Tag: the CMO Club summit

The Importance of Having a Metrics Program

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Dan Marks, CMO of First Tennessee Bank, is a big believer in learning from his peers. Having seen him speak at The CMO Club Summit in NYC last year, I would say Dan gives as much as he gets, if not more. As such, I was delighted to be able to catch up with Dan a couple of weeks for a conversation about marketing metrics. Dan is also responsible for orchestrating one of the most effective marketing metrics program I’ve heard about, a program that can not only look backwards at the impact of 84% of his marketing spend but also has the ability to predict with “reasonable” accuracy what will happen when budgets get cut.  If you are a marketer and don’t have a metrics program in place, you’ll read this and weep.

DN: Please speak to the advantages, to you as the CMO, of having a strong metrics program in place.
The advantage of having strong metrics in place is it helps you understand how good the creativity is and helps in conversations with the rest of the business.  So for instance, when you’re talking about changing resourcing between business lines or overall budgets you’re able to quantify the impact of your actions, maybe not to an ultimate level of precision but good enough that it lets you have a comparable type conversation to other investments the company makes.  At the end of the day, marketing is a huge line item at any company.  And so having the same level of accountability and quantification that you might have in other areas puts you at equal conversation and helps raise the credibility of the conversation.

DN:  Have you been able to move the conversation from where marketing is no longer just a cost center but is rather a revenue driver as a result of having the metrics in place?
We’re on that journey.  I’m not sure we’re completely there yet, but we’re definitely on that journey to more precisely quantify the linkage to revenue and to be able to quantify the revenue impact of different marketing approaches. Marketing is a matter of talking the customer’s language, right?  So when you are talking to sales and you can show a stack ranking of your marketing programs and their benefit, all of a sudden you’re talking their language because they stack rank their salespeople.

DN: One of the terms that you used that I really liked is the notion that creating a metrics program is a journey. Talk to me a little bit about the journey.
The revolution really is in saying, let’s not have a separate set of metrics or let’s, at the very least, connect the marketing metrics to the core bottom line revenue and costs and profit objectives.  And so that’s the journey. The measurement approach varies by type of marketing activity and channel. So the stages of the journey start with direct marketing, where the linkages and the science are the most developed. Even in B2B, if I can quantify that I’m helping create opportunities from introduction or helping move things along the pipeline, all of a sudden now you are speaking the same language that sales is.  One of the most elusive goals and one that’s still not there yet is the overall full media mix impact–what’s the cumulative impact of everything working together?

DN:  If you could measure the impact of the full media mix, what would be the benefit of that?
Other places that spend cash have ability to quantify the impact of that cash.  So in operation, it might be a cost per output or what my cost is to deliver a dollar of revenue.  And so it allows that same sort of conversation around marketing, what is the revenue impact of a dollar spent with me as I make decisions and look to optimize it–is that getting better or worse? And so it’s several layers of precision, of getting to be more precise and being able to forecast the impact of different decisions.  And then track what happens and continue to optimize– that just adds that much more credibility and confidence in making marketing decisions and the organization.

And related to that is giving you the confidence to be able to pursue it scientifically.  So we can creatively think of a few different ideas and then decide based on the risk tolerance or the level of uncertainty we’re willing to approach.  We may try a very uncertain idea at a lower spending level knowing that, okay, we’re going to take a chance on that huge one, but we’re not going to bet the farm on something that’s very unknown.  Yet we’re going to take more incremental experiments around more proven ideas.

DN: I want to make sure that we clarify language.  What’s the difference between an outcome measure and a diagnostic measure and then can you put them in a priority order relative to job security and doing your job well?
Sure.  So when I think of outcome measures, [these have] impact on revenue profits and margins.  These are the key results that the CEO and board ultimately care about.  And so those are the cardinal metrics.  Diagnostic measures are important to understand outcomes.  So for example, we look at awareness.  But my team still cringes when I say, ‘You can’t eat awareness.’   But it’s important to understand that customers do go through this buying process of awareness, consideration, purchase, all this kind of stuff.  But our goal is not to create awareness.  Our goal is to get people to buy stuff and generate revenue.  We have to understand the buying process.  We have to understand if we’re having trouble getting people to buy stuff, is it because the awareness low, do they not know about the product, or are they are trying it but not repeating it therefore the likelihood to recommend the product to others is low or the experience is bad?  When I said diagnostic metrics, these are things that help us understand what the potential actions we should take are, and the prioritization of those actions based on understanding the customer, the customer and the marketplace, and the buying process and the competition.

