The Art of B2B Market Research: Understand Your Audience Better–and Faster—in 2024. 

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:00:03] It's 2 p.m. on the East coast, 11 a.m. in the Bay area. And wherever you are. It's time for a coffee break. I'm Alex Jonathan Brown, Senior Content Strategist here at Iron Horse. And if you work in the B2B space for any amount of time, you learn really quickly. I think that there are a few things people love more than buzzwords, and while some ideas leave as quick as they show up, there are other ideas that transcend being a buzzword and become something that it turns out it's like sort of really important to know about. Um, and one of those things that follows or falls very heavily in that space is the idea of research. And to do a deep dive on what we talk about when we talk about market research and intelligence. I'm joined today by Iron Horse Vice President of Growth Strategy, Barbie Mattie and Director of Growth Marketing Ellen Smoley. Hi, everybody.

Barbie Mattie: [00:01:02] Hello.

Ellen Smoley: [00:01:03] Hello. Thanks for having us. Yeah.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:01:06] Of course. I'm so glad that y'all could fit us into your schedule. Um, and we'll start off super easy. Uh, hey, Barbie, uh, what's market intelligence? If you could just sum that up very quickly.

Barbie Mattie: [00:01:18] That is kind of a softball. But thank you. So we just wanted to start by kind of level setting on some of the terminology. Just because it's really important to, you know, understand that you're saying the same thing. So if you think about like the highest level market intelligence is the like the Uber process for gathering, um, analyzing, interpreting any information about the market, um, trends, your competitors, customers. So that's kind of it. It's it it's Uber level at market intelligence. And then if you're thinking kind of more nested down, I think the title of this presentation was around market research. And so now we're into the market research. And that's more of focusing on the the components of market intelligence. So where we need to find out one specific thing. And then a process for gathering that market research is primary research which is our survey data. And that's one of the things that we're going to be talking about today. Because I have been doing surveys for a decade. Um, and boy, have I learned a lot of things of what not to do.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:02:39] So I think with that kind of like umbrella. Um, umbrella definitions set up and in place. And I know we're going to, uh, get to the specifics of some survey stuff later, but can we pause for a second and just discuss why this is all important? Um, like I said, in the the kind of, um, intro, I joke that it was a buzzword, but it's so much more than that, and it drives so much of what what we wind up doing. So why is this something that people need to be thinking about if they aren't?

Barbie Mattie: [00:03:14] Well, if you ask my husband, I can't even make a personal decision without, like, seven data points. So, um, sometimes it's inherent in the weirdness of the person, so, so fully admitting that, um, but it's just, you know, it's it's supplemental information to help you make better decisions, right? We're, you know, we're we're no longer in the in the days where marketing's just art. Right. We have turned and continue to turn marketing into a science and having market intelligence market research, primary research as inputs to that. It just it makes your decisions more informed and your results more expected.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:03:59] Yeah. And I think especially in the spaces where we work, where there are a lot of like strong personalities, sometimes a lot of organizations, whether they plan to or not, wind up running just on the idea of like, oh, someone spoke loudly. And so that's the direction and I think, yeah, and we'll let you talk a lot more about this. But it's so much of I think what we do in the research space is be a toddler and just ask why over and over and over again. And like the research at least lets you get closer to what those answers are.

Barbie Mattie: [00:04:38] Absolutely. I can't tell you how many times our entire business has shift in in previous lives, of course, where an entire business has shifted because one guy had drinks with one client in a bar in Beijing. Right. And then they come back and they they're doing this whole other thing, or I'm we've been doing ABM for quite a few years now. The amount of times where the marketing leaders that I've been working with have come in and said, oh, our CEO was at a golf tournament, or I've been playing golf with his buddies, and he said, we need I needed to come back and do this ABM thing. Like that's how things start. But it has to be based on more than a hunch and a golf tournament.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:05:22] And unfortunately, like every time that, um, you know, people are asking for results or how did this work? You don't get to go back out to the golf course and like, schmooze that conversation again. At some point, you you're going to have to have results. And I think research is a great way to, to help get there. Right.

