Crafting a more holistic marketing approach based on better sales and marketing integration is helping Hewlett Packard Enterprise improve account based marketing (ABM) and better engage key target accounts.

In 2014, Hewlett Packard split into two divisions, HP inc., the consumer business, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), the B2B arm of HP. Adam Benaroya, senior manager of global media at HPE, notes that at the start, the new organization felt like a “$50 billion start-up,” because at launch it was building its marketing structure from scratch alongside some legacy systems inherited from the shared infrastructure.

“We needed to rethink the B2B adtech and martech stack and [consider] what we needed, particularly around ABM,” says Benaroya.

Many of the sales and marketing teams in the new organization had account lists they wanted to activate with digital marketing techniques, but because of the size of the company there were decentralized strategies in place which were somewhat limiting.

‘We had too many lists from too many parts of the organization,” says Benaroya. “Sales alignment wasn’t always realized at the start of programs, list quality was questionable and any one account might sit in multiple programs at the same time.”

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Having access to customer data is critical for ABM success, no matter how large an enterprise your marketing team is managing.

“You can’t expect to find customers with a promising lifetime value and [create] an ideal customer profile without accurate data,” wrote Kristina James, director of marketing at MRD, in a recent article for Chief Marketer. “Putting in the time to research and evaluate data with a fine-tooth comb will also improve your demand gen campaigns. Suddenly, all of your outbound marketing will have the potential to be more personalized.”

The issue of siloed data, coupled with questionable list quality, added up to the true promise of ABM being near impossible for HPE to realize, notes Benaroya. “We needed to decide the best mix of campaigns and messaging to accounts but there was no holistic company strategy related to ABM.”

ABM success relies heavily not only on integration between various marketing channels, but on integration between all involved departments within an organization, marketing, operations and analytics teams, says Rene Asis, head of B2B measurement at LiveRamp, which works with HPE.

“The ABM journey has become more advanced,” he says. “The struggle is attaching channels to ROI signals, to see if your efforts are making a difference.”

A recent report from Ascend2 notes that while 65 percent of marketers see their ABM efforts as “somewhat successful,” only 29 percent describe their ABM initiatives as best-in-class. Not surprisingly, the highest percentage of respondents said that their primary objective with ABM was to increase existing account revenue (56 percent). But, not everyone is apparently succeeding in this goal: over a third (39 percent) also cited this as a top challenge for ABM success, topped only by increasing accounts and contacts and improving sales and marketing alignment (43 percent each).

HPE’s marketing team started to work closely with the sales teams, to help prioritize which accounts would be targeted with ABM strategies, in the process trimming down the number of individuals who would be involved in that decision making process.

The company has the luxury of a large data scientist team, notes Benaroya, which gives HPE access to propensity modeling to determine which accounts are currently in market. The goal was to manage the ABM process in a holistic way and create a clear strategy across both the entire portfolio of HP products and the target accounts.

“[Then], account centralization can be applied to the rest of our marketing work [in digital and beyond], whether it is events or any other type of analog marketing program going into market,” he says.

The more holistic marketing approach is helping HPE optimize media investments for new products, and prevent multiple siloed marketing efforts targeting a particular account at any time. The marketing team now had a list of account segments that matched back to the U.S. sales team roster which, when coupled with sales propensity models, would help target the messaging mix across different markets.

It can take time for companies to determine what success looks like for ABM, says James. “Traditional metrics, like the number of leads generated, for example, aren’t as important. KPIs change, and it’s hard to know upfront how many opportunities will be generated or how much pipeline is needed to fill the funnel.”

“In the past we had platforms that allowed us to activate” but these were siloed, says HP’s Benaroya, who spoke at Connect to Convert recently. “We wanted to measure full digital activity and  [increase our] measurement capability across all digital channels to see what activity was turning into leads.”

The Ascend2 survey of 293 marketing professionals found that in ABM more isn’t necessarily better. Forty-five percent of respondents said that managing fewer than 50 contacts was the most effective with ABM; 40 percent said they were working with 50 to 500 contacts, and only 15 percent said they worked effectively with over 500 contacts in their ABM program. Sales revenue, cited by 67 percent, was far and away the most effective metric used to measure ABM success, followed by qualified accounts (41 percent) and account engagement (38 percent). 

