Ask the Experts: Answers to your Burning Marketing Questions

Stephanie Siemens: Hi, everybody. Welcome. My name is Stephanie Siemens, and I will be your host for today's Coffee Break Session, Ask the Experts: Answers to Your Burning Marketing Questions. We're breaking out of our marketing bubble today with this, Ask Me Anything, where we'll be chatting with a panel of three experienced marketers answering the questions you all submitted during registration.

Stephanie Siemens: I am super excited to have these lovely panelists here. So before we dive into our questions, I'd like to give a quick intro to each of them. Our first panelist is Jess Bahr, Senior Director of Demand Gen at Movable Ink. Jess is an award-winning marketer that loves the overlap of data, tech, and marketing. Fun fact about Jess, if you were on Facebook at all during the late 2010s, you're almost guaranteed to have seen or at least been targeted by a campaign her team executed. Jess, welcome. Thanks so much for being here.

Stephanie Siemens: All right, our second guest is Nirosha Methananda, VP of Marketing at Influ2. A proud marketing generalist, Nirosha has a penchant for building out B2B brands in niche categories. Fun fact about Nirosha, born in London, lived in Somalia, raised in Australia, heritage in Sri Lanka, and now at home in the U.S., Nirosha only has the continents of South America and Antarctica to conquer to truly be a global citizen. Nirosha, so cool.

Nirosha Methananda: Thank you. Hi.

Stephanie Siemens: Welcome. Welcome. And last but not least, our third guest is Sruthi Kumar, director of Demand Gen at TripActions. Sruthi excels at driving revenue and pipeline from Demand Gen marketing channels like events and direct mail. Fun fact about Sruthi, she was the first marketing hire at Sendoso in 2018. Welcome Sruthi, thanks for joining us.

Sruthi Kumar: Thanks for having me.

Stephanie Siemens: Of course, of course. All right. Well, we've got a lot of content to cover today, so I'm going to just jump right in here with our first question. And Jess, why don't you get us kicked off here? Our first question from the audience is, is the MQL, the marketing qualified lead, truly dead?

Jess Bahr: I feel like this is the headline that I see everywhere on LinkedIn, like thanks Chris Walker, and occasionally gets said by reps and people I work with, and it's not dead, right? Maybe it's transforming, but it's definitely not dead. So the way I view MQLs, MQAs, however you want to score it, is it's still a great signal of something you can action on.

Jess Bahr: I will say I haven't sent MQLs to my sellers in quite a while, but I like to use them as a way to automate marketing activity. When I'm seeing someone is really hot, let's hit them with a call to action to get them to inbound. So let's get them raising their hand to be a buyer because they might be ready for it. So I don't think it's dead. I think it's a really dramatic and attention grabbing statement to say it's dead, if I could be honest with that. And it maybe has transformed since the days where marketing teams were gold on MQLs and now marketing teams by the most part are gold on pipeline and bookings, but I don't think it's dead. I'll argue about that till the cow comes home on that side.

Nirosha Methananda: I was going to say, Jess, I don't think, when we were having our discussion prior, I think we all agreed that it, there's been a lot of this cancel culture in marketing where the MQL is dead, email is dead, all of these things are dead. And I think you hit the nail on the head where you said, it's a signal. And you can do so many different things with signals and how you use them. I think that's something for people to keep in mind with different stats and data that you can get. And that's really how you operationalize it, right?

Jess Bahr: Yeah. I agree a hundred percent.

Sruthi Kumar: And I think when we're talking about signals, there has to be understanding throughout the org and what the MQL has already exists, people already know what it is. You're not going to have an AE join your team and not understand what an MQL is. They understand it's a signal, someone filled out a form, they probably got scored on it in a certain way depending on your organization, but there's a way you rally around it. And that's where the signal comes in handy. So I agree, the cancel culture is so hot right now, and it's almost like it exists only so something else can work. Without the MQL, you need to depend on something else, but still use the MQL and also try another type of signal. So I don't think there's any love lost when you keep the MQL.

