Average subscribers paid 12% more in 2022 than in 2021. The company attributed the increase to existing customers adding capabilities to their marketing automation instances and the growth of enterprise-level customers. 

HubSpot also continues to add customers; 8,200 were onboarded in Q1. The company now has 143,000 customers, up 26% year-over-year. 

HubSpot now offers a suite of applications: customer relationship management (CRM), customer experience, operations and content management software (CMS), in addition to marketing automation. More than half of the company’s customers subscribe to more than one, HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan said in a recent call with analysts.  

Why we care. Two things jump out. 

First, that average customers pay only $11,000 per year demonstrates just how successful this billion dollar company was at penetrating the small-business market. 

Second, the 12% YoY revenue-per-customer growth affirms how much success HubSpot is having in cross-selling additional products to existing customers, and that it’s successfully moving up-market into territory occupied by Marketo (Adobe), Eloqua (Oracle) and Pardot (SalesForce), to name a few of the enterprise-level incumbents.  At it’s third quarter analysts call, HubSpot said the number of enterprise-level customers paying at least $36,000 annually increased more than 80% year-over-year.

Our MarTech Replacement Survey found that marketing automation was one of the most frequently changed applications in the martech stack. HubSpot is undoubtedly contributing to this upheaval. 

Download the 2022 MarTech Replacement Survey here. It’s free and no registration is required.

The post HubSpot customers paying 12% more than in 2021 appeared first on MarTech.

We’re seeking a motivated self-starter to join our growing marketing services team. You’ll participate with our customers and your team members in the ideation, creation, and execution of marketing programs that unearth prospective customers. Webinars, buyer’s guides, and content syndication are among the channels you’ll work in.

We’re looking for someone who can work in a fast-paced, team environment. You must be comfortable with technology and data platforms. The ideal candidate will be able to manage multiple projects leveraging outstanding project management skills and attention to detail while confidently working directly with clients.

Responsibilities:

• Create and execute email and other campaigns across multiple channels to achieve client goals and success
• Serve as a concierge to clients/sponsors/speakers by communicating program details, deliverables, and timelines
• Write copy and promotions that solicit audience participation
• Track the status of the programs you manage; prepare and deliver sponsor reporting
• Schedule and conduct tech checks for webinars
• Coach speakers/sponsors on presentation best practices
• Write moderator notes and/or introductions for the moderators to read/record
• Provide quality control, proofreading, and formatting of all materials, including lead lists

Qualifications:

• Obsessed with external and internal customer satisfaction
• A people person: enjoys customers, colleagues, and community members
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Digitally savvy with an eagerness to learn new technologies
• Experience creating, implementing, and reporting on e-mail marketing campaigns
• Detail-oriented and highly accurate
• Exceptional Excel skills
• Experience with PowerPoint and Google Slides a plus
• Able to manage competing priorities

What we offer:

• Competitive salary
• Forever work-from-home
• Paid vacation
• Annual vacation stipend

Interested? Send a cover letter and resume to jobs@thirddoormedia.com.

Job Type: Full-time

Location: Always remote

Salary: $70,000-$85,000 per year

The post We’re hiring: Marketing Services Client Success Manager appeared first on MarTech.

Three-quarters of B2B sellers say that they are more efficient than prior to COVID, according to a recent McKinsey & Company survey. A third said they were “much more” efficient; 41% said they were “somewhat more” efficient.

Ninety-four percent said their sales organizations were at least as efficient compared to pre-COVID times.

Digital self-serve is increasing during consideration phases of purchasing

The trend of buyers doing their own research has accelerated during the pandemic. Thirty-seven percent of respondents said they “identified and researched” new suppliers online in the latest version of the survey, an increase of 13 percentage points compared to the August 2020 edition.

The trend was directionally similar at the “consideration and evaluation” stage. Digital self–serve accounted for 34% of activity in November 2021, an increase of seven percentage points from August 2020.

The three methods of interacting with supplier sales reps were nearly equal in November 2021. Digital self-serve (websites and searches), remote interactions (phone calls, video calls, email) with people, and traditional interactions (in-person meetings, direct mail) all garnered approximately a third of the responses.

“B2B suppliers must continue to adapt to meet this new omnichannel reality. Undoubtedly, shifting to a more varied selling approach is not a straightforward process. But selling organizations can take confidence from the increasing comfort that many of their peers (and their customers) have with omnichannel as an effective way of doing business,” McKinsey concluded.

Dig deeper: The B2B customer journey is set on a digital track

The 3 martini lunch was a dinosaur — now close to extinction

This McKinsey research documents a continuation of two trends in B2B marketing: omni-channel marketing/sales is accelerating, and sales organizations believe they are more efficient in this remote and self-serve world.

Face-to-face sales was already on its way out prior to the pandemic for a variety of reasons:

• Meetings and the travel required to get sales reps to those meetings are expensive. Estimates are the average cost of a face-to-face meeting is $400, compared to $50 for a phone call.
• We’re all busy. Meeting in-person is an inefficient use of the buyer’s (and seller’s) time.
• Buying involves many stakeholders. Getting them all in the same room at the same time is nearly impossible.
• Perhaps most importantly, buyers are capable of, and prefer conducting, research online… long before contacting a sales person. That has been a trend for many years and is continuing. 

Finally, explaining the value propositions, use cases and benefits of marketing software and services don’t require a face-to-face interaction. For software, users will be in front of a screen. And for services, most of the collaboration will take place remotely.

The post The B2B sales process is more effective now than pre-COVID appeared first on MarTech.

It’s indisputable that virtual events are as varied in format as their physical world counterparts. In purpose, composition, duration, presentation technology, virtual events are as wide-ranging as the organizations who are pioneering this medium.

