Uncategorized Archives - Act-On

How to Build & Measure Brand Loyalty

Act-On — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 18:20:25 +0000

Companies put considerable effort into building brand loyalty to retain their existing customers, and for good reason. It’s about more than just upselling, cross-selling, or generating referral opportunities. Retaining customers is highly cost-effective, as existing customers spend 67% more than new ones.

The challenge is that your competitors have growth goals too.

Their strategies often involve attracting your customers and luring away business. Stopping this cycle isn’t always easy, but building stronger brand loyalty can help. Unfortunately, this approach is often overlooked.

“Companies that have won consistently over the past decade have invested in their brand early and built a defensible brand,” says Trevan Strean, creative director at Act-On. “So brand loyalty isn’t necessarily more important to B2Bs now. It’s just that some haven’t invested as heavily because they had a strong sales channel.”

Building stronger brand loyalty, in addition to having a strong sales channel, can help solve many challenges B2Bs deal with, such as churn and hitting growth goals.

What is Brand Loyalty?

Brand loyalty is a consumer’s consistent preference for a particular brand over competitors, driven by trust, emotional connection, and perceived value. It goes beyond simple customer satisfaction, reflecting a deeper relationship built on quality, consistency, and positive experiences.

When a brand reliably meets expectations, provides excellent customer service, and aligns with a customer’s values, it fosters long-term loyalty. As a result, brand-loyal customers are more likely to make repeat purchases, advocate for the brand, and resist competitor offers, making brand loyalty a valuable asset for businesses.

The Lines Are Blurring Between B2B and B2C

When it comes to customer experiences, B2B and B2C aren’t islands. Customers interact in both sectors, and their expectations cross-pollinate between the two.

Amazon taught customers to expect fast delivery, Netflix taught them about entertainment on demand, and Spotify showed them personalized experiences based on previous interactions.

Research shows that over half of consumers say a company’s customer experience matters as much as its products or services. With expectations from B2C crossing into B2B, this also shapes brand loyalty.

“When you’re shopping for business software, you might think, ‘Okay, in my everyday life, I experience Netflix, and that’s an amazing solution,’” says Trevan. “So you have this dichotomy of really great B2C experiences and customers carrying that into what they expect from B2B.”

When experiences fall short of expectations, brand loyalty can take a hit. B2Cs often do a good job establishing consistent customer experiences and building trust and reliability. B2Bs have an opportunity to create similar interactions to grow brand loyalty.

Three Ways to Build Brand Loyalty

1. Ensure a Consistent Message Across Different Channels

Twenty years ago, the iPhone didn’t exist. Brands communicated through channels like direct mail, radio ads, print media, and television. Today, marketers have far more channels available, along with greater opportunities to make mistakes. One such pitfall, according to Trevan, is a lack of consistency.

“Make sure the marketing you’re putting in front of your audience is consistent, related to your other efforts, and speaks in the same voice and visual language,” says Trevan.

He believes this strategy has a greater impact than most marketers realize. A customer who views a social media post that misaligns with their original reasons for loving the brand might lose confidence in it. For example, a company that promotes its software as eco-friendly might lose customer trust if it posts about a new product that requires extensive packaging made from non-recyclable materials. . As a result, the customer becomes more vulnerable to churn, and competitors are positioned to steal their business.

Brand affinity tools, such as marketing automation, can help support consistency through cross-channel campaign coordination. For example, you can create multichannel campaigns across email, web, and social using the same platform, making sure your brand’s voice and messaging remain consistent.

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2. Leverage Automation to Improve Content Alignment

Trevan explains that the content you create for audiences can be a powerful tool for building brand loyalty.

“As a marketer, I might have more than one audience—let’s say an executive like a CMO and a manager,” says Trevan. “I may create reports or studies to help the CMO perform their job, while also providing tactical resources like case studies, webinars, or how-to guides for the marketing manager. Even though these audiences are different, maintaining brand messaging consistency is important. It helps reinforce loyalty and prevents ‘chinks in the brand armor.’”

These chinks can occur when a customer receives an email that misaligns with the brand due to inconsistent messaging or voice. Achieving consistency across all channels can be a challenge. One approach we’re experimenting with here at Act-On to address this issue is automation.

“We’re currently working on a project that uses Artificial Intelligence to scrape a large amount of content data and analyze it for brand consistency,” says Trevan. “This data is then used to generate guidelines. Our project can assign a score out of 100, highlighting elements that are on-brand and providing recommendations for improving content alignment.”

With this information, marketers can correct inconsistencies that may leave prospects and customers confused or, worse, disengaged. Using AI tools in this way allows marketers to remain authentic and human while leveraging modern technologies to achieve goals, such as improving brand loyalty.

3. Use Customer Feedback to Build on Solid Ground

Customers often talk about brands ‘behind closed doors.’ They do this increasingly in niche communities, especially when peers are shopping for a new solution. You need insight into these conversations to understand brand loyalty. However, according to Trevan, getting visibility into these conversations is difficult due to the number of layers between marketing and customers.

“There is so much legwork to get that feedback,” says Trevan. “But if you can access those insights, they’re a gold mine for understanding what your customers love about you—and avoiding the trap of ‘marketing blindly.’”

Trevan suggests building strong relationships with the teams that interact directly with your customers, such as customer success and support staff. With these relationships, you can understand insights, such as “What’s driving people to sign up for an upsell or to make the decision to renew?”

“If customers are saying, ‘You have better support than anyone I’ve ever worked with,’ that’s really important to capture,” says Trevan. “Now, you have social proof to back up that point instead of just putting a message out there—because anyone can say anything, but once you have proof, it’s worth more.”

This type of feedback can also shape your brand messaging and build the loyalty needed to drive cross-sells, upsells, and referrals.

How to Measure Brand Loyalty

Marketers are under increased pressure to show the results of their efforts. Eighty-five percent of B2B marketers say connecting performance to business outcomes is challenging.

Knowing how to measure brand loyalty can be difficult, but several metrics can help, including:

Repeat Purchase Rate: What percentage of customers make repeat purchases over a specific period?
Referral Rates: How many of your new customers come from existing customer referrals? Higher referral rates often indicate loyal customers are willing to advocate for your brand.
Brand Affinity Metrics: What is your share of voice in social media discussions, brand mentions, and sentiment analytics compared to your competitors?
Customer Surveys and NPS score: What is the likelihood that a customer will recommend you to others?

Trevan points out that even though measuring brand loyalty can be tricky, it doesn’t mean it’s not important.

“You’re going to have to get creative about how you measure and report things,” says Trevan. “But just because it’s hard to measure and isn’t a clean metric doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.”

If you’d like more ideas for improving your brand loyalty, watch our on-demand webinar, Content Glow Up: Taking Your Content From Ho Hum to Fabulous, where you’ll learn our favorite strategies to connect with your audience.

Marketing Automation for Management Consulting

Create, execute, and deliver personalized initiatives at scale with Act On’s marketing automation for financial advisors.

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Marketing Automation and CRM Sync: Keep Data Clean and Current Across Your Teams

Act-On — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 16:23:53 +0000

More and higher-quality leads are on the wish lists of nearly all sales teams. Marketing works hard to deliver them, which is why it’s so discouraging to hear things like:

We need more leads from marketing…

We’re spending way too much time chasing down leads who aren’t ready to buy…

Our sales targets are unrealistic, given the quality of the leads we’re getting…

And it’s not from a lack of trying. You’re working hard to give sales what they need, but missing data capabilities often hold you back.

Research shows that most high-performing companies use marketing automation. However, some of these tools lack bidirectional sync with your CRM, which creates disjointed sales and marketing collaboration.

When data can sync in “both directions” (from marketing to sales and back again), all teams have the latest information about your prospects. And the result is tighter marketing and sales alignment.

Solves the “guessing game” challenge

It’s no secret that prospects are demanding more personalized experiences. Seventy-one percent say they expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when they don’t.

Marketers use automation to provide more customized and meaningful experiences, but sales often doesn’t have access to the marketing data collected along the buyer’s journey.

And when a salesperson calls a prospect, they need all the data they can get.

For example, instead of going into sales calls cold, what if bidirectional sync allowed the reps to see information like:

What web pages did the prospect visit?
What emails did they click?
What forms did they engage with?

With this data, the salesperson can understand buyer interests and identify the best talk tracks before jumping into a call.

Helps sales spot “hot sales leads” faster

Time is a fixed resource.

You never get more of it.

That’s why sales gets so frustrated when they spend their valuable time on a lead that doesn’t pan out. And it’s also why they turn their attention to marketing.

One of the best ways to support marketing and sales alignment is to make sales’ job easier. And that starts with easy lead prioritization. It can transform comments like “Why does marketing send us such terrible leads?” to “Wow, these leads are really awesome!”

A tool that helps sales reps spot the best leads faster is lead scoring. It allows them to quickly see who in their pipeline needs immediate follow-up versus which leads need a little more nurturing before they’re ready to talk.

Lead scoring uses benchmarks and common metrics set by sales and marketing to clarify what constitutes a good lead. For example, once you build your lead scoring model, you enter your rules into the platform. Then, points are automatically accumulated on each of your prospect’s records once you add up those scoring rules. As a result, sales reps are much more likely to get higher-quality leads.

Also, a marketing automation tool that easily integrates with your CRM allows your sales team to see the lead score for every prospect. This visibility allows them to sort, prioritize, and engage quickly.

Measuring ROI and creating a closed-loop system

Are you feeling the squeeze around proving ROI?

You are not imagining it.

Marketing leaders cited proving ROI as their top challenge in a recent survey.

And even if you aren’t facing internal pressure around ROI, the ability to easily show it is always important (especially when those end-of-year budget conversations roll around!).

As you work to attach marketing efforts to results, a marketing automation tool that integrates bidirectionally with your CRM helps you measure results.

Here’s an example:

Closed-loop reporting capabilities link “closed won opportunities” to the appropriate prospects in your marketing automation tool.
Looking at the data, you can tie revenue to specific marketing touchpoints.
With this information in hand, you can demonstrate which campaigns are the most effective in converting leads to customers.
You can then use this data to prove ROI and leverage what’s working into future campaigns to scale results.

Bidirectional CRM Sync: Pulling it all together

A recent survey collected responses from 700+ marketers who were asked about the future of marketing leaders. It found a top challenge cited by respondents was “increase cross-functional partnerships with sales.”

In other words, the need for marketing and sales alignment will only continue to grow.

As departments figure out how marketing and sales work together more effectively, syncing data in both directions is often a missed opportunity. It can help you:

Spot the best sales opportunities faster. Teams can prioritize the leads most likely to convert with tools like lead scoring. And they can avoid wasting time calling leads who aren’t ready to convert and need more nurturing.
Connect to marketing data to create more meaningful sales calls. With bidirectional data sync, sales can see the prospect’s interactions during the nurturing process and can spot interests, make faster connections, and pick appropriate talk tracks before making a call.
Attribute closed deals and revenue to marketing campaigns. You can prove what you’re doing is creating impact.

Want to see how a marketing tool built with this capability works in action? Book a demo to take a sneak peek inside.

Meanwhile, check out this guide for more information about syncing data bidirectionally in Act-On.

5 Lead Nurture Campaigns that Build Pipeline and Support ROI

Act-On — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 17:33:26 +0000

Pressure has been building around improving ROI and lead nurture campaigns present an often overlooked opportunity. Sure, the pressure has always been there to some extent, but it has recently increased, according to B2B marketers. And many say that while expectations for ROI are increasing, their budgets are not. Hardly seems fair, right?

A recent survey of marketers by MarTech.org found that, of those surveyed:

An effective way to improve ROI is focusing on strategic changes in your nurture campaigns to build stronger pipeline. Want a few ideas for getting started? Let’s dive into our favorite 5 lead nurturing strategies and examples.

Audit Existing Lead Nurture Campaigns for Performance

Do you have engagement programs scheduled to kick off after a prospect attends a webinar, downloads content, or takes other actions with your brand?

If so, that’s a great first step. The second is figuring out how to improve lead nurturing campaigns even more. Begin by checking your open rates.

For example, we did a complete audit of our nurture sequences last year and found the open rate was around 25%. That’s a decent performance, but there was an opportunity to improve. Our internal guru, Kelsey Yen, revamped our nurture campaigns, and our open rate jumped from 25% to 48%. Our clickthrough rates increased from 1.32% to 17.93%. Not bad, right?

Here’s a quick rundown of what Kelsey did:

Inventoried what we had. She looked at the current program metrics to determine which messaging worked and which didn’t.
Aligned with intent and the buyer’s journey. As she looked through the data, she also figured out which messaging performed best with our target ICP but also aligned with where a person was in their journey (top of funnel, middle of funnel, or bottom of funnel).
Created streams based on how people entered the database. She accounted for how each person entered our database. Did they download an eBook, attend a webinar, or do something else? The goal was to capture the data to ensure they were tagged appropriately to get into the correct nurture sequence.

Of course, this is a quick summary of the process. We published the full details here, if you want to check them out and apply our lead nurture campaign strategies to your own program.

