Amber Bogie: Accelerating Pipeline with Personalized ABM

Sourabh:
How many contacts in a buying committee should a marketerbe focused on when it comes to personalizing and building a relationship? Is itjust the decision maker and everything else will follow? Or do they need tothink about a larger group of people they're targeting for particularopportunity?

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Amber:
Yeah, I feel fairly strongly about this one in particularbased on even my own personal experiences. But I do strongly feel it'simportant to include people beyond the “decision makers”, the directors, theVPs. I think that it goes into a lot of different areas. We are also needing toestablish brand recognition, thought leadership. There are people that aregoing to be executing on your product one day. They need to know who you are,what you are, what you do. So building that out. One of the other things that Ithink is really, really important to consider is we... We talk about decisionmakers and just focus on decision makers. And while they are obviously criticalto the buying cycle, they're not 100% always doing it.

And that's kind of my argument is that we rely on our managers to provide guidance on certain things. We rely on our executioners to be aware of the hottest trends and what's going on. Oftentimes, we are busy above everything else. Orchestrating the strategy, ensuring the numbers are where they need to be. We assign these kind of actions to our team. I can speak to more than one occasion where I have a manager bring a product to me and I expect them to provide information around what's the value of the product, what do they do. Seek out the information, have initial conversations, bring me in where relevant. And in some cases, it's absolutely me that's making the decision on behalf of the product.

And there's been another instance with somebody with another skillset. This example in particular was marketing operations. They had a skillset that I trusted them to make the decision. And so I think that we need to also understand that we're all spread really thin. We need to think about how we're operating within our teams. And we need to... We can't do everything all at once all the time. It is our job and responsibility to ensure that we're making good decisions for the company and making purchases appropriately and evaluating that information, but that's also gonna come from other people in your team. And the second thing that I have to say about that is these managers or non-decision makers, they are just a few short years away from being these true decision makers. They are the future of the industry, and it's our job to ensure that we are establishing ourselves so that they know who we are and they come to us when the time is right for them.

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Sourabh:
Yep. And I think this is gonna be a separate conversation I have to bring you back for this, is the evolution of what we call at Lead2Pipeline, what we call “Need-based Buying”. Because with so much subscription tech buying, budget is no longer the primary consideration. Authority, as you just said, has spread. It's not center on the individual. And since budget and authority aren't the key factors, timing is very flexible. So it's need-based buying, which is why I love this. There are more people involved in the decision. They're arguably younger. They're arguably more specialized. And you may not be reaching all of them if you're just focusing on Amber, the Director of Global Demand Generation. You need to get to a team. So I'm gonna take this one step further when it comes to personalization, because if we are doing things that is not digital, we're sending things to people, right? How are we sending it to them? Amber, most people are not working in the office. How do we even know where they are? Who got their mailing address?

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Amber:
That one's a fun question, just because even the question of it feels almost like, “Oh, I haven't really had to think about that for awhile”. That's in particular because our product is that we are capturing the location of where it's being sent based on what the prospect determines and what information that they are providing to us. So, you know, the example kind of scenario goes that whether it's a direct email from an SDR, BDR, or they arrive at a landing page for a campaign, it's simply insert your information for a campaign, put it in a form fill, and then it's sent off to your preferred location. For a BDR, they send out a gift. They say, “Hey, this gift is for you”.

There's a step of address verification. So in order to accept the gift, there's the step to include where you want it to be sent. That's a big part of our product and a big part of what made us so successful early on in Covid was that we had incorporated that into our product. We're kind of born out of Covid, if you will. Again, I haven't had to think about this for a really long time, but there's no list builds. There's no research for hours on trying to identify people's locations. It's who are the contacts that we wanna send this to, send it out. And then the redemption is those who choose.

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Sourabh:
And we'll move past this, but I do wanna make the point. I'm a lot older than you, so I'm not building a spreadsheet of addresses. I'm not printing labels. I'm not going to the post office. Is that what you're saying?

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Amber:
Yeah. You're not doing any of that. You're not building the list. You've got who you're going to send these out to. You are relying onus to basically source the products for you, house them at our warehouses, get them from our suppliers. Obviously, the suppliers are given us options, what kinds of things you wanna send. And then we take care of all the logistics. There's no USPS, FedEx, any visits required.

