Here are a handful of best practice Actions to help B2B marketers kick-off 2019 with a bang!
- Invest in process and remediation efforts to clean up your CRM contact data.“Contact data ages like fish, not wine…it gets worse as it gets older, not better.” — Gregg Thaler
- Subscribe to an email validation service such as neverbounce.com — In 2018, turnover in corporate America was the highest it has been in 10 years, with 3 million people leaving their jobs every month. That is a lot of bad email addresses. We see 20–30% invalid emails in typical B2B contact databases.
- Stop sending emails that are not part of an overall content strategy or marketing plan — Too often, marketers focus on sending emails for events or promotions, but have no plans to develop content for a customer journey.
- Get your CRM and Marketing Automation tools in sync — Stop importing purchased email addresses into your marketing automation tool, hoping someone will respond and become CRM-ready after you send them an email. You will save lots of time and money if the majority of your marketing automation prospected are synced with a CRM record.
- Measure Marketing Influenced Opportunities (MIOs), not just Marketing Generated Opportunities (MGOs) — It’s getting harder to generate a B2B lead by having a prospect “raise their hand” to have a salesperson call them. Most marketing organizations invest in multiple marketing channels over several years to drive awareness and demand. Being able to track MIOs is essential, so your organization can prove the impact of multiple marketing touches on opportunity generation.
- MEET WITH YOUR SALES LEADERS to get sales and marketing in sync — Start with their agenda, not yours. Most sales leaders are not dummies, nor marketers. Take time to understand what they understand and want, before you tell all you can do for them. Sales leaders get that it’s not just about leads — many B2B salespeople generate 70–90% of their leads!