^{Lead nurture campaigns help you build affinity with both customers and prospects.}

Nurture your Silent Prospects

Obviously, you want to focus on the prospects taking action and proactively moving through their buyer’s journey, but what about the prospects who won’t budge?

Focusing on non-action prospects is an underrated strategy, and here’s why: It’s not always about the actions prospects take; sometimes it’s about the actions they don’t take.

Imagine a known prospect visiting your product page but not performing the desired action. And when we say “known,” we mean they’ve interacted with your brand in the past, so you have their email address (courtesy of your marketing automation platform). You can use that non-action for a trigger email and to kick off a campaign.

Maybe this means sending the prospect an appropriate eBook based on their interests or sending a related webinar replay. The goal is to keep the conversation going. You want to turn that non-action prospect into an engaged prospect.

Go Deeper with your Existing Customers

Growing customer lifetime value (CLV) isn’t a new concept to marketers. Yet only 25% of marketers rank customer lifetime value (CLV) among their top five marketing metrics. And here’s something else to consider: Research shows that while most businesses make sales to between 5% and 20% of new customers, they close deals with 60% to 70% of existing customers.

Here are three lead nurture campaign strategies ideas to help you go deeper with your existing customers and grow your CLV:

Segmented product recommendations. Use customer data to segment your audience based on their buying history and current behavior. Then send targeted content to them based on the data, to encourage related purchases.
Design reengagement campaigns. Target inactive or dormant customers by sending personalized messages with exclusive content, limited-time offers, or other premiums based on past interests.
Ask for feedback. As you work to nurture leads, consider asking for input about your products or services. For example, let’s say you offer a marketing automation solution. You might ask: what do you wish you could do when creating nurture campaigns that you currently can’t? Maybe the customer wants help coming up with good subject lines because it’s time-consuming (by the way, we actually created that feature). You can now use that feedback during product iteration and updates.

These three strategies are excellent opportunities to showcase additional product or content recommendations and fill the pipeline with new opportunities.

Design Campaigns Based on Lead Scoring

A Gartner study found that businesses using lead scoring experienced a 77% increase in ROI with lead generation. The research also revealed that 70% of leads are lost due to inadequate follow-up.

Lead scoring allows you to master the follow-up and can trigger emails about scheduling a call or booking a demo for your “hot leads.” For example, Starshot’s team uses Act-On’s precision lead scoring capability to automate the process, enabling them to focus on marketing-identified “hot” opportunities and move leads through the pipeline faster and more strategically.

A warm lead might receive relevant content such as a case study, a white paper, or other educational content. And a cold lead might trickle into a nurture campaign focused on reengagement. You can then offer them highly personalized content based on where they are in their journey.

Launch an Educational Nurture Campaign

Have you ever purchased a product, got excited about using it, and immediately run into frustrating roadblocks? Yeah, us too!

When this happens with one of your customers, you run the risk of churn and the loss of future revenue opportunities. You can combat this challenge with educational nurture campaigns. Design your campaign with common customer challenges in mind.

If you aren’t clear on the challenges, talk with your customer service and sales folks. They’ll have plenty of ideas! Then create educational content, blog posts, eBooks, or webinars to address those challenges and build loyalty and satisfaction.

Bigger budgets would be nice, but in the meantime …

The rest of us are just working smarter. And part of that strategy can include nurture campaigns designed to build a stronger pipeline. As you work to achieve that, consider that lead nurturing software, such as marketing automation, helps you get there faster and easily show ROI.

Marketing Automation for Management Consulting

Create, execute, and deliver personalized initiatives at scale with Act On’s marketing automation for financial advisors.

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What Are the Best Marketing Conferences?

Act-On — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 00:13:24 +0000

Looking to meet and mingle with the leaders in your marketing field? Or pack in a year’s worth of learning into one weekend? Check out our picks for the best marketing conferences. From the art of storytelling to the science of data analytics, these events are endless sources of creativity, innovation, and strategic insights. Get your lanyards ready as we go through the best marketing conferences on the scene.

HubSpot INBOUND

HubSpot INBOUND isn’t your average marketing conference; it’s a full-blown immersion into the world of marketing, sales, and customer success. Held annually in September, INBOUND is one of the best marketing conferences because it calls together the world’s inbound marketers to share their expertise. Programming includes keynote speakers and breakout sessions that explore everything from content creation to lead nurturing.

As popular as the event is, the popularity comes with a price. Just like the product it spun off from, the cost can be a bit steep, especially for smaller businesses managing tighter budgets. And, with so many attendees vying for networking time and seat space, you might have trouble making it to all the events and panels you’d like.

Content Marketing World

Billed as “the largest content marketing event on the planet,” Content Marketing World is the pinnacle event for content marketers. Taking the stage every September, this conference brings a cavalcade of ideas, tactics, and strategies designed to reignite your content marketing efforts. Whether you’re a seasoned wordsmith or just dipping your toes into the sea of content creation, you’ll find sessions and workshops that cater to your needs.

This is one of the best marketing events due to the lineup of speakers. It reads like a who’s who of the content marketing scene, with practical and hands-on workshops to dig into. But beware the paradox of choice—so many sessions, so little time! Navigating the offerings can be a challenge, but if you manage to find your niche, you’ll leave armed with actionable insights. Just make sure to save a few brain cells for the inevitable decision fatigue.

Adobe Summit

Adobe Summit makes our list of best marketing conferences even though it isn’t strictly a conference. It’s more a huge promotion channel for Adobe’s suite of design and marketing products. If that appeals to you, the event showcases the latest trends, technologies, and tactics for using Adobe’s products. Held in March, this annual gathering offers a kaleidoscope of insights across the digital marketing spectrum. From keynotes about pushing the boundaries of creativity to immersive labs that let you get your hands dirty with Adobe’s tools, this conference is a playground for marketing and design nerds.

But again, you get what you pay for. The price tag might have you clutching your corporate credit card to your chest, just like many of Adobe’s products. The design and creativity angle also might not be ideal if that’s not your marketing lane.

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SXSW (South by Southwest)

Music, film, tech, and marketing, together at last? That’s SXSW. No one asked for it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not here to stay. Taking over Austin, Texas every March, this event is a smorgasbord of creativity and innovation, making it a must-attend for marketers who want to tap into the pulse of cultural trends. We think it’s one of the best marketing conferences for that reason, even if it’s not strictly a marketing event.

But beware that you don’t get a case of “eyes bigger than stomach.” This festival is like a buffet where you’ll want to sample everything, and the sheer volume of sessions and events can be a tad overwhelming. Plus, the marketing track shares the spotlight with other domains, so you’ll need to sift through to find what you’re looking for.

MarketingProfs B2B Forum

Looking for something a little more cozy? This gathering of B2B marketing enthusiasts brings leaders of the field together to exchange ideas, tactics, and maybe a few laughs. That’s the essence of MarketingProfs B2B Forum, a more intimate event held every October. If you’re knee-deep in the world of B2B, this conference offers a spotlight on strategies tailored just for you.

The vibe is warm and welcoming, fostering an environment where connections flourish. However, if you’re looking for a more diverse range of marketing topics, this might not be the best marketing conference for you. If B2B is your bread and butter, this forum is your platform to shine.

Tweets, posts, and likes, oh my! This event, orchestrated by Social Media Examiner, is like a master class in all things social media. Held annually, it’s a pilgrimage for marketers who want to stay at the forefront of this ever-evolving landscape. Prepare to dive deep into the realm of hashtags, algorithms, and engagement metrics.

From insightful sessions with top-notch social media gurus to networking opportunities that can turn virtual followers into IRL friends, this conference is a feast for the social-savvy. Just be aware that the social media bubble can sometimes overshadow other aspects of marketing, so if you’re looking for a broader menu, you might need to look elsewhere

MozCon

Hosted by the makers of one of the best SEO tools, MozCon is your best chance to meet the luminaries of search engine marketing in person. Held annually, this is a deep dive into the intricacies of search engine optimization and digital marketing tactics. In such a fast-changing realm as SEO, this can be a great way to catch up on the most recent trends and changes. But keep in mind this is a niche conference. Come here if you want to focus on toning your SEO muscles, not for a more well-rounded experience.

AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O

Unravel the enigma of programmatic advertising at AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O. This conference is where the wizards of ad tech come together to discuss programmatic marketing. Held annually, it’s a deep dive into the world of data, algorithms, and targeting.

Expect to immerse yourself in discussions about ad exchanges, real-time bidding, and the ever-elusive click-through rate optimization. The conference is a treasure trove of insights for those who thrive in the data-driven realm. However, be prepared for a slightly tech-heavy focus, which might go over your head if data isn’t your primary focus.

The Market Research Event (TMRE)

Delve into the world of consumer insights and market research at The Market Research Event (TMRE). Held annually, this conference is your source for methodologies, trends, and case studies that can elevate your understanding of your target audience.

Get ready to unlock the secrets behind surveys, focus groups, and data analytics. The conference offers a platform to rub shoulders with market research experts and glean insights from their successes and challenges. Just bear in mind that the scope is primarily centered around research, which could be a bit of a niche topic for some.

MarTech Conference

We had to include this martech focused event in our list of best marketing conferences. Navigate the intersection of marketing and technology at this event. Held annually, it’s a voyage through marketing automation, AI, data analytics, and beyond. Meet your favorite vendors, and discover new products to help automate and integrate your marketing functions.

That’s it! So mark your calendars, pack your notepads, and get ready to embark on a journey of marketing discovery like never before.

Marketing Automation for Management Consulting

Create, execute, and deliver personalized initiatives at scale with Act On’s marketing automation for financial advisors.

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Oracle Eloqua Alternatives: Time to Take A Serious Look at Act-On

Act-On — Sat, 19 Aug 2023 13:00:00 +0000

Oracle claims their Eloqua platform is the best marketing automation software—we have a bone to pick with the dinosaur about that one. And we’re not the only ones: Act-On beats Eloqua in a head-to-head match-up based on G2 reviews of both platforms. (Did we mention we also knock out Oracle alternatives like Pardot and Marketo?). In fact, this summer, business software review aggregator G2 ranked Act-On as either Leader or the Best in Class in more than eight categories.

As marketers ourselves, we weren’t surprised. It’s the same thing we’ve been saying since we decided to come out swinging against Eloqua and others like them last year. Act-On is the simplest, most intelligent marketing automation platform. Plus, our estimated ROI compared to Oracle will make you the finance team’s new best friend. (Hello, budget increase?)

Most importantly, Act-On is still laser focused on innovating in marketing automation. We’re building AI into everything we do, to make marketer’s lives easier. Come talk to us about our product roadmap–in just the last year, we’ve made massive improvements to AI, UI, reporting, integrations, data structures, and more. Meanwhile, word on the street is Oracle has moved on from marketing innovation and stopped prioritizing Eloqua.

^{Feel like you’re stuck in the ’90s? You might be an Oracle Eloqua user…}

Let’s dive deep and take a look at how Act-On and Oracle compare in three key dimensions: ease-of-use, return on investment, and support.

No Contest: Act-On is Easier to Use Than Oracle Eloqua

^{Best marketing automation software for ease-of-use, Enterprise.}

What good is a marketing automation platform if your team can’t actually use it? This is the question Oracle is hoping you never ask. The truth is, Oracle’s interface is stuck in the 90s. Nostalgia can be fun, but it’s not what you want from a software that’s supposed to keep you on the leading edge of marketing technology. Even reviewers with positive feedback for Oracle see the user interface as being outdated and clunky.

Contrast this with Act-On, and you’ll feel like you just stepped into a time machine and made it back to the future. From drag-and-drop editors with Chat GPT built into the interface, to native CRM integrations (including with Oracle’s own NetSuite). Our intuitive journey builder set the stage for a new way of automating your marketing back when we introduced it, and it’s still the best in the game.

We’ve heard feedback from users that you basically need to be able to code HTML to be able to use Eloqua’s marketing automation. Wow. That sounds like a great solution … if this were 1999 and we were using a floppy disk full of free America Online minutes to dial up the world wide web and edit our Geocities page. Here in the 21st century? We’ll take a modern, intuitive user interface please.

“It takes about half the time to create an email with Act-On as it does with Eloqua. That alone has been a tremendous help for us.”
-Ryan Saul, e.Republic

Act-On Beats Oracle Eloqua in Return on Investment

^{Best Estimated ROI, Enterprise.}

Best estimated ROI, Enterprise.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t start by mentioning that Act-On costs less than Oracle. In a way, that’s not hard: Oracle is one of the more expensive marketing automation platforms on the market. It has a reputation for being expensive to buy and expensive to run. At the lowest pricing tier you’ll be limited to fewer contacts, fewer users, and a lack of core marketing automation features.

Meanwhile, Act-On’s active contacts pricing model is easy to understand and even easier to love. Charging you only for the amount of contacts you send to is just plain fair, and it makes it easier to prove and calculate ROI. We save Eloqua customers 40-60% in contract costs and total cost of ownership.*

How do we do it? Well, we don’t use tiered pricing for core functionality. You’ll get all the features and support you need to engage, nurture, and convert leads across the customer lifecycle with marketing automation. But price isn’t everything. As a savvy marketer, you understand that cost isn’t as important as value for money and documenting return on investment. Luckily, we have Eloqua beat there also.

