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 Bottomley and today my guest is Brandon
Goldstein, senior manager of marketing operations at evolve, an industry leader in making
vacation rentals easy by simplifying rental property management for more than seventeen thousand homeowners and
by streamlining vacation bookings for more than five million guests at more than seven hundred
and fifty destinations around the world. Thanks for joining me today, Brandon.
Thanks for having me. Glen's great to be here. Well, listen,
before we get started, I understand that you are a volunteer with the Friends
of birth and pass, which promotes avalanche in wilderness safety and awareness for winter
sports. Can you share a little bit more about why you got involved in
sort of the impact that this has had on your life? Yeah, be
happy to share some details there. It's a really cool organization. As you
said, they really promote avalanche and outdoor travel safety and awareness and in particular
for those backcountry sports that we exercise during the winter. And so I am
a back country skier. I've been doing that for fifty years. Have taken
a number of certification courses to make myself a safer individual and really our missions
kind of a line. I want to be able to go out there enjoy
myself with my friends and also know that I'm not going to have to rescue
somebody in an emergency, but also that if the worst should happen, that
somebody knows how to rescue me. And so it's all kind of looking out
for each other. It's a really great community and the best way to keep
ourselves safe is really through education, and the Friends of birth at pass does
a lot of education events, both virtual and on snow, to really make
ourselves safer individuals and as groups in the back country. So it's a yeah,
organization I feel really aligned with given my own personal hobby. That's fantastic.
What an interesting organization. Thanks so much for sharing that. That's excellent.
Okay, so let's know shift over to marketing operations. So Brandon at
evolve. You are responsible for increasing penetration on both the guest and the owner
sides of the business. So what difference is have you found in terms of
how you market to various groups like that, and is one more challenging than
the other and sort of why? Sure, yeah, so I'll give you
a little backstory here. Of all, grew up as a business really serving
owners specifically, and so for those vacation rental properties, we wanted to make
it easy, you're, for those individuals to get their properties listed on Airbnb,
on Verbou Bookingcom, get professional photography and actually have their their property booked
for the entire rental season. And you know, as we grew up and
became more proficient at that, we started to look into the guest side of
the business and that really launched right at the end of two thousand and nineteen,
early two thousand and twenty, and so now we are both continuing to
welcome homeowners who want to find an easy way to list their rentals but also
get help with identifying cleaning partners other service partners. But then we also want
to welcome guests into those highly rated homes and, as you said, yeah,
they're really very different parts of the business and, you know, for
the owners, they are, in you know, our perspective, kind of
a business owner themselves, and so the marketing efforts that we do, they
are very be to be. We actually use hub spot and sales force for
those communications, as you know, all of our marketing as well as transactional
communications, and we really are driving to a property acquisition team as the sales
team there. Now the guest side is B Toc and you know, as
I'm sure you're well versed in the vacation rental business, you've probably stated in
Airbnb or a verbot home before. So guests can take multiple trips and they
don't necessarily require the same style of a marketing or sales process in order to
get them to purchase with us. They want to probably use a similar pathway
they're familiar with. So go on to an AIRBNB or the evolvedcom website,
go through, find a home that looks good, that's available for their days,
has the proper amenities in place and can book it right online. Now
we do have a customer support team that is there for the guests if they
have any questions about the bookings before they actually want to go through with it
or even after the fact if they want to figure out some questions with the
guest contact anything like that. But on the marketing side, to get back
there, there are very two distinct parts of the business, the be Toc
and the be to be, and we try to treat them as very separate.
Now I wouldn't say one is necessarily more challenging, they're very different.
So you have business objects that relate to each of those sales and marketing processes.