This guide is for marketers who are looking to build their sales pipelines, acquire customers and retain existing customers with virtual events. Here’s what’s inside:

• What is a “virtual event”?
• Virtual event history.
• COVID-19, changes in customer behavior accelerated virtual event development.
• Virtual events are a viable alternative to in-person and popular with attendees.
• Virtual events are NOT physical events.
• Virtual events excel at identifying prospects and their intent to purchase, and bestowing thought leadership.
• Virtual event “networking.”
• It’s just not like being there.
• Making the exhibitor-attendee connection with virtual events.
• Allocating resources to making connections.
• Choosing the right virtual event marketing technology: platform or stack?
• Avengers (er, stack), assemble!
• The future of events: “always on” physical and virtual.
• Virtual events: a catalyst for always-on events?

Estimated reading time: 17 minutes

What is a “virtual event”?

The definition of “virtual events” is evolving rapidly. For this guide, we’ve defined them as live and/or recorded presentations, typically organized by topic or subject. Semantically, there is no functional difference between a virtual event, an online event, or a digital event and the terms can be used interchangeably. This guide focuses on virtual events produced for business purposes, including building sales pipelines, acquiring customers and retaining existing customers

Content may be presented live or may be recorded. Often it is available for live on-demand after it premieres live or recorded. Virtual events typically require attendees to either pay for access or provide their personal information in lieu of payment.

Most virtual events feature more than one presentation. Webinars, which have been produced since the 1990s, are one variety of virtual event. Typically they feature one presentation.

In addition, 1-to-1 meetings arranged between vendors and participants may be offered as a component of virtual events or may be the entirety of the programming.

Virtual events also typically feature networking opportunities for attendees and participating exhibitors/sponsors. These activities include audience polling, chat, Q&A, along with elements intended to entertain the audience like group yoga, bartending, DJ/music events, and virtual swag and meals delivered to the attendee’s location. Much more on networking is here.

Virtual event history

The development of virtual events began in the mid-1990s with several software applications that enable users to share their screens.

PictureTel introduced LiveShare Plus software, an application that provided users with remote access to another computer. In 1996, Microsoft introduced NetMeeting, which enabled users to communicate and exchange data in real-time.

Xerox released the first webinar software, PlaceWare, later that year. PlaceWare allowed users to create presentations that many others could attend. PlaceWare also included several features that are staples of webinars today, including audience polling, private chat, and the ability to elevate a webinar attendee to a presenter.

Webinar platforms proliferated at the end of the 1990s. Notable platforms debuting then included Cisco’s WebEx Meeting Center, GoToMeeting and On24.

For more on the history of virtual events, visit this page.

COVID-19, changes in customer behavior accelerated online event development

COVID-19 accelerated the pace of virtual event development as prospective attendees sought alternative professional development opportunities and ways to stay connected with their professional community. Solutions providers, precluded from participating in live events, sought alternative ways to identify prospects.

Virtual event/webinar platform provider On24, which is publicly traded, illustrates the growth COVID-19 spurred. The company added nearly 600 customers in 2020, compared to just 150 in 2019. Its revenue grew 76% in 2020, compared to just 8% in 2019. And as the world started to open back up in 2021, that growth continued as the company’s sales grew by 30% compared to 2020.

On24 Growth, 2018 to 2021

Source: MarTech analysis of On24 earnings reports

Changes in the sales dynamic, particularly the B2B environment, also accelerated the adoption of virtual events.

Customers are educating themselves before contacting company salespeople. That means offering access to information about products and services online is essential in this environment.

In addition, virtual event platforms and technology stacks cost-effectively facilitate customer engagement at scale, engaging large numbers of prospective customers and customers.

The cost of participating in virtual events, in addition to producing them, is typically a fraction of the cost of participating in an in-person event.

Digital events are a viable alternative to in-person and popular with attendees

Interest in virtual events is likely to remain high, as the timeline for a return to in-person events remains uncertain. Marketers are reluctant to attend large gatherings. Nearly 50% said they won’t attend an in-person event through the first half of 2022, according to MarTech’s Event Participation Index, which measures marketers’ attitudes toward attending in-person and virtual events.

Half of Marketers Expect to Attend an In-person Event in 2021

Meanwhile, virtual event participation — and satisfaction with them — is high. Eighty-one percent of marketers responding to the Event Participation Index survey said they attended a virtual event in the last three months, and three-quarters said they were satisfied with the experience. (Editor’s note: Respondents were marketers who self-selected to participate in this survey. Results for other industries and populations may be different.)

Marketers attend/are satisfied with virtual events

Three in four marketers said they were satisfied with the virtual event experience. Factors contributing to the high degree of satisfaction included:

• Risk of infection is not a concern
• Most virtual events are free or relatively inexpensive, compared to in-person events, to attend
• Travel — and the associated expense and investment in time — is not required
• Participants can engage with virtual event content at their own pace, provided live sessions are available on-demand

While 100% satisfaction will remain an aspiration, there’s room for improvement rooted in the disconnect between what the medium is able to deliver and what attendees expect.

Virtual events are NOT physical events

Virtual events provide an experience that’s different from physical events — for attendees and exhibitors/sponsors alike. The experience is so different, it’s unfortunate the “event” analogy and terminology was adopted to describe virtual events at all.

For attendees, perhaps no online experience can replicate the energy of a packed ballroom of people anticipating an inspirational keynote, the electricity of an expo hall humming with engagement, a chance meeting with a like-minded peer, or reconnecting with colleagues or friends.