Act-On includes built-in ROI reporting to analyze your data and attribute revenue to each of your marketing touch points. You’ll know exactly which campaigns generated the most leads, deals, and revenue, making it easier to prove and improve your team’s ROI.

“With the metrics and ability to track what goes on we are able to show management real ROI, help our sales team grow their pipeline, and bring metrics that help our team make better decisions more quickly.”
-Actual G2 Reviewer

Act-On Support vs Oracle Eloqua: A Whole Different Ball Game

^{Best marketing automation support, Enterprise.}

Companies like Avery Dennison trust us to manage automation for their worldwide business units and thousands of employees. James Moat, their global director of corporate and business communications, said, “Act-On is a true partner. Their support is amazing, and their team provides feedback and insight that helps us meet our challenges. They’re part of the Avery Dennison family, and just as committed to reaching our goals as we are.”

Sniff. Sniff. Oh, sorry, excuse us, we got something stuck in our eye. Ok, back to support. Our independent research (not to mention the reviews online) shows that Oracle support has become extremely difficult to work with— and that’s if you can even reach someone in the first place. We do things a little differently here at Act-On.

We think of it this way: our job is to make your marketing a success. When you need help, we respond like the Bat Signal has gone off. Real humans committed to your business goals are on the way (Batmobile not included), whether it’s via phone, chat, or email request.

Check out these quotes from online reviews that show our commitment to support compared to that other platform:

Act-On technical support always surpasses my expectations. I have put to the test many times the ability to reach support over chat and to get expert advice any time of the day 24×7. Last week I had an urgent question… Within 5 minutes of posting my question on the support chat I had clear directions, including screenshots, on how to do it. Act-On tech support is a step above the rest.
-An actual G2 Reviewer

I would strongly consider utilizing … other marketing automation platforms instead of Oracle’s Eloqua. Since the acquisition they have become unreasonable and it shows in the platform. When you’re unable to even send out basic emails and they don’t want to propose solutions it goes to show how fall they have fallen from once being a top tier marketing automation platform.
-An actual G2 Reviewer

Ready to stop time traveling?

Set up a demo today to learn more about how Act-On can make it easier for you and your team to meet your goals, not become masters of automation programming.

Need more information? We knew you were smart: more information on Act-On vs. Oracle Eloqua, including details on how we make CRM integrations easy, and how the migration from Oracle will be a lot smoother than you think.

_{*All Oracle intelligence based on independent research conducted by a third party and commissioned by Act-On.}

How to Use Marketing Automation to Optimize Your Marketing and Outpace the Competition

Act-On — Fri, 21 Jul 2023 22:52:04 +0000

Ever feel like you’re spinning your wheels, going in circles, and not getting to where you need to be as a marketer? Sounds like you need to hit the brakes with your marketing communication plan. When it comes to marketing automation, you don’t need the fastest car to win the race – you just need to know how to use it effectively and efficiently.

Luckily, we here at Act-On have an ace driver in Jeff Day, Act-On’s SVP of Marketing, who has 25 years of experience working in go-to-market teams. In this webinar collaboration with Marketing Profs, he sharedl best practices and tactics that work in optimizing marketing automation. It’s the extra boost you need to get you off the slow track and into the fast lane.

When it comes to marketing automation, Act-On’s no rookie. We earned our racing stripes with over 4,000 satisfied customers. Learn how Act-On’s Marketing Automation is the best in the business.

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

Why use marketing automation tools in the first place? According to Gartner, businesses are using less than 50% of their marketing automation capabilities. That’s like owning a sports car but only driving on suburban roads.

When used correctly, marketing automation users see improved lead generation and more conversions. But although companies increasingly take advantage of the benefits of marketing automation, many don’t feel they’re getting all they could from the technology. According to a recent study, 54% of marketers admit they aren’t using marketing automation tools to their fullest potential.

In the webinar, Jeff and Mike Felix, an Act-On solutions consultant, delivered tips for tuning up your marketing automation machinery to achieve benefits such as:

– Driving more qualified leads

– Converting more leads to sales

– Optimizing your marketing spend

Work On a Well-Oiled Machine

The tools are right at your fingertips: leverage all that data! Start with 1P (first-party) Data – information on your customers you already have, because you’ve been collecting it through their activity on your website, engagement with your emails, and with your social media. Augment that with 3P (third-party) data where it’s helpful, such as demographic and firmographic information from other sources, as well as intent signals. Analyzing this data allows you to fine-tune your messaging into automated programs for that audience.

Next, empower sales: help them optimize their sales ability by feeding them higher quality leads through the front-end of the sales pipeline. Integrate your marketing automation platform to your CRM so your salespeople are equipped with the data that can help move a prospect closer to a sale.

In the process, you can make your other systems better. It’s a virtuous cycle when you empower sales automation, account-based marketing, and social with what your marketing automation platform knows about your customers. The more you lean into your data, the richer your output will be.

Accelerate Conversions and Create More Personal Programs

These days, it’s not a good idea to “set it and forget it” with your marketing automation.On the other hand, moving away from “dedicated send” emails to automated processes is crucial. How? By aligning your automated programs with the marketing outcomes you want to achieve. The content you send for outreach, nurture, and re-engagement programs should vary in tone and content.

Rev up your marketing with a focus on personalization and segmentation. To effectively send more personalized communication, you need to be able to segment your audience based on their characteristics. Put pedal to the metal by aligning nurture streams around the buying lifecycle. Know if your customer is ToFu, MoFu, or BoFu (top, middle, or bottom of funnel), and treat prospects in each part of the lifecycle differently. For instance, those closer to the top of the funnel haven’t demonstrated enough genuine interest for product-focused messages. Hit them with more generalized content. Once they progress further, they’ll be more receptive to pushing harder towards a sale.

Then keep fine-tuning. Analyze, test, iterate – don’t expect to get it right the first time. Nobody goes from zero to 100 miles an hour in one step. Track how your programs are performing, and test new content, subject lines and CTAs.Learn about Best Practices for Email Marketing Automation here.

Get In the Driver’s Seat with Personalized Engagement

Use demographic data to drive content. A prospect’s behavior score and activities should drive the next step in your automated platform: if they’re not engaging with your content, keep them in ToFu and handle accordingly.

Remember, there’s no need to stay in one lane – reach your prospects through multiple channels: email, social and SMS, and remember to personalize your content with dynamic content.

It Takes a (Pit) Crew

You want to hand over the best leads to your sales team. But how do you optimize scoring leads?

Learn how to assess demographic and firmographic scores and see how they match up with your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Use behavioral scoring to measure engagement and readiness, to help sales prioritize and follow up with relevant conversations. Shifting gears, how does AI help you to improve efficiency and scale? Read about Act-On’s vision for AI and marketing automation here.

Keep an Eye on the Dashboard

Take steps to tweak and improve. Use your reporting to analyze what is and isn’t working, then take an intentional approach to making changes. Continue to iterate and test, but always measure!

It may seem like you’re on the right track, but are you actually driving sales conversions? Is the marketing fuel you’re spending leading to ROI?

Kick Into High Gear

Watch the full webinar and learn more tips from experts on how to use marketing automation to optimize your marketing and outpace the competition. You can also explore the full transcript below.

Webinar Transcript:

Joe Roberts:

Hello everyone and welcome to today’s webinar. I’m Joe Roberts from Team Marketing Profs, and I’ll be your moderator for today’s event that is Fast and Furious, how to optimize your marketing automation to outpace the competition. Thank you for being here. But before we get started, I have a few housekeeping items to go over. If you lose audio or visual, simply exit out of Zoom, come back in. That should solve most problems. The chat feature is available at the bottom of your screen. It’s a great way to network and meet new people and to add your general comments to. But if you have any questions, please add them to the q and a, that way we don’t lose them in the chat. So we will hear from our speakers and then we’ll go into our Q&A session, and I’ll be asking as many of those questions as possible.

We’ll get to as many as we can within the time allotted. Now I’d like to take a minute to thank Act-On for sponsoring today’s broadcast. Act-On Software provides solutions that empower marketers to engage targets at every step of the customer lifestyle, allowing marketers to build smart and effective programs to grow their businesses and generate higher customer lifetime value. Now onto the official speaker introductions, I’m excited to introduce Jeff Day and Mike Felix. Jeff Day is senior VP of marketing at Act-On and has 25 years of experience working on go to marketing, go to market teams and manage managing all functions of marketing. He’s passionate about building highly productive teams and driving growth in tech companies. Mike Felix is a solutions consultant and sales engineer at Act-On Software, a former engineer at Lockheed Martin and NASA. He brings a decade of experience helping marketers learn that marketing and sales success shouldn’t be rocket science. All right, you’re here for Fast and Furious, How to Optimize your Marketing Automation to Outpace the Competition. Jeff and Mike, the floor’s all yours, take it away.

Jeff Day:

Thank you, Joe, and thank you for everyone joining us today for this optimizing. So this is an optimizing class. We were told to bring the pro tips. That’s why I have Mike here. He’s the pro. I’m just in the lofty towers, but this is a sort of 300 level, 400 level targeted topic in terms of optimizing. So this is not 1 0 1 how to get started. We’re trying to bring you practices that we’ve seen our customers do and we follow ourselves that have really helped to optimize. Oh, I’m on the wrong screen and it’s not advancing. There we go. So you already met us, so we do have fast and furious theme.

Mike Felix:

Little bit. You got to share your screen.

Jeff Day:

Oh, thank you, Mike. Thank you, Mike. Rookie move. All right, let’s see if this works better.

Mike Felix:

All right, there we go.

Jeff Day:

Awesome. I saw the screen. I didn’t know why everyone else can’t see it. Thank you for that. We do have this fast and furious theme, so you’ll see some references to that throughout. We’ll try to keep it a little fun and light straight roads are made for fast cars, turns are made for fast drivers. So you guys are the advanced drivers today, quote by the famous rally car driver calling McRay. I won’t really spend time, I’m not a big fan of reading the agenda, but like I said, this is sort of circuit tips on how to optimize and we’ll follow the agenda that was published to you. I wanted to start out with a poll kind of to set the stage of where everybody is or is feeling like they are in maximizing the potential of their marketing automation platform. Joe, can you help us? There we go. So do you feel like you’re using your marketing automation platform to its full potential? Please pick one.

We got the numbers coming in here. I don’t know if everyone can see the numbers. Let me see. C nnn, my magic ai, C n N driven reports. Tell me. With 72% of participants responding, we’ve got pretty clear winners around, not really closely followed up by somewhat, so not too many people falling into the definitely camp, which is probably why you’re here today. Kind of makes sense. It goes, all right, how do I close that out? And it keeps popping back up. There we go. So let’s keep moving. There we go. What we’re hearing, Mike, you want to lead us through these industry stats?

Mike Felix:

Yeah, yeah. So first and foremost, great to be here. Excited to have this discussion with you guys. To be honest with you. We put that pull out, but we kind of knew what’s most of the answers would be. We’ve seen a lot of data come in through various sources. One of them being Gartner. They identified that businesses are utilizing less than 50% of their marketing automation capabilities. And there’s also another stat to show that less than 50% of organizations that have certain marketing automation tools are not even leveraging them. So a lot of data around the utilization of certain platforms. But what we’re noticing, the title of this presentation is optimizing your marketing automation to outpatient your Competition. There are the other 50% that are, so we want to you with ensuring that you get the most out of this information and you’re outpacing your competition. 80% of marketing automation users see improved lead generation and 77% see more conversions. Marketer, automation users experience a full hundred and 51% increase in qualified leads. 63% of customers are outperforming competitors with help from marketing automation. To be honest, we have about 50 other data points that we could present, but the point here is that there’s evidence to show that what’s happening within this marketing automation space is having a positive impact on your business from a revenue standpoint, but it’s up to you to lean into it.

Jeff Day:

Absolutely. Right? Yeah, thank you for that, Mike. Yeah, and so it is good that, you know, have the marketing automation platform, but definitely getting used out of it using its features is key that getting outpacing your competition and getting full benefit from it. So let’s dive into that. So of course this isn’t, we don’t do this just to score leads or tot our own horn on how well our emails are performing. It’s really with the business outcomes of driving more qualified leads to get those to sales so that sales is focusing on the highest potential pipeline opportunities, convert more leads to revenue, giving them the giving sales, the signals and the activities and all the information to improve their performance throughout the pipeline. And then from a marketing perspective, to optimize really your R o I so optimize your spend and your effectiveness, focusing, getting the most out of all the inbound leads, outbound prospecting and nurturing those leads into successful pipeline opportunities.

So let’s dive into the meat of how we’re going to help you leverage your marketing automation solution and maybe tune up some of the areas where you are leveraging it. Oh, it’s a build slide. Awesome. So first and foremost, there’s a lot of solutions in the MarTech landscape right now. And if you’re like us, you probably have a lot of marketing technology across the board. Marketing automation tends to be the foundation and the center of the MarTech universe, but you do want to leverage all of these different systems to really make your engine hum at high performance. And we’re going to talk a little bit more about some of the different ways that you can take advantage of these different systems and make your marketing automation platform work at a higher level. Really, the big message is leverage all that data as a marketing automation platform.

