they're going to talk to a sales rep maybe go back
out, you know, read a brochure, something, read a thought leadership
piece, a blog, you know, what have you. So how do
you how do you then take all of that information, compile it all and
then craft sort of a look and feel of the journey that then can be
more broadly interpreted that this is when we're selling this product to this market.
This is how that journey looks. Or here's how we're going to now modify
the way in which we're going to touch the customer, because in general,
eighty percent of our customers go through this sort of a path. So how
do you how do you tap into the multi touch and then the journey to
then change sort of okay, moving forward next quarter. This is how we're
going to do it. Yeah, no, absolutely common denominators. That's the
term I want to use. So the common denominator, what does that mean?
While you look at the customers that have come in the door and you
try to figure out what's that common touch points? What are they always touching?
Right, every journey is going to be different, right. Some people
going to come through add some people going to be searching different search queries,
some people are going to land on your home page and some people are going
to land directly on a landing page or some random piece of content and find
you that way. So the journey's always going to be different. But what
if there's a common denominator? Right, I like to talk about the Tofu,
Mofu and Bowfu. That's top of funnel, middle of funnel and bottom
of funnel, and those journeys, those touch points, there's some piece of
content in each one of those. If you're looking at a funnel, right,
you have to plug that funnel. You pour water in there, they're
just going to leak out if you don't have a plug, what do you
plug it with? You plug it with content. And so what I've learned
is that you find those common denominators of customers you already have in the door.
So you see that someone came in, they touched these various pieces of
content, they went to your home page and then very you know, various
touch points, and what you can start to see is, what does that
path to purchase look like? Now it's going to be an abbreviated path.
You're going to say, okay, so you know, they may have touched
a lot of blog posts, but all right, let's say that they touch
the blog. So that's, you know, one touch point, even though
they're touching maybe multiple blogs, but at least we can say okay, it
comes blog, then case study, then contact US request. I'm over simplifying
here, of course, but then what you can start to do is say,
okay, if I know that there's ten steps to this journey, I'm
again oversimplifying, and I've seen that this individual or individuals have taken for out
of five, four out of ten steps. We want to email the group
of people who've taken the fourth step to take the fifth step. If we've
seen that someone's taken nine steps out of ten, we want email them to
take that last step. Now I'm saying email. That might necessarily not be
the way that you push them to take that next step, but if you've
learned those common denominators, you should have a good idea. And every I
will call this out, every audience is different. There is no fast,
hard and fast rule for every content marketer out there. There's no hard and
fast rule for every funnel out there. Right, not every funnel is going
to look the same, but the idea is that there are common denominators that
your customers, when they come in the door, have touched along those touch
points and you know more often then not, that top of funnel piece is
just going to be something that's kind of general familiarity and then you're going to
start to get into those more nitty gritty pieces where they're touching your website,
you're about us page and things like that, and then when you see that,
you can say hey, they've touched this. Now I have an idea
that they more than likely will next want to go here. The next phase
of their journey. Most often is this. So what I've learned in my
previous experience with my audiences is case studies most often are that middle of the
pack, bottom, almost bottom of the funnel part where right before they're going
to reach out to you or right before they do that free trial, they're
going to want to look at some case studies, and we all know that.
I think the ideas case studies are a bottom of the funnel kind of
piece of content. They want to know how you've worked with other people like
them so that they can say hey, that sounds right, that sounds like
it's a good fit. I've already done my consideration. I do know I
have a problem and now I'm here looking for that solution. So that case
study is most often going to speak to that solution. So what I've found
is when you see that, even when you see those people touching that case
study, email them to say hey, let's take that next step. Now.