For exhibitors/sponsors and speakers, the tactile satisfaction of being face-to-face with customers has not translated well.

Attempts to replicate the expo hall experience for exhibitors have fallen particularly flat. The Second Life-like representations of virtual booths don’t effectively connect buyers and sellers. Meaningful engagements haven’t occurred in volume adequate to justify creating and staffing a virtual booth.

Virtual events excel at identifying prospects and their intent to purchase, and bestowing thought leadership

Disciples of the marketing funnel analogy are likely to categorize virtual events as top-to-mid funnel opportunities. They are highly effective in attracting attendees, gathering intent data from those who register, and enabling exhibitors/sponsors to demonstrate authority and thought leadership.

Virtual events are capable of attracting more registrants and participants than their physical counterparts. They eliminate barriers that limit in-person event attendance including travel/entertainment costs and scheduling conflicts.

Data gathered from virtual events can also signal that certain individuals are likely to be interested in hearing from exhibitors and sponsors. Intent data can be a byproduct of participating in the event. (Did a given individual register, attend or participate?) Or it can be solicited and provided by participants in questions asked during registration or via applications like polling that solicit responses to questions.

Thought leadership opportunities are unlimited since the time and space limitations of physical events don’t apply; the amount of inventory and the time available to present depend on the amount of content there is to present. The attention of the audience is the only aspect of a virtual event that is finite.

Virtual event “networking”

Creating rewarding and scalable networking opportunities that serve all constituencies is the trickiest aspect of executing virtual events. It’s also been the least satisfying aspect for attendees, exhibitors and other event participants.

“Networking” is an ill-defined activity. Even at in-person events, it means different things to different participants, depending upon if networking is attendee-to-attendee, exhibitor-to-attendee, speaker-to-attendee, exhibitor-to-exhibitor, press-to-exhibitor, etc.

For exhibitors, networking typically means meeting potential prospects, business partners, press/analysts and investors. Exhibitors often use “engagement”, “interaction” and “networking” interchangeably to describe these activities.

Meanwhile, attendee expectations of “networking” may be vastly different, depending on the type of event they are attending. The motivation for attending trade shows may be principally commercial, e.g. attendees go to buy things for their stores and businesses. The commercial opportunities are front and center, while training and networking play supporting roles.

“Conferences,” on the other hand, are predominantly educational sessions and keynotes. Commercial activities are often limited to cocktail hours, coffee breaks, and meals. Conference attendees may define networking as meeting like-minded professionals during meals or after-hours activities, being able to ask questions of presenters during/after sessions or arranged meetings via “birds of a feather” tables, speed networking or meeting apps like Braindate or Brella.

With the diversity and potential mismatch of exhibitor/attendee expectations, it is not surprising that producers of online events have struggled to fulfill the expectations of networking. Fifty percent of producers surveyed in the Virtual Event Tech Guide said their top frustration with virtual events was matching the level of engagement provided by in-person events.

It’s just not like being there

The rewards of attending an in-person event have kept participation high because physically being with others in-person with similar interests and sharing a common experience, when properly orchestrated by the event producer, is satisfying. (Interested in learning more about the psychology of events? Check out The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact by Chip and Dan Heath.)

Unfortunately, the tactile pleasures of in-person gatherings are absent in virtual environments. For each person, the experience is mediated by the device they’re accessing the event on, the software they’re using and the bandwidth they have.

In addition, the environments they chose for viewing — coffee shops, living rooms, offices or conference rooms — influence the experience greatly and are beyond the control of the organizer.

Overcoming the mediated nature of virtual events is not possible, at least today. Organizers have no choice but to work within the capabilities of the medium and do their best to overcome the limitations.

Making the exhibitor-attendee connection with virtual events

Like other lead generation tactics, connecting with virtual event attendees is often based on an exchange of value. Exhibitors offer something of value to attendees in exchange for their attention and agreement to share their personal information.

Valuable content is the most commonly used tactic to get attention. Compelling and successfully promoted sessions are the typical drivers of attendance.

Once an attendee accesses a presentation, the opportunities to engage begin to unfold: real-time chat and Q&A, book a demo, ask a question and polling are just a few of the on-screen presentation connections that can be accomplished.

Supplemental experiences can be promoted while you have the attendee’s attention, such as small-group video chats, one-on-one meetings with speakers and invitations to visit a virtual booth.

Offering incentives (a version of gamification) is another way to encourage attendee engagement and maintain attention. Gift cards, goodie packages and food/drink/swag giveaways are all tactics exhibitors are using to achieve these goals. Registration data, whether provided pre-event or used post-event to invite attendees to a supplemental activity, is key to ensuring the success of these incentives.

Allocating resources to making connections

Exhibitors need to be mindful of whether these opportunities to network are “live” or asynchronous and plan resources accordingly.

If the activity is truly live, as is the case with Q&A, group chat and virtual booths, those apps can’t be left unattended during “show hours”; staff must be present and able to respond to requests from all attendees who might want to engage. Asynchronous alternatives must be available when staff isn’t available to respond.

Asynchronous engagement applications don’t require 24/7 staffing but are integral to the virtual event experience. Since space and time don’t apply to virtual events (at least not to on-demand presentations), exhibitors need to be able to communicate with prospects whenever they choose to engage.

Enabling access to applications typically available on the exhibitor’s website — “request a demo,” contact us or even chatbots — are effective ways to be responsive in an on-demand environment.

Regardless of how you connect, be mindful of attendees’ willingness to engage: Just because someone has given permission to be contacted, participated in a virtual session, attended a networking event or visited a virtual booth does not mean that they are a buyer. As in the physical world, they should be qualified before they are sold.