You have all the one P, that’s first party data. That’s the data that you’re collecting as a brand about your customers. And through marketing automation, you get their activity on the website, their engagement with your emails, if you’re leveraging s m s, social media, all of the programs and leads that hopefully you’re bringing into your marketing automation solution. All of that creates this wealth of information about what your customers are doing with you and how they’re engaging and really take advantage of that. And then of course, augment that with third party data where it’s helpful. So we bring in a lot of demographic and firmographic information from third party sources because we’re not asking that of our customers as they come in, as they fill out forms or as they engage. So let’s augment that so we know more about our customers as they come in.

And then more and more we’ve got all these wonderful sources of intent signals, third party intent signals that say, Hey, this company is researching these topics a lot. How can you use those intent signals to not only improve your lead scoring, but guide how you want to engage with those prospects as they come in? And that leads to the next point, which is really about increase your relevance to your audience via targeted content and aps. The more about the audience, what topics they’re searching on, the titles the companies are coming from, the industries they’re coming from, you can then tune your content to that audience. So it’s the way you want to speak and the content that you want to provide to a VP of marketing is very different than say an email specialist or a marketing ops person who might be very interested in the systems and the technology and the analytics less about strategy, that sort of thing. So you can use all that data that you have to create automated programs. Sorry, when we say ap, we mean automated programs, the sequenced email programs or sequenced content programs that you set up through marketing automation and you can personalize and fine tune those aps to your audience. Mike, do you want to talk a little bit about the next couple steps?

Mike Felix:

Yeah, no, absolutely. Before I jump into those extra steps, I want to pause for a second to say that even throughout all of this information that a key thing here as you listen to us and what you take away from this presentation is to make sure you explore, turn over every stone, make sure that you understand what the benefit can be from you even having this data. Years ago, we did not have the technology to have this data. So there’s a duality here to technology for one, tech created a lot of noise, two, tech C created a lot of opportunity. So the companies that lean into understanding how to leverage this data to deliver a message at the right time is very important. Okay, so Mark Mar, we’re going to explain later that marketing automation is far more than just what I would say some people consider to be like an email marketing platform, but there’s a lot of depth to this information that we want you to explore even after this short presentation here.

So when we reference journeys, there’s a conversation that there’s a conversation that’s held with anyone who has any type of intent on prospecting or what’s the word, showing interest in your offerings. And marketing automation enables you to have that conversation without expending certain types of resources, but moving that to when it actually matters. So when we start speaking about empowering sales, the best way to empower sales is to give them the opportunity to do what it is that they need to do, which is sell. They need to be able to optimize their sales ability and their output by ensuring that the front end of that pipeline was done well. So by integrating your marketing automation platform and any C R M that you’re using, you’re able to have your salespeople commence that conversation with enough insight so that they know what to say, how to say it, and they have an angle towards being able to move that prospect closer to a close. When we say making other systems better, empowering your sales automation, your account based marketing, your social, what we’re referencing is the fact that the more you lean into leveraging this data, the richer the output would be. All right, and we’re going to lead into some details here in a moment, but I’m hoping that you’re grasping the fact that we have access to more, while we have access to more. There’s also a lot of noise, but we have to make sure that we’re leveraging it in the right way.

Jeff Day:

Yeah, I love the way you put that, Mike, about making your interactions richer with the audience, really, because certainly as one who gets a ton of prospecting emails and calls and everything, somebody who can come to me with a targeted message that already understands what I’m interested in based on whatever I’ve been researching, that’s the stuff that I’m going to engage with, and that’s what we’re trying to accomplish. At the end of the day, we want to engage on a one-to-one conversation with our target audience. And so if you can make that conversation more rich along the topics that customer is interested in, that’s the name of the game. All right, our second poll, how many active automated programs or whatever you want to call them, do you have? So these are programmed automated sequences of either emails, emails and calls, social media messages, whatever you have, but

Mike Felix:

Funnels is a word that many have adopted as well. Funnels, some refer to them as campaigns.

Jeff Day:

Campaigns could be. Yeah. So we got some answers coming in. Let’s see, I’m waiting for the numbers. So we got 62% of participants. It’s a fairly good distribution, I think is Mike, can you see this? Can everybody

Mike Felix:

See? Yeah, I can see it. And it does, again, love the inputs. There is a certain level of predictability to these inputs. The majority of people are none. Each email is a single dedicated send. We’re hearing that a lot. So we’ll be touching on that.

Jeff Day:

Yeah. Well, this is good to understand our audience too. We’ve got a lot of people who are doing still sort of dedicated email approach, clearly with marketing automation that have one to five or six to 10 set up, and then definitely some people who have explored and made maybe more sophisticated and more targeted approaches. So great, we’ll dive in a lot more here. Thanks for sharing that information. Great. So here’s where we’re going to dive into automated programs. Lot of information on this page, so we’ll take some time on this. This is probably our richest topic in this webinar. Really important to think about how you’re leveraging your email, your automated programs, your campaigns to get the most out of them. And while it takes a little bit more to set up these multi-touch campaigns and think about who you’re targeting and building your lists and all that, it really pays over the long run, both in terms of your ability to engage in interesting conversations with your prospects and buyers, nurture them to a qualified lead and a more engaged buyer.

And then to scale what you can do as a marketing automation, because once you set it up, you can, we don’t want to say set up, forget it, because we do actually want you to go back, but you’re not doing a dedicated send every time you want to engage with a customer or send a piece of content. So one of the tips that I really like to do, and I found very effective is to not all campaigns, all outreaches, all communications with your customers are the same. And think about what you’re trying to do as an outcome and create automated programs appropriately that. So one way I think about them is, you know, have outreach emails. Those are kind of your prospecting, your first touch. Maybe you got a list from somewhere, maybe you got a bunch of opt-ins from an event, but they didn’t really engage with you.

So how do I reach out to them and try to drive interest as more of an awareness top of funnel type of activity. Then there’s the classic nurture of, which was a cornerstone of why marketing automation was created and nurturing is like, okay, I got to lead, but it’s not a marketing qualified lead yet. They haven’t yet kind of raised their hand and said, oh yeah, I want to talk to sales. So how do we nurture them and educate them and engage with them more and lead them down the buying cycle? So nurture those first touch inquiries to get them to become M qls. We’ll talk a lot more about that. It’s kind of going to be the core of what we talk about. And then what my team and I talk a lot about is as re-engagement emails. So this is the database marketing.

They’ve already gone through the nurture sequence or the outreach, they never made it to MQL or maybe they made it and got sent back, but this, you want to stay in front of them, keep them warm, stay top of mind with them so that when they do get back into a buying cycle, they recognize you. They’re like, oh yeah, I really like the content for our case that Act-On has been sending. I want to talk to them. I’m ready to engage now. So this is the keep warm, and each of those have a very different campaign structure and you’re going to be sending them different content. I am a strong advocate for building nurture programs for all inbound lead types of campaigns. So I think most people do ’em for paid for lead type of programs, content syndication type stuff, p p c, webinars, events.

But really sometimes, and I’ve seen this a lot, an event might get a follow up like, Hey, thank you for talking to us at so-and-so event, and that’s it. Or do a demo. And that’s a pretty big jump from picking up a t-shirt at an event to saying they want a demo. So can you create a more sophisticated email sequence that says, Hey, as a reminder, here’s kind of what we do and what we’re all about. If you want a quick hit video demo, go check this out. Or go check out our website and check out this. Give ’em a little bit more to chew on. Give them some next piece of content that’s a little more advanced. Maybe something about how to optimize their email programs and help them, educate them on what you do and what value you can deliver to them. And then maybe the last thing in the sequence would be, hey, if you’re interested, contact us for a quick demo. So in that way, every inbound lead is treated more than just a one-time hit. You know, either make it or you don’t, but you build an automated program to help educate them and bring them farther down the buying cycle.

I’ve been talking a lot, Mike, do you want to take over?

Mike Felix:

Yeah, absolutely. I’ll definitely lean into these next few points here. One thing I want to emphasize though is some of the words that we’re using in this presentation optimize accelerate, and we are using the word automated, so I want to speak on that for a second and then lead into these other points. You can do the right thing the wrong way. You can also do the wrong thing the right way. The aim here is to get as close as possible to doing the right thing the right way. So I saw a question in the chat that said, how do I calculate ri? You have to have some expectations on what you’re targeting, and then the focus here is to optimize and then accelerate. Okay? So as you’re developing these programs, as you’re thinking through how you want to engage with these prospects, you have to realize that you’re not going to get this a hundred percent initially starting out the gate.

The purpose of these marketing automation platforms and these programs is to be able to, over a period of time, optimize and get closer and closer to realize whether or not your expectations were feasible or whether or not you should do more to get closer to what you expected and get that return that you’re expecting. A lot of dynamics around that conversation, but we’ll cover some of that later. This point here, personalization through segmentation is huge because you have to ensure that you’re speaking the right language and you have the right message to certain individuals based off of where they are in their buying cycle, what they’re interested in, what problem they may be solving, what they’re looking to address, and how they’re framing their perception of your business and what you’re offering. So personalization is huge, and being able to put various contacts and leads and prospects into different segments based off of what they’re characterized by is very important to be able to automate those programs to them aligning your nurturing around a buying life cycle.

And I know some of you may be familiar, a lot of us marketers we’re using these terms, tofu, mofu, bofu, this top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel. Irrespective of what industry you’re in, you have a funnel, you have a funnel, there is going to be a certain level of volume that’s going to be coming into that life cycle, into that pipeline. I’m sorry, that pipeline that you’ve created for your business and some are going to fall out. And then there’s going to be more that’s in the middle of your funnel, middle of your pipeline, and then some are going to fall out. And then at the bottom of it, you’re going to have those prospects that are really close to becoming a customer. Those are individuals that you’re, you’re going to nurture them a little bit differently than the ones that just engaged with your brand. So you have to align your nurturing around what that life cycle looks like for your business. And this takes analyzing, testing, iteration and fine tuning. You’re not going to get it right the first time. I have yet to find anyone over a decade of marketing, running multi-million dollar advertising as advertising campaigns. I have yet to find anyone that got it the first time they optimized. I mean, apple doesn’t even get it right the first time. They optimize, they analyze, they test, they iterate, and then they fine tune.

Jeff Day:

Yeah, and that’s great. And as I’m hearing you talk about all this, and maybe this is a lot, particularly for people who are still in the dedicated email mindset, maybe this feels overwhelming. It doesn’t have to be one step at a time. You can start by creating a few nurture emails and maybe segmenting ’em by industry if that’s what you think is probably most effective. Or maybe you start by building what’s the next inbound campaign that’s coming in, build a nurture sequence off that and just kind of continue to build on it as you time. It doesn’t have to be going from zero to a hundred miles per hour in one step. This can be very iterative and as Mike says, go try something, measure it, analyze it, think about it. Could I do better? Could I do better here? Maybe there’s better content, maybe there’s better segmentation and personalization I can do, and then improve on that and build out the next one with that learning. So it can be a very iterative step.

Mike Felix:

And if I may, one point before we leave this slide, overall within a marketing automation framework or methodology, the point here is to be able to feed your tofu, to feed your tofu more without losing capacity. So marketing automation platform enables you to feed more volume into your tofu so that it can do what it needs to do so that more qualified leads make it down to your bofu. I see Roanna in the chat said, lol, I didn’t know what those acronyms were, so I’m glad you learned something. If you leave with anything, you know what those acronym, those acronyms mean?

Jeff Day:

Yeah, yeah, that’s absolutely right. And that gets to scale. It really does help you do more with less. You can handle more inbound, you can get more top of the funnel stuff going and actually create more bottom of the funnel M QLS with less effort. So little case study here, again talking about top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel. At one point we reorganized our automated programs to align to tofu, mofu, bofu segmentation. And this is really with the mindset of saying, Hey, we know top of the funnel, they want more value add, educated, lighter touch information, best practices. Have you thought of this? What’s the impact of ai? It’s less demo and total cost of ownership and case studies and stuff. So how do we start to align our content thinking about our first engagement with a customer, leading them down a funnel, bringing them into a middle of funnel automated program based on the activity that they do with us.

So they only get there if they click and read some and download some content and do some things that we think suggest that they’re actually ready for the next level of content. We had incredible results from this. So we took 23 different individual programs and still with personalization and dynamic content and stuff so that we were speaking to our intended audience, but then aligning it to a tofu, mofu, bofu state, and I mean, look at our open rates we’re 53, 23, 60 9%, 62% are clickthrough rates top of funnel. Not surprising, they’re top of funnel, that’s by definition they’re not quite as engaged. So our clickthrough rate was not great. But then the ones that graduated into mid-funnel and bottom funnel, we had these amazing click-through rates. So overall we were able to improve our open rates from 25% to almost 60%. Our click-through rate from 1.32% on average to almost 32% on average. This really changed the performance of our email programs. And again, depending upon where you are, if you’re starting out with just a few programs, great, I would encourage you to think about how even if you don’t do sort of this level of programs aligned this way, but if you think about the content you’re delivering as top of funnel and then more engaged type of content as people work through their sequences, I think it’ll be very effective for you.