The post HP Improves ABM with Sales and Marketing Integration appeared first on Chief Marketer.

More than half of respondents to this year’s Chief Marketer Martech Outlook survey said they expect marketing technology budgets to increase in the next 12 months. That’s great news for brands—and martech vendors. But before you buy, you need to carefully consider what purchases make the most sense for your organization.

Ashley DePaolo, president of CommCreative, notes that she frequently has conversations with B2B clients wanting to invest more in their martech stack.

“We try to coach clients that unless they have the content and programs to fuel [such expenditures], stop,” she says. “Martech isn’t a bandage to help you keep up with bandwidth. Investing without a strategy will lead to you ending up with a very complicated tech stack that won’t really help you nurture leads.”

Technology, a good CRM system, marketing automation and a marketing analytics platform that are set up to meet your brand’s needs are table stakes. But beyond that, it doesn’t make sense to go crazy out of the gate, DePaulo says. “You don’t need a lot. Start small and add as it makes sense.”

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CMOs (43 percent), CEOs (42 percent), marketing VPs (46 percent) and marketing managers (38 percent) were the leaders most likely to be responsible for making martech purchasing decisions, according to Chief Marketer’s research.

Marketers looking to invest in technology need to consider their investments from several different angles, notes Siddharth Taparia, SVP and head of strategic ecosystem marketing at SAP.

“Ultimately, what does the technology do for the customer? Does it provide a more personalized experience? Does it capture the information you’re looking for? Does it make a sales transaction easier? Does it make marketing more efficient? That is the guiding principle.”

As marketers invest in technologies such as AI and machine learning, it is important to understand how to get the most effective ROI from those investments, he says. “We need to identify our customers and think about how we can [use] the information we have about customers to provide the right information at the right time for the entirety of the customer journey.”

The volume of solutions on the market (50 percent) and a lack of available budget (45 percent) were the two biggest hurdles to optimizing martech and making purchasing decisions. Respondents also cited frustration in how quickly solutions could become outdated.

“The idea that as soon as you buy or subscribe to a solution a new one could come out and claim to be better is frustrating,” said one respondent. “And the truth is that it might just be better at one part of what it does.”

It can be difficult determining which of the numerous solutions on the market is the best one for your company, said another. “It’s hard to understand whether we should go for a niche product or a broader solution, and understand whether a broad solution has the specific tools to get each job done.”

The post Brands Need to Consider Martech Investments Wisely: Report appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Only two percent of respondents to a survey on CCPA preparedness by the International Association of Privacy Professionals this summer said they felt completely ready for the new rules. On a scale of one to 10, the average level of readiness for respondents was 5.27—up from 4.75 when the survey was first conducted earlier in 2019, but still a long way from perfect.

Non-compliance will become pricey: when enforcement actions begin on July 1, 2020, the California Attorney General will be able to seek civil penalties of $2,500 per violation. AdLawAccess.com offers ideas creating a plan to get your organization ready for CCPA.

Make it clear: On your site, post notices in transparent, straightforward messaging addressing CCPA in language that a consumer would actually understand. Vet your privacy policies to make sure they accurately represent your company’s practices and don’t contain false or deceptive statements. And, include simple and easy to find directions on how consumers can submit requests to opt out of the sale of personal information.

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Make protecting personal information a priority: Insure that your company is in compliance with industry standard practices. This includes reviewing software and hardware connected to a network; limiting user and admin privileges; assessing system vulnerabilities; defending against malware; providing proper security training for employees and vendors; and having a response plan in place if there is a security breach. Documenting these efforts is crucial, notes AdLawAccess. “Being able to demonstrate that it followed these controls, and how, will be a critical part of a company’s defense.”

Know how CCPA will impact your digital advertising plan: Under the new rules, companies need to look at how they use data for interest based advertising and retargeting. Publishers may be considered to have “sold” personal information if they pass along certain types of data to partner firms, depending on their relationship with the partner company and how the partner uses the data. “For partners that are not intuitively service providers or obvious recipients of data sales,” says AdLawAccess, “more analysis and industry benchmarking on interpretations are likely warranted.”

Also, if you’re working with a vendor to place cookies or tags on your site, make sure these activities are cataloged, so you know to what extent they might represent the potential “sale” of personal information.

