Category: Drew’s Articles

America’s Most Courageous CMO Nominee

Posted on by Drew Neisser

“Our time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.” – Steve Jobs

That quote pretty much sums up Ani Matson, who until recently was the CMO at NEA Member Benefits. Ani had the courage to rethink marketing in the context of the entire customer experience versus short term expedience. And I’m not being melodramatic.  Consider for a moment that prior to taking the reigns, NEA Member Benefits sent new customers over 50 separate pieces of communications, offering a wide range of products and services. While this approach allowed the company to achieve it’s marketing goals it ultimately had a deleterious impact on perceptions of the brand and response rates.  After considerable study and consensus building, Ani and her team reduced the number of new member communications to six touches.  The results were staggering–a 20% increase in participation and significantly improved customer satisfaction ratings.  Less turned out to be more. And while The CMO Club recognized Ani with its Officer’s Award, I think next year they need a new category, Most Courageous and here’s the first nominee!

Drew: Could you explain a little bit about the business model on NEA Member Benefits and its relationship to NEA?

NEA Member Benefits is a for-profit entity owned by the NEA, the National Education Association, which represents public school teachers and other staff who work in public schools. We research insurance and retirement plans and get benefit deals for teachers. We talk to top players, we rank them, then we offer the benefits and members enroll into these benefit programs.

Drew: NEA Member Benefits markets to three million members plus their families. It’s certainly a very well defined target. What does marketing look like given that?

You still need an intentional strategy. In fact you have to be very precise because you are marketing to people who you want to have a relationship with for the length of their career and after they retire. It’s not just about finding an audience for your product, it is about serving a defined group with the best portfolio of products, in the most relevant way. The stakes are high, and if you become noise by acting like any other marketer out there, you’ll get turned off and you would have missed out on building a relationship that would last a lifetime.

You can contact members via direct mail, which is the way we used to market for many years, but you can’t just offer the same thing to three million people. So instead, as people go through their life stages, we try to give them relevant offers at specific times in their lives. We’re just trying to build offers and communications around member journeys.

Right now the secret is to get the attention because now almost everybody is doing customer-centric marketing. So now it’s about multi-channel marketing and building experiences versus just sending the information and waiting for the results. That’s the key.

Drew: What is a journey now?

Everything is set up and automated and triggered so that members can receive the appropriate information at the appropriate time based on their behavior, what they do, and what they tell us.

We’ve scored the whole membership file, and based on those scores, we decide which offers are most appropriate to market to whom. You have to watch members and understand them deeply and understand their behavior, understand their needs, understand their attributes to able to offer them the right thing. It’s beautifully analytical. They have children, they get married, they buy a car, and as they go through those stages we have different offers for them.

Drew: Let’s talk about a win that you’ve had where suddenly you were able to get the right product in front of the right person at the right time with the right message.

The one that I’m most proud of the team for doing is the reimagining of the content strategy and the way we deliver the content to the members. What we are trying to do is optimize the content at the right gaps of a member’s journey. We have came up with a huge roadmap for delivering the right information to the right members.

The best results so far have been from the new member experience that we built last year. New members were cordoned off from receiving everything that other members would receive. Instead, we designed a different experience for them, basically welcoming them to the organization, showing them what’s available to them, giving some freebies to them and just inviting them to come and explore.

By not pushing, we were able to get better results than the way we had done it in the past. We touched them only six times last year and increased participation by 20%. In the past, we had touched their comparable cohort 50 times.

Drew: That’s an incredible story. Do you have brand health metrics tracking so you know how people perceive you?

We do. We were initially thinking of using Net Promoter Score, but then we came up with what we call a “brand index”. It is similar to the Net Promotor Score but it takes into consideration other factors we thought were important for our brand. We have a relationship with Harte Hanks, and they run a longitudinal study and the “brand index” for us once a year. So we take the pulse on perceptions of the membership once a year. We’ve been tracking member perceptions for the past, I think, seven years and seeing how their opinions about the organization have changed. That is amazingly positive for us.

Drew: So, if you were to sit down with a fellow CMO, what sort of advice would you give them in order to get started?

