[Research Round-Up] Salesforce Survey Examines the State of Marketing

Source:  Salesforce

(This month's Research Round-Up focuses exclusively on the latest edition of the State of Marketing survey by Salesforce. The new Salesforce survey is a large global survey of B2B and B2C marketers, so it provides a broad perspective on the priorities, challenges, and attitudes of the marketing community.)

Salesforce recently published the findings of its latest State of Marketing survey. The latest survey is the ninth edition of the Salesforce research. It was in the field February 5 - March 12, 2024.

Survey Demographics

• The survey produced 4,850 responses from marketing decision-makers
• Respondents were drawn from 30 countries across North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, and Europe
• Respondents worked in 18 industry verticals
• 50% of the respondents worked in B2C companies, and 50% worked in B2B or B2B2C companies
• 39% of the respondents were VP-level or above
• 50% of the respondents were with mid-market companies (101 - 3,500 employees), 30% were with small and medium-sized companies (1 - 100 employees), and 20% were with large enterprises (over 3,500 employees)

Marketing Performance Levels

Salesforce classified survey respondents based on their self-reported level of marketing performance and used these categories to report some survey findings. The three categories used in the survey report are:

• High performers - Respondents who were completely satisfied with the overall outcomes of their marketing investments.

• Moderate performers - Respondents who were highly satisfied with the overall outcomes of their marketing investments.

• Underperformers - Respondents who were moderately or less satisfied with the overall outcomes of their marketing investments.

Marketers' Top Priorities and Challenges

Salesforce asked survey participants to identify their top priorities and biggest challenges, and the following table shows how respondents answered those questions.

It shouldn't be surprising that survey respondents identified "implementing or leveraging AI" as their top priority and their biggest challenge. Artificial intelligence, particularly generative AI, has been the hottest topic in marketing since OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022.

It's also notable, but not surprising, that the top priorities and the biggest challenges are nearly identical. These survey respondents clearly believe that for marketing to have the greatest possible impact on the business, they must successfully address their biggest challenges.

The State of AI

The survey revealed that the implementation of AI is still in its early stages. Thirty-two percent of all respondents said they have fully implemented AI in their operations.

Salesforce did find that high performers were 2.5x more likely than underperformers to have fully implemented AI. Forty-two percent of high performers said they have fully implemented AI, compared to only 17% of underperformers.

The survey also asked participants how they were using or planned to use AI, and the top five use cases identified by respondents were:

1. Automating customer interactions
2. Generating content
3. Analyzing performance
4. Automating data integration
5. Driving best offers in real time

While marketers are excited about the potential benefits of AI, they also have concerns about embracing the technology, particularly generative AI. The top five concerns about generative AI identified by survey respondents were:

1. Data exposure or leakage
2. Lack of necessary data
3. Lack of strategy or use cases
4. Inaccurate outputs
5. Copyright or intellectual property concerns

The State of  Marketing survey also provides valuable data on several other topics, including:

• The strategies and sources marketers are using to collect customer data
• Where and how much marketers are using personalization in their marketing programs
• How marketers are measuring marketing performance

The Salesforce State of Marketing survey is one of the research studies I pay attention to every year. I wish Salesforce provided a breakdown of responses between B2B vs. B2C companies and by country (or at least region), but even without this more granular reporting, the survey still provides important insights.

4 Questions You Should Ask Before You "Go All In" on Personalization

It's almost an article of faith among marketers that delivering personalized content and experiences to customers and potential buyers will improve business results. The value of personalization has gone largely unquestioned for nearly two decades. Most marketers now view personalization as essential for success, and many companies are on a mission to improve their personalization capabilities.

This strong belief in the power of personalization is easy to understand. There are now dozens of surveys showing that most consumers and business buyers want and expect to receive messages, offers and other content that are personalized based on their wants and needs.

But while support for personalization in marketing is widespread, it isn't unanimous. Earlier this year, Peter Weinberg and Jon Lombardo wrote an article for Marketing Week calling personalization "the worst idea in the marketing industry."

Weinberg and Lombardo base their case against personalization on two points. First, they argue that it's impossible to consistently produce effective personalization because the data used to fuel personalization is often inaccurate. They are particularly critical of third-party data, writing that, "Most third-party data is, to put it politely, garbage."

The second argument against personalization is that it wouldn't work even if marketers had accurate data about every customer and potential buyer. Weinberg and Lombardo write, "Arguably, there has never been a successful piece of personalized creative in human history. The biggest movies, books, songs and ads all speak to universal experiences that resonate with everyone, everywhere."

According to Weinberg and Lombardo, marketers would be better served by investing in performance branding, which the authors define as using "one-size-fits-most" marketing content that "speaks to the common category needs of all potential buyers, all the time."

The Four Critical Questions

In my view, Weinberg and Lombardo go way too far when they assert that personalization is "the worst idea in the marketing industry." The research clearly shows that when personalization is used under the right circumstances and in the right ways, it will boost marketing performance. But as with most business tools, the key to being successful with personalization is understanding when and how to use it.

The first important thing to recognize is that personalization isn't a single, monolithic marketing technique. It's a term that encompasses a wide variety of use cases that differ in significant ways. They have different business objectives and different data requirements, and they can demand different human and technological capabilities. Therefore, you need to assess each potential use of personalization as a discrete marketing project.

When you're evaluating any potential use of personalization, there are four critical questions you need to answer.

"Do we have enough accurate data to successfully implement this use of personalization?"

No proposed use of personalization will be successful if you don't have relevant and accurate data. Unfortunately, personalization efforts often miss their mark because of inadequate or inaccurate data. In a survey of U.S. consumers conducted earlier this year for Redpoint Global, 70% of the respondents reported receiving mistargeted information at least once a month, and 24% said they receive mistargeted information daily.

Each proposed use of personalization will also require specific types of data. For example, offering a research report to potential buyers working in a set of selected industries will require different data from making a product recommendation based on an existing customer's previous purchases.

So, this is really a two-part question:  "Do we have the right types of data to execute this proposed use of personalization, and is the data accurate and reliable?"

"Will this use of personalization provide a meaningful benefit to members of our intended audience?"

Research by Gartner has shown that personalization works best when it provides meaningful, pragmatic value to the intended audience. The most effective uses of personalization will be those that help members of the intended audience solve important problems, or address important issues, or get more value from a product they've already purchased. Personalization can also be effective if it makes it easier for a customer to do business with your company.

The important point here is that when you're evaluating a prospective use of personalization, you need to put yourself in the shoes of your audience and ask, "How will this help me?"

"Is this use of personalization appropriate based on the relationships between our company and members of our intended audience?"