Making connections in the virtual world is going to be an issue that producers and exhibitors struggle to overcome in the coming months and years.

Choosing the right virtual event marketing technology: platform or stack?

The debate continues to rage in marketing technology circles whether deploying an all-in-one platform or assembling a “stack” of best-of-breed applications yields the best results.

See examples of martech stacks here.

That’s the choice facing virtual event producers now, and the benefits and pitfalls of each approach apply to virtual event production as well.

Download the MarTech Intelligence Report: Enterprise Digital Events Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

Define the objectives and requirements upfront

As with any marketing tech choice, the answer to the question, “To platform or stack?” depends on what you are trying to accomplish. Start by defining your objectives. Are you producing a tradeshow with lots of sponsors, and therefore attendee/sponsor interaction is the goal? Is it a training course, where learning is the key benefit? Or is attendee-to-attendee networking the root of the value that will provide? Answering these questions (and many others) will guide the decisions you make.

If, for example, you are planning for a large event, with thousands of attendees and presentations, being mindful of scale is important because you’ll need a high-performance platform that can handle a large number of participants simultaneously. If, on the other hand, your event will have limited attendance and features pre-recorded content, or it’s a mixed scenario with live and on-demand content, you face a completely different set of challenges.

The implications of your business model or desired event experience can’t be overstated. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. You’ll have to dig in to find the right solution. Start with the three “Ds”:

• Document the required features;
• Define use cases for key stakeholders;
• Determine the budget.

In addition to the objectives, you need to define requirements, a list of features you expect to have for attendees, sponsors and your team. Making a detailed list will get you started on the right path and save you a ton of time in the long run. You’ll avoid pointless conversations with the hundreds of vendors now vying for your virtual event business.

Your requirements should start with ideas about what kind of experience your attendees expect, including an easy registration form that is mobile-friendly. Will you be charging for registration? If so, how does the registration system handle payments (and refunds)? Are there multiple ticket types? Will the event be live, pre-recorded, or a mix of both? How will attendees connect? What benefits do sponsors get? How will you measure activity, engagement, and ultimately the success of the event?

Make certain your requirements take into account the business model of your event. For example, if your event is free for attendees, and sponsors will pay the freight, you’ll skew your requirements to sponsor needs such as branding, reporting, and support. Likewise, if your event model relies on matchmaking or 1:1 meetings, you’ll need to flesh out your meeting requirements. Whenever possible, involve key constituents — attendees, sponsors and your team — in decisions. You’ll earn much-needed buy-in during the process, which is vital for the success of any martech project.

All-in-one virtual event platforms provide a standard set of features. You’ll love some of them, loathe some of them, and ignore others.

Depending upon the capabilities of your team, choosing an all-in-one platform may be wise to impose structure, particularly in workflow. You’ll inherit a defined way of doing things and the support of the vendor’s client services team including onboarding and training.

The alternative to an all-in-one platform is an event “stack.” A stack will consist of tools that deliver the same or more functionality as a platform, but with the benefit of allowing you to swap out or add in elements as needed.

An event stack approach gives you the flexibility to integrate cutting-edge technologies and features and is generally less expensive than using an all-in-one platform.

So, what are the drawbacks of a stack? You’ll be sourcing elements from different vendors and will need to connect them all to provide a seamless experience for users and aggregate data for sponsors and your use. You’ll also be on your own; stacks don’t come with client success organizations to support your efforts.

Avengers (er, stack), assemble!

Assembling your own event stack means taking ownership over things such as managing disparate registration and content management systems and landing pages, video hosting, and other widgets and tools. You’ll want to lean heavily on your requirements document and stick to what matters. Do you need surveys and polls, or are those just things that feel good to have but that you don’t use in your event? Do you have a lot of sponsors or no sponsors? That will impact your reporting needs. Is there live Q&A during sessions, or will that happen in a Slack channel, or in a private Facebook group?

Assembling a virtual event stack offers flexibility and is potentially less expensive. But assembly comes with its own set of drawbacks and caveats. For example, if you don’t have a technically capable or curious team, it can be overwhelming to try to connect all the dots between different solutions. A well-designed event stack will have more moving pieces than an all-in-one event platform. You’ll have to manage multiple vendors and won’t have a single source of support.

While the idea of having everything in an all-in-one solution sounds comforting, it can also be extremely limiting. In this virtual, digital environment, where innovation is happening as quickly as customer expectations, locking yourself into a single platform contract could have some significant drawbacks in terms of your ability to be agile and flexible and to create the ideal experience for your customers.

If you intend to explore the event stack route, we recommend you get clear on your core requirements and match them directly to your business model. Identify who on your team can handle integrations and prepare everyone so they understand the benefits of building a stack, and how it changes everything from the front-end user experience to the way they manage events.

So, what’s the better approach: all-in-one or stack? It depends. You can only answer the question by taking the time to understand your requirements, budget, and the experience you want to deliver.

The future of events: “Always on,” physical and virtual

Looking to the future, many analysts and industry participants expect a hybrid future where events include both physical and virtual components, which may include online marketplaces. The trade show industry has long paid lip service to this concept, but few of its leading players have fully embraced the idea.

In their book “Reinventing Live,” Denzil Rankine and Marco Giberti predict marketers expect live events to return, but won’t abandon virtual events. “We’re going to have a mix,” Rankine said. “We’re going to find that some versions of events are working very well online; businesses are having an impact, making money, and so on. And certain models — for example, one-to-one meetings work that way.”