Get rid of funnels and think past the buying. If you don’t have a good experience after you buy, you’re not coming back for more.

Look at the stages of the experience, the journey that any human being would go through when they have a need and then as they look to fulfill their need. I would ask the question why, what do they use it for? Where do they use it? And then I would start to build the experience around that.

CMO Insights: A True Marketing Force

Posted on by Drew Neisser

When I was growing up, a surprising number of our local professionals had names that doubled as appropriate descriptors.  Dr. Gum was an oral surgeon, Dr. Smiley a delightful plastic surgeon. There were many others. Only Dr. Bonebreak messed things up as he was not an orthopedist but instead a rather feared pediatric dentist!  So when I hear a name like LaForce, I can’t help but wonder if the namesake is a force to be reckoned with.  Read my interview below and you will know with certainty that Colette LaForce is indeed just that.

As CMO of AMD, the microprocessor company that is the David to Intel’s Goliath, LaForce quickly established a Marketing Operations to quantify activities, dealt with a major corporate restructuring and then relaunched AMD on a global basis.  Oh and did I mention she’s piloting an innovative marketing effort exclusively for the Chinese?  It’s never a dull moment when you’re working for a challenger brand and Colette seems to thrive under these circumstances so it’s little wonder she is also a recent recipient of The CMO Club‘s award for Leadership.

Drew: Congratulations on winning the Leadership award.  What are some of the lessons you can share with aspiring leaders especially of the marketing variety?

One critical trait I see in great leaders is an ability to simplify goals and objectives.  People can’t remember ten goals, or even five.  Great leaders, like great sports coaches, prioritize just one or two compelling goals for the team to commit to and focus on.

Drew: I love the fact that you have “transformative CMO” in your LinkedIn bio.  Can you talk a little about how you are being transformative in your current role?  

For me, the word ‘transformative’ represents a desire to be a steward of change.  Stewardship is really all about making lasting contributions that leave your environment in better shape than it was the day before.  Couple that with a leadership approach that encourages meaningful change and an outstanding team that can drive execution and consistency, and you get true transformation.

Drew: What advice do you have for your fellow marketers if they too wanted to transform their organizations, one way or another?  

To drive transformation, a team must to be aligned on the organization’s purpose, goals and values. Why do you do what you do?  What are you trying to do?  And how will you do it?  Once you get clarity on those points, true transformation can begin.

Drew:  AMD by definition is a challenger brand given Intel’s category dominance.  How has this shaped your overall approach to marketing?  Do you feel the need to be more innovative than you were at Dell or Rackable Systems?  

Innovation and creativity should always play a role in what we as marketers do, whether you work for an existing market leader or an emerging player.  Many of us are drawn to challenger brands because of the ‘underdog’ phenomenon.  Being the underdog can be a great motivational tool that builds character, forces innovation, fosters creativity and can be very rewarding.

Drew: AMD is considered an “ingredient” brand, but you have said that the customers’ relationship with your product is typically much more emotional than with other such “ingredients.” How did you come to that conclusion, and how has that realization aided your efforts to spark consumers’ passions for AMD?

We consider AMD beyond just ‘ingredient’ and more of an ‘enabler’ brand.  Semiconductor technology powers the devices we use every day, giving people very personal, rich computational and graphical experiences that literally enable us to change the world.  Our research with thousands of users echoed this sentiment, and we are actively building a more emotional connection with buyers.

Drew: What have been the biggest challenges you have had to overcome during AMD’s rebranding campaign, and how were you able to use the rebranding efforts to lead the brand back to profitability and align with the business goals?

We recognized that our multi-year business transformation needed to start with a global brand transformation. Evolving a brand while simultaneously cutting costs, completing a corporate restructuring and pushing into new markets with new competitors is quite challenging and might seem even counter-intuitive to some.  But without a baseline for purpose, values and mission and an outstanding team to execute, we could not have effectively united 10,000 employees and millions of fans worldwide.

Drew:  Marketing budgets are getting increasingly complex as new options and tools become available.  How as CMO are you staying on top of budget allocation and optimization?