The post CCPA: 3 Tips to Get Ready for Compliance appeared first on Chief Marketer.

One of the top concerns for all marketers in the digital age is cybersecurity. Chief Marketer recently chatted with McAfee CMO Allison Cerra about the challenges of promoting cybersecurity products, how she looks at marketing ROI, and the gender gap in the industry. Cerra, who joined McAfee in 2015 shortly before the brand was spun off from Intel, is the author of the new book, “The Cybersecurity Playbook: How Every Leader and Employee Can Contribute to a Culture of Security.”

CHIEF MARKETER: What’s the biggest challenge to marketing cybersecurity? Is education and content a big part of the equation?
CERRA: Yes. I think there’s a really strong appetite for cybersecurity. It’s a really strong market and it is growing. The challenge is not so much explaining why customers need cyberdefense. The challenge is more that there are 3,000 vendors on any given day that will offer some form of cybersecurity and the [market] is noisy and overwhelmingly complicated. Really trying to differentiate and distinguish yourself against thousands of competitors is where I think the challenge and opportunity is, rather than trying to create demand for the [product] itself.

CM: What are the main channels you use to connect with and engage customers?
CERRA: We have a diverse integrated marketing mix. We do a lot of digital, as you might imagine, but we also do a healthy percentage of trade shows, events and conferences to get our message out there. Then, we also do traditional things like dimensional mail, in a targeted way as part of ABM to break through clutter and compliment the digital sequence. We really try to exercise as many motors of the engine as we can to reach the customer throughout their buying journey.

CM: The cybersecurity space and the types of threats out there are constantly evolving. How do you communicate those changes to your audience?
CERRA: There are a lot of business line leaders who have a role in cybersecurity. Often, marketers might not even realize they have a role to play. Unfortunately, because cybersecurity is complex, most marketers are loathe to go talk to their information security officer and create a relationship, to understand how they can insert themselves [into the process]. Cybersecurity will never be the main part of their job, but it needs to be part of their remit, in a way that doesn’t overwhelm them but empowers them.

There are a few ways marketers can be part of cybersecurity, one of which is having a recovery plan. You need to get with the chief security officer (CSO) and understand [what is happening], because not all breaches are created equal. Maybe your data and systems might not be compromised, but your brand could be. What would you do? On the other end of the spectrum, what if personally identifiable  information is compromised? Now, what does your disaster recovery plan look like?

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CM: McAfee had a social media breach of its own a few years back. How did you cope with that situation?
CERRA: We had just spun out from Intel about two weeks earlier, and I got a text on Easter Sunday from our chief HR officer to go check our social media page on a prominent platform, because it was bad. I was confronted with a page completely defaced with the most inflammatory racist, sexist, homophobic derisions directed at just about every walk of life. The moments that followed were panic stricken, as we tried to figure out what to do.  We reached out to our CSO to make sure that our systems were good, even though this was a third party [site], to make sure a hacker hadn’t thrown this up as a smokescreen while they did real damage somewhere else. Our systems were fine, our intellectual property was fine, our personally identifiable data was fine.

Then, it was a matter of working with the social media provider, because we had been locked out administratively from our own account. We struggled for hours to get control back, to restore our social media page. In the aftermath, we learned several lessons. I and my team could have been much more on our game to be on the lookout for potential hackers. We should have a tighter relationship with the social media provider, we should have had [arrangements] in place for such an occurrence. We should have been more on top of this, and candidly, we weren’t. Every function—product development, marketing, HR—needs a playbook for when we find ourselves in the crosshairs of an adversary.

CM: Marketer didn’t need to have these types of skills in the past. How have the types of skills you and your team need changed?
CERRA: It used to be a one way street – you controlled the message, the channels, the feedback loop from customers. The entire marketing paradigm changed. Buyers started to change the way they communicated with brands, which made us change the profiles and skill sets we had as marketers. We couldn’t just rely on the broadcast channels any more. We had to co-own the brand with customers, realizing their voice mattered more than what we were trying to tell the market about our unique selling proposition.

