Marketing Automation and Lead Management Blog

Designing Marketing Dashboards

Nowadays, there is so much attention being paid to the "M" word in Marketing – “Measurement”. The goal is to have real-time access to reliable, relevant and actionable information. Standard Reporting solutions are being replaced with robust Marketing Dashboards to meet such demands. Here are a few tips to take into consideration while embarking on such an initiative:

1. Consistent operational processes: The most expensive mistake an organization can make is to start thinking about Dashboards after operational process is set in place. Thinking through and formalizing KPIs and supporting metrics that need to be tracked and measured upfront is extremely critical and will help make the right design decisions in the operational system. For example, if we need to track Responses by channel like web or email we can make sure that the right tracking codes are in place for landing pages that are shared. Otherwise, Marketing Operations team will be tied up with manual methods to break up the Response metric after the fact.

2. Design Role based Dashboards: One of the key drivers for adoption of dashboards is the ability to setup role-based dashboards. Let’s take executive dashboards as an example. Executives are always trying to measure the performance of their organizations against their MBOs. Make sure executive dashboards are aligned with their MBOs. Setup gauges on the dashboard that can help an executive track progress weekly or monthly and take appropriate actions. Typical KPIs could be:
a.    Qualified Leads per Quarter
b.    Qualified Opportunities per Quarter
c.    Marketing Responders per Quarter
d.    Number of Campaigns per employee
e.    Cost per Lead
f.    Cost per Response
Similarly mid-management might be interested in understanding the performance of key initiatives and tactics. Create a matrix of the different roles within the department and metrics relevant to each role. This will help design effective Dashboards by role.

3. Setup Dashboards to track “areas of improvement”: We would all love to be in a situation where the initiatives we undertake deliver results as expected and we are able to consistently meet or exceed our goals. The reality is we have a mixed bag of Campaigns that provide expected results and campaigns that don’t. Every quarter pick an “area of improvement” that you want to focus on and setup Dashboards to help you analyze the results of the tests you conduct to improve yield from the tactics within this initiative. For example, one of my customers recently mentioned that they were getting steady improvement in their web traffic but the number of soft offer downloads was stagnant. We are now setting up a dashboard to measure tracking on pages that drive traffic to the whitepapers and measure conversions. This requires side-by-side views of “web traffic” & “form downloads”, understand where the drop-offs are happening and optimize appropriately.

4. Incorporate best practices into Dashboards: There is lot of great research being produced by organizations like Sirius Decisions, Marketing Sherpa among others. Incorporate benchmark data relevant for your organization into your dashboards. This is a great way to peg your results against industry standards and also set the bar within the organization.

5. Constant Tuning: Dashboards need to be agile and need to be tweaked based on changing business needs and goals. As priorities change appropriate metrics and KPIs need to emphasized/de-emphasized on Dashboards. Reading dashboards and gleaning knowledge is a non-trivial skill and requires some ramp up. Regular knowledge sharing sessions within the organization is a great way to help Marketers share tips about how to recognize patters in the data, understand what the patterns suggest and make appropriate decisions.

Nurturing Sales Opportunities - How to increase pipeline conversion

How great would it be for an organization if sales can close all the opportunities that get added to the sales pipeline! Reality is that organizations are elated if they can convert half the number of opportunities into deals. There are quite a few opportunities that get stalled and languish in the funnel for various reasons. In some cases sales continue to pursue such opportunities but more often than not sales people tend to move on to greener pastures. This is the classic “last mile problem”! It’s a shame that companies spend a lot of time, energy and dollars in creating demand, nurturing leads and generating opportunities but not following all the way through to close. Part of the problem is sales people inherently lack the patience and perseverance to work on Leads and Opportunities beyond a certain point because they have to meet quarterly goals or in some cases monthly goals.

Here is where Marketing can step in and help. Imagine a situation where Sales has ready access to content and nurture processes developed by Marketing to specifically address concerns and overcome hurdles that sales runs into during the late stages of the sales funnel. Some of the typical challenges are:

• ROI and TCO justification: Most organizations lack a good framework or methodology to measure the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and also justify spend for a product or service they are buying. This is where vendors can help create whitepapers, case studies and tools that their prospective buyers can use to create a case for executive approval.

• Risk Mitigation: Most sales methodologies talk about how prospective buyers tend to start worrying about risk as they approach the final stages of purchase.

            

                    1. Will my vendor be around in a year’s time?
                    2. Will my vendor’s service and support organization help me with deploying the 
                        product or service?
                    3. Will I be able to influence my vendor’s product roadmap to align with my business goals?

There are the kinds of questions that sales people have to field and might end up losing the deal to a competitor because they continue to push the sale without giving much heed to such concerns. Again, Marketing can be the perfect ally for sales in such situations. Marketing can create great content and programs to introduce prospective buyers to case studies, implementation processes, best practices etc. and also invite them to user groups and customer success programs.

Marketing should have regular conversations with their sales counterparts and get a good understanding of the typical “deal blockers” that sales runs into and design nurture programs specifically to addresses such issues.