DN:  Do you use Net Promoter Score?
We look at likelihood to recommend, we look at it in the total likelihood and in net time basis.  But we don’t just rely on that.

DN: Do you look at the various points of contact in the customer experience and measure each of those?
We look at it both overall and after a key experience point.  So after you’ve had an interaction at a branch, after you’ve had an interaction with a business banker, after you’ve interacted with some of our online technology.  So we do — we definitely understand how they are all different.  And we’ve studied it.  So we also know that our experience scores and our recommend scores strongly correlate/predict future changes in retention and revenue.

DN:  So when you see your experience core decline, you can go to the CEO and say, ‘sales are going to be down next quarter?’
Well, maybe not quite that quickly!  We know over time if scores are trending down or scores are trending up, that will translate into a strong probability of having lower or higher revenue in the future.

DN: Give me a sense of how often you’re looking at numbers.
Well, we do have an alert mechanism.  So if poor scores are spiking, we know that pretty fast.  But generally speaking, we look at our customer experience and customer buying metrics on a monthly basis– and that’s where you see trends.

DN:  Is a commitment to a metrics space approach sort of a guarantee incrementalism
Well, that’s something that we talk about a great deal.  And I think misunderstood, it could. But I would say it’s better to spend a little bit of time on testing than to take a huge leap of faith and fail.  And usually your level of urgency is not so great that it doesn’t make sense to spend a little bit of time testing it.  It’s a lot easier to scale something up that is successful than to pull back when it’s not.

DN:  So at some point is it possible to spend too much on analytics?
At the end of the day, it’s some expensive people and some expensive technology but in the grand scheme of things that’s still, in the neighborhood of one or two percent of your budget.  And I have not talked to anybody yet who didn’t say after they started getting better analytics, they weren’t able to reallocate at least 10 percent of budget.  You spend one percent to find out that 10 percent of your budget is not working or not working as well as it could be.  And, that’s a 10 to 1 return.

DN: I’m assuming that there was a budget cut at some point in the last three years?
That’s right because everybody had one.

DN:  So were you able to predict how the marketing budget cut would impact your business?
Oh, yes.  And the level of prediction was pretty close.  I mean, not a hundred percent.  No model is completely perfect, but it’s definitely useful.

DN: What three pieces of advice do you have for CMOs about to start the metrics journey?
First, definitely have the conversation with your key partners, whether it’s your CEO, CFO or sales leaders. Figure out who is going to judge your performance and collaborate with you because most of the time CMOs can’t actually sell stuff themselves. They’re influencing sales activities. Have that conversation early on, and ask what metrics are important to them and what are the outcomes that you should focus on. And number two, I would definitely commit to a program of optimization and continuous improvement of marketing results.

And then thirdly, I would say for sure, connect to and focus on giving back to the community. And there are a number of different ways to do that– The CMO Club is one example. There are also several great CMO type organizations that exist to help CMOs share information. And you’ve got to do that, carefully. You don’t want to give away trade secrets, but there are great resources out there to help talk about common challenges, common best practices. And every CMO has got something to add to the conversation, and what you give, you get back in spades.

You can follow Dan on Twitter @wdanmarks

How to Bring CSR and Social Media Together for Good

Posted on by Drew Neisser

I had the pleasure of meeting Elisabeth Charles at The CMO Club Summit in LA this October.  As CMO of Petco she has orchestrated a number of innovative marketing programs to actively engage pet owners.  Learning that Elisabeth was on the board of HABRI, the Human-Animal Bond Research Initiative, I thought she would be a great person to discuss how companies can do well be doing good and extended these activities through social media.  Turns out, this time, I was barking up the right tree.

