You could do it alone, but you shouldn’t. Marketing is most effective when paired with intentional and consistent collaboration with the sales team. Together, you create clear objectives and customer journeys.
In this episode, I interview Josh Druck, Sr. Manager, Digital Marketing + Operations at Signify Health, about the wildly effective team-up between sales and marketing and the ever-green relevance of multi-touch attribution.
Join us as we discuss:
- The significance of multi-touch attribution
- The benefits of sales and marketing working together
- Why the customer experience is still paramount
“You look at the customers that have come in the door, and you try to figure out ‘what's that common touchpoint?’ Every journey is going to be different.” — Josh Druck
The Significance of Multi-touch Attribution
Attribution comes down to asking pointed questions about your site and the “path to purchase” journey.
In Josh’s experience, those questions look something like this:
- Are we measuring the right pieces and are they effective?
- Is our website doing what it's supposed to be doing?
- If not, how can we improve?
And that’s where multi-touch attribution can pitch in.
“Google has made it easier to do targeting and figuring out 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 purchase point?” said Josh, on why regular tracking may not be as effective as this method.
Times have changed in marketing—that's obvious—but the focus is the same: people.
What’s different is the way you reach them.
“To me, multi-touch attribution is super valuable, because it allows us to tie back to what's working and what isn't working. 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?” continued Josh.
Multi-touch attribution can change the game for marketing teams by providing detailed reports of what each customer's journey looks like. Josh wants to bring this holy grail solution to every marketer he speaks with.
“There are a lot of levers to pull in the marketing world. Sometimes you have to experiment and you have to pull those different levers.” — Josh Druck
The Benefits of Sales and Marketing Working Together
Your sales team needs to be in the loop. Together, you can create a more efficient, simple, and effective system for your customers.
Josh shared his insights on collaborating with the sales team to get the most out of your conversations.
1 - Keep SDRs Updated
If a lead they're responsible for has a new touchpoint and is showing engagement, let the sales rep know. Give them a report of each touchpoint their customer had, where they’re at, and where they're likely to head next.
“Just saying, “Hey, you own this person, they touched this, let me just let you know that most often the next step would be this.” Said Josh, explaining one way to work with sales.
2 - Sit In On Sales Calls
You can both learn a lot from one another—from customer needs to insights on what happens when a sale is closed.
“Sales is taking the baton, 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,” Josh explained.
3 - Provide Solid Documentation
Keep your CRM updated, consistent, and accessible.
This may seem like a no-brainer, but it takes constant vigilance to upkeep good documentation across departments. Sharing that documentation with the sales team can lead to vibrant success.
When they know exactly where to go, they’re free to focus on what matters: the customer's journey.
“There is no hard and fast rule for every content marketer out there, and there’s no hard and fast rule for every funnel out there.” — Josh Druck
Why the Customer Experience is Still Paramount
Josh learned a valuable lesson about retaining customers.
The company was losing customers—they were churning at a concerning rate—and it was up to Josh and his team to figure out why.
They started with the obvious: a welcome drip campaign. GENIUS!
Right?
Not quite.
They put together a “boot camp” welcome drip for the product and waited for the responses to roll in and the numbers to rise, but that didn’t happen. They were still churning at a high rate.
What now?
Josh dispersed surveys throughout the campaign. That will surely inspire people to respond, right?
Nope. No one filled out the surveys.
The team and Josh realized no one wanted to click on the link, no matter how short the survey claimed to be. They didn’t want to be taken to another tab.
In the end, Josh decided to put the questions directly into the body of the emails, one of which was the very NPS sounding “What are your biggest problems right now?”
“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. But we found, in the end, the user experience was most important, and getting the information from those individuals was most important.” said Josh, explaining the decision.
“When you reply to an email it feels like you're actually replying to an individual, as opposed to going off into some internet ether,” continued Josh.
People like to feel like they’re having a real conversation, and what they say matters. That simple principle is easy to forget when you’re caught up in numbers and data.
“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,” said Josh, wrapping up his tale.
Recognize that people are still people, no matter what the numbers say.