Mike Felix:

And one thing, oh sorry,

Jeff Day:

Should I go back?

Mike Felix:

Yeah, really quickly. I was just going to add, and again, this adds some depth to what you’re seeing here. You’re seeing data around email, but there are other elements that’s happening within a marketing automation platform that’s contributing to these increased open rates. It is visits to webpages, opt-ins, to various landing pages, opt-ins, to webinars. There’s other activities that’s contributing to when these messages are going out to these individuals that’s contributing to these highly effective open rates. So as you can see under the demo track, these individuals have gotten to a point within our life cycle that they are highly interested in seeing or experiencing that demo. So their open rates are going to be high, but all of that required excellent timing in when they were getting those messages. So just wanted to add that.

Jeff Day:

No, that’s perfect. That’s a very good point to make. What drives people from tofu to MOFU to more engaged states within our system is all of the activities off the website, off of email, off social media, off of downloads, form fills, everything that we do on track.

Mike Felix:

And just to address even with that, and we’ll jump to the next slide, the statement around the MQL slash funnel is dead. It’s not that anything is dead, it’s just that the qualifiers are changing. What’s moving people to actually buy those contributors, those elements are changing, so it’ll never die. It’s just that bar that you have to adjust to make sure that you’re more effectively selling. That bar is moving now that people are buying differently.

Jeff Day:

Yep, good point. So personalized engagement, I think this is just maybe hammering home some of the points that we’ve been making to support the previous slides. Demographic data is about the person, so title, what company they’re with, things like that. And that can be in enhanced with firmographic data. How big is your company? Revenue size, employee size, where it’s located, industry it’s in all of that. That usually drives the content that you’re going to deliver, whether it’s industry specific or title specific. The behavior score then is based on the activities that they do with you, as Mike was talking about through your website, through responses to email, click throughs, form fills, content downloads, social media responses, anything like that that drives triggers in both the automated programs. How do you get them to the next step or bring them lower into mofu, bofu and also drives their overall lead score with you. And as Mike said, this is multichannel. It’s not just about email, even though we seem to, that’s the core of what marketing automation have done, but we have expanded to include s m SMS and social media and web responses and forms and web pages, landing pages, all this stuff. So you can really personalize all this content, not just with first name, last name, but really dynamic content, dynamic images, dynamic content blocks within an automated program to personalize to the demographic, the title, the industry, all that.

Mike Felix:

Absolutely.

Jeff Day:

And the outcome is the Glen Garry leads. So yes, I’m aging myself by referencing Glen Garry, Glen Ross, but it is a great movie for any of you who haven’t seen it this out, the qualified leads, these are the really good mql. We want to pass the good golden leads to our sales team, so they’re very effective in using their time to go after the most promising leads and opportunities. So this is really the outcome of why we do all this.

Mike Felix:

And for those who do understand that reference, the whole ABCs in the movie, it’s always be closing because that was the generation that they were in. It was you call conversation, you figure out how to close. Now nowadays it’s more always be converting. There’s different layers to what you’re getting people to commit to or to convert on. So that also ties into how you would be adopting your philosophy around market automation.

Jeff Day:

Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, you don’t have to close on Monday one, just get ’em to take the next step with you, just the next step and then the next step. And then the next step,

It takes a fit crew, advanced lead scoring for sales. So this is now shifting over another part of your marketing automation solution. Talking about lead scoring. Again, as we’ve said, the goal is to hand over the best leads. The Glen Gary leads to sales. Again, we leverage, and I think the sort of advanced thinking is thinking about a demographic slash firmographic score that is based on who the person is, the title they carry the industry, they’re from the size of the company. We have developed our own I C P, our, my gosh, it’s been so long, I don’t even know what it stands for anymore. Ideal customer profile. We talk about ICP all the time. And so your ICP for, if people who are unfamiliar with that term is taking a step back with the business and saying, Hey, who do we want to be selling to?

What’s the ideal customer look like based on company size industries that we’re really successful selling to, maybe activities that they do if you’re in a more transactional business, whatever it is that you can do to segment and profile that customer. And then having that drive how you want to set the demographic firmographic portion of your score. And then using the behavioral elements, all of the activity that they do with you that we’ve talked about. And you can score each one of those. I don’t actually know, I’m, I’m going to guess a little bit here, but it’s usually small points for engaging with you on your website. Maybe a P P L lead where they downloaded some content is five points, but filling in a form to get a demo is 50 points. That gives them an automatic score to MQL and away we go. So you vary your score based on the engagement points that the customer is doing with you in some sort of smart logic to say, Hey, the higher value, the engagement shows a greater level interest.

They’re farther down the buying lifecycle with the end goal being like demographic score plus behavior score will get them to the magic line of mql. And it’s, it’s all moving, it’s all independent, it’s all custom for who you are and how you want to set up the score. And it’s really a matter of balancing the score versus the bar. And here too, it’s just iterate, iterate, iterate until you feel like you’re pretty close. It’s never perfect because there’s always going to be outliers, but just keep iterating and playing with it until it’s close. And then using that to drive not only your automated programs, but then when do you actually turn it over to sales? Sorry Mike, I talked to that whole slide.

Mike Felix:

No, no, this is good stuff. I mean, this is really good stuff. Just carrying on this conversation around scoring, this also leads you to identify different ways to develop your marketing assets as well. So you being able to sort of quantify who is, who’s farther along within their journey is important to your sales conversation, but also looking at that data and scoring them based off of what’s contributing to their readiness. There are just within our business, we organized our website based off of what psychological pursuits someone may have when they’re thinking about adopting market, adopting marketing automation or what other contributors they have. So an example would be what other competitors or what other platforms have they seen? Well, we’ve created content around addressing how we differ from those other platforms. So when we look at not only one score, but what, when we also look at their behavioral pattern, we’re able to see, well, Susan got to the website, the first page she went to was pricing.

So when my salesperson has a discussion with them, most likely I think pricing may be something that’s going to be a high on her consideration when she’s choosing a vendor. But then the next thing that she went to was, well, how does Act-On compare to Marketo or HubSpot or some of these other platforms? Seeing which pages were visited enables our sales team to understand what competitors or what type of conversation we need to have to differentiate us from what they may be thinking already. So all of this, again, it takes iterations, it takes making changes here and the data you get from it contributing to changes over here on the website, on the content side, on the social publishing side, it all works together to, it’s all orchestrated to help you with building your revenue.

Jeff Day:

Yeah, that was absolutely right. Thank you for sharing that. All right. You want to talk about ai? AI

Mike Felix:

Is yes, yes, yes. And again, I know we’re throwing out acronyms. I doubt there’s anyone on this webinar that does not know what AI stands for. If you don’t know what AI stands for, it stands for artificial intelligence. But just know this, it stands for artificial intelligence, right? So as you’re hearing a huge movement about ai, this AI that ai, AI does not replace the fact that you need human intelligence. You need that humanity to what you’re putting out there. But AI can enable you to track and do things that you just don’t want to do or not able to do. So from a standpoint of lead scoring, there are so many different dynamics to scoring that. AI is, I mean, we titled this the future, but we have already adopted predictive elements to leveraging AI, to scoring various leads based off of their sales conversion data, their behavioral data, the demographic and firmographic data and the technographic data, and having AI crunch a ton of data points and be able to provide us with some insight on who may have a higher likelihood to close and what that sales conversation should look like. So this is the future, but it’s only calling it the future because many of us or many companies have not adopted it yet, but it is here right now, especially in Act-On.

Jeff Day:

And we’re very excited about it. It will enable you to do a lot more efficiently. So as we can do AI driven, predictive lead score, AI driven predicted segmentation, audience analysis, we have our brand of content create is called AI create. It can write emails for you. So we are taking the approach that we really want to leverage AI to make you more efficient and effective. And so it’s helping you accelerate. As Mike said, it’ll never, well, I shouldn’t say never. Best practice right now is that it doesn’t completely eliminate, like you should take any of this and then apply the human intelligence, as Mike said, to make sure that content is what you want and the scoring makes sense and is right. But we do think that it’s going to greatly improve your efficiency and scale. All right, we’re getting close to the end of our time and we are getting close to the end of our presentation. One final poll. How often do you measure performance after activating a program? And this is important end cause I suspect that a lot of you measure performance, but how often do you measure performance and make changes to optimize based on that analysis?

And thank you for those who are still with us. We do have just a few more minutes and the answers are coming back in as I suspected, there’s not very many, rarely than ever. That’s good. I like to see that we usually measure performance but rarely have time to make optimization changes. That is true with a lot of us. And then yeah, this is, what do they call this, a W graph or something like that? 2.0 boy, I just went back to engineering school with the two point graphs and analysis. We got a bunch of other people most of the time do this. So good to see it’s on a lot of your minds. It is important of course to measure everything.

But then also the key to optimization, since this is an optimization conversation, is to take the steps to just tweak. It doesn’t have to be massive. You don’t have to change everything, but if you can change a subject line, if you can say, Ooh, I, we’ve got this new piece of content that I think would fit in really well here, let me swap that out, take a little bit of time to improve and tweak and iterate and then bring those learnings in. And that’s really the key to optimization is this continual tweaking. So use your reporting analytics, most marketing automation platforms, certainly our platform has a lot of analytics to help you analyze email performance, other automated program performance to do AB testing automated through the platform. You can dive pretty deeply into each individual email into the automated program as a whole. You can look at all of your content to see what’s performing best, take time to dive in and measure. And then my tip advice is to be very intentional about your experimentation and optimization and say, great, I’m going to apply these changes here and then I want to measure in a couple weeks certain timeframe what the changes were. Did that improve my performance? Great. Now let me take the learning of that one experimentation and apply it across other relevant aps or emails or social media posts or whatever it is.

And then of course, most important, and this is near and dear to VP of marketing here is like, okay, email performance is great, but really that’s a leading indicator to are we driving more conversions? Are we creating more M QLS out of our leads? Are those M QLS converting to more sales opportunities? What are my most effective channels and what’s my cost opportunity? One of the big things we talked at the top of our is how do you get more out of your marketing dollar? And so analyzing it in this way, you can say, okay, well where’s my lowest cost per mql, lowest cost per opportunity and let’s invest more in those areas to get higher roi.

Mike Felix:

Absolutely.

Jeff Day:

Mike, anything you want to add there?

Mike Felix:

And before we leave this, leave this slide just on the topic of analytics and testing and measuring, it’s key to make sure that you’re looking at your data and you’re analyzing things to tell a story in the way that it should be told to get you to those marketing objectives. So an example throughout this presentation, we’ve done a couple polls, right? First poll was, do you feel you’re using your marketing automation platform to its fullest, fullest extent? 53% of you said not really. Next question was, how many active programs do you have? 30 over 33% said none. Every email is single. And then last question was how often do you measure performance? And the highest one here is most of the time. So now if you would’ve just look at one of those questions that most of the time answer, I could mean something totally different if I didn’t already know that over 50% were not using the full capabilities of a marketing automation platform.

So when you’re looking at your sales, your marketing alignment, make sure that you are, you’re really leaning into analyzing your data the way that it should be analyzed so that you’re driving your sales outcomes. Because otherwise, just like someone mentioned Kumar, what should the ideal time be to optimize your learning curve so that it’s not repeated otherwise, you’ll be doing that a lot more. You want to create a cadence so that you are iterating at the right time and you’re iterating in the right way. And I don’t want to say hopefully, but it has to be progressive. All right? So just make sure you’re doing the right thing the right way.

Jeff Day:

This is why he’s the NASA engineer and I’m not. He’s the master of this. That’s awesome. Mike.

Last slide. And just to land this all and a success story we on, we have our marketing automation platform. We have customers, we work with agencies like the marketing guys to help our customers improve and optimize their performance. In this particular case, it was an engagement to help build custom and real-time dashboards, to analyze the multi-touch attribution, to help them optimize their performance, to do things like R O I analysis, which I know is a question that we need to get to. And we did do a lot of what we’ve been talking about today, not surprisingly leveraging, setting them up with behavior data, firmographic data from third party information that we pulled into our platform, helping them get richer data about who they’re driving, who they’re engaging with, building out more finely tuned and relevant automated programs. And then using the analytics that we built with them to measure, tweak and improve. And it really helped this, as the quote says, gives us all the data intelligence we need to execute on our lead generation strategy. So it really does pay off. It works. It is an iterative process. I hope we didn’t overwhelm anyone. We really wanted to provide a whole bunch of different tips that you can draw on the ones that you want to act on next,

Mike Felix:

Full pun intended, full pun

Jeff Day:

Intended, but if you’re sort of earlier in this process too, marketing automation platforms help you do this and can help you automate these programs. And so you just have to take the first step in building out a sequence or a couple of sequences and then just continue to grow from there. I think that’s all we have. We ran a little bit longer than we intended, but that’s to be expected because we’re passionate about our subject here and what we do, and we really want to help you optimize your programs. Do we have some time for q and a, Joe?