DN: Do you think being recognized as a good corporate citizen is increasingly important to a brand like yours? Why?
Good corporate citizenship is very important to Petco – it’s built into the fabric of our entire business. Everything we do is guided by our vision for Healthier Pets.  Happier People.  Better World.

We established our non-profit organization, the Petco Foundation, in 1999 and have since raised more than $80 million in support of some 7,500 local animal welfare partners across the country. Each year, we also help save the lives of more than 250,000 animals through adoption events in our stores.  Through the Petco Foundation, we also support spay and neuter efforts, animal-assisted therapy programs and humane education. Working hand-in-hand with the Foundation, our Petco and Unleashed by Petco stores serve as the first and largest national pet food bank in the country. Designated collection bins located in each of our stores allow customers to donate pet food that directly benefits pet parents in need in their local community.

As a company, we’re also increasingly adopting more sustainable business practices. We strongly believe that if it’s good for the planet, it’s good for pets and people, too.  Earlier this year, Petco became one of the only non-grocery store retailers to be recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as an Energy Star Leader for reducing our energy consumption by more than 10 percent across our entire business. Additionally, our Planet Petco line of products offers pet parents the ability to choose high-quality, more sustainable products that utilize recycled and reclaimed materials and renewable resources. These are just a few examples of what we do as a company today. It’s an ongoing process and we’re always striving to do more in this important area of corporate social responsibility.

DN: Is there a fine line between “doing good” as a company and talking about it so much that is seems insincere?
You absolutely have to be sincere and authentic in what you are doing and saying, and you must also be fully committed, rather than doing something only half way. A company’s goodwill efforts should be far more than just a marketing campaign. For Petco, all of our “do-gooding” is centered around what we believe is the right thing to do. The programs we create and support reflect our company’s values and the passion our associates have for people and pets.

DN: Is there a particular Petco goodwill/charitable program that you are particularly proud of?
There are many charitable programs that we get involved in, so it is hard to name just one.  A newer program that really took off this year was our National Pet Food Bank program and our National Pet Food Drive. Just in the program’s second year, this year’s drive ran for two weeks (late October-mid November) in all of our Petco and Unleashed by Petco stores. During the national drive, we encourage customers to pick up an extra bag or can of pet food during their shopping trip, or bring unopened food from home, and donate it via the collection bins in our stores. Also for the second year, Hill’s Science Diet supported our efforts by matching 100,000 pounds of donated food during the drive. In just two weeks, we collected nearly 350,000 pounds of pet food – a more than 60 percent increase over last year – to help financially strapped pet parents feed their pets during the holiday season. The Petco Foundation Pet Food Bank is a year-round program, but it’s very exciting to see how generous our customers are during the national drive leading into the holiday season.

DN: I noticed you personally are working with an organization called HABRI.  Can you talk what and why you are doing this?
Petco is excited and proud to be a founding sponsor of HABRI, the Human-Animal Bond Research Initiative. Other founding sponsors are the American Pet Products Association and Pfizer Animal Health.  We got involved because we passionately believe that pets enrich our lives and we want to help generate formal, widespread scientific recognition of the positive role pets play in our lives.  HABRI’s mission is to support research, education and other charitable activities that validate the positive impact the human-animal bond can have on the integrated health of families and communities, by consolidating, organizing and sharing existing scientific research into the human-animal bond in partnership with Purdue University.

DN: Goodwill activities seem to translate well into social media.  Have you found this to be case and/or how do you see good will programs evolving next year?
Absolutely.  We actively use social media (especially Facebook) to engage our fan base, which is now nearing 600,000 likes, to support our charitable causes.  In general, we find that goodwill posts and campaigns featuring authentic stories perform very well in social media.  Positive campaigns with an altruistic call to action perform remarkably better (up to 100 percent more feedback) in user interaction on social properties than promotional campaigns or transactional posts. Human interest stories and, of course, anything to do with pets, are the second most shared and clicked upon posts/tweets/videos.

In October, we hosted our first ever National Adoption Reunion Weekend. Fans online were asked to submit stories about how their adopted pets had changed their lives and were given the opportunity to raise funds for the Petco Foundation through Foursquare check-ins. The social portion of the campaign performed very well, driving the most organic Twitter growth and retweets for a campaign we  have seen to date, the most views on a non-commercial video on YouTube, more than 57,000 photos uploaded on Flickr and more than 3,000 likes across three blog posts. Needless to say, we were very pleased with the results.