No one likes "creepy" personalization, and today's consumers and business buyers will react strongly to personalization that goes too far. In the Gartner research mentioned above, 38% of the survey respondents said they would stop doing business with a company that sent them creepy personalized messages.

The lesson here is that the level of personalization you use needs to match the real-world status of the relationship between your company and each member of the intended audience. To be effective, personalized marketing must be based on genuine insights about your audience. When you take personalization beyond such insights, it becomes inauthentic and will likely be perceived as superficial, presumptuous or creepy.

"Do we have informed permission from the members of our intended audience for this use of personalization?"

Numerous research studies have shown that marketers are facing a Catch-22 when it comes to the use of personalization. On one hand, the research shows that most consumers and business buyers want and expect personalized messages and experiences. The research also shows, however, that many consumers and business buyers aren't comfortable with how companies are collecting, accumulating and using their personal or business information.

Personalized marketing will not reach its full potential unless marketers use an approach to personalization that addresses these privacy concerns. If the huge volume of personalization research tells us anything, it tells us that consumers and business buyers will welcome and value personalized content and experiences when they are helpful, authentic and based on permission that is willingly and consciously given.

So how can you gain this kind of informed permission? There are three key steps.

Use personalization "programs" - In most cases, personalization should be organized into discrete programs, each of which is designed to provide a specific type of value to a specific type of customer or prospect. This approach will help you to focus on the purpose of personalized marketing from the perspective of your intended audience.

Ask for participation - Invite the members of your intended audience to "subscribe" to personalized content on a program-by program basis, and reassure them that subscribing to one program won't open the floodgates to other marketing communications.

Be Transparent - It's important to be radically transparent in your invitation about the details of the personalization program. So, the invitation should include:

• Why the program will be useful and valuable for the recipient
• What personal information will be used, and how the information will be used
• How the personalized content will be delivered (format)
• How frequently the personalized content will be delivered
• How long the program will last
• A clear statement that the recipient can "unsubscribe" at any time

It's About When and How - Not Whether - To Personalize

The issue for marketers is not whether to personalize marketing content and experiences. The evidence is clear that customers and prospects want and appreciate the increased relevance that personalization can provide. The real challenges are about how to deliver personalization. By making personalization helpful, authentic and based on informed permission, you can reap the maximum benefits of personalized marketing.

Top image courtesy of Jernej Furman via Flickr (CC).

An Extra "Pinch" of Human Effort Will Boost Demand Gen Results

Powerful marketing technologies enable B2B marketers to automate many communications with customers and prospects. But a "pinch" of additional human effort applied at the right time and place can boost demand generation results just like a tablespoon of bourbon elevates the taste of a Thanksgiving pecan pie.

There's no longer any doubt that technology has reshaped the practice of B2B marketing. Over the past two decades, the number of marketing technology tools has grown at an astounding rate, as Scott Brinker's annual marketing technology landscape graphics have clearly documented.

The capabilities of marketing technologies have also dramatically improved. With today's technology tools, B2B marketers can deliver marketing messages in a wide variety of formats, manage messaging in multiple communication channels, and automate many of their interactions with customers and prospects.

But despite the impressive capabilities of today's marketing technology applications, there are several "inflection points" in your relationship with a customer or prospect where hands-on human involvement can have a big impact on results. These inflection points are moments in your relationship with a customer or prospect when there is a ripe opportunity to move the relationship to a higher level.

One of these inflection points is when you are seeking to have the first person-to-person conversation with a potential buyer. Numerous studies have shown that many business buyers prefer to conduct early-stage research and information gathering on their own, and to delay conversations with vendor reps until later in their decision-making process. Overcoming this reluctance is challenging, but a relatively small dose of human involvement will increase your odds of success.

To illustrate how easy it can be to add a dash of human involvement, consider this example.

Below is the text of an email I recently received from a business development representative with a sales technology company. I received this message after I attended one of the company's webinars. I've altered the message to conceal the real names of the company and the BDR.

"David,

Thanks for attending our webinar with Jones & Company, 'The Secret Sauce for a High-Performing Sales Organization.'

Hopefully, you enjoyed the webinar - John and Joe had some great insights on . . .

• The current state and challenges of sales enablement in the age of the modern business buyer
• Why a buyer-centric sales enablement approach is vital for an organization's revenue growth
• How the right software can accelerate sales enablement efforts and help win more deals

Would love to get your feedback from the webinar.

Are you available this Friday for a quick 15 minute chat?

Best,

Roger Smith"

I suspect the company used its marketing automation software to send this email to everyone who attended the webinar.

This isn't a bad follow-up message. It's concise and not overly promotional. But it didn't convince me to reply and schedule a telephone conversation. (Note:  The webinar itself was quite good. I didn't decide not to schedule the call because of a bad webinar experience.)

What Roger failed to do in this message is show me that he know some basic things about me and my business and suggest why a telephone conversation could be worthwhile.

If Roger had spent two or three minutes scanning my LinkedIn profile, he would have been able to get a basic understanding of what I do. My profile also contains links to the 188 articles I've published at LinkedIn. If Roger had spent another five minutes scanning the titles of those articles, he could have obtained a pretty good understanding of my professional focus.

With this information, Roger could have easily added a short paragraph to the email that would have made me more inclined to schedule a telephone conversation. Something like this immediately after the bullet points:

"I see from your LinkedIn profile that you work with B2B companies to develop marketing strategies and marketing content. I also noticed that you've written several articles about improving marketing and sales productivity. I'd like to get your thoughts about the role that sales enablement technology plays in improving sales productivity."

This approach would have demonstrated that Roger had made an effort to get to know me and my business, and the suggested topic of the telephone conversation fits with my work.

Some readers may be thinking:  "There's no way we can have our business development reps spend even this much time on every prospect." That's not what I'm recommending. This approach should be reserved for prospects whose engagement with your company suggests that they may be ready to move the relationship to a higher level.

Such as prospects who have registered for and attended a webinar.

The important point here is that a small investment in hands-on human involvement, when strategically used, can produce a significant impact on demand generation results.

Image courtesy of Thomas Brueckner via Flickr (CC).

The Inevitable Convergence of ABM and Classic Demand Gen Marketing

For the past few years, Forrester Research has been arguing that account-based marketing and "classic" demand generation marketing are converging. In 2019, several Forrester analysts went so far as to predict that the term "ABM" would disappear by 2024.

Forrester's recent ABM research confirms that the convergence of account-based marketing and lead-based demand generation is beginning to occur. In the 2022 State of ABM Survey, Forrester asked survey participants about the current state of the relationship between their ABM and demand generation efforts and about how they wanted the relationship to change in the future.