Stephanie Siemens: Awesome. All right. We are going to move on to our second question here. And Nirosha, we'll let you kick this one off for us. What have you found is your most successful channel that's driving top of funnel and mid funnel conversations? Conversions, I'm sorry.

Nirosha Methananda: Yeah, so I don't want to toot our own horn, but, Influ2 has been drinking its own champagne, we've been using our own tool to be able, for a long time, to be really be able to drive our top of funnel engagement as well as our mid funnel. And it's a little bit different in the sense that it's a B2B advertising platform at a very personal level, but really I think where the different or what the difference is in terms of how our ABM team approach it is in the context of the content that they're putting forward. So if it's a top of funnel campaign, and it's addressing a large audience, it's a bit more generic and brand focused, as you know, that's not surprising, I think everyone's doing that, but then when you come down to that middle of funnel, it's really about, "Okay, well, what are you trying to achieve? What are you trying to drive?" It's really that conversion to meeting and to get to that sales accepted lead.

Nirosha Methananda: So a lot of the content that the team has been doing has been to support SDR air cover, and what I really like about it is that they, one of our campaigns in particular, is really humanizing and tying back to what the SDRs are doing. So, if they send a LinkedIn message, then we are creating advertising that links back to that message. In fact, I usually have a slide that shows for some of those examples, but we have one of our SDRs, Stacy. She's on the ad, holding her puppy, and introducing her, and talking specifically to that account. And then there's a landing page, and she's on that page.

Nirosha Methananda: And it might be a little bit of overkill, but I feel like for some people, but at least it humanizes the person that you are speaking to. And I think that's a really important thing to remember. It's not necessarily about all the different things you're doing. It's like, "Okay, what's the context around this?" And I know, Sruthi, this was something that you were talking about, I don't know if that's something that resounds for you or you have any other ideas about that?

Sruthi Kumar: Yeah, no, I love that. What you've done is given the SDR the ability to use their face, and sometimes, we have all these tools for our teams to use like Vidyard and Loom and all these opportunities, and you have to almost, and I stick to this, you have to be a certain amount of creative on your own and as an SDR in order to be able to master the craft and then move forward in your career in sales or marketing or whatever you decide to end up doing, but what you've done is given SDR an equal playing field.

Sruthi Kumar: The people that may be uncomfortable behind the phone call when they're following up with that MQL or the person who is going to be the liveliest person in a room and ready to go introduce themselves and shake everyone's hand. And here at TripActions, we don't leverage this. This is fantastic and amazing, but what we have done is have a couple of evergreen campaigns always running for our SDRs to be able to use to follow up with anyone who's maybe registered for a webinar or downloaded a piece of online collateral. And so that way they also have, they're always geared with something to talk about or talk with or offer to the prospect.

Jess Bahr: I'm a little bit different. Well, similar. I think it's all super great things. I really like email marketing speaking of things that people say are dead, and there's still a really big space for email marketing, but leading with content that shows value that helps your reader, that really helps them understand that you're not just a vendor, you're a partner, you understand the space, you are the expert to build that authority and that relationship and that trust. So when the rep does reach out, they already know who we are, and they're already primed to buy, to try and make that a little easier, or ideally get them to raise their hand to come buy us. So really good content marketing tied to email nurtures and follow up, and ideally it's part of an overall campaign, but I think email is one of those components that people tend to write off because people do think email is dead, but it's not.

Sruthi Kumar: Email is powerful. When we were all working from home in 2020, email was the one way you knew you were going to get everyone's attention. Of course there's some other fantastic things you can do like direct mail and other items, but email, you know it's getting delivered to those inboxes.

Jess Bahr: It's opted in also.

Sruthi Kumar: Yeah.

Jess Bahr: So you are advertising, you're promoting on social media, you're hitting someone, but maybe it's not where they want to consume your content. If they're in your database, and you're following data compliance rules, they're likely opted in, and they want to hear from you. So it's such a higher intent signal on that side.