DN: I’m a big fan of Pedigree’s “dogs rule” campaign and their pet adoption program.  Have you partnered on “good will” programs with any of the brands that you carry and if so, what are the advantages of this approach?
Every month, we host a National Adoption Weekend when adoption events are held in all of our stores across the country. Each monthly weekend event is sponsored by one of our vendor partners.  We’ve also joined forces with several of our vendor partners for in-store fundraisers to support mutual charitable interests, including Blue Buffalo for Pet Cancer Awareness and Natural Balance for National Guide Dog Month.   I think programs like this are a huge win-win when we are able to work together to help improve the lives of pets and pet parents, and when we all know the funds raised are going to important work that we mutually care about.

CMO Insights: A Social Media Weigh In

Posted on by Drew Neisser

After The CMO Club Summit, I caught up with Hope Frank, Chief Marketing Officer of WebTrends to get her take on social media.  As “the global leader in mobile and social analytics,” Hope’s company not only uses social media to market themselves but also  monitors social as a revenue stream making her uniquely qualified to weigh in on this hot topic.

 DN: What are Webtrends primary objectives for social media?
We use social media to distribute and facilitate conversations pertaining to WT digital marketing thought leadership, primary research and analysis of buzz and trends online.We also use social media to extend the reach and impact of traditional marketing efforts to grow awareness among key influencers and prospects.

DN: Do you use social media for customer service?
Yes. For monitoring and problem solving as well as for gathering consumer insights.

DN: How important is social media in your overall marketing mix for Webtrends?
It is essential and deeply integrated. Growing our communities, developing and curating compelling content,  experimenting and innovating on social media platforms is part of every effort we execute.

DN: Since the tracking of social media is part of Webtrends’ product/service offering, how important is it that Webtrends be on the forefront of social media practitioners?
Our Digital Marketing team is empowered to lead by example, to solve big marketing challenges, to iterate and to loudly share our stories. We have direct access to the world’s best global tools and experts, it is amazing! We are fortunate indeed to be in this position.

DN: What has worked for you in social and what hasn’t?
We see the largest impact of social media when we execute integrated ideas that launch with compelling content/experiences then leverage our media engine,  then mix social to amplify the message and increase the value. We have also seen great success running self-contained programs in Facebook where we purchase ads that drive to FB apps. We’ve been able to then take FB campaign learnings and apply them to broad based marketing efforts.

It’s cliché, we all know using social media as another “channel” to push out messaging and brand/product news fails. In the early days when we could only support pushing basic messages out and not integrating or engaging deeper, we experienced limited success.

DN: As evidence of WebTrends ability to monitor social media and turn this into social currency (in this case, PR), Hope provided the following links to all the “brand elevation and buzz analysis” Webtrends achieved during the #RoyalWedding.  The Mashable infographic is quite cool.

 

CMO Insights: The CMO Club Summit

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Probably nobody in the world talks to more CMO’s than Pete Krainik, founder of The CMO Club.  I caught up with Pete last week after The CMO Club Summit in New York City and asked him for the inside scoop on CMO’s and social media.  Here’s our Q&A:

DN: There was a lot of conversation at The CMO Club Summit about social media.  Why do you think this is the case?
CMOs care about customer engagement and having a reason and vehicle for listening, having a conversation, and sharing their Brands.  Social media is simply the best way, for many brands to do this.  Every Brand has different products/services and customers so the conversation’s centered on new and game changing ideas they can build on for their industry, customer base and products.

The other big reason is about marketing mix optimization.  Every dollar and resource focused correctly is worth significantly more than before. More targets, more marketing vehicles results in more interest in getting it right.

DN: Do you expect this conversation to grow over the next 12 months or are CMOs approaching Social Media fatigue?
The conversation will grow but move from social media to social marketing and social branding.   I’ve noticed within The CMO CLUB that more and more 1-1 conversations with CMOs to think through synergies for sharing resources together.  Moving from company specific apps, communities, programs to a community of Brands approach.  Very interesting times ahead.