Eighty-two percent of the survey respondents said their "desired future state" is to have ABM and demand generation efforts that are broadly aligned (sharing people, processes and tools) or fully aligned (combined in a single function). That was up from 54% of respondents in the 2020 edition of the survey.

The evolution of account-based marketing has actually foreshadowed its convergence with classic B2B demand generation. When ITSMA (the Information Technology Services Marketing Association) introduced the concept of account-based marketing in 2003, it defined ABM as, "treating individual accounts as markets in their own right."

As originally conceived, therefore, account-based marketing was not intended to replace a company's demand generation strategy or tactics for most customers or prospects. Instead, ABM was designed to be a "special" approach to marketing that would be used with a small number of the company's most strategic, high-value customers or prospects.

Within a few years, however, many companies began expanding their ABM programs to encompass a broader range of customers and prospects. In its 2016 Account-Based Marketing Benchmarking Survey, ITSMA identified three types or "flavors" of ABM.

• One-to-One ABM - "Marketer works with key account teams to develop and implement highly customized sales and marketing programs for individual accounts; typically with 5-50 strategic accounts."
• One-to-Few ABM - "Marketer works with specific sales teams to create customized campaigns for small groups or clusters of accounts with similar business attributes or imperatives . . . usually 5-15 accounts per cluster."
• One-to-Many ABM - "Marketers work with sales to target priority accounts at scale, using technology to support issue-based campaigns with personalization; typically hundreds or more named accounts."

Collectively, these three types of ABM can cover a wide swath of the target market at most B2B companies, and the reality is, there is little difference between one-to-many ABM and modern, well-designed demand generation programs. They use similar marketing tactics and channels (digital advertising, email marketing, webinars, etc.), and they typically employ similar levels of targeting and personalization.

In the 2021 ABM Benchmark Study by ITSMA and the ABM Leadership Alliance, about half (48%) of the survey respondents said they are using one-to-many ABM. Given this level of usage and the commonalities mentioned above, it shouldn't be surprising that ABM and demand generation are converging.

Technology Convergence Is Well Underway

The convergence is already well underway in the marketing technology space. Several providers of B2B marketing automation software have added features to make their solutions more capable of supporting account-based marketing programs, while some of the leading providers of ABM software have added capabilities (such as native email) that support classic demand generation programs.

These developments are likely to accelerate the convergence of ABM and demand generation by making it possible for marketers to manage the combined function within a single technology platform.

What Convergence Doesn't Change

The convergence of account-based marketing and classic demand generation marketing will have a significant impact on how B2B companies organize and manage their demand generation operations. But it's also important to recognize that this convergence will not change the basic recipe for effective demand generation.

Account-based marketing is a powerful approach to demand generation because it is based on two fundamental principles of B2B commerce. First, many B2B buying decisions are made by buying groups, not by individuals, and ABM recognizes this fact.

Second, not all customers or potential customers are equally valuable, and the three varieties of ABM enable B2B companies to align their marketing and sales efforts - and the related investments - with the estimated value of each customer or prospect. Marketing and sales professionals can use highly effective, but resource-intensive, one-to-one ABM programs with a small number of their most valuable customers and prospects, while using lower-cost one-to-many ABM tactics for those customers and prospects that are desirable, but have lower potential value.

Image courtesy of XoMEoX via Flickr (CC).

[Book Review] A Strategic Guide to Using Artificial Intelligence in Marketing

Source:  Stanford University Press

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in marketing has been discussed by an army of industry pundits, and recent research suggests that it may be nearing mainstream adoption. For example, in the seventh edition of Salesforce's State of Marketing survey (conducted May - June 2021), 60% of the respondents said they have a "fully developed" AI strategy, up from 57% in the 2020 edition of the survey.

It's easy to find e-books, white papers, and articles discussing the role of AI in marketing, and there are dozens of books dealing with the technical aspects of artificial intelligence and the social and cultural ramifications of AI.

There are far fewer full-length books that provide a detailed treatment of how AI can be used to support marketing decisions and enable more productive marketing programs. For that reason, I looked forward to reading The AI Marketing Canvas:  A Five-Stage Road Map to Implementing Artificial Intelligence in Marketing (Stanford University Press, 2021).

This book was written by Raj Venkatesan, a professor of business administration at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, and Jim Lecinski, a clinical associate professor of marketing at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

What the Book Covers

The AI Marketing Canvas includes four major sections.

Part 1 (Chapters 1-3) - This section lays out the authors' point of view on the importance of artificial intelligence in marketing and provides an overview of the book's content. Venkatesan and Lecinski state their position on AI in explicit terms at the beginning of Chapter 2. They write:

"In this new economy . . . we believe there is one way and one way only to win, and that is with AI and machine learning - developed against a rock-solid marketing strategy . . . These strategies also need to be driven by marketing leaders whose obsession is to find ways to use AI and machine learning to personalize the customer relationship at every juncture." (Emphasis in original)

Part 2 (Chapters 4-6) - Chapter 4 discusses the emergence and power of "network" business models (e.g. Amazon, Google) that are enabled by technology platforms. In Chapter 5, the authors describe their four-stage customer relationship model (acquisition - retention - growth - advocacy), and they review the three "waves" of marketing (mass-segmented marketing, data-driven marketing and one-to-one personalized marketing). Chapter 6 explains some of the basic concepts and uses of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Part 3 (Chapters 7-13) - This part contains the core of the book's content. In Chapter 7, the authors introduce the AI marketing canvas, and then they devote a chapter chapter to a discussion of each "stage" of the canvas framework.

The AI marketing canvas is primarily a matrix created by the four customer relationship components ("moments") and a five-stage AI maturity model that includes foundation, experimentation, expansion, transformation and monetization. According to the authors, companies that achieve a high level of success with AI in marketing will move through most of these five stages of AI maturity.

Part 4 (Chapters 14-16) - The final section of The AI Marketing Canvas provides guidance for implementing the concepts discussed in the previous portions of the book. Venkatesan and Lecinski adopt John Kotter's change management model from his 1996 book Leading Change, and they argue that changes will be needed across four organizational dimensions - people, process, culture and profit - to maximize the impact of AI in marketing.

The authors conclude their book with an unambiguous "call to action" for marketers and marketing leaders. They write:  "To be a successful marketer in the coming years, you must decide now whether you will engage and become an expert in AI marketing, or sit on the sidelines and watch the 'AI bus' pass you by - or worse, run you over."