One of the first things I did when I came to AMD was create a Marketing Operations team.  We now have centralized visibility to spending, metrics and ROI.  We have a great team that may not always have the fanciest new tools to govern with, but we are steadfast about how we measure and optimize marketing performance.

Drew: Have you made major changes to your budget allocation in the last year and if so, can you share what lead to those changes and how these changes have impacted results?

Like many marketing organizations, while our overall marketing budgets continue to shrink, we’ve protected funds for earned and owned media. We’re also setting aside funds for what I like to call ‘innovation marketing.’ For example, we will soon kick off a unique program in China, designed exclusively to engage with our Chinese fans. Too often, US-based corporations pilot programs in North America and then try to localize further. We’re starting in China and then will see where it goes!

CMO Insights: Getting Off to a Great Start

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Four brands, united in a global mission to bring fashion to those in need. It’s no superhero tale, it’s just another day in the life for Miki Racine Berardelli, CMO of clothing company Chico’s. Miki isn’t the kind to shy away from a challenge; in fact, she picked this job so she could juggle all the different responsibilities of a global multi-brand organization. If that doesn’t sound like someone who deserves a Rising Star award from The CMO Awards and The CMO Club, I don’t know who does.

As we spoke, I found out that this drive to balance different roles goes way beyond a little brand dancing. Miki is not just interested in enhancing the customer experience on her existing channels, but she also gives critical advice for aggressively expanding your social media and developing mobile sites and applications. Supervillains beware.

Drew: Chico’s recently teamed up with Borderfree in an effort to expand its ecommerce globally. What are the goals of the partnership, and what advice would you give to other CMOs looking to expand their ecommerce into new, international markets?

We are excited to tap Borderfree as a strategic partner to help Chico’s FAS serve international shoppers with ease and consistency. From logistics to fraud management to market insights, we look forward to leveraging the Borderfree platform to the fullest extent to grow our international presence while maintaining the core values of our brand.

Thinking globally requires a different mindset than being purely domestic. It’s important to support international efforts with the right amount of marketing support, whether it’s SEM or otherwise, to acquire customers from other countries who may or may not know your brand and product offering.

Drew: What have been the biggest challenges you have faced since taking your current position as CMO of Chico’s? How did your experience as CMO of Tory Burch prepare you to take on these challenges? 

I have only been on the job for a couple of months so I haven’t necessarily faced any challenges, but this role requires Digital Commerce and Marketing oversight of four very distinct brands across multiple channels, product categories, touch-points and countries. Our brands include Chico’s, White House Black Market, Soma Intimates and Boston Proper. The experience of working in a multi-brand organization will challenge me, one of the main reasons I decided to join Chico’s FAS.

I will be forever grateful for the rewarding experience I had at Tory Burch during a chapter of such exciting growth in the brand and change across the landscape. Everything I learned there prepared me for my new role.

Drew: A lot of marketers are talking about employee advocacy – is this a priority for you and if so how are you going about it?  If not, perhaps you could talk about how you as a marketer have had an impact on the whole customer experience

Whether employee advocacy makes sense for a brand or business really depends on the company and culture within. While we don’t currently have a formal program in place, Chico’s FAS is comprised of four strong brands on an amazing campus with inspired and dedicated employees. I believe we have opportunity for our employees to share that, digitally and traditionally.

Drew: What role does social media play in your marketing mix? Are there any platforms that are working better for your brand than others?

I have always been a strong believer in social media. We have a strong portfolio with presence on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, Instagram and Youtube. We also have strong blogger relationships that are important to the mix. We use each platform differently and are exploring new ones as well as new ways to create and share content to tell our stories.

Drew: How are you being “creative” in your current role and how has that helped you?

I have always tried to balance the “art” with the “science.” I believe brands are most successful when they strike right down the middle. I’m excited about the creative opportunities here, creating a seamless experience for our customer, and continually enhancing our digital presence and marketing touch-points.

Drew: Looking ahead to 2015, what’s on your priority list? 

Learning! If I had to state the top three areas of focus based on my “fresh eyes,” the would be: customer experience across all channels, mobile sites and applications, and helping to set us up for the future while we continue to build four successful global brands.