Joe Roberts:

I was going to say, if you’re willing to stay on for another minute or two, I think that we can get to a couple of questions. Sweet. Awesome. So I know that you answered a whole lot of them during the process of the presentation, but here’s one that came in towards the end. What should be the ideal time to optimize so that your learning curve isn’t coming in these big lumpy cycles?

Jeff Day:

Great question. I think we’ll probably all have our take, and I wish we could get my email manager on Mike on this one as well, but I think it’s one of those classic both. So as we said, every email, every automated program kind, everything you do, go back and visit it after an appropriate amount of time, measure it, see what’s doing well, see where you’re getting good clickthrough rates or bad clickthrough rates or good engagement, bad tweak experiment. That’s very iterative and doesn’t take a lot of time. And then sometimes if you feel like we showed our case study, we’re like, oh man, I want to do a full revision of how we’re doing our automated programs. We’re going to move more to a tofu mofu, bofu. That was a big effort, took a lot of energy with really surprisingly incredible results that we did not expect those good of improvements, but it had really good. So I think the answer is both when it’s appropriate, but absolutely do the iterative stuff.

Mike Felix:

And if I can add a point there to your marketing automation or just overall marketing, there’s going to be a lagging. There’s going to be a lag between how you’re measuring your marketing performance and how that translates into revenue generated and your sales performance. Certain companies are going to have a longer lag and certain companies have seasons. So if you’re in certain industries, you’re going to get a bulk of your sales during certain seasons. And you also know that when your prospects are looking for solutions, that also is going to be concentrated within certain seasons. So it’s really key to know what your sales timeline and seasons look like, what your life cycle looks like for a particular or your pipeline looks like for a sale. And then aligning your marketing at the front end of it so that you’re not, oh yeah, I clicked go on my marketing automation. Why aren’t my sales going up? It’s a matter of you knowing that there is a lag between what’s happening on a marketing end, the front end of your pipeline, and how that should translate a certain one quarter down the line, two quarters down the line, and then that’s when you’re really going to be able to get the most out of how you analyze that data.

Joe Roberts:

Okay. So one more quick question. Our team is pretty small. We don’t have a lot of resources. What do you recommend is our best first step?

Jeff Day:

Yeah, it’s a great question. We deal with a lot of customers who are sort of new to marketing automation, and that’s fantastic. My personal take, I’m sure my has, is start with what you can do. Journey of a thousand steps starts with the first step. So I’d say figure out who your I C P is. Figure out who you really want to improve your engagement with in terms of a segment or a buying audience, and create a few automated programs that maybe speak to different titles within that and line up some content and use that as a starting point. So if you’re coming from single email dedicated, use that as a starting point, see how that works, measure tweak. Then maybe you can go after the next segment of target audience that you want to go after and build. The nice thing is that it really does become a mechanism of scale, because once you get very efficient at building these things out and you can set ’em, they can run for as long as you want them to, and that gives you the scale to do more and more and more without each individual effort.

Mike Felix:

Ditto.

Joe Roberts:

Okay. Well unfortunately, we are at a time. This was a great in depth, lots of really important information. So many of us need. Thank you both for an amazing presentation and for answering so many of those questions throughout. Again, thanks to Act-On for sponsoring today’s presentation As a quick WI F Y I for the audience, just remember you exit Zoom, there’ll be a window that pops up the very short survey. We’d love to hear what you thought about today’s session. So thank you for joining us and we will see you soon.

Jeff Day:

Yeah, thank you everyone for attending. Thank you. Really appreciate it.

4 Benefits of Video Marketing That Will Make You Rethink Your Marketing Plans

Act-On — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 21:59:34 +0000

Customers want to view your content. It might not seem like it when your marketing gets passed over again and again with little to no engagement, but the problem isn’t you. It’s that customers are picky. They want to consume content in their preferred format, and if you miss the mark, it can be nearly impossible to cut through the noise. And, of course, one of the most preferred formats right now is video. The benefits of video marketing production are too good to ignore. Read on to learn more, and for some great video marketing case studies.

^{Producing your own video marketing content can yield many benefits for your brand. Photo by Brands&People via Unsplash}

People spend an average of 84 minutes a day viewing videos—almost an hour and a half. And that number is rapidly growing.

And do you know what else?

Consumers don’t just “like” videos. They love them, with 91% saying they want more videos from their favorite brands.

Why?

Video leverages the power of sound, vision, and storytelling to bring your products and services to life. Or as MarketingProfs explains it, video has the 4 Es, which are:

Engaging: We’re hardwired to pay attention to storytelling.
Emotional: Video provides an opportunity to trigger stronger connections.
Educational: We process video faster and retain it longer.
Empathetic: Viewers can see themselves in stories, helping to forge meaningful bonds and trust.

If you’re considering adding more video to your content strategy, here are five benefits of video marketing and some tips for successfully leveraging it.

Benefits of Video Marketing: Lead Generation

Leads .. who doesn’t want more of them, right? Sure, you’ve got plenty of marketing strategies you could deploy, but there is a really good reason to pull the lever on video marketing: It gets 66% more qualified leads annually.

Nice, right?

Plus, 93% of marketers say they’ve landed new customers due to videos posted on social media. Improved lead generation can be attributed to video content being educational and engaging and helping build trust and authority.

Benefits of Video Marketing: Higher ROI

Jay Baer of Convince and Convert recently quoted the old adage that states: “Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

92% of video marketers reported that video provides them with positive ROI
Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing 2023

Of course, we’re discussing marketing, but we could argue the same thing. Marketers diligently measure results, but it’s often difficult to figure out which strategy will give you the greatest impact for your spending. And the surest way to hedge your bets on a winner is to jump on a strategy that is already performing, which is why video marketing is so impactful.

For example, a survey found that 92% of video marketers report that video provides them with a positive ROI. And one of the reasons why, which we’ll discuss shortly, is engagement.

Benefits of Video Marketing: Improve Engagement

https://act-on.com/learn/e-books-guides/b2b-multi-channel-marketing

Video content, by nature, is highly engaging. It leverages the power of storytelling, instantly making your message more “sticky.” Research shows that the human mind is 22 times more likely to remember information when told in a story.

A fantastic example of a video marketing case study is GoPro leveraging video to discuss real-world issues that resonate with its target audience. The company’s videos have captured an audience of over 10 million subscribers on YouTube. They feature average people doing amazing things through user-submitted videos and campaigns.

For example, when the world was locked indoors during the pandemic, GoPro found a way to embrace it.

The outdoor-focused brand invited its audience to submit videos to their #HomePro challenge. The videos showed all the cool things people were doing indoors, and the top videos were awarded cash prizes.

And here’s something else to consider when creating videos. Any time you boost engagement, it has the potential to create positive impacts on SEO. When a user spends more time interacting with videos on your website, Google’s algorithm takes note, potentially viewing you as more relevant and worthy of rising in the search rankings.

Benefits of Video Marketing: Build Authenticity

Customers love authenticity. They want to feel like your brand is honest, authentic, and relatable, and video helps create that connection. Another great video marketing case study to consider is Everlane. It’s a brand that has developed quite the following thanks to its message of “radical transparency.” The company has adopted Instagram Stories as one of its main vehicles to convey this mission, building its customer base and engaging consumers.

^{Q&A-style videos are one of the easier formats for video marketing production. Try them to enjoy the benefits of video marketing. Photo by
visuals on Unsplash}

In its series “Transparency Tuesday,” staff members answered questions from their followers regarding the company’s mission, corporate responsibility efforts, and upcoming product releases. This strategy might be what is fueling the organization’s growth, since research shows that 88% of consumers report authenticity is a critical factor when deciding which brands they prefer.

Video Marketing Case Study: “Show” Rather Than “Tell”

The old quote “Tell me, and I will forget; show me, and I may remember; involve me, and I will understand” is at the heart of why video is so impactful.

A video can show and involve viewers through storytelling. For example, Columbia Sportswear is not only claiming that its products are designed for those who live an active lifestyle, but it’s also using video marketing to show you exactly what makes the company unique. The brand has created a variety of YouTube series, such as “Directors of Toughness,” to tell exciting stories that motivate its target audience to adopt an active lifestyle while also showing you how Columbia’s apparel and accessories hold up in extreme situations and climates.

^{Columbia’s “Directors of Toughness” series shows its apparel in action, but puts the content first, a great video marketing case study.}

Creating a Successful Video Marketing Production Strategy

Whether it’s your first time experimenting with video marketing production or you’re a seasoned pro, there are always ways for you to improve your efforts and enjoy the benefits of video marketing. Here are a few tips for creating videos that boost results.

^{Check out our video marketing production tips. Photo by Malte Helmhold on Unsplash}

Capture your audience’s attention. Don’t assume your audience will stick around until the end just because your video pops up in their feed. To keep viewers engaged and get your message across, ensure your video’s content captivates them right from the beginning. Storytelling is a great way to accomplish this task.
Create the right video length. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy when it comes to creating a great video, but there are some general length guidelines. Research shows that videos around two minutes long seem to get the most engagement. Therefore, keeping things short and sweet for your next video project might be a good idea.
Determine the best platform to showcase your video. Regarding video length not being one size fits all, not all platforms are created equal either. Think about what you are trying to accomplish with your video and the best place to reach your audience with it. For example, if you plan on live streaming a music festival, Facebook or Instagram Live might be the best place for you to get engagement. But if you’re creating a video customer success story, YouTube might be a better choice.
Realize that timing is everything. Did you know that the day and time can determine engagement levels? Statistics show that Tuesday between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. is the best time for B2B companies to get the most views. However, as with any rule, checking your analytics to see what time frames work best for your target audience is always a wise idea.
Don’t forget a call to action. Like other content marketing efforts, your video should include a call to action. You can ask your users to subscribe to your channel, view a product page on your website, or sign up for your email list. Just make sure to ask them to do something that encourages them to continue to engage with you in the future.
Leverage analytics and adapt your strategy. Once you’ve published your video, determine which videos your target audience engages with most. Which platforms are generating the most views? When are viewers dropping off? You’ll want to answer these questions for maximum ROI and to guide future content creation.
Use interactive elements. For example, in-video links, quizzes, and surveys can boost your video’s effectiveness and engagement levels.

Using Video in the Future

Successfully integrating more videos into your content marketing yields benefits, including helping to foster deeper engagement with your customers. But when creating content, it’s important to continually ask, “Why are we doing this?” and “Why do my customers care?”

Because at the end of the day, you’re in the business of solving pain points. And when you leverage video and storytelling to bring content to life, you can more effectively connect with your customers, make them feel understood, and build the loyalty and connection required to fuel better results.

Video marketing and a multi-channel strategy go hand in hand.

Do you want tips for making yours more successful? If so, we’ve got you covered. You can download the complete guide here.

Best Books on Marketing and Branding to Take Your Business to the Next Level

Act-On — Tue, 02 May 2023 22:47:20 +0000

If you’re looking to take your marketing game to the next level, reading the best marketing books can be an excellent way to gain insights, learn new strategies, and stay up to date with the latest trends in the industry. Sure, you can browse all day on social media and search for articles and white papers on search engines. But there’s something about sitting down with a book–even via your favorite e-reader–that helps you go deeper and absorb more information.

https://act-on.com/learn/e-books-guides/b2b-multi-channel-marketing

One way to stay current with new marketing books is to follow reputable marketing blogs, websites, and social media accounts. These sources will often share information about new and upcoming marketing books. You can also subscribe to newsletters from marketing publishers and authors, as they often announce new releases and offer exclusive content. Another way to stay up-to-date with the latest marketing books is to attend marketing conferences and events. These events often feature keynote speakers who are experts in the field, and they may share insights into new and upcoming marketing books.

Remember, the marketing industry is constantly evolving, and there are always new books and resources being released. By staying engaged with the latest marketing news and trends, you can be sure to find the best marketing books for your needs.

So get out your library card, head to your favorite local bookstore, or fill up your online shopping cart. We’ve compiled a list of some of the best marketing books to help you improve your marketing skills and drive more success for your business.

Best Books on Marketing

“Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert Cialdini

This book explores the science of influence and persuasion, providing practical insights into how to persuade others to take a desired action. The book covers six key principles of influence:

^{We’re gonna let you finish, but Robert Cialdini’s “Influence” is one of the all-time best books on marketing.}

Reciprocity: People are more likely to give back to those who have given to them first.
Social Proof: People are more likely to follow the lead of others similar to themselves.
Consistency: People are more likely to stay committed to a decision if they have publicly committed to it.
Authority: People are more likely to follow the lead of someone they view as an authority figure.
Liking: People are more likely to be persuaded by those they like and find appealing.
Scarcity: People are more likely to want something if they believe it is in short supply or scarce.

Cialdini provides numerous examples of how these principles work in everyday life, including in sales, advertising, and politics. He also offers practical advice on how to use these principles ethically and effectively to influence others. It’s a classic marketing book that is still highly relevant today.

“Contagious: Why Things Catch On” by Jonah Berger

This book examines the social factors that drive the spread of ideas, products, and messages, providing insights into how to create marketing campaigns that are more likely to go viral. It’s a must-read for anyone looking to improve their social media marketing skills. Berger outlines six key principles that make things contagious:

^{If only lead generation were contagious…}

Social Currency: People share things that make them look good to others.
Triggers: People talk about things that are top of mind or easily triggered by their environment.
Emotion: People share things that evoke strong emotions.
Public: People are influenced by what they see others doing in public.
Practical Value: People share things that have practical value or offer a solution to a problem.
Stories: People are more likely to share information if it is presented as a story.