You're not saying it like that, but you're saying, Hey, I've
no you know you were on this case study thought maybe you felt this was
interesting. Now what about this next step? And we know from that path
to purchase journey that we've done research on and again, there's lots of different
ways of tracking that, but digital interactions, digital engagement will tell me that,
hey, here's the next step, so I can kind of give give
them a gentle nudge H or at least make the available offer to them for
that next step. Yeah, I love that. That's really really not only
logical but really insipeful in terms of how you engage, build a relationship,
you know, with that prospect and following along on sort of you know what
the data are showing you in terms of the journey points, because in the
beginning it's sort of like it feels like sometimes marketing operation starts like when you're
in you know, in a canoe in a river, and in the beginning
your you know, if you're the river is so wide and you're going down
the canoe, the canoe is moving very, very slow because you don't necessarily
know which pieces of content are going to be most relevant for that buyer and
so things are going relatively slow. But as you start to understand the buy
or more it's more it's like the mouth of the river gets close, gets,
you know, gets closer and closer, and so it becomes more of
a rapid process because now you can move them through the process more quickly because
now you know more information about the buyer. And to your point, once
they hit that case study, now you're falling up with that email, you're
providing this next piece because you just know that the data shows that that's kind
of the path. So I love how you sort of you're using the data
understanding the journey, feedback, you know, have that feedback loop to bring
it back in, make the modification and do it again and and each step
of the way, correct me if I'm wrong, but each step of the
way, I would imagine, your journey path gets quicker because you you know
maybe that customer is not moving as quickly as every other average customer, but
the fact that you know more you can move them through that funnel more quickly.
Would you agree? Absolutely. And you can automate one of the big
things as you can. And again you say you speak like you know we're
speaking data driven. I know everyone talks about being data driven. There's a
great little example of that right. People like to say it's a jargon in
term, but when you talk about being data driven, here's a great little
tiny example of hey, just learning a couple of the past, a couple
of the steps. Then you can start to push that and you can automated,
like I was about to say, you can automate some of that using
emails, and so I could say hey, you land on a case study,
I'm going another thing. I'm going to email you, hey, take
this next step. Another thing is even just working with the sales team.
Just Hey, hey, hey, sales individual, you own this person.
They touch this. Let me just let you know that most often the next
step would be this. So when I'm emailing them, when sales REP A
or B is emailing this individual, they are armed with the knowledge and the
information that they need to know what might be, or most likely will be
the next pain point or the next step in that person's journey. So yeah,
there's many different ways of doing it. I'm speaking to email because that's
kind of my life, is being able to push people via large marked,
large scale marketing emails. But yeah, it really does make a lot of
sense to even inform the sales team say hey, sales team. You know,
hey, here's some of the indicats. So bringing that activity to the
sales team is super valuable. We'll talk more about that integration between sales and
marketing, but the real idea, the real crux of it is, hey,
we have some information, we are armed. Marketing is getting this knowledge
and Info. It's super valuable to the sales team and so being able to
start to narrow that out and give that kind of information out to the right
people, you're going to see things move that and we again, marketing can
help by automating right. We can alert sales to what's going on in the
activity and the warmth of the lead or the engagement of that individual or where
they are in the journey that we understand so far, and let the sales
rep take on, you know, the next steps, because they can be
really specific, really personalized and might even already have a prior relationship. So
definitely, once we get this canoe moving down the water, you really can
learn a lot and do a lot of fancy footwork, as I like to
say. Yeah, I love that. And so with everything that you've just
mentioned, Josh, I mean there is so much value that is provided just
with what you started in. We've got many topics to cover today, but
multi touch attribution just from from that point alone. So, given how much
value that can provide a sales organization, revenue ups up Organization, a broader
executive organization, why do you then believe that so much of what marketing operations
teams do today sort of flies under the radar? Yeah, no, it's
a good point. Clan. So I have a bunch of bad analogies.
So here's my first one. I love thinking about us as the umpire and
baseball. I don't know if your sports person, but umpire and baseball,
referee and football the code. You know in basketball, the you know the
reps in basketball. If they're doing their jobs correctly. You don't even think
about them. You don't hear a peep out of them. You don't think
about them. Right the umpire. You never even talked about the umpire because
he's calling the correct balls and strikes and it's just exactly how the game should
be played right. It's smooth sailing through com se's that's exactly how a marketing
operations person being in the in this in this profession for for about a decade
now I've recognized that. If I'm doing my job correctly, if the website
feels smooth and there's a nice journey that you feel, if you feel like
the emails are coming to the right people and they're going to the right links,
the ads that I'm putting out there makes sense and are leading people to
take the next step in the conversation, all of that stuff. It should
be in the background. Right I should feel like this is a smooth experience,
a smooth UX, even though we're not necessarily on the UX side of
things, in a way kind of we are. That's a huge piece of
it. I think that if we do our jobs correctly, we do fly
under the radar a bit. Now, between me and sales, the sales
it you know relationship that we have, that's where we really shine. Right,
sales utilizes us. Sales is basically my customer. Right. I'm trying
to appease them and give them warm leads and they're telling me if they're not
warm and yelling back at me that I'm not doing my job correctly, and
that's totally fine. That's how we kind of had that symbiotic relationship. So
what I will say is that when we're doing our jobs correctly, just like
the umpires and baseball, you really don't notice that we're there, but at
the same time you recognize that it's us that's keeping kind of the game moving.