Barbie Mattie: [00:05:42] Well, and that's why I started with the definition of market intelligence because there's three flavors of market intelligence. You have your formal or your planned market intelligence. So it's like this is what our competition is doing. And this is why we need this information to do our pricing strategy. And then at the other end of the spectrum, you have your like completely reactive market intelligence that like, oh, our our biggest competitor just acquired, you know, one of our partners, I need data to figure out what to do about that. And then kind of in the middle of stuff that's unplanned, but it's a little bit more informal and it's not as emergency oriented.

Ellen Smoley: [00:06:23] And I have, um, one of those toddlers that you mentioned. So I understand the question of why, um, and so that's what, you know, we set out to do is understand our audience and ask a bunch of why questions. And so, Barbie, it's really been great to work with you and kind of work on this survey together so we can understand why our audience is interested in certain things. So.

Barbie Mattie: [00:06:45] Absolutely.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:06:47] So when you're like, well, the next thing we'll talk about is kind of the lessons from structuring the service. But before we get there, just like, do you what? Okay. If we're doing research, how do I know what's interesting and what's just numbers that I can, um, I can, like, gloss over as my very, uh, qualitative brain. Yeah.

Barbie Mattie: [00:07:10] Well, the question reminds me of a dear friend of mine that I worked with, uh, before, where her her her advice was never show a board member a number you don't want to talk about. And kind of the same principle applies for when you're doing research. Don't just gather data for the sake of gathering data. Have a purpose, have an intent, have a use case. Um, so one of the things that we were, um, teasing about in preparing in preparation for this, uh, coffee break is we were going to tell you the four essential questions for how to get your best survey results. And so that's where we started. It's it's well, what's number what's the number one thing that we're doing. What are we trying to prove? What's our hypothesis? And specific to Iron Horse. And the survey that Ellen just mentioned. Well we've been working on for a few weeks as well. We just were a growth marketing agency. We specialize in ABM. We have ABM Fast Start programs. You know how what is our differentiation? However, there's a lot of players out there doing the same thing. How does Iron Horse differentiate? And so our hypothesis when we started this survey, which was step one in the four essential questions, is what, you know, um, can we prove that when. Sales is enabled with, uh, proper training on the technology and ins and trained on how to interpret the insights from those technologies. Does that signal a more effective ABM program? And so that was the big hypothesis that we set out to prove. And we wanted it to be metrics oriented. So we can't just do a survey and say like, oh yes, it was effective. Well, what does effective mean? Going back to like I like to define things by what they mean. So when we said, um, we're we're proving that. When sales is the right enablement. So on the technology, on how to read the insights, then an ABM approach is more effective and that manifests in higher conversion rate, improve velocity and higher customer satisfaction. So that was step one in doing the survey. Um, and then Ellen, did you want to chime in with anything else because this was a this is a partnership for sure.

Ellen Smoley: [00:09:42] Yeah, it has been. And it's definitely been interesting to see in this data, um, the value of account based marketing. So this is another topic. It's another webinar and we'll get there. Um, but the value of account based marketing and how those high growth companies and y'all will see that in this report that will, will launch in the next month, um, are aligned in some of their top initiatives with the account based marketing. So we'll get into all of that and we'll have a separate webinar about it. But it's been fun to see and kind of look at our hypothesis and say, yeah, that's true.

Barbie Mattie: [00:10:13] Yes. So spoiler alert, the report data is pretty good.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:10:19] I think one thing that I don't want to let slip by, that so many people forget to think about as part of the process, it and it's it's the scientific method that you learned in seventh grade. Right. Like none of this works and your survey is going to be a mess if you don't know what the hypothesis that you're testing is. Yeah. Part of that too is that is you also have to be willing to say, oh, our hypothesis was wrong. But like you do have to have a starting viewpoint for the the thing that you're trying to test with this data before you sort of set anything up. Exactly. Or else that's, that's how you wind up with results. And you're like, we have no idea what this means because we don't we don't really know what we were asking, even though we know the questions. Exactly. And speaking of questions, uh, we did mention the four essential questions to ask to get the best survey results. So, um, with that awesome segue, I'm going to pat myself on the back. Uh, maybe now's a good time to to dive into those a little bit.

