Gleanster Research and Act-On Software sought to answer these questions. We conducted a study in Q4 2014 and Q1 2015, surveying marketing professionals in 750 companies to understand how they perceive and support customer relationship management. For the purposes of this study, we defined CRM as: Any iteraction a customer has with your brand across all stages of the customer lifecycle.

1. Ian Michiels
Principal Analyst & CEO
Gleanster Research
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Atri Chatterjee
CMO
Act-On Software

2. Rethinking the Role of Marketing
in B2B Customer Engagement
Key Findings from over 750 Marketers in Midsize B2B Firms
Ian Michiels
Principal & CEO
Gleanster Research

3. Agenda
 Setting the Stage: The Ultimate Hypothesis
 The Many Key Findings from the Survey
 Practical Recommendations for Marketers

4. What’s
keeping you
up at night?
Empowered & Educated Buyers
Too Many Marketing Channels
Sales and Marketing Alignment
Lack of Time / Resources / Budget
Technology Fragmentation
LEADS & OPPORTUNITY CREATION
Difficulty with Attribution
Improve the Customer Experience
Marketing Executive

5. What’s
keeping you
up at night?
The customer experience is the sum total of all
interactions a prospect or customer has with a
brand.
Marketing
Sales
Service
CustomerExperience
Marketing Executive
Partners & Affiliates
Improve the Customer Experience !?!

6. A Litany
of Nebulous
Concepts
Customer Relationship
Management (CRM)
Customer Experience
Customer Engagement
Customer Lifecycle
Customer Journey
Who is actually responsible for:

7. Marketing is
the Only
Function to
Touch All
Stages
Marketing
Sales
Service

8. Key
Questions to
Explore
 What is the state of CRM and
marketing’s role in CRM?
 How do marketers perceive their role in
managing the customer lifecycle?
 What are the major challenges with
managing customer engagement?
 Benchmark best practices and tactics
used TODAY

9. Key Finding
 Given what we know Top Performers are
doing, it’s time to re-think the role of
marketing in customer lifecycle engagement.
 Ramifications on:
 Measurement & Attribution
 Technology
 Compensation
 Strategy & Tactics
 REVENUE!

10. Survey
Demographics

11. All results are biased by marketers
perceptions.
Performance data is self-reported
and anonymous.

12. Identifying
Top
Performers
Apply filters to the data and analyze how a
subset of companies answered specific questions.
AVERAGE B2B FIRM
 B2B
 50-1000 Employees
 All others excluding Top
Performers
TOP PERFORMERS
Top 2%
 B2B
 50-1000 Employees
 Beat 2013 Revenue Objectives
 “Very Effective” at managing end-
to-end marketing lifecycle
 Estimate >90% of customers are
happy
Only 2% of respondents (15) companies did a “good” job at customer
lifecycle engagement in marketing!?!

13. Here’s how
the story
unfolds:
1. What is the current state of affairs in
customer lifecycle engagement?
2. What does customer lifecycle success
look like?
3. What can we learn from these findings?

14. Marketers don’t feel like they
are “primarily responsible” for
managing the customer
lifecycle.

15. Breaking the
Customer
Lifecycle into
Stages
Marketing
Marketing / Sales
Service
Sales
According to
marketers – who is the
primary owner?

16. What do
CMOs think?
56%
51%
79%
0% 50% 100%
Expansion
Retention
Awareness /
Acqusition
CMO (n=56)
Percentage of CMOs who believe marketing
holds primary responsibility for [x] activity?
* Multiple answers allowed

17. Should
Marketing
Own CRM?
Scratch that… how do marketers define CRM?

18. How much
time, effort,
and budget
are allocated
to different
stages?
The average annual marketing spend - $1.3M.
11% 10% 14% 19% 18% 16% 7% 4% 3%
<$50k $50k -
$75k
$75k -
$100k
$101k -
$500k
$500k -
$1M
$1M -
$2M
$2M –
$5M
$5M -
$10M
> $10M

19. Marketers generally feel
like they are effective at
end-to-end customer
engagement.

20. Marketers are
Generally
Confident –
But is it
Justified
Are You Effective At Managing The
End-to-end Customer Experience?
37% 50% 13%
Very
Effective Effective
Not
Effective
56% 44%
Very
Effective Effective
AVERAGE
TOP PERFORMERS

21. Top Performers allocate more
time and effort on retention and
expansion.
Top Performers spend more on
awareness and up-selling.

22. How much
time, effort,
and budget
are allocated
to different
stages?
Average Companies
spend
Effort acquiring new customers:
Average companies spend 67%
Top Performers spend 52%
Average Companies
spend
Budget acquiring new customers: Average companies spend 54%
Top Performers spend 46%

23. Why
Marketers
Should Focus
on
Retention?
1. Finite products and services = Finite
campaigns
2. You can automate campaigns with
behavioral data to up-sell to
existing customers
3. Attribution to real revenue!