Yeah, excellent, I love the analogy. That's that's wonderful. So
I know that you believe that our lie is one of the most important metrics
that a marketing operations team can deliver. And so why do you think this
is so hard to do, and can you provide any advice to our audience
about how best to do this? Yeah, so what I've learned, at
least in my limited time. You know, in this world and doing these
things, it's bad habits. It's kind of I don't even want to say
bad habits, but it's just how you've always done things right. So being
able to integrate and track all that Roy requires a really close knit and this
will be the theme of my talk, as you can tell already, is
really integrating with sales, right. I think hup spot calls, it's marketing,
sales and marketing put together. And and what you really need to do
is you need to make sure that sales is taking in the leads that you're
providing them the MQL's, turning them into Sal's, but also putting them on
the opportunities. Now I'm speaking a little bit about sales force here or your
crm, but we want to be able to see that entire as I've been
saying, click to close journey. And the reason it's so hard to get
that Roi sometimes just because marketing, often the bad habits that I'm talking about,
has kind of just said, hey, we produced more traffic, we
produced more vanity metrics. Right, I don't know what that might be.
It could be social media, could be likes, it could be traffic is
important, right. Website traffic is definitely important these days. Traffick to your
billboard on the side of the road is important these days still. But can
we see where it's going? And the reason why it's hard to track ro
I, like your question going, is because I don't think we've completed that
entire system, and that system is what I what I've been building these all
these years, is being able to kind of create that system that we can
say hey, so it's train, training on the sales side, but also
training on the marketing side and also training as far as the business goes saying
that, hey, if you're not using sales force or your crm correctly,
let's get that working and integrated with your automation tools, integrating with your marketing
and digital reporting tools. A lot of new tools that have come out are
doing that right. Visible, I think, was bought by Marquetto and they're
doing that there. There are a lot of tools that are trying to fill
in those gaps and I bet you they were created by marketers, because marketers
are saying, wait a minute, they're all these gaps that were missing.
I need a tool to fill those gaps. And so what I've noticed is
that getting everyone on the same page and getting those tools integrated is super important
to being able to track that full Roi. And so there's some other little
tidbits of difficulty, like the setup of the campaigns, the setup of getting
the members onto the campaign's right making sure that we marketing is doing their job
correctly, but also, on the other end, that sales is taking those
you know, taking the baton, as so to speak, and saying,
okay, I've got this valuable baton. Let me make sure that I'm doing
everything in my power to make sure that this is all being done correctly,
my good habits are being used and that I'm doing everything correctly, and I
could get into the nitty gritty and nuts and bolts of that. But yet
putting the individual, the prospect on the contact role of your Opportunity Real,
real grangular there, but a kind of an example of how we can track
that Roi. So it's those habits, it's getting into the right habits,
training and making sure we're all on the same page. Excellent Advice, excellent
advice that you mentioned in that in that respons or to us, you talked
a bit about the relationship with sales and and a part of that, of
course, in many marketing operations organizations, a key deliverable is a marketing qualified
lead. Now I know that when you and I chatted before, I I
I remember I asked You do marketing qualified leads or Mq Wels, do they
really matter anymore? And and of course I asked you know, to be
somewhat interested to see your thought on this, and you passionately answered yes.