But we are just newer at the guest side, so that's an area
where we're still really trying to find our place in our true cadence. We
have a lot of great marketing programs going out already, but simply due to
the fact that it's a newer part of the business, I think there are
just more areas to optimize and refine and we have continued to take massive steps,
and you know both areas, but now we're actually starting to do some
national advertising efforts on the guest side, which it really exciting. That's that's
great to hear that. And then also have you found some interesting challenges that
when you your marketing operations efforts are really to your point, you're going after
her both a be to be audience and a B Toc Audience. Have there
been some interesting learnings along the way for our audience, because I would imagine
that there are many in our audience that have that sort of similar dynamic where
they're going to in their marketing to a business and then also either be to
be Toc or they're splitting, like in your case, they're marketing to a
be to be audience versus a B Toc are there some unique takeaways or lessons
that you've learned on the either the be tob side that's, you know,
different from lessons you've learned on the BC side? I mean, I think
there's a ton of different lessons and you need to kind of put yourself in
consumer shoes in each case. What is working for our owners from marketing tactics
is not necessarily working for guests. The vacation rental model nowadays is fairly lowtouch,
but for an owner trying to figure out how to, you know,
rent out their property in a effective way, they're going to require a lot
more education in wetting and so there really are very different ways that we want
to approach each of those business cases. Now, for other businesses that are
considering branching into other areas. Maybe they're a be Toc company and they have
some be tob style opportunities on the horizon. I'd say one of the best
things that they can really do, and and it may not be the thing
that everyone wants to hear, but I think investing in those data structures early.
So the business model, as I've already said, is going to be
a little different. The object relationships in your crm, like sales force or
hub spot, are also probably going to be different. I think it's worth
taking some of that extra time to really set up a good foundation for whatever
this new, you know, sales are marketing model is, so that you
can understand the object relationships easily. And you know, what I've often found
is that businesses are going to just try to use their existing models and go
after a new segment of business, and that's great, but then after a
little while they find that their inefficiencies in the process and those are often driven
by business processes that were realistically designed for something very different. So, you
know, really to double down on that. I think it's worth reiterating that
it's good to branch into kind of unknown sectors, but if you feel like
this is going to be a concerted effort for your company. I think it's
worth taking that time and investing and setting up the model that can support your
growing business so that you don't have to go back and try to, you
know, duct tape things together. And I'd say, yeah, well,
one of the things that I've talked about, I know and in my past
is this utilization of technology and what is the end goal? Is the end
goal optimization or is the end goal transformation? And because a lot of times
I think the technologies that we put in place as marketers, they are too
optimize a specific flow, workflow, making something faster, maybe something, something
more efficient. But I think what you're getting at is something really key,
which is also understanding and recognizing when the technology that you're putting in is actually
to transform and and transformation, because then, to your point, it is
much more than just making an existing process faster, it's actually changing the process
to be far more efficient, far more transformative to the organization. Yeah,
definitely, yeah, and I you know, I think it's tempting to fall
into those same traps when you see a new opportunity, opportunity lie in front
of you, you want to just jump in and take it, but being
improperly prepared to leverage your opportunity can often be one of those limiting factors.
So yeah, I think it's, you know, of supreme importance to really
consider how you want to optimize, sure your existing processes, but also to
see if you just need a completely new structure or process for something that is
going to actually require it. It's, you know, something that is is
probably the case that a lot of companies. I've seen it before I was
working at hospitality. This is not entirely uncommon for anyone working in an operations
related field where you have, you know, a new product that you're looking
to upsell. So I just say take the time, understand where you're trying
to get. Doesn't have to be perfect, but set up those those building
blocks to make sure that you are at least prepared for success and not just
winging it. Yeah, great point. So we've talked a bit about data
structures, we've talked a little bit about some Martech. Let's talk a bit
about messaging. So I would imagine that in your career you have had a
lot of examples in with where you have multiple audiences. You know that you
have to message to. You've talked a bit here about homeowners and vacationers and
I would imagine you have the unique situation where, you know, some of
your owners are also guests and we're guests become owners, etc. So can
you share with our audience how how do you differentiate messaging too various user groups
that you mark it to, and what advice can you sort of give to
our audience members on sort of the best way to discover the right message right?
I mean those are, you know, two very, very big topics.