Nirosha Methananda: Yeah. I agree with you. I mean, I think it's super underrated. It's something that we tested recently with an event that we went to. We had the SDRs reaching out and then I supplemented with a couple of dirty word marketing campaigns. But it actually, you could see the lift, and you could see the interest. And I agree with you, it's definitely not dead. I think as well, it's like okay, rethinking what it is. I love nothing more than doing a beautiful, laid out HTML email. I just love doing it. There's something about it that just is very fulfilling for me. But I changed it to be just a text email, it was straightforward, whatever, and that seemed to hit better. So I think it's like, "Okay, cool. These things work." It just, it's changing our viewpoints around how execute them.

Jess Bahr: I love a-

Sruthi Kumar: Oh, sorry, go ahead.

Jess Bahr: I love a good fake email that comes from like your VP of marketing that people think is like a one to one email. And like, "They emailed me, they really wanted me to attend." And I mean, I see the replies, right? We often catch people who are like, "Thank you so much for this invitation. I did miss it in my inbox." And it's like, it's heartwarming.

Sruthi Kumar: It is.

Jess Bahr: You make them feel special, and they are special. They're your huge customer and they are special and they're helping them feel special.

Nirosha Methananda: I'll say. And in our case, it's not fake. It is definitely coming from me.

Stephanie Siemens: She's like confirmed, it's really me.

Nirosha Methananda: But I will say, I think you touched on a really interesting point around we have a customer of ours that the way that they, and this is a little bit off topic but it kind of still align, but what they do is they monitor engagement signals that they're getting and they actually have integrated them into their Slack. And so they look at like, "Okay, who is this? What's their title?" And then they get someone who's from their team, who's at a corresponding level to respond. So if it's a C level, they get a... And I think that's, it's obviously a very mature, you have to have some maturity. I think it's some great resources and that's the investment they're making. And I think that does, it does make a difference in terms of who you are hearing from and what they're saying, unfortunately.

Sruthi Kumar: Yeah, I've done that in the past too when I ran events. We did everything under the sun to make sure we were getting our registration. So 75% of our registration was coming from marketing emails, even though we had sponsors. So we had sponsors doing outreach, with SDRs doing outreach, with customer success and AEs and AMS, like account managers and account executives doing outreach as well. And it still came from marketing. And some of the tactics we used were doing the same thing, the spoof email from our CMO, and also trying to match titles because anyone who was an IC, they would receive an email from me, just felt like, "Hey, we know we're tackling the same obstacle because I'm your peer. And this is how I'm doing here at this MarTech company and our customers were marketers. So it made more sense. And then our CMO reached out to anyone who was VP or reached out to anyone who was VP and higher.

Sruthi Kumar: And something else we did talking about these amazing HTML emails that you can use that sometimes people are like, "Okay, it's a marketing email." We actually started using business cameos. So how you can send a cameos go to a friend, wishing them happy birthday, do the business side of it, and we had Ice-Tea inviting everyone to our event.

Stephanie Siemens: That's amazing.

Jess Bahr: Yeah.

Sruthi Kumar: We also put that into our SDR outreach and it's just like, it makes everything more exciting. To bring that buzz to people, it's just really fun and it's not bad.

Jess Bahr: Yeah. We did with Tony Hawk and we wrote the script and we were like... And this is for it's in the tech industry. As he clearly would not go to this conference. He's not a system admin. He was like, "I was there last year. You guys probably missed me." I was like, "Oh, this is hilarious." No one got it there. Like, "Was Tony Hawk really there?" No, he's not. But yeah, those little things, I think where people, you're reaching them in a fun way. I mean, that's how people want to consume now. They want to consume with, they want to work with vendors and partners who are fun, who make them like happy and who can celebrate some of those nuances of being in their industry with them.

Stephanie Siemens: Yeah. I want to emphasize one point. I think Nirosha, you brought it up first is humanizing this outreach and really having empathy for who you're reaching out to. Email gets a bad rap because a lot of people are sending out lazy emails and they're not putting the time and effort behind them, they're not humanizing them, they're not personalizing them. We're not using intent signals to see where our prospects are in the buyer's journey and providing value to them to tie it back to your point, Jess. And that comes across badly for the brand. So I think if you do email well, it's still a really, really great channel for marketers.