CMO Insights: Getting Your Digital House in Order

Posted on by Drew Neisser

How do you market products around a basic human need like water? For Lisa Armstrong, recent winner of a Rising Star award at The CMO Club’s CMO Awards, this is only one challenge on a long list of marketing initiatives. As the VP for Marketing and Branding at Pentair, Lisa is in charge of educating consumers about water conservation, while simultaneously helping to create solutions for communities without access to clean, safe water.

In the interview below, we talk about how she’s learned to tackle key initiatives like this, how to manage priorities in a changing organization, what the future of marketing looks like at Pentair, and how she tackles a topic that keeps many CMOs up at night: building credibility with your CEO.

Drew: What’s been your biggest challenge as a marketer at Pentair and how have you tackled it?

One of the biggest challenges I have is getting everything done on our bold list of initiatives. I recognized that dedicating time and attention to building processes, sharing knowledge and developing capability will help sustain all of our new initiatives.

Drew: Is there one marketing initiative in the last year or two that you are particularly proud of and if so, can you please talk a bit about it?

I’m proud of the work our team did to launch our new external website. There were a lot of new paradigms and new thinking that went into the design and development of the site. We mapped out a cross-business view of our solutions from the customer point of view instead of from an inside-out perspective. We also evolved our case studies to be impact stories that focus on the effect our solutions have on our customer, our customer’s customers and the environment.

Drew: What is the most important lesson you have learned during your career, and how has it helped you get where you are today?

I’ve learned that adaptability is a critical skill of being a leader. I keep myself open to new ideas, continuous learning and re-invention. I keep a pulse on the market, up-to-date on new trends and am continuously up-skilling to ensure that my skills and experience are relevant for today and rightfully positioned for the future.

Drew: Water is so fundamental to life that we often take it for granted, certainly here in the eastern part of the US. Does the role water play in our lives impact your marketing at all?

Absolutely. Even though most places in the U.S. have an abundance of water, at Pentair we do have marketing efforts aimed toward educating and promoting the need for conserving water and water re-use. In other areas of the world, however, access to safe clean water is still a struggle and becomes a human and women’s rights issue. In these markets we try to help build safe clean water solutions through our CSR efforts and community partners.

Drew: In your experience, how do you know when it’s time to make changes to an organization or department? 

You know the quote…”Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Anytime an organization or company goes through a fundamental change (growth, expansion, and/or maturity), you can’t apply the same organizational model. In my experience, I realize it’s time to make changes when I start seeing gaps in what needs to be done and the ability or capability to get it done.

Drew: What advice would you give to fellow CMOs when it comes to building credibility with your CEO? 

A CMO builds credibility by being connected to what the C-suite and board are facing each quarter and asking how marketing can help.  You can lose credibility by proposing initiatives at the wrong time. The challenge for marketers is that we often face the “what have you done for me lately” pressure so we have to be consistently maintaining our credibility.

Drew: What marketing nut would you like to crack in 2015?  

Two major areas I’d like to tackle: #1 is Digital – Integrated Marketing. We need to build a robust roadmap with the emphasis on levering digital to drive growth. And #2, Marketing Excellence. I’d like to build a process and curriculum to help build a world-class marketing organization that delivers innovation, revenue and leadership talent for the entire organization. (OK… so this one may take longer than 2015).

CMO Insights: Diving into Programmatic

Posted on by Drew Neisser

L.L. Bean has been in the direct marketing game for over 100 years having issued its first mail order catalog way back in 1912.  Since then it has learned a thing or two about customer acquisition, building loyalty and marketing mix optimization.  In that context, it wasn’t too surprising that current L.L. Bean CMO Steve Fuller talked about getting the “basics right” while simultaneously capitalizing on the latest digital marketing techniques like programmatic.

In our conversation below, Steve is refreshingly honest, sharing accomplishments and missteps in an understated manner that seems entirely consistent with the L.L. Bean brand itself.  For example, though he was a recent winner of The CMO Club‘s award for Programmatic Marketing, he is also quick to point out his organization is still in the early stages of applying all of this technology to its fullest advantage.  This is not a case of a New Englander saying “you can’t get theya from heya” but simply a recognition that patience and in Dave’s words not “expecting too much too soon” from new tech platforms can be a virtue even in the fast paced world of digital marketing.