Berger provides numerous examples of how these principles have been used in successful marketing campaigns and how they can be applied to make any idea or product contagious. He also emphasizes the importance of creating content that is shareable and focuses on the needs and desires of the audience.

“Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind” by Al Ries and Jack Trout

This classic marketing book offers a framework for creating a unique brand identity and positioning it in the minds of consumers.

The authors argue that in a crowded marketplace, it is essential to create a unique selling proposition that sets a product or brand apart from its competitors. They emphasize the importance of simplicity, consistency, and focus in creating a strong position, and provide numerous examples of successful positioning strategies from history, used by companies like Coca-Cola, Xerox, and IBM.

The book also covers the concept of brand extensions and the risks of overextending a brand, as well as the importance of understanding the customer’s perspective when creating a positioning strategy. It’s a great resource for anyone looking to develop a strong brand strategy.

“The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing” by Al Ries and Jack Trout

^{22 “immutable” marketing laws. Not included: You will always have 50% less budget than you need.}

This classic book outlines twenty-two rules or principles that are essential for successful marketing. The authors argue that these laws are unchanging and universal, and that companies that follow them are more likely to succeed in the long run.

Some of the laws covered in the book include:

The Law of Leadership: It’s better to be first in a market than it is to be better.
The Law of the Category: If you can’t be first in a category, create a new one.
The Law of the Mind: It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear.
The Law of Perception: Marketing is not a battle of products, it’s a battle of perceptions.
The Law of Focus: The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospect’s mind.

The authors provide numerous examples of successful and unsuccessful marketing campaigns to illustrate each law and explain how they can be applied in different situations. They also emphasize the importance of simplicity, consistency, and clarity in marketing messages, and the need for companies to be willing to take risks and innovate in order to stay ahead of the competition.

“Building a StoryBrand” by Donald Miller

^{“What’s your story?” If your brand can’t answer, pick up a copy of this one.}

This book provides a step-by-step guide to creating a clear and compelling brand story that resonates with your target audience and drives business results. Miller argues that customers are drawn to stories that are clear, concise, and relevant to their lives, and that businesses can use storytelling to create a strong and memorable brand message.

The book outlines a seven-step process for creating a compelling brand story, including identifying the customer’s problem, positioning the brand as the guide, and providing a clear call to action. Miller emphasizes the importance of simplicity, clarity, and consistency in brand messaging, and provides numerous examples of successful brand stories to illustrate his points.

In addition to the seven-step framework, the book also covers other topics related to branding and marketing, such as the importance of customer personas, the role of empathy in storytelling, and the need to focus on the customer’s needs rather than the company’s features.

https://act-on.com/learn/e-books-guides/b2b-multi-channel-marketing

“Digital Marketing Excellence: Planning, Optimizing and Integrating Online Marketing” by Dave Chaffey and PR Smith

^{This comprehensive guide is one of the best books on digital marketing.}

This comprehensive and practical guide to digital marketing strategies and tactics is suitable for both beginners and experienced marketers. The book provides a solid foundation for understanding digital marketing and developing effective online marketing campaigns that drive business results.

The authors cover a wide range of topics related to online marketing, including website design and development, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click advertising (PPC), social media marketing, email marketing, and analytics.

The book emphasizes the importance of developing a clear digital marketing strategy that aligns with business goals and objectives, and provides a step-by-step process for creating a comprehensive digital marketing plan. The authors also stress the need for integration between different digital marketing channels in order to create a cohesive and effective marketing campaign.

In addition to the strategic planning process, the book also provides practical advice and guidance on the implementation of different digital marketing tactics. The authors provide numerous examples and case studies to illustrate the concepts discussed in the book, and provide detailed instructions for measuring and analyzing the effectiveness of different digital marketing campaigns.

Even as social media platforms come and go, this book’s approach stands the test of time.

You may know Vaynerchuk from his social media presence. (You’d hope a social media expert like him would have a strong one). Vaynerchuk’s book, in refreshingly accessible language, provides a framework for creating effective social media marketing campaigns. The title of the book is derived from the concept of “jabbing” with valuable content on social media platforms, and then delivering the “right hook” of a promotional message when the time is right. Jab, Jab, Jab covers a wide range of topics related to social media marketing. Topics include: the importance of understanding the unique characteristics of different social media platforms, the need for storytelling and emotional connection in social media content, and the importance of measuring and analyzing the effectiveness of social media campaigns.

Vaynerchuk says marketers need to create content tailored to the unique strengths and limitations of each social media platform. He provides lots of examples of successful social media campaigns to illustrate his points. He also stresses the importance of engaging with customers and building relationships through social media, rather than simply using it as a promotional tool.

Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook is a practical and actionable guide for marketers looking to create effective social media marketing campaigns, emphasizing the importance of storytelling, emotional connection, and relationship-building in social media content.

“Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less” by Joe Pulizzi

^{Content marketing tips from a long time ago in a galaxy far away.}

Pulizzi provides a comprehensive guide for businesses looking to create and execute successful content marketing strategies. The book emphasizes the importance of creating high-quality, valuable content that meets the needs of your target audience. Pulizzi argues that by creating “epic” content that is both informative and entertaining, businesses can break through the clutter of traditional advertising and win over customers.

Throughout the book, Pulizzi provides numerous examples of successful content marketing campaigns, and provides practical advice for businesses looking to get started with content marketing. He covers topics such as identifying your target audience, developing a content strategy, creating a content calendar, and measuring the effectiveness of your campaigns. Epic Content Marketing provides practical advice and examples that can help businesses of all sizes develop and execute successful content marketing strategies.

“Conversion Optimization: The Art and Science of Converting Prospects to Customers” by Khalid Saleh and Ayat Shukairy

Saleh and Shukairy focus on the art and science of turning website visitors into paying customers. Conversion Optimization covers topics such as user experience, persuasive design, copywriting, and testing and analytics.

Throughout the book, Saleh and Shukairy emphasize the importance of understanding your target audience and tailoring your approach to their needs and preferences. They also provide numerous case studies and examples of successful conversion optimization strategies, which can serve as inspiration for businesses looking to improve their conversion rates. The book provides practical advice and actionable strategies that can help businesses of all sizes optimize their websites to improve conversion rates and drive more sales.

^{It’s not just a science. Social media can be an art, too.}

This practical guide to using social media for business and personal branding purposes covers a wide range of social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. It provides tips and strategies for building a strong social media presence, increasing engagement with your audience, and using social media to drive traffic to your website.

Kawasaki and Fitzpatrick emphasize the importance of creating valuable and shareable content, and leveraging the power of social media to build relationships with customers and prospects. In addition to practical tips and strategies, the book also includes numerous case studies and examples of successful social media campaigns, as well as insights from industry experts.

These are just a few examples of the best marketing books out there. By reading these books, you can gain insights into how to create compelling marketing campaigns, develop a strong brand identity, and optimize your digital marketing efforts.

Books are great and all, but are you looking for something you can read and digest a little quicker? Check out Act-On’s ebook, The B2B Perspective on Multichannel Marketing.

The Rebel Instinct Podcast episode 5: Leo Ochoa

Galen Ettlin — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 23:26:00 +0000

^{Inspired by his work as a wildland firefighter, Leo Ochoa founded Dorsum (dorsumtech.com), which produces spinal support mobility devices. He was discouraged from launching at the end of 2019 (holiday season), but decided to go for it anyway. A few months later, the world shut down for the COVID pandemic, but Leo was luckily up and running. Leo shares his inspirational and defiant journey, leaving behind the big corporate world of Phillips Sonicare and Columbia Sportswear to found his own company at a scary time.}

On every episode of the Rebel Instinct, our team sits down with rebels from across the marketing landscape to share stories about bold moves they’ve taken as marketers. Subscribe for more.

Galen Ettlin:
You are listening to the Rebel Instinct Podcast by Act-On Software for all the marketing innovators living outside the box. Hey everybody, I’m Galen Ettlin with Act-On Software and today we’re switching it up, spicing things up here. My VP of marketing, Casey Munk, who is usually here, is taking a breather, and so I’m joined today instead by Jennifer Blanco, senior customer marketing manager for Act-On. Jennifer, you have helped me so much to navigate this new space when I started a few months ago, so I’m really excited to have you here. Thanks for joining.

Jennifer Blanco:
Very happy to be here. Thanks so much, Galen.

Galen Ettlin:
Yeah, and of course our guest today is a friend of yours, Jennifer, Leo Ochoa, a designer and innovator who founded Dorsum, focused on mobility support devices, literally life-changing kind of stuff for people. Thank you so much for being here, Leo.

Leo Ochoa:
Absolutely. Thank you so much for the invitation. I’m excited to be here.

Jennifer Blanco:
Leo, it’s so great to see you. Thank you so much for accepting and joining. We actually have not seen each other in person for quite some time, obviously if there was a pandemic, but I always follow you on social and keep track of what you’ve been doing and what Dorsum has been doing and have been a champion of yours. So super excited to dive into everything today.

Leo Ochoa:
Thank you so much for the invitation as well. You’ve always been a supporter ever since I’ve known you of everything. I do all my projects and I was so happy when I got the invitation from you, so thank you again.

Jennifer Blanco:
You rock. Let’s do this.

Galen Ettlin:
See, that’s the kind of happy family stuff that I love. Alright, so Leo, for people who don’t know, tell us about Dorsum and what the tech does that you’re helping produce.

Leo Ochoa:
Yeah, so Dorsum literally means a reference to the back and the problem we’re solving is the issue of back pain, specifically lower back pain manifests in different ways for different people, but we’re starting with creating a device that inserts into apparel to stabilize the lower back of the human body and allow for movement to happen. So that’s in generic description. The technology in our first innovative product that we’ve launched to market is the Dorsum exo spine.

Video promo interview audio:
“What I love about the Dorsum back support is the curvature of the lumbar spine…”

Leo Ochoa:
If you think of a backpack without the pack, so basic lightweight harness that wraps around your back and supports your posture while giving you posture feedback,

Galen Ettlin:
That’s pretty amazing and I would imagine really helps people who are injured or maybe have other conditions where they need that extra support. Now you’ve worked with other companies, big ones, Columbia Sportswear, Phillips Sonica, and others. How did this journey come together for you though going from say, footwear and dental care to now these exo spines?

Leo Ochoa:
It really was just following my interest, which comes from art and design and solving real big life problems with Columbia. It was about designing footwear, being in product creation teams to help people be active, to enjoy the outdoors, just be more physically involved with nature. From there I learned I had a deeper passion for product creation, taking an idea to the design process development and then launching it to market. But I wanted to design more than just footwear. So I went back to school in LA and pulling from my inspiration from growing up outside of Portland, being a wildland firefighter and then tackling the issues of healthcare, we were giving the assignment to design innovative products for the future, to redesign what I believe a paramedic uniform should be with this built-in back support. That got me my job at Phillips Healthtech, pulled me up to Seattle and then I started designing healthcare products for dentistry but also health management, so categories that really elevated my design skills to solve for improving people’s health.

Galen Ettlin:
Talk about a journey and now you’re doing something that supports the body in other new ways. What inspired you to do that specifically?

Leo Ochoa:
It was a bit of ignoring the call until I couldn’t and then just responding to it. I had, coming out of design school, I had this concept that really attracted people’s attention. I got invited to go to Italy to present to a health and wellness conference and just hearing people say, this is great, I see the need for it, take it as far as you can, and then receiving emails from first responders and said, Hey, I saw this on your website, I think this can help me get back to work. How can I purchase one? At that time I learned everything about taking my design through the innovation process and creating a patent, and it was just the constant emails that made me think things differently and I decided I’m going to exit corporate life and launch myself into entrepreneurship and really learn how to bring this to life and all the resources I need to put together.

Jennifer Blanco:
Leo, I feel like, I mean I’m still so proud of you, but that’s so scary to leave something that is so comfortable and really follow your dream into the unknown. How did you navigate that entire experience to actually launch a real life company?

Leo Ochoa:
Yeah, scary is the best description because it’s fun and exciting to dream about it, and it’s really scary to take the first leap, I really had to prepare myself for a whole year and question myself, is this really the next step? Is this really what I want to do and what does it take not just resources, but internally? How do I need to change my mindset to respond to this? So I did spend about a year preparing myself, saving up so that I can reduce that fear and also starting to do mind mapping on how do I take the leap before taking it and then just learning how much can I learn from the next step so that I can take it and prepare myself the best I can.

Jennifer Blanco:
What is one of the key things that you did in all of your preparation that could help any of us looking to take a big step or a risk?