My Take

The AI Marketing Canvas is an ambitious book that, for me, doesn't quite live up to its promise. The authors expressly state that the mission of their book is to provide ". . . a road map you can use to build an effective marketing plan - one that accounts for all that is required to effectively apply AI and machine learning to your marketing - so you can win"

Rather than a detailed "road map," the book is more like an impressionist painting than a close-up photograph. It addresses most of the important issues, but it doesn't contain enough detail to be called a "how-to" manual.

That being said, The AI Marketing Canvas provides some valuable information for marketers who are novices when it comes to artificial intelligence. For example, Chapter 6 is a good introduction to AI and machine learning, but marketers will need to learn a little more to have a good working knowledge of AI and ML.

Another particularly valuable part of the book is Chapter 8, which discusses the digital infrastructure required to collect and process the customer-related data that is necessary to feed AI applications. Providers of AI-enabled software applications typically emphasize the powerful capabilities of their solutions, but they don't talk as much about the volume or quality of data that's required for those capabilities to perform as intended.

Put simply, the output produced by an AI application will only be as good or reliable as the quality of the data it uses to generate that output. In Chapter 8 of the book, the authors emphasize that building a robust data infrastructure is the first essential step in implementing AI in marketing, and that this process doesn't end. Starbucks is one of the companies featured in The AI Marketing Canvas, and the authors note that Starbucks has been developing its data collection and AI capabilities for over ten years.

Artificial intelligence is already an integral part of marketing at many larger enterprises, and the use of AI in marketing is destined to become more widespread in the near future. The AI Marketing Canvas is a worthwhile resource for marketers who are just starting to learn about artificial intelligence. If you already have a basic understanding of how AI works and how it can be used in marketing, other resources will be more useful.

[Research Round-Up] B2B Buyer Preferences, Online B2B Buying and Personalization

(One of my objectives for the monthly Research Round-Up post is to share research reports and other research-related materials that may be under the radar screens of many B2B marketers. Our February Research Round-Up fits that description nicely. It features a look at B2B buyer preferences by organizational consulting firm Korn Ferry, an examination of online B2B buying by Wunderman Thompson Commerce, and recent research from McKinsey about personalization.)

2021 Buyer Preferences Study:  Reconnecting with buyers by Korn Ferry

Source:  Korn Ferry

This research is focused primarily on B2B selling, but the results include several data points that are valuable for B2B marketers. Korn Ferry conducted a similar study in 2018, and the research report includes some findings from the 2018 study. So it's possible to see how some buyer attitudes and practices have changed over that three-year period.

The 2021 study consisted of a survey of 261 business buyers who work for companies having annual revenue of at least $250 million. Eighty percent of the survey respondents were director-level or above. All of the respondents were directly responsible for making purchases of $10,000 or more, and 59% had purchase authority of $200,000 or more.

Respondents were located in North America (43%), EMEA (35%) and APAC (27%). Respondents were from a variety of industries, with manufacturing (43%) and technology (32%) being the largest two cohorts.

The study examined how the pandemic changed the B2B buying process, when buyers prefer to engage with sales reps and what resources buyers use to address business problems and learn about possible solutions.

The research results contain several insights that are relevant for B2B marketers. For example:

• On average, 6.2 decision makers are involved in buying decisions.
• 57% of the survey respondents said they prefer to identify and clarify their needs and identify possible solutions before they engage with sales reps.
• The survey asked participates what resources they turn to for information and insights about how to address business problems and challenges. The top three resources identified by respondents were past experience with vendor (44%), subject matter experts from industry or third parties (41%) and industry/professional online communities/social networks (36%). Only 28% of the respondents cited vendor websites, which was down from 35% in Korn Ferry's 2018 study.

Overall, this study confirms and reinforces the argument that marketing programs and marketing content are playing a vital role in influencing B2B buying decisions.

The B2B Future Shopper Report 2021 by Wunderman Thompson Commerce

Source:  Wunderman Thompson

This is the second edition of Wunderman Thompson Commerce's B2B Future Shopper research. The first edition of the study - which I discussed in this post - was published in 2020.

The 2021 report was based on a survey of 604 B2B buyers located in the United States (202 respondents), the UK (201 respondents), and China (201 respondents). Survey respondents included purchase managers, procurement managers, agents and C-level executives. All respondents were involved in making purchase decisions for their company.

The Wunderman survey addressed a wide range of topics related to online B2B buying. Here are just a few of the "headline" findings.

• The survey respondents reported making 49% of their purchases online, up from 46% in the 2020 study.
• 93% of the respondents said they expect to keep at least some of the purchasing behaviors adopted because of the pandemic after the pandemic ends.
• 89% of respondents from the US and the UK said buying online is more complicated than buying offline.
• 90% of the respondents said they expect a similar experience when buying on a B2B site as they do on a B2C site, and 72% said they want a better mobile experience from B2B suppliers. 

The shift to online B2B buying has been underway now for several years, and it's growth has been well documented. The Wunderman research provides valuable insights for companies that are already offering online buying as well as those that are just getting started.

The value of getting personalization right - or wrong - is multiplying by Nidhi Arora, Wei Wei Liu, Kelsey Robinson, Eli Stein, Daniel Ensslen, Lars Fiedler and Gustavo Schuler (McKinsey & Company).

Source:  McKinsey & Company

This resource is not a formal research report, but rather an article discussing several of the findings from McKinsey's "Next in Personalization 2021" survey. Some of the data points discussed in the article are also drawn from other recent McKinsey research.

The "Next in Personalization 2021" survey involved 1,013 US consumers that were sampled and weighted to match the US general population (18+ years). The survey was conducted September 7-8, 2021.

The McKinsey research echoes the findings of numerous other studies that have examined the importance and value of personalization. For example, McKinsey found that 71% of consumers now expect personalization, and 76% get frustrated when they don't find it.

In addition, 76% of the surveyed consumers said receiving personalized communications made them more likely to consider purchasing from a brand, and 78% said personalized content made them more likely to repurchase.

One note of caution. Several of the questions in the McKinsey survey were in the form of, "Please indicate how much you agree or disagree with [a statement]." Most of the percentage amounts used in the article refer to respondents who selected somewhat agree, agree, and strongly agree.

By including respondents who selected somewhat agree, the percentage amounts used in the article may not provide an accurate picture of how strongly consumers feel about personalization.

[Book Review] Welcome to the "Fifth Paradigm" of Marketing

Source:  Amazon

Yesterday, a Google search using the term future of marketing returned over 500,000 results, and my search was limited to the past year. Clearly, there are an abundance of views about how marketing will evolve over the next several years.

A quick scan of the first several pages of search results revealed that many of the articles and other materials focused on a specific aspect of marketing or a particular marketing technique. It's more difficult to find content that takes a longer-term, big-picture view of the future of marketing. A new book by Raja Rajamannar, the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at MasterCard, fills the gap.

