Account – Target Marketing

A Case Study in Data-driven B-to-B Customer Acquisition Marketing

While preparing case studies for my new book, I had the fun of interviewing a bunch of very smart B-to-B marketers to learn how they were applying data and analytics to their marketing objectives. One of the most compelling stories came from Doug Sechrist, vice president of demand marketing at Five9

My new book, B2B Data-Driven Marketing: Sources, Uses, Results, is launching in a few weeks. While preparing case studies for book, I had the fun of interviewing a bunch of very smart B-to-B marketers to learn how they were applying data and analytics to their marketing objectives. One of the most compelling stories came from Doug Sechrist, vice president of demand marketing at Five9, a cloud contact-center software company based in San Ramon CA. Here’s a sneak peek of Doug’s success in finding new customers using lookalike modeling.

Five9’s solutions provide everything businesses need to run an inbound and/or outbound center for sales and marketing, customer service or outsourcing, including sophisticated management tools for reporting, recording, workforce management, quality monitoring and CRM integration.

With responsibility for demand generation, Sechrist is mired in database marketing. “Our approach starts with crafting a data strategy and operationalizing it,” says Sechrist. “First, we target the right accounts. We look at past wins, and the attributes of those customers. We examine those who buy and later become long-term clients.”

In short, Five9 is creating an ideal customer profile, and going out in the market place to find similar accounts, a process known as lookalike modeling. In their search for lookalikes, they identified 6,000-7,000 prospects. “We focus our demand generation marketing on those lookalikes,” says Sechrist.

Attributes that tend to be predictive in the lookalike modeling include:

Number of employees in the call center.
Presence of a customer service or outbound sales and marketing team.
Use of an outbound collections department internally.
Use of similar technologies, whether SaaS or on premise.
Past purchase of cloud-based software.
Competitive technologies installed.
Use of “adjacent” or complementary technologies, like a workflow management system.

Five9 also looks at individual personas among their customer base, using a similar process. First they identify the attributes and behaviors of top buyers, using the rich detail that can be found on LinkedIn or other social sites. The personas support the crafting of relevant messages at the right time to sell call center software.

To get a steady stream of lookalike contacts, Sechrist uses Leadspace, which builds models and then scrapes fresh contacts from various websites. Leadspace contacts are scored based on the desired persona attributes, and then ranked and prioritized for use by the sales team.

In an effort to invest marketing resources wisely, Sechrist built a tiered system of lead distribution.

Tier 1, comprising the highest paid and most skilled reps, gets the most relevant matches to the ICP and the highest quality type of leads.
Tier 2 is the lead development team, given the next level down of relevant qualified accounts and qualified leads.
Tier 3 goes to outsourced programs that help to validate interest and provide a foot in the door to pitch the five9 solution. These programs include campaigns with vendors such as By Appointment Only and Simply Direct’s survey service, which puts together a custom database of prospects based on specific titles and account attributes, and sends short email surveys to senior executives therein.

The next evolution of this program aims to leverage additional technologies and process to identity target accounts as they visit the Five9 website or search on relevant terms in Google or other search engines. Once Five9 can identify such accounts they can trigger the appropriate content to be delivered to the right persona at the right time, and subsequently engage with buyers that not only match the ideal customer profile, but are exhibiting buying signals for Five9 solutions.

A version of this article appeared in Biznology, the digital marketing blog.

A Parting Shot: What to Say to Unsubscribers

This morning, I went through my inbox and started unsubscribing from all the publications I’ve accumulated but no longer read. In the process, I considered all the different approaches and thought it might be good fodder for a discussion.

Assuming you’re following all the rules, each of your emails includes a path to unsubscribe. But that’s not the end of the story, is it?

The first unsubscribe link I found was from Cornerstone OnDemand. It was cold, made no effort to engage me, and had no branding. Though I had clicked a link in their email, when I got to the unsubscribe page, I had no idea from what—or whom—I had just unsubscribed (see the first image in the media player).

Target Marketing Magazine took into consideration my short-term memory loss and welcomed me with a branded confirmation page. Short, sweet, and simple, but missing the marketing of their other products or benefits to staying on the list (see the second image in the media player).

Digg was a similar experience. While their logo is present, they listed the emails address of the subscriber, and the process was easy, they included a link to unsubscribe from all of their publications at once—the dreaded nuclear option (see the third image in the media player).

After clicking the unsubscribe button, I was presented with a confirmation of my request (see the fourth image in the media player).