Barbie Mattie: [00:11:19] Well, yeah. So I already did one, which is start with the hypothesis. And you made my segue. What are you trying to prove? Um, and then the second one is, okay, what is the purpose of the research? Like, in addition to the hypothesis, what do you need to know? What are some of the facts like what are what do you think is reality versus what you need to prove is reality. And so specific to the survey that we just launched around about effectiveness? Um, obviously the point was to gather, um, what the, the similarities and the, the differences were in people's understanding of ABM, if you were a seller versus you were a marketer. And so that was the lens, the next level down in which we bifurcated the hypothesis is like, what is how do how does sales think of ABM effectiveness and how does marketing think of ABM effectiveness? So that was what we set out to do for our objective, which was the second question. Um, and so what we did with that is we wanted to ask a similar set of questions like, hey, these two marketing and sales, get these six sets of questions together. And then we want to know separately how sales feels and how marketing feels. So the the questions that we wanted to align on were, how is ABM defined? Okay. That's the first step in ABM is getting everybody on the same page as to what ABM is and making sure everybody is aligned. Um, so in the definition, um, you know, that that was one of the things. And then we wanted to know what the primary objective is, because if if sales and marketing are completely off the mark on the definition and the primary objective, there's just loads of trouble up ahead. Um, and so then we wanted to do some questions. Obviously interlock is a really important portion of, of uh ABM. What are some of the barriers preventing effectiveness? What are the key metrics you're using to measure it. Um, and then where it got pretty cool is we broke it. We did branching of the questions and we said, um, marketing, what are the top benefits and drawbacks? Sales were the top benefits and drawbacks. Um, the last question we asked and it was under ten questions, which is another pro tip for when you're doing surveys. Don't do surveys with 80 questions. You're not going to get a good completion rate unless you're paying a significant sum for that survey data. Um, but then we said, okay, marketing, what are what are the top five things that you need from sales in order to be more effective? And then we asked all of the sellers, hey, what are the top five things you need from marketing to be more effective? And so we've got this really good story with two different lenses that is going to allow us to pivot, um, into. The third essential question is, which is how are we going to use? How is Iron Horse going to use this research to drive growth? Um, and so Ellen, our head of marketing, is on here to tell you that, but we definitely were using this as a, as a tool, um, to really, um, differentiate, differentiate ourselves as a growth marketing agency that specializes in ABM. I don't know if what you have to add, Ellen, on that one.

Ellen Smoley: [00:14:45] Yeah, I've got a whole entire section that we'll get to about how we're using this for our marketing plan. Um, but definitely there's I think one big thing to, while you're thinking about the planning portion is what how do you want to slice the data? And so are there certain industries that you want to focus on. Then make sure your quotas are high enough that where you're going to have a good in to be able to then take that data and analyze it and cut it and be able to have, uh, significant data. So I think that's one thing in the planning, one of the, um, preparations that you really have to think about is how do you want to slice this, to then be able to use the data in your different verticals, different personas, whatever that might be? Um, but thinking about that up front is a really important piece. Yeah.

Barbie Mattie: [00:15:32] And then the last of the fourth essential question, which Ellen will dive deeper into later is how how can we target our audience using this research? So just to summarize, since I was all over the place, first question is what are we trying to prove? Second is what is the objective or the purpose. Third is how does this support company growth? And the fourth is how can we target our ideal customer profile and use this research?

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:16:00] I think those are incredible. Like obviously for the specific cases that we're talking about, like they've worked great for us, but that is really a thing that you can pick up and kind of drop in, um, in whatever company you're considering.