DN: The CMO’s at the event seemed to be at various stages of the adoption curve when it comes to social media, why do you think that is the case?
A number of reasons.  For larger, more technical B2B Brands, a smaller number of customers are leveraging social media so the call to action and priority is different than for B2C Retailers and CPG companies.  Also some companies focus on innovation leadership while others are fast followers, etc.  Finally global companies have issues of rollout and priority by region, product lines, etc.

DN: What role does social media play in the marketing of the CMO club?
Given the club is an exclusive “heads of marketing only” community with the mission of facilitating the world’s best CMO conversations, Social media has been the single more important vehicle for the growth of membership. Two out of every 3 new members in the club come from referrals and recommendations from heads of marketing in the club.

We not only use social media for communicating new posts and events from members, but the members only site itself is a community site vs. website. Everything from member blog posts, member Q/A, New CMO jobs on the market, vendor rating programs, plus content in the CMO CLUB Thought Leadership Library is contributed from members.  Social media is used to share member insights, build subgroups of interests, and listen to members.

Our weekly poll question of members has gone from 75 to 150 members per week responding, then sharing and discussing results. The value of the club is to help CMOs connect with peers, share insights, and stay sharp and competitive as heads of marketing.  Social media and our social community platform is the catalyst to make it happen.

DN: Pete closed by noting that the October 2011 CMO Club Summit in Los Angeles will have a large section focused on “CMO worthy” innovations in social media.

CMO Insights: Growing Role of Social Media

Posted on by Drew Neisser

At The CMO Club Summit last week, Grant Johnson, CMO of Pega Systems joined a panel discussion on “new innovations in customer acquisition and retention.”  After the panel, I caught up with Grant and asked him about the role of social media in Pega’s marketing plans.  Here’s the Q&A:

DN: From a marketing perspective, how important is social media to Pega right now in the overall mix of options?
Since our goal is to allow people to more easily engage with and access the Pega brand however they want, social media is becoming increasingly more important to us as a part of an integrated and multichannel marketing mix.  It’s a small spend today, but we’re spending more time and effort focusing on this, and the activity has ramped up fast.  For example, you can find all Pega news items and links to a variety of content on Twitter, where we now have nearly 1,100 followers; you can view Pega videos and educational content on YouTube; you can engage with Pega employees and peers on our Facebook page and in our Pega Forums; and you can also subscribe to our content via RSS feeds.

DN: What needs to happen at your organization for social media to become a larger priority?
The biggest challenge with social media in most organizations, including Pega, is measuring results back to customer interest and loyalty.  There’s a lot to filter through in order to separate the noise from the signal. We listen closely to our customers and have the ability to focus more on this as their needs dictate. We use mechanisms such as “likes,” “downloads” and “views” to understand the impact of social content that is created, but ultimately we’ll need to be able to better drive customer activity and engagement as a result.  Pega has historically been highly customer focused and as with many of our other initiatives, we will always adapt to their needs in order to continue helping them meet their business improvement objectives.

DN: For Pega, does social media play a role in customer service?  If not, do you see that happening any time soon?
Yes, social media also plays an important role as a medium for customer support and feedback at Pega. Our customers are very vocal in our forums about areas that they would like support in or new features they would like to see in our products. We also have an internal community called the Pega Developer Network, which allows our customers to collaborate and get help specifically with regard to their unique implementations, so as to increase their product understanding and the value of our support. We see this activity growing more in the future as social media channels become more and more common.

DN: How do you think social media could impact Pega’s business down the road?
It’s already impacting us in a positive manner, serving as a real-time and dynamic channel to communicate with customers and prospects. Today, Pega provides social media capabilities within our products, allowing developers to use social media tools to collaborate on business processes and case work. Pega also provides social media capabilities in our CRM products, including the ability to monitor social media such as Twitter and bring that feedback into a customer service setting where it can be addressed. We see two emerging trends in customer service that could impact us even more down the road: first, social media is helping us better service our customers across channels, and crowd-sourcing and self-service is becoming a reality; and, second, we believe that the ability to listen, analyze and act via social media – to actually fix broken customer service processes more quickly – will improve service delivery and customer satisfaction in the future.