24. What’s the
difference
between Top
Performers
and Average
Firms?

25. What’s the
difference
between Top
Performers
and Average
Firms?

26. Top challenges remain virtually the
same as they did 10 years ago.
Themes: People, Process, Technology

27. What are the
top challenges
that cause you
to struggle
with current
marketing
objectives?
58%
60%
73%
80%
83%
90%
95%
Our processes are inefficient
We don't collect the right
customer data
Internal skills and expertise
Limitations with current
technologies
Fragmented marketing systems
Marketing alignment with sales
Access to existing customer data
All Respondents

28. Deeper Dive
on People
Challenges
39%
55%
48%
48%
50%
25%
28%
36%
41%
92%
Internal skills and expertise
No accountability for process
improvement
Leadership doesn't value emerging
B2B tactics
Marketing and sales collaboration
Hiring skilled resources
Top Performers Average

29. Deeper Dive
on Process
Challenges
71%
82%
59%
30%
39%
50%
Lack of process
improvement
Decisions not metric
based
Legacy processes part
of culture
Top Performers Average

30. Deeper Dive
on
Technology
Challenges
84% 83% 59%41% 92% 56%
Configuring
campaigns
Multiple systems
manage separate
channels
Marketing & sales
technology doesn't
integrate
Top Performers Average
 



31. 90% of B2B firms still measure
marketing on inquiries and
marketing qualified leads
(Acquisition Metrics).

32. You can’t manage the customer
lifecycle or make people
accountable unless you
measure and compensate for
the right behavior.

33. Where’s the
accountability?
TOP PERFORMERS ARE 2X MORE LIKELY TO TIE MARKETING
OBJECTIVES TO THE ENTIRE CUSTOMER LIFECYCLE

34. Marketers are in an ideal
position to manage and optimize
the end-to-end customer
lifecycle.
Marketers aren’t compensated
appropriately for the effort.

35. Three key
findings:
1. Marketing technology is the central conduit
for monitoring, measuring, and engaging with
customers across the entire customer
lifecycle.
2. There is currently a massive misalignment of
efforts at average B2B mid-size firms.
Nobody is actually accountable for
optimizing the holistic customer lifecycle.
3. The customer lifecycle needs a leader.

36. Managing the customer lifecycle is
very difficult with fragmented
technologies.
B2B companies still rely heavily on
legacy technologies like stand-alone
email.

37. What
marketing
technologies
support the
customer
lifecycle?
Top Performers were 20% more likely to use Marketing Automation
* All Respondents

38. Other
Marketing
Automation
Trends in the
Research
2010-Present
 Marketing automation helps to activate customer
data (implicit & explicit) because it unifies
fragmented channels.
 Top Performers are typically 5-7x more likely to
use marketing automation.
 Marketing automation allows marketers to
automate campaigns that capture more revenue
from customers.
 Companies report an average of 120% boost in
sales-ready leads as a result of MA.
 Marketing automation makes CRM more valuable
and encourages reps to use CRM.

39. Top Performers are 2x more likely to
use behavioral data to trigger
engagement.
BUT the vast majority of companies
struggle with relevance.

40. How are
companies
leveraging
personalization?
29%
39%
45%
36%
42%
39%
38%
56%
63%
63%
75%
75%
0% 50% 100%
Segmentation with psychographic
attributes (interests)
Segmentation with demographic
attributes (industry, role)
Segmentation with purchase
history data
Personalizing customer campaigns
with CRM data
Adjust messaging based on
prospect behavior
Personalizing messaging by stage
in the customer lifecycle
Top Performers Average

41. Recommendations

42. Prioritize
Customer
Engagement
Efforts
 Overcome the desire to cast the net wide
 Struggling with segmentation in existing
marketing tools – use CRM data to isolate
trends sales conversions
 Identify 1-5 target audiences
 Refine content efforts to proven
segments
 Only 50% of B2B firms had a blog

43. Move from
static
campaigns to
behavior-
based and
segmented
engagement.
 6 out of 10 companies used marketing
automation
The right tools are not being used effectively
 -or- the right tools don’t exist
87%
67%
13%
33%
0% 50% 100%
Top Performers
Average
Yes No

44. Take a stab
at
documenting
the customer
journey –
look for
potholes

45. Attribution in
Retention
Efforts!
Marketing Attribution?
 10%?
 20%?
 30%?
Sales

46. Hiring and
Retaining
Talent
90% of SMB companies that invested in marketing
automation did not find it necessary to hire new headcount.

47. Additional
Recommendations
 Focus on new customer acquisition AND
engagement with existing customers
 Partner with an agency to get specialized help &
step up your game
 Segment and personalize to improve engagement
 Marketers need to step up and showcase their
impact on the end-to-end customer lifecycle.
Make a case for more budget, financial incentives,
and attribution.

48. Summary
Findings
1 There is a massive misalignment of efforts
and objectives at average B2B mid-size firms.
2 The customer lifecycle needs a leader
3 Marketing technology is key to monitoring,
measuring, and engaging with customers across the entire
lifecycle

49. Q&A
Ian Michiels
Principal & CEO
@InsightFanatic
ian.michiels@gleanster.com