I'll try to keep it relatively concise here. If I'm thinking about the
owner versus guest differentiation to start, you know, despite we the fact we
know the world is not such a simple place, but sometimes we just have
to make assumptions to simplify it, and so that's an area that you know,
although you could probably spend years trying to figure out the perfect data model,
it's important to I think you know, way the the importance of getting
things actually going with maybe something that will work. Don't let you know,
perfect be the enemy of good, and for guests, for his owner,
we have just completely segregated the data in a way that make sure that we
are looking at the guest experience as a completely unique part of our business that
is not going to be impacted by some of the owner pieces. So if,
for example, an owner is also a traveler with us, we are
at least currently not looking to feed any guest related messaging to them as an
owner. We are keeping those two channels very separate. Now I think there
is some room to continue to optimize to your point earlier, where we might
be able to pull some of those signals in and utilize them in a beneficial
way, but for the sake of simplicity and, you know, really approaching
each business model in earnest, it's been important for us to kind of keep
them separate and approach them very distinctly. Now on the guest side as well
as the owner side, and I'm sure for almost any business out there,
there are still going to be further differentiations required of their customer base, and
so the best thing that you can do there is segmentation. Segmentation is a
really powerful tool. It's not all that complicated, but it does require some
early decisions to be made, kind of to the building blocks and foundation points
I made earlier. You are going to want to segment your audiences into categories
that really allow you to treat them as different individuals, as you know,
slightly different aspects of the same sales model. On the owner side, for
example, there might be somebody who has never rented their home before and this
is their first time doing any kind of vacation rental business with their property.
Others have maybe worked with a you know, a property manager, or were
even renting their home out themselves. For those kinds of individuals we may have
very, very similar underlying messaging. You know, we want to prove to
them that we can help them make vacation rentally easier. But ultimately the way
to get to some of their pain points, the ones that are going to
make them look at our messaging and open our emails and possibly schedule a call
with one of our sales reps, those might be slightly different, and so
that segmentation has allowed us to dive into some of the pain points and opportunities
that are relevant to each one of those customer segments. Same idea on the
guest side. You know, I think a lot of companies have discovered that
within their guest populations there might be individuals interested in the beach, the mountains,
foreign travel more of an adventure style. You know, this is an
area that you could continue to slice and dice further as you go, but
I would say to start it's really important to identify your high level segments so
that you can effectively capitalize on their eyeballs that you're hopefully getting at the end
of the day, at the end of your email. Really yeah, that's
excellent. A couple things that really resonated in in your answer there. One
was that, if you think about your messaging, to your comment about sometimes
you have to make assumptions, that is so relevant, I think, because
it is a fallacy to think that we will have perfect data, that we
will have perfect information, and and not succumbing to that that fallacy, I
think, gets us to something that is more effective and faster and it I'm
sort of I reflect on the law of diminishing returns that if you tried to
go that extra you know, two percent of accuracy, would take you know,
you know, you know, a so much more effort just to get
that two percent. So is it really worth it to get that? Is
the data, or are the data that we have accurate enough for us to
make the right assumptions, make the right content decisions, business decisions, to
propel them, you know, through the through the buyers journey. So I
think that was really, really, really key. The other thing you also
mentioned, which I wanted to hit on, which I think is interesting,
is understanding the pain points and one of the things that I have found,
I'd be interested in your read on this, is I have talked with some
marketers who there is not a sense that there's a pain point. But pain
points don't have to necessarily be incredibly painful. They can actually be minor nuisances
that, you know, is adds just a little bit of friction in and
by just eliminating just a little bit of friction it allows them to to grab
a hold of a new solution. And there's a phrase that I've used in
the past that products and services that move people away from pain are generally more
successful then products and services that meet move people towards pleasure. So, in
other words, the anchor is the pain point. And what is what is
that pain point, however small it is, and it sounds like, based
on your response pain, that discerning that pain point is a really key aspect
of your effort. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, and to your point,
it doesn't need to be this primary source of, you know, anxiety for
the individual on the end of the line. As long as it is something
that is standing between them and an action that could be possibly beneficial, that
could be defined as a pain point, but I think a friction point might
be a kind of more accurate way to describe it. You know, if
we think about the the movie rental business, you know, it's not like
going to blockbuster was all that big of a pain. You know, I
don't think I ever complained about the car ride to the movie store as a
child. But here we are sitting in front of our couches with endless opportunities
because at some point they were able to identify that there is some friction,
some inconvenience that we can steer around for that consumer base and, low and
behold, we have a whole pretty much taken them up on it, and
I think it's the same way that we want to look at marketing for our
own products and services. If we can identify an area of friction, that
means that, you know, they the process to join our business or the
process that they require to actually run their business. If we can help address
any of those pieces in a way that doesn't require them to jump over other,
you know, possible hurdles. I think a lot of people are going
to be interested and that's kind of the model behind self service as well.