Other predictions and observations Rankine made in Reinventing Live and an interview MarTech conducted with him:

• In-person events will return, but there will be fewer of them, and attendance is likely to be reduced. Some of the digital-only events are going to continue. All face-to-face events will be supported by digital tools.
• Some event organizers will only produce in-person events. “Some people only like to read newspapers on paper; they’ve got ink in their blood. And you’ve got that in the events industry too,” he said
• “In a few years’ time, we won’t even be talking about virtual or hybrid. We’ll just be talking about events; it’s a given that you’ve got all these digital extensions.”
• In addition to the negative environmental impact associated with unnecessary air travel, the people at brands who hold the purse-strings — and perhaps don’t attend events themselves — will be highly conscious that businesses continued to function last year without the need to expense flights and hotel stays.

Download the MarTech Intelligence Report: Enterprise Digital Events Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

Virtual events: a catalyst for always-on events?

Innovative event producers and their customers have long dreamed of creating an “always on” event. Such an “event” would connect buyers and sellers 24-7-365, the way that Amazon and Walmart serve consumers.

“365 is ambitious and tricky,” Rankine conceded. Where there’s a 365-day workflow, however, it may become a realistic goal. B2B customers routinely use ten or more channels to interact with suppliers, according to a recent McKinsey & Company study. The potential for virtual events to participate in that ecosystem is high.

Interested in exploring a virtual events stack in action? Check out Search Marketing Expo and The MarTech Conference.

Marc Sirkin and Kim Davis contributed to this guide.

The post Why we care about virtual events: The ultimate marketers’ guide appeared first on MarTech.

Good morning, Marketers, are you certain you want to go freelance?

In Monday’s newsletter, Kim wrote about the Great Resignation: “In article after article, I am reading that marketers are choosing the freelance life,” so they can work with “clients of their own choosing, in their preferred location, and at the hours that suit them best.”

Freelancing is not always so idyllic.

Clients will demand you be available for early morning Zoom meetings and late night calls to discuss the “couple of changes” that need to be made to your work.

You’ll likely have to master skills that are out of your wheelhouse. Ask yourself: are you really a natural salesperson, or accounts receivable clerk?

And the pressure of making payroll, when feeding your family is on the line, can be overwhelming.

If freelancing is the path you’ve chosen, Godspeed. But if you’re working in-house at a company or agency, please take our 2022 MarTech Salary and Career Survey. It takes less than 5 minutes to complete. We look forward to sharing the results with you all.

Chris Elwell

CEO, Third Door Media

Shorts

Quote of the day: “If we don’t diversify our approach to the market, soon we’ll be operating by the equivalent of candlelight. The industry risks losing $10 billion in annual sales – without a serious plan for what happens when everyone’s in the dark.” Angelina Eng, vice president, measurement and attribution at the IAB’s Programmatic+Data Center

The post Good morning: Freelancing may not be so idyllic appeared first on MarTech.

• Facilitating marketing activities,
• Training and supporting marketing staff,
• Budgeting for, selecting, implementing and administering marketing software,
• Architecting the marketing software “stack”, and,
• Making data accessible and useful to marketing colleagues and others, e.g. sales and customer service.

This description is useful for understanding what some MOps teams do and what they aspire to do, but the responsibilities and tasks undertaken by marketing ops organizations vary widely. 

Marketing ops provides a 15% to 25% improvement in marketing effectiveness, as measured by ROI and customer engagement, according to McKinsey. 

In this piece, we’ll dive deep into marketing ops and the profile of marketing ops professionals. We’ll cover:

• Why the explosion in martech created the modern marketing operations role.
• How does marketing operations fit in your organization?
• What do marketing ops professionals do? 
• Why MOPs teams devote most of their time to automation and campaign management tools.
• How marketing ops teams are structured.

Why the explosion in martech created the modern marketing operations role

There’s some disagreement regarding the advent of marketing operations. Some trace the function within marketing departments all the way back to the 1920s. 

The “modern era” arguably began in 2005, when IDG first defined the term and marketing ops pioneer Gary Katz chaired the Marketing Operations & Management Symposium, which was part of the Digital Asset Management Symposium, in Los Angeles. Approximately 70 people attended.  

The rapid proliferation of marketing software applications and the need for professionals to select, deploy and operate them, accelerated the prominence of the field and its practitioners. The number of applications increased to 9,932 in 2022, which is up 24% from 2020, according to chiefmartec.com’s Scott Brinker in his latest Marketing Technology Landscape. 

It’s not uncommon for small/medium businesses to have 25-50 marketing software applications in their martech stack, while enterprise-level organizations can have more than 250, according to stack management firm CabinetM. Many companies have as many internally developed applications as off-the-shelf software.

And the profession has expanded. At the end of 2021, more than 250,000 LinkedIn users in the US and nearly 600,000 worldwide included “marketing operations” in their profiles. The site also listed more than 15,000 open positions for marketing ops professionals at that time.

How does marketing operations fit in your organization?

In most cases, marketing ops is part of the marketing department and MOPs team members identify as marketers. 

Most MOps departments report to the CMO, with the CEO coming in second, according to “The State of the Marketing Ops Professional”, which was jointly published by HubSpot and Mo Pros. 

More than ¾ of marketing ops department members have marketing titles, according to the report. Nearly 30% were marketing managers, followed by 13.8% marketing directors and 6.4% in the position of VP/Head of marketing. 

Brinker maps all marketing roles into four archetypes. (He refers to all marketers as “marketing technologists,” which belies his personal journey to marketing from software and web development.)

The model is helpful for understanding the breadth of marketing ops responsibilities, showing those that are geared toward internal factors, external factors, processes and technology.