Now, you’re starting to see that waterfall to other functions. Sales is starting to feel that and be disintermediated by digital channels. They saw it later than marketing, because we’re at the top of the funnel and they’re about closing it. Things have changed. The martech stack has changed and continues to change. We’re learning how to create this integrated sequence that has hundreds of touchpoints that you have to manage. This is a different completely set of challenges than what I encountered when I entered the workforce and marketing 20 years ago.

CM: Given all these changes, has it evolved how you think about ROI for marketing?
CERRA: Absolutely. There are certain functions of marketing that you can clearly measure—demand gen is the easiest one. But I would also argue that there are many measures that have nothing to do with ROI. When we’re doing brand building, it would be impossible for me to prove ROI for basic awareness generating campaigns. I could try, but I would be surprised if a smart CFO didn’t call me on whether those campaigns drove awareness versus a whole other host of conditions that you have no control over in the marketplace. So it becomes about how you measure awareness consideration and how you look at that over time, to figure out where mindshare is changing.

CM: Beyond marketing, is staffing an issue in the cybersecurity industry? Is there a gender gap?
CERRA: It is a huge issue. Cybersecurity is a unique industry in many ways. It is the only industry that I’ve ever worked in that has a zero unemployment rate. There is a global talent shortage that will persist for the foreseeable future. The gender gap is pervasive. It is 85, 90 percent male. There are very few females in cybersecurity, and there are similar issues with minorities. We need all hands on deck. We need to stop the unconscious bias questions not only in this but other industries. We need more people from other industries to come into the ranks, because there are not enough bodies to fill positions. We need to make sure that we are gender and minority neutral, to make sure that people with skill sets that are transferrable into the pipeline.

The post CMO Q&A: McAfee’s Cybersecurity Marketing Challenges appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Testing creative and calls to action is helping Justworks improve its online lead nurturing and conversion rates.

Engaging B2B decision makers as early as possible is critical, because much of the decision making process today happens before a prospect ever talks to a salesperson, notes Wayne Silverman, CRO of Business.com, which works with Justworks on its digital strategy.

For Justworks, a SaaS HR benefits technology company, the Justworks.com pricing page is a significant strategic opportunity, because in the brand’s competitive set, it is the only one that publishes pricing.

“It’s a way for us to educate prospects about our core value and differentiate ourselves,” says William Boyle, digital marketing manager for Justworks.

About a year ago, the company tested redesigning the pricing page. Previously, the page design was straightforward with pricing prominently displayed above the fold and the different plans clearly explained. The redesign took a more conceptual approach, showing toy dinosaurs clustered around a computer, looking up what plan was right for them.

It was a big departure, that didn’t pay off. After several weeks of testing, conversion rates dropped and requests for demos went down. Different calls to action were tested, such as a soft “learn more about benefits” button and a more direct “get started” button, with the latter improving conversions by nearly two percent.

Different images were also tested. Justworks has found great success in paid social with creative using photographs of real people, which makes sense for a human resources provider, Boyle notes.

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The illustration used at launch resulted in a 2.4 percent request rate for demos, while the revised page showed a 3.2 demo request rate. “This is excellent, because when we convert these leads, each percentage point adds revenue,” says Boyle. “Always be testing, even when you think you have a good page—not every campaign will convert, but you have to be constantly testing new things.”

“Making sure your website can communicate with your audience is critical,” adds Silverman.  “You need to understand who your audience is and why they come to your website.”

Justworks’ fiscal calendar starts in June, so in late spring, the company needs to drive website traffic and generate as many leads as possible, to fill the pipeline for salespeople. Last year, the company spent 70 percent of its lead gen budget in the first two quarters, but only hit 59 percent of its goal. In the second half, it needed to reduce its cost per lead and hit its goal.

The solution? Recycle qualified leads that hadn’t converted. There were numerous reasons the leads hadn’t converted—perhaps the timing simply wasn’t right, or maybe the contact wasn’t the right decision maker. Regardless, those contacts needed to be reengaged. Internal data was studied to see where the contact were in their buying journey, what was happening in their vertical market, their job titles and what landing pages they had visited.

Leads were then segmented, and different lead nurturing journeys—with content and cadences catering prospect’s specific path—were created.

“The content depended on the persona,” says Boyle, who presented at Connect to Convert in Boston. “Some might be motivated by hard data, and others by case studies, so we have to consistently be looking at data to tweak the experience.”