Nirosha Methananda: A hundred percent.

Stephanie Siemens: All right. I feel like we have a session just on email. Well, let's move along to our next question, and Sruthi I'll have you kick us off here. How are you leveraging gifting campaigns in your ABM strategy?

Sruthi Kumar: So as we're talking about emails, I mean like emails, aren't dead, but what is really fantastic is if someone receives a digital message from you, whether it's an ad or something they're consuming online and then having something physical land on their desk or their work desk or home desk can be super powerful too, because it just really brings that message home. So some of the things that I've done in the past and doing today is making sure we have sends that are more themed around like a holiday or even something silly. It doesn't always have to be like, "Oh, this is a Christmas send. And we're wishing you a happy new year's or holiday send." We've also done, I've done sends in my career for national dog day. And we paired a bunch of, we paired like a Shopify store online and I previously worked at Sendoso, so this was also sharing our own product. Sendoso is a sending platform. So very big on direct mail. And so we paired it with a video and we had dogs around the office reading our G2 reviews, so if you get it on YouTube, I am one of the dog's voices. So highlighted my career, honestly, it's all downhill from there, but third with a bunch of giveaways for your prospect's dog or customer's dog. And then we matched how much ever was spent on the store and we donated to SPCA.

Sruthi Kumar: So just if there was a lot of components in that, does it have to be that detailed? No. Some of the things we do here today for not a marketing audience, but to a finance audience and travel managers in HR. So definitely different person. On the other side, we run a survey that we have evergreen just running throughout the year, and it's like $5 to fill out a $5 survey of what is your status of your financial planning for the year? Guys it's powerful. People love $5. People will take an action, and so we make sure to add in a lot of eGifts and physical gifts throughout the SD outreach as well.

Sruthi Kumar: And so what we have done here, a recent campaign we ran was Groundhog Day. So you would think it was based off of February 2nd Groundhog looking at what the environment and weather is going to be like, but we actually played it off of Bill Murray's movie Groundhog Day. And we're basically telling finance people, "Hey, you don't have to keep dealing with your expense report, we can break the cycle for you." Very fun messaging, but we paired it with giveaways from Bill, like images of Bill Murray from the Groundhog Day movie. And we had a market and campaign go out from this. So we had follow-ups going out to any third party list that we had acquired throughout the quarter. So whether that was an event we sponsored or session we spoke on and acted on those names, we also had it paired with sends that sales reps could send out to their own prospects and enabled them.

Sruthi Kumar: Like here are the two separate ways you could be following up or reaching out, proactively reaching out to your prospects, using these. And they're very popular. Everyone loves using them and we work with the finance audience. So it's not always as fun. So even like, I think it's just super fun to add in direct mail for your internal team, because it gets them pumped up and they get to do something different, no more inviting to a webinar, no more. Just following up on a guide. Those are all powerful, but giving something the team to get excited about too can be really exciting. And I think if you're launching your ABM strategy and adding direct mail in for the first time, it's great. It's a really easy way to be like, "Hey, this is a high value item or this is a mid-value item or low value item. What is the audience that we care about?" And then being able to split it out accordingly. And it's a really easy way to start testing out segments and how they're responding to your messaging.

Nirosha Methananda: Yeah.

Sruthi Kumar: So we'd love to hear from Jess and Nirosha, because I know they both use direct mail too.

Nirosha Methananda: You want me...

Jess Bahr: I'm here. My dog was snoring kind of loud for a sec, so I muted it so we didn't have to hear logs over there. But yeah, I jokingly will probably like bribe everyone, but it's nice to have just a little like thank even little eGifts where we had a meeting, super common use case, trying to get someone to come speak at an event, sending them an Uber to get there, just trying to make it easier for them to do business with you and a pleasure to do business can go a long ways.