And and so can you share a little bit more about why you feel that,
for example, mql's have gotten, say, called a bad rap in
the past and why you feel so strongly that measuring mql's is such an important
metric that marketing operations teams absolutely should be measuring. Yeah, no, it's
a great question and and you know, in my mind supplying warmly so an
mql. Will talk about that a second. But what an mql really means
to me is let's supply a warm lead, and we can talk about what
warm means in a second as well, but let's supply a warm lead to
the sales team. To me, that is the reason for business right,
that's the reason for marketing is we want to close deals and we want to
know who is showing more buyer and buying intent. Again, some jargony,
you know, nomenclature that we use here in the marketing world, but some
buying intent right, if they're showcasing that I'm interested in purchasing something, if
I'm showcase seeing that, you know, if I'm in the mall and I'm
picking up a Nike Shoe and I'm looking at it, you know there's a
good chance that maybe I'm interested in that Nike Shoe and to me, if
you're seeing that as a salesperson in the mall, you're saying, Hey,
I should walk up to this individual because they are a warmer lead than an
individual that just walks right by the store. So to me this is the
the rules of business since day one. Right, if you want to sell
something, you might want to talk to the people who are more likely to
buy than less likely to buy. Someone who's not even at the mall,
you don't want to reach out to them, but someone who's in the mall
reach out to them. Someone who's standing in your store might even want to
reach out to that. Someone who's holding the shoe that you're selling. You
really want to reach out to them. So that's really what the MQO process
is. Now. MQL might just get a bad rap because of the name
and to be honest with you, Glenn, it's because it's being implemented incorrectly.
I've talked to other people who've been using the MQL process and they're like,
yeah, you know what I'vever? I give to the sales team.
They don't even seem to accept them. They never become sal's. I said,
well, maybe the system's not correct right, maybe your systems not in
place, and so people get a bad taste in their mouth and they say,
I'm not really sure about this mql process, forget it, let's just
do what we've been doing the whole time. And so in my mind,
the MQL will never be dead, because the point of business, in in
any business like in the mall, is to sell your product. And if
someone shows more engagement than another person, shouldn't the sales team be aware of
that? And that's all the mql process is, Glen. It's really me
saying, hey, sales rep in an automated, more scaled fashion. Hey,
sale is rep your own prospect, the individual that's sitting in your store,
that you're waiting to pick up the shoe, has picked up the shoe.
Reach out to them because they're ready. Hey, can I help you?
Do you want to see that? See that in a size ten?
You know, I mean, that's what it comes down that's what it comes
down to, Glenn it. And so to me, the MQL system needs
to be implemented correctly. Now have I done it pert though? I will
never have done it perfectly. Will always need improvement and will always need to
be optimized, but I have found that R MQL's are closing in half the
time right and the reason they're closing in half the time is because these individuals
have shown they're picking up the shoe. They've already you know, when you're
talking to someone who doesn't even know that the mall exists, they're not ready
to buy. And so if I can give the sales people just a hint,
just a taste of someone who has at least knows that the the mall
exists, knows that the shoes are in there and is picked up the shoe,
the sales team is going to be happy about that. The sales teams
can say, Hey, I just want to know. Don't Josh, I
don't need to know everyone in the mall, but just give me one or
two or three of the people who have shown interest. And when I say
all this, obviously I'm comparing it all to digital interest, and so the
mql is just digital interest. It's hey, this person has been on our
website a little bit more than that person, or this person is dug in
and filled out some forms a little bit more than the other person, and
that's really all it is. And I think maybe it's kind of bad rap
because it's either implemented incorrectly or just hasn't shown fruit, or it's just maybe
a difficult process to implement, which it is. It definitely is, because
there's training and getting people to change habits. Yeah, and to your point,
the person who is they're not in the mall, the person who is
in the mall, the person who's standing outside the store, the person standing
inside the store, person looking at the shoe, person picking up the shoe,
all of those are, to your point, indications of some degree of
intent that's getting closer and closer to the purchase. But ultimately, to your
do your analogy, you still might have a conversation with that person and they'll
put the shoe down and they're not going to buy. But the data show
that if they're you know, they're in the mall, they're in your store,
they're standing at the the shoe, they're grabbing the shoe, looking at
the shoe, there are a higher prior probability that they are going to buy
then someone who is has never even heard of the mall, you know in
your example. So I think that's a really great analogy and story about how
you approach, you know, communicating, you know, and working and partnering
with your sales teams and how you look at Mql to continue moving that forward.
So that's that's excellent. So when you think about just let's let's broaden
it now and just think about just overall projects for your marketing operations teams,
so how do you then decide to prioritize one project over another and in what
your marketing operations teams focus on? And then how have you found that it's
the best way to communicate those priorities across the organization? Yeah, so,
you know, I do come from the startup world. So in the startup
world you wear many hats and priority staffing is limited, budgets are limited,
and so priorities tend to be the hard currency. So a mentor of mine
shout out to Michael Idianopolis, the head of communications at McKenzie. I learned
a lot from him in the two years that I work with him at a
startup, and I used to always talk about soft currency and hard currency,
and and hard currency is kind of you know, you got your vanity metrics,
which is the soft currency, and your hard currency, which is like
that are a I that we were talking about. And so the way I
view it as soft currency and hard currency and and what you really want to
do is, of course, traffic to your website, facebook likes, you
know, clicks on your emails. That's important stuff, but sometimes you really
want to focus on that hard currency, and that hard currency is that are
all those dollars in the door. And so what I find the individuals that
I speak with, the VP's that I'm talking to of marketing, the CMOS,
you know, chief marketing officers of the companies that I'm working at and
speaking with. They want to hear more about that hard currency. And what
are the what of the campaigns? What are we doing now? Of course
those campaigns will entail some work on the soft currency side of things. Right,
you're going to want to get that traffic in the door because that's the
top of the funnel and we're going to have to work them down that funnel
with content and with various other pieces. But priority is going to be focused
on trying to get that hard currency in the door. It's trying to utilize
the vanity metrics to continue to push people down the funnel and get to that
are a why? And that's what makes the MQL process, or even just
the multitouch attribution so important, is that I can track it back to that
so I can say, Hey, we went to this trade show last year.
Let's go back to this trade show because we know that we closed one.
This many opportunities and this and trade shows aren't so difficult to track these
days, right, you know, there are certain digital interactions that are tough,
but the allfine interactions of a trade show, if not virtual these days,
or even if virtual, you can bring that into your sales force and
then you could say hey, sales reps, have any of these individuals turn
into opportunities? If they did close, win and it's more than the value,
than the cost of the event that you went to. You made some
Roi. There's some money there, so let's do it again next time.
So I know I'm kind of running off on on, on a bit of
a tangent there, but what I'm trying to really get it is if you
can figure out that Roy piece, then you really know where the priority lies.
And so when I taught data driven right, I'm going to use that
jargon again. When I talk to that CMO, I say hey, don't
listen to me, let's take hunches and guesses out of it. Let data
tell that story and guess what. Data tells the story and data says,
Hey, go back to that conference, because will make money again, potentially
if we can close a deal or too, it's worth it, maybe even
spend some more money to do that. So I'm talking trade shows, but
I'm also talking priorities in your campaigns and expressing that to the leadership, like
you asked. is saying, Hey, here we've seen or we're hoping to
see on Roi. We're hoping to say, Hey, our audience likes to
open emails and likes to click on them. Okay, great, then let's
continue to use email as our focus. Let's promote our content via email.
And so that's really what it comes down to when prioritizing and trying to showcase
this Roi is really saying, Hey, what has proven or what do we
believe? Take a hypothesis, we have to do experiments. We're all scientists
here and trying to figure out, hey, does this make sense to do
this? Well, in the past, the data says yes, or potentially
we don't have past data. So let's give it a shot. Let's pull
that lever. Right. There are a lot of levers to pull in the
marketing world. Let's sometimes you have to experiment and you got to pull those
different levers, and that's where I think the beauty of a start up comes
because you don't know really when you're in a start up, in the testing
all that there's no proven you work for a company that's been around since one
thousand nine hundred and fifteen. They might say, Hey, we've proven that
our audience likes this or our audience wants to go to trade shows. And
then you know that kind of stuff, and we can prioritize our data of
prioritists, we can prioritize our campaign execution based off of that data. So
yeah, yeah, no, that's excellent. Well, in Josh, everything
you just Said said, I mean you can just hear in your voice the
amount of experience and passion that you have towards marketing operations and and you said
something a few months ago where you said, well, I don't know if
I've got it all figured out perfectly and I don't know if I'll you know,
if I will ever have that, you know, completely perfectly. So
if I did get on that just for a quick second, based on everything
that you've learned, you know in marketing operations, can you give or share
an example of maybe a mistake or maybe a failure that you've experienced in a
marketing operations context and and and maybe what you learn from it. Oh absolutely
so, right off the bat, I can. I know if you ask
this to to a bunch of marketers, they would all have at least some
of these answers. But I want to give something outside of this before I
go out to the outside of it. Have I sent an eightyzero person email
to the wrong list? Absolutely. Have I used first names with lowercase letters,
Dear Josh with a lowercase J. absolutely don't like that, have I?