Cinco Ideas de Mayo

Posted on by Drew Neisser

April was a remarkable month with both Facebook and Apple making game changing introductions while gatherings of characters, developers and CMO’s provided glimpses into the goodness ahead.

1. Learn to Love the Like Button

Make no mistake about it; the Like button from Facebook is a stroke of genius for them and most likely for the online publishing world.  Just in case you missed this momentous land grab, on April 21st Facebook made its Like button available to all publishers and in the blink of an eye changed how content is shared on the internet. Over 50,000 sites jumped at the opportunity because it is a smart and easy thing to do–so easy that even I could add it to this blog in a matter of minutes.  Facebook is expecting a billion Like buttons to sprout shortly and I’m hard to pressed to think of a site that wouldn’t benefit from this simply yet powerful means of encouraging content sharing.

2. Keep Your Eyes on the iPad

I was at party for iPad developers a few weeks ago and it felt like the late ‘90s again. The party was sponsored by the HR department of Barnes & Noble, who was there trolling for developers – no doubt looking for ways to leverage this new media channel.   The energy and excitement over this new platform is akin to the early days of the Internet.  Simply whip out an iPad and people will flock to you like moths to a flame. A friend of mine recently used an iPad during a sales call and got an hour of quality time with a previously recalcitrant prospect.  Even when the novelty wears off, assuming that happens in the next 12 months, the uses of this device go well beyond gaming as the true business applications are just beginning to be explored.  Sure other “tablets” that promised a B2B revolution have been released before, but none have had the dazzling elegance and enthralling simplicity that Apple brings to the iPad.

3. Tap into the Goodness of Tweeters

Among the many things I gained from the 140 Characters conference in New York last month was a profound sense of hope.  For those of you not aligned with the Twitterverse, the 140 Characters conference assembles 140 interesting people on stage and another 1000+ in the audience to share the good, the bad and the ugly of all things Twitter.  With no PowerPoint crutches, many speakers bared their souls, enlightening us about the good deeds enabled by Twitter, from raising money for Haiti to putting prayers into the Western Wall.  Celebrity tweeters like Anne Curry and Ivanka Trump engaged with the hoi polloi in a remarkably open manner reflecting their belief that “people are inherently good.”  Maybe it’s the “retweet” function that attracts good people to Twitter, but regardless there’s a very strong Pay It Forward substrate embedded into this particular social medium.

4. Follow Twelpforce into Customer Service

As most of the marketing world is contemplating how social media fits into customer service, BestBuy is out there doing it and doing it well via TwelpForce (and I’m not just saying that because I won an iPad courtesy of BestBuy at the 140 Conference!).  Set up over a year ago, Twelpforce is “a collective force of Best Buy technology pros offering tech advice in Tweet form.”  Enter a question on Twitter about technology referencing BestBuy or Twelpforce and you’ll get a well-conceived response in short order.  They even set up their own monitoring/response tool that allows the hundreds of BestBuy employees that make up Twelpforce to respond with answers longer than 140 characters.  It is no wonder that over 25,000 twitterers are following Twelpforce.  If your company hasn’t integrated social media into customer service yet, Twelpforce offers a pretty darn good road map.

5. Channel your Chutzpah

I’ve spent a lot of time with marketers lately, interviewing them for articles and at conferences like The CMO Club Leadership Summit.  Marketers come from all walks of life, many starting in disciplines other than marketing, and the range of approaches to their positions is startling diverse.  Some are heavily analytic, others more prone to shoot from the hip.  That said the one thing that the most successful ones have in common is chutzpah.  They simply aren’t afraid to bend the rules or challenge convention or beg forgiveness in order to get an innovative program out in the market.  When the CEO of Kodak asked his CMO, Jeff Hayzlett, about the ROI of a Kodak social media initiative, Jeff’s response was, “I’ll answer you if you can tell me what’s the Return on Ignoring our customers.”  Now that’s chutzpah!  What Jeff is doing with the Kodak brand is a veritable album of innovation.

Hopefully, the shower of stimuli I absorbed in April will help your ideas bloom in May.