Three of the four archetypes — Maestros, Modellers and Makers — are functions within marketing ops’ purview. The Maestros are the system administrators who make the marketing trains run. The Modellers are professionals who make data accessible and useful. The Makers are software developers and engineers who create home-grown marketing applications and work with APIs. 

The “Marketers” in Brinker’s model (the upper right quadrant) aren’t typically involved with marketing ops functions, although the number of individuals in that quadrant is undoubtedly the lion’s share of those working in marketing. 

The model was further expanded to acknowledge the role of managers who oversee the breadth of marketing and marketing ops. That role involves “people management, as well as having the responsibility for overarching martech strategy and governance — connecting it with overall marketing strategy, set by the CMO at the next layer up,” Brinker wrote.

What do marketing ops professionals do?

Just as there is no one definition of MOps, there are variations in what tasks MOps conducts. 

According to the chiefmartec.com/MarTech 2020 Career Survey, marketing technology and operations personnel were responsible for the following at least 70% of the time: 

1. Designing, running and implementing marketing campaigns
2. Training and supporting marketing staff on using marketing software
3. Operating marketing software as an administrator
4. Researching and recommending marketing software
5. Designing and managing internal workflows and processes

Here’s the full list: 

Applying the results to his earlier model, Brinker mapped the functions to each archetype within the marketing organization: 

Dig deeper: 6 key marketing ops predictions for 2022

Why MOps teams devote most of their time to automation and campaign management tools

When asked which marketing tools are most likely to be used during the week, 70% of the MOPs professionals replying to the 2020 Career Survey put marketing automation and campaign management solutions at the top of their list.

They also spent at least 10 hours a week in spreadsheets — solutions like Excel, Google Sheets and Airtable. So while many marketing ops teams are devoting much of their time to automation and campaign management responsibilities, many are spending as much time reporting on the results of their efforts.

Project management, also called marketing work management, was another popular platform, with half of the survey respondents spending a large part of their workweek using project management tools. 

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Here are the applications MOps professionals say they spend at least 10 hours a week working with: 

How marketing ops teams are structured

Sixty-five percent of self-identified MOPs professionals said they work in an organization with a dedicated MOps team or individual, according to “The State of the Marketing Ops Professional” (registration required for download), which was jointly published by HubSpot and Mo Pros.

Small businesses with fewer than 100 employees are least likely to have a dedicated marketing ops department. Large companies typically have dedicated teams. Fewer than 5% of companies with more than 500 employees said they didn’t have the function.

“All models are wrong, but some are useful,” statistician George Box is credited with saying. Here are three models of how marketing operations is configured.

Model 1: The MOPs 1-armed paper hanger

Like so many specialties within small companies, marketing ops is a one-person band in many organizations. Twenty-five percent of respondents to the survey said they were the lone member of the MOps team. 

The chart above supports this view of marketing ops as a hands-on, in-the-weeds profession. More than 50% of respondents to that survey reported they spent more than 10 hours per week working with marketing automation, spreadsheets (presumably for reporting results), CRM/CDP (for customer identification), and marketing work management. 

In the context of Brinker’s model, these individuals are probably doing the tasks of all four archetypes, but are the “owner” of the Maker, Maestro, and Modeler tasks.

Model 2: Marketing ops supporting marketing

Typically in larger organizations, MOps departments are responsible for making the marketing trains run. The mission of these types of organizations is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing through people, process, technology and data so that marketing can achieve operational goals, according to Pedowitz Group’s Debbie Qaqish. 

Here’s how noted MOps leaders and industry observers characterize the marketing ops function: 

“Marketing operations is beyond your marketing automation platform; it involves people, process and technology.”
– Michael McNeal, National Marketing Operations Lead, Centric Consulting 

“Marketing ops is like the pit crew, and sales and marketing are the race car drivers. Marketing operations replaces the wheels, tunes up the engine, refuels, keeps an eye on all the instrumentation and constantly talks to the driver to find out what he or she needs. An effective pit crew enables a driver to focus on winning the race, and not on things like if his or her car will fail during the race. The more planning, guardrails, and smart processes we have in place, the faster marketers can go.”
– Darrell Alfonso, Amazon Web Services

“The world of marketing operations is where the professionals try to inject some order into chaos but are constantly beaten back by faulty tech, unreasonable workloads and meaningless requests from uncomprehending business teams.”
– Kim Davis, Editorial Director, MarTech

Model 3: Marketing Ops as the CMOs best friend

In many organizations, Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are responsible for leading overarching initiatives, such as digital transformation, the pivot to customer-centricity, and driving revenue and growth. CMOs who elevate MOPs to a strategic function to tackle those challenges tend to change the perception of marketing within their firm, according to Debbie Qaqish.

“CMOs who succeed in accelerating wider digital transformation, who adopt financial accountability and who lead customer-centricity cannot do this with a marketing operations group focused on operational measures. They need a strategic marketing operations organization that envisions and drives change through the magic formula of people, process, technology and data.”

Not surprisingly, McKinsey has a similar take: “It’s sad but true: marketing operations has traditionally been overshadowed by sexier marketing tactics. Yet as consumers become increasingly empowered and sophisticated in the way they make purchasing decisions, it’s never been more important to use data to map customers’ DNA, understand exactly what they want, and then take those insights to develop and deliver a superior (and flawless) customer experience. As outcomes go, we think that’s pretty sexy indeed.”

In the end, the size, focus and marketing maturity of your teams will likely dictate which model is right for you. And, these models will fluctuate and evolve over time. But the continued explosion of marketing technologies and the endless need for brands to build deeply connected customer journeys is an indication that the MOps profession is one that will continue to evolve and grow, becoming more enmeshed and critical to not only the marketing function but C-Level Execs and, in many cases, the board as well. The future is bright for MOps!

