B2B Data Management How-to Guide

1. How-To Guide B2B Data Management: Best Practices & Insights By: David Raab, Research Associate – Demand Metric August 2015 © 2015 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

2. Table of Contents Executive Summary 3 B2B Data Management Best Practices 4 6 B2B Data Management Maturity Levels Taking Advantage of B2B Data Management 7 Action Plan 8 Analyst Bottom Line 10 About the Analyst 11

3. How-To Guide: B2B Data Management EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The B2B buying process has changed in recent years, with customers doing more research on their own and delaying engagement with sales teams until late in the purchase cycle. This has increased the need for marketers to reach customers early in the buying cycle and to provide more information as their research progresses. The effort has multiplied further as the number of interaction channels expands. In this new environment, effective data management is essential for success. Balancing multiple opportunities to find the best marketing investments relies on data as do finding and delivering the most effective treatments for each prospect. The sheer number of choices means that only a data-driven approach can produce the right decisions. Good data management isn’t easy. Data comes from many sources in many formats. It must be acquired, assembled and analyzed to make sound marketing decisions. Then, the data must be made available to customer-facing systems in order to execute those decisions on a one-to-one basis. This How-To Guide will help you organize your data management efforts. You will learn how to define goals, specify requirements and build a plan to meet those requirements. Then, you can begin your journey to data management success. 3 © 2015 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

4. How-To Guide: B2B Data Management B2B DATA MANAGEMENT BEST PRACTICES  Associate data from different sources that relates to the same customer. This may mean matching on a shared identifier, such as an email address or customer ID captured separately by each system. Advanced methods may “stitch” together identities by linking a customer to a device, and then attributing all behavior on that device to the customer. Still other approaches may infer linkages across devices, cookies, names or addresses by correlating usage and location, or draw on outside services that have identified such linkages using external data. Association is more important with anonymous leads than with current customers, who have more reason to identify themselves directly.  Organize data to make it accessible for queries and analysis. This requires physically storing the data in a structure that identifies its contents to query and analysis tools. It often also involves additional processing to make analysis more effective. This may include tagging raw data with categories, creating aggregated or derived variables, such as web visits in the past week, or calculating predictive model scores. It also includes Business marketing data comes from many sources. Many are controlled by marketing itself: display ads, website visits, email, events and marketing automation. Others come from elsewhere in the company, such as CRM, order processing or customer service, while others are external data providers, such as Dun & Bradstreet. This data helps marketers understand customer behavior, select the right treatments for individual customers and prospects and measure the results of marketing programs. But it must be processed before it can be used effectively. The main steps are:  Ingest data from multiple sources. This can be done by direct database updates, API (Application Program Interface) connectors that automatically move data between systems as transactions occur, file transfers that move collections of data in a periodic (batch) process or other techniques. In addition to establishing the connection, ingestion also requires mapping data elements from each source system into the marketing database so they are stored consistently. 4 © 2015 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

5. How-To Guide: B2B Data Management updating the data over time as new inputs imply changes in attributes, such as purchase history, interests or addresses.  Expose data for use by customer-facing systems. This may involve access by campaign managers that select lists for outbound promotions; by interaction managers that make decisions during web visits, mobile app sessions or call center conversions or by the web, email, mobile, social or other delivery systems themselves. Since customer-facing systems often require sub-second response time to function effectively, they often need data to be stored in different structures than analysis and reporting systems. 5 © 2015 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

6. How-To Guide: B2B Data Management MATURITY LEVELS B2B data supports many different applications, which are possible depending in part on the scope and sophistication of your data management processes. The maturity model in Figure 1 describes how your capabilities can be expected to grow. B2B Data Management Stage 2: Stage 4: Stage 1: Basic Stage 3: Marketing Automation Customer Management Integrated Marketing Coordinate & personalize prospect and customer treatments across all channels for entire lifecycle; Base treatments on data synchronized across all channels in real-time; Select treatments during real-time interactions on web, mobile apps, call center, etc. Email, web forms, web visitor behavior, CRM, call center & external enrichments; Company operational systems (order processing, customer service, accounting, product usage, etc.) Coordinate and personalize prospect treatments across email, web, call center & other channels; Automatically pass leads from marketing to CRM; Segmentation and campaign triggers based on behavior across all channels Marketing Capabilities Supported Coordinate prospect treatments between email and web forms; Personalize email and web forms; Report on marketing-generated leads Un-coordinated Prospecting Campaigns in Each Channel Email, web forms & web visitor behavior; CRM, call center & external enrichment; Include unstructured data elements (e.g. search terms, social media posts.) Associate anonymous cookies with email from MA and CRM; Use email to match data from MA, CRM & other systems; Use external data to find additional matches Ingestion (Data Shared in Marketing Database) None Email, web forms and website visitor behavior Associate anonymous behaviors with cookie; Match email address to cookie after email address is provided Associate across anonymous cookies, email, devices, CRM IDs, etc.; Use external data to find additional matches Association None Segments are based on user-defined queries, predictive model scores and behaviors across all channels; System applies automated methods to classify products, content and other items; System tracks trends in model scores and other derived variables over time Segments and behavior categories based on user-defined queries against marketing automation system Segments are based on user-defined queries, predictive model scores & behaviors across channels Organization None Lists for email, mobile, ad retargeting, social and other sources extracted from marketing database; CRM system receives limited contact data (name, address, lead score, etc.) from marketing database; CRM users can view contact behavior details stored in MA, but details are not loaded to CRM system; Reporting tools can access full marketing database through APIs Email, mobile, retargeting, social, CRM, and other systems can extract data from marketing database or connect via APIs; Automated analysis tools can scan database for significant events or predictive data relationships; Users can construct personal custom dashboards and receive alerts about specified events Email lists are extracted directly from marketing automation; Reporting tools can access limited marketing automation data; May be API access to marketing automation data, usually limited Exposure None Figure 1: B2B Data Management Maturity Model