You know, we want to create the opportunity for somebody to speak to somebody
on the phone if they need to and have additional questions. But if need
be, some owners might be well educated enough about the entire situation that they're
ready to just, you know, get signed up and start working with us.
We want to try to create a barrierless way for them to do just
that. And so those are some of the ideas that can prompt a lot
of development, not only in your product development, but on your marketing strategy
development and how to actually communicate to the individuals on the other end of the
line. Yeah, your movie rental example, is a is is a perfect
one because to your point at the time, you know, Peter Drucker says
that, you know, any process innovation, once invented and introduced, immediately
becomes obvious. Right. So you know at the time we've fought that.
Oh my gosh, I can go to this vocation just right down the street
get any movie that I want, bring it home, watch it and then
return it back. And and then, of course, you know the Netflix
innovation of the DVD ease. You know, at that time, you know,
you create your list and then the first one comes to you and it
gets mailed. And we thought that was amazing. And I talked with someone
who used to work at Netflix and they said that their distribution hubs at netflix
would they it was super simple. The computer managed it all and they literally
would get a stack of DVD's, they would scan it and then the computer
screen would say send it to this person and a receipt would pop out with
an address, or it would say scan tomorrow and and so they just had
two bins and it was just, you know, am I shipping it today
or am I scanning it tomorrow? That's it. And so as simple as
that process was, streaming to home became such an easier, you know,
process each your point, easier prospect for the consumer and easier on the business,
because now they don't even have to scan the DVDs. Of course we
have these still have a small part of their business that does, but but
still I think it's a perfect analogy. Yeah, my grandmother still gets their
DVDs, so I'm aware. Yeah, they still have some of that going.
No, I really like also, what you just pointed out is that
it's not just for your end consumer. You know, think about the friction
points for your sales team. You know, one of the ways that we
try to look at a project's viability is not only by, you know,
the new potential eyeballs that we get, attracts and getting them on to our
site, but you know, how hard is this for our sales team to
process? Are they going to have to spend a bunch of time working on
this prospect, or we able to siphon information to them in a really seamless
immediate way that allows them to be ready for, you know, emailing or
even hopping on the phone with one of these prospects and getting them through that
sales process faster and with less friction. So yes, I think it applies
both to, you know, the audiences you're looking to attract for your own
products and services, but really for your internal audience, who is one of
the most important of all, where we want to create smooth, easy processes,
make their lives easier, because that means they're selling more print is a
costly and complex investment for every business, but a necessity. Tailor is the
expert in simplifying a stack you may not even know exists. Your print stack
from corporate identity products to data solutions. Tailor provides a personalized marketing solution for
your organization. PRINT STAC offers a powerful combination of technologies, processes and insights
which identifies and eliminates waste in your marketing operations and print processes, drives savings,
simplifies your ordering and allows you more control over your brand. Tailor enables
your organization to work faster, smarter and more efficiently. Learn more and estimate
your own savings with print stack by visiting tailorcom. Yeah, I completely agree
because to your point that this this notion of friction at the at the customer
level, customer consumer level, it's a ultimately it's a sales inhibitor, right,
it just a little bit of that might slow down your sales. But
to your point, those internal little friction points is also a sales inhibitor or
revenue inhibitor because it you know, it's if it's going to take, you
know, if you can shave off, you know, so much time you
know, from a sales process, you're just going to be more efficient,
you know, in your process and I think to your point marketing operations team
members, that's it's a key part of our our our role. It is
there's a lot of levers to pull. Yep, Yep. Now, so,
like many in our audience, you talked a bit about about sales force.
So I know that you use sales force and and have in a lot
of your career opportunity. So what would you say? Is back to your
comment about data structures. What has been the biggest challenge with data structures?
Data rights, you know, just that data side, particularly for our our
listeners who are also in a sales force environment right. Well, be very
clear. You know, evolved has a product development team that actually entirely owns
our sales force instance, and although we collaborate with them closely on new developments,
we are not actually, you know, the ones pressing the buttons and
Sales Force, so to speak. But I've worked in sales force long enough
to, you know, have some pretty strong opinions here, and one of
them goes back to the kind of what I was saying about setting up good
foundations for success. I found at this organization as well as others. You
know, if we didn't really put ourselves in a kind of in that thought
bubble where, you know, where is this business going to potentially advanced to
in the next two or three years, it ends up meaning that we don't
have some of the data structures built. And you know, in my opinion,
the worst part of that isn't really that you don't have, you know,
some of the operational pieces in place, but that after the fact you
can't look back before that, you know, that horizon and look at historical
data. Historical data is, you know, one of the great ways that
we can evaluate against some of our new projects and see how successful or how
unsuccessful they may be. But it's really important to be measuring pretty much anything
that you are going to find important. So I mean it's pretty much a
common adage in our data driven age. You know, just measure what matters.
If you care about it, you should measure it and all the possible
inputs. And you know, even if you're unable to leverage data for some
important insights by collecting relevant metrics, your company's simply focusing its gaze on the
most important parts of its business. And I think that really applies to sales
force. I would say, what are all of the data points that we
would need to understand how somebody, a prospect, is working through our sales
funnel and how sales force and particular, can reflect that? If we don't
have good underlying data they can tell us how that journey is going and how
to compare the success of that journey to journeys beforehand, it means we're kind
of left scratching our heads and looking for maybe some imperfect comparisons. Now we
do that all the time. You know, that's just the nature of any
evolving business. You're not going to always have data to, you know,
look to and rely on, but if you do have it available, it
can always make such a clearer case for one, you know, direction or
another, especially if you're coming to some of these decision inflection points. But
you know, I would say that it really ties back to that initial point
of putting the building blocks and pace find a good way, you know,
a good a good set of data models, to pursue build out that scheme
of fully try to make sure that all of these possible new actions, whether
it's a sales interaction or maybe an engagement with the website that we can track
that in incorporate that data so that we can actually use it. In my
perspective, there are really two huge benefits of a product like sales force or
any crm. One is the ability to automate and the other is the ability
to feed data out so that we can make better decisions. But both of
those are dependent on a really good data Schema that has been built out that
has clear object relationships and minimizes any confusion. So you know it, even
though it's a automation and crm talking point, I really think that I go
back to, I think, creating a good data model. And so,
you know, we have like third normal form ideals where we try to keep
data in objects separate enough so that we aren't just relying on these giant flat
files to, you know, report on our business objectives. It's good to,
you know, be able to keep the business nimble and if we are
relying on giant objects that relate to other giant objects, we're going to lose
some of that processing speed. If we can keep some of those objects themselves
a little simpler, that might just bridge let's say an owner to, you
know, an account to their property, you know, instead of having it
in one general, one kind of more general data object and split it into
three, for example. That may feel more complicated to begin with, but
it actually pays dividends in your ability to automate some of those pieces and then
to report on it later on. Yeah, well, and on that the
data component you're talking about. So any advice in terms of how you differentiate
when data, you know, is an actionable insight versus data that's just noise?
That's that's tough right, because a lot of those noise signals end up
being the things that we sift through and finding some real value on. So
the way that I would differentiate is really, you know, take a very
honest look at Your Business and the structures that you employ. I don't think
that just because it may be noise that it's not worth measuring. I still
think there's value and collecting to that. We don't know how to leverage yet,
but as a owner or, you know, primary operator in a business,
you'll probably know what those main points are. So I would start there.
Of course, make sure that all of those are clearly vetted and able
to be clearly measured. A lot of the kind of system and tech dependencies
of setting that up will create some of the extra data signals like noise.
However, there's always room for some of that. You know, an example
would be, you know, if I want to append information from a third
party vendor into my data model, I don't necessarily want to be pumping that
into my main objects because that's just going to, you know, slow down
my system, clutter up the view of that sales hource record so on.
Doesn't mean I don't want that data necessarily available. If you have a way
of collecting some of those additional engagement points or demographic points on a potential customer,
I wouldn't turn away from it, unless it's, you know, cost
prohibitive, of course, but if you're able to collect and store that information,
I am always an advocate for figuring out a low barrier way to store
a lot of that noise data, because that's the stuff that you can end
up relying on, I think, later on, especially if you want to
get into more sophisticated sales processes like lead scoring and, you know, lead
score based routing. A lot of that's going to rely on the data points
that you never really considered as important milestones in your sales journey, but they
may be relevant nonetheless. So I'm very you know, I'm an advocate of
prioritization, of course, but that with low effort, if there is extra
data available, to simply just try to collect and store it. Yeah,
because in a sense what you're saying is noise and outliers today may become trends
tomorrow. That's very correct. Yeah, I mean these are the things that
might unlock the next growth opportunity. Ye, that said, don't make them,
you know, central functions of your business if you're not relying them every
day. You know that the measure what matters points, like I said,
is it's really important to not only get information on the things that matter most
to your business, but by simply measuring it, you're going to be able
to apply focus to other areas of business that may end up being quite important.
Yeah, exactly. Now, so I can only imagine how robust that
your own mare text ac is and probably the stacks that you've used in the
past. But are there any new emerging areas or some new exciting technologies that
excite you in sort of intrigue you for the Future of marketing operations? Yeah,
Um, you know, I think there are a couple of interesting things
on the horizon that we really need to stay abreast of. Now this is
something that, you know, brings up a mix of anxiety and also like
kind of mental fatigue now at this point. But third party cookie deprecation.
It's been on our radar for a while and Google has kicked the can down
the road a couple times already. It may again, you know, kick
the deadline out. I would not be terribly surprised. However, there is
this general move with online companies. Firefox and safari have already kind of done
away with their cookies and that trend is going to continue. So even though
we have maybe, you know, seventy percent of the overall online consumer base
still cookied and giving us information, that's not going to last forever and there
are new processes and tools that allow us to, I think, get better
insight as to the particular engagement and, you know, incentive pathways for individuals
that are engaging on whether it's social media or just on paid search through Google.
Facebook, in particular, has already launched their solution and it's called their
conversion API, cappy. That is one product that I think it's really worthwhile
to invest some time upgrading, upgrading to its basically a way to fight against
some of the recent changes that, you know, we've been seeing with third
party cookie loss in general, but also with like IOS fourteen, where we
now have lost a even larger portion of the consumer base because they now have
to opt into data collection. I mean it makes sense, but we have
our retargeting pool shrink. You know, anything where we want to create look
alike models, that's harder and harder to do because we have fewer individuals to
base the kind of data comparison on. And what cappy does is, you
know, it relies on internal proprietary technology from facebook, of course, but
what it allows you to do is to tap into those signals and allow facebook
to do some additional optimization for you. So we may never get to really
peak under the hood as much as we would really like, but the fact
of the matter is we've already seen some gains due to implementing cappy, as
it allows us to better optimize some of our ad performance on those platforms.
You know, they are moving to a cookieless age. But ultimately, what
I'm most excited about is the fact that they are able to collect and leverage
more signals than cookies could actually ever provide. So that's one area. Another
one is CDPs. CDPs aren't super new, but they are really cool.
So we're just starting to get working on ours and are very excited about the
possibilities. You know, the automated actions that you can drive from a CDP
stacked on your crm and tied in with your email platform. They're the kind
that companies really need to start unlocking. What I think is this next great
threshold for so many companies in the digital age, which is personalized messaging,
and it ties back a bit to some of the segmentation efforts, except it's
going to go layers deeper, where we can not only identify a specific profile,
as we'll just call it, for a customer, but we can actually
see all of the last engagements and touch points of this individual made with our
assets, whether it's an email or website, what have you, and it
allows us to customize their experience online so that we can try to really meet
them where they are in the funnel and then push relevant messaging, relevant incentives
to keep them moving where it's right. Now, you know, targeting and
segmentation can do a great job, but it's never going to get to that,
you know, ultra granular level where we're actually evaluating a specific individuals path
and CDP customer data platform. Yes, thank Ti, you and dad.
Yeah, yeah, that platform and make sure the up for our Theen yes,
you know, thank you. That's you know, I I hear these
terms all the time and you know by day to day and I'm sure you
do. But yeah, good to be aware that not everyone knows right away
what a CDP is. But you know, I think there are also a
bunch of options here, so it's difficult to necessarily choose. But I would
say, you know, some of those choices are less important than the fact
that you've chosen to pursue, I think, this extra level of automation.
And you know, I know there's telum out there. Their segment sales force
has their own CDP solution and all of them have their own, you know,
kind of company specific quirks and benefits. So I just say, you
know, there's no one size fits all, but the possibilities that you can
unlock with CDP style functionality or what really excites me because we're going to be
able to do, you know, better customer identification, where if somebody clears
their cookies now or or comes in through a different device, a CDP is
able to leverage some of the existing signals that we already have to bring that
that individual together the yeah, I think the CDP style functionality really allows us
to identify ways that we can serve the best messaging possible for an individual.
And as long as that's your company's mission, I think that means you're on
the right path forward. So, as I said, you know, customer
identity resolution, I think, you know, on the base again, you
can think of abandoned cart emails. Later you could actually serve different web experiences
based on where they are in the sales funnel. Another really big benefit of
CDPs is the data unification piece, and that's an area that I think all
of us in the marketing field have been fighting against for a long time.
You know, we have our sales force data silo, we have our email
system data silo and we might even have a, you know, maybe a
sequel server style database that we can access and pull our information in. However,
we have to take some roughly manual steps to pull and join and transform
that data, whereas the promises of CDP, one of them that really appeals
to me is the fact that it's going to be able to naturally incorporate those
signals and tie them together in a way that is right there on the platform.
We don't need to go and do a bunch of data poles and transformation
and reload in order to get at some of the underlying insights. The CDP
platform itself should be able to pull and digest and incorporate a lot of that
data in real time. So that's really exciting, you know. But say,
you know, we might use a a be testing tool right now a
side of a couple of custom signals that we have to set up. It's
difficult for us to say that somebody who actually goes through our entire sales cycle
interacted with an a version versus a b version of a page, whereas if
we're able to tie that a be testing tool in with our CDP suddenly we
have an additional signal that we can continue to use in leverage down the line
in that sales funnel for that particular individual. Well, and I think that
that that's actually a good segue to to my last question for you. And
that is that. I know that when we chatted in the past you've mentioned
to me that you and in your team are sort of constantly asking the question
what is going to give us the best lift, and so I was going
to ask you, you know. So where, where have you found to
be the most likely sources, you know, to answer that question? And
it sounds as if, obviously you know your crm and your metrics, but
your customer data platform, your CDP, that is sounds to me as a
very, very rich source for getting those clues as to how you can can
get the best lift. Would you agree? I would. Yeah, it's
not going to necessarily be on every company's, you know, one to three
year horizon to bring on a CDP. It's a large investment from not only
a monetary perspective but from just like a time of setting up all those connections
and being able to leverage them and, you know, really take advantage of
all that connectivity. But yes, it offers a really big step to do
what I think the you know, the specific action that is generating lift here
is segmentation and personalization. That is a way to achieve better conversion rate optimization
throughout our sales funnel and we're doing that through you robust landing page tests as
well, as you know, engaging automated campaigns both by email, social and
right there on the site. The CDP allows us to tielell those things together
and probably get to a net another level of personalization. But I would say
as a trend, it's that personalization and segmented user journeys that are going to
in often, you know there are going to be cases that are going to
buck the trend, but I'd say often and most of the time you can
count on personalization to actually give you lift. Now again, you have to
kind of consider your marginal returns here on, you know, every ounce of
effort spent. But assuming you're looking to scale and having trouble with that,
personalization is, I think, a good way to unlock a lot of that
extra value. You know, I also think that, beyond just offering personalized
user journeys, that segmentation is also going to give us value. You know,
the entire customer base that we're looking at is not equal. There are
some individuals that are going to provide, you know, evolve with x the
revenue of another potential prospect and we want to be able to identify those.
So it's not just for the you know, the customers benefit and creating a
journey that makes them feel like they're in the right place of the sales funnel
at the right time. As important as that is, it's also really making
sure that we are spending all of our efforts where they matter the most.
Prioritization is key and, you know, identifying and prioritizing your segments is a
great way to produce the lift because, you know, if we are able
to get, you know, twenty five percent back from our top performing segments,
that's still going to outpace like a hundred percent return on probably are lower
performing segments. So, you know, make sure to understand the importance and
the potential benefit out of getting more of each of your posts. One results,
Brandon. We're going to leave it there. This wraps up this episode
of the art of marketing operations. Thank you so much for joining us today,
Brandon, and until next time, stay safe, take care and thank
you for listening. Thank you for listening to the art of marketing operations,
brought to by Taylor. Don't forget to hit subscribe in your favorite podcast player.
If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review and share until next 553 00:42:07.400 --> time,