Barbie Mattie: [00:16:15] Absolutely.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:16:16] Yeah. For your viewer, um, one thing that I think is important that we have been lucky to have here at Iron Horse and it goes back to the goes back to the hypothesis and then pulls through all those questions. Barbie is you also have to have an organizational willingness to like do something with this if it's going to be helpful. Right. And you can start to like get that picture really from the hypothesis stage because, you know, either this is going to be true or isn't, and then are we willing to change anything about how we work, or are we willing to like, change our go to market or any of those things based on that? And if if the answer is no, yeah. Why are you doing the survey like every time?

Barbie Mattie: [00:16:56] You're so right, Alex. You have to have an insights driven culture or this won't work.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:17:01] Which is that's where we get back to marketing being the buzzword, right? Oh, we should do a survey. Okay, great. But then like, are you going to do something with it and to talk about what you can do with it then? Hi, Ellen. Uh, let's talk a little bit about how we're taking what we've learned, um, and making this fit into our overall marketing plan or perhaps more correctly, making our overall marketing plan fit into what we're seeing from the data.

Ellen Smoley: [00:17:31] Yeah. And it really, uh, we had a couple meetings when we started working on this survey of, like, what are our objectives and how are we going to use this? So are there certain verticals, like I just mentioned, that we want to have some really good data pieces on. And if you are on the phone and from professional services, you were in luck because we have got a great data set for professional services. Those will be coming out soon. Um, where we slice the data and looked at the ABM effectiveness for just professional services. So with that you we are able to create just a gold mine of content. And there's content for the overall report. We're using that report to create blogs. We're using that to create infographics. We're using that to create a video series. A webinar in a few months will be on this exact topic. So there's just so much when you think about the money that you spend and the time that you spend to gather the data, to analyze the data, to then figure out how it's going to be used in your content, it is truly worth it to be able to look at all of the derivative pieces that you're able to create. And not only that, so it is also equipping your sellers with this data too. So then when they have outreach to say, uh, professional services or to sellers or to marketers or to whoever your personas are that you are, um, getting data back, then they can have personalized data within their emails that speaks exactly to who they're trying to reach.

Ellen Smoley: [00:18:57] Um, and as we were looking at this, we all know that everybody likes data. And, um, I was looking at a study that put data into their seller's subject lines, and if they use numbers in the subject lines, then it almost doubled the open rate. Because if you think about your inbox and you're just kind of scanning through, looking at those numbers are really going to call out and you're going to say, oh, that might be interesting and click on that. So it almost doubled the open rate of the seller's emails. So of course, what are we going to do with that. We're going to use the data to then put it into our subject lines for our marketing emails, for our sales emails, and then personalize those emails based on the data that we know. Um, uh, so then also, you know, we'll use a lot of these data nuggets throughout all of our content all year. So we've got this great, um, data set. And so what we'll do is we'll create a blog post in six months, but we'll always have this report to link back to to say, okay, we've got a really great point about how, uh, sellers and marketers need to work together to be more efficient. Let's put that data point in there. So there's no dead ends. You're always, always linking back to your assets. And if you think about it, you know, sometimes we don't have our own data to pull from. So we do use the Forrester and the McKinsey and the data that we have at our fingertips. But when we source that data, it goes to their site. So now we're able to continue to source the data and always link back to our pieces, which I love. I think that's fabulous. Um, and then my last point, um, is being able to trend the data. So if we do this survey every six months or every year, then we can see how is this data trending? Is it moving in the right direction? Are our challenges changing or pain points changing. And then we're able to use that data then to create a, uh, other reports that look back and show you kind of those trends and what's changing. So, so much to wrap up my spiel, so much that you can do with the data and, um, just so much derivative content. I think that it sources a lot of our marketing needs as well as our sales needs, helps us be more personalized and helps us know our audience better. So it's been a fun survey to work on, and I know we've teased it the data a lot. Um, so yeah, just be on the lookout for that in the next month. I promise it's coming and we'll make sure everybody gets that that report.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:21:26] I think one of the things about the derivative content idea that's so important is even if you've got an organization that's very bought into like, hey, we want to do research so we can learn things so we can do better. And all of that, like having derivative content, improves the ROI of this research in a totally separate stream. Right. Um, and if you're if you're doing anything right now in this space, it feels like figuring out what you want to do for content and figuring out how to make that make sense and like, prove conversions and all that stuff really isn't ROI question. And this lets you kind of split the the cost of the survey, for lack of a better tum into both, um, both of those funnels. Um, sorry for anybody budgeting who just some marketing department just had research ask them for like to cover half the cost of the survey. That's not what I'm saying. But, um, you can you can, uh, use this in those extra ways. And I think that's really something that you can be planning for from the beginning again. Um, so I love that you brought that up. Ellen. I think that's super smart. Um, Barry, I didn't your your microphone popped up, so I was like, oh, are you hopping in? Uh, if not, you have some questions. Uh, and I can, uh, get into those now if you have questions. Also, as we kind of, um, enter the question part, throw them in the chat. I'm keeping an eye on it. Um, but we had some people. Oh, we got some popping up right now. Uh, what ongoing survey initiatives do you recommend for continuously gathering insights about an audience over time? So, Ellen, this is exactly what you were just talking about. If you do this often enough, you can do trend based stuff. Um, but is that we're going to do a survey every time, every time we feel like it or every time we remember that this is the thing that we were doing. Um, what kind of makes sense as a real rough idea for a long term, uh, survey project?