Jess Bahr: We found when the pandemic first started, we did a movie night in. Everyone's already stuck at home, they're not going anywhere. And we had reached out a few theaters for some movies that had gotten postponed because of the pandemic. I think it was like 6.75 total for the cost. It was like an Amazon movie rental and a popcorn 10. And that was the highest performing campaign we ran was just saying, "Hey, like we know things are not the greatest right now, so have a little break." Or having the option to have a Disney character read to your kid on a different Zoom while you're on the business call. Well I'll kind of distract your kids. Little things like that.

Stephanie Siemens: That is so cute.

Jess Bahr: Yeah. It just makes their lives easier. It makes it easier for them to go about their day. And so you're providing value. I feel like everything I say goes back to value, but you're providing, you're helping them in a way that isn't tied to what they're doing with you. So you're kind of in, it definitely can go. I can't imagine the business world bringing now without gifting, after becoming such a common thing for really good companies. There's still companies that aren't doing it, which are missing out. It's a very small price to pay to get a good outcome from it, but definitely been very impactful would incorporate it well into other campaigns. It's hit me. There are vendors I've only talked to because they sent me a nice gift.

Stephanie Siemens: Yeah.

Sruthi Kumar: Surprisingly, I worked at a direct mail company. I didn't get hit up with direct mail enough. And vendors were trying to sell me and I'm like, "Why aren't you sending me something?" 

Jess Bahr: Let me kick it up a notch, direct mailing for recruiting. When you're trying to get a really good candidate and they're just like not interested. There's a couple that I've been trying to poach for a while and so every time they have a career move or something big in their life, I send them a little, thanks. "Like congratulations on the new role. Why isn't it working for me?" But it goes a long ways. Everyone likes to feel special.

Stephanie Siemens: Oh yeah.

Nirosha Methananda: Conversely, I think with your point Jess, like a lot of companies are using  gifting now. So we had a, recently, we were at a conference and conferences, it's not necessarily direct mail, but there's a lot of swag going around and it's how, for us, it was really thinking about the one... A couple of things that I was thinking about when we were I think doing our outreach and so on was what would be worth your time? When you have limited time, what would be worth your time in terms of what we offer you? And it was a question that came up recently on a Slack group that I'm in. Okay, what would be the value that you'd offer for a meal or something like that?

Nirosha Methananda: And it's like being able to answer that question and differentiate in that, from that perspective, can make all the difference, because there's so many different things that you can and you can be so creative or not. And there's so much of that on offer, certainly from a B2B MarTech space at the minute, I think it really is about like, "Okay, what's that value that you're delivering?" And I love that question. That is actually the question I ask every vendor that I work in. How are you going to make my life easier?

Stephanie Siemens: Yeah.

Jess Bahr: How are you going to get me to my number? And if you're not cool, I don't care.

Nirosha Methananda: Yeah. Or how are you going to make my life easier or my team's life easier or help us achieve our goal or whatever? But it's like having that empathy and taking that perspective I think is super important.

Stephanie Siemens: Yeah. I think,

Sruthi Kumar: Sorry, go ahead.

Stephanie Siemens: Oh, sorry Sruthi, I was just going to say it ties back to the humanizing point. We're human. People like receiving gifts. And I think gifting also helps you rise above the noise, not everyone is doing it, and if someone's reaching out, a sales rep is reaching out with a really personalized gift that shows they did their research about you as a consumer, it means something. I will just tell a quick story. I had a vendor reaching out to me over and over again, via email, calls, I wasn't responding. And then she, I got a direct mail gift to my inbox. She had been on my LinkedIn and seen that I had volunteered at a specific nonprofit. She sent me a $50 gift card to donate to that nonprofit on my behalf. And I was blown away. I was like a hundred percent. I will take a call with you because that's just great marketing. So it really makes a difference.

Nirosha Methananda: I think there's a question that's come through. The question is how do you address people taking meetings just for the gift? And I've kind of seen this come up.

Stephanie Siemens: Yeah. That's a great question.

Nirosha Methananda: My answer to that is just similar to your recruiting and what you do. It's like, well, you leave that brand impression, you leave them with what it is. It may be them just taking their gift, but they probably leave that meeting with some understanding of who you are, what your brand is. And you never know, like it's such a fluid market at the moment, you never know where they're going to go and what their next position's going to be. So I don't know, that's just my view on it if anyone else has any.

Jess Bahr: I will admit I have taken meetings for a gift before, because I am a sucker for branded swag. I liked it. I was like, I want that backpack. And I took it. But now with this role, we use that platform. And so coming in, I was like, "oh, I am familiar with that." Before it wasn't. I knew I didn't have a budget before but I didn't quite make sense. But now coming into this company with that platform, I already have that knowledge, that affinity for it. And if I came in with no tech, I probably would've had them, I would've had them definitely involved in the evaluation process. It's going to happen. You're going to have to eat it.

Stephanie Siemens: Right.

Jess Bahr: You know, just plan for it.

Sruthi Kumar: It happens. There's no way around it. But the best thing you can do is lead with the value prop and make sure you're sending something that ties back to your company's offering. And like, you're not just going to send a pillow, you have to send a pillow with messaging around it like, "Sleep easier using our product." Like there is a lot of tie-ins so yeah, it's a problem marketer as you're going to have, you're going to have to spend a buck on the wrong lead, but with that could be many good leads that come in.

Stephanie Siemens: Exactly. All right. We are running out of time. I'm going to skip to our next question about intent data because I want to make sure we touch on this. So Nirosha if you could get us off, how are you using intent data to amplify your ABM programs?

Nirosha Methananda: Yeah, so I also have a hidden history with one of the leading intent data providers for about five and a half years. So with Bombora so just full disclosure, if you didn't know before, but we are using Bombora at Influ2 and primarily for our sales and SDR team. Bombora's account level data, and so it really helps hone your interests, who's interested from your target accounts and then be able to help prioritize, that's one of the use cases. I think we're, and I know Jess and Sruthi have to add, I'll just say like, I think the more as I progressed in Bombora and I think, the more intent data you have, the better it is. The caveat to that is though make sure you know how to orchestrate and use it for the right purposes.

Nirosha Methananda: I think the rise of the CDP is going to be the next big thing just to use something cliche. But it is about how you orchestrate and use it and how you, we are not just like flushing out more emails that don't have any meaning or that are like, "Hey, are you alive?" Or whatever it is. I think you have to have the empathy that goes along with it. And with that, I will open the floor.

Sruthi Kumar: Definitely none of these things are silver bullets, intent data, direct mail, email, but when used together, if you're building ABM, use your intent data signals to build out segments of people who are engaged or navigating or investigating on your website, send them a piece of direct mail that correlates with the part of the journey they're on with you and follow up with email, like there's your ABM strategy. So definitely use it thoughtfully and don't think anything's going to solve your pipeline funnel problem.

Nirosha Methananda: No matter what the sales person tells you.

Sruthi Kumar: Yeah.

Stephanie Siemens: Right?

Jess Bahr: Yeah, nothing is a magic bullet in that regards. Yeah, very similarly how I've historically used it is using it out prioritize the larger targeted audience. So selling into our targeted account list who in there is actually hot? Who's who's interested? And then just making sure that we can leverage that intent data to reach the right person there, the right accounts at the right time in the journey. So definitely a tool that I love having in my tool belt.

Nirosha Methananda: One actually one other thing I will say that I believe it's underrated for it. I have an affinity to content as well. If you look at intent historically and you can start to map trends, it actually isn't, it can be a little bit predictive for content and for content strategy. And I think it's a little bit underutilized in that case, but if you think about it from that perspective, it could be quite powerful.

Jess Bahr: Yeah.

Nirosha Methananda: My two cents.

Stephanie Siemens: Definitely. Well, thank you all so much. We are already out of time that went by super quickly. I feel like we need another session. It was so fun to talk with you all. Nirosha, Sruthi, Jess, thank you so much for joining us. And thank you to our audience for hopping on. I know we didn't get through all of our questions, but we'll be circling as a group after this session and following up with people. So thank you again. And I hope you have a great day.