In the third quarter, 1,900 marketing qualified leads were engaged, with an average of 25 touches. Since the leads had been previously paid for, the efforts cost nothing other than the salespeople’s time. The initiative paid off, with the reengagements accounting for 10 percent of conversions.

The post Justworks Refines Online Lead Nurturing With Testing appeared first on Chief Marketer.

According to Chief Marketer’s Martech Outlook survey, marketers face a number of hurdles in making the most of the marketing technology investments, including a lack of training (27 percent), lack of time (58 percent), the solution not working as expected (25 percent) and a lack of vendor support (11 percent).

B2B brands were more likely to look at leads as a key gauge of ROI, while B2C marketers were more inclined to use industry specific KPIs. Across the board, respondents determine the ROI of their martech spending in a number of ways, including leads converted to opportunities (63 percent), sales (52 percent), KPIs specific to the brand’s industry (36 percent), productivity (22 percent) and cost savings (23 percent).

Marketing automation was the type of technology the highest number of respondents said they planned to invest in over the next year, with 48 percent of B2C respondents and 51 percent of B2B respondents saying they planned such purchases. Email was the second most popular type of tech on marketers’ wish lists, with 47 percent of both B2B and B2C respondents indicating they planned to update their email marketing technology.

Of course, no technology can be used effectively without the right talent to direct how it is used. Anecdotally, respondents cited staffing and resources as two of their top challenges when it comes to purchasing, implementing or using martech.

“We need the dedicated resources to fully leverage capabilities and analyze the results, so we can make recommendations  for better utilizing [systems], said one respondent.

Another cited issues with getting IT on board. “Our tech teams don’t understand true marketing needs,” said another respondent. “They don’t actually use the tools, so their input on purchasing decisions is skewed.”

Click on the Image to View the Full Size Infographic

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The post Why Martech Investments Aren’t Optimized: Infographic appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Creating modular email templates helped The Ohio State University improve branding consistency across the entire university system.

“It was challenging trying to maintain consistency sending email,” notes Bri Loesch, associate director of email marketing for the university. “We had tens of hundreds of looks and feels.”

There were numerous challenges.  The messaging had varying levels of mobile responsiveness, and there were numerous issues with emails rendering properly across different devices.

“They weren’t user friendly for our email pracitioners, and our audience was left wondering if these emails were all coming from the same university,” says Loesch, who spoke at Litmus Live in Boston recently.

The university wanted to create one visual identity, and make sure that no matter where in the organization the message originated, it had a consistent look and feel.

Loesch wanted the email templating initiative to be collaborative, and driven by the  Ohio State email community. Users across different departments were surveyed, to discover what their challenges were and uncover why brand standards weren’t being followed. “We wanted to make sure we could provide support,” she says.

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Then, focus groups were created to take a deeper dive into the best ways to address core issues. Past emails were also audited, to identify which of the existing templates were used the most often, and see what types of messaging and modules were the most commonly deployed.

The team wanted the new modules and templates to be easy to modify, with numerous possible combinations. And, at same time, Ohio State was also transitioning to a new marketing automation tool, so an easy transition to dynamic content that could be plugged in without the risk of broken code was also a consideration.

“We wanted to allow for flexibility, but wanted to have some requirements in place, for consistent look and feel,” Loesch notes.

Two basic requirements were that every message had to have the same masthead and footer designs, with the primary university logo at the top. The footer could include the unit’s secondary logo if desired, and had to include typical required footer information, such as the address and a preference management link.

An email toolkit was created to assist departments in using the new templates, including brand guidelines, a quick start guide and a landing page explaining the modular design.

“Because of various skill levels, we wanted to provide every module configuration they might need, in regards to text and image placement,” she says. “We also wanted to make sure people understood the why behind what we were doing and why brand consistency and accessibility are important to our email marketing efforts.”

The university adapted to the new system quickly: in four months, there was 96 percent compliance with the new templates.

The post Email Templates Help Ohio State Create Consistent Branding appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Companies that observe email marketing best practices often don’t think blacklisting should be on their worry list. Think again.

“Most people believe they are better than companies that get blacklisted, but it can still happen,” says Melanie Kinney, email marketing manager at GasBuddy. “It isn’t contagious, but it still happens.”