Ellen Smoley: [00:23:31] Barbie, you've been doing this for ten years. Um, I'm going to slide that one over to you.

Barbie Mattie: [00:23:38] Challenge accepted. Um, no. Um, it it depends on your definition of audience. Right. And then that kind of goes back to some of the the tips and tricks I was going to share. Um, depending on how you cut the data, that dictates how how the longevity of this is. Right. So for example, this particular survey, um, I've been looking at surveys for a decade now, and the best lens that I have ever, ever found to look at data is comparing companies by growth rate. Right. So, um, you have your Bell curve. You have the companies that are lower growth or flat to declining. You have the, the the companies that are, that are, that are really doing, you know, you know, 11 to 40% annual revenue growth. And so then it's kind of like, well, I want to do what these companies on the outside of the Bell Curve are doing. And then I want to make sure I avoid this stuff on the other side of this bell curve, because I don't want to do the things that companies that aren't growing. So so that's kind of a really good way to to look at it. And if you look at it from that lens, Alejandro, you can extend the life of that survey data for a long period of time. Um, some of the biggest questions that we get, um, I love this ABM survey. I want to do this again. Um, in the past, Iron Horse has done, um, survey around buyer insights data. There are a lot of other players doing that, um, uh, out there. And some are really, really good too. Um, and, and so, you know, that's one, one, um, another type of survey data that you will never get fired for asking for is budget survey data. Um, uh, so, you know, Mark, you know, what's the marketing budget as a percentage of revenue? How is that allocated across people, programs, technology, leadership? And anybody who has a budget will absolutely want that information to go in, equipped to have those horribly complicated budget conversations to say, well, this is what high growth companies are budgeting, marketing as a percentage of revenue. And this is what low growth companies are. So it just equips you to have more educated, less emotional conversations. Um, so there wasn't a specific answer, but hopefully I was close enough.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:26:08] Uh, no, I think that's fantastic. Um, the other thing, and this is backing up to Ellen's point a little bit, if you're thinking about this as derivative content, like it is also super, super valuable if you are in a. Like really well defined market niche like that. Then you get a little more time on all this data. It's valuable for a little longer. And oftentimes you're the only one who's out there doing this research. And when we get back to all the principles of ABM, like that stuff gets really valuable and helps you, um, identify yourselves as market experts really, really quickly. Um, so when we're looking at the Long Terme plan, you know, maybe that's, um, maybe that's another thing that you factor in and tweak some stuff so you can see that derivative content play out. Um, and you still finding stuff useful that's maybe three years old or however old. Um, another question then, uh, and I think we touched on this a little bit, but it's worth going back to always, um, what are key metrics or indicators that B2B businesses should prioritize when they're conducting market research in 2024? And we'll say beyond.