In Quantum Marketing:  Mastering the New Marketing Mindset for Tomorrow's Consumers (HarperCollins Leadership, 2021) , Rajamannar lays out his vision for how marketing needs to evolve in the face of a deluge of emerging technologies that will change how people obtain information, communicate and live their daily lives. 

Technological developments have already driven huge changes in how marketing is practiced, but Rajamannar argues that the changes we have seen so far amount to only the tip of a massive iceberg. He writes, "The last five years have seen more change in marketing than the previous fifty. And the next five years will outpace all of them put together."

Rajamannar contends that we are standing at the precipice of the fifth paradigm of marketing, which he calls "Quantum Marketing." In this impending new era, the marketing function will have the potential to ". . . leapfrog toward astonishing levels of consumer insights, real-time interactions, and hyper-targeted, hyper-relevant consumer engagement."

But Rajamannar also argues that marketing needs a fundamental reset to take full advantage of the opportunities the era of Quantum Marketing will offer.

He notes that marketing is currently in a crisis, with a growing number of companies " . . . fragmenting the 4 Ps of marketing . . . and distributing them across multiple areas outside of marketing." He also refers to research showing that most CEOs say they have little confidence in their marketing team, and he suggests that many CEOs don't see value in marketing.

The Landscape of Quantum Marketing

Rajamannar devotes most of the book to a description of his vision of what marketing can look like in the era of Quantum Marketing. He addresses a wide range of topics, including:

• The continuing - and explosive - proliferation of customer data (Chapter 4)
• Advances in the capabilities of artificial intelligence and the rapid growth of marketing-related AI use cases (Chapter 5)
• The emergence of a slew of new technologies that will enable new ways to connect with customers (Chapter 6)
• The impact of blockchains on the marketing/advertising ecosystem (Chapter 7)
• The need for a new approach to customer loyalty (Chapter 10)
• The declining impact of traditional advertising (Chapter 11)

Importantly, Rajamannar also includes a discussion of marketing ethics, and he ends the book with a detailed description of the characteristics and skills that CMOs will need in order to succeed in the era of Quantum Marketing.

A Worthwhile Read

Quantum Marketing provides a timely and important perspective on where marketing stands today and how it needs to evolve to remain (or become) a driver of growth and competitive advantage in a rapidly-changing world.

Most of the content that marketers see and/or hear on a day-to-day basis is focused on short-term strategies and tactics. While this type of content is useful, it's important for marketers to occasionally take a step back and think about longer-term issues. Quantum Marketing provides that longer-term perspective.

I do question whether Rajamannar gives sufficient weight to the impact that privacy concerns could have on how marketing evolves over the next several years. His vision of marketing's future depends on companies having relatively unfettered access to consumer-related data. In fact, he suggests that new and emerging "connected" devices such as smart speakers, autos, home appliances and wearables will add a tsunami of data to the vast amount that already exists.

The uncertainty is:  How much of this data will be available to companies for marketing purposes? Google's decision to block third-party cookies in its Chrome browser has been widely publicized and discussed, and so has Apple's move to require user permission before allowing third-party cookies in its iOS 14.5 update released last April. According to a December report by AppsFlyer, only 46% of global iPhone users (37% of U.S. users) have opted-in to tracking.

If governments step in with new data privacy regulations, or if other private companies follow the lead of Google and Apple, some of the futuristic marketing techniques described in Quantum Marketing are less likely to be widely implemented.

Even with this caveat, however, Quantum Marketing is an important book and a worthwhile read for marketers.

Marketing Week Article Takes Aim At Account-Based Marketing

Marketing Week published an article earlier this month that is sure to provoke a strong response from proponents of account-based marketing. In "Account-based madness:  The new craze in B2B," authors Jon Lombardo and Peter Weinberg fire a broadside at ABM, calling it an "unholy monstrosity."

The authors reluctantly acknowledge that ABM is "a pretty decent idea" if it's done correctly. But they also contend that ". . . almost no one in B2B is doing ABM right."

Lombardo and Weinberg define ABM as ". . . a strategy in which the marketing department delivers personalised communications to best-fit accounts, which are prioritised based on data from the sales team." The authors note that this "seems to be" the most common definition of ABM, and they refer to it as "bad ABM."

Lombardo and Weinberg write that, ". . . bad ABM is actually three bad ideas - personalisation, hypertargeting, and loyalty marketing - mashed into one unholy monstrosity."

Here's how the authors describe the three "bad ideas" of "bad ABM."

Personalization - According to Lombardo and Weinberg, bad ABM assumes that every account has unique needs and that content personalized for each account will drive better marketing performance. The authors contend that, ". . . personalised creative does not outperform generalised creative, despite many unsubstantiated claims to the contrary." And they argue that added cost and complexity will cancel out any benefits of personalization.

Hypertargeting - Lombardo and Weinberg say that bad ABM also assumes that targeting the right customers is more profitable than targeting all potential customers. But they argue that, ". . . the best available evidence suggests that B2B brands grow by reaching every buyer in the category."

Loyalty Marketing - The third "bad idea" is that bad ABM assumes that marketing will produce more growth by targeting a few large accounts rather than a larger group of accounts of all sizes. The authors contend that this assumption is dead wrong.

Lombardo and Weinberg offer three suggestions for transforming "bad ABM" into "good ABM."

Target the Category - Good ABM targets all the potential buyers in the relevant category, not just a narrow subset of buyers.

Avoid Over-Personalization - Good ABM features messages and stories that cover the most common buying situations applicable to all potential category buyers.

Avoid Hypertargeting - Good ABM seeks to reach both large and small buyers.

The authors summarize their position in unequivocal terms:  ". . . broadly targeting a massive set of customers with the same message isn't a bad marketing strategy. It's the most effective marketing strategy. It's how almost every brand in human history has been built. . . It's an old strategy, yes, but it's old for a reason - it works."

What's Wrong With This Picture?

It would be easy to dismiss this article as expressing views on account-based marketing that are held by only a very small minority of B2B marketers. I disagree with most of the points made in the article, but I also think it's worthwhile to place the authors' views in context.

Jon Lombardo and Peter Weinberg are both "Global Leads" at The B2B Institute, a think tank funded by LinkedIn. For the past several years, The B2B Institute has been a strong proponent of brand marketing by B2B companies, and it has published several content resources by brand marketing advocates such as Les Binet and Peter Field (e.g. The 5 Principles Of Growth In B2B Marketing). 