Webriti added something that was missing from both Target Marketing Magazine and Digg—the ability to easily resubscribe. And, even though Target Marketing did provide a link for me to manage my subscriptions, it wasn’t as simple as a single button. Clicking the link would take me to their site, where I might actually have to think about my actions, and since I was in a hurry I didn’t do that (see the fifth image in the media player).

EMS Inc., used Constant Contact—as do many other small companies—and I like how well thought out the process is from this vendor. First, they provided me a clue as to which email address I’ve used, without actually displaying it, and then ask me to confirm. The instructions were clear, and the process provided just a little security in case someone else would try to unsubscribe me (see the sixth image in the media player).

The second step of the process was to present me with a confirmation that included an opportunity to type a reason for unsubscribing. I would have preferred a drop-down list or checkboxes at this point, because I am admittedly lazy. I was on a mission to unsubscribe, and their requirement for me to write an essay is just too burdensome. If they had made this step easier, I would have provided a reason. I don’t know the abandonment rate to be expected at this point, but whatever it is, I’m certain it’s higher than if they had given me options from which to choose (see the seventh image in the media player).

The final step of Constant Contact’s approach is a nice touch: the ability to change my mind and resubscribe. Also, in case my reason for unsubscribing is that I had signed up with a less-preferred contact address, a reminder of what that was (see the eighth image in the media player).

Google+ had a similar approach, but with both Constant Contact and Google, I was bothered by the lack of corporate branding within the dialogue, or enticements to stick around. Google+ did provide information about which list I was leaving and a link to manage, rather than leave altogether (see the tenth image in the media player).

The confirmation screen looked so much like the unsubscribe page that I wasn’t sure it was successful—if it weren’t for the word success in tiny print, I wouldn’t have known it hadn’t gone through (see the eleventh image in the media player).

I clicked the link to manage my settings settings, and that’s when the page got more interesting. Finally, Google engaged me me with a conversation about just what it is I want. Just because the unsubscribe process has to be completed in a single click doesn’t mean you shouldn’t promote yourself in the process (see the twelfth image in the media player).

Like Google, LinkedIn listed my current subscriptions and enabled me to make changes to all or some on a single page. If you have lots of lists, this presents not just the opportunity for your subscribers to leave, but to learn of others they might wish to join (see the thirteenth image in the media player).

Every company—except for MosaicHub—provided a link in the email titled “unsubscribe,” which I appreciated. Our recipients are not stupid, so intentionally mislabeling the unsubscribe link is not going to reduce unsubscribes; it’s going to irritate them in the process.

Focus on showing your subscribers why leaving the list is not beneficial, not alienating them to the point they never come back (see the fourteenth image in the media player).

After I got over being irritated, I found that the page was actually an opportunity to manage the settings, rather than just bail, but it didn’t stop me from leaving. I had already made up my mind, and was irritated to the point where I couldn’t be stopped.

If you want to provide a manage link, it can be a good idea, but not to the point where you can leave out an unsubscribe link (see the fifteenth image in the media player).

Worse still are manage links that require me to log in to an account I’ve forgotten—or never created in the first place—like this one from Plaxo. This had to be the single most frustrating unsubscribe experience I’ve ever encountered. I didn’t remember my log in, so I clicked to recover the password. I went to the site, typed in the password, and it failed. I’ve spent more than an hour trying to unsubscribe from just one list—and I was clearly unsuccessful given this effort was from a link in an email I received today (see the sixteenth image in the media player).

There have been a number of companies sending me emails to manage my subscriptions as a way of actually getting me to create an account on their site. I guess they suppose once I’ve gone to the trouble to create an account, I might come back. I’ve read the privacy policy and terms and conditions pages of some of these—yes, I actually do that—and found that they grant themselves permission to use my address for future marketing when I create an account this account. Talk about a rabbit hole!

So those are things not done well, but in this page from Lynda.com, however, there are many things done right. They’ve reminded me of the address I used, provided an opportunity to reactivate my paid account, made promises of privacy, and allowed me to unsubscribe from select or all lists. Nice job (see the seventeenth image in the media player)!

So who, in my opinion got it completely right? eMedia. Starting in the upper left, they offered me other bulletins, in case my real issue is I’m getting the wrong type of information or on the wrong schedule. They also signed me in and displayed my user name. Next, they listed my current subscription and provided a simple checkbox to to unsubscribe and below that—importantly, on the same page—they asked for information about why I wish to leave the list. In the right column, they tried to convince me to hang around by giving me other options. Since this was a web page on their site, I am contributing positively to their site anaytlcs as I mull over my options. If I clicked one of these links, it would be even better for them. Below that, they comforted me by promising to never sell my name—and if I was interested, I could read their privacy policy ( (see the final) image in the media player).