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Sourabh:
Perfect. Let's just not talk about that anymore. Okay. Let's get to the far more interesting, and frankly, the psychology behind this, about building this relationship and having the moments that matter with our prospects, and with our customers, who we want to renew and upsell and build, land and expand into. Especially if it's an enterprise customer. Right? So can you give us an example, or more than one? What have you seen that has worked as far as personalizing something to a prospect that then was migrated across the team? Was it all determined upfront by the SDR or the marketing team, or did it sort of go back and forth as to what would work and how it was personalized?

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Amber:
I mean, of course, there's different products that you can send with personalization like sending a bottle of champagne, personalized name, sending cookies, cupcakes with logos on it. Some levels of personalization that are available in these products. But in terms of where and when the personalization happens, if it's the BDR team, the sales team, they're determining that personalization based on what's appropriate for that prospector customer. They're utilizing their relationship, their knowledge. What I would have to really say is that our most impactful and effective gift send is actually the Congrats Gift Send. We have a stat of 50% of all of these gifts generate an opportunity, which is pretty significant. Pretty significant stat.

I think that that one right there is really deepen a level of personal of recognizing somebody's achievement, accomplishment, personal, you know, it's accomplishments. Of course you got your standard job promotions, your job changes. Those are always really good ones. But things like people having a baby or getting married, those are all things that are deeply personal to people. We have onesies that we send out to people, congratulatory bundles for certain occasions. So of course there's personalization options within our products and platform, but then there's also the much step further of utilizing the information that you have on hand.

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Sourabh:
‍And that was where I'm going next, right? So on the sales and the SDR side, right? There's an inbuilt process of personal research to make a relationship one-to-one. A lot of marketers, especially tech marketers, are still struggling with this. Even if they only have 500 accounts to focus on, which there's no one in our audience who only has 500 accounts to focus on. I can just tell you because I know who they are, right, but even if you only had that many. So what can marketers do to enable that better personalization? Especially if it's a marketing sourced opportunity, truly a net new lead that we brought in, and we're now handing them off to the SDR or BDR team. What information or data do we need to enable this for our sales team?

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Amber:
‍In terms of the information? That's obviously quite a big broad thing, right? So if you're saying it's 500 accounts, then marketing needs to look at those 500 accounts and see what kind of groups they can be put into in terms of, you know, this isn't gonna be a, “We can identify of these 500people who most recently moved jobs”, but it can be, “Of these 500 people, what kinds goals, KPIs, pain points that they have that we can solve for”. And so driving that personalization in the way of, “What's gonna make their job easier? What's gonna make their life easier”? And the value that we can provide.

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Sourabh:
‍So I'm gonna take another example, Amber, to build on this, right? Because the problem where, let's say the situation with net new leads is not the 2023 focus. You're a Director of Global Demand Gen, all we do is demand gen. Let's just be honest, the primary focus this year is on what you would call zombies, is that you've got this hundreds of thousands, for some of our clients, millions of contacts that at some point were qualified. They would not be considered top of funnel now, but they were once, and we are just trying to get them back and back through the middle of the bottom of the funnel. Have you guys had any campaigns, have you had any success with customers on progressing non-progressively?

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Amber:
‍Yeah, we've definitely had quite a bit of focus on that. We do what we call “Wake the Dead” campaigns. We will have marketing segments of these accounts that are in this different kind of grouping. And then we have gift sends, “Wake the Dead” gift sends. So, you know, sometimes there's a little bit of a play with that in the types of gifts that we can send. But it's absolutely something that needs to be focused on. And in addition to that, it's marketing's responsibility to nurture those, right? Because as you said, they were at one point qualified. So, the expectation shouldn't necessarily be on sales to bring those to the top of the list. Focus on those, the expectation should be on marketing to engage and nurture those accounts, and then for sales to drive a little bit further with some personalized sends.

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Sourabh:
‍Perfect. Love it. Now, stepping one step back. We've got a target, we've got a smart selection, right? We've got a criteria and we've got an SLA or agreement with the sales team, what we should be doing, where we're getting people before we hand them over to them, and then from there, what are they doing that we may or may not be able to support? Because sometimes sends work really well in tandem with major moments like events, right? That those are things that can really work well together, they're receiving something and we're going to see them in-person. Perfect combo, right? So have you seen, and I know it's a broad question, but again, we're helping foundationally, right? For our audience today, our marketers. Have you seen that most sends that have been successful, like the 50% stat you mentioned around the congrats send, have most sends been successful in a seasonal notion or with a seasonal theme? Or is it the right thing or the right send for the right person no matter what time of year?