The B2B Institute has also published several papers written by researchers at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science. (Note:  Byron Sharp, the author of How Brands Grow, is probably the most widely-known marketing thought leader working at Ehrenberg-Bass.) The Ehrenberg-Bass approach to marketing emphasizes the importance of brand building and more specifically, the importance of concepts such as mental availability, distinctiveness, and brand salience.

I find much of the content published by The B2B Institute to be persuasive and compelling, and I agree that most B2B companies are probably under-investing in long-term, broad-reach brand marketing and over-investing in short-term, highly-targeted demand generation marketing.

I suspect that Lombardo and Weinberg were motivated by this belief in writing the article. It's also not surprising that the marketing principles discussed in the Marketing Week article line up closely with the perspectives of Binet, Field and Ehrenberg-Bass. But the attack on "bad ABM" is ultimately misguided, and what the authors call "good ABM" really isn't ABM at all.

When ABM is used under the right circumstances and in the right ways, it can be a vital part of a B2B company's marketing efforts. The effectiveness of account-based marketing has been clearly demonstrated. B2B marketers just need to remember that ABM isn't the only type of marketing they need to be using. That's the point Lombardo and Weinberg should have emphasized.

Image courtesy of emiliokuffer via Flickr (CC).

How to Make Personalization Work in a Privacy-Conscious World

In my last post, I wrote that it's time for marketers to rethink their approach to personalization. The value of personalized marketing has been widely recognized for nearly two decades, and most marketing pundits are recommending that marketers expand their use of personalization. They contend that marketers should make personalization more specific and use it more frequently, in more channels, and for more types of communications and experiences.

The problem with this "more personalization" approach is that it fails to account for widespread and growing privacy concerns among both consumers and business buyers. Personalized marketing will not reach its full potential unless marketers use an approach that addresses these privacy concerns. Simply increasing the use of personalization will be ineffective at best, and may do more harm than good.

Personalization has been the subject of numerous research studies over the past few years, and these studies provide a good picture of what is required for personalized marketing to produce maximum results. There are three major components of an effective personalization strategy.

Make Personalization Useful

The first requirement for effective personalized marketing is that it must deliver meaningful and pragmatic value to the recipient. A 2018 study by Gartner/CEB documents the business value of personalization that is perceived by customers and prospects to be helpful. I've previously discussed this research, so I won't repeat that material here. For a more detailed description of the Gartner/CEB study see this post.

Make Personalization "Relationship-Appropriate"

The second component of an effective personalization strategy is to use a level of personalization that is appropriate for each customer or prospect. By appropriate, I mean that the level of personalization should match the real-world status of the relationship. A message or offer sent to a long-time customer can and should be more personalized than a first outreach to a new prospect.

To be effective, personalized marketing must be based on genuine insights about your customers and prospects. When you take personalization beyond such insights, it becomes inauthentic and will tend to be perceived as presumptuous. Corporate Visions recently conducted a field trial involving this principle, and you can read more about that research in this post.

Get Meaningful Permission for Personalization

Much of the concern about data privacy and personalization revolves around the issues of transparency and control. Many consumers and business buyers aren't confident they know what personal data companies are collecting about them or how that data is used. And many feel they don't have any meaningful control over those data practices.

Several recent research studies have shown how important transparency and control are for customers and prospects. For example, in a 2019 survey of 3,000 people in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., The Harris Poll asked participants about the importance of several data privacy practices. The following table shows the percentage of survey respondents who rated four transparency and control practices as very important or absolutely essential:

These research findings point the way to the third important component of an effective personalization strategy. In a world where privacy concerns are heightened, permission is critical to successful personalized marketing. If all the research about personalization tells us anything, it tells us that most consumers and business buyers will welcome and value personalized content when it is helpful, authentic, and based on permission that is willingly and consciously given.

So, how can marketers gain this kind of permission? There are three key steps.

Use Personalization "Programs" - In most cases, personalization efforts should be organized into discrete programs, each of which is designed to provide a specific type of value to a specific type of customer or prospect. This approach leads marketers to focus on the purpose of personalized marketing from the recipient's perspective.

Invite Participation - Invite your customers and/or prospects to "subscribe" to personalized content on a program-by-program basis, and reassure them that subscribing to one program won't open the floodgates to other marketing communications.

Be Transparent - It's important to be "radically" transparent in your invitation about the details of the personalization program. The main objective of the invitation is to persuade customers or prospects to participate in the program. So it should include:

• Why the program will be useful and valuable for the recipient
• What personal information will be used, and how the information will be used
• How the personalized content will be delivered (format)
• How frequently the personalized content will be delivered
• The duration of the program
• A clear statement that the recipient has the option to "unsubscribe" at any time

It's About How - Not Whether - to Personalize 

The issue for marketers is not whether to personalize marketing content and customer experiences. The evidence is clear that customers and prospects want and appreciate the increased relevance that personalization can provide. The real issue is how to deliver personalization in a way that respects privacy. By making personalization helpful, authentic, and permission-based, marketers will reap the maximum benefits of personalized marketing.

Top image courtesy of Josh Hallett via Flickr CC.

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Why It's Time to Rethink Personalization

The value of personalization in marketing has been largely unquestioned for nearly two decades. Today, most marketers view personalization as essential for success, and many companies have made personalization a top priority. But the marketing environment is changing, and that means it's time for marketers to rethink their personalization strategy.

In a report published last November, the research firm Gartner predicted that by 2021, one-third of marketers will reduce spending on personalization, and by 2025, 80% of marketers who have invested in personalization will abandon their efforts due to lack of ROI, the perils of data management, or both. These predictions were both surprising and controversial because they run counter to most of the current conventional wisdom about personalization.

While I doubt that eight out of ten marketers will completely abandon personalization over the next five years, it is clear that marketers are already facing a personalization conundrum. On one hand, numerous studies conducted over the past several years have reported that consumers and business buyers want - and are willing to provide personal information in order to receive - personalized offers, messages, and experiences.

But a growing number of studies also show that consumers and business buyers don't always welcome personalized marketing and will react strongly when they perceive that personalization goes too far. In one recent study, for example, 38% of survey respondents said they would stop doing business with a company that sent them "creepy" personalized messages.

Most marketing pundits and many marketing leaders argue that the key to increasing the effectiveness of personalized marketing is more personalization. They contend that marketers should collect and use more data about customers and prospects, make personalization more specific, and use it more frequently, in more channels, and for more types of interactions. The popularity of this view explains why hyper-personalization and personalization at scale have recently attained buzzword status.

The "more personalization" argument is based on the idea that increased personalization will produce more relevant messages and experiences, and that the increased relevance will make those messages and experiences more compelling. The fundamental flaw of this approach is that it fails to account for a significant shift in public attitudes toward personalization that's occurred over the past few years.