The post What is marketing operations and who are MOps professionals? appeared first on MarTech.

That doesn’t excuse event producers, whether for-profit trade show organizers or companies running virtual events to generate business or retain customers, from cracking the code of successful virtual networking.  

The “event” analogy fails … again

Part one of this series concludes that the “experience (of in-person and virtual events) is so different, it’s unfortunate the ‘event’ analogy and terminology was adopted to describe virtual events at all.” Networking is another example of that #fail.  

“Networking” in the physical world means different things to different event participants: attendee to attendee, exhibitor to attendee, speaker to attendee, exhibitor to exhibitor, press to exhibitor, etc.

For exhibitors, networking typically means meeting potential prospects, business partners, press/analysts and investors. Exhibitors often use “engagement”, “interaction” and “networking” interchangeably to describe these activities. We’ll use “networking” as a blanket term for activities that connect exhibitors with potential buyers. 

Meanwhile, attendee expectations of “networking” may be vastly different, depending on the type of event they are attending. The motivation for attending trade shows may be principally commercial, e.g. attendees go to buy things for their stores and businesses. The commercial opportunities are front and center, while training and networking play supporting roles.

Conferences, on the other hand, are dominated by educational sessions and keynotes. Commercial activities are often limited to cocktail hours, coffee breaks, and meals. Conference attendees may define networking as meeting like-minded professionals during meals or after-hours activities, being able to ask questions of presenters during/after sessions or arranged meetings via birds of a feather tables, speed networking or meeting apps like Braindate or Brella.  

With the diversity and potential mismatch of exhibitor/attendee expectations, it is not surprising that producers of online events have struggled to fulfill the expectations of networking. Fifty percent of producers surveyed said their top frustration with virtual events was matching the level of engagement provided by in-person events. 

It’s just not like being there

The rewards of attending an in-person event have kept participation high because physically being with others in-person with similar interests and sharing a common experience, when properly orchestrated by the event producer, is satisfying. (Interested in learning more about the psychology of events? I suggest The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact by Chip and Dan Heath.)

Unfortunately, the tactile pleasures of in-person gatherings are absent in virtual environments. For each person, the experience is mediated by the device they’re accessing the event on, the software they’re using and the bandwidth they have. 

In addition, the environments they chose for viewing — coffee shops, living rooms, offices or conference rooms — influence the experience greatly and are beyond the control of the organizer. 

Overcoming the mediated nature of virtual events is not possible, at least today. Organizers have no choice but to work within the capabilities of the medium and do their best to overcome the limitations. 

Making the exhibitor-attendee connection

Like other lead generation tactics, connecting with virtual event attendees is often based on an exchange of value. Exhibitors offer something of value to attendees in exchange for their attention and agreement to share their personal information. 

Valuable content is the most commonly used tactic to get attention. Compelling and successfully promoted sessions are the typical drivers of attendance.

Once an attendee accesses a presentation, the opportunities to engage begin to unfold: real-time chat and Q&A, book a demo, ask a question and polling are just a few of the in-screen presentation connections that can be accomplished. 

Supplemental experiences can be promoted while you have the attendee’s attention, for example: small-group video chats, one-on-one meetings with speakers and invitations to visit a virtual booth. 

Offering incentives (a version of gamification) is another way to encourage attendee engagement and maintain attention.  Gift cards, goodie packages and food/drink/swag giveaways are all tactics exhibitors are using to achieve these goals. Registration data, whether provided pre-event or used post-event to invite attendees to a supplemental activity, is key to ensuring success of these incentives. 

Allocating resources to making connections

Exhibitors need to be mindful of whether these opportunities to network are “live” or asynchronous and plan resources accordingly. 

If the activity is truly live, as is the case with Q&A, group chat and virtual booths, those apps can’t be left unattended during “show hours”;  staff must be present and able to respond to requests from all attendees who might want to engage. Asynchronous alternatives must be available when staff isn’t available to respond. 

Asynchronous engagement applications don’t require 24/7 staffing but are integral to the virtual event experience. Since space and time don’t apply to virtual events (at least not to on-demand presentations), exhibitors need to be able to communicate with prospects whenever they choose to engage. 

Enabling access to applications typically available on the exhibitor’s web site — “request a demo”, contact us or even chatbots — are effective ways to be responsive in an on-demand environment. 

Regardless of how you connect, be mindful of attendees’ willingness to engage: Just because someone has given permission to be contacted, participated in a virtual session, attended a networking event or visited a virtual booth does not mean that they are a buyer. As in the physical world, they should be qualified before they are sold to.

Making connections in the virtual world is clearly going to be the issue that producers and exhibitors struggle to overcome in the coming months and years. Have anything to add to the thoughts I’ve shared above? Give me a piece of your mind at chris[at]thirddoormedia.com.

The post What we think we’ve learned about networking for virtual events appeared first on MarTech.

After producing two large virtual events for the martech and search marketing communities, with another martech event planned for this fall, we’re beginning to answer some questions about the characteristics and capabilities of the medium and its ability to satisfy the needs of attendees and exhibitors/sponsors. 

What IS a “virtual event”?

Long before COVID, marketing professionals attended live and recorded presentations online for professional development. Third Door Media has produced more than 400 online presentations, often called webinars or webcasts, since 2007. In that time, more than 100,000 individuals, all of them marketers, viewed those presentations in exchange for allowing sponsors to contact them about solutions and services.

The definition of “virtual events” is evolving rapidly. For our purposes, we’ve defined them as collections of live and/or recorded presentations, typically organized by topic or subject. Content may be available only live, but more often is available for live viewing and later for viewing on-demand. Virtual events are typically gated, requiring attendees to either pay for access or provide their personal information in lieu of payment.