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Amber:
‍That's a good question. I think they're two different things, right? The seasonal campaigns in seasonal sense are really to drive...I don't wanna say personalization, but it's a connection touchpoint. It's a recognition of something, so there's a personal connection, right? So that in itself is effective in that nature, right? So we build out campaigns based on seasons to be able to have fun and have play with the kinds of gifts that we do. So that's supporting that level of personalization. Even if you don't know that person adversely and that they like to go to the beach, it's summer and you sent them a cooler and a book to read and some sunglasses, right? You're kind of just celebrating together the seasonality of things. I'd say that when it comes to events and particular time-based touch points, there's absolutely significant increase in attendance for these types of events. Yes, definitely.

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Sourabh:
‍And what generally is the follow up? I know this is a sales question, it's not necessarily a marketing question, but after a send, like you said, right, attendance is going up, somebody has come through, and the ROI of that initial touchpoint or that campaign is good. We got them to the event. What is generally the follow up after a send? Is it personalized from the salesperson on, “Hey, I hope you enjoyed this”? Or is there a theme and a story that builds into it? What, what works best?

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Amber:
‍It's definitely based on the SDR, the communication and what they have established thus far. If they haven't had any connection touchpoint, there's definitely the ability to use the gift theme to have a play on words, and absolutely our team does that. I think because Reachdesk is our product, we drink our own champagne, if you will. We have a really strong utilization of the product and the personalization, and we do recognize that salespeople all have unique ways of working, and they identify what is successful for them. We certainly share those stories in-house, success stories of particular campaigns like Amazon Rainmaker was really successful for this reason or the other different kinds of messaging that they've utilized. But to answer that, there's a very high level of individuality in that and because we have established SLAs that we have that level of trust within the organization.

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Sourabh:
‍Perfect. So let me come back then to what might be one of our last questions. Final reminder. If you have a question, please get it in. So attribution, looking at this from a data perspective, right? At the individual level, we're winning, sales is winning, we're winning, SDRs are winning. And of course, you just brought up a great point. The individual nature of the salesperson doesn't just determine the nature of the deal and timing. It determines the nature of the entire relationship, right? Let's not forget, we're not selling refrigerators. It's not something someone's buying for 10 years and we won't hear from them. We're gonna hear from them every quarter if we're doing our job right? Right? So that individuality? Completely understood. But when you're running demand gen and especially if you're running it globally or for the Americas or Europe per region, right? We've got to work with a very large set of data. What attribution is available from something like Reachdesk or from a send program that marketing can point to, to say, “We need to do more or less of this”, and in which situation?

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Amber:
‍Yeah, in terms of attribution, one of the biggest ones that we have is ROI, which I feel like is very timely and appropriate for the current save things, but ROI is is one of our strongest things that we have across all of our customers. So much that we have a 5X ROI guarantee with utilization of our product. That ROI scales up a lot from just the 5X minimum. I have a stat from Rapid7 that invested in the direct mail for their ABM efforts. And they had a 5000% ROI on their efforts. They had 25% close rate that they saw running a campaign. They created 324 ops, closed $697,000 in revenue and generated 3.3 million in pipeline. And so that's one of many success stories.

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Sourabh:
‍And on one second, if I heard you correctly, before you started the numbers, right? You said this was a direct mail campaign?

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Amber:
‍This was through the investment of utilizing direct mail with Reach desk, yes.

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Sourabh:
‍Wow. And this was cold. They were reaching out to these people and trying to get them to convert. And the conversion you said was 25%?That's unheard of for direct email.

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Amber:
‍You've gotta invest and focus on it. It's an integral part of an ABM strategy without question, but I think of it as a must-have tool for any strategy. It is supportive of your demand gen efforts. It's supportive of your ABM strategy. It supports your sales, your sales team, your outbound motion. It provides collaboration internally in terms of supporting that team. It also is massively useful and supportive for your customers and building advocacy.

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Sourabh:
‍Yeah, it's an all-in-one. And I think there's one other point about this that we may not be realizing because we're in it every day. This is a very powerful methodology and approach for disruptors. If you are a new and up-and-comer in your space, you're not the incumbent. You're taking accounts away from the incumbent, right? The digital channels, if you are the disruptor, are so noisy. This is a channel that every human appreciates but is not being utilized, probably not being utilized at all by the incumbent or larger players, right? This is a chance to reach people on a one-to-one level.