The Shadow of Cambridge Analytica

Since the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal became public knowledge a few years ago, we have been bombarded with media coverage about how companies collect and use our personal information. Facebook's data privacy policies and practices have been widely, strongly, and repeatedly criticized, but other large tech firms such as Alphabet/Google have also been the subject of multiple media stories and Congressional hearings.

All of this has made the public more acutely aware of how much personal data companies are collecting and how they are using that data to target and personalize advertisements and other marketing communications.

Note:  The data practices of large technology companies have also been addressed by several highly-respected scholars. If you'd like to see an example of these discussions, get a copy of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff. Dr. Zuboff is the Charles Edward Wilson Professor emerita at the Harvard Business School. Her book is thorough and sobering - if somewhat strident - but at over 700 pages, it is not a quick or easy read.

The heightened public awareness is impacting personalization in two ways. First, as members of the public have become more knowledgeable about how companies are using personalization in marketing, they have become desensitized to its effects. They no longer see personalized messages or content as extraordinary. So, many of the more widely-used personalization tactics and methods make less of an impact today than they did in the past. As the old saying goes, "Familiarity breeds contempt."

More importantly, as the public has learned more about how companies are collecting and using personal information, they have also become more disturbed about those practices. Today, when someone receives a personalized message, he or she is likely to think first about what enabled the personalization. What does this company know about me? How did the company obtain that information?

The conundrum facing marketers is clear. Most consumers and business buyers say they want and value personalized offers, messages, and experiences. At the same time, however, both consumers and business buyers are becoming more concerned about privacy, and they are increasingly distrustful about how companies are obtaining and using their personal information.

Under these circumstances, the "more personalization" strategy may do more harm that good. So, what's the alternative? I'll discuss that in my next post.

Image courtesy of Phil Wolff via Flickr CC.

Four Keys to Strong Customer Relationships

A recent report by Accenture Interactive provides several interesting insights on both the fragility of B2B seller-buyer relationships and what B2B companies need to do to strengthen long-term customer relationships. Service is the new sales was based on interviews with 748 business buyers and 1,499 B2B sellers across 10 countries and 16 industries.

All of the study respondents were directly involved in (or had oversight of) their company's buying or selling strategy or processes. About 75% of the respondents were manager-level or above, and about 25% were C-level. All the companies represented in the research had annual revenues of at least $25 million.

Accenture's report opens with some rather disconcerting statistics. The research found that 44% of B2B buyers had switched sellers in the 12 months preceding the study. The percentage was even higher among buyers who made weekly B2B purchases. Sixty-two percent of those study respondents said they had switched sellers in the previous 12 months. Another 36% of these frequent buyers said they plan to switch sellers in the coming 12 months.

When Accenture asked buyers why they had switched (or plan to switch), the three top reasons - each identified by 25% of the study respondents - were:

• Uncompetitive pricing
• Long lead times for delivery/fulfillment
• Missed delivery dates

This finding indicates that business buyers are a pragmatic group, and it suggests that, before anything else, B2B sellers need to be sure they are getting the basics right.

On a more positive note, half of the buyers interviewed by Accenture said they had increased their average number of items per purchase and grown average purchase values with those sellers who met their needs and helped them succeed.

The Accenture research also sought to identify important attributes and behaviors of B2B "leaders," as compared with "laggards." The report does not provide a precise definition of "leaders" and "laggards," but it does describe how Accenture made the distinction:

"To discern the leaders from the laggards, we weighted responses to 12 questions from the sellers' survey across three key pillars of B2B transformation:  organizational strategy, activities, and infrastructure. To give a robust and accurate picture of the global state of buyer-seller relationships, greatest weighting was given to questions reflecting the objective and measurable elements of B2B sales and service."

With this "definition" in mind, here are some of the major differences between leaders and laggards that the Accenture report highlights.

Personalization - Leaders were twice as likely as laggards to track buyer behavior and more likely to make personalized offers based on "the sum of all behaviors." The Accenture study found that leaders consistently offered greater personalization at all stages of the customer journey.

Digital and Human Interactions - Laggards tended to prioritize digital sales channels over channels with a human touch. Leaders, on the other hand, emphasized interaction channels that provide a dialogue with buyers. This includes digital channels such as chatbots and traditional sales reps and call centers.

Organizational Commitment - Leaders were more likely than laggards to view customer experience as an ongoing work-in-progress rather than as a one-time effort. Seventy percent of leaders said that providing good service and experiences had been a top or high priority in their company for at least three years.

Functional Integration - Forty-eight percent of leaders said they had fully integrated marketing functions across channels, compared to only 19% of laggards. Leaders were also more likely than laggards to have partially or fully integrated their sales and marketing teams.

The Accenture report also highlighted the benefits of being in the leader category. Ninety-seven percent of the leader respondents said they had gained market share, 96% reported higher profitability, and 90% said they had won a greater share of their customers' wallets.

This research also confirmed the importance of blending digital and human-to-human interactions to build and sustain strong customer relationships.

Image Source:  Accenture Interactive

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Where Marketers are Missing the Mark with Customers

The New York chapter of the American Marketing Association has just published a research report that should be required reading for marketers. The Techlash is Here report addresses several aspects of marketing in the world's two largest economies - the United States and China. While the findings about China are interesting, this post will focus on the U.S. results.

The U.S. part of the research consisted of two quantitative surveys and several interviews with marketing leaders. One survey included 502 marketing executives - about 200 from agencies and approximately 300 from brand owners. The second survey polled 508 U.S. consumers. The consumer sample was matched to population data through weighting.

This research revealed two significant disconnects between U.S. consumers and U.S. marketers, one pertaining to social media, and one relating to the appetite for, and concerns about, new marketing technologies and practices.

The Social Media Marketing Bubble

According to Investopedia, a bubble is "created by a surge in asset prices unwarranted by the fundamentals of the asset and driven by exuberant market behavior." The AMA New York surveys suggest that a different kind of bubble may exist in the social media marketing space.

In the consumer survey, respondents said they expect their use of social media to decline over the next three years. The net change (the proportion of respondents expecting to spend more time on social media minus the proportion who expect to spend less time) was -6%. The survey also found that Facebook use is likely to show no net growth over the next three years, while the use of Twitter, Snapchat, and LinkedIn will decline over that period.

U.S. marketers, on the other hand, plan to substantially increase spending on social media advertising over the next three years. In the marketer survey, social media generated the strongest indication of increased spending (net 68%), followed by web display ads (net 51%) and email (net 47%).

Other research has found a similar exuberance for social media among marketers. In the August 2019 edition of The CMO Survey, respondents said they expect spending on social media to increase from 11.9% of their current marketing budget to 22.5% of the budget in five years.