I’d like to say that my own unsubscribe process is as great as this one, but sadly, it is not—we are the cobbler’s children. How does yours measure up?

Security Is Your Responsibility Too

As agencies, we often receive and have our clients’ credentials for all sorts of sites—email automation applications, FTP servers, hosting accounts, social media accounts and more—but do you provide your client with adequate protection, including how you receive it and how you share it internally? I bet not.

Agencies are rarely able to focus on the solitary task of architecting email campaigns; a good multitouch campaign will have social media, press announcements, landing pages, web pages, microsites, shopping cart pages and more. If that is a typical effort, we must gather, store, access, share, update, change and protect our client user names and passwords for:

Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
Email-automation application
Press-syndication application
FTP
Host provider
cPanel
WordPress administration
Plug-in administration
PayPal
Google Analytics

Some of these are extremely sensitive sites representing great financial exposure to the client. Yet, it’s common for clients to email their log in credentials with not so much as a second thought.

We need to invest in education—internally and externally.

I asked a client today for their PayPal credentials so we could configure their payment gateway and requested the user name by email and the password by text to my phone. I received both the user name and password in the same email and the password was—I kid you not—her first name. I wrote back and asked her to log in immediately, change the password to something VERY hard, and resend via TEXT. I explained the financial risk associated with emailing passwords to sites such as this, which has direct access to the company’s bank accounts.

She texted me the new password a few minutes later. Her first name followed by 1234. What’s worse, it’s the same password she was using at all of the company and her personal social media accounts, the company hosting account and the company’s main email.

I could only sigh, log in and change the password myself; which I did, and then texted it to the business owner.

In a conversation about this with my 30-year-old son (yes, a gamer/hacker), he pointed out to me this is an issue of semantics. My client’s understanding of a difficult password and my understanding differed (substantially). Thus when I requested a difficult password, she believed adding 1234 created sufficient security.

Many hackers make no attempt to guess passwords. They go the easy route of grabbing your password during a security breach. Think back to recent news when Adobe servers were hacked and millions of email addresses and matching passwords were stolen. If your client is (or you are) using that same email address and password for accessing other accounts, then the hackers who attacked Adobe may well now have access to your bank account, your credit cards, and so much more.

When we ask our clients for their credentials and do not enable them to provide this to us securely—and compound the problem by forwarding those unsecure emails to our team—we increase the risk to and potential losses of our clients.

Here are some ideas for helping your clients protect themselves:

Texting Passwords
As I pointed out earlier, sending the user name via email and the password via text is helpful. As we’ve learned from Target, Adobe, Snapchat and others, nothing is failsafe, but though you cannot prevent hacking or interception, you can certainly throw in a few roadblocks to make it more difficult. It’s akin to parking your car after dark under the street light.

Pattern and Unique-to-site Passwords
Many people use the same password simply because it’s so difficult to remember multiple logins. Several years ago, I read a great blog for creating passwords—it’s one we still use today, and one we teach our clients. It provides for a different password for every account and website, and gives an extra layer of security, even if someone does manage to hack one of your accounts or access your credentials from an unsecured server. Shared here:

Choose the number of alphanumeric digits you will use for all passwords. Many sites today have a minimum of eight characters, so let’s go a bit higher: 10.

Grab the first six letters from the account you are accessing. For this example, we’ll use SpiderTrainers.com: spidert.

Now, choose two letters you will always capitalize. I’ll go with the fourth and sixth: spidErT.

Replace one character with the numeral of your choice. Don’t be obvious such as using numeral “1” for “I”—be unique. I’ll replace the second character with the numeral 9 for every password from here forward: s9idErT.

Choose two starter characters from the shift-numerals of your keyboard, for instance, “%^”: %^s9idErT.

Close it with two more characters from the shift-numerals of your keyboard, such as “#@”: %^s9idErT#@.

So, all together we have created a difficult password because it will be different for every account we have, but one that is easy for us to remember after we’ve become accustomed to our own pattern.

In the event you run across rules within the site, such as you must start with a letter, have a plan B password and use that.

Create a Phrase
Instead of the pattern trick, use the phrase trick and choose letters from the beginning of each word. For instance: I think Amazon.com is a wonderful 1st Rate site!, results in: ItA.comiaw1strs!

Long Passwords
Most sites built today require your password to be at least eight characters, but the longer the better. If you use the pattern trick above, and you’re visiting Q.com, have a plan C. Add a word, such as engine, to any site too short to produce the base six characters.