Have I done a paid media campaign with linked into a to join a
webinarm and put the wrong link in there? Oh, I've done that too.
Good. So everyone will say that as a marketing operations person, right,
being the the umpire and saying strike when it's really small? Right,
calling it out of bounds on that team when it was out of bounds on
the other team? Of course, of course I've done that. Not only
do I do that every day, but I'm constantly learning from it and trying
to get better. So absolutely, but one sort of different tact that I'll
take, our different answer that I'll give is a really cool learning experience that
I had, which was a dabbling of mistakes alongside some successes. And so
what I really want to call out as one experience that we had where,
at one of my companies, we had us, we had a lot of
churn. So we were losing. Churn is basically loot, everyone knows,
you know, losing customers and they were leaving us and we were trying to
figure out why are they leaving us? And this happened to be one of
the lower tiers of customers. Right, they paid us the least, they
didn't get the white glove service, they weren't getting that hand holding that maybe
they needed. So we noticed we were churning. Now that was the first
mistake, right, and I don't blame it all on me, but you
know, we were losing some people and they said, Josh, what can
we do to fixness? Marketer, Josh, is there any idea we have
here? So I started to think maybe what we can do, not only
I do want to give shoutouts to my team there as well. There's definitely
others involved, but we start to think about is like, let's and this
might be really obvious to everyone on the call, but surveying our customers.
Okay, that seems like an obvious idea. Maybe a boot camp, a
customer welcome drip, okay, very obvious. A lot of companies have customer
welcome drip school. Well, we decided to do is we did a Google
shopping boot camp, and so the first email was, you know, Boot
camp number one or chapter number one. So an email that was already catered
around like this boot camp. Who doesn't want to join a boot camp?
And who doesn't want to kind of? Well, at least I would think
you want to when it's revolved or aunt, you know, evolving around,
revolving around your professional life? That sounds interesting. I want a little bit
of a boot camp so I can learn Google adds better or something like that.
And what we found was that was cool and it was a nice little
way of having a touch point, but we were still churning. We were
still churning at a high rate. So what we thought about was let's survey,
and I think I mentioned the survey. So in the dispersed throughout this
drip, this email nurture campaign or this customer welcome drip, we decided let's
put surveys in there. So we put in a survey on the second email
out of eight emails. I think it was eight emails, sixteen over sixteen
weeks. So you're talking about one email every other week. And we would
survey them the second email and the sixth or seventh email. Nobody filled out
the surveys. We found that we were sending people lit we had links in
there to go. So we were like what, they won't even fill it
out. So what do we so another write. Another mistake there. So
what was the mistake we were sending? Nobody wants to fill out of survey
right. Nobody wants to click on that link. You'd only take fifteen minutes.