Drew: You have been at the forefront of ecommerce for a while.  What did you try in 2014 from a digital marketing standpoint that worked particularly well?

In our case, it was better execution of the “basics.”  Our search programs – paid, natural, etc. – have been lacking in recent years and we definitely got those programs back on track in 2014.  And after testing nearly every alternative available, it appears we might have finally beaten the in-house product recommendation engine that we built waaaay back in 2005.

Drew: Did you try some things that didn’t work as well as you hoped?

A few.  We have a fairly robust analytics cloud in development.  We like the overall direction of the project, but it’s progressing slower than we would have hoped.  L.L.Bean also moved to a new chat/social media tracking platform that has been a disappointment.

Drew: If you could wave a magic wand, what is the one thing you’d like to see fixed about digital marketing and why?

I’m not sure the right word is “fixed,” but demand/investment attribution is still an undeveloped area.   There are a lot of people doing interesting things, but the methodologies – and results – vary wildly.  And while I understand the desire to protect proprietary research, the “black box” approach of many companies makes them a challenge to evaluate.

Drew: When bringing on new tech/platforms what are some of the pitfalls to be avoided?
Expecting too much too soon.  These are incredibly complex systems both from a production and analytics perspective.  Implementation “sequencing” is also something to watch.  Too many changes at once makes it almost impossible to isolate performance.

Drew: How has programmatic marketing helped you reach your overall marketing objectives?

I want to be the first to say that we’ve got a long way to go with programmatic.  We learn something each and every day.  But we’re especially pleased with its ability to help bring “scale” to those programs in an efficient way — both from a presentation and an analytics perspective.

Drew: What were some of the challenges of adopting programmatic and what advice would you give to another marketer who is just getting started?

The easiest thing to overlook is the amount of production work required to do it right.  Ads need to be created, they need to be trafficked, etc., etc.

The other advice is to find a good partner. We looked a number of possible providers and ended up with MediaMath. Not only did we like their technology platform, but they were invaluable in helping us making the operational transition. Again, you’ve got a tremendous amount of detail and process to get right in order to leverage these new tools – MediaMath helped make that happen.

Drew: Do you have a marketing dashboard?  What advice would you give to a CMO who was looking to develop a dashboard?

We have a series of metrics that that drive the organization.  My advice is easy — keep it connected to the customer and keep it simple.  The amount of data flowing through the typical marketing organization now can lead to overly complex measures.  You want to keep your organization focused on the activities that drive measures — not trying to interpret them.

Drew: How important is it to you and your company to have a strong Corporate Social Responsibility program?  

L.L.Bean has operated on the stakeholder concept for over 100 years.  It is embedded into our culture with responsibilities shared throughout our organization.

CMO Insights: Email Excellence

Posted on by Drew Neisser

No one said being a CMO is easy.  In Jeff Goodby’s recent post on Forbes.com he encourages CMOs to be bold and move fast given a likely tenure of 45 months describing their position as follows:

  • You’ve got some big fish to fry. The CMO’s job responsibilities have expanded like a dumped-out bowl of TUMS. You are now responsible not just for advertising and research but also for all internal and external corporate communications, all social media, all PR, the company’s Internet presence, countering snipey comments about the company’s Internet presence, any and all stupid photos that go public, leaked documents and ill-advised blog posts by employees. You are doing more than anyone in the company, actually.

It is with all these responsibilities in mind that I reached out to Shannon Smith, former SVP and Global CMO at JCrew, and as you will see, we covered a lot of ground from repositioning to customer experience, email systems to customer loyalty programs. Shannon’s hand in the success of JCrew’s repositioning probably would have been enough for her to win a Rising Star award at this year’s CMO Awards but it’s only the tip of the iceberg as you will see soon enough.