Leo Ochoa:
It really was weighing out the different fears because taking the leap was once in a sense, there’s a lot of fear behind it, taking a leap into the unknown, but I also had a fear and a worry deeper that made me think things differently, saying I also have a fear of not trying. I have a fear of not realizing my full potential, of not pushing myself more, getting myself out of that comfort zone and really responding to what I think is a call. So that fear of not trying and letting a dream slip out of your hands was bigger than taking a leap from the job I had that was very comfortable and not trying because I thought, okay, if I take the leap and fail, I have my skills, I have my passion, I can always get back into getting another job, but if I let my dream die, I just thought it was going to kill me from the inside and that slow, what do you call it, sadness of letting a dream slip out of your hands was the fear behind everything and it’s still what drives me today.

Jennifer Blanco:
Yeah. Well, thank you. I feel like that’s very inspirational and very relatable. I was just going to say, you all had things like that for me, it was leaving Portland and moving to New York and now I’m back in Portland, but if I wouldn’t have done that, I want to be who I am today. So I completely understand thinking through, okay, this is the Rebel Instinct podcast, so if you had to think through one thing that you would think is rebellious that you had to do in order to drive momentum and success or awareness for dorsum, what do you think that would be?

Leo Ochoa:
I started everything in 2017, kind of stealth mode, prototyping, designing, innovating, really taking big ideas and bringing them down to smaller portions that would be considered your MVP, the most viable product that you can launch in the market. Reduce cost, it took us two years to really design everything as minimal as it is now. And 2019, there was a huge growth factor that happened within myself and our team. We designed it so many different times and pitching, getting feedback, everyone was telling us because we were getting close to the end of the year. It was around this time that we launched and we took three months to prepare ourselves to launch via crowdfunding, and everybody was telling us, it’s the wrong timing. You’re too close to the holidays, you’re not going to have the biggest splash in the market. It’s going to be an uphill battle navigating through holiday marketing and you’re a startup, it’s going to sink your marketing budget.

And everyone was telling me, wait till next year. But I had this gut instinct, which I think now is that rebel instinct where you just feed off of your momentum and that’s what helps push through that fear. And I just had a feeling that no, we can’t wait. We’re going to lose the momentum and then we can’t let three months go by and start fresh next year, then it’s going to delay everything. We decided to do it anyway. Everyone was telling us to wait. But what ended up happening is, as we all know, beginning of 2020, the world changed, our production stopped, crowdfunding stopped everybody’s own fear, just elevated. Suddenly, had I not launched, I don’t know where I would be now. I probably would be preparing to launch now and would’ve lost two or three years. But the fact that I didn’t held back, I still got the team together, we continued forward is the ability that positioned us to where we are now

Galen Ettlin:
And what a wild kind of serendipitous thing for you to have internally to know now is the time because none of us could have predicted how 2020 was going to shake out.

Leo Ochoa:
And 2020 just changed everything. Seeing the next level of fear where we realized, oh my God, what have we done? We launched and then it felt like the momentum we were expecting, the wind was just taking out of our wings and we were starting to sink and manufacturing or development plans, everything was paused and everyone was trying to figure things out. We had to navigate all 2020, kind of more like in survival mode, just we had launch and now it’s like, okay, we need to just keep things going. It’s not the pretty launch we were expecting, but we need to just navigate through it, less visionary, less forward thinking, more like how can we navigate all these challenges that are coming to us suddenly so fast while everyone is doing the same thing? And I think that really made us stronger emotionally and it made us our mindset quicker to adjust to whatever the moment or the present brings.

Jennifer Blanco:
So I was thinking we could switch gears a little bit here, Leo. We are a marketing automation company. I am a marketer, and I’m sure that you work with plenty of marketers or have experienced working with plenty of marketers as you’ve been trying to get dorsum tech up and running and now as you’re trying to and continuing to have success and sharing it more broadly, broadly. So broadly from your perspective, what is it that you think marketers could do better to support their customers?

Leo Ochoa:
Yeah, I’ve thought about this a lot because learning from the way we do things and the way we communicate our message and we’re doing, we’re learning as we go. But what I see other marketers could do, especially with the times as they are now, is to just help reduce customer or client fear. We’re to are still in a moment where things are changing rapidly. At the same time, technology is advancing online shopping is accelerating, communication is becoming more confusing, and it just increases anxiety from our followers, our customers, our clients. And what I think marketing could do is just help reduce that fear and anxiety by being honest, authentic, and direct. With the messaging, I think we have less time to grab their attention. It’s moments where we experienced less inspirational and more helping them navigate, helping them make the best decision. And once they do decide to work with us, letting them know that we’re going to be there along the way, that we’re not going away, we’re going to help them use our product best, we’re going to help them along the way as well as they grow. Personally,

Jennifer Blanco:
I love what you said about calming fear, so thank you. I’m going to take that and write a little post-it note and stick it on my computer.

Galen Ettlin:
We could all do with a little bit less fear, right? Calm the nerves. I mean something that was probably pretty nerve wracking becoming a founder and c e o of your own company. But now looking at it kind of from the broader sense, a lot of more experience now, how do you view marketing differently today than you did when you were strictly a product designer?

Leo Ochoa:
Gosh, when I look at marketing, I think from all angles now, it’s more a holistic view. The face of the company, when I get in front and present or pitch, there’s still a lot of ideas in my head that I have to communicate to others that are helping me. So right now it’s more forward thinking in the sense that I’m connecting with clients. It’s more direct communication with our customers, our followers, and learning from them and learning what’s resonating with them, what words we’re using that help them in what words we’re using that pushed them away. When I was strictly a designer part of a design team, I felt disconnected from that. We were always kind of living in the future trying to design the next trend, the next breakthrough technology, and it was very much in the lab space and working with marketing directors, marketing teams, but we felt disconnected from the consumer. Now I feel very approachable that anyone with an idea can come to me. Our customers that they have an issue, they can bring it to me. And my job right now is to figure out how do we remove that friction? How do we make their lives easier? How do we make staying engaged with us more comfortable? And I like that part more because it feels more human, more personable.

Jennifer Blanco:
That’s kind of a theme that mentioned a couple of times now is that personal element and it can be a differentiator for your business. It’s something that stands out in the customer’s mind. I mean, we all know what good customer service is and what bad customer service is.

Leo Ochoa:
Absolutely we try to bring that element to our product too, because when people think of exo spines or exoskeletons, they think of very robotic, mechanical, very cold, and it’s like, no, we’re designing from a human perspective of movement of motion a more natural way. So we want that to communicate visually in our marketing, in our images, but also in our product, the way we describe it, the way it moves and in the words we choose, we want it to be friendly human and then just comfortable a lot warmer than what people might have in mind.

Jennifer Blanco:
And especially being in more of the medical field. Is that something that was one of your goals thinking through, I don’t want to have all of this medical jargon associated with my product. I want to be something that anybody would get as soon as they look at it or look at our packaging or something like that?

Leo Ochoa:
Yes. I think that’s what I learned a lot from being involved with Phillips in the different business sectors. It was really taking that fear of what people might have in mind of a doctor’s office or clinical space that starting developing as a child where it doesn’t feel like a comfortable, friendly experience. So it’s trying to remove that fear by letting them know we’re going to help you, but we’re also friendly and approachable, and we’re going to do it in a way that fits your lifestyle well. So yes, it’s a lot of reducing that anxiety and providing a new experience.

Jennifer Blanco:
That’s awesome. I love that. I think that that’s so great and such a good way to connect to your customers. So thinking through outside of work, Leo, besides going to SpaceX launches, what would you consider something that’s rebellious in your own life?

Leo Ochoa:
I learned this recently because of how the weather is changing here. It’s getting colder, it’s getting wet. We’ve been getting more rain. I still enjoy running in the rain. There’s times when I’ve been at my desk all day, I’m stuck in an idea. I’m cozy and comfortable, but it’s like I have this built up energy. I just need to release, and I stuck in the same thought process. I want to just go out and take a run and feel the rain and let it just wash my thoughts away. I want it to bring me back to reality. And I like that it’s hard to go from a cozy spot to out in the rain, but for me, I like it. Once you get passed through that uncomfortable feeling, you find a new comfortable definition of the moment and the environment. And a lot of people think that’s crazy. A lot of people, I

Jennifer Blanco:
Think that’s crazy.

Leo Ochoa:
Yeah, a lot of my friends wouldn’t join me, so I realized, okay, it might be a little bit rebellious or I’m going against the grain in this part.

Galen Ettlin:
I’m one of those born and raised Oregonians who does carry an umbrella despite everyone saying, oh no, we don’t do that. I do.

Leo Ochoa:
Yeah, I’m still the same way. I haven’t developed that habit of carrying an umbrella. Even with glasses, you get raindrops on. It’s really annoying. And even with the hoodie, it doesn’t block the rain. I still can’t bring an umbrella with me.

Galen Ettlin:
You’re more true Oregonian than I am.

Jennifer Blanco:
Is there a rebel in our culture, Leo, that you think needs to be celebrated or that you look to maybe get inspiration?

Leo Ochoa:
I’ve been focused on a lot of movies now. The one that I’ve been having my mind around this month is because they’re launching, it’s the new Black Panther movie and then also the new Guillermo del Toro Pinocchio story. I follow directors and I always appreciate how they take an idea and bring a team around it, build a set, create a new world, and just tell a new story. And the new Pinocchio story really has captured my interest because it’s claymation. And I started as an artist before I was a designer and innovator. And I feel like Claymation is one of those arts that it’s losing you. It’s losing traction because of the amount of work it takes. So everything is really sculpted in clay. Stop motion filming. And the new Pinocchio story tells a new way of looking at the story we all grew up with, but in a modern way, the images are more realistic, the trailer is amazing, and the fact that they spent three years building it, it just increases the amount of appreciation I have for them. So I always appreciate directors that are continuing to break the mold and not depend everything on CGI and digital explosions. Guillermo del Toro is always someone I feel is a rebel in the movie industry.

Jennifer Blanco:
That’s an awesome example, for sure.

Galen Ettlin:
Well, it is now time for our ‘honey, I don’t think so’ segment talking about what’s annoying you lately, and that needs to stop in either the marketing space or maybe in the space that you’re working in. Leo, you have 60 seconds to make your case. I’m going to be timing it, so I’ll just give you kind of a five second warning or whatever when you need to wrap it up.

Leo Ochoa:
Okay.

Galen Ettlin:
Whenever you’re ready, let me know.

Leo Ochoa:
Yes, I’m ready. There’s one that’s really been bugging me. A feature I don’t even know how to describe it that’s really bugging me is with YouTube. I love YouTube. Out of all the social media platforms is the one I use the most. I’m always listening to podcasts, watching videos, learning new things. But there’s something that they’ve done with the ads. It’s not the five second skip button anymore. There’s an ad that pops up as soon as that five second ticker starts. And if you’re not careful, you accidentally click on it. And a lot of the times I’m listening to YouTube and I have it in the background, have it in my hand, and I’m looking to skip the ad. I’m waiting for that five second, I skipped the ad and I accidentally hit the image and then the ad just keeps repeating, keeps repeating. I’m watching other videos, it’s the next day and I’m getting the same ad. And it’s annoying. And it adds to that frustration and anxiety. Anxiety. And it’s like, I didn’t mean to click on it. I don’t want to see it anymore. I didn’t want to see it the first time. Why does it keep following me? And it’s a pop-up feature that really disturbs my attention and I hate it and I want it to go away

Galen Ettlin:
I totally know what you’re talking about, and I totally agree. I hate YouTube advertisements in general, although I understand why they’re there. But yeah, just don’t create a bad user experience, right?

Leo Ochoa:
Right. Because in the middle of a video and then I’m in the middle of a conversation I’m enjoying, and then that ad I accidentally hit it and it disrupts my mood. And I feel like they do it intentionally because they try to have you upgrade to the premium subscription model that you don’t get the ads, but it’s like it’s annoying and makes we want to turn the ad on the app off and then relaunch it and it just adds more steps and anxiety. Anxiety and I hate it.

Galen Ettlin:
With that said, thank you to all of our YouTube viewers today on this video version of the podcast. Haha! Well, Leo, it has been so nice to connect with you. Thank you so much for joining us and sharing your really inspirational story, starting your own company and helping people out through the technology that you’re helping develop and design. And Jennifer, thank you to you for joining as well. It was really fun to have you on the podcast and hopefully we can have more of your friends on.

Jennifer Blanco:
Yes. This was so exciting. So great to see you, Leo, and so great to give some love to Dorsum Tech as well.

Leo Ochoa:
Yes. Thank you so much, Galen, it was great to meet you. And Jennifer, thank you for the invitation. It was great to catch up. We got to do it again.

Galen Ettlin:
Thanks everyone for listening to the Rebel Instinct Podcast. Be sure to follow Act-On Software for updates in upcoming episodes, and remember to always act on your rebel instinct. Until next time.

Check out the next episode of the Rebel Instinct Podcast with Heidi Bullock, CMO of Tealium and former CMO of Engagio and Global VP of Marketing at Marketo.

Protected: Email List Management Worst Practices (And How Best to Avoid Them)

Travis Wetherbee — Sun, 19 Apr 2020 20:49:00 +0000

Uncategorized Archives - Act-On

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The Rebel Instinct Podcast episode 5: Leo Ochoa

Protected: Email List Management Worst Practices (And How Best to Avoid Them)