At Litmus Live, Kinney shared her story of what happened when GasBuddy suddenly found itself blacklisted, and how they got themselves unblocked and back into inboxes.

GasBuddy creates apps to help users find the best prices on gas and earn rewards. The company maintains engaged and lapsed user files. The engaged list is segmented in several ways—such as gas prices in a user’s area, or the type of vehicle they drive—to help make email marketing more targeted. “We believe in sending relevant content,” says Melanie Kinney, email marketing manager of GasBuddy.

Kinney and her team were doing a final test of a round of emails on a Monday morning. She sent out a proof and waited for feedback. When no one had responded after a few hours, she checked and found out no one had received the email. Thinking it was a Salesforce glitch, she sent them again—and found all the emails had gone into spam.

Her initial thought was that maybe a broken image resulted in the messages not getting through, but when that wasn’t the case the team feared the worst. A hold was put on all outgoing email blasts, and the team began looking at all triggered and ad hoc emails to investigate what might be happening.

Several things can land a domain on a blacklist, notes Kinney, including a sudden surge in list size, a number of bad addresses or poor links in the message itself. Human error can also be a factor.

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GasBuddy ran a spam test in Litmus, and found that it failed DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Email, which allows senders to associate a domain name with an email message) and DMARC  (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance, a protocol used to determine the authenticity of an email message).

Two other key acronyms for email marketers to consider at when something has gone awry with delivery are SORBS (Spam and Open Relay Blocking System, which uses a daemon to check all servers from which it received email to determine if an email was sent via various types of proxy and open-relay servers) and RATS (Really Annoying Trouble Spots, or non-conforming IP addresses that could be related to problems like compromised servers).

“These are not things to overlook,” Kinney says.

GasBuddy ultimately found that it had an email domain with a lapsed registration. The lapse happened over a weekend, which triggered the failed authentication, leading to the blacklisting. With this information, Salesforce was able to submit an unblock request. Forty-eight hours later, GasBuddy was off the blacklist.

“If you haven’t been on an unblock list before, getting off can take a relatively short time, but it gets harder for repeat offenders,” she notes.

Kinney offered four key tips for surviving a blacklisting:

Know who has the keys. Know who controls the email domains in your organization, so you can open the appropriate communications channels in an emergency and know who to contact quickly.

Seize the moment. If you end up on a blacklist, take the opportunity to consider putting new data hygiene strategies in place. “There might be a partner who can help in the future,” she says.

Learn from your mistakes. Again, take the time to access what happened and better understand your overall deliverability situation, to prevent the same thing happening again.

Educate yourself. No one wants to talk about being blacklisted, but it is important to know what steps to take if it happens. Before your organization finds itself blocked, educate yourself about what needs to be done if it happens to you.

The post Surviving the Blacklist: Email Tips for Getting Your Domain Unblocked appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Personalized email is helping the Bernie Sanders campaign create a spirit of community to engage subscribers—and donors—for the presidential candidate.

“We have so much data available, so we can make more relevant asks of subscribers and get them to engage,” says Robin Curran, vice president of digital strategy at Aisle 518 and digital fundraising director at Bernie Sanders for President. “Community is a broad movement and is at the center of everything we do.”

When getting started with personalization, it is critical to take the time to tailor content to recipients, notes Curran, who spoke at the recent Litmus Live conference in Boston.

“It is a privilege, not a right, to be able to send email to our donors,” she says. “We create a two-way relationship with subscribers by showing what we know about them and what is valuable to them.”

Curran shared a number of examples of ways the Bernie 2020 campaign is personalizing messaging to donors and supporters.

Donor History: Showing a donor’s giving history to the campaign in an email illustrates what supporters have done in the past—and then pivots attention to what they can do now. The campaign created a visual map taking the donor from the exact date of their first contribution to the campaign, to how many donations they have made, to the total amount donated since Sanders announced his candidacy.

“It’s because of you that our campaign is off to such a strong start.,” reads the email copy. “But we still have a long way to go in order to win this election and transform our country. Can Bernie count on you to add another contribution today?”

The visual road map of donor history generated two times more than the typical email blast, she says.

Local Events: Bernie 2020 kickoff event emails were personalized using subscribers’ zip codes. This enabled the campaign to inform supporters about the event nearest their geographic location. The call to action was an invitation to RSVP and attend.