COVID accelerates virtual event development

COVID accelerated the pace of virtual event development as prospective attendees sought alternative professional development opportunities and ways to stay connected with their professional community. Solutions providers, precluded from participating in live events, sought alternative ways to identify prospects. 

Interest in virtual events is likely to remain high, as the timeline for a return to in-person events remains uncertain. Marketers are reluctant to attend large gatherings. Nearly 70% said they won’t attend an in-person event through the first half of 2021, according to MarTech Today’s Event Participation Index, which measures marketers’ attitudes toward attending in-person and virtual events. 

MarTech vendors are equally disinclined. Many have imposed travel bans on their employees and cancelled their own events, most notably SalesForce.com, which cancelled its 2020 edition of Dreamforce. 

Meanwhile, virtual event participation — and satisfaction with them — is high. Eighty-one percent of marketers responding to the Event Participation Index survey said they attended a virtual event in the last three months, and three-quarters said they were satisfied with the experience.

It is encouraging that 3-in-4 marketers are satisfied with the virtual event experience. Factors contributing to the high degree of satisfaction include:

• Risk of infection is not a concern
• Most virtual events are free or relatively inexpensive, compared to in-person events, to attend
• Travel — and the associated expense and investment in time — is not required 
• For the most part, participants can engage with virtual event content at their own pace, provided live sessions are available on-demand (in our experience,approximately 70% of sessions are viewed live)  

While 100% satisfaction will remain an aspiration, there’s room for improvement rooted in the disconnect between what the medium is able to deliver and what attendees expect. 

Virtual events are NOT physical events

Virtual events provide an experience that’s different from physical events — for attendees and exhibitors/sponsors alike. The experience is so different, it’s unfortunate the “event” analogy and terminology was adopted to describe virtual events at all. 

For attendees, perhaps no online experience can replicate the anticipation of a packed ballroom anticipating an inspirational keynote, the electricity of an expo hall humming with engagement, or a chance meeting with a like-minded peer, or reconnecting with colleagues or friends.  

For exhibitors/sponsors and speakers, the tactile satisfaction of being face-to-face with customers has not translated well. 

Attempts to replicate the expo hall experience for exhibitors have fallen particularly flat. The Second Life-like representations of virtual booths don’t effectively connect buyers and sellers. Meaningful engagements haven’t occurred in volume adequate to justify creating and staffing a virtual booth. 

Virtual events excel at identifying prospects and bestowing thought leadership

Virtual events are highly effective for driving large numbers of leads and enabling exhibitors/sponsors to demonstrate authority and thought leadership. If you’re a disciple of the marketing funnel analogy, virtual events are more top-of-funnel activities than in-person events. 

Based on our experience, virtual events are capable of attracting many more registrants and participants than their physical counterparts. The virtual editions of MarTech (Discover MarTech, held in April) and Search Marketing Expo – SMX (SMX Next, held in June) attracted approximately 9,000 and 13,500 registrants, respectively; more than two times the number of participants attended compared to their real-world counterparts. These levels of participation enabled delivery of guaranteed lead goals within the first week of the event and in numbers equivalent to the most aggressive booth teams at physical events. 

The composition of the audiences — company size, purchase authority and percentage of participants who are in-market — were similar. 

Thought leadership opportunities are unlimited, since the time and space limitations of physical events don’t apply; the amount of inventory and the time available to present it depend on the amount of content there is to present. The attention of the audience is the only aspect of a virtual event that is finite. 

We’re just getting started..

In future installments of this series, we’ll discuss what “networking” means in the context of virtual events, share thoughts on virtual event platforms and “stacks”, and discuss what the future might hold for this rapidly-evolving medium. 

In the meantime, share your comments on this piece or anything virtual-event related with me at chris@thirddoormedia.com. I look forward to continuing this journey together.

The post Virtual Events: What We’ve Learned appeared first on MarTech.

Just last week, the team here at Third Door Media produced the virtual Discover MarTech event, which drew 5x more attendees than any MarTech conference in our history. And we did it in less than three weeks of promotional efforts. Don’t get me wrong, having nearly 9,000 registrants was something we were proud of, but it got me wondering about sustainability. 

Most people working from home (and not spending hours commuting) has been a shot of adrenaline into the arteries of the attention economy. We’re experiencing an unprecedented attention glut. There’s just more time in the current landscape for discretionary use. 

It won’t last, even if changes to the workplace that enable more to be done virtually are lasting. The demand for efficiency will ensure that any discretionary time is occupied. 

So, enjoy the success you’re having virtually now. It’s not going to last forever. 

The post Soapbox: Enjoy the attention glut while it lasts appeared first on MarTech.

It’s bad news for those who monetize ads on sites with content of questionable value, often authored by automation. It’s also bad news for the ad tech industry that has taken 40% off the top by facilitating buying on those sites.

Oh, and it’s also bad news for agencies that will find media buying in a cookie-less world more costly less efficient. Who knows? Maybe buying media will become a creative profession again.

The winners? Brands and publishers.

Brands win because they’ll know their messages are appearing on sites publishing brand-friendly editorial and attracting quality audiences. They’ll spend more time being creative and less trying to verify that people actually engaged with their messaging.

Content publishers that invest in quality editorial in a brand-safe environment will also win in attracting loyal and engaged readers. Programmatic buying of inventory through marketplaces is likely to play a role, but the days of blindly buying low-cost inventory on low-rent sites may be ending.

Am I just nostalgic for the good old days? Or is this truly Back to the Future?

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