Barbie Mattie: [00:27:19] Um, well, that's a very broad question. And we've been talking about specifics, and that's okay. Um, so from a from a metrics perspective, um, I'm going to start with kind of more of a misnomer, right? So when you're thinking about, you know, I need metrics to show how this is going to drive more pipeline. I need metrics for how you know it. Again, it goes back to the previous question, who is the audience we need to know this information about. And then that's going to signal success. So if you're going to go and you need to know how to get new buyers, you're going to have an entirely different set of metrics that are going to signal the achievement of that goal. Right. So you're going to have net new logo acquisition. You're going to have, uh, you're going to have pipeline, all of those things. But then if you're trying to figure out something about how to engage customers, existing customers more, you're going to have an entirely different set of metrics. You're going to look at retention and churn and all of those things. So the it's really just important to think about, you know, back to the four essential questions. What are we doing this why? And then the audience one is a really key question as well. Was that answered anything else to add?

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:28:37] No, I absolutely like if there if there was one simple if there was one simple answer to that, we would have just sent an email out. Yeah. Wouldn't have. We wouldn't be doing a webinar about it and having a conversation. Um, there's one more question from chat. And then I know we're coming up on time, so we'll wrap up. But I always think this is one of the most interesting things about doing research across the board. Um, sinus says we've had low response rates from last year's survey. What are your thoughts on incentives or other forms of value to offer in exchange for feedback? So this is always a big question. How do you get people to take your survey?

Barbie Mattie: [00:29:15] Well, we used a really good vendor. And we had very, very specific quotas. And that was actually another one of my tips that I wanted to share is do the work to spend the time up front, to think through the qualification questions of who you want to be allowed to take the survey in the first place? Um, it's if if it's low response rates, that's okay. It's better to have low response rates than have high response rates of people that aren't that don't match your target audience. So, for example, in the past I've run, uh, CMO surveys where we want to get people with titles of CMOs to take the survey. Well, if you're targeting a company with revenue that's more than $5 billion, you're not going to get a CMO to take a survey. Um, there was at one point where we did use this vendor, and because of the quality of the person we were targeting, we did pay $200 per survey to get that completed. Um, that was a lot of money, but that was that's what the purpose it served, because we had to get somebody with titles. Um, going back to the the tips for thinking through like the qualification questions, um, you know, it's really important. Like what level of seniority do we want? Right. So if it's managers and above, what can we what can we do to disqualify the people that aren't doing that. And that's when you kind of like start triangulating some of the initial data sets you get back. So if you if you see somebody that says that they're a CMO, um, they've got 17 years experience. But then when they ask you, they answered the generation question they identified as Gen Z. They're lying. So you got to weed out the people that are just taking the survey to, to be, uh, uh, incentive based.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:31:13] And a huge part of that is don't forget that. Like if you're working with a vendor like you are the client and that that operation, and that doesn't mean you get to send emails that are slightly terse. If you want to send a slightly terse email about some of the results you're getting.