“It was effective at building community and getting them plugged into the work,” says Curran.

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Year in Review: Taking inspiration from the Spotify Year in Review emails, the campaign created a year in review message showing what events supporters had RSVP’d to, what donations they had made, whether they had shared stories about why they support Sanders with the campaign, and any Bernie 2020 purchases they had made, such as t-shirts or bumper stickers. The email also showed how many people from the donors state had also contributed.

Things the supporter had done were shown in red; activities the supporter hadn’t yet done were shown in light grey, to illustrate what they still could do for the campaign.

“It really helps build community,” she says, noting some contributors shared the email via social media. “People latched onto stats like the numbers of donors in their area.”

Maxing Out Contributions: This messaging identified those who had given single contributions of $500, or $1,000 total, to acknowledge these donors had given more than most (the average donation for Bernie Sanders is $19, low for a presidential campaign), and asking if they are able to max out their giving to the maximum allowable amount. This very targeted email raised an average of $25 per recipient, versus the typical average of $.09.

2018 Midterm Election Data: This messaging was based on a comprehensive spreadsheet of who was on the ballot in every state around the country, to show supporters the candidates in the top races and highlight the states of the election nationwide. A link to look up local polling places and the suggestion to donate to the campaign was also included.

The post Email Personalization Boosts Bernie 2020 Donations appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Over half of B2B online shoppers use loyalty programs, optimizing benefits both for the company and employees.

Fifty-six percent of global businesses are members of loyalty programs, according to the 2019 UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper. Benefits in 73 percent of these businesses go to the company itself, while 36 percent said benefits went to employees and 23 percent to customers. Only 16 percent of respondents with loyalty memberships said the benefits went to the person making the purchase.

B2B respondents to the survey purchase a number of products online. Sixty-two percent purchase office supplies; 55 percent technology and electronics; 46 percent cleaning and maintenance supplies; 39 percent apparel, footwear and accessories; 33 percent heavy goods; 24 percent packaging; 23 percent entertainment items; 22 percent groceries; and 21 percent components and materials.

Not surprisingly, 88 percent research items before purchasing online, with the majority going to a merchant’s website (45 percent) or search engines (42 percent). Price comparison websites (35 percent), Amazon (23 percent) and procurement portals (16 percent) are also resources.

Product quality was the most cited aspect of choosing a supplier (64 percent), a variable that went up even more if a business was purchasing goods for resale (71 percent). Supplier reliability (47 percent) and low cost (43 percent) were also important.

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Respondents weren’t afraid to look outside of their home country to get what they wanted. Sixty-three percent said they had made an international purchase in the last 12 months, with 44 percent citing better prices as the reasons they shopped outside their borders. Forty-three percent made an international purchase because a product they wanted wasn’t available in their country, and 32 percent were looking for something of higher quality than what was on-offer domestically. Total cost and delivery time were the two most important factors in international online buying, cited by 97 percent.

The 2019 UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper B2B survey data was collected from a total of 897 participants across 14 countries in Europe, Asia Pacific and the Americas.

B2B buyers are looking for the same conveniences as their B2C counterparts: Over 44 percent of B2B respondents wanted to shop with online sites that saved their basic log-in information, payment details and delivery preferences.

“What B2B buyers are looking for in their online experience underpins the point that their B2C consumer experiences are shaping their work-time B2B expectations,” said the report. “Though there will be unique capabilities required in delivering an optimal B2B experience—specifically with how businesses manage their budget and quantities—their online expectations are very much aligned to typical B2C expectations.”

Depending on what the type of purchase, businesses indicated they would be willing to accept a slower shipping option in exchange for lower delivery costs (46 percent) or a credit (32 percent).

“Goods that are critical to the business, such as goods for resale or assembly components, are much more time-sensitive than are cleaning products or office supplies purchased for the business,” said the report.

In the event that it is necessary to return something, B2B online shoppers a streamlined process. Seventy-one percent cited simplicity as a top concern, followed by a clear returns policy (67 percent) and free returns (61 percent).  More than a quarter of businesses believe the supplier should pay for returns, even when the return is simply the customer’s decision and not due to a problem or defect.

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