Nobody want was that? But what we found was if we put the
questions right in the email, three questions don't go book. What? What
are your biggest problems right now? What's you know, something like that on
MPs score kind of question. We did that second email and then, like
I said, six or seventh email. What I found was if you and
now it's not add and it's not totally automatable or it's not totally, you
know, digitally integrated, but we found that people would prefer to respond to
the email and answer the questions as opposed to filling out the survey. Now
digitally trackable. Maybe not right. We can't once you start to fill out
and reply, but we found in the end the user experience was most important
and getting the information from those individuals was most important. So what we found
was people were responding to that email, not necessarily wanting to fill out a
survey, but when they saw the three questions, what could we be doing
better? What would you know? They would reply back and again, not
something that you know we'd have to manually in take those responses and work off
of them, but at least we were getting responses. And so here's kind
of an example of US trying to figure out why people were churning, realizing
we need to survey them, realizing people don't want to click off to a
fifteen minute survey when they're angry. They just want to reply back and feel
like people are Reson. You know, when you replied on email, feels
like you're actually replying to an individual as opposed to going off into some Internet
either. And so the idea it was let's let them reply back, to
give them three questions. Not so difficult and especially if you have a problem
you're going to want to respond with those three you know, to those three
questions, and we did that again later and guess what? Churn started to
go down. We started to keep more of our customers and we found it's
because we got out ahead of their issues immediately. That second survey. They
responded and we were able to eventually, just so you know, we did
turn it back into a digital please respond to these three questions either via the
email or click this link. We found that we could do both. If
they click the link, we automatically applied it, appended it to the record
in sales force so that the CSM's, the client services side of the house,
saw that their individual their own account, responded to a survey road a
specific feedback and that feedback was acted upon. So it might not be the
perfect answer to what you're asking, but I've always remember, you know,
besides my my terrible sense of Eightyzero to the wrong people, that was probably
one of the best learning experiences I ever went through. I love that.
I mean there's so much richness in that example and, you know, not
only being presented with a very difficult challenge and of course, like you said,
you know we've all had those you know, very interesting and frustrating challenges,
you know, as marketers. But how you were able to take that
approach a solution, respond in a certain way, see that that's not working,
modify the approach, then that starts to work, you know, and
then ultimately then, you know, the problem was starting to alleviate. So
I think that's an upstanding example. So, you know, and let's take
that now as a learning and let's fast forward now five to ten years,
you know, with everything that's going on right now the marketing operations context.
How do how do you see marketing operations is going to evolve, you know,
here all these next five to ten years? Yeah, well, I
think I've noticed this, and I think probably you've seen this as well,
and probably a lot of the listeners have noticed, is we're in a hot
market right now for what we do right for marketing operations and text St AC
and all of that, and I think it's because we're starting to recognize that,
Roy, and I think we're starting to recognize that marketing needs to tie
back what they're doing to more than just the billboard on the side of the
road and they, you know, no offense any build board of the side
of the road people. That is definitely a way of getting trafficked in the
door and getting your name out there locally. But I think more and more
it's like, okay, if we're going to spend money, if we're going
to create content, can we tie it back to something? Anything, just
a touch point, you know. And of course forms getting filled out.
We could say, Hey, a hundred people downloaded something great, but it's
taking those next steps and I think over the course of since even I've been
in the world right and in this in this automation world and in the marketing
ops world, I've recognized that that, you know, we were just,
you know, sending out some emails, but now we're actually tying those emails
back to the journey and that's really cool. And next thing we're going to
be doing is we're going to be time that journey back to you know and
feeding all that data to the sales side of the house. And then that's
pretty cool, right. And and we're doing each step one by one.
And so, you know, am I going to try and predict where will
evolve to in the next ten years? Who knows? With the cookie lit
and increasing cookie list world is, as I've been hearing and and you know,
things will change and will adapt and marketers will adapt because that's what we're
good at. But more importantly, I think that will be recognized. The
Marketing Operations Roll and and tactics will be recognized, especially if done correctly,
if the MPL process gets a better wrap over the years because we're doing things
better and the technology is improving, will be a real integral and crucial part.
That's not just behind the scenes, Glenn. That's also at the forefront.