Barbie Mattie: [00:31:30] They do. They do stick to hard quotas, which is good. And then if your sample size ends up being, um, smaller than expected, these are the Barbie Maddie rules for statistical significance, right? Um, obviously, statistical significance from a mathematical perspective is 100 sample size of 100 or above. Well, we're in marketing. So, um, what I like to say is a sample size of 8 to 24. That's equivalent to you conducting a focus group, which is still market research. Um, 25 to 39 can be used directionally. So you would want to augment that data source with, you know, historical performance or other, another third party data or something. And then statistically significant as a sample size of 40 or above. Um, but then again, that's why it's so important to Ellen's point earlier about making sure that you make you stick to your quotas and you don't cut the sample sizes too small for us to be able to compare high growth to low growth companies for this survey or this report, we're going to launch, you know, the sample sizes had to be large because then we cut it again and said, okay, if you're high growth and then we cut it. Here's all of the responses for sellers. Here's all the responses for marketers is everybody has to artistically significant. Yes okay. We're good.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:32:59] No, I think that's, uh, the I it has been really great to work with you. Um, specifically coming out of, like, took, like, one stats class in grad school. Level of level of. I have opinions on research. Um, and to really, like, figure out how that translates into stuff that we can use in the marketing space has been super helpful. Another thing I'll say and real quick. And then Elon, if you have anything else you want to um. Hop in with Get Ready because I'm throwing to you next. But it does also help so much organizationally to have someone who really owns these projects like this should be someone's baby, because there are so many decisions like that where you it's always helpful to have more voices involved in discussions, but somebody has to make those calls. And sometimes those calls are weird and sometimes they're tough. And just knowing that like, oh, I was there when we were doing the questions and now I can make it decision on the back end about what that means, like makes this whole process work so much smoother. And frankly, you get much better results on the back end if it's a coherent process. So. Work by committee is great, but someone should have the ability to be like, no, this is my child and and this is how we're going to do it. Um, but, Ellen, I know I've talked a lot. Um, do you have anything at the end that you want to throw in?

Ellen Smoley: [00:34:27] I love that last tip. Um, I think that for this past example is when it comes down to creating the content and we are saying, well, let's go in this direction. It always comes back to Barbie to say, no, no, we didn't intend for that. And here's why. And here's the question that we asked, and here's how you know, that should be created from there. So amazing tip on that last one. Um, and then I will say, so we did use a great data vendor, but it doesn't always have to be that way. So if you've got an amazing database, I do think incentivizing is the way to go. Otherwise it's going to have a low response rate. Um, but what you could do is pick a couple people out of the hat and give them $100, however much gift card. Um, and if if it is your database, then you get that PII data and you know exactly who took the survey, which sometimes can be even cooler. Um, if you're using a data, you do not get that PII data. So we don't know exactly who in terms of title or email took our survey. Um, so there's definitely pros and cons to both.

Barbie Mattie: [00:35:27] Yeah, that's a great point because even when you do that, that's an opportunity for people on the sales side of the house to engage with customers that maybe have gone a little bit dark lately. And so it's a really good client engagement strategy to offer them to participate. And, you know, you'll share the data in advance. And this incentive. So yeah, there's many good reasons for doing that.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:35:52] Awesome. Well, we have gone a little over time, so I think we will wrap this up. Thanks everyone for joining us. Um, Barbie, Ellen, this is where I usually ask people to plug something. We all work at the same place, so I think this is going to go relatively quick. Who wants to do it?

Ellen Smoley: [00:36:10] You, Alex.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:36:11] Great. So we all have LinkedIn so you can find us there. We also all work at Iron Horse. You can find everything we're doing there, including, um, initially I think some data from this we're creating, as Ellen said, derivative content out of this. Um, that'll all live @ironhorse.io. We do these coffee breaks roughly once a month, um, schedules, usually depending on when we have, uh, interesting people who want to say interesting things like these, too. So it's not just me for a half hour. Um, so we've got a great schedule coming up. Nothing. Uh, Ellen, are we announcing anything yet for the next coffee break?

Ellen Smoley: [00:36:47] Um, we do not have our next coffee break launch, but it is launching this Friday. Uh, so come back to the website this Friday, and it will be on the hello bar. You'll find.

Alex Jonathan Brown: [00:36:58] That I. Oh, uh, we love a hello bar. Um, again, thanks, everybody, for joining us. And until until you go to the website later this week and learn when the next one is, uh, uh, get back to work. Coffee break's over. Bye, everybody.

Ellen Smoley: [00:37:14] Bye, everybody.