Drew: The J. Crew brand seems to have evolved in last few years.  Can you talk about how this evolution?
J. Crew has evolved their brand position quite a bit over the past 5 or so years, from a more traditional, basics-driven retailer (think roll-neck sweaters, barn jackets, khakis and button-downs) to a much more fashion-forward brand with runway shows during NY Fashion Week.  This has largely been driven by the design and merchant teams, with the evolution of the merchandise itself, and supported by the creative positioning of the marketing, including the site, catalog and email.   It is not easy to change a brand’s position in the eyes of the consumer, but J. Crew is fortunate in that most customers love the new styles.  One thing that has been incredibly successful in shifting the brand’s image is creative collaborations with high-end designers, from Comme des Garcon to Alden Shoes.  The direct marketing team’s role is to get the most relevant product in front of the customer, and communicate that the brand offers tremendous product breadth with a wide range of styles and price points.

Drew: What changes has J. Crew made over the last year in order to improve the customer experience?   
J. Crew is constantly working to improve the customer experience, from the design and fit of the clothes to the services offered in stores to the website functionality.  My role in this endeavor was constantly striving to deliver more relevant, personalized marketing communications to our customers, providing them with information about the products that would be of interest to them, whether it was our women’s new arrivals, a new men’s suiting line with a different fit, or great children’s clothes.  I worked towards this in our email marketing program, our catalog versioning and our rewards program, the J. Crew credit card.

Drew: I saw this quote on AdExchanger: “J. Crew is incorporating email engagement behavior into segmentation and targeting. ‘We’re setting up a much more triggered and robust marketing platform,’ says Smith.” Can you talk about this new initiative?
In 2013, I led J. Crew through the transition onto the Responsys email platform (Responsys was subsequently acquired by Oracle and integrated into their Marketing Cloud).  They are a best-in-class service platform, enabling J. Crew with a much more robust set of capabilities around customer segmentation and targeted marketing campaigns.  Our email segmentation strategy is now capturing not only customer purchase history, but also website browse and email engagement behavior (opens, clicks, etc.).  In addition, we have launched a series of email triggers, including Abandoned Cart and “Category Browse” campaigns, that are driving millions of incremental dollars in email revenue.

Drew: So would you describe this as your single most important new digital tool?
For my world, it was absolutely our transition to the Responsys email marketing platform.  The capabilities they provide in bringing vast amounts of customer online behavior into our segmentation has allowed us to significantly improve the productivity of our email campaigns through better segmentation of our customer base.  We are able to incorporate products customers are interested in – indicated by browsing and email engagement – in addition to past purchases, which is incredibly powerful.

Drew: Can you talk a bit about your experience with loyalty programs and what it takes to get them off the ground?
J. Crew doesn’t have a loyalty program (our J. Crew credit card is our rewards program) but at Sephora I managed the Beauty Insider program for 4 years, growing it from launch to an active customer base of over 10 million members.  In terms of getting it “off the ground”, it was an enormous company initiative involving everyone in the marketing, operations, store and technical organizations.  It had a tremendously successful launch and grew quickly, but loyalty programs require significant effort and funding to keep them fresh, top-of-mind, engaging and meaningful.  At Sephora, I led the launch of the VIP premium tier and new types of program benefits, including new point-level rewards.  The Beauty Insider program has been invaluable in that it enabled the company to build a customer database and personalize marketing communications to their enormous base of retail customers.  However, I was constantly working with our analytics team to measure the ROI of the program holistically.  It’s not an easy thing to do.  I believe loyalty programs can have real value for companies, particularly when many retailers selling are the same products and competing for customers, like department stores.  That said, I always caution a company considering a loyalty program to be very thoughtful and clear on the strategy for their program, how it aligns with their brand and how they will drive value from it, because it’s going to be a big investment.

Drew: What advice would you give to fellow marketers when it comes to building credibility with your CEO? Are there some things to be avoided?
You need to know what’s important to the CEO, and to present marketing results and accomplishments in a way that will resonate with his/her values.  If the CEO is an analytical, metrics-driven leader, the marketer would be best-served providing a numbers-driven communication about metrics and performance.  If the CEO is more creative and emotional, the marketing leader should speak to results in terms of positive impact on the customer, building connection to the brand, etc., and how this supports the company’s growth.  What I’d say is to be avoided is trying to communicate things in a way that is important to the marketing leader – but isn’t important to the CEO.