And what do I mean by that? Is Sitting on those big calls,
sitting on the sales calls. Right. One big thing, and I
think we'll touch on this in a bit, is is how we interact with
sales, and I think that's just kind of becoming an obvious thing. It's
like, wait a minute, sales can learn a lot from marketing, but
marketing can learn a lot from sales, and if we only just work together
and fused our stuff together, maybe we could be this one cohesive department like
a marketing department, like I mentioned before. And so you know again I'm
not going to try and speak to exactly where will be and where we'll go
with technology and cookies and privacy and things like that. But what I do
really believe is that marketing APPS will come to the forefront, if it hasn't
already, and be recognized as someone and some group ands a department that's really
making a difference and that has capabilities to bring people in the door maybe better
than than any other department, and I know that that's what marketing is supposed
to do. But from the operation inside, there are so many levers to
pull and there's so much trackability out there. Right there's so much. There's
so many things that I can tell you about what's happening. I mean even
just a click in and email or even just a Dutch on our on our
home page. I mean that's the simplest highest form of it, but there's
so many things that there's so much data out there, and that's really I
mean that's you know, the last ten years has been obviously a huge piece
of the operation side. So yeah, bottom line is there's there's we're coming
to the forefront. I think we're being recognized as an integral part of the
marketing operations mix and that the skills that we have and that we're producing or
that we're gaining. The skills that we're learning are really applicable and really and
this comes from, you know, companies like up spot, who's just made
a name for themselves and shown that, like Hey, ops is and marketing
automation is special and can do a lot. Yeah, well, and my
Gosh, the you just gave the perfect testimonial as to why this podcast exists
is, you know, to your point as bringing the marketing operations team to
the forefront. So I think that's outstanding. So, Josh, before we
wrap up today's episode, what would you say is the main takeaway that you
want to leave our audience with in understanding the challenges facing marketing operations executives today?
M Such a good question. So much they're right and I think everything
we've discussed is a big everything we've discussed as my answer, but my real
answer is that that attribution is there. We need to we need to showcase
that attribution and I think showcasing it in your crm, where your sales reps,
where your potentially your leadership is going to find that data, those dashboards
and stuff like that. That's the crux of it all. We need to
tie it back to the Roi we need to showcase. Hey, these downloads
are cool and everything, this traffic is cool and everything, but it has
actually done so much for us. It has actually pushed us so much.
There's so many touch points. We've worked that top of the funnel and now
we can start to move to the mud middle of the funnel and eventually pull
people. So the idea is that there's just so many levers out there.
And you know, the number one rule of marketing or content marketing is know
your audience. Right, you really need to know your audience. But once
you know your audience and once you're gaining that knowledge, it's not going to
be perfect. The audience is always gonna, you know, want to want
to engage in different ways, whether it be videos, social media, emails.
But the idea is, once you learn what kind of triggers your audience,
what their pain points are, what's keeping them up at night, right,
you should be able to go out there and start to speak to them
and talk to talk and be human. Right. It's be to be,
and everyone says this. It's be to be, it's be to see whatever,
but it's human to human and I know everyone has said that to death,
and that's definitely something, but in the end you're talking to humans,
whether it's a business or not, and you need to just be human on
your end. To write. Is that personalization or an email? Maybe,
but what it really is is is talking how they're feeling, right using the
words that they're saying to themselves every day when they search for something in the
search query. Use that same terminology. You know. That should be your
subject line, you know. And so there's too many emails out there,
there's too many digital internet you know, and it's hard to sift through all
that clutter. But if you can stand out, if you can put good
habits into place, you can start to learn what does work and what doesn't.
And it doesn't have to work always in mass scale. It doesn't have
to be a hundred thousand people coming to your website and converting. It can
be five to ten people who matter. It can be that a you know,
somewhat of like what ABM speaks to, you know, the count base
marketing. It's like, maybe these are the end of the high target individuals.
We want to go after what matters to them. Let's figure out what's
important to them and let's talk human to human and say hey, if this
is a fit, it's a fit and let's utilize that and marketing can help
with that. Marketing can help inform the sale side and sales can help form
the marketings inform the marketing side. Sit on those sales calls, marketers right,
listen to your sales team, because they are doing it. They are
boots on the ground daytoday. And so once you kind of understood your audience,
you can put all these practices into place. We can get the MQL
process working and it will leave a good taste in the mouth because people will
enjoy it. The sales team will love you. I was at a you
know, my last company, to sales team appreciated that we were giving them
these these mqls, whether it was ten mqls a week or a hundred mqls
a week. They recognize the value. They closed in half the time.
The deals were bigger because they were already educated. So the ideas. Try
to kind of work through this, try and understand your audience and then eventually
you and the sales team will be best friends and you can utilize that to
kind of help the hard currency in your business. And so to me,
you know, it's just a matter of learning each business, learning what works
and putting good habits into place. That's excellent. Well, that wraps up
this episode of the art of marketing operations. Thank you so much for joining
us today, Josh, and until next time, stay safe, take care,
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