No Names
Don’t use your name, your pet’s name, your child’s name, or your spouse’s name in your password. If you participate in social media, everyone on Facebook knows you have a boxer named Oscar.

Character
Passwords are ideal when you use at least one uppercase letter, lowercase letter, numeral and symbol, as we did in our pattern password above. Some sites or applications limit your use of special characters, but for the most part you can use: ‘ ~ ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ – + = { } [ ] | : ; ” ‘ < > , . ? /.

Lie
Many sites today use two-point verification: a password and a response to a question. If the site is asking you for your mother’s maiden name, lie and use JimmyChoo. Your mother’s maiden name is likely another bit of information pretty easily found on the web. If the site asks for your first pet, say giraffe. Your first car: roller skates.

Store It, If You Must
If you must store passwords, for yourself and your clients, store them in documents that are not labeled as or named “password,” and store them separately from the user names.

Change It Often
Just about the time you get comfortable with your pattern (assuming you use the tip above), change the pattern and notify the client. By text, of course.

4 Things I Learned at The Email Evolution Conference

I just got back from the 2011 Email Evolution Conference in sunny South Beach. The fourth annual event, sponsored by the Direct Marketing Association’s Email Experience Council (EEC), didn’t disappoint. I met many of my “virtual” contacts in person, did some networking, gathered some interesting content for our e-newsletters and acquired leads for future articles. There was a positive vibe about email in general at the event, with more than 500 attendees and exhibitors milling around the Eden Roc Resort. Here are four takeways from the conference:

1. Email needs to be more humanized. In his entertaining keynote address, Gary Vaynerchuk, the online marketing trailblazer, entrepreneur and author of CRUSH IT! Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In On Your Passion and the upcoming book The Thank You Economy, told attendees that for the email industry to evolve, it must offer a more human experience to consumers. “I’m convinced that nobody in this room cares about their customers enough,” Vaynerchuk said. “In the ecosystem we live in now, the currency is trust, appreciation and humanization.”

2. Marketers need to pay close attention to Facebook Messages. This Facebook service, which allows email, text messages and instant messages to be linked together in a “social inbox,” will be offered to most of the more than 500 million Facebook users over the next two months. Since people will undoubtedly be switching over to this service, marketers need to make sure they have a mechanism in place to deal with all the new addresses.

“Persistent consumer switching behavior and increases expected to be driven by Facebook Messages will have an impact in the number of dormant email accounts, requiring marketers to exert more effort in understanding subscriber engagement and reactivating subscribers,” said David Daniels, CEO of The Relevancy Group, in a presentation he led at the event.

Daniels also discussed his newest report, The Social Inbox: The Impact of Facebook Messages on Email Marketing. The report, which surveyed 1,000 consumers about their feelings toward Facebook Messages, found that nearly half of online consumers would switch their personal email address to Facebook or create a new address. These behaviors are trending higher for younger demographics.

“As consumers begin to spend more time on Facebook and in Facebook Messages, they’ll be less attentive to their other email accounts,” added Daniels. “The survey data indicates staggering implications for Gmail and Yahoo. Even if users maintain a separate account for their marketing messages and they move to @Facebook for personal communication only, they’ll be spending less time in their traditional email account — even if they don’t abandon it.”

3. Stick to the basics. While email is going through a rebirth of sorts (see No. 1), some industry best practices must remain the same. Austin Bliss, president and co-founder of FreshAddress, made the case that marketers should make it easy for consumers to sign up to receive their emails.

“Ask for their email addresses everywhere — on every page of your website, during every phone call and on every paper form,” he said. “Also, make sure to include email sign-up capabilities or a link to your website’s sign-up page on your social networking pages. Other best practices that were constant themes at the conference included the following: be vigilant of email law; master the subject line; be careful when using lists for acquisition; and strive for targeted, relevant and engaging emails.

4. Loren McDonald was named the winner of the Stefan Pollard Marketer of the Year Award. After much speculation, McDonald, the vice president of industry relations for Silverpop, was named the winner of the first-ever award from the EEC. The award was presented to McDonald by David Springer, CEO of Resposnsys, at Tuesday morning’s keynote in front of a teary-eyed audience.

This annual award was established in honor of Stefan Pollard, a highly respected and beloved member of the email marketing community who passed away last year. Pollard was considered a selfless mentor and champion of best practices in email marketing. The award honors an individual who demonstrates the qualities and professional standards that Pollard exemplified during his lifetime. Congratulations Loren!