7. How-To Guide: B2B Data Management TAKING ADVANTAGE OF B2B DATA MANAGEMENT  Staff Skills. More advanced levels of data management involve creating new types of coordinated campaigns. Some team members may need new skills in planning, analysis, execution and reporting to manage these effectively. Companies should plan to invest in assessment and training to ensure the necessary skills are available when needed.  Measurement Techniques. Working across channels requires measurement of cross-channel results. This means channel- specific metrics, such as email open rates and web click rates, must be supplemented with channel-neutral metrics, such as conversion to sales-ready leads and incremental lifetime value. Marketers also need to master advanced attribution methods that help them to understand the net contribution that each marketing program makes to the final results. Data management also has its own operational metrics to assess data quality in many dimensions, such as coverage, accuracy and currency. Data management processes by themselves are not enough to produce results. Marketers need other capabilities in place to take advantage of their data. These include:  Related Systems. Other systems must feed data into the central marketing database and deliver the coordinated, personalized messages that result. Customer-facing systems in particular must be open to integration so they can accept centralized inputs. The exact method of integration will vary by system; but in most cases, an API connection is preferred.  Business Processes. The company must have processes that allow it to design and deploy customer treatments across channels. This means that channel managers, such as advertising, web, email and call center teams, may have less autonomy than before. It encompasses campaign design, content creation, reporting and other processes. Full coordination across the customer lifecycle also involves sales, service and support teams. 7 © 2015 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

8. How-To Guide: B2B Data Management ACTION PLAN 1. Assess your current situation. Compare your existing marketing programs, systems and data management practices with the maturity model in Figure 1 to find your current level. 2. Select a target. The most advanced level isn’t for everyone. Make an honest judgement of how much change is possible given your company’s resources and management support. Bear in mind that you can always raise targets after you have achieved initial success. 3. Estimate the cost and value of reaching your goals. Start by identifying the specific marketing programs you would like the improved systems to support. Then, estimate the value of those programs to your business, identify the technical and business changes needed to execute them and estimate the costs of those changes. This will be the foundation of a financial business case that you will need to present to management. 4. Build detailed technology and business plans. These will define how you expect to manage the necessary system and business changes. Plan to make the changes in small steps, with each step ideally providing a concrete business benefit. Be sure that each intermediate change is also compatible with your ultimate target. You don’t want to find yourself ripping out a new system because it can’t grow with you. 8 © 2015 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

9. How-To Guide: B2B Data Management ACTION PLAN 5. Execute, measure and repeat. Find systems that meet your requirements and deploy them, making sure you also address the process, staffing and measurement issues needed for a complete solution. Measure your results, learn from any failures and build on your successes. Continue to make improvements until you’ve met your target. Then, consider whether you should set a more ambitious target or make changes elsewhere in your business. 6. Identify use cases. Define specific marketing programs that would benefit from external data. Identify the specific data they would use and the systems that would deliver the programs. Then, make sure the data you want is actually available and your systems can use it as intended. Finally, estimate the value that those programs might create and compare it to estimated costs. Neither estimate will be very accurate at this stage, but you want to confirm that there is a reasonable balance between cost and benefit. 9 © 2015 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

10. How-To Guide: B2B Data Management ANALYST BOTTOM LINE B2B data is one component of your entire marketing technology universe, which in turn is only part of your marketing department’s technology, human and organizational resources. You need to match your data management level to your larger marketing program, while recognizing that better data management may in itself open doors to new and more advanced techniques. Use the maturity model in Figure 1 to understand your current situation, identify gaps to fill and build a practical execution plan. Then, move carefully but steadily to improve your data management capabilities and your overall marketing results. 10 © 2015 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

11. How-To Guide: B2B Data Management ABOUT THE RESEARCH ANALYSTS David Raab, Research Associate – Demand Metric With an MBA from Harvard, David is an expert in both B2B & B2C marketing strategy & technology. He has advised The Gap, JC Penney, Lowe's, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Williams-Sonoma, Scholastic, Unisys, Sprint and Verizon Wireless. He also publishes the Raab Guide to Demand Generation Systems and the Marketing Performance Measurement Tool-Kit. 11 © 2015 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

12. How-To Guide ABOUT DEMAND METRIC Demand Metric is a global marketing research & advisory firm serving a membership community of over 70,000 marketing professionals, CEOs, and business owners with advisory services, custom research & benchmarking reports, vendor studies, consulting methodologies, training, and a library of 500+ tools and templates. Using Demand Metric resources, members complete projects faster and with greater confidence, boosting respect for the marketing team and making it easier to justify needed resources. Our 1,000+ clients range from start-ups to members of the Global 1000. TO LEARN MORE ABOUT DEMAND METRIC To discover how Demand Metric can help you become more strategic, please visit us online at www.demandmetric.com CLIENT SUPPORT For information, inquiries and general support, please contact us toll-free at +1 866 947 7744, or info@demandmetric.com We offer discounts for academic and nonprofit institutions, provide group memberships and license our content to associations and large enterprises for use on corporate universities and intranets. © 2014 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved.