How Coveo’s CMO is ‘Making Business Personal’ with Account-Based Marketing

One of the most sought-after goals in current B2B marketing is being able to deliver personalized content to clients in a sales cycle. This elusive skill is one of the foundations of Coveo, a company using machine-based intelligence to help clients deliver personalized content to their markets. On this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, Drew talks with Coveo’s CMO, Mark Floisand, about the latest account-based strategies that have allowed them to become experts at personalized marketing.

As Mark explains, the company’s tagline “Making Business Personal” serves as the base upon which the rest of their business operates. Mark and his team are proving that it is possible to scale the personalization of content, if you use the right data. While taking advantage of account-based marketing, Coveo’s success has come from strategically utilizing the computing power that allows personalization at large. Mark also shares his insights on how to walk the thin line between helpful and harmful data usage when determining personalization.

Learn how to deliver the right content at the right time.

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What You’ll Learn

Coveo’s account-based marketing strategy allows them to reach more markets than ever before

When Mark joined the Coveo team in early 2016, he realized that not every account in Coveo’s market needed (or wanted) an in-depth sales presentation. He began to ask the question, “How do we cost-effectively reach the target audience we know we can differentiate to?” He and his team segmented out which clients needed an individualized interaction, which could be a part of a one-to-few presentation, and which could handle a one-to-many approach. By getting specific in the way they approached clients, Coveo was able to land 1 in 5 meetings and raise over $100 million last year. The full story is on this episode, and it’s one you won’t want to miss.

Delivering personalized content CAN happen at scale – here’s how Coveo is delivering on that promise

Nearly every B2B marketer understands the importance of delivering personalized content to clients; content that adds value to their purchase journey. But many are wondering if this can happen at scale, across dozens of platforms. Coveo’s team is proving that yes, it is possible! Mark tells Drew that it’s all about “Using as much information as you have access to, to make the best guess at what is going to be most statistically likely to be relevant to each individual.” Coveo’s machine-learning programs take data from website interactions, searches, clicked links, etc. and use it to create personalized content streams that can be delivered to clients when they need it most. They’re taking advantage of the world’s computing power and putting it to use.

“Making Business Personal” is much more than a tagline, it’s a way of running the entire company

Coveo not only uses the tagline “Making Business Personal,” they use it as a foundation upon which the rest of their business operates. Mark explains that “The more you can position an organization against the real goals that your target customer has, and the personal goals they are trying to solve, the more relevant you become.” The B2B market is no longer satisfied with cookie cutter sales pitches. They expect – and deserve – quality personalized content because they experience it every day as a consumer. Why should their workplace experience be any different?

Timeline

[1:00] Coveo takes personalization of content in their stride
[2:26] Mark’s Renegade Rapid Fire segment
[12:57] Coveo raised $100 million last year – here’s how they did it
[20:16] The logic behind “Making Business Personal”
[22:55] Coveo can personalize content at scale because they leverage THIS technology
[29:28] Lessons learned en route to becoming a purpose-driven company
[31:44] Walking line between helpful and harmful data usage
[36:00] Measuring what’s important to a client over a long sales cycle

Connect With Mark:

Follow Mark on the Coveo blog
Connect with Mark on LinkedIn
Follow Mark on Twitter

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Drew

Meet the Guest

Mark Floisand is Chief Marketing Officer at Coveo. He has over 20 years of marketing, sales and general management experience in the technology industry, spanning blue chip and start-up companies across three continents, including Apple, Adobe, BusinessObjects, SAP, Total Defense, Untangle and WeVideo. Mark was most recently with Sitecore, a Coveo technology partner, where he led product marketing. Mark holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa; and an MBA from the University of Durham in the UK.

Quotes from Mark Floisand

It's all about putting information in front of people earlier in the funnel before you actually know that they are actively looking at you.
The reality is that buyers have had their personalization expectations raised substantially due to being consumers in a digital age.
The irony of the mantra "make business personal" is that it can be applied at scale when you start marrying the right content to the right set of interaction data.