The Techlash is Here report describes the emerging social media marketing bubble (my term, not theirs) as follows:

"American marketers are overindexing on many social media now and plan to increase spending even as consumer use flatlines or falls off. Currently, the share of ad spend devoted to social media in America . . . is 150% of the proportion of consumer media time they receive."

The Technology Disconnect

The AMA New York surveys also investigated the attitudes of U.S. marketers and consumers about nine specific marketing/advertising technologies and techniques. In this research, between two-fifths and three-fifths of U.S. marketers said they plan to increase their use of every one of those nine innovations, as the following table shows:

A striking disconnect between marketers and consumers becomes apparent when we look at the results of the consumer survey. As the table below shows, none of the nine technologies or techniques is viewed favorably by a majority of U.S. consumers. Four of the nine did receive a favorable plurality by survey respondents, but five of the nine technologies and techniques are viewed unfavorably by a plurality of U.S. consumers.

Once again, the survey report describes the current situation in compelling terms:

"American marketers overrate the perceived positives of marketing innovations:  most expect that U.S. consumers will consistently welcome them . . . On average, nearly four out of five (78%) expect American consumers will agree with each benefit claim we tested. The proportion of marketers who say consumers will agree substantially exceeds that of consumers who do on every one of them - by an average of 27 points."

The Takeaway

The AMA New York research should serve as a wake-up call for marketers. It highlights the risks inherent in getting caught up in the hype that inevitably surrounds new marketing channels, techniques, and technologies. While this research dealt with important disconnects between marketers and consumers, many of the study findings will apply to B2B marketers and business buyers.

Marketers' exuberance for new technologies and techniques is often attributed to the fear-of-missing-out or the shiny object syndrome. This view is overly harsh, but it does contain some truth. FOMO can actually be a positive thing when it motivates us to experiment and test new tactics and tools. But if it isn't tightly controlled, FOMO can also result in bad - or at least ineffective - marketing investments.

The findings of the AMA New York research regarding personalization are particularly noteworthy. As I have previously written, marketers are facing a true conundrum regarding when and how much personalization should be used. In fact, I would argue that the personalization-privacy paradox will be an "elephant-in-the-room" issue for marketers in 2020. I'll have more to say about that in a future post.

Top image courtesy of Artura Pardavila III via Flickr CC.

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When "Prove You Know Me" Personalization is Essential

A few months ago, I published a post arguing that marketers who want to improve the effectiveness of personalized marketing should focus primarily on making personalization pragmatically useful to recipients. This argument was based on the results of several research studies, including a 2018 survey by Gartner/CEB that polled more than 2,500 consumers in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.

One objective of this study was to identify what types of personalized messages are most effective. Survey participants were asked several questions about the content of personalized messages they had recently received. From the participants' responses, Gartner/CEB identified two types of personalization based on what consumers perceived was the primary intent of the message:

• "Prove You Know Me" Personalization - Consumers perceived that these types of messages were primarily intended to demonstrate that the company "knows" the recipient. So, for example, they may have explicitly mentioned a previous purchase made by the recipient, or they might have mentioned that the recipient had recently viewed a particular product.
• "Help Me" Personalization - Consumers perceived that these types of messages were primarily intended to help the recipient in some way. For example, they may have made it easier for the recipient to complete a purchase, or helped the recipient understand how to better use a product.

To measure the comparative effectiveness of these types of persosnalization, Gartner/CEB created a "Commercial Benefit Index" that considered four consumer intent and behavior factors - brand intent, purchase, repurchase, and increase in shopping cart size. When Gartner/CEB analyzed the impact produced by each type of personalization, they found that "Help Me" personalization produced a 16% increase in the CBI, while "Prove You Know Me" personalization resulted in a 4% decline in the CBI.

Where "Prove You Know Me" Personalization Really Helps

As any good lawyer will tell you, "There's an exception to every rule." The evidence is clear that "helpfulness" is the most powerful driver of effective personalization. But there are some points in your relationship with a customer or prospect where demonstrating that you "know" him or her can be critical to advancing the relationship.

One of these points is when you are seeking to have the first person-to-person conversation with a prospect. Many prospects prefer to conduct early-stage research and information gathering on their own, and to avoid conversations with vendor reps until later in their decision-making process. Overcoming this reluctance is difficult, and that's where an injection of "Prove You Know Me" personalization can be highly effective.

To illustrate this point, below is the text of an email message that I recently received from a client development representative at a sales technology company. I received this message after attending one of the company's webinars. I've altered the text to conceal the real names of the company and the rep.

"David,

Thanks for attending our webinar with Jones & Company, "The Secret Sauce for a High-Performing Sales Organization."

Hopefully, you enjoyed the webinar - John and Joe had some great insights on . . .

• The current state and challenges of sales enablement in the age of the modern business buyer
• Why a buyer-centric sales enablement approach is vital to an organization's revenue growth
• How the right software can accelerate sales enablement efforts and help win more deals

Would love to get your feedback from the webinar.

Are you available this Friday for a quick 15 minute chat?

Best,

Roger Smith"

On the surface, this appears to be a well-constructed email. It's concise and not overly promotional. But it didn't convince me to reply and schedule a telephone conversation. What "Roger" failed to do in this message is show me that he knew some basic things about me and my business, and explain why a telephone conversation could be worthwhile.

If "Roger" had spent two or three minutes scanning through my LinkedIn profile, he would have gained a basic understanding of what I do. My profile also contains links to the 127 articles that I've published at LinkedIn. If "Roger" had spent another two of three minutes scanning through the titles of these articles, he could have obtained a pretty good understanding of my professional interests and focus.

With this information, "Roger" could have easily added a short paragraph to the email that would have made me more inclined to schedule a telephone conversation. That paragraph could have looked something like this:

"I see from your LinkedIn profile that you work with B2B companies to develop marketing strategies and marketing content. I also noticed that you've written several articles about improving marketing and sales productivity. I'd like to get your thoughts about the role that sales enablement technology plays in improving sales productivity.

Are you available this Friday for a brief telephone conversation?"

This approach would have demonstrated that "Roger" had made an effort to "get to know" me and my business, and the proposed topic of the telephone conversation is one that could be useful for both "Roger" and me.

Some readers may be thinking:  "There's no way we can have our business development reps spend this much time on every prospect." That's not what I'm recommending. This approach is reserved for prospects whose engagement with your company suggests that they may be ready to take the relationship to a higher level by beginning to have person-to-person conversations with your reps.

Image courtesy of Marco Verch (